Key events

Some Nations League team news. Belgium must do without captain Youri Tielemans and midfield talisman Kevin De Bruyne when ⁠they meet France in the Nations League on Monday in a blow to their chances at the Stade de France.

The ⁠pair are suspended after ⁠being cautioned in successive games and have to serve a one-match ban, sitting out the last of four Nations League games ⁠played over a 10-day period in the international window.

De Bruyne was the hero of Belgium’s 3-0 home win over Turkey in Liège ⁠on Friday but picked up a caution late in the game for an outburst after being fouled.

(Reuters)

“It is of course a topic and we speak about it at dinner.” Probably pretty easy to guess what Thomas Tuchel is referring to here. Yes, here’s the England boss on the new series of Celebrity Traitors. Not really.

England manager Thomas Tuchel at the Stadion HNK in Rijeka. Photograph: Bradley Collyer/PA

Got a minute to spare? Why not try our daily Premier League trivia game, On the ball? Every day a star player past or present is hidden behind nine clues. How many will you need to identify them?

I got it after two guesses although there was an element of good fortune.

Danny Myers emails in with a mention of a landmark and some stats.

“Harry Kane is likely to equal Peter Shilton’s all time cap record in the next few days. You obviously can’t compare keepers with strikers in any ‘greatness’ debate. However, here’s a stat.

• Shilton conceded 80 goals in 125 games for England over a 20 year period. Admittedly his numbers were impacted by the Clemence rotation arrangement in the 70s.

• Kane has scored 87 goals 123 games in 11 years.

So, there you have a stat which I’m not sure tells you much but somehow feels impressive. Harry Kane has scored comfortably more goals for England than all the players Shilton faced in his 125 games for England.”

The big one in the WSL this weekend is Man City v Arsenal on Sunday. The table shows Arsenal already seven points behind leaders City and boss Renée Slegers is under mounting pressure after just one win in five matches. Tom Garry sets the scene for the 16:30 BST kick-off.

Just a single game in the WSL today but it’s an intriguing one.

13:30 BST Man Utd Women v Liverpool Women

United have made a stuttering start under new manager Eva Olid, taking just four points from the opening four games. That said, they got their first league win last weekend, a 2–1 success against West Ham.

Liverpool are fifth with seven points and beat Everton 2-0 in the Merseyside derby at Anfield last weekend. Gareth Taylor’s team are definitely on the up and vastly improved from the side that sat bottom of the table last January.

The head-to-heads still favour United though as Liverpool have won only one of five WSL away games against them. They’ve lost their last three visits to Leigh 9–1 on aggregate.

How best to punish Manchester City? Jonathan Liew goes deep.

These are almost philosophical questions, questions of justice and ethics and morality. Do you decide that the strict imperative is to punish or “cancel” the harm done, as Kant or Hegel might have argued? Do you agree with Durkheim that the point of punishment is not exemplary deterrence but the reinforcement of shared moral values, or with Bentham that the infliction of pain for its own sake simply prolongs the original sin, and that the emphasis should always be on averting future evil? And do any of these scenarios end with Victor Lindelöf lifting a Premier League trophy?

Here’s Sam Cunningham on Raheem Sterling. The former England winger could face a prison term next month after pleading guilty at Basingstoke magistrates court to dangerous driving and possession of nitrous oxide after an incident that witnesses feared might kill someone.

Thomas Tuchel said this when asked about Sterling in Friday’s England press conference: “It’s sad to see that someone struggles, because he was a devoted father for his children and he was a family guy, a nice guy to be around. It just seems that he goes through a difficult period. I’m not sure how much is his fault; sometimes you just enter a strange spiral in your life, a downward spiral. Thoughts are with him of course. The belief is always that he can turn it around.”

Raheem Sterling being detained by police officers. Photograph: Crown Prosecution Service/PA

Today’s ‘Saturday read’ is David Conn on Manchester City.

At the core of Burnham’s speech was the wrong turn he says Britain took under Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s, selling off and privatising council housing, water, energy, transport and care. “We built the common good,” he said, but “the common wealth … created for the many was seen as an opportunity for the few.”

He could have been talking about football, too.

Plymouth, by the way, are one of six teams in action in League One today. Most of the fixtures have been postponed due to the international break. All times BST.

15:00 Burton Albion v Huddersfield Town
15:00 Leyton Orient v Plymouth Argyle
15:00 Reading v Bradford City

Here’s the early table. Bradford have the chance to stretch their lead at the top while Plymouth could hit the summit if the Bantams fail to win.

A morning quiz question: which Spurs player has the most goals this season?

The answer is Oliver Irow, on loan at Plymouth: four goals across seven appearances v Tottenham’s two goals in the Premier League after five matches.

The forward only joined Argyle on loan in August but has the best haul of any player contracted to Tottenham in the 2026-27 campaign. Irow made his Plymouth debut the day after he joined and announced himself to the Home Park faithful with a goal in a Carabao Cup loss to Coventry.

The 20-year-old followed it up with a sensational strike against Barnsley before a brace in a 4-2 triumph over Doncaster. London-born Irow was quickly sold on a loan move after a conversation with manager Tom Cleverley as Argyle seek promotion from League One.

Irow, Irow, it’s up the league they go? Photograph: Steve Taylor/PPAUK/Shutterstock

In perfect timing, krishnamoorthy v has just dropped this on email.

“Away from the Nations League this evening has a dream come true for many Indians when India hosts Brazil for a friendly in the football-crazy Calcutta (Kolkata to be politically correct). Brazil may find it bewildering to find that the home crowd supports them and not India.”

Time to peruse today’s Nations League fixtures. All times BST:

14:00 Finland v Albania
17:00 Belarus v San Marino
17:00 Croatia v England
17:00 Estonia v Luxembourg
17:00 Iceland v Bulgaria
19:45 North Macedonia v Scotland
19:45 Spain v Czechia
19:45 Switzerland v Slovenia

There are also two Playstation friendlies that are actually happening in real life.

15:00 India v Brazil
16:00 Russia v Namibia

With European nations involved in the Nations League, Brazil seem to have decided to just play teams with Test match cricket status. After back-to-back friendlies against Australia (1-1 draw and 4-2 win), now it’s India. Who next? The West Indies? Pakistan? Bangladesh? New Zealand?

Brazil’s head coach Carlo Ancelotti with his India counterpart Khalid Jamil in Kolkata. Photograph: Piyal Adhikary/EPA

Let’s switch to more grown-up matters. Here’s Matt Hughes on Etihad’s statements on funding appearing to contradict Manchester City’s defence in their appeal against the independent commission’s guilty verdict in more than 100 charges of financial rule breaches.

A key element of City’s appeal, which was confirmed by the club on Friday, is understood to be based on their claim that commercial contracts, which the commission concluded were part-funded by their owner, were in fact paid for by the Abu Dhabi government.

In a 2015 submission to the United States’ department of commerce, transportation and state as part of investigation into state-owned airlines, Etihad described suggestions that the government paid for its sponsorship of the club as “false”.

Bringing a couple of ideas already discussed together, I once attended an England v Northern Ireland schoolboy international as a kid. To this day, I can still hear the squealing wall of sound generated by thousands of children whose voices hadn’t broken. Harrowing.

Croatia v England 'behind closed doors' … but mainly full

Despite the belief that Croatia v England is being played behind closed doors, that isn’t quite the case. The match in Rijeka officially has that status due to a Uefa punishment for Croatia following crowd trouble involving their supporters during a Nations League quarter-final against France. However, Uefa’s disciplinary rules include an exception for children up to the age of 14 from schools and/or football academies in the local Rijeka area, who have been invited to the match free of charge.

Uefa had initially anticipated around 3,000 children plus guardians, but the Croatian federation now expects between 5,500 and 6,000. In an 8,200-seat stadium, that puts it somewhere around 70% full.

Add in the 100 England fans allowed to attend and there will be more atmosphere than expected. Perhaps very high-pitched, screechy atmosphere but surely that’s better than eerie silence. Possibly.

The pre-match quiet in Rijeka. Photograph: Bradley Collyer/PA

Ukraine 0-3 Northern Ireland! Okay, it wasn’t quite up there with John Motson screaming “Armstrong!” after the striker’s goal against Spain in the 1982 World Cup finals (what the heck was Arconada doing parrying the ball straight into his path?) but that was surely one of the great nights for Northern Irish football.

You’ll find the detail in our Nations League round-up which also features:

• Why Kevin De Bruyne’s 127th cap for Belgium went very well indeed

• Frustration for Zinedine Zidane in his first home game as France boss

• A hat-trick for Robert Lewandowski

• A winner from a Liverpool full-back

Northern Ireland players celebrates after Ciaron Brown scored their third goal against Ukraine. Photograph: Dénes Erdős/AP

Those with long memories may recall how England boss Ron Greenwood used to alternate between Peter Shilton and Ray Clemence on a match by match basis in the late 1970s and early 80s. Are we seeing something similar with Jordan Pickford and James Trafford? They’re getting two games each in this quickfire round of Nations League fixtures and Pickford is in goal for the first of his pair against Croatia later today.

Here’s Jacob Steinberg on the battle for the England No 1 jersey. Is Thomas Tuchel being smart in hedging his bets?

Let’s go to the the very top and see what Barney Ronay has to say about Andy Burnham. BR ponders whether the PM’s contortions over the Manchester City verdicts have landed him with an early test of what he wants to stand for. Realpolitik, or real values?

Preamble

Good morning and welcome to another Matchday live! While the Premier League takes a back seat once more, the football headlines continues to flash hard due to the fallout over Manchester City’s guilty verdict and the raft of Nations League games during this extended international brek.

We’ll try to untangle and add more perspective on the former throughout the day and also focus on the latest group outings for both England and Scotland. The Three Lions play Croatia at 5pm BST while the Scots travel to North Macedonia for an evening kick-off at 7.45.

And how about that result for Northern Ireland last night?! News on that coming up and we’ll even tell you what happened in Kazakhstan v Moldova.

Come and join us!