Sporting

Eddie Howe was just a couple of days into an end-of-season break when the Newcastle head coach’s phone “exploded” last summer.

Sporting director Paul Mitchell had just announced that he was departing.

While there were initial tensions between the pair, Howe was the first to recognise that such a figure “protects the manager from a lot of things”.

That is why the arrival of Ross Wilson is so significant for Newcastle.

Rather than rushing into the appointment – despite the need for a sporting director during a draining transfer window – Newcastle have been keen to recruit the right person.

In Ross Wilson, who already has a good relationship with Howe, they feel they have that man.

It will fall to Wilson to help plot the medium to long-term strategy of the club.

And, after a period of boardroom upheaval, Newcastle will hope the Scot will stick around long enough to see that vision through.

PLANS for Riyadh Season 2025 have been formally announced – with WWE and darts events now on the agenda.

As part of the Middle Eastern sporting bonanza which starts this week and runs until early next year, Saudi Arabia will host the Royal Rumble, becoming the first nation outside of North America to take on a marquee WWE event.

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They are also expected to stage Wrestlemania in 2027.

The Kingdom will host the Saudi Arabia Darts Masters in January as part of the World Series of Darts.

The PDC has never taken a professional darts event to Saudi before.

Chairman of the Saudi General Entertainment Authority, Turki Alalshikh, announced the plans for Riyadh Season 2025 in a press conference on Sunday.

Alalshikh has previously said he wants to try something “crazy” with darts – but it is not yet clear what he has up his sleeve.

The Riyadh Season Snooker Championship remains on the calendar, along with high-profile events in tennis and boxing.

Six Kings Slam is one of the most lucrative events on the tennis circuit, with Novak Djokovic, Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz all set to feature.

Players are guaranteed £1.1million just for competing, with the winner banking an eye-watering £4.5m.

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Ring IV will feature boxing showdowns including David Benavidez vs Anthony Yarde and Brian Norman Jr. vs Devin Haney.

A parade in Boulevard City will kick off Riyadh Season 2025 on October 10.

The entertainment extravaganza will feature 15 global championships as well as 34 exhibitions and festivals.

And Alalshikh estimates that its brand value has reached £2.4BILLION.

Organisers said: “Riyadh Season 2025 will be a defining milestone in the history of global entertainment, emphasising that Riyadh has become the emblem of a new era of creativity, culture, and international entertainment excellence.”

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A SWARM of flying bugs halted the Women’s Cricket World Cup grudge match between India and Pakistan.

Players from both sides tried to fix the problem by waving towels and spraying bug repellent.

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But organisers called for heavy duty measures when India were 154 for four in the 34th over of the group match.

With the insect invasion in full swing, a man in a gas mask emerged to fumigate the pitch with an industrial grade bug spray cannon.

Both sets of players were forced to leave the field and fans had to sit through a 15-minute delay.

But even that didn’t seem to have the desired effect.

Once play resumed, it wasn’t long before another stoppage was brought on by a bug flying into the eye of Pakistani bowler Rameen Shamim.

Indian batters repeatedly moaned to the umpire about being affected by the insects.

Unsurprisingly, there is nothing written into cricket law to guide umpires when bugs bother the players.

But they are advised to signal a dead ball if a player is “disadvantaged by an animal within the field of play”.

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India ended up winning the clash with their geographical neighbours by 88 runs.

The match was played on neutral ground in Colombo, Sri Lanka, due to political tension between the two nations.

And there were no handshakes between the players before the action got underway.

Colombo is proving to be a troublesome venue for cricket matches of late.

On Saturday, the match between Sri Lanka and Australia was washed out without a single ball being bowled due to heavy rain.

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Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez says Israel must face the same sporting sanctions as Russia did after the Ukraine war.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has urged international sporting bodies to ban Israel from competitions, saying its treatment should mirror Russia’s exclusion after the invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Speaking to his Socialist Party on Monday, Sanchez said Israel’s participation in global events was incompatible with its assault on Gaza.

“The sports organisations should consider whether it’s ethical for Israel to keep participating in international competitions. Why expel Russia after the invasion of Ukraine and not expel Israel after the invasion of Gaza?” he asked. “Until the barbarity ends, neither Russia nor Israel should be in any international competition.”

His remarks came a day after pro-Palestinian activists disrupted the closing stage of the Vuelta a Espana cycling race in Madrid, throwing barriers onto the course in protest at the participation of the Israeli team Israel-Premier Tech. Police clashed with demonstrators near the finish line, leaving 22 people injured and arresting two.

Last week, Spanish Sports Minister Pilar Alegria said Israeli teams should be banned from sport in the same way that Russian sides broadly were in 2022 after the country invaded Ukraine, highlighting a “double standard”.

Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Saar lashed out at Sanchez, calling him an “anti-Semite and a liar”, without elaborating on why the criticism of Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza was anti-Semitic. Israel has been accused of weaponising anti-Semitism to target criticism of Israel’s policies against Palestinians.

Last year, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the International Criminal Court anti-Semitic after the Hague-based court issued an arrest warrant against the Israeli prime minister and his former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes.

Tensions between Madrid and Tel Aviv have sharpened in recent months, with Spain’s left-leaning coalition openly backing activists who staged demonstrations during several stages of the Vuelta against the Israeli team’s presence.

Weapons deal with Israel cancelled

Spain is also reportedly planning to scrap a major weapons deal with an Israeli defence manufacturer. According to official documents seen by AFP, Madrid cancelled a contract worth nearly 700 million euros ($824m) for rocket systems designed by Israeli firm Elbit Systems.

The deal, signed in October 2023, involved the purchase of Elbit’s PULS rocket launchers, known in Spain as SILAM. Its cancellation brings the total value of Israeli arms contracts annulled by Spain in recent months to nearly one billion euros ($1.2bn). A previous agreement in June, reportedly with defence company Rafael, was also halted.

Neither Elbit nor Rafael has formally commented, though the Israeli daily Haaretz, which also reported the cancellation, quoted a source as saying that no official notification of cancellation had yet been received. Neither government has confirmed the move publicly.

Al Jazeera, however, could not independently verify the reports.

Spanish media reported that Madrid is exploring ways to distance its defence industry from reliance on Israeli technology. La Vanguardia said officials are studying a plan with Spain’s main arms producers to replace the Israeli systems affected by the embargo.

Last week, Sanchez unveiled nine measures aimed at ramping up pressure on Israel, including banning docking and overflight rights for ships and planes carrying weapons to the country. The prime minister framed the steps as part of Spain’s responsibility to push for an end to what he described as Israel’s “barbarity” in Gaza.

Other steps include banning imports from Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank and Sanchez pledging 10 million euros ($11.8m) in new funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) and a total of 150 million euros ($176m) in humanitarian aid for Gaza by 2026.

CHELSEA are interested in signing Sporting Lisbon striker Conrad Harder, according to reports.

The Blues could re-enter the transfer market for a forward following the injury suffered by Liam Delap against Fulham on Saturday.

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Enzo Maresca’s side were on the brink of loaning Nicolas Jackson to Bayern Munich, having deemed the 24-year-old to be surplus to requirements.

Jackson was allowed to travel to Germany for a medical yesterday, only for Chelsea to pull the plug on the deal upon Delap’s injury.

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MO SALAH and Alessia Russo shared a hug on the red carpet at the PFA Awards.

The Liverpool star is set to be crowned the PFA Men’s Player of the Year.

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He is one of six players nominated for the award, along with Bruno Fernandes, Alexander Isak, Cole Palmer, Declan Rice and Alexis Mac Allister.

Salah looked stylish on the red carpet in a dark suit and he stopped for an embrace with Arsenal and England Women’s star Russo, who is up for the Women’s PFA Player of the Year.

Russo stunned in a low-cut, ankle-length green dress and had posed for photos before bumping into Salah.

The striker was crowned European champion and club and international level this year, and proved a popular figure on the red carpet.

She was joined on a star-studded carpet by the best players the Premier League and WSL has to offer.

Five other players were nominated for the Women’s PFA Player of the Year – Mariona Caldentey, Erin Cuthbert, Mary Fowler, Yui Hasegawa and Phallon Tullis-Joyce.

Rice posed on the red carpet alongside Arsenal team-mates William Saliba and Gabriel.

Another England star, Aston Villa’s Morgan Rogers, was in attendance to pick up his PFA Young Player of the Year award.

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The Swedish striker joins the London club after scoring 97 goals for Sporting Lisbon over the past two seasons.

Arsenal have signed Sweden forward Viktor Gyokeres, bringing an end to the Premier League club’s years-long search for a prolific goalscorer.

Gyokeres completed a move from Sporting Lisbon on Saturday worth a reported 63 million pounds ($85m) and signed a five-year contract.

“Viktor is an exceptional talent and has consistently demonstrated he has the qualities and winning mentality required of a top-level centre-forward. His physicality, intelligence and work ethic make him a perfect fit for our vision,” said Arsenal sporting director Andrea Berta.

The 27-year-old striker joins Arsenal after establishing himself after two outstanding seasons in Portugal, in which he fired Lisbon to back-to-back league titles with 97 goals, including 54 goals in 52 appearances across all competitions in the 2024-25 season, outscoring the likes of superstars Kylian Mbappe, Erling Haaland and Mohamed Salah.

A top-class striker has long been considered the missing element for Arsenal, which came runner-up in each of the last three Premier League seasons. The failure to bring one in during the January transfer window badly undermined its attempts to challenge Liverpool for the title last term.

“The consistency he has shown in his performances and availability have been outstanding, and his goal contributions speak for themselves,” said manager Mikel Arteta. “He is a quick and powerful presence up front, with incredible goalscoring numbers at club and international levels.”

Gyokeres returns to England after joining Brighton as a youth player and later emerging at second-tier Coventry, where his 22 goals helped the team reach the playoff final in 2023.

His record of 40 goals in 97 games for Coventry caught the attention of Lisbon and led to a 20.5 million pounds ($25m) move to the Portuguese club.

His explosive form over the past two seasons has seen frequent speculation about a move to one of European football’s giants, including Manchester United. But Arsenal has won the race for his signature, and the transfer represents a remarkable rise for a player who was first developed at Brommapojkarna, a Swedish club with a reputation for guiding the careers of some of the country’s best emerging talents.

“He was a late developer because he was not the best striker or the best player in Brommapojkarna at age 16, 17, 18, 19,” Dalibor Savic, his former youth coach at the Swedish club, told The Associated Press in November. “If he aims at something, he will achieve it.”

Gyokeres will have to prove he can make the step up to the Premier League after failing to break through at Brighton, a club known for unearthing players like Moises Caicedo and Alexis Mac Allister in recent years. He only made eight appearances for the club and was loaned to St Pauli in Germany and Swansea before his permanent move to Coventry.

His performances for Sweden and in the Champions League suggest he will be able to continue that form at Arsenal.

He was the leading scorer in the Nations League, with nine goals, outscoring Cristiano Ronaldo and Haaland, and hit six in eight appearances in the Champions League for Lisbon last season.

Arsenal target Viktor Gyokeres is facing disciplinary action by his club Sporting after failing to report for pre-season training, says the Portuguese club’s president Frederico Varandas.

Varandas added that any potential transfer was now becoming “more complicated”.

BBC Sport reported last week that Arsenal sporting director Andrea Berta held face-to-face talks with Sweden international Gyokeres in Portugal.

Sources have told BBC Sport that talks are ongoing with Arsenal, who are still hopeful of striking a deal, with their most recent proposal for the 27-year-old totalling about 70m euros (£60m) including add-ons.

Last month Sporting president Varandas said there was no ‘gentleman’s agreement’ for Gyokeres to leave for 70m euros but added that the club would not demand his full release clause of 100m euros (£85m).

Gyokeres, who scored 54 goals in 52 games last season, has yet to publicly explain why he has not turned up for pre-season.

Varandas told Portuguese news agency Lusa that “no one is above the interests of the club”.

“We’re calm. Everything can be solved with the closure of the market, a hefty fine and an apology to the group,” Varandas said.

“If they don’t want to pay Viktor’s fair market value, we’ll be very comfortable with that for the next three years.

“If the geniuses who are devising this strategy think that this puts pressure on me to make it easier for him to leave, not only are they completely wrong, but they are also making it more complicated for the player to leave.”

Gyokeres has scored 97 goals in 102 matches during his two seasons in Portugal, firing Sporting to two league titles.

ARSENAL are close to securing the long-awaited signing of Viktor Gyokeres.

The Gunners have been desperate for a centre-forward and now appear set to get their man.

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Gunners’ sporting director Andrea Berta flew to Portugal for talks at the end of last week to push the deal through, according to CNN Portugal.

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