⚽︎Friday, August 11: Chelsea & Liverpool Battle in the Transfer Market and the League
Plus: Arsenal-Nottingham Forest, Bayern Munich-RB Leipzig in the German Supercup, and Burnley coach Vincent Kompany hosts his former employers at Turf Moor.
Welcome to The Football Weekend, your Friday morning rundown of all the best matches across world football over the coming weekend in the Premier League, La Liga, Serie A, the Bundesliga, and more. Get kickoff times and broadcasters, betting odds and what to watch for—all in your inbox to mark the beginning of the end of the workweek.
Below, you’ll find a couple of matches previewed in some detail, a marquee match that’s previewed in quite a lot of detail, and a few more games you might want to check out. There’s also a roundup of news and feature articles from the past week that I think you’ll find are worth your time. You’ll also see a couple of stunning goals and/or delicious pieces of skill that are sprinkled throughout.
For more on how this newsletter came to be, I’d invite you to have a look at the manifesto. Check into the comments below and let me know if there’s a match I missed, what you’d like to see in this newsletter going forward, or just something you’ll be looking out for this weekend. And now…
THE HEADLINES
Tottenham have accepted an £86 million bid from Bayern Munich for Harry Kane, their talismanic star of the last decade. Kane will depart the club that has defined his career to seek his first professional trophy.
Liverpool have had a £110 million bid for Moises Caicedo accepted, according to David Ornstein, beating out a £100 million offer from Chelsea. Brighton ran a midnight auction for the midfielder in another stunning bit of business from the league’s best-run club.
Thibaut Courtois has reportedly torn his ACL during a training session. Will Real Madrid go into the market for a solution at goalkeeper, and could it be the once linked and currently unemployed David De Gea?
The Guardian’s Jacob Steinberg has a new profile out on Levi Colwill, the 20-year-old centerback who will be crucial to Chelsea’s quest to get their house in order.
Barcelona are rumored to be seeking a reunion with Neymar. It would be the second massive departure from PSG this summer after Lionel Messi, while Kylian Mbappé is still at loggerheads with the club that’s paying him a lot of money to play football.
PREMIER LEAGUE: BURNLEY-MAN CITY
Friday 3pm ET on NBC Sports (USA) / 8pm on Sky Sports Main Event
Vincent Kompany won the Premier League four times with Manchester City, but now he comes up against them as an opposing manager in the inaugural match of the 2023-24 season. Burnley won the Championship at a canter to gain promotion in May, taking 101 points with the most goals scored (87) and the fewest conceded (35). Along the way, they softened the Clarets’ well-earned reputation as a blunt-force weapon, playing some decent stuff. The star attraction in midfield last season was Josh Brownhill, one of the relatively few who bring Premier League experience to this team. For Burnley, the biggest question may be where the goals will come from. Last season’s top scorer, Nathan Tella, was on loan from Southampton and has returned to the relegated Saints as they look to get back into the Premier League themselves.
BURNLEY+900 | DRAW+500 | CITY-313
Burnley are back in the big time now, and you can expect the champions to make sure they know it. City have lost a few big players—Ilkay Gündoğan in particular will be missed come the crunch months of April and May—but Erling Haaland and plenty more remain. Kevin De Bruyne is still working his way to fitness, but there are all kinds of weapons in sky blue, and they seem to be addressing concerns about a dropoff in midfield quality this summer by looking to add Lucas Paquetá from West Ham. (They already brought in Mateo Kovačić from Chelsea as a maybe-replacement for Gündoğan.) They’ll be looking to put their Community Shield loss to Arsenal deep in the rearview.
PREMIER LEAGUE: ARSENAL-NOTTINGHAM FOREST
Saturday 7:30am ET on Peacock / 12:30pm on TNT Sports 1
Last season’s runners up have been handed a favorable schedule to start the campaign, as their opponents at the Emirates Stadium took just eight points away from home last term with a goal difference of -33. Big summer signings Declan Rice, Kai Havertz, and Jurrien Timber all started in Arsenal’s Community Shield victory on Sunday, though how many will feature here is open to question. Leandro Trossard is the form attacker for the Gunners at the moment, but he’s been unable to convince Mikel Arteta to play him from the start. Either he or Havertz will likely fill in for the injured Gabriel Jesus up front—Eddie Nketiah is a less likely option—but all in all, Arsenal come into this one with a big, healthy squad. No excuses for a young team now burdened with expectation. They must challenge for the title this season.
ARSENAL-526 | DRAW+700 | FOREST+1600
After a revolution in the summer of 2022 with massive turnover in the squad upon their promotion from the Championship, it’s been relatively stable for Forest this time around. The big arrivals are the fleet-footed winger Anthony Elanga from Manchester United, veteran striker Chris Wood from Newcastle, and American goalkeeper Matt Turner from…Arsenal. Could he produce something special to show his very-recently-former employers what a mistake they made? The man to watch from a creative standpoint, meanwhile, is Morgan Gibbs-White. He’ll need to orchestrate the counterattacks on the few occasions where Forest can break out of Arsenal’s pincer-grip press. With the additions of Rice and Timber, Arsenal should be more effective than ever at locking the opposition into their third of the field and swamping them with wave after wave of attacks.
Please enjoy Martin Ødegaard’s footwork in the Community Shield last weekend. Julián Álvarez donated his ankles to the cause.
« « The Marquee Match » »
PREMIER LEAGUE: CHELSEA-LIVERPOOL
Sunday 11:30am ET on Peacock / 4:30pm on Sky Sports Main Event
Here we find two giants of the European game, each of whom had to endure an almighty slog last season. Chelsea’s youth revolution careened to a 12th-place finish, a genuine shock for a club of the West Londoners’ stature as Graham Potter got the sack and Super Frank Lampard oversaw a period of turgid misery to see out the season. Chelsea scored just 38 goals in the league, 13 fewer than relegated Leicester City. But they’ll hope to be reborn under the leadership of Mauricio Pochettino, a manager who once took Tottenham—Tottenham!—to the Champions League final. The Argentine is a brilliant tactician who knows how to draw out everything his players have and more. Expect Chelsea to work a whole lot harder off the ball—and farther up the pitch—than they did last season.
Their spending throughout the brash ownership of Todd Boehly—a man who busted into European soccer like the Kool-Aid Man and seems determined to embody every stereotype of an American private-equity prince—has now topped £750 million with the addition of Boehly’s compatriot Tyler Adams on Thursday. The American midfielder will be asked to bring his bulldog belligerence to bear next to Enzo Fernández, the supremely skillful 22-year-old Argentine with a World Cup winner’s medal at home. It’s a typical age profile for this team of promising youngsters on 46-year contracts: 19-year-old Carney Chukwuemeka could take the place of Christopher Nkunku after the attacking midfielder’s crushing knee injury last week. (He’ll be out “for an extended period” following surgery.) Mykhailo Mudryk (22), new signing Nicolas Jackson (22), and Ian Maatsen (21) could all feature in the front line, though (relative) veteran Raheem Sterling is likely to find his way in there somewhere.
At 28, Sterling provides some of the only experience in this team outside the backline, where the ageless Thiago Silva remains the standout in terms of actually keeping people away from the Chelsea goal. (It’s only a bit of a stretch to say Chelsea’s defensive record last season kept them in the league.) It’s likely to be Robert Sanchez between the sticks, a fresh signing from Brighton that Blues fans may have found a bit underwhelming, while 20-year-old Levi Colwill could partner Silva following a fantastic season on loan at the same club. Look for his range of passing to unlock a new dimension when they’re building out from the back. Newly crowned captain Reece James is a locomotive going forward on the right, a force unlike any other in the Premier League when he’s fit. That’s a big “when,” but he’ll be out there on Sunday.
Liverpool’s arrival at Stamford Bridge will provide a stern test, as I for one expect Jürgen Klopp’s side to return with a vengeance this season. The Reds suffered last year for an aging midfield that was drained of physicality after a few grueling seasons battling it out with Manchester City. Fabinho and Jordan Henderson looked awfully leggy last term, and now they’ve both been shipped off to Saudi Arabia. World Cup winner Alexis Mac Allister has arrived from Brighton to fill the gap along with Dominik Szoboszlai. They’ve also gone and pipped Chelsea to the signing of Moises Caicedo, the most in-demand midfielder across the league this summer outside of Declan Rice. Long-rumored target Romeo Lavia, on the other hand, could be on his way to Chelsea before all is said and done.
CHELSEA+205 | DRAW+265 | LIVERPOOL+140
This matchup will be something like two kids fighting on the (transfer) merry-go-round, but Liverpool are looking like the bigger kid even if they still may be a bit short on physicality in midfield. (It might sound a bit reductive, but Liverpool need somebody to get around the pitch and snap into tackles.) Trent Alexander-Arnold could return to his hybrid role shuttling between right back and midfield—not unlike Oleksandr Zinchenko’s remit on the left for Arsenal—and look for him to post big goal and assist numbers this season. The Merseysiders have followed Man City and Arsenal’s lead in bulking up as well: Virgil van Dijk and Ibrahima Konaté are the twin towers at centerback, supported by Andrew Robertson’s tireless running on the left and the world’s best goalkeeper behind them in Alisson Becker.
Then there’s the story up front. Diogo Jota has shown some good form in preseason, and he’ll share time in the left and center forward spots with Darwin Núñez and Cody Gakpo. The former will provide the physicality and the powerful running, while the latter—with Jota—is the technician and (in theory) the silky finisher. And then Mo Salah is Mo Salah. If Erling Haaland doesn’t win the golden boot this season, I’d expect it to be him. If Mac Allister and Thiago can stay fit and spray the passes around, Liverpool are going to score a lot of goals.
Consider the technique it required for Frans Krätzig to keep this volley down after he ran in behind the Liverpool back line last week:
DFL-SUPERCUP FINAL: Bayern Munich-RB Leipzig
Saturday 2:45pm ET on ESPN+ / 7:45pm on Sky Sports Football
When Borussia Dortmund threw away the Bundesliga title last season, Bayern were there to benefit. They’ve since beaten out Manchester United to the signing of Kim Min-jae to beef up their backline, while Konrad Laimer and Raphaël Guerrero have come into the midfield. Jamal Musiala and Joshua Kimmich are still the stars in there, however, while somebody up front will need to take the opportunity and start scoring regularly. Serge Gnabry led with 14 league goals last season, while Sadio Mané has a lot to prove following a disappointing first season after many great years at Liverpool.
Oh, and Leipzig are playing, too. Losing Nkunku to Chelsea was a blow, and a lot rests on the shoulders of Dani Olmo and Timo Werner. Bayern are the favorites as they appear in their 12th-straight Supercup—the kind of trophy record that’s tempted Harry Kane over.
BAYERN-175 | DRAW+333 | LEIPZIG+425
PREMIER LEAGUE: BRIGHTON-LUTON TOWN
Saturday 10am ET on Peacock / 3pm on BBC Radio 5 Live
Luton missed out on a founding membership in the Premier League when they were relegated in 1992, just a few months before the FA changed the sporting landscape. It’s been a struggle in the time since, but the Hatters have battled their way back to the big time following victory in the Championship playoff final. Their reward, at least in Matchweek 1, is to play one of the most entertaining sides of last season. Brighton will play European football for the first time in their history following a sixth-place finish, and they’ll want to show the newly promoted side how things are done around here.
BRIGHTON-294 | DRAW+460 | LUTON+950
LEAGUES CUP QUARTERFINAL: Inter Miami-Charlotte
Saturday 8:30pm ET on Apple TV
If you’d like to watch Lionel Messi turn a few more adult men into his sons, you can tune into this one. Like many of his bouts so far on American soil, this is likely to be a case study in why you cannot allow the greatest player who ever lived to sashay through huge spaces in the final third. In fairness, few on the North American continent have much experience dealing with that kind of violent body swerve and silky ball control. The North Carolinians could be in some trouble.
MIAMI-227 | DRAW+360 | CHARLOTTE+500
THE FANTASY DIARY
A longtime trend where wide forwards are listed as midfielders in Fantasy Premier League (FPL) means this is likely another season where few forwards are worth a big chunk of your budget. Erling Haaland is hard to ignore, of course, even if his preseason wasn’t too much to write home about and he’s been bumped up to an astonishing £14.0 million price tag—£1.5 million above anybody else. He joins only prime Thierry Henry, Robin van Persie, and Cristiano Ronaldo in hitting the 14 threshold.
But no, the moneymakers are in the goalscoring midfielders and the defenders who can get goal involvements and feature frequently in a team that keeps a lot of clean sheets. Mo Salah is no steal at £12.5 million, but I’m backing Liverpool to start off with a bang—which is why I’ve also gone for Diogo Jota. They’re joined by Marcus Rashford, another wide forward listed in midfield, and Arsenal’s Leandro Trossard. He may only feature off the bench, but I think he will have a points return.
At the back, I’ve gone for Gabriel in the expectation that Arsenal will keep some clean sheets and he’ll get his usual handful of goals from set pieces across the season. Then there are two set-piece takers, Kieran Trippier and Trent Alexander-Arnold, who also get forward in open play. Finally, Luke Shaw and André Onana could be clean-sheet machines in Erik Ten Hag’s system at Manchester United: in spite of everything, David De Gea took the golden glove last season.
Oh, and up front? I like Julián Álvarez to start the first few matches for City while Kevin De Bruyne gets himself fit, and Alexander Isak was scintillating at times for Newcastle last season. He may take on more of the striking load from FPL legend Callum Wilson this term.
The Football Weekend has an FPL league of its own. You can join up here and see if you’re able to beat a guy who keeps giving you his strategy every week.⚽️
hell of a first post, just perfect for this gambling degenerate, cheers!