Frank Lampard has said he loves Hakim Ziyech’s “inner confidence” and believes the Moroccan will boost Chelsea’s ability to break down defensive opponents.

Chelsea lacked invention last season and hope Ziyech, who had to wait to make his debut after sustaining a knee injury in pre-season, will increase their creative threat. The former Ajax playmaker impressed on his first start against Krasnodar in the Champions League on Wednesday, scoring in a 4-0 win and showing signs of the personality that has convinced Lampard of the 26-year-old’s ability to succeed in the Premier League.

Burnley v Chelsea: match previewRead more

“He can find a pass and sometimes last season I felt we lacked that when we were playi…

Thomas Tuchel has admitted “nobody wants to touch” the Chelsea No 9 shirt vacated by Romelu Lukaku because of a “curse” that stretches back to the days of Fernando Torres.

Lukaku rejoined Internazionale on loan in June after returning to Stamford Bridge in a club-record £97.5m deal and scoring only 15 goals in 44 appearances last season. Chelsea, who completed the signing of Marc Cucurella from Brighton on Friday in a deal that could reach £62m, are considering a move for Barcelona’s Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang after last month rejecting an opportunity to sign Cristiano Ronaldo from Manchester United.

Football transfer window summer 2022 – Europe’s top five men’s leaguesRead more

The No 9 shirt has be…

Vanessa DiBernardo scored the first goal for Kansas City in their new stadium and the Current held off the Portland Thorns 5-4 on Saturday in the regular-season opener for the National Women’s Soccer League.

NWSL 2024 predictions: are Gotham FC and San Diego on a repeat collision course?Read more

Debinha’s rebound shot deflected off Thorns goalkeeper Shelby Hogan and fell to DiBernardo, who scored in the 22nd minute. Rookie Ellie Wheeler scored moments later and the Current built a 3-1 lead by halftime.

Bia Zaneratto, Kristen Hamilton and Alex Pfeiffer added goals for the Current. Sophia Smith and Janine Beckie each had a pair of goals for the Thorns.

The Current were hurt in the 32nd mi…

The race is on for coveted spots in the FedEx Cup playoffs at this week's Wyndham Championship, which serves as the final regular-season event of 2024. The final opportunity to qualify has drawn a field chock full of players hovering around the top 70 in the standings who will earn spots in the first leg of the playoffs at the FedEx St. Jude Championship. The event begins Thursday at Sedgefield Country Club in Greensboro, N.C., and our golf experts provide their favorite prop picks along with best bets to win this week. WYNDHAM CHAMPIONSHIP Location: Greensboro, N.C., Aug. 8-11 Course: Sedgefield Country Club (Par 70, 7,131 Yards) Purse: $7.9M (Winner: $1.422M) Defending Champion: Lucas Glover FedEx Cup Leader: Scottie Scheffler HOW TO FOLLOW TV: Thursday-Friday: 3-6 p.m. ET…

Jürgen Klinsmann wasn't brought in for Brazil. Fans, U.S. Soccer, and Klinsmann himself know he's here for the long run, being given time to build his own team and trot it out in Russia in 2018. And he's already set a goal. Klinsmann spoke to NBC Sports ahead of yesterday's 1-0 friendly win over the Czech Republic, and in case you were wondering, he does consider the team's performance in Brazil a success. But he says it hurt to go out that way, in extra time against Belgium. So he's aiming bigger for the next time around: "This is our goal going towards Russia, not to stop at the Round of 16, maybe not to stop at the quarterfinal. To say clearly, listen, we have four years to prepare this cycle. Our goal is going into a semifinal in a World Cup.&quo…

Now that 2014 is over—and we've all decided that year's very best films—it's time to look ahead to 2015. Here are the 20 scheduled films we're most excited about.

Ant-Man (July 17)
Marvel is on such a roll right now that it's easy to ignore some of the warning signs here—director Edgar Wright, the only reason Marvel was making this movie in the first place,
leaving the project right before filming began foremost among them—in the wake of Guardians of the Galaxy, which opened up a whole new world of goofy sidebar comic-book B-movie possibilities to come. Paul Rudd is an inspired choice to play the title character, but the cast around him looks even more fun: Michael Douglas, Corey Stoll, Judy Greer, Evangeline Lilly, Michael Pena, and John Sl…

Hockey players can’t stop doing weird things with their mouths, and P.K. Subban might be the latest victim. At the end of the second period in an eventual 2-1 win for his Predators over the Golden Knights on Wednesday, the Nashville defender very visibly claimed that he was bitten on the finger while grabbing hold of Vegas’s Pierre-Edouard Bellemare in the crease. Video, unfortunately, wasn’t quite conclusive: Here’s probably the best angle of the bunch. There’s definitely an opportunity for teeth-on-digit action, if that’s what Bellemare desired: Bellemare wasn’t penalized at all for what may or may not have gone down, but Subban got four minutes for roughing and unsportsmanlike conduct, while Knights enforcer Ryan Reaves got two for trying to go after Subban at the …

The National Football League, as everyone knows, is a not-for-profit charity, the chief purpose of which is to promote the growth of the sport of football. Sure, it rakes in hundreds of millions of tax-exempt dollars annually, and pays its executives tens of millions, but why not? Who can quibble with its sterling track record of football promotion? Football is safer than it's ever been, and we've got Goodell to thank for that. He surely earned at least half of his salary just by thinking up new ways to penalize thuggish players for illegal hits to the head while allowing us to enjoy clean, healthy helmet-to-helmet smashes, which are still awesome. When not making sure we can watch the game with a clear conscience, Goodell's NFL is writing big checks to other charities…

The perfect contract: You rarely get that in sports. Of course, we may revisit this down the line and think otherwise, but for now, for this moment in time, Julius Randle’s extension with the New York Knicks is perfect for business. In 2020-21, while leading the Knicks to a No. 4 seed, widely outperforming the public’s preseason expectations, Randle averaged 24.1 points, 10.2 rebounds, and 6.0 assists per game on 46 / 41 / 81 shooting splits from the field, three-point range, and the free-throw line. Following his first All-Star campaign and 2021 Most Improved Player honor, the bully-ball four ⁠appeared in his first playoff series, where he was memorably lackluster, posting 18.0 points, 11.6 rebounds, and 4.0 assists per game, but only shooting 30 percent from the field and 33 perc…

data-mm-id=”_lylof8xcu”>The Detroit Lions will be among the NFL teams sending a representative to Colin Kaepernick's Saturday workout. With Matthew Stafford likely sidelined for an extended period and playoff elimination hiding behind only one more loss, there's little reason or urgency to bring in the polarizing free agent. But teams are wont to do their due diligence. The Detroit Free Press' Dave Birkett — like any other human being who dares mention Kaepernick's name in an online post — was beset with a deluge of emails for simply reporting this news. More than one person, it appears, wasted no time issuing an ultimatum to Birkett, who I guess was supposed to relay this to Bob Quinn and other Lions brass — that signing Kaepernick would be the last straw for t…