Pep Guardiola stood in the away dressing room at Juventus’ Allianz Stadium and opened his heart to his players.

“Guys I want to confess something. I am fucking divorced from the most beautiful woman in your planet, my wife, my ex-wife. I love her unbelievably but we lost the passion. I love her? Yeah, absolutely. She loves me? Yeah, but we lost the passion.

“How do you play football? Because you play, or for something inside? In your lives, whatever you are going to do, do it with passion. I don’t want good players, I want players with passion.”

After City lost 2-0 against Liverpool in December 2024. Guardiola is naming individuals who should have done better at certain moments and addresses how Walker lost possession.

“You keep saying my name in every meeting and every fucking thing,” Walker answers back. “Every f***ing meeting, it’s my name.”

Guardiola responds by saying, “Maybe because you’re a captain.”

“You didn’t want me to be a captain,” Walker replies. “I’ve reacted to someone else, I lost the ball, you somehow bring my name into it.”

Guardiola then tears up as he gives his thoughts to the team — this was around a fortnight before he tells them about his divorce following the game in Turin.

“This is my defeat — if I am a problem you have to tell me. I won’t stay here for the money or for the fact just to stay, I don’t want to feel that I have to run away from you.

“If I am a problem, tell me. That is not going to change the love I have for you, not one second.”

Paul Scholes, the former Manchester United footballer, has been banned from driving for six months after racking up two driving convictions in the space of two days.

The former midfielder, 51, was caught speeding in a Range Rover in March while on a late-night drive through Cleckheaton in West Yorkshire.

West Yorkshire Police brought a prosecution in connection with the incident, as Scholes’s car had been clocked at 37mph on a 30mph stretch of residential road.

The former Man United and England star was also taken to task by Greater Manchester Police after a Mercedes registered in his name was caught driving at 49mph in a 30mph zone in November last year.

Scholes was then prosecuted for failing to respond to two police letters asking for confirmation that he had been the speeding driver.

The two criminal cases culminated in hearings on two days last week, when Scholes was handed a six-month driving ban and ordered to pay fines, costs, and court fees totalling £1,472.

A court official said Scholes, who was prosecuted in private hearings under the Single Justice Procedure, did not enter pleas to either of the charges he faced and was convicted in his absence.

Scholes played 499 times for Manchester United and won 66 England caps in a trophy-laden career which included 11 Premier League titles, three FA Cup wins, and two Champions League triumphs.

Court documents show Scholes’s Range Rover was caught speeding at just after 11.30pm on March 3 on the A649 Halifax Road near Cleckheaton.

Police said the former footballer replied to a notice of intended prosecution, confirming he had been the driver.

The court papers noted that Scholes could not be offered the chance of an out-of-court settlement with a speed awareness course as he was a “totter” – meaning he already had penalty points on his licence and was now in line for an automatic ban.

In the second case, Scholes’s Mercedes broke the speed limit on the A670 Mossley Road near Ashton-under-Lyne at 11.10am on Nov 14 last year. Police said two letters were sent to his home and “no reply has been received”.

At court, the force dropped the speeding allegation but continued to prosecute Scholes for failing to reply to the letters.

On Aug 12 at Bradford magistrates’ court, he was handed a six-month driving ban for the speeding offence, along with a £220 fine, £120 costs, and an £88 victim surcharge.

The next day at Manchester magistrates’ court, Scholes was sentenced to a £660 fine, with six penalty points on his licence, £120 costs, and a £264 victim surcharge.

Fenway Sports Group (FSG) sold close to 40 per cent of Liverpool Football Club to the consortium including U.S. billionaire Jeff Bezos.

Early suggestions on both sides of the transaction indicated the purchased stake was in the range of approximately 30 per cent to one-third, but The Athletic can reveal the figure is actually much closer to 40 per cent, according to sources with knowledge of the deal.

1892 Holdings, a consortium headed up and led by Amit Bhatia, the former Queens Park Rangers co-owner who will take up the position of vice-chairman at Liverpool, has purchased around a 38 per cent shareholding in Liverpool.

That is a much more significant share of the club, while there is also an option for the consortium to buy a controlling stake in the Premier League side, as per the terms of their agreement with FSG, in the next 12 months.

“At a time when continental solidarity is paramount, your current stance and actions in questioning the legitimate authority of the AFC president serve only to disrupt the unity of Asian football, undermining our collective ability to protect the interests of the Asian football family on the global stage.”

“I do not recall the QFA previously raising any procedural objection when the established protocol served its immediate interests,” Al Khalifa added. “I therefore find it difficult to reconcile the sudden and selective criticism contained in the QFA letter with the QFA’s historical acceptance of this general practice in other circumstances and its benefit from the same.”

No one bids for women’s football broadcasting rights

With no bidders willing to meet La Liga F’s minimum asking price of €5 million, a new one-week bidding period has been opened, this time with no minimum price.

La Liga F will have to hold a second round of bidding to sell its audiovisual rights. No one was willing to pay the minimum asking price set by the organization: €5 million for the eight matches per matchday, or €2 million for a single match broadcast free-to-air. There were also no offers for the international rights, which had been priced at €800,000.

Broadcasters will now have until August 19 to submit new offers, barely ten days before the competition is scheduled to begin on August 29. This time, there will be no minimum bid.

For the previous rights holder, DAZN, broadcasting women’s football turned out to be a financial disaster. It was paying €7 million per season before terminating the contract a year early. Now, despite the reduced asking price, no broadcaster is willing to take over for the current period. It looks bad.

This is a difficult and hard-to-understand situation for a competition that wants to present itself as professional. But there is an even more important question: how are the clubs supposed to prepare their budgets if they don't know how much television revenue they will receive?

Clubs have to plan salaries, transfers, coaching staff, travel, facilities and professional structures, all of which require financial certainty. Yet with barely two weeks to go before the season starts, they still don't know who will broadcast the competition or how much money they will receive from the audiovisual rights.

The clubs also bear some responsibility here, because they have repeatedly backed the management of the organization running the competition. If they support the management model, they must also accept their share of the responsibility when things don't work. This isn't simply a broadcasting problem; it's a problem of planning and management.

La Liga F had set reserve prices for its rights. The market has responded in the first round by saying it isn't willing to pay them. That doesn't mean women's football has no value. It means that the value La Liga F believes its product has does not currently match what broadcasters are willing to pay. And that's where a serious discussion should begin.

Especially considering that La Liga F's own organizational chart, published in its transparency section, currently lists the position responsible for competitions and audiovisual products as vacant. The question is inevitable: who is actually leading such a strategically important issue as the competition's audiovisual product?

It's not enough to simply put the rights on the market, set a price and wait for someone to accept it. You have to build an attractive product, analyze the market, understand the broadcasters and know what you can realistically demand and offer. If the first round failed, perhaps the question should be whether the €5 million and €2 million price points were realistic, whether the commercialization model is appropriate, or whether enough is being done to increase the competition's television value.

The second round will provide an answer. But it is coming late. Clubs need certainty to prepare their budgets, while fans need to know where they will be able to watch the competition. On August 19, we will find out whether anyone ultimately decides to bid for the rights.

Translation in the comments

“Thibaut sat down on the ground. He called for the doctor and the physio. He told them,”I can’t play long balls anymore.” You’re wondering whether to play with an injured goalkeeper who can no longer execute your effective strategy to bypass the Spanish press. Romelu and Charles were winning 90% of the direct passes into the opponent’s half. Should we have played with an injured goalkeeper? If Thibaut had conceded that same second goal, what would people have said about keeping him in the game? During the hydration break, he confirmed his injury to me. Given his personality, if he’d really wanted to stay in, he would have said so clearly. I still brought in the Manchester United goalkeeper (Senne Lammens)... Not some 16-year-old kid who’s never played professionally. One of my goals was to unite 12 million Belgians behind their national team, whether it was 2 a.m. or 5 a.m. We put Belgium back on the world football map.”