Jalen Hurts is going to surprise a lot of people this season. The Eagles’ second-year quarterback has reportedly been locked in and is determined to get better every single day. He’s even gaining the respect of a lot of his teammates as the new franchise QB. If you’ve followed Hurts throughout his collegiate career, nothing about what’s been reported about his work ethic and leadership will surprise you. He’s been that guy since he was at Alabama. What has turned the tide on the perception of Hurts is how much his skillset as a passer continues to improve. He’s quickly turning into a guy that can make most of the throws that are necessary to win football games on Sunday. Eagles fans might be able to have confidence in Hurts as a passer. That’s a statement not many peopl…

Jürgen Klopp believes the past year has been the toughest of his life as he admitted he has found it hard to cope with the consequences of the coronavirus pandemic. The Liverpool manager lost his mother, Elisabeth, in January and travel restrictions meant he could not return to his native Germany to attend the funeral.

A naturally gregarious character, Klopp has also struggled with a world where he could not go out for lunch or a beer or meet friends, while Liverpool have had a unique combination of factors that has meant they could not retain their Premier League title and may need victory against Crystal Palace to finish in the top four and qualify for the Champions League.

Battle for Europe: how the Premier League’s places will be d…

Welcome to Moving the Goalposts, the Guardian’s free women’s football newsletter. Here’s an extract from this week’s edition. To receive the full version once a week, just pop your email in below:

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FC Viktoria Berlin are an ambitious side. Currently playing in the Regionalliga Nordost in the third tier in German women’s football, they aim to reach the Frauen-Bundesliga in five years – and change the game in Germany while they’re at it.

A lot has already happened this year. They are under new management and now separate from…

Aston Villa are closing in on a £50m deal for the Everton midfielder Amadou Onana. The 22-year-old moved to Goodison Park for £35m from Lille two years ago.

Onana, who was in Belgium’s team for all their Euro 2024 matches, endured a difficult final couple of months of the season and started only two of Everton’s last six games – the final two when top-flight status had been secured.

Men’s transfer window summer 2024; all deals from Europe’s top five leaguesRead more

There was an expectation the club would cash in on him because he was not viewed as integral to Sean Dyche’s plans. Everton, who received two points deductions for financial breaches last season, are happy to cash in, although it is understo…

Once the Toronto Maple Leafs get Andrei Vasilevskiy’d in the first round again, it’s not like the angst level in the T.O. will fade all that much through the summer months. That’s because the Toronto Blue Jays have reached the same threshold as the Leafs passed a few years ago, where you go from young and promising and exciting to what the fuck have you done? The Jays are loaded and still have Vlad Jr. and Bo Bichette, but they’re also still a team that hasn’t won a playoff game in seven years despite getting two cracks at expanded fields in 2020 and 2022. They’re still a playoff team, but can they overtake the Yankees and/or hold off the Rays this time around? Or are they going to be just part of the playoff field again? There has been some surgery to the roster, though most…

The NL Central is the rare occurrence in modern-day Major League Baseball where an argument could be made for four teams to win it. Or, to put it more accurately in today’s context, only one team has actively given up and merely exists to siphon off revenue-sharing and BAMTech money while causing its entire fanbase to listen to My Bloody Valentine exclusively, and that’s the Pirates. credits: 2019 NL Central Standings Last year’s division winner, the Cardinals, returns essentially their entire team to try and do the same. The Cincinnati Reds were the big movers of the offseason and most picked them to be the surprise team of the NL, before everything went to shit. The Brewers still have Christian Yelich, who can account for even more in just 60 games. And the Cubs, despite their o…

Yaroslav Askarov made 27 saves and also stopped both shootout attempts he faced as the Nashville Predators snapped a three-game losing streak with a 3-2 victory over the host Washington Capitals on Saturday night. Askarov, the 11th overall pick in the 2020 NHL Draft who was making his second career start and third career appearance, picked up his first NHL win. Nashville's Luke Evangelista and Roman Josi scored in regulation before Gustav Nyquist and Ryan O'Reilly converted their attempts in the shootout. Alex Ovechkin and Beck Malenstyn scored for Washington, which lost its fourth straight game (0-2-2). It was the 829th career goal for Ovechkin, second only to Wayne Gretzky's NHL record of 894. Washington goalie Hunter Shepard, recalled from the Hershey Bears of the…

Andre Drummond, in his career, has been a hilariously bad free throw shooter. He’s not the first: Chris Dudley was such a disastrously terrible free throw shooter during his career that his name—a name that would not otherwise echo much in the minds of basketball fans—became a reference point for lousy free-throw shooting among my friends in high school. But Hack-a-Shaq eventually begat the Hack-a treatment that has generally made guys like Drummond and Dwight Howard and DeAndre Jordan unplayable in crunch time in the modern NBA. Recent rule changes have scaled that back a tad, but they can’t do much to change the fact that a player who can’t shoot free throws can be made into a severe liability down the stretch of a close basketball game. But, hey, whoa, look at what Andre Dr…

The easiest shape to draw is a straight line, and yet, look at this shit. This is also my reaction: If you know the person who drew this squiggly, avant-garde sideline, please let us know at [email protected]. …

Over at Men's Journal Nicholas Dawidoff's new book, Collision Low Crossers: A Year Inside the Turbulent World of NFL Football: Some people question why football coaches put in such hours, but a game plan is their creative work. Coaches say that even on the best professional teams, only 10 percent of the time do all 11 players perform their roles as scripted. But you always aimed for better. Besides, the mere idea of free time is for them anathema – they feared not working, because working all the time was the only salve for the anxiety-driven nature of the job. In August, with Hurricane Irene bearing down on New York, a Jets preseason game against the Giants had been postponed. The coaches and players were told that they should stay home, and that their practice facility i…