Saturday
8am (all times BST)
Matchday live
Football
Our essential Saturday morning gateway to the weekend’s football returns and Yara El-Shaboury is your host as the Championship launches with a flurry of matches. Readers are invited to get in touch with their plans for the day; we spin through the headlines from overnight, including Friday night’s Birmingham v Ipswich curtain-raiser; and we flag the day’s big Championship, Football League and Scottish Premiership matches, with team news and all the latest breaking transfer stories. Post your thoughts and questions to Ben Fisher for our Football League Q&A at 11am. Send your queries to matchday.live@theguardian.com from 9.30am. Ben sets the scene on the new Championship season – the contenders, hopefuls and youngsters to watch – here.
12.30pm
Southampton v Wrexham
Championship
Wrexham return to the second tier for the first time in 43 years. Three consecutive promotions have taken the Red Dragons – the Welsh club with Hollywood backing and an unlikely global following – from the National League to an opening-day fixture at Southampton, freshly relegated from the Premier League. While some fans have been dreaming that Wrexham can make it four promotions in succession there is the danger that, after such a rapid rise, they find their ceiling – the jump from League One to the Championship is bigger than those they have bridged in the past couple of years. Ben Fisher reports from St Mary’s.
12.45pm
Manchester United v Fiorentina
Football
The noise around United never ceases and Ruben Amorin’s outlay on players to refresh a team that struggled so glaringly in the Premier League last season has kept them at the forefront of the transfer agenda over the summer. So for United’s final warm-up match, plenty of attention will be on his new signings, the boyhood supporter Bryan Mbeumo among them. Mbeumo was handed the chance to fulfil a dream with a £70m switch from Brentford. Amorim will hope the 25-year-old Cameroon forward adds pace, creativity and goals – he scored 20 in the league last season – as he attempts to improve upon last campaign’s desperately disappointing 15th-place finish. Will Unwin reports.
3pm
Middlesbrough v Swansea
Championship
Next up in our coverage of the opening Championship weekend are another Welsh club with North American connections. Comparisons with Wrexham, who are owned by the Hollywood actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney, have been unavoidable since the 53-year-old American rapper Snoop Dogg joined a growing list of celebrity investors in British football last month by becoming part of a Swansea ownership group that already included the Croatia midfield great Luka Modric. Snoop said Swansea’s “underdog” story “really struck a chord with me” and his vast following on social media – 89 million on Instagram and 20.5 million on X – quickly learned about the Welsh club and his love for Joe’s ice-cream in the city. A docu-series tracking life at Swansea, on similar lines to the Welcome to Wrexham, is understood to be already in the pipeline. Louise Taylor reports.
8.10pm
France v England
Women’s rugby union
England’s final warm-up match before the Women’s Rugby World Cup takes John Mitchell’s side to the Stade Guy Boniface to take on old foes France, but again without the experienced Emily Scarratt, Claudia Moloney-MacDonald and Holly Aitchison. Also absent will be Marlie Packer following last weekend’s red card against Spain. Packer sparked fears about her availability for the first fixture of England’s home World Cup against the USA on 22 August after she was sent off in a 97-7 win for a clumsy clearout. A two-week suspension would have ruled the former Red Roses captain out of the opener at Sunderland’s Stadium of Light, but she will miss only this fixture after World Rugby handed out a one-match ban. Raphaël Jucobin reports from Mont-de-Marsan.
tbc
Cincinnati Open
Tennis
Tumaini Carayol reports on Emma Raducanu’s preparations for the US Open, the tournament she won in 2021, at the Cincinnati Open, where she received a bye in the first round and will face Olga Danilovic. The Briton’s form of late has been encouraging. She followed a round-three exit to Aryna Sabalenka at Wimbledon with a semi-final showing at the Citi Open in Washington, where she was eventually beaten by Anna Kalinskaya. The US Open begins later in August and Raducanu is improving under the guidance of Rafael Nadal’s former coach Francis Roig. “I’m working on the quality of my shots to be better,” she says. “I think against the very top that’s what it needs, it needs to improve.”
Sunday
8am
Matchday live
Football
Dominic Booth and Daniel Harris pick up the baton on our compelling, one-stop guide to the day’s unfurling football action. They’ll be spinning through the overnight headlines and keeping track of all the breaking news, as well as flagging up the Community Shield at Wembley. John Brewin posts updates as he arrives at Wembley for Crystal Palace v Liverpool. Expect a rundown of the latest transfer window stories and some discussion on fans’ transfer hopes. Team news too for the big game in Scotland, Aberdeen v Celtic.
3pm
Crystal Palace v Liverpool live
Community Shield
Arne Slot is relishing the challenge of facing Crystal Palace, the FA Cup winners, at Wembley, as the Premier League champions aim to begin the new season with silverware and prepare for their title defence. Liverpool are chasing a 17th Community Shield title, with their latest coming in 2022, but their last trip to Wembley ended in a surprise 2-1 League Cup final defeat by Newcastle in March. “It’s nice if you can start the season by winning something. We have a chance at the beginning of the season. We face a difficult Crystal Palace side. They have shown how hard it is to win a one-off game with them,” Slot says. “Palace hit the ground running again, it is still the same team. A good challenge for us to start the season.” Rob Smyth is your minute-by-minute host, while Ed Aarons and John Brewin report from Wembley.
4.30pm
Leicester v Sheffield Wednesday live
Championship
In a turbulent past few months Sheffield Wednesday have been hit with several EFL-imposed embargoes for financial breaches, including failing to pay players and staff on time in May, June and July. That led to the 15 first-team players still on the books at the club to boycott a behind-closed-doors friendly against Burnley, which came to light on the same day Henrik Pedersen was announced as manager. The Dane is certain there will be no repeat in their Championship opener at Leicester. “I think I have a really good relationship with the players. I’m convinced we have a group who are really looking forward to Sunday’s game and will do everything they can for our club,” he says. Daniel Harris helms our live blog, with Billy Munday reporting from the King Power Stadium.
