Could this be the most open Premier League season ever?
It’s difficult to recall a Premier League season starting amid such widespread uncertainty as this one. Half the division, including Chelsea, Liverpool and Manchester City, is under new management. The Pep Guardiola era is over and, as Jonathan Wilson put it, the Premier League has no alpha manager possibly for the first time ever.
Mikel Arteta may be the new alpha. His Arsenal team the new dominant force. The Gunners, however, haven’t been great in preseason, conceding six goals in back-to-back defeats to Real Betis and Borussia Dortmund. Arsenal were still missing many of their best players after the World Cup, but what condition will they return in? William Saliba is sidelined with a back injury. Declan Rice played over 5,000 minutes for club and country last season. How fresh will the Premier League champions be?
Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur have kept their managers over the summer, yet Michael Carrick and Roberto De Zerbi find themselves in a very difficult situation. Can Carrick prove he has a long-term vision for United? Will De Zerbi be afforded the freedom to reshape Spurs in his own image after saving them from relegation last season?
It’s tempting to suggest this season could be ripe for a Leicester City-esque outsider to emerge as a shock challenger. Stability, however, is difficult to find anywhere in the league right now. Bournemouth, Crystal Palace, Fulham, Ipswich Town and Nottingham Forest all have new managers. Many of them have lost key players. Uncertainty is rife up and down the table.
City may hit the ground running under Enzo Maresca. The same may happen for Chelsea under Xabi Alonso and Liverpool under Andoni Iraola. Equally, they could each require time to impose their own ideas on a new group of players. The Premier League’s established order doesn’t currently look so established. Someone could take advantage. But who?
Are Barcelona repeating mistakes by targeting Rodri?
For a player with no previous links to the club, Rodri is about as Barcelona as they come. Nobody had more touches of the ball at the 2026 World Cup. Nor did any other player complete more passes than the metronome at the base of Spain’s midfield. It makes sense that the Catalans want the 30-year-old this summer.
Rodri is the closest thing to Sergio Busquets since Sergio Busquets. It’s easy to envisage how he will fit into Barcelona’s midfield. He will give Hansi Flick the sort of structure his team has lacked in the biggest games over the last two seasons. Barça will be a bigger threat in the Champions League with Rodri controlling things from deep.
Something, however, about Barcelona’s move for the World Cup winner harks back to the club’s darkest days, when their recklessness in the transfer market nearly sank the whole club. The Catalans have only recovered in recent years thanks to the unmatched output of their youth academy, so would Rodri’s signing indicate another change in approach?
Barcelona have done a good job of supplementing their squad with an experienced head or two. Robert Lewandowski spent four years at the club while Marcus Rashford enjoyed a moderately successful season on loan there last term. These signings, however, plugged a hole in Barça’s squad that La Masia couldn’t fill.
The Rodri signing is different because Barcelona already boast one of the strongest midfields anywhere in the world. At least one of Marc Bernal, Marc Casado, Gavi or Pedri will be impacted by the arrival of the Ballon d’Or winner and the last time Barça put up barriers between their famed youth academy and the first team, things didn’t work out so well.
Is Gianni Infantino causing an irreparable divide?
Two weeks on from Gianni Infantino’s failed attempt to sell off the World Cup like a cartoon villain trying to steal a giant diamond from a museum, the soccer landscape shows no sign of healing. If anything, divisions are now even deeper as confederations have lined up to either oust the embattled Fifa president or back him.
The past few days have made clearer where exactly the divides are. While AFC, Concacaf and Uefa co-signed an open letter calling for “leadership that serves football, not seeks to command it,” confirming preliminary discussions about the hosting of alternative tournaments, Infantino has received support from Caf and Conmebol. The battle lines have been drawn.
It’s difficult to envisage how the sport will ever come together again with Infantino still in place. Even if he is ultimately ousted or defeated in March’s presidential election, the political divisions that have opened up could take a long time to mend. Infantino may have broken international soccer for the foreseeable future.
Nobody really knows how serious AFC, Concacaf and Uefa are in their threat to boycott future World Cups and organise their own tournaments. That in itself, however, is proof of how the sport is fracturing. If trust in soccer’s governing body is so low that this is a viable option, how can there possibly be a way forward without further fragmentation?
Only a few weeks ago, Infantino appeared untouchable. That may still be the case. The rebels may not have the numbers to get rid of him in a vote. The pertinent question, though, concerns the position of Fifa president itself and what power it will still hold once all this is over.
