Sports, in brief

Manchester City, the English football club owned by Sheikh Mansour of Abu Dhabi, have been found guilty of breaking the Premier League's financial rules on all but one of 115 charges, the Athletic and the Times reported on Friday. [2][4]

The Premier League, England's top football league, would not comment and called the process confidential. City said the process is still going and did not deny the reports. [2][1]

The charges were brought in February 2023 after a four-year investigation. They cover the seasons from 2009-10 to 2017-18, plus 35 counts of not cooperating with the league's inquiry between December 2018 and February 2023. [5][8]

The biggest group, 54 charges, says the club did not give the league accurate accounts. The league says City counted money from their owner as income from sponsors, the Abu Dhabi airline Etihad and the telecoms firm Etisalat. [5] Other charges said sponsorship deals were backdated and the manager Roberto Mancini was paid off the books. [10]

The case began in November 2018, when the German magazine Der Spiegel published leaked emails from inside the club. [4][8]

A panel of three judges heard the case in private in London for 12 weeks, from 16 September to 6 December 2024. [2][6] Nobody outside the panel knows who sat on it until the written judgment is published. [5]

The punishment has not been set. The league's rulebook allows anything from a warning and a fine to points taken away, past titles removed, or expulsion from the league. [3][9]

The league chose on purpose not to fix set punishments for money offences, so that no club could work out in advance whether a breach was worth the fine. [9]

City are expected to appeal. The BBC says an appeal is a formality, and the club's lawyer, Lord Pannick, is reported to charge 5,000 pounds an hour. [5][1]

Other Premier League clubs have hired lawyers and are talking to each other about suing City for money, possibly as one group. In June a panel ordered Everton to pay Burnley 35.1m pounds after Everton broke a spending rule. [7]

European football's governing body, UEFA, banned City from its competitions for two years in 2020 over the same emails. The Court of Arbitration for Sport lifted the ban because most of the charges were too old under UEFA's five-year limit. The Premier League has no such limit. [8][4]

City won three league titles in the years the charges cover. They have won five more since, top the table today after five wins from five, and spent 450m pounds on players this summer. [5][4]

Why it matters. Watch for the written judgment, which will name the panel and set the sanction; a points deduction this season would hit a team that is top of the table.

George Russell of Mercedes took pole position for Saturday's Azerbaijan Grand Prix in Baku on Friday, 0.837 seconds ahead of Ferrari's Charles Leclerc. [11][14] That is the biggest gap between first and second in a Formula One qualifying since 2023. [12] His teammate Kimi Antonelli, who leads the championship by 81 points, hit the wall at the first corner and will start 16th. [15][14] Max Verstappen of Red Bull was fastest in practice but qualified eighth, saying his engine lost top speed and his battery did not charge. [13] The race is on Saturday. [16]

Why it matters. Russell can cut into an 81-point lead in one afternoon, and Antonelli made the first mistake of his season in the week he had a chance to close out the title. [12]

The International team swept all five Friday foursomes matches at the Presidents Cup, the golf match between the United States and a team from every continent except Europe, at Medinah near Chicago. [17] They lead 7-3, the worst American position in the event since 1998, the only year the Internationals have won. [17] Nick Taylor of Canada hit a 9-iron to a foot on the last hole to beat Scottie Scheffler and Sam Burns. [17] The Americans had led 3-2 after Thursday. [19][20]Twenty points remain across Saturday and Sunday. [17] Justin Thomas drove into a pond on the 12th and lost 4 and 3 with Cameron Young. [18]

Why it matters. The Americans have won ten in a row, and in 2024 they came back from a similar sweep. Adam Scott told his team not to celebrate yet for that reason. [17]

Zhang Zhanshuo, a 19-year-old Chinese swimmer, won the 400m freestyle on Friday in Nagoya to become the first swimmer to win seven gold medals at one Asian Games. [22][21] He won four individual freestyle races and three relays. [23] China won a record 30 of the 41 swimming golds; Japan won seven. [21] Japan's Shin Ohashi, 17, set the only world record of the Games in the 200m breaststroke, and China's Yu Zidi, 13, won three golds. [21] Japan also beat China in the men's team table tennis final, the first time China has lost that event since 1990. [22]

Why it matters. Zhang said the Asian Games are not the goal and he is aiming at the Olympics. The teenagers in the pool will be the story at the 2028 Games in Los Angeles. [22][21]

Major League Baseball's owners are almost certain to shut the sport down in early December when the labour deal with players expires. [44] The Athletic reports that if 60 or more games are lost in 2027, most of the league's national TV contracts, worth over $2bn a year with Fox, TNT and others, extend a year to 2029. [44] The networks pay in 2027 even if no games are played, so owners would still collect about 17% of their $12bn revenue. [44] Local stations are promised about 125 to 145 games a season, so that money falls sooner. [44]

Why it matters. The owners want new national deals worth several times the current ones. A long lockout delays that payday by a year, which is the strongest reason on their side to settle before the end of May. [44]

Italy lost 2-0 to Belgium in Rome on Friday in the Nations League, a competition for European national teams. [43] It was their first match since losing a play-off to Bosnia in March, which means Italy, four times world champions, missed a third World Cup in a row. [43] Roberto Mancini was back as coach three years after leaving to take a lucrative job coaching Saudi Arabia. [43] Only 47,155 people came to the 70,000-seat Stadio Olimpico, and the crowd whistled the team off. [43] Mark van Bommel won his first game as Belgium's coach. [43]

Why it matters. Mancini said that when you lose you can get jeered. Italy's football federation brought back a coach who walked out, and the empty seats show what supporters think of it. [43]

Sydney Roosters beat the Dolphins 36-20 in Brisbane on Friday to reach their first National Rugby League grand final in seven years. [32] The NRL is Australia's top rugby league competition. Their playmaker Sam Walker came back from an ankle injury in 27 days, equalling a record. [32] But Connor Watson was ruled out with a category one concussion, which under a rule brought in in 2023 keeps a player out for 11 days, so he would miss next Sunday's final. [34] The club's doctors had called it category two; the league's independent doctor overruled them. [34] The Roosters may appeal. [34]

Why it matters. Watson is the first player at risk of missing a grand final under the 11-day rule. Whether the club fights it will show how firm the concussion rule is when a title is at stake. [34]

Penrith, who finished top of the NRL's regular season, said on Saturday [35] that Nathan Cleary will play Sunday's semi-final against Newcastle. [33] Cleary, their halfback and twice the grand final's best player, has what the club calls a stress-related bone problem in his right foot and wore a moon boot for most of last week. [33] His father and coach, Ivan Cleary, said the scans show something is wrong and the injury could get worse. [33] Newcastle finished bottom of the league last year and are one win from their first grand final since 2001. [35]

Why it matters. Penrith nursed Dylan Edwards through a foot fracture to win the 2021 title. A club that expects its stars to play hurt in September is making the same bet again. [33]

Warwickshire, whose home ground is Edgbaston, need only a draw against Leicestershire at Edgbaston to win their ninth County Championship, England's four-day league. [36][38] Sam Hain scored 142 on Friday to give them a first-innings lead of 247, and Leicestershire closed on 55-3. [36] Second-placed Somerset, who have never won the title, are all but out after Surrey scored 422 against them at Taunton. [37][39] Nottinghamshire, last year's champions, can no longer win it. [38] In the second division, Kent are close to promotion while Northamptonshire lead Middlesex by only 97 runs at Lord's with three wickets left. [40]

Why it matters. Somerset finished second before, and Tom Abell became only the third batter past 1,000 runs in the division for a team that will still not win it. [37]

Viktoria Chladonova, a 19-year-old from Slovakia, won the under-23 women's road race at cycling's world championships in Montreal on Thursday. [29] She outsprinted Isabella Holmgren of Canada, who had chosen to ride the under-23 race rather than the senior one in order to win at home. [29] Holmgren finished seventh at this year's Giro d'Italia and eighth at the Tour de France. [29] The senior women's road race is on Saturday over 180km, and the men's on Sunday over 273km. [30] Tadej Pogacar, the sport's best rider, is absent after a crash in August. [30]

Why it matters. Britain has 49 riders on the two world tours, more than ever, and Zoe Backstedt won silver in the time trial last weekend. Without Pogacar, the men's race is open. [30]

Seff Van Kerckhove, an 18-year-old Belgian who was favourite for the junior time trial at the world championships, was hit by a car while training in Montreal on Sunday and ruled out. [31] His brother said the driver turned across the road without seeing him. [31] It was his second collision with a car in nine months; the first broke four vertebrae. [31] The Athletic lists riders hit by cars this year at the Tour de France and in Spain, and a 19-year-old, Finlay Tarling, was killed last month when a vehicle got onto the course of the Volta a Portugal. [31]

Why it matters. Road cycling trains on public roads, and the riders were blameless in almost every case listed. The sport's governing body has no answer for drivers. [31]

India's women beat Iran 37-34 in the kabaddi final on Saturday at the Asian Games in Japan. [28] On Friday Suruchi Singh, 20, and Kamaljeet, 23, won India's first shooting gold of the Games in the mixed-team air pistol, with an Asian record score of 484.6. [25] India had won nothing in the individual pistol events the day before. [25] Sawan Barwal ran a national record 2:11:37 for silver in the men's marathon on Saturday, 48 seconds behind Japan's Ichitaka Yamashita. [24][28] Bahrain's Shitaye Eshete, 36 and a mother of three, won the women's marathon. [24]

Why it matters. Indian shooting picks its team on current scores alone, and the pistol squad was under attack at home after two blank days. One final answered it. [25]

Carlos Yulo, the Philippine gymnast who won two Olympic golds in Paris, won the floor exercise on Thursday and the vault on Friday at the Asian Games in Nagoya. [26] No Filipino gymnast had won a medal of any colour at an Asian Games before. [26] He qualified for the vault final only seventh after a bad landing, then averaged 14.599 in the final to beat Iran's Mahdi Olfati. [26] He was fourth on the parallel bars, 0.133 points from a third medal. [26]

Why it matters. Yulo called it a miracle after failing his vault in the training hall. The floor gold was also the Philippines' first gold of these Games. [22][26]

Michel Arkhangelskiy, 21, won the 50m butterfly on Thursday to give Bahrain its first Asian Games swimming title. [27] He is the son of political refugees who fled Russia for France, lived in France for 16 years without citizenship, and swims for the University of California, Berkeley. [27] He said he would be arrested if he went back to Russia. [27] Bahrain paid for his training and he would not say what the sponsorship was. [27] Bahrain also fields the Kenyan-born Olympic steeplechase champion Winfred Yavi and much of its wrestling team from abroad. [27]

Why it matters. A Gulf state buys medals by giving a passport to athletes other countries would not, and the athletes get a country. Arkhangelskiy said it was win-win. [27]

Team Europe lead Team World 3-1 after the first day of the Laver Cup, a three-day team tennis event, at London's O2 Arena on Friday. [41] Carlos Alcaraz and Jakub Mensik won the closing doubles 6-4, 6-4 against Alexander Bublik and Taylor Fritz. [41] Brandon Nakashima, a late replacement for Ben Shelton, won his first match for Team World. [41] Wins count one point on Friday, two on Saturday and three on Sunday, and the first team to 13 wins. [41] Team World won last year. [41]

Why it matters. Friday's four matches are worth less than one Sunday match, so a 3-1 lead can be gone by Saturday night. [41]

The Czech Republic reached the final of the Billie Jean King Cup, the women's team tennis competition, on Friday in Shenzhen, China, when Karolina Muchova and Linda Noskova won both singles against Spain. [42] They play Ukraine or Italy, the holders, on Sunday. [42] At the Singapore Open, Leylah Fernandez of Canada beat the top seed Mirra Andreeva 6-2, 7-5 to reach the semi-finals. [42] Rain pushed the Seoul quarter-finals to Saturday. [42]

Why it matters. The Czechs did not need the doubles. Italy have to beat Ukraine on Saturday to defend the title they won last year. [42]

Stephen Jones, co-owner of the Dallas Cowboys, said on Sportico's TV show that the family will own football only, though they have had offers. [45] The Cowboys are valued at $15.05bn, the most of any sports team, with $1.3bn a year in revenue and $510m in operating profit, more than double the next NFL club. [45] More than half of NFL controlling owners also own teams in other leagues; Stan Kroenke, who owns Arsenal and the Rams, has agreed to buy baseball's Los Angeles Angels. [45] The Cowboys' sponsorship deals often include shares in the sponsor, such as a stake in the ticket firm SeatGeek. [45]

Why it matters. Owners collect teams to share staff and data across them. The richest club in sport says one team is enough to think about. [45]

ESPN's Sunday-night NFL highlights show, NFL Primetime, does not appear on YouTube TV even though YouTube TV now carries the rest of ESPN's streaming service, Sportico reports. [46] The NFL controls how its highlights are used, and NBC holds the right to show extended highlights on television before its Sunday night game. [46] The show ran from 1987 to 2005, then came back in a digital-only form. [46] ESPN bought NFL Network from the league this year, and the NFL owns 10% of ESPN, but the league still keeps control of its highlights. [46]

Why it matters. Even partners that own pieces of each other cannot show a recap of Sunday's games. Every right in American football has been sold to somebody. [46]

The Atlanta Braves opened a 1,200-square-foot store and small museum in their stadium this season to sell game-used items and trading cards. [47] Dom Smith's helmet, dented when he spiked it after a walk-off grand slam in his debut in March, sold for $1,100 at auction, with the money going to the club's charity. [47] A rosin bag from Chris Sale's 150th win went for $400 and a base from a Ronald Acuna Jr. triple for $820. [47] The club says its authentics business is up 55% this year and the game-used store up 67%. [47]

Why it matters. The Braves' retail chief said parents who collected cards as children are buying with their own children now. A used base is now inventory. [47]

Will Wade, the basketball coach at Louisiana State University, says his team has 15 players, but the university lists only four and will not name the rest. [48] Wade said it was in the players' interest not to say why. [48] The NCAA, the body that runs US college sport, allows 45 days of practice before a player's eligibility is confirmed, and rosters must be final the day before the first game. [48] Front Office Sports counted 13 players from Wade's own comments and social media, including two who won a court order to play a fifth year. [48] The first exhibition game is on 8 October. [48]

Why it matters. A public university is fielding a team it will not name two weeks before it plays. The eligibility fights in college sport are now hidden inside a roster. [48]

The Baltimore Orioles activated Felix Bautista, their former closer, on 19 September, 14 months after his last major league game and after surgery on his shoulder. [49] He saved 33 games and made the All-Star team in 2023, missed all of 2024 after elbow surgery, and had 19 saves in 2025 before his shoulder went. [49] The same day Trey Mancini signed a one-day contract to retire an Oriole; he came back from colon cancer in 2020 to hit 21 home runs in 2021. [49] Baltimore said manager Craig Albernaz will stay for 2027 despite a 75-79 record. [49]

Why it matters. A pitcher who has had both his elbow and his shoulder rebuilt is back on a major league mound. The Orioles are keeping the manager who waited for him. [49]

Duane Kuiper, 76, who has called San Francisco Giants games for more than 40 years, said he has throat cancer and began treatment this month. [50] He will miss several games but plans to call the final weekend against the Dodgers, the last games for his partner Mike Krukow, 74, who is retiring because of a muscle disease. [50] The pair are believed to be the longest-serving broadcasting duo in the major leagues. [50] Doctors have told Kuiper the treatment should work, and he plans a limited schedule next year. [50]

Why it matters. Krukow's last game will be Kuiper's first weekend back in the booth. [50]

Brisbane play Fremantle in the Australian Football League Grand Final at the MCG in Melbourne on Saturday at 2:30pm local time. [51] Kylie Minogue headlines the pre-match show at 1:39pm, 40 years after she sang at the 1986 rugby league grand final in Sydney. [51] G Flip and Mike Brady also perform, and Snoop Dogg had the slot last year. [51]

Why it matters. The result came after this edition went to press. Two clubs from outside Melbourne play the final in Melbourne. [51]