分类： sports

In a landmark announcement made Saturday night in English football, Manchester United captain Bruno Fernandes has capped off a standout domestic campaign by claiming the prestigious Premier League Player of the Season award.

The 31-year-old midfield maestro delivered a career-best performance across the 2024-25 league season, matching a long-standing top-flight record that places him alongside two of the competition’s all-time greats: former Arsenal forward Thierry Henry and current Manchester City playmaker Kevin De Bruyne. All three players now share the mark for the most assists registered in a single 38-game Premier League campaign, with Fernandes notching 20 goal-creating passes this term.

Beyond his playmaking contributions, Fernandes found the back of the net eight times in league play, playing an instrumental role in guiding Manchester United to a third-place finish in the table. The result locked in the club’s automatic qualification for the 2025-26 UEFA Champions League, a much-coveted milestone for the side led by interim manager Michael Carrick this season.

The honor carries extra historical weight for Fernandes and Manchester United: he is the first Red Devils player to win the league’s top individual award in nearly 14 years, since Serbian defender Nemanja Vidic took home the prize at the end of the 2010-11 campaign.

Fernandes beat out a stacked field of top contenders to claim the honor, including Arsenal’s defensive star David Raya, center-back Gabriel Magalhaes, and midfield enforcer Declan Rice; Manchester City’s record-breaking striker Erling Haaland; Bristol City loanee Antoine Semenyo; Brentford forward Igor Thiago; and Nottingham Forest playmaker Morgan Gibbs-White. This award adds to Fernandes’ growing collection of 2024-25 honors, following his win of the Football Writers Association Footballer of the Year award earlier this season.

In the night’s other major award, 21-year-old Nico O’Reilly of treble-chasing Manchester City took home the Premier League Young Player of the Season honor after a breakout campaign that cemented his place as one of English football’s brightest young talents.

O’Reilly stepped into a regular starting role for City this season, featuring primarily at left-back while also filling in effectively in midfield when called upon. Across all competitions, he notched five goals and three assists, including a iconic two-goal performance that led City to a 2-0 victory over Arsenal in the EFL League Cup final in March. He also started in City’s recent FA Cup final win against Chelsea, proving his ability to deliver on the sport’s biggest stages.

The young defender beat out a strong group of fellow rising stars to claim the prize, including City teammate Rayan Cherki, West Ham United’s Mateus Fernandes, Newcastle United’s Lewis Hall, Brentford’s Michael Kayode, Manchester United’s breakout star Kobbie Mainoo, and Bournemouth duo Alex Scott and Eli Junior Kroupi.

The second stop of the 2025 Diamond League track and field circuit, held Saturday in Xiamen, China, delivered a night of record-breaking performances highlighted by standout efforts from Jamaican athletes and a historic run from American hurdler Masai Russell.

One of the biggest stories of the competition came from shot putter Rajindra Campbell, the Olympic bronze medalist who made global headlines recently when World Athletics denied his and three other Jamaican athletes’ requests to switch national allegiance to Turkey. Undeterred by the off-track controversy, Campbell launched a 22.34-meter throw that shaved three centimeters off his own 2024 Jamaican national record, set earlier that year in Croatia. The mark pushed Campbell to second place in the global shot put rankings, outperforming a pair of top American competitors: Jordan Geist, who took silver with a 21.52-meter throw, and Olympic star Ryan Crouser, who notched a season’s best 21.41 meters to round out the top three.

In the women’s 200-meter sprint, Jamaican sprinter Shericka Jackson continued her fine form this season, clocking a new season’s best time that improved on the mark she set just one week prior. Jackson surged ahead of the pack coming off the final turn, pulling away from the field with a smooth, controlled stride to cross the line well clear of her competitors. Her time also broke the existing Xiamen meet record of 22.41 seconds set by American sprinter Anavia Battle in 2024. In a repeat of the previous weekend’s podium, Shaunae Miller-Uibo of the Bahamas took second place with a 22.04-second run, while Battle earned third with 22.29 seconds.

Long jump delivered its own share of standout results, led by Greek Olympic and world champion Miltiadis Tentoglou, who claimed gold with a season’s best 8.46-meter jump. The mark matched the 2025 global leading distance and broke the previous meet record of 8.18 meters set by China’s Zhang Mingkun last year. Jamaican Olympic and world medalist Tajay Gayle notched a massive personal improvement from his 7.93-meter result at the previous week’s Shanghai-Keqiao meet, leaping to a season’s best 8.32 meters to take second place. Fellow Jamaican Wayne Pinnock finished sixth with a 7.93-meter jump, matching his own season’s best.

In the men’s 110-meter hurdles final, American Jamal Britt took gold with a 13.07-second run that equaled his personal best. Japan’s Rachid Muratake claimed silver with 13.13 seconds, while Jamaica’s Orlando Bennett rounded out the podium with 13.20 seconds, matching his 2025 season’s best.

Jamaica’s Lamara Distin took third place in the women’s high jump, clearing 1.94 meters behind a pair of Ukrainian competitors: gold medalist Yulia Levchenko, who cleared 1.99 meters, and silver medalist Iryna Gerashchenko, who hit 1.97 meters.

The most historic performance of the day came in the women’s 100-meter hurdles, where American Masai Russell delivered one of the fastest times in the history of the sport. Russell crossed the line in 12.14 seconds, beating her own existing American record of 12.17 seconds. The run also shattered both the Xiamen meet record of 12.45 seconds set by Jasmine Camacho-Quinn in 2024 and the overall Diamond League record for the event. Nigerian world record holder Tobi Amusan took silver with a season’s best 12.28 seconds, while Devynne Charlton of the Bahamas broke her own national record for the second consecutive week, clocking 12.37 seconds to take third. Jamaica’s Ackera Nugent finished sixth in the race with 12.64 seconds, and fellow Jamaican Danielle Williams placed seventh with 12.90 seconds, capping a day of strong results for Caribbean track and field in Xiamen.

In a stunning display of attacking dominance at the UEFA Women’s Champions League final held in Oslo, Norway on Saturday, FC Barcelona delivered a crushing 4-0 defeat to eight-time defending champions Lyon, securing the club’s fourth continental title. The star of the match, Polish striker Ewa Pajor, broke the deadlock in the 55th minute after a tightly contested first half where both sides struggled to find clear openings. Pajor doubled her personal tally 14 minutes later, putting Barcelona firmly in the driver’s seat before Spanish talent Salma Paralluelo put the result beyond doubt with a spectacular long-range effort late in regulation. Paralluelo capped off the dominant performance with a fourth goal in stoppage time, leaving the Lyon side stunned and unable to respond to Barcelona’s relentless pressure.

This latest title extends Barcelona’s extraordinary recent run in the competition: all four of the club’s Women’s Champions League crowns have come in the last six seasons, marking the Catalan side as the preeminent European women’s football powerhouse of the past half-decade. Lyon, who still hold the all-time record for most titles with eight, had been seeking their first championship since lifting the trophy in 2022. Saturday’s lopsided result marks one of the most surprising final scorelines in the competition’s recent history, cementing Barcelona’s status as the dominant force in European women’s football for the 2023-2024 season.

MILAN, Italy – After a historic campaign that secured them both the Serie A title and domestic cup glory, Italian champions Inter Milan wrapped up their triumphant league season with a thrilling, high-scoring 3-3 comeback draw against Bologna on the final matchday.

Simone Inzaghi’s side headed into the closing fixture of the campaign already confirmed as champions, and they stretched their unbeaten streak to 10 consecutive matches, finishing the domestic season an extraordinary 14 points clear at the top of the table. Second-placed Napoli was set to close out their own campaign against Udinese later Sunday, with no chance of catching Inter’s dominant lead.

The match looked set to end in a disappointing defeat for the champions, as Bologna held a two-goal advantage shortly after halftime. The breakthrough for Inter came in the 64th minute, when young French midfielder Andy Diouf, a former France under-21 international, broke past two Bologna defenders and saw his shot bounce off the goalpost. Pio Esposito was quick to react, tapping the loose ball into the net to cut Bologna’s lead in half for Inter.

Earlier in the match, Inter’s Federico Dimarco opened the scoring with a stunning free kick, but goals from Bologna’s Federico Bernardeschi and Tommaso Pobega, paired with an own goal from Inter’s Piotr Zielinski, put the hosts firmly in control of the contest. With just three minutes left in regulation time, Diouf became Inter’s unlikely hero, firing home his first ever Serie A goal for the club to lock in the final 3-3 scoreline.

For Bologna, the result sees them end the 2024-25 Serie A season in eighth position, falling just short of securing a spot in next season’s European competitions.

LAS VEGAS – The inaugural Enhanced Games, a controversial multi-sport competition held this weekend in Las Vegas that permits and even facilitates performance-enhancing drug use among competitors, has sparked fierce backlash from public health experts and sports officials. Critics have launched intense scrutiny of participating athletes, questioning why they have chosen to compete in an event that flouts global anti-doping rules while posing documented and unknown long-term health risks to participants, as well as dangerous risks of encouraging risky substance use among impressionable young audiences.

Interviews with competing athletes ahead of the event revealed a wide range of perspectives on the unorthodox competition, spanning unapologetic defiance, straightforward financial motivation, and quiet concerns about the event’s public health impact.

Retired Australian Olympic swimmer James Magnussen, one of the highest-profile participants, has publicly confirmed he has already taken five banned performance-enhancing substances, including testosterone, growth peptides, and anabolic steroids. He downplayed personal risk, joking that unregulated use of such substances is already widespread among his athletic friends in Australia, where he says he often encourages peers to reduce their unsupervised intake of performance-enhancing products. When pressed about the risk that young fans could see his heavily muscled physique shared on social media platforms or event coverage and seek to replicate his drug use, Magnussen pushed back, arguing that the criticism is hypocritical. He pointed to the widespread legal advertising of pharmaceuticals, gambling, and alcohol on American television – all products prohibited to minors – arguing that responsibility for regulating youth access falls to parents and guardians, not athletes or event organizers.

For former 100-meter world champion Fred Kerley, who is competing in the event without using performance-enhancing drugs, the question of athlete responsibility for promoting experimental drug use to the public is straightforward. Framing the competition as a commercial venture first and foremost, Kerley told Agence France-Presse that at the end of the day, any business needs customers to succeed. The sprinter, who holds an equity stake in the Enhanced Games organization, added that he fully supports the event’s model.

The high-profile competition is backed by a roster of wealthy and influential backers, including tech billionaire Peter Thiel, former U.S. President Donald Trump’s eldest son Donald Trump Jr., and members of the Saudi royal family, among other high-net-worth investors.

Not all participating athletes share the defiant stance of Magnussen and Kerley. British swimmer Ben Proud, who earned a silver medal at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games earlier this year, openly shared his concerns about the impact of the event’s content on young fans, saying he worries impressionable young athletes will be inspired to start using performance-enhancing drugs after watching the competition. Proud said he wishes he could block all users under the age of 21 from accessing his social media content related to the event, but noted that such strict age-gating is impossible to implement on mainstream platforms. The 31-year-old, who chose to participate after already securing his Olympic success, emphasized that younger athletes should “no way” attempt to use performance-enhancing drugs, saying he hopes adult stakeholders will work to protect young fans and developing athletes from harmful exposure.

Organizers of the Enhanced Games have pushed back against safety criticisms, noting that all substances provided to competing athletes are approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for legal clinical use. However, leading sports scientists and medical researchers have warned that the long-term health impacts of using these substances at the extremely high doses required to challenge world records remain completely unstudied. A recent analysis from the University of Birmingham warns that chronic use of high-dose performance-enhancing drugs can lead to severe damage to the heart, liver, and kidneys, with life-threatening complications potentially emerging decades after first use.

When asked about these long-term risks, Magnussen drew a parallel to the widespread global rollout of COVID-19 vaccines, noting that long-term impacts of those injections were also unknown when they were first deployed to the public. Pressed on whether he opposed COVID-19 vaccines while supporting the Enhanced Games’ unprecedented open doping regime, Magnussen clarified that he was only drawing a comparison between the two situations’ unknown long-term effects, not taking an explicit anti-vaccine stance.

Other participating athletes have said they are comfortable deferring to the medical experts employed by the Enhanced Games to assess safety. Proud said he has accepted the event’s medical team’s assurance that the substances he is taking are safe for his use. Former Greek Olympic swimmer Kristian Gkolomeev echoed that perspective, saying he relies entirely on the guidance of the event’s doctors rather than unvetted information from social media influencers, and that he had little prior knowledge of the substances before joining the competition.

The final matchday of Spain’s top-flight La Liga season delivered a full slate of drama, emotional farewells and decisive outcomes on Saturday, with Real Madrid securing a 4-2 victory over Athletic Bilbao to cap a difficult, trophy-less campaign, while two clubs saw their top-flight dreams ended with relegation.

Mallorca picked up a solid 3-0 win over already-relegated Real Oviedo to finish the campaign with 42 points, but the three points were not enough to keep them in the division. Girona, a club that competed in the Champions League just one season prior, also dropped down to the second tier after playing out a tense 1-1 draw with Elche. The result was enough to keep Elche safe, while it sent Girona packing. In a three-way tie for the final relegation and survival spots on 42 points, Levante (16th) and Osasuna (17th) retained their top-flight status thanks to superior head-to-head results against Mallorca, who finished 18th and dropped down.

For newly crowned La Liga champions Barcelona, the final match of the season brought a milestone: star veteran Polish striker Robert Lewandowski found the back of the net in what was his final appearance for the club. However, Barcelona could not hold on for a win, as goals from Javi Guerra, Luis Rioja and Guido Rodriguez gave Valencia a 3-1 comeback victory.

European competition spots were also finalized on Saturday. Celta Vigo locked in their place in next season’s Europa League with a tight 1-0 win over Sevilla, finishing the campaign in sixth position. Getafe claimed seventh place and a spot in the UEFA Conference League with a 1-0 win against Osasuna.

Real Madrid’s match against Athletic Bilbao was marked by emotional farewells. Veteran defender Dani Carvajal, playing his final match for the Los Blancos at the Santiago Bernabeu, set up the opening goal for Gonzalo Garcia, who put the second-place hosts ahead. England star Jude Bellingham followed with a stunning second goal for Madrid before halftime. Just before the break, Athletic Bilbao’s Gorka Guruzeta pulled one back past Real Madrid goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois, in what was also head coach Ernesto Valverde’s final match in charge of the side.

Kylian Mbappe, who finished the season as La Liga’s top goalscorer, netted Madrid’s third from outside the 18-yard box, notching his 25th league goal of the campaign. With 10 minutes left to play, Carvajal was subbed off to a warm send-off: players from both Real Madrid and Athletic Bilbao formed a guard of honour to celebrate the 34-year-old’s legendary career with the club, as he bid an emotional goodbye to the Bernabeu. Moroccan attacking midfielder Brahim Diaz added a late fourth goal for Madrid, with Athletic’s Urko Izeta scoring a late consolation second. Despite a disappointing trophyless season, Real Madrid ended their campaign on a positive note with the win.

The final match of the entire La Liga season will take place on Sunday, when Villarreal and Atletico Madrid go head-to-head to decide who claims third place in the final table.