Five of Manchester United players have been brutally handed woeful grades by German newspaper Bild following their performances in their 4-3 defeat by Bayern Munich.

Erik ten Hag‘s men were well-beaten by Harry Kane‘s Bayern on Wednesday night despite the close scoreline and the defeat means the struggling Red Devils have now lost four of their first six games in 2023-24, including three in a row.

And nearly half of United’s starting XI for the clash at the Allianz Arena have been given Bild’s second-lowest grade possible in their player ratings following the game.

Four of the five United players given a ‘5’ by Bild – with 1 being their best rating and 6 being the worst – were predictably in defence after Bayern picked them apart with ease.

United’s new £47.2million goalkeeper Andre Onana was given the low score for his calamitous mistake for Bayern’s first goal, after Leroy Sane‘s shot squirmed under his gloves and rolled into the back of his net. 

He has now leaked 14 goals in six games since replacing David de Gea.

Both centre backs, Lisandro Martinez and Victor Linelof, were also given the paltry scores while Diogo Dalot was hammered for his performance by the German newspaper.

Facundo Pellistri also failed to escape the damning low score as he filled in for Antony on the right-hand side.

Ten Hag himself received the second-lowest rating possible despite his side’s late comeback that left them to within one goal of tying it up in the dying moments.

Sergio Reguilon and Christian Eriksen were both give 4s while the rest of United’s starting XI – Ramus Hojlund, Marcus Rashford, Bruno Fernandes and Casemiro – all received the average score of 3 by Bild. 

And it wasn’t just the German press that laid into the Red Devils following the shocking defensive display in Munich.

Spanish sports newspaper Marca ruthlessly labelled United a ‘small team’ after shipping four goals.

Marca’s Ramon Garcia wrote: ‘The Dutch coach [Ten Hag] closes one of the most difficult weeks in memory at Old Trafford for the Red Devils in Munich. Manchester United came out to the Allianz Arena as the big team it is supposed to be, but each blow from Bayern turned it into a small one little by little.’

French news outlet L’Equipe – famous for their own brutal player ratings – claimed the result plunged United a ‘little deeper into crisis’ while Italian paper La Gazzetta dello Sport echoed Paul Scholes’ comments, claiming the team ‘collapsed psychologically’.

United went 2-0 down at the Allianz Arena after Onana’s howler gifted Sane the opener in the 28th minute before Serge Gnabry doubled the host’s advantage four minutes later.

They pulled one back through new £72million striker Hojlund but again wilted after Kane’s controversial penalty restored Bayern’s two-goal lead.

Casemiro scored two late goals for Ten Hag’s team, either side of Mathys Tel adding a fourth for the hosts in stoppage time. 

Speaking on TNT Sports, former Man United star Scholes claimed his former side were guilty of collapsing in adversity.

Scholes conceded United had done well to score three times against the German champions on their home turf but believes Bayern could have inflicted even more damage on Ten Hag’s under-pressure team. 

‘There is a weakness to them,’ Scholes said. ‘There is a soft underbelly and they do seem to collapse a bit when things are going wrong. 

‘They scored three goals and that is good, but I felt Bayern could then turn it on and score another.

‘I thought there was a big distance between the teams, in that second half especially. 

‘First half I thought they did well but still conceded two goals through a lack of concentration. 

‘There is experience in the team but I don’t think it is being used. Concentration in Europe is so important, once you concede one goal, it can turn into two and three. 

‘None of those centre halves are saying “look Casemiro and Eriksen get in here”. 

‘Are Casemiro and Eriksen saying to the wide players come in next to me, lets calm the game down?’

The result only heaps more pressure on Ten Hag, who is facing huge issues both on and off the pitch as he desperately tries to turn the club around.

A Toon Army tsunami! Newcastle fan makes a splash by diving into canal to race stunned rowers in Milan as fellow Toon supporters cheer him on

• Crowds lining the Naviglio Grande cheered the fan on as he swam after the boat
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By Elena Salvoni

Published: 12:12 EDT, 20 September 2023 | Updated: 12:21 EDT, 20 September 2023

By James Cohen For Mailonline

Published: 12:01 EDT, 20 September 2023 | Updated: 15:39 EDT, 20 September 2023

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• Harry Maguire’s place in the England squad has been under increasing scrutiny 
• Harry Kane could face him in the Champions League on Wednesday in Munich
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By Dominic Hogan For Mailonline

Published: 09:17 EDT, 19 September 2023 | Updated: 09:31 EDT, 19 September 2023

In a clearing in a forest, a gravel path gives way to a square of tarmac that is about the size of a football pitch. It is all that is left of what was once the runway at Munich-Riem airport. It was from a point near there that the Busby Babes began their final journey on February 6th 1958.

There are two thick white lines running down the middle of the tarmac, the remnants of airport markings. But there is not much else to identify it. Even those lines are stained by tyre tracks, tell-tale signs of kids finding a hidden spot to spin cars in roaring circles, doing doughnuts after dark.

The echoes of the saddest moments in Manchester United’s history whisper at you as you stand there, gazing into the distance where the runway once led. ‘It’s now or never,’ Roger Byrne, United’s skipper, said as the British European Airways twin-engine Elizabethan sat there on the tarmac, preparing to make its third take-off attempt.

When Sir Bobby Charlton, the last living survivor of the disaster that killed eight Manchester United players, regained consciousness as he lay in the snow amid the plane’s wreckage at the other end of the runway, he saw Byrne still strapped in his seat and realised straight away that he was dead.

The old control tower, an ochre outlier beside the glass frontages of the shopping mall and the international congress centre that have been built on the old airfield, is the only other remnant of Munich-Riem. To stare up at it is to imagine the horror that gripped the people who occupied it that February evening and saw the Elizabethan ploughing through the snow.

It is still hard to reconcile the horrors of those moments 65 years ago with the everyday life that unfolds around the crash site now. In late afternoon on Monday, boys spilled out of primary school on their scooters and sang and laughed as they made their way home. One stopped briefly and reached up to pull fruit from the low-hanging branches of a quince tree.

It rained in squalls on Monday afternoon. At the crash site, a bouquet had been placed at the foot of the plinth that commemorates the 23 footballers, club staff and journalists, who died. The little square, which sits at the edge of a ploughed field, was renamed Manchesterplatz in honour of those who did not come home.

There was no one else there on Monday, Cars hurried past on a busy road but it is still a peaceful place. The plinth, and a display case filled with tributes to the ‘Flowers of Manchester’ sheltered from the rain beneath the kindly and noble boughs of four lime trees.

More will visit on Tuesday and more still on Wednesday, the day when the successors to Byrne and Charlton and Eddie Colman and Harry Gregg and David Pegg and Duncan Edwards and the rest of them take on Bayern Munich in their first match of this season’s Champions League group stage.

This is a place of pilgrimage for United fans, a place where you can still feel the soul of the club as well as the sorrow of what happened and the way the memory of those who died here drove United on to win the European Cup at Wembley ten years later.

Everyone whose family comes from Manchester has a story about the Babes and the crash and how it touched them. My mother’s family lived in Denstone Avenue in Urmston and, in the days before footballers lived behind the locked gates of mansions, Dennis Viollet and his family lived in a club-owned terraced house opposite them.

When the plane crashed, Viollet’s wife, Barbara, was desperate for news but the club had not provided them with a phone line. My grandmother and grandfather relayed what news they could. Finally, she was able to make a call from their house that told her Dennis had survived relatively unscathed.

My dad’s story was more straightforward. He rode his bike from Stockport up to Ringway Airport and waited by the side of the road to pay his respects as the coffins of the dead players were taken by car into Manchester city centre.

The modern United was built on the legend of Matt Busby, who was gravely injured in the crash, and of those brilliant young players who perished. They built the club that became the biggest in the world, and Sir Alex Ferguson nurtured it before things began to change so that now supporters wonder what has happened to their club’s soul.

Out here in Bavaria, with the memories of the boys who died, sometimes feels like as good a place to locate it as any. ‘We’ll Never Die,’ the words written on a scarf in the display case under the lime trees say and for all the sadness of this spot, there is something wonderfully uplifting about it, too.

As United prepare to play Bayern, reeling from scandal after scandal with Mason Greenwood, Antony and Jadon Sancho, struggling to come to terms with the manner of their defeat to Brighton at the weekend, starting to ask questions about Erik ten Hag, lost in anger at the dereliction wrought by the Glazers, this place stands for something else.

Sure, United will be desperate to win in the Allianz Arena on Wednesday evening and others will be delighted if Harry Kane puts one over on the team that that had flirted with buying him in the past and should be regretting not doing so amid all the mediocrity they have injected into the side.

But what is left of the old airfield at Munich-Riem is not the place for such worries and fretting. There is a timelessness about this place that make rivalries seem petty and inconsequential. There is a Manchester City scarf among those in pride of place in the memorial display. There are pictures of players immortalised by what happened here.

The world of film has its picture of James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause as its version of a star who never got old. Football’s James Dean is Duncan Edwards, his chest puffed out, standing at the end of the line of United players before a European Cup tie against Red Star Belgrade, their last before the crash. For all of us who never saw him play, he will always be a 21-year-old hero, a player who could have been the greatest ever.

Edwards died at the Rechts der Isar Hospital in Munich 15 days after the crash and this month, the hospital’s in-house magazine published an interview with Elisabeth Weber, one of the nurses who treated the injured United players and Busby and became known as The Angels of Munich.

When Elisabeth spoke to the interviewer, the interviewer noted that she was wearing a United scarf with the words ‘Lest we Forget’ emblazoned on it. She, and others, were honoured by the Queen for the care they gave to United’s stricken team.

And so there will be rivalry when the clubs meet on Wednesday but there will be something deeper that is shared, too, something which is always shared when United visit this beautiful city whose name looms so large in its history.

‘Thank you to the wonderful citizens of Munich for 60 years of respect and compassion,’ a message from United fans reads at the crash site. Underneath the limes, there is a bench with a plaque on it, too. ‘To the Munich citizens in thanks,’ it says, from the ‘supporters of MUFC.’

By Sami Mokbel and Chris Wheeler for the Daily Mail

Published: 15:11 EDT, 14 September 2023 | Updated: 03:18 EDT, 15 September 2023

Clubs in Europe breathed a sigh of relief on Thursday night when the Saudi Pro League (SPL) transfer window finally closed.

It will be hard to remember 2023 as anything other than the Saudi summer as a new footballing machine powered onto the scene and signed a whole host of world class and Premier League stars.

The next few years promise to be intriguing as we find out whether this summer was just a one-off or, as is more likely, the Middle East becomes a rival destination for top flight teams across Europe when courting players.

European chiefs continue to insist that the SPL recruitment drive doesn’t pose a danger to the continent’s footballing landscape, but the league was second only to the Premier League in spending this summer with an outlay of more than £750million.

In some ways, this has provided a rest bite for English clubs when battling FFP considerations, with the SPL almost acting as a ‘cash-cow’ – as demonstrated by Chelsea selling unwanted stars such as Kalidou Koulibaly and Edouard Mendy to Saudi clubs for a combined £36m.

Much of the incessant spending was mainly restricted to four teams – Al-Hilal, Al-Nassr, Al-Ittihad and Al-Ahli.

That is because they were all taken over by the country’s Public Investment Fund in June – the same backer that also owns Newcastle – and all four have strengthened significantly.

Former Liverpool favourite Sadio Mane joined Cristiano Ronaldo at Al-Nassr, while they have also added other stars including Croatian midfielder Marcelo Brozovic, former Man United left back Alex Telles, Aymeric Laporte, Otavio and Seko Fofana.

Last year’s champions Al-Ittihad – who are coached by ex-Tottenham and Wolves boss Nuno Espirito Santo – look like the early favourites for the title again having brought in Ballon d’Or winner Karim Benzema along with N’Golo Kante and Fabinho.

Newly-promoted Al-Ahli signed Roberto Firmino, Riyad Mahrez, Mendy, Franck Kessie and Allan Saint-Maximin and have already shown their mouthwatering attacking credentials with 10 goals in five games.

Meanwhile, the most decorated Saudi club is Al-Hilal and they made an early splash in the market by securing deals for Koulibaly, Sergej Milinkovic-Savic and Ruben Neves.

However, they also secured what could be the biggest move in the window by adding Neymar from PSG for £78m before handing the Brazilian an eye-watering £260m two-year deal, while Aleksandar Mitrovic also arrived from Fulham.

Of the £750m-plus outlay, more than £680m was splashed by the four PIF-owned clubs which is not surprising given they are backed by a fund worth an estimated £538bn.

Deals were still taking place right up until the transfer deadline, with Luiz Felipe’s £21.5m move from Real Betis to Al-Ittihad and Demarai Gray’s £8m switch from Everton to Al-Ettifaq the major deals on the final day.

For Al-Ettifaq, while they aren’t owned by the PIF, they have still managed to lure some big names this summer due to their backing from Saudi Arabia’s Basic Industries Corporation, which is the kingdom’s second-biggest petrochemicals company.

They added Jordan Henderson, Moussa Dembele and Jack Hendry on mega wages, with Henderson reportedly earning £700,000 per-week.

They also managed to entice Steven Gerrard to the Middle East, before adding Gray and Georginio Wijnaldum in the final throes of the window as they look to improve upon last season’s seventh-place finish.

In what is looking like an increasingly positive outlook for the league and it’s appeal, there has also been a move over the summer towards a younger profile of recruits.

An early criticism of the transfer drive was that Ronaldo is 38, Henderson is 33, while Kante, Mahrez and Koulibaly are all 32, with a limited number of stars arguably in their peak.

However, the arrival of Saint-Maximin, Malcom, Neves and Felipe – with the quartet all 26 – shows the league’s strength, while the signing of 21-year-old Spanish starlet Gabri Veiga despite interest from some top European clubs was a statement of intent.

It is hard to look past the four PIF-owned clubs when examining who came out of the window best, particularly when viewing the top 10 net spenders across the world.

Al-Hilal were ranked first, just ahead of PSG, with Al-Ahli third, Chelsea fourth, Arsenal fifth and Al-Nassr sixth. 

In truth, the summer transfer window is the latest evidence of Saudi’s global footballing profile being transformed over the past 12 months.

While it has always had a long and rich tradition as a football nation, with the kingdom having reached six of the past eight World Cups, the addition of Ronaldo and their victory over Argentina in Qatar last year, along with the plethora of star names plying their trade in the SPL has taken their reputation to new levels.

The only blot on the success of their window is perhaps that they failed to lure three main targets – Kylian Mbappe, Lionel Messi and Mohamed Salah – with the trio either remaining at their clubs or in the case of Messi, choosing to move elsewhere to a rival league in the MLS.

However, with Salah, is does feel as if he will inevitably end up in the Middle East, with Mail Sport reporting how Al-Ittihad believe their pursuit to sign the Egyptian is merely on hold after the Reds rejected a £150m offer for their talisman last week.

We’ll have to wait and see how the SPL develops in the coming years and whether it follows in the footsteps of the Chinese Super League or, as league executive desire, truly becomes one of the best leagues in the world and ends the dominance of European football.

But, whatever their ambitions, European chiefs will seemingly continue to ignore the perceived threat the SPL poses.

‘I don’t think there is a danger,’ European Club Association chairman Nasser Al-Khelaifi said this week.

‘We believe in ourselves. We have the best and biggest competitions and the best players. It is not for me to judge what is happening outside of Europe. But listen, most of the clubs sold players to them. If we are not happy, why do we sell our players to them? That’s the truth.

‘Is it dangerous? I told you my opinion. If there is a danger, the European clubs will not be quiet. So far, I don’t see any danger.’

Premier League confirm FIVE English clubs could qualify for the Champions League next season

•  Usually the top four clubs in the Premier League qualify for Champions League
• Extra spot to be awarded based on performance across European competitions
• In five of the last six seasons English clubs would have merited additional team

By Sonny Cohen For Mailonline

Published: 09:53 EDT, 9 August 2023 | Updated: 14:21 EDT, 9 August 2023

When it emerged that Liverpool had offered £21million for Fluminense midfielder Andre, there was a collective murmuring among many Kopites: ‘who?’

This has not come out of nowhere. Mail Sport reported in July that Liverpool were among a host of European clubs interested in him. 

All the same, he is a relative unknown, and he was no high-profile target until recent days.  

With Jordan Henderson completing his move to Al-Ettifaq for £12million, Fabinho joining Al-Ittihad for £40m, and Southampton rejecting Liverpool’s second bid of £41m for Romeo Lavia all in the last week, this is not a time for studious patience. 

Liverpool need a new defensive midfielder very soon. Perhaps one, perhaps more. With Brazilian option Andre entering the fray, it’s worth answering the burning questions: who is he, and what could he bring? 

Overview 

Andre Trindade is only 22 but he has already acquired a strong amount of experience.

He first appeared on Fluminense’s radar at the age of 12, when he was playing as a striker in a youth tournament. Seven goals in eight games was enough to convince the scouts to pluck him from his home and bring him around 1,000km away to the Brazilian capital. 

It wasn’t an easy start for him, according to Breaking The Lines. Having no relatives in Rio made the transition hard for the youngster and he was not overly pleased when he was moved into midfield.  

Fast forward several years, and the defensive midfielder isn’t looking back. With 145 appearances under his belt for one of South America’s most prestigious clubs, playing in front of an adoring Maracana crowd, he has already achieved a fair amount of success. 

In 2022 and 2023, he won successive Taca Guanabara and two Campeonato Carioca titles with Fluminense – regional championships in the state of Rio de Janeiro – accolades which hold some weight in Brazil. 

His performances last season bagged him a spot in the Brazilian league’s team of the year. With 61 appearances throughout 2022, he also proved his endurance and is used to balancing domestic fixtures with continental clashes. 

In June, he received his first cap for Brazil, coming on as a substitute in a 4-2 friendly defeat to Senegal. 

Fluminense are desperate to hang on to him. According to A Bola, the Portuguese outlet who have been covering Sporting CP’s pursuit of the youngster, Tricolor Flu Fluzão do not want to let him go until at least January, after the current Brazilian league season is over. 

With Fulham, Barcelona, Atletico Madrid, Spurs, and West Ham all reportedly interested, there could be a scuffle for his signature.

A deeper look  

The risk with assessing any player in a less familiar league is that it is easy to overhype or underestimate them. Information sources are often unreliable. 

A quick scan of clickbait-titled YouTube highlights reels only reveals so much. One ten-minute video on Andre, tantalisingly subtitled ‘Insane Goals, Skills & Assists’, proceeds to show no goals and no assists.

That said, compared against his peers in Brazil’s top flight, he has the requisite qualities to play a variety of midfield roles, particularly for his passing and ball-carrying qualities. 

Some of his statistics are remarkable. According to stats site Fbref, no player in Brazil’s Serie A has completed more passes this season. No player has completed a higher percentage of their passes attempted. 

Just four players have had more touches of the ball, and only five have carried it further. He is only dispossessed around once every three games, despite being in the top 2% for the number of times he receives the ball. 

The caveat to that is that Fluminense have had more possession than anyone – 59.6% – and are a highly ranked team. So naturally you’d expect a man in the heartbeat of that team to see more of the ball and do more with it.

Defensively, he is strong in the Brazilian league. Only one midfielder has made more interceptions. He ranks in the bottom half of his peers for attempted tackles, but most of those attempts are successful. 

Collectively, he makes more tackles in Fluminense’s defensive third than the other two thirds of the pitch put together, indicating that he typically intervenes in opposition attacks at quite a late stage. This might contrast with what he would be expected to do at Liverpool, as Klopp likes to win the ball back quickly high up the pitch, and it would be interesting to see if he could make that transition 

His heat map places him in a typical No 6 position: directly behind the centre circle. But his movement is more eclectic than that, seeing him crop up regularly on the left side of the opponent’s half, suggesting he would fit into an expansive and fluid system. 

At Fluminense he is playing among footballing royalty in the form of Marcelo and, to a lesser extent of regality, Felipe Melo – old sages who he can learn from.  

Amid all these positives, it is worth clarifying what Andre is not. Based off current evidence, the 22-year-old is not your typical playmaker. While he may complete most of his passes, only a handful of those are progressive passes. Most of his duties involve picking a safer option and moving the ball on to a more creative player. 

There’s nothing wrong with that – in fact, that was one of Fabinho’s strengths – but it is worth bearing in mind that he does not contribute much on the attacking front. A record of three goals and three assists in his entire career could be much improved, even for a defensive midfielder; Fabinho managed to chip in with eight goals in 2021/22. 

There’s only so much stats can say, though. Not only is their gathering vulnerable to human error, but they fail to account for so many factors. A high number of interceptions, for example, could be explained by a team-mate applying pressure to opposition players and causing them to mess up passes. 

And so one finds those YouTube clips all the more tempting, allured by the romance of trying to decode a player with one’s own eye, to come up theories about what he might be capable of. 

He is certainly impressive to watch. What stands out to the naked eye is his determination to dive into the tackle, to battle through the men around him, to get first to a stray pass. There is also an elegance to the way he sprays his passes and how he drifts through the midfield with the ball.  

The problem is that any professional footballer can do that at the right level for them. It’s not rocket science. Clearly Andre Trindade stands out in Brazil, and he has earned the chance to prove himself in Europe.  

Whether he can translate being dominant in his homeland to controlling the midfield of an elite European club is another question that only time will answer. Should Liverpool fans allow themselves a glimmer of excitement, though? Absolutely.