USA axing, Iniesta quits, washing-up injury, what happened overnight in the world of sport

Professional sport is fraught with potential routes to injury. Muscles and joints are vulnerable to high-speed movement and regular twisting and turning, while routine physical collisions between prime physical specimens come with the obvious risk of bruising and breakages. How maddening, then, for an elite sportsperson when they find themselves out of action following a mundane off-field incident? That is what has happened to Ipswich Town defender Axel Tuanzebe, who has joined a list of footballers who damaged themselves in the confines of their own homes. The flesh is added to the bones of that story below, along with news of one man who has decided it is time to walk away from playing top-level sport, and another who has been told he has no immediate future on the professional scene following a poor start to his season. All this and more has been going on while you were sleeping. Sacking season It is not the legacy he would have had in mind when he was appointed New York Jets head coach in 2021, but Robert Saleh has become the first man to drive owner Woody Johnson’s patience to breaking point. Johnson had never sacked a boss in 25 years as the club’s overlord, but that changed when he axed Saleh following three defeats in the Jets’ opening five matches of this season. The dismissal of Saleh, who was on the coaching staff of Seattle Seahawks when they won the 2013 Super Bowl, has led to more questions over the Jets’ acquisition of ageing quarterback Aaron Rodgers in 2023. A Super Bowl champion with Green Bay Packers in 2011, the 40-year-old Rodgers suffered a serious Achilles injury last season and his return for 2024 has done nothing to galvanise his current team. Indeed, Rodgers has consistently attracted most of his headlines for various outlandish views on global affairs, leading one outlet overnight to describe the player who fills the Jets’ key position as “a soon-to-be 41-year-old conspiracy theorist whose last top performance against a quality opponent was delivered on Christmas Day 2022”. Salty. Washing-up woes To on-field football matters shortly, but first one of those bizarre stories that intermittently rears its head and raises a chuckle for everyone, other than the poor soul who is the subject of the tittering. Tuanzebe, the current Ipswich and former Manchester United player, will miss around one month after injuring himself washing up. Credit to house-proud Tuanzebe, who could probably afford ‘staff’, for getting stuck into the domestic chores, but the 26-year-old suffered a deep cut to his thumb in the process, leaving Kieran McKenna, the Ipswich boss, lamenting a “very unfortunate incident”. Tuanzebe, a starter in each of Ipswich’s opening six Premier League matches, is keeping very good company as a footballer injured inside his own four walls. In football’s equivalent of the Darwin Awards, Dave Beasant, the former Chelsea and England goalkeeper, once severed the tendon in a big toe after trying to cushion a bottle of salad cream he had dropped. Rio Ferdinand was a Leeds United player when he did not budge for hours on end while watching TV with his foot resting on a coffee table. Result: a tendon strain in Ferdinand’s knee. And what about Richard Wright, who was a goalkeeper for Arsenal and Everton? In 2003, Wright hurt a shoulder after falling through his loft while packing away suitcases following his summer holiday. Chelsea see off Real Madrid Chelsea staved off a late Real Madrid fightback to give manager Sonia Bompastor a winning start in her quest to break the club’s Uefa Women’s Champions League duck. English champions in each of the past five seasons, Chelsea have never managed to crack the European code, despite coming close on multiple occasions. Finalists in 2021 and semi-finalists in each of the past two seasons, they led after two minutes when Sjoeke Nusken’s deflected header defeated goalkeeper Misa Rodriguez. Chelsea appeared set fair when Guro Reiten made it 2-0 from the spot after a foul on Nusken. Abel Redondo pulled one back before half-time, but Maya Ramirez restored the hosts’ two-goal cushion shortly after the restart. Any thoughts of cruising to full-time were banished when Real substitute Linda Caicdeo bundled home on 83 minutes to set up a nervy finish at Stamford Bridge. Chelsea held out to win 3-2, however, as Bompastor, who won this competition twice as a player and once as a manager with Lyon, began this year’s edition on a winning note. In the other Group E match, Dutch champions Twente won 2-0 at Scottish counterparts Celtic. Aussies’ Trans-Tasman joy Australia thumped feeble New Zealand by 60 runs in the Women’s T20 World Cup in United Arab Emirates. Batting first, the Aussies, seeking a fourth straight title, and seventh in the tournament’s nine editions, lost their way from 109 for three to finish on 148 for eight from their allocated overs. Opener Beth Mooney top-scored with 40, while the Kiwis’ Amelia Kerr claimed four for 26 with her leg spin. Batting at No 3, Kerr scored 29 from 31 balls in her team’s reply but found little support from elsewhere, as New Zealand folded to 88 all out in 19.2 overs. Australia seamer Megan Schutt returned the extraordinary figures of three wickets for three runs from 3.2 overs. Australia already look comfortable at the top of Group A, with New Zealand set to fight India and Pakistan for the second semi-final berth. Legend Iniesta’s tears of pride ‘Great’, ‘legend’, ‘genius’: all words grossly overused in football, but every one of those titles rests comfortably on the slender shoulders of Andres Iniesta. Graceful midfielder Iniesta, who has announced his retirement at the age of 40, scored the only goal when Spain beat Netherlands in the 2010 World Cup final. He added two Uefa European Championship crowns with his country and four Uefa Champions League triumphs at Barcelona. Iniesta was a fulcrum of Pep Guardiola’s formidable Barcelona team, one of a three-man engine room, with Xavi Hernandez and Sergio Busquets, who formed what Sir Alex Ferguson, the former Manchester United manager, called ‘passing carousels’ that dizzied the heads of beleaguered opponents. To give context to what it was like to play against Barcelona back then, if you did subdue the midfield kingpins, a chap called Lionel Messi would come along to hurt you regardless. Iniesta has, latterly, been playing for Emirates in the UAE Pro League, after five years in Japan with Vissel Kobe, following his Barcelona exit in 2018. “All these tears we have shed these days are tears of emotion, of pride. They are not tears of sadness,” Iniesta said. Grealish over his grump Elsewhere, Manchester City great Jack Grealish has said he “didn’t really agree” with Gareth Southgate’s call to omit him from the England squad for this summer’s European Championship. England were beaten finalists in Germany, but did not come close to locating any kind of fluency under former manager Southgate. The legendary Grealish revealed he was “devastated” when he was told he had the summer off, but the 29-year-old “can’t speak highly enough” of current Three Lions interim head coach Lee Carsley. Genius Grealish said missing the Euros was “the most difficult period of my life”. He is in a grand place on and off the field now, however, after becoming a dad for the first time last week and returning to prominence in an England jersey. Grealish scored against Republic of Ireland last month and is expected to feature in meetings with Greece and Finland over the next week.

USA axing, Iniesta quits, washing-up injury, what happened overnight in the world of sport

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Ipswich Town player joins bizarre-injury list, Barcelona great retires, US sacking season begins, Grealish reveals England anguish

.css-1mniedq{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;}Sacking season

Ipswich Town player joins bizarre-injury list, Barcelona great retires, US sacking season begins, Grealish reveals England anguish

Sacking season