Soccer

Atletico El Vigia FC ( 1 – 1 ) Trujillanos FC , Venezuela on The 19th of May, 2013 at half past ten Podcast:

Arsene Wenger has announced that they are in ‘advanced talks’ with Auxerre forward Yaya Sanogo. The youngster is out of contract at the end of the season although his club will still be owed compensation as he is under 23. Arsenal are heavily expected to strengthen their squad this summer with £70 million rumoured to be the gunners budget. It has been suggested that the backroom staff at the Emirates are keen for the club to make a move for Man U striker Wayne Rooney, who has recently handed in a transfer ...

Deportivo Quevedo ( 1 – 1 ) El Nacional , Ecuador on The 19th of May, 2013 at twenty five past ten Podcast:

Real Esppor Club ( 0 – 2 ) AC Mineros , Venezuela on The 19th of May, 2013 at twenty five past ten Podcast:

The permanent signing of Javier Garrido this week and the forthcoming July arrival of Ricky Van Wolfswinkel shows the ambition Norwich City has, by bringing quality players such as these to Carrow Road. However, after surviving the dreaded second season syndrome, the Canaries still continue their club mantra of a solid team spirit and collective togetherness inwards, which has not only seen them rise back to the top flight, but in my opinion is the reason their team displays have been so passionate on the pitch. This incredible ethos seemingly doesn’t stop ...

Penarol ( 0 – 0 ) Wanderers , URU on The 19th of May, 2013 at ten past ten Podcast:

Santos ( 1 – 1 ) Corinthians , Brazil on The 19th of May, 2013 at five past ten Podcast:

• Parkinson's pride as £7,500 squad secure League One return• Wembley no place to lose, admits Northampton's BoothroydBradford City achieved promotion by handing out a lesson, and not just to Northampton Town. This emphatic victory rewarded an accomplished performance and the ascent to League One repaid the exemplary way that the club have been run in recent years.Looking around Wembley, which was awash with proud Bradford fans for the second time in three months following February's Capital One Cup final, it was clear that the club are harvesting the fruit that was planted after relegation from the third tier in 2007.Back then the joint chairmen, Mark Lawn and Julian Rhodes, introduced a scheme to offer supporters the cheapest season tickets in the Football League and even for this triumphant campaign, six years on, season tickets were available for less than £200. Prices were set following consultation between club management and the 21-member supporters' board, the first of its kind in England, and go a long way towards explaining why Bradford have attracted average home attendances of around 10,000 – not just this season but also last term, when they were struggling against relegation from the Football League. Phil Parkinson's success as a manager since he arrived in August 2011 has been to produce a team that have contributed to the synergy with the bumper home crowd."I think the season-ticket deal that the chairmen have done for the supporters is fantastic," said the manager. "If you're a supporter and you've got value for money, you tend to be more forgiving if the players make mistakes. Whereas if you've paid over the odds, you've got a bit of anger inside you. So when I came in we knew that if we can give the crowd something to respond to, they would get right behind us. We've got a mantra in the team that if we can out-work and out-tackle everybody, then the supporters can really identify with the players, and the support we've had has been incredible."Parkinson's entire squad cost just £7,500, having paid a fee for no one other than the striker James Hanson, who opened the scoring against Northampton with a looping header from Garry Thompson's cross. Rory McArdle scored a virtually identical goal four minutes later and then, in the 28th minute, Nahki Wells volleyed a third past the Northampton goalkeeper Lee Nicholls, who made several saves after that to prevent heavier damage.Northampton's manager, Aidy Boothroyd, has also presided over an upturn in his club's fortunes since succeeding Gary Johnson midway through last season, when the Cobblers were in the League Two relegation zone, but the progress that has been made since then offered no consolation for the way his team froze at Wembley."It's great to have got here but when you get to a final like this, you want to be a winner, nothing else," said Boothroyd, who also insisted that defeat was not made any easier by the fact that it was against Bradford, the club that he has supported as a child. Boothroyd was at Valley Parade with his father 28 years ago when 56 people lost their lives in the Bradford fire disaster.Parkinson attended a memorial service for those victims on the anniversary of the tragedy, 11 May. "I felt since I've been here that there is a close bond between the city and the football club and obviously that [tragedy] is a major factor to it," he added. "The supporters have a special connection with the club. I felt the bond was probably lost a little before but we've got that back this year."Man of the match Gary Jones(Bradford City)League TwoNorthamptonBradfordPaul Doyleguardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Title race had stale script but at least cup competitions were genuinely thrilling and made 2012-13 season singAs one zillion-budget sequel returns, so the credits roll on another. Hollywood's latest upchuck, Fast & Furious VI, with its grunts and gloss and smack-crash-slam emptiness was dismissed by one reviewer as having a "generic plotline" and "an awful lot … to meander through" – which will sound strikingly familiar to anyone who has sat through Premier League XX, the latest and least interesting incarnation of the series for years.True, the 20th Premier League season was fast and furious. It usually is. Along the way there were standout scenes and star turns: Manchester United's up and level then up again victory at the Etihad, the random craziness of Arsenal's 7-3 smashing of Newcastle United, Gareth Bale's 3-2 win over West Ham United. Bale, Robin van Persie and Luis Suárez were the season's best actors, while Pablo Zabaleta, David de Gea and Michu all played fine supporting roles.But what will linger longest in the memory – at least on the pitch – is the stale script and a finale that had as much tension as a torn hamstring.Even the Premier League's most exhilarating and exhausted narrative in 2012-13 – United coming from behind to take all three points, as they did on nine occasions, hardly required a spoiler alert. Those who grew up in the 1970s will remember the wrestler Big Daddy, 26st of blubber and spandex, being pinned early in a best-of-three match on ITV's World of Sport only to emerge victorious after landing his finishing move, the Big Splash, on his weaker opponent. United were this season's Big Daddy; its only big splash. Manchester City and Chelsea crumbled too early and easily.The title race was over, bar the ticker tape and trophy, in the second week of February when United went 12 points clear with 12 games remaining.The teams expected to finish in the top three did. Only Newcastle, QPR and Southampton performed significantly worse or better than the bookies' predicted last August. And only 10 times across 10 months did a top-five side lose to a team that finished in the bottom half (incidentally in 1992-93, the first year of the Premier League, it happened 22 times).Its defenders would argue that the Premier League was far from alone in being a procession. They are right: Barcelona, Juventus and Bayern Munich all topped their respective leagues from first week to last. It took until December for United to pull away.And at least Premier League XX also provided plenty of goals. Indeed, this year's average fell only just short of last year's record of 2.81 a game.Still, you have to go back to the 2005-06 season for the last time both the Premier League title and relegation places were bagged and zipped before the final day. There are other similarities too: Chelsea also had the league won by February, while Arsenal and Tottenham spent the final day duking it out for the final Champions League place.That season the Mourinho-fication of English football was at its zenith; 4-5-1 became as much a philosophy as a formation and negativity was the new orthodoxy. The average number of goals per game was 2.48, the lowest ever in the Premier League.Even a makeshift Arsenal defence featuring Philippe Senderos and Mathieu Flamini at left-back went 10 Champions League games without conceding.This was, to borrow Jorge Valdano's memorable phrase, the shit-hanging-from-a-stick era of English football. Chelsea won the league with 91 points despite losing their final two games. But at least they beat something along the way: Manchester United were emerging again to be a significant force, with both Cristiano Ronaldo and Wayne Rooney making Fifa's top 20 that year; Liverpool, the European champions, were also stronger than in previous seasons.Yet while the Premier League, supposedly the game's bread and butter, has felt as stale and processed as an old Mother's Pride loaf, the cup competitions have been genuinely thrillin

Before continuing I must point out that it is only speculation at present about Pellegrini and the vacant role at Manchester City, the British media are prone to getting it wrong – just a few months ago it was convinced that Pep Guardiola was ready to abandon his yearlong sabbatical and join the madhouse at Chelsea FC, instead Guardiola announced he was to become the new manager of Bayern Munich and Chelsea turned to Benitez. So it is with a pinch of salt that we take the news of Manuel ...