Stole Dimitrievski locked up the goal, Valencia can finally breathe

It took six rounds for Valencia's first win of the season in La Liga to arrive - and it only came after the club changed both its coach and its sporting director. Away at Alaves the score was 0:1, with Luis Rioja scoring in the 78th minute. Before that, VAR had already disallowed a Valencia goal. The man who preserved the result was the Macedonian international goalkeeper Stole Dimitrievski, the best player in his side, with a clean sheet. After six rounds Valencia have one win, one draw and four defeats - four points - under interim coach Oscar Sanchez. When a club has to replace its entire leadership to win one match, the real question is not whether Stole keeps goal well. The question is how long one goalkeeper can patch the hole left by everyone in front of him.

Messi comes back for one more - on 6 October, at El Monumental

The media war in Argentina ran for days, and then football federation president Claudio Tapia simply announced it in a video address on Instagram. Lionel Messi will wear the Albiceleste shirt once more - against Benin, on 6 October, at El Monumental in Buenos Aires. "We invited the best player in the world, our captain Lionel Andres Messi, to play one more match and get the farewell he deserves," Tapia said. Messi had already announced the end of his international career on 31 August, so the return was exactly what half of Argentina had been waiting for. Coach Scaloni also published the squad - Emiliano Martinez, Cristian Romero, Lisandro Martinez, Enzo Fernandez, Mac Allister, De Paul, Julian Alvarez and Lautaro Martinez, plus young names like Nico Paz and Franco Mastantuono. This is the third friendly in the window, after Bolivia on 30 September and Burkina Faso on 3 October. At 39, Messi is getting a send-off few in the history of sport have had - and for the second time.

Rodri is not hiding it: Barcelona are not favourites in the Champions League

Rodri left Manchester City this summer after seven years and signed for Barcelona until June 2030. Now that he is inside, the Spain international tells Mundo Deportivo that the Champions League title is achievable, but: "Beyond that, I don't think we are favourites." The man who scored the winning goal against Inter in the 2023 final knows what he is talking about - in his view, Europe is not won by the most talented team but by the one that handles the decisive moments best. Red cards, penalties, needless goals conceded. Barcelona paid dearly for that last season, going out to Atletico Madrid 3:2 on aggregate in the quarter-finals after Pau Cubarsi was sent off in the first leg and Eric Garcia in the second. The start of this European season is emphatic - 5:1 against Feyenoord - and Barcelona have been waiting for the title since 2015. It is a rare star who refuses to declare himself a favourite at the club that has just paid for him. Either Rodri is being honest, or he simply knows where excess confidence leads by March.

Arsenal started a 16-year-old, and he decided everything

In the English League Cup, Arsenal won at Ipswich 4:2, with two goals from 16-year-old Max Dowman - the first from an Eze pass, the second at the start of the second half assisted by Zubimendi. Madueke and Merino added the others, while Mehmedi and Akpom only softened the defeat. At Anfield, Liverpool knocked out Tottenham 3:1: Mac Allister in the 21st minute, Gakpo at the start of the second half, Gallagher pulling one back from a corner in the 69th, and Dominik Szoboszlai finishing the job with a spectacular strike. The same evening in Abu Dhabi, Al Ain thrashed Al Nassr 4:0 at the start of the Asian Champions League, with Cristiano Ronaldo invisible on the pitch. A teenager from the academy settled a match in half an hour. At the same time, the best-paid footballer on the planet spent an entire evening without a single moment worth replaying. One evening proves nothing lasting, but it shows where clubs are looking for their future.

Two VAR officials stood down, and the system that confused them stays the same

Matt Donohue, the lead VAR official who allowed Erling Haaland's winning goal in the Manchester derby, and his assistant Blake Antrobus have been stood down from duty for the Carabao Cup and the coming Premier League round. Pro Ref admitted an "error of judgement" - the technology confirmed Haaland was onside, but nobody applied the subjective rule: Enzo Fernandez was clearly offside, tried to play the ball and directly obstructed Lisandro Martinez. City won 1:0. The interesting part is not the punishment but what lies beneath it. Unlike the World Cup and the Champions League, which use a single provider, the Premier League works after tender with two: Genius Sports for semi-automated offside and Hawk-Eye for goal-line technology. Former referee Graham Scott called it "unnecessarily clunky" - on a suspected offside the official has to communicate by radio with someone from a different company in an adjacent room at Stockley Park and switch to an entirely different screen. On top of that, the Puma balls in the English top flight carry no microchip, because Adidas holds the patent, so there is no real-time data on the moment of the pass. The league has no plan to unify the system until the contracts expire. Two people paid for one week. The contracts remain.