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- The Assist: Premier League final day and Cup finals galore
The Assist: Premier League final day and Cup finals galore
Plus decision day in Serie A, Women's Champions League Final, and EFL playoffs at Wembley
The climax of the European season really is serving up some treats, and this is another weekend that features campaign defining games from start to finish. Napoli or Inter will be crowned Serie A champions tonight, there are Cup finals including the Coupe de France and DFB Pokal on Saturday, and then the final round of the Premier League on Sunday. Read on for more on those, and a heap of other fun stuff.
The 38th game
Somehow, in a season when much has seemed like a foregone conclusion (Liverpool winning the league, the three promoted sides dropping back down etc.), we’re left with a final round of Premier League action where, for a number of sides, their whole season depends on getting a result on the final day.
We are, of course, mainly talking about the five teams fighting it out for the three remaining Champions League places, although there are still other places potentially up for grabs in UEFA’s other competitions.
Liverpool, runners-up Arsenal, and newly crowned Europa League winners Spurs are all into next season’s League Phase already. Just three points then separates Man City, in fourth, to Nottingham Forest in seventh.
Opta’s prediction tool, the all-powerful Opta Supercomputer, gives City a 97% chance of joining them. Their final fixture falls away at Fulham, one of 10 simultaneous kickoffs taking place on Sunday afternoon.
Perhaps the most crucial of all the fixtures, though, is that of outsiders Nottingham Forest and fifth-placed Chelsea. The Supercomputer obviously favours Chelsea at 58% but Forest have, for the majority of the season, proven to be the great disrupters, and despite Opta rating their chances of making a Champions League return at just 20%, we wouldn’t put it past Nuno Espírito Santo’s side to spring one last surprise.
Friday night lights
The two Serie A title contenders, Napoli and Inter, have seen their respective decisive final games brought forward to tonight.
Both agonisingly drew last weekend, meaning Antonio Conte’s Napoli still hold a one point advantage over defending champions Inter. Therefore to claim the Scudetto, the Neapolitans - who play at home to Cagliari - just need to match whatever Inter achieve in their game (away at upwardly mobile Como).
It’s going to be a nail-biting finish, one made all the more painful for the managers as both Conte, and Inter’s Simone Inzaghi must serve touchline bans, and will be forced to watch the action unfold with the rest of us.
Year of the Underdog
After Bologna lifted the cup in Italy and Crystal Palace made history in the FA Cup, Arminia Bielefeld will be hoping the pattern continues as the final of the DFB Pokal takes place in Germany this weekend.
Arminia are enjoying one hell of a season - they finished champions of the 3 Liga and now have the chance to experience their first ever cup final. They face three-time winners Stuttgart, who despite playing Champions League football this season, only managed to finish ninth in the Bundesliga under highly rated coach Sebastian Hoeness.
The format of the DFB Pokal has always encouraged upsets in the early rounds and amazingly, this is the fourth time that a third tier club has reached the final, the last being Union Berlin in 2001. All those that went before them lost out in the showpiece game, but after sealing promotion AND defeating holders Bayer Leverkusen in the last round, Arminia fans can dream about changing that record.
Fighting on two fronts
It’s a massive week for Stade Reims and their fans. As they prepare to make their first Coupe de France final appearance since 1977(!) against PSG on Saturday night, they must also fight for their survival in Ligue 1.
Having finished the season with three defeats they slipped to 16th, dropping in to the relegation playoff place, and were obliged to start their two-legged, winner-takes-all tie against Metz, the side who finished third in Ligue 2, on Wednesday night. That game ended 1-1, a scoreline that will only intensify the nerves going into the return leg next Thursday.
PSG are, of course, one week out from their second ever Champions League final. Luis Enriques’ side wrapped up Ligue 1 with six games to spare so the Parisian giants have been able to ease up in recent weeks. And while they may already be looking towards facing Inter in Munich, they’ll want to use this game as a springboard for the main event, with the Coupe de France completing a domestic double before they hope to convert that into a treble.
Scottish Cup Final
Celtic will also be treble-hunting when they take on Aberdeen at Hampden Park, the home of Scottish football.
Should the Hoops successfully add the Scottish Cup to their League Cup and SPFL triumphs, they will claim all three domestic titles for a record-extending ninth time (Rangers have achieved the feat on seven occasions).
The Dons, under new coach Jimmy Thelin, started the season on fire - winning 10 of their first 11 league games -, but eventually slipped out of the European places, finishing fifth and 39 points down on Brendan Rodgers’ champions. This therefore is a shot at redemption amid plenty of disquiet among the fanbase.
Pere Romeu's Barcelona are looking to claim their fourth European title in five years. Their squad boasts a plethora of talent, with a star-studded midfield and Ewa Pajor up front, the Pole having scored 43 times in 45 appearances this season. They blew Wolfsburg and Chelsea away in the knock-out stages and come into Saturday’s game as firm favourites.
Arsenal, for all their rich history, are in transition this season, with Renée Slegers taking over as coach in October. They remain the only English team to have won the competition - some 18 years ago - but had to go through the qualifiers this year before beating Real Madrid and then the mighty Lyon, the record tournament winners in the last round.
The Gunners have a potent attacking force with England’s Alessia Russo finding form up front, but lack defensive solidity especially in transition, shipping 12 goals in their last three games.
The midfield battle could prove crucial with Barcelona's Aitana Bonmatí and Alexia Putellas winning the last four Ballon d’Ors between them. Arsenal, however, have their own aces. The peerless Mariona Caldentey has been transformational since arriving from Barca last summer, having spent ten years with the Spanish champions. Alongside her, 34-year-old captain Kim Little remains the heartbeat of Slegers' team.
There’s no doubt this will be a tough ask for Arsenal. Everything points to a Barcelona victory but football can be unpredictable. And the Gunners will be holding onto that thought as they attempt to achieve what was unthinkable eight months ago.
We have a three-way title battle raging in the SuperSport HNL, Croatia’s top division. This is not standard procedure here, with Dinamo Zagreb usually having it all wrapped up by now - as they have done in 18 of the last 19 seasons!
Dinamo are the current leaders but they head in to Sunday’s final day level on points with Rijeka, the side who last broke their monopoly on the title back in 2017. Indeed, until last weekend the most likely winners looked to be Rijeka.
They went to third placed Hajduk Split in the penultimate round only to lose to the side managed by former-Italian international Gennaro Gattuso, a result that ended Hajduk’s six-game winless run and also kept them in the running, two points down on the joint leaders.
Dinamo sacked coach Fabio Cannavaro, Gattuso’s former-international teammate, in early April, with the defending champions then eight points off the pace. One defeat in seven since, combined with shaky form from their rivals, has left Dinamo only needing to match Rijeka’s result on Sunday to claim an unlikely but all-too familiar league win.
Should they drop points, at home to fourth placed Varaždin, either Rijeka or Hajduk could steal the title away from the country’s capital.
Wembley Stadium plays host to the deciding games of the playoffs in all three of the EFL divisions over the weekend, starting with the Championship final on Saturday.
Sheffield United and Sunderland will fight it out for the last remaining place in the promised land of the Premier League next season. The Blades bounced back from the disappointment of missing out on automatic promotion to smash Bristol City in the semifinals, while Sunderland got a much-needed moment of magic with Dan Ballard’s mania-inducing stoppage time at the end of extratime winner against Coventry.
For an in depth preview of this meeting between two classic sides from the northern industrial heartland of English football, check out this article from broadcaster Sanny Rudravajhala - here.
On Sunday, London sides Charlton Athletic and Leyton Orient face off in the League One final. Nathan Jones’ Charlton are one of the success stories of the season having lost just three out of 24 games since mid-January, a run that culminated in victory over Wycombe in the semifinals. For Orient, a win would seal a fairytale return to England’s second tier for the first time since 1982!
Finally, on Monday the sides who finished just outside the automatic promotion places in League Two, Walsall and Wimbledon, meet to decide who will move back up to the third tier.
Like everyone else, we were suitably impressed with the Palace midfielder in the FA Cup Final and in this article we explore his potential as a lynchpin of Thomas Tuchel’s Three Lions squad in the build up to the 2026 World Cup.
With Leipzig well off the pace in the Bundesliga and Salzburg set for their lowest finish since the takeover in the other Bundesliga, all is not well in Red Bull’s multi-club world. Alex Roberts explores what has gone wrong for the two energy drink-fuelled sides this season.
Ahead of the Coupe de France final that we previewed earlier in this newsletter, check out Zach Lowy’s detailed look at the challenging end of season conundrum Reims find themselves in - do they concentrate on the Cup or ensure their Ligue 1 survival?