Were predictions of Manchester City’s post-Pep drop-off overstated?

Squint hard enough and Manchester City still look like Manchester City. They’re still playing the same possession-hungry soccer. Erling Haaland is still scoring goals. They even have a new manager with vaguely the same appearance and oeuvre as their old manager. An AI Pep Guardiola in the dugout.

Of course, nothing is truly the same at City this season. How could it be? This is a club that was moulded in the image of Guardiola over a full decade. Everything was geared towards the Catalan coach whose manic intensity energized everything at the Etihad Stadium. Take that energy away and many assumed the lights would turn off.

So far, though, Enzo Maresca’s Manchester City have played some bright soccer, winning their first three Premier League matches of the season and starting their Champions League campaign with a comfortable 2-0 away win over Porto on Tuesday. If a post-Pep drop-off is coming, it hasn’t hit City yet.

This isn’t to say there hasn’t been vulnerability. Maresca is still integrating a number of summer signings. It will take time for Elliot Anderson, Ayyoub Bouaddi and Enzo Fernández to settle into City’s reshaped midfield unit. As if life after Guardiola wasn’t stark enough, Manchester City are also attempting to move on from Rodri, the central pillar who supported so much within their team.

The scale of turnover at the Etihad this summer was huge. Bernardo Silva and John Stones departed, too. Eleven senior squad members in total left, and yet Manchester City have already shown enough to suggest they will once again compete for the biggest prizes this season. Predictions of their demise may have been premature.

Why does the Ballon d’Or Féminin continue to ignore the USA’s best players?

Thirty candidates for the 2026 Ballon d’Or Féminin and just one American – Rose Lavelle. Nobody expected to see any star-spangled representation on the men’s shortlist (as good as Malik Tillman was at the World Cup), but the sight of just one American name on the shortlist for the women’s award was jarring considering the country’s standing as a women’s soccer superpower.

Americans have been overlooked for the most prestigious individual prize in soccer before. Last year, Emily Fox was the highest-ranking US player in the final voting, finishing 25th. Lindsey Heaps (26th) was the only other American in the top 30. The year before that, when the US women’s national team won gold at the Paris Olympics, there wasn’t an American in the top three.

None of this is to say Americans should be rewarded by right. The women’s soccer landscape has shifted dramatically in recent times with many of the sport’s best players now operating in Europe. Long gone are the days when the NWSL (and the various iterations before it) sat unchallenged at the top of the women’s soccer food chain.

This shifting power dynamic could be a factor in why the Ballon d’Or Féminin has a habit of overlooking Americans. This is, after all, a European award. After decades of American dominance of the women’s game, is this Europe getting a small form of revenge? Is the Ballon d’Or Féminin shortlist deliberate rage bait?

Trinity Rodman could have been nominated. Ashley Sanchez, fresh from setting the NWSL single-season scoring record for an American, might have been listed. Otherwise, it’s a bit difficult to make a case that many others were overlooked. It wasn’t a vintage year for Americans at the elite level. That, rather than any sort of agenda, may be the true explanation for their Ballon d’Or Féminin omission.

Has Raphinha found his best position as Barcelona’s new No 9?

Conventional wisdom said Barcelona needed a new No 9 this summer. Hansi Flick’s Barca, however, are anything but conventional and they may be stronger than ever after the departures of Robert Lewandowski and Ferran Torres. The Spanish champions never needed a new center-forward when they had Raphinha.

Five games into the season, the Brazilian has already notched eight goals. Against Feyenoord on Wednesday, he led the line for a Barcelona team who are destroying opponents at will, producing one of the Champions League’s first highlight-reel moments of the season by sending two defenders sliding off the Camp Nou pitch with a feint and finish.

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Raphinha has made a habit of proving his doubters wrong. Some of those doubters have come from within his own club, who attempted to sell the former Leeds United winger before Flick turned him into one of the game’s most productive wide attackers. Raphinha’s latest evolution looks to have elevated him to an even higher level.

Far from being a “false nine”, Raphinha is moving as if he’s played his entire career through the middle. His penalty box instincts are sharp. His ability to link play is smooth. The 29-year-old has made the shift to playing center forward appear so easy that Barcelona’s public pursuit of Julián Álvarez now looks a waste of time.

Gabriel Jesus arrived on deadline day to give Barca at least one out-and-out striker in their squad. The former Arsenal and Manchester City forward will be a useful option if he can avoid the injury issues that have plagued his career to date. His goal against Feyenoord showed what he can offer. It was nothing, however, compared to what Raphinha is doing.