分类： sports

In a landmark move that has shaken up the English Premier League summer transfer window, Chelsea have confirmed the signing of 23-year-old England attacking midfielder Morgan Rogers from Aston Villa, with the deal valuing at a new British transfer record of £117 million ($157 million).

The London-based club announced on its official website Tuesday that Rogers, who just returned from the FIFA World Cup held in North America, has put pen to paper on a 10-year contract that will keep him at Stamford Bridge until 2033, after successfully completing his mandatory medical examination on Monday.

Speaking following the completion of his transfer, Rogers expressed his long-held admiration for one of London’s most iconic football institutions. “I’m so excited,” he told Chelsea’s media team. “For me, Chelsea are the biggest club in London and a club I’ve always admired since I was a kid. I’m really excited about the project with the new manager, the players we’ve got and where the club is heading. That’s why I’m here and I can’t wait to get started.”

This historic transfer breaks two major records in English football. It surpasses the previous record for the highest fee paid for a British player, which was set just weeks earlier when Manchester City purchased Elliot Anderson from Nottingham Forest for £116 million earlier this July. It also becomes the most expensive signing in Chelsea’s 119-year club history, outstripping the £107 million the club paid to acquire Enzo Fernandez from Benfica back in 2023.

The high-profile capture of Rogers represents a clear statement of ambition from Chelsea, who pulled off the signing despite the club failing to qualify for next season’s UEFA Champions League – a competition that Aston Villa will compete in after their strong top-five finish last campaign. The west London side had been tracking Rogers for more than two years, and eventually won the race for his signature by meeting Aston Villa’s steep asking price, beating out fellow Premier League giants Arsenal, who declined to match the valuation.

For Villa, Rogers’ exit marks the third high-profile departure of this transfer window for manager Unai Emery, following Youri Tielemans’ recent move to Manchester United and an expected outgoing of left-back Lucas Digne to Paris Saint-Germain. The Midlands club issued a warm farewell to their former star, saying in an official statement: “A player with impeccable behaviour and commitment, Morgan leaves Aston Villa with the best wishes of everyone at the football club for both his service to the club and for for his future career. He will always remain a core part of our recent great moments and memories.”

Championship club Middlesbrough, who sold Rogers to Aston Villa back in 2024, will net a 20 percent cut of the transfer fee thanks to a sell-on clause inserted into the original deal, a windfall that will reportedly go towards their new stadium project.

Rogers enjoyed a breakout 2023/24 season with Villa, scoring 14 goals and providing 11 assists across all competitions, and notching up a total of 21 goals in 85 league appearances for the club. He was also a key part of Villa’s successful Europa Conference League run, scoring in the club’s May final victory over SC Freiburg.

Now, new Chelsea manager Xabi Alonso faces the exciting challenge of integrating Rogers into a revamped attacking line that already includes Cole Palmer, Pedro Neto, Estevao Willian, and fellow recent signing Geovany Quarda. To free up space in the squad and the wage bill, Chelsea are expected to offload Argentine winger Alejandro Garnacho before the summer transfer window closes.

Off the pitch, Rogers shares a long-standing personal connection with Palmer, having come through the youth academy at Manchester City together. It was Rogers, in fact, who inspired Palmer’s famous ‘cold’ celebration – the pose was first popularized by Rogers during his time as a Middlesbrough player.

The signing is widely viewed as proof that Chelsea remain a huge draw for top-tier talent even after a disappointing 2023/24 campaign that saw the club finish 10th in the Premier League and miss out on all European competition. Rogers will join up with his new Chelsea teammates after taking a planned post-World Cup break, having helped England reach the semi-finals of the 2024 tournament in North America.

The 2024 Tour de France delivered a dramatic day of racing on Tuesday, as Belgian cycling star Remco Evenepoel claimed a memorable individual time-trial victory on Belgium’s national holiday, capping off a second consecutive stage win while the peloton was left reeling from a hard crash that eliminated one of the general classification’s top contenders.

Staged over a 26.1-kilometer route tracing the stunning shoreline of Lake Geneva, the 16th stage of the Tour saw Evenepoel – the reigning Olympic and world time-trial champion – deliver a masterclass in controlled power. The 24-year-old crossed the finish line a full 28 seconds faster than four-time Tour champion Tadej Pogacar, who retained his overall general classification lead but saw his advantage cut to 4 minutes 32 seconds after Evenepoel’s dominant performance. No other rider came close to challenging the top two: Denmark’s Mattias Skjelmose finished third, more than a full minute behind Evenepoel, at 1 minute 4 seconds.

For Evenepoel, the win carried extra personal and national significance. The victory marked his fourth career Tour de France stage win and his third time-trial triumph at the race, coming just two days after he claimed the mountainous 15th stage to secure his first back-to-back stage wins at the event. Compounding the moment was its timing: the race fell on Belgium’s annual national holiday, a detail Evenepoel said made the victory even sweeter.

“It’s amazing, it was a very nice TT, a lot of people on the side of the road,” Evenepoel told reporters after the finish. “My whole family from both sides being here, my parents came just today. My wife is here with her parents and the siblings as well. And also on the Belgian national day is pretty special — I read this morning it’s been a while since Belgium won on National Day, so I’m proud to be the one.”

Beyond cutting into Pogacar’s lead, Evenepoel also extended his advantage over third-place overall rider Isaac del Toro, pushing the gap to more than two minutes.

But the day’s celebrations were tempered by a devastating crash that forced Evenepoel’s Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe teammate Florian Lipowitz to abandon the race. Lipowitz, who sat fifth overall heading into the stage and had posted the fourth-fastest time through the route’s three intermediate checkpoints, crashed heavily on a sharp mid-route bend. Just 48 hours after former two-time champion Jonas Vingegaard was forced to withdraw from the Tour following a crash while sitting second overall, the German rider was helped into a medical vehicle clutching his injured left arm.

Pogacar and del Toro both navigated the same bend moments after Lipowitz’s crash, escaping the incident without incident after a close call.

From the opening kilometers of the time-trial, it was clear Evenepoel was riding at a level unmatched by the rest of the field. When the top 10 general classification contenders started their races, Skjolmose set an early blistering pace that put him well ahead of most competitors, with Lipowitz, del Toro and French teenage prospect Paul Seixas all within a handful of seconds through the first two checkpoints. But Evenepoel blew those times out of the water: by the first checkpoint, he was already seven seconds faster than Pogacar – the only rider who could stay within 30 seconds of his pace – and 22 seconds ahead of Skjelmose. That gap expanded to 14 seconds over Pogacar and 56 seconds over Skjelmose by the second checkpoint, with most of Evenepoel’s advantage built on the route’s uphill section, where his sustained power proved unbeatable. He held his lead through the final descent and flat finish to claim the win.

Evenepoel acknowledged that the victory was mixed with worry for his injured teammate, calling the moment “bittersweet” and telling reporters he hoped Lipowitz’s injury was not serious. Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe sporting director Klaas Lodewyck echoed that sentiment, noting the team’s joy over Evenepoel’s performance was overshadowed by the loss of one of their top general classification contenders.

“It’s mixed emotions, let’s say. We’re over the moon with the win from Remco, but the loss of Lipo was a big blow for the team,” Lodewyck said.

In a high-profile summer transfer move that has caught the attention of women’s football across the globe, Everton Women have secured the signing of prolific Australian striker Holly McNamara on a free transfer. The 23-year-old forward joins the Women’s Super League side after her contract with hometown club Melbourne City reached its expiration.

McNamara brings an impressive goal-scoring track record to Merseyside, having claimed the A-League Women Golden Boot award twice in her young domestic career. The young forward first rose to prominence in 2022 when she was named the A-League Women Young Player of the Year, and most recently she played a key role in helping the Australian national team reach the final of the 2026 Women’s Asian Cup. To date, she has earned 20 senior caps for her country.

Everton confirmed that the club fended off stiff competition to complete the signing, beating interest from what the club described as “a wide range of top clubs across Europe and the United States” to land the in-demand striker. McNamara is the fourth new addition to Everton’s senior squad this summer transfer window, following the earlier arrivals of Noemie Mouchon, Hannah Cain and Zara Kramzar, marking a clear statement of the club’s ambitions for the upcoming WSL campaign.

Speaking after completing her move to Goodison Park, the Australian expressed her excitement at the new chapter of her career. “It is unreal to be here. Goodison Park is such a special stadium. I am very lucky to be here,” McNamara said.

She went on to explain what drew her to the historic English club, saying: “Everton have such a rich history and that drew me to the club. It is a good club that has great ambitions and a great project for the next few years. A big thing was also the chance to play in the best league in the world. It is so competitive and any team can beat anyone. I can’t wait to try to do everything for this club in order to win and to do as well as we can.”

The new signing will take on the iconic number nine shirt for Everton as she prepares to make her debut in the Women’s Super League, one of the most competitive top-flight women’s football competitions on the planet.

As the 2026 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow approach, track cycling star Matt Richardson is ready to set aside the public uproar that followed his high-profile switch of national allegiances from Australia to Great Britain, and focus on defending the two gold medals he won while competing for Australia four years ago.

Born in Maidstone, Kent, Richardson moved to Australia with his family at age 9 and held dual Australian-British citizenship for decades. His career-altering decision to change his cycling registration to Great Britain came just days after he claimed two silver medals and one bronze for Australia at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games. The Australian cycling federation responded with a permanent ban barring Richardson from ever rejoining the national team, a move that sparked widespread debate across the global cycling community.

Now, 27-year-old Richardson says he has intentionally tuned out the criticism surrounding his switch and moved forward with his career. “I tried to block out all the negativity, and all the noise,” he told BBC Radio Kent in an exclusive interview. “I experienced the way they decided to handle it at the time, and moved on as quickly as I could. Ultimately, it has zero effect on me. If, for some reason, the British public didn’t take it well, that wouldn’t have been very good, but it wasn’t the case.”

Since joining Team GB, Richardson’s on-track results have strongly validated his career choice, with a string of landmark performances that have cemented his status as one of the world’s top track sprinters. He followed his Paris Olympic success with two silver medals in the individual sprint and team sprint events at the 2025 UCI Track Cycling World Championships, before going on to claim both the European sprint and keirin titles later that year. Most notably, Richardson made history by breaking the men’s flying 200m time trial world record twice, becoming the first sprinter ever to clock a time under the nine-second barrier.

Richardson attributes his rapid recent improvement to the enhanced support, resources and training infrastructure available through British Cycling. “No expense is spared when it comes to trying to achieve success, and it really feels like that,” he explained. “We fly with more bikes, and more equipment – anything we need to perform at our absolute best at a given race. I remember doing World Cups for Australia, and I would only fly over with my race bike. I fly to races now with about four or five bikes. I’ve got spares, I’ve got bikes for team sprint, I’ve got bikes for sprint, I’ve got a road bike, I’ve got a bike that I just warm up on for activations. Those things really make a difference, when a final comes down to a thousandth of a second.”

Heading into the Glasgow Commonwealth Games, Richardson is not daunted by the target on his back as defending champion in both the individual and team sprint events, nor by the fact that he will now compete against his former Australian teammates. Instead, he channels that extra pressure into motivation. “I use it as fuel,” he said. “I always find motivation in something, whether it’s trying to hunt someone down, trying to be better than someone or trying to stay better than other people.”

The only major uncertainty hanging over Richardson’s Commonwealth Games campaign is his tight competition schedule, which requires him to travel directly to Glasgow from a race event in Japan. This leaves his participation in the full slate of events he planned to enter in question. “It’s nip-and-tuck on which events I can actually make,” Richardson admitted. “If I was to race in the team sprint, I will fly in on the day and literally go straight to the velodrome and race. Whether or not that’s the best thing to be doing physically, I’m undecided yet, but there is theoretically time for me to race everything. My plan currently is to race in the team sprint, keirin and the sprint. The kilo is undecided. If I do race everything, the goal is to win everything.”