​By. Guillem Balague. BBC Sport Columnist. 26 minutes ago. 9 Comments. Julian Alvarez’s phone kept ringing, every day.. It was Rodrigo de Paul, then Antoine Griezmann, then Giuliano Simeone, the Atletico Madrid’s manager’s son.. And behind every call, pulling the strings, was Diego Simeone himself, firing messages into Alvarez’s phone during the Copa America and the Paris Olympics of the summer of 2024.. In the end, the World Cup-winning Argentina striker, who had just clinched the Premier League with Manchester City, had to beg for it to stop.. “Tell your dad to stop calling,” Alvarez finally told Giuliano. He was coming, so could they all back off?. The story shows the first time Alvarez encountered the intensity of Diego Simeone, and also why he chose Atletico Madrid over Paris St-Germain, who were reportedly offering up to £8.7m a season in wages.. Image source, Getty Images. ‘The Little Spider’. Alvarez grew up in Calchin, a town of 3,000 people in the province of Cordoba, Argentina.. His brother Rafael started calling him ‘La Aranita’ – the Little Spider. When he played on the neighbourhood pitch, 50 metres from his front door, no-one could get the ball off him. He seemed to have too many legs.. Opponents from other villages would show up asking: “Is La Aranita playing today?” The name stuck and his teachers were the only people who ever called him Julian.. Aged 11, he impressed in a trial with Real Madrid, but returned home anyway, a decision he calls one of the most formative of his life.. At 15, a River Plate scout named Juanjo Borrelli needed only one training session to decide that this kid from a tiny Cordoban town had to come to Buenos Aires. Borrelli told him he would start on the bench but he did not stay there for long.. River Plate made Alvarez. In one extraordinary Copa Libertadores performance against Alianza Lima, he scored six goals in a 8-1 win, which announced him to the world.. Playing for one of South America’s giants, where winning every game is an obligation, forged the competitive instinct that now defines him. “Once you’re at River,” he said, “you can never lose a game without it hurting you.”. From River Plate, he went to Manchester City in January 2022. There he won the Champions League in his debut season, becoming part of Pep Guardiola’s machine and thriving within it. He was 23. It was all happening very fast. Then came the calls.. Image source, Getty Images. ‘The chance to be my best’. What Atletico manager Simeone sold him was a football project that had the striker at the centre of it. Alvarez wanted to feel wanted.. “He told me I could give the club something huge,” he recalls. “That I’d have the space and the opportunity to be my best version.”. The Argentines already at the club helped too – De Paul, Griezmann’s warmth, the Spanish language, a culture that felt closer to home than Paris or Manchester ever could.. In August 2024, Atletico Madrid confirmed the deal – 95m euros (£81.5m), a club record receive  

​Image source, Reuters. 59 minutes ago. 19 Comments. It’s just over two weeks until the 2026 Formula 1 season resumes with the Miami Grand Prix, following the cancellations of the races in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.. BBC F1 correspondent Andrew Benson answers your latest questions.. Of the drivers, whose contracts are up this year and who has something to prove? – Christopher. This is a really tricky question to answer because Formula 1 teams have become increasingly secretive about the lengths of their driver contracts in recent years.. However, some things are known for certain.. The big one is Max Verstappen. He’s the keystone of the driver market because he is regarded by everyone as the best out there.. The four-time champion has a contract with Red Bull that runs until 2028. However, it has performance clauses in it, which mean he is free to leave the team if he is not in a certain position in the championship by a certain point of the season.. The way Red Bull are performing at the moment, there is absolutely no chance that Verstappen will be high enough in the championship to lock him in by the summer break unless they have a massive turnaround in form.. So, we can assume that Verstappen is a free agent this summer if he wants to be.. The questions then would be: a) does he want to leave Red Bull; b) does he want to go to another F1 team and if so which one; and c) might he leave F1 and go and race elsewhere? In Japan, he confirmed he was considering the last option.. If he wants to stay in F1, the obvious destination would be Mercedes. Team principal Toto Wolff has been courting Verstappen pretty openly for the past two years.. However, both George Russell and Kimi Antonelli are said to have contracts that lock them in at Mercedes beyond the end of this year.. Wolff said in an interview with Austria’s OE24 last month: “We have two drivers with whom we have long-term, multi-year contracts. I couldn’t be happier with both of them.. “Both are delivering top performances, so there’s absolutely no reason to even consider a line-up change, or other drivers. I say this with the utmost respect for Max.”. Of course, in F1 no contract is completely concrete, there is always room for manoeuvre. But on the face of it, that does suggest the door at Mercedes is shut for Verstappen for now.. McLaren might also be appealing to Verstappen, especially with his race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase heading there.. Both Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri are under contract at least until the end of 2027, according to the team. And McLaren Racing chief executive officer Zak Brown has said on a number of occasions that he believes they have the best driver line-up in F1.. It’s also hard to see how Verstappen would fit in with McLaren’s racing philosophy and the way they operated with their drivers in the championship fight last year.. The other leading team is Ferrari. BBC Sport’s sources say that Lewis Hamilton signed a firm three-year deal when he joined the team for  

​ByMark Woods. BBC Sport. Alex McKechnie chuckles at the leap of faith he took when he packed up almost all his belongings in Glasgow and booked a one-way flight to Vancouver, Canada on 7 September 1974.. “I had $300 in my pocket,” he recounts. “And no job.”. At that point it might have been hard for the newly qualified physiotherapist to imagine he would one day be telling basketball great Shaquille O’Neal – with his full entourage in tow – to wait his turn to see him.. Or that an idea he had when looking at a children’s playground would spark a novel way to improve recovery from knee injuries.. His pioneering methods would make him one of sport’s most sought-after physios and even earn him a small slice of British sporting history as the only Briton to win an NBA championship ring as either a player or member of the sideline staff.. He has now won six, and at the age of 74 the man credited with bringing players back from career-threatening injuries is still very much in demand.. Image source, Getty Images. Darting with a football in his youth around the mean Scottish streets of Easterhouse – at the time the centre of Glasgow’s notorious ganglands – McKechnie dreamed of playing for Rangers.. But a car crash that injured his father and brother provided his introduction to a different career path.. Watching them recover steadily fascinated a young McKechnie. It persuaded him to study physiotherapy at a technical college in Leeds before heading to North America in search of a job.. Within a week he secured a temporary role at a hospital, and within a month he was working at a university with athletes from many sports. It sparked a fascination with an area of sports science that was under-researched – anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injuries.. When he first started practising there was no surgery that offered a certain cure.. “It was basically an ACL tear, and your career was basically over,” says McKechnie.. Working with athletes, he started to notice a link between cruciate injuries, core strength and pelvic control, and so devised a rehabilitation process based on this.. He got his patients to wear elastic bands – which simulated resistance – while doing a series of exercises that would strengthen their core.. This approach is now common, but back then it was innovative.. Image source, Getty Images. His next Eureka moment came while walking his dog through a park in which children were rocking on spring-mounted horses.. It sowed the seed for the idea of a wobble board which could heighten core strength through muscle movement, training the body to learn healthy patterns which promote overall stability.. The first prototype was “built with a large engineering spring” and Reebok subsequently licensed the idea in 1999, turning it into a mass-market product sold worldwide.. Word was already spreading about the physio who was piloting new approaches and saving careers.. In 1997, when LA Lakers star O’Neal, then the most dominant centre in the NBA, sus  

​’It’s a real issue’ – who is the back-up to Lucy Bronze?. ‘It’s a real issue’ – who is the back-up to Lucy Bronze?. Alex Scott, Fara Williams, Ellen White and Steph Houghton discuss the challenge England face in finding a back-up and eventual successor to Lucy Bronze.. READ MORE: How do Lionesses solve full-back succession problem?. England Women. 1 hour ago. Share page. About sharing  

​Image source, Getty Images. ByMatthew Henry. BBC Sport Journalist. 14 April 2026, 06:17 BST. Updated 1 hour ago. Adam Peaty is back for more, again.. The three-time Olympic champion, who almost quit the sport before the Paris Olympics and considered doing so after taking silver in the French capital, returns to the London Aquatics Centre on Tuesday.. It is a key step on the road he hopes will lead to a fourth Olympic Games in Los Angeles in 2028 – and possibly another Olympic gold.. “The next two years are probably going to be the hardest of my career,” Peaty tells BBC Breakfast.. “There probably won’t be much winning, but the one win that does matter is LA.”. ‘Don’t give up’ – why Peaty was convinced to go again. 15 April 2025. Peaty content after night of pure Olympic emotion. 28 July 2024. Peaty aims for LA 2028 after 50m events added. 9 April 2025. It is almost a year since Peaty, who got married while swimming took a back seat, confirmed he will go again.. He made the decision after it was confirmed the 50m breaststroke event would be added to the schedule in 2028. It gives Peaty a second shot at more individual golds – the chance to add the 50m title to the 100m medals he won in 2016 and 2021.. He has raced here and there in recent months with mixed results, but will compete over both distances at this week’s British Championships – a crucial step which he hopes will lead to the Commonwealth Games, World and European Championships and America’s west coast.. “It’s like tasting an amazing steak and then having to go back to a McDonald’s burger,” he says.. “The Olympics is the one that excites me. That is the one that really gets me out of bed every day, the one I dream of.. “We have to set that path now.. “Two years out, it is about how much racing and experience can we gather to give the best performance in LA.”. Peaty confident of avoiding burnout repeat. Peaty was beaten to a third successive gold in Paris by Italy’s Nicolo Martinenghi, having contracted coronavirus in the days before the final.. “With the cards I was dealt I swam out of my skin,” he says. “I shouldn’t have got a silver medal.”. Before the Paris Games, Peaty shared his struggles with injury and his mental health, describing the period as a “self-destructive spiral”.. He says he has not allowed himself to think about what another Olympic medal might mean but remains confident similar issues will not return as he chases more success in LA.. “Can we avoid burnout? Absolutely,” he says.. “It is the logistical and strategic thinking we have to do.. “I look at my life without sport and I wouldn’t be 5% of the man I am, have friends I have and wouldn’t have been able to deal with problems I had.. “With sport giving me what it has given, the price is the price.”. ‘It was always going to be hard to beat Gordon’s wedding speech’. Peaty believes he is in a “very good frame of mind” as he makes his return in London.. He won gold in the 50m at the Edinburgh International Swim Meet a mo