With the disruption caused by the Covid pandemic permeating all areas of life, work at Everton Football Club continues as they overcome the difficulties this has caused whilst pushing the club forward both on and off the pitch.

With November’s international dates now a mere footnote in football history, it is time to reflect on the culmination of the Nations League group phase and with the final four booking their place in Italy next year, the focus is now on who will win the trophy next October. Initially the final phase of the competition was set to be contested next summer, but with the European Championships being delayed by 12 months and taking far greater priority, it means there is something of a backlog as far as UEFA governed tournaments are concerned.

When it comes to an outside view of LaLiga, it is one that sees a competition with nothing more than a duopoly between two global superpowers, as Barcelona and Real Madrid pass round the league title between them. Admittedly, they do allow a guest to dine at the top table from time to time, as Atletico Madrid, Valencia, and Deportivo La Coruna have also earned the mantle of Spanish league champions since the turn of the millennium.

Player 4 Player, founded by a group of former professional footballers (Stiliyan Petrov, Emile Heskey, Gaizka Mendieta, Michael Johnson and Gareth Farrelly), launched in October 2020 with the mission to support current and former professional footballers in their careers on and off the pitch. We had the pleasure of hearing from Aston Villa and Celtic legend, Stiliyan Petrov about this incredible venture.

While although there have been reasons to be cheerful within the Women’s game across the last six months, they have been largely few and far between and even though the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) has recently heralded its own success story, it is the exception rather than the rule.

With the final four play-off fixtures being contested and a victorious quartet earning qualification to the UEFA European Championships, we know now all 24 nations that will competing in next year’s delayed tournament.

With eight weeks of the Premier League season now behind us, it is the ideal opportunity in which to take stock of overall performance and when it comes to the efforts of Burnley thus far, now might not be the greatest time to invest in them.

If there was one positive to come from the unveiling of “Project Big Picture” it was a sense of collective understanding regarding the EFL and most importantly, how all of their 72 clubs can navigate through such choppy waters. Had the now dismissed project been accepted by all English football’s parties, it would have seen a bailout package of £250m subsequently handed out by the Premier League, in return for all manner of concessions.

In years gone by, the global football calendar was a creation of genius, as six different regional confederations all intertwined with each other on a four-year cycle and because of this, international tournaments were contested in a perfect harmony. However, that very same concept has been seemingly ripped into a million pieces as of late and because of the effects that COVID-19 has had on the sport, a once robust looking calendar is now looking rather fragile.

When it comes to the topic of divorce, it can only go one of two ways. It’s either a messy protracted affair which may have come around because of an affair or it is a simple parting of ways, because the love is no longer there. While when it comes to the landscape of both the Men’s and Women’s game in Australia, both genders have announced a divorce of their own and although it was not as amicable as hoped, it has finally allowed both the A-League and the W-League to go it alone.