Veteran quarterback Teddy Bridgewater will retire at the conclusion of the NFL season, he told the Detroit Free Press in a report published Saturday. A first-round draft pick by the Minnesota Vikings in 2014, Bridgewater missed the 2016 and part of the 2017 seasons because of a torn ACL and dislocated knee. A starter his first two seasons with the Vikings, he now is the backup quarterback to Jared Goff with the Lions — his sixth NFL team. He has played just a single snap this season. "When I got hurt, I realized that I'm only a football player for three hours on a Sunday afternoon," Bridgewater, 31, said. "Outside of that, I'm Theodore Bridgewater, so it just put everything into perspective, and it really helped me not even have to think about not being a st…

Everton should fear Liverpool. Their abysmal record in the Merseyside derby would suggest that is a given but, surprisingly, it was Carlo Ancelotti who called for Everton to approach Anfield with trepidation as he discussed overcoming the mental block that has contributed to the club’s failure to win there for 22 years or win any derby in any competition since Roy Hodgson managed Liverpool in 2010.

“A derby is a special game,” said the veteran of local spats in Milan, Madrid and now Merseyside. “If you think it is a normal game then you are wrong. Special games bring more pressure, and sometimes more fear. Fear is not a bad thing in my opinion, because if you don’t have fear then you are going in front of the lion thinking it is a …

Thanks to a Dominic Calvert-Lewin diving header in May, James Tarkowski gets to experience the passion and ferocity of a Merseyside derby four months on. It was a goal that preserved Everton’s top-flight status for a 69th year and, ultimately, inflicted a wound on their first summer signing that will not heal.

“It will never leave me. Never,” says the defender of Burnley’s relegation last season. “I was super proud to play for that club and I wanted to leave on a high – and staying in the league would have been a high. It was so disappointing that I couldn’t.

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“I’m not someone who has ever got super low or sup…

Real Madrid have been granted their wish by Uefa to have the Santiago Bernabéu’s roof closed when playing Manchester City in the Champions League on Tuesday night to ensure as vocal an atmosphere as possible.

At a meeting in the Spanish capital on Tuesday of the Uefa match delegates and the referee, François Letexier, it was decided that Madrid would be allowed to have the stadium sealed. Four weeks ago, the governing body granted the same request for the club’s last-16 second leg against RB Leipzig, which ended 1-1.

The newly renovated Bernabéu has an increased capacity of 85,000. The quarter-final is the fourth time under Pep Guardiola that City have faced Madrid there.

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