Part 195: Appendix: The Year in Football/Futbol/Fußball/Calcio/Soccer, 2025-2026

Appendix: The Year in Football/Futbol/Fußball/Calcio/Soccer, 2025-2026
June 10, 2026

Wrexham



What a team! Even our backups like Callum Allan and Matias Mercado had huge numbers, and every single player rated an average of 7.0 or better. Really, I couldn't be more chuffed.

England



City's disqualification is Chelsea and Everton's joy, as the former will be back in the Champions League and the latter gets into the Europa League.



Tackleford stays up! They're a mediocre squad, but they have plenty of money and appear to have reached a new level of performance. I'm hoping they build on it so we can start pushing them around twice a year.



Hull City pops right back up to the Championship, they've fallen a long ways since the start of the game and it's now a dozen years since they were relegated from the top division.



It's rather shocking how few top teams made it to the late rounds of the FA Cup, as of the quarterfinals there were more Championship clubs in the running than Premier League ones.



Stoke will be in the qualifying stages of the Europa League next season, if they get through to the group stage they'll be looking at a wildly crowded schedule between their 23 first half league matches, their League Cup title defense, and the Europa League group stage.

Europe



Real Madrid wins La Liga for the 40th time, while Barca will have to go through the playoff to get to the Champions League group stage.



Napoli are quickly becoming a dynasty. This is their second title in a row and third in five years. Southern Italy finally has a powerhouse. In other news, Bologna's Chilean copper bazillionaire has succeeded in getting to the Champions League thanks to a head to head tiebreaker over AC Milan. Bologna will be in the same playoff bracket as Barcelona this coming August.



The title chase was more boring than it looks, Bayern had wrapped up the title a week before the end of the season.



I hate PSG. They spend more than any other team, and they still regularly underperform in a mediocre league. They're the worst. If I were spending £190m a year in France the minimum acceptable season would be going undefeated.



Nice work, Braga! That's the second time they've upset the big three of Portuguese football in five seasons, they have more titles since I started coaching than Sporting.



Despite selling one of their stars to Flamengo, CKSA Moscow still won the title.



Ajax backed into their title, they drew with Heerenveen 1-1 on the final day, but PSV blew it by falling 3-1 to Feyenoord.



Belgium's wacky split divisions comes into play again, with Anderlecht getting the shaft and missing out on the Champions League despite losing only two matches all season.



Galatasaray is one of my favorite football club names. Actually, I'm a fan of most of the big Turkish club names. I'm not sure why, but back when I knew nothing about club soccer I thought that Galatasary, Besiktas, and Fenerbahçe were all much bigger clubs than they actually are.

On the other end of the table Samsunspor barely avoids relegation, a sharp decline in fortunes considering they won the league two years prior.



The old firm is back in force. I don't expect to see any club outside of Glasgow sneaking into the top two any time soon.



Our defense was sublime and our offense unstoppable. We never trailed our opponents on aggregate in any of our knockout ties, and only trailed for five minutes in any individual match throughout the whole damned tournament, including the group stage. Those five minutes came between 21st to 26th minutes in the second leg of our Barcelona knockout round match when we down 0-1 in the match but up 3-1 on aggregate.



Real Madrid did not take kindly to being knocked out of the Champions League, they cut a serious path of destruction through the lesser lights of Europe.

Asia



27 is an odd number of matches to play, I guess each team plays the others three times a season. I'm not sure how that works out given the power of home field advantage, but Melbourne doesn't care as they hoist the trophy for the first time in two decades.

North America



Data point one million and three for the axiom “the playoffs are a crapshoot.” The Chicago Fire (that name still makes me shake my head) barely made the playoffs. So of course they won the MLS Cup.



Atlas and Tigres are heckuva good, guys.



MLS has surpassed Liga MX as the most reputable competition in North America. That's probably in large part thanks to DC United winning the CONCACAF Champions League.

South America



Sao Paolo wins their first title since 2008, with Gremio not far behind.



Boca wrapped up the Apertura handily, while Velez had to defeat Racing Club in a playoff to seal their fourth trophy since 2023. These two have won ever single time since 2021's first stage.



Palmeiras returns the Libertadores to Brazil, overcoming teams from Argentina and Chile along the way.

International



Oh what could have been. Losing to the World Cup favorites is no shame, but I would have loved to nab that trophy for us.



Similarly, we were dead tired and had several players hurt going into the final against Argentina, but it would have been sweet for our kids to get used to the taste of victory.



At least we defended the Gold Cup.