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The Pep Guardiola effect is in full swing at Manchester City with the Citizens beating Barcelona to the signing of 19-year-old Brazilian forward Gabriel Jesus.

City and Jesus’ Brazilian club, Palmeiras, have agreed to a £27 million fee with the attacking talent set to stay in Brazil until December. Jesus has been widely touted as the greatest prospect to emerge from Brazil since Neymar — the two will be in action together for the Selecao at the 2016 Olympic Games.

It’s the question that has plagued Real Madrid manager Zinedine Zidane throughout his time in charge of the club: What’s the deal with James Rodriguez? Does the French coach even rate the Colombian playmaker?

Following a season in which James only appeared in 26 La Liga games for the club, his lowest total since arriving in 2014, would James be shown the door this summer? The player has continued to excel for Colombia on international duty, where he's the focal point of the attack, but he's taken a back seat in Zidane's preferred 4-3-3 formation at Real. 

Sources from Lionel Messi’s family have told Goal.com that the former Argentina captain will not return for his country’s September World Cup qualifiers against Uruguay and Venezuela.

One of the major stories of the past week, providing guffaws and giggles around the world, has been new Sunderland manager David Moyes’ pursuit of Marouane Fellaini. Having brought the Belgian midfielder to Everton from Standard Liege, Moyes infamously reunited with Fellaini for his short-lived stint in charge of Manchester United.

As FourFourTwo set about compiling a list of the top 50 managers in world football, one of their resident experts, former Dutch international Pierre van Hooijdonk, revealed the difficulty in ranking such a role: “If you changed all the managers in the league for cats, there would still be a champion.

Didier Drogba is usually in the news for scoring a cool goal, or scoring a buch of goals or refusing to play in artificial turf, but this weekend he made headlines for doing a very stupid thing in Montreal's 1-1 draw with DC United. Every dirty player knows you have to be aware of where the ref is at all times. Drogba must be out of practice.

Argentina’s opening match of the 1986 FIFA World Cup in Mexico was against a South Korean side that was participating in the tournament for the first time since 1954. Argentina’s 1982 World Cup campaign, after having won the 1978 edition on home turf, had been a disaster. 

It had been Maradona’s first World Cup and defeats against Italy and Brazil had offered a glimpse of how to disrupt the Argentinian star: aggressively man-mark and foul the Argentine No. 10.

Through the first 30 minutes of the 2016 MLS All-Star Game, there was an interesting contrast between the midfields of Arsenal and the MLS All-Stars. Andrea Pirlo anchored the setup for MLS, in tandem with Kyle Beckerman and Kaka, while Arsenal chose the strength of Francis Coquelin and Mohamed Elneny to support Jack Wilshere.

The average age of the duel was 24 for Arsenal and 35 for MLS, but one couldn’t help but be in awe of the play of MLS’s old guard — particularly the sumptuous, metronomic style of Pirlo.