Football

Romelu Lukaku has remained in Belgium despite Manchester United expecting him back at Carrington on Tuesday, Sky Sports News understands.

Lukaku has been in Belgium training with Anderlecht with United's permission, but that mutual decision was only for Monday, a scheduled day off for the strike

You could say that it is about to begin, but really it has just continued. Not the seemingly never-ending football season, which is set to ‘restart’ with Sunday’s Community Shield at Wembley, but rather the rivalry between its participants that has developed from one that was purely sporting to something with a lot more spike.

Pre-season preparations have already seen Manchester City staff privately restate complaints about the more favourable media coverage they believe Liverpool receive. Pre-season press conferences have meanwhile seen Jurgen Klopp publicly reference the champions, or rather Liverpool’s effect on them.

“I don’t think they would have got 98 points if we hadn’t been around,” the German argued.

That is someway debatable, since City got 100 points the previous season when Liverpool were nowhere close to them, and it feels far more true that the champions brought out much more in the challengers. Guardiola argued this himself in April, while someway reinforcing Klopp's own point.

“This standard was last season, we helped Liverpool to achieve it and Liverpool helped us to keep going, so thanks to Liverpool we are competing.”

That, however, reflects something that is much less debatable. The City-Liverpool rivalry has reached that stage of intensity where they push each other further and thereby bring out the best in each other. At least on the pitch.

I hope that we don’t make Megan Rapinoe into more than what she is. I hope that we don’t elevate her to something beyond human. Into someone infallible. Once she becomes a hero or a god, once she is seen as a leader of the masses, she will be boxed into a set of behaviors that she must adhere to. She will be confined into conforming into the idea of herself rather than being herself, which will only set up her eventual downfall.