The World Cup has come to an end, so the focus for fans immediately switches back to transfers and domestic football.

Arsenal are gearing up for their first season as Premier League champions for more than 20 years, but preparations will look slightly different in the wake of a major international tournament.

This is our chance to look at what to expect from the players who represented their countries over the past six weeks in the United States, Mexico and Canada, as well as those who got some rest ahead of a new season. Here is what the north London club have planned between now and their opening league game on August 21.

How many Arsenal players were at the World Cup?

Arsenal had 15 players involved in the World Cup.

These were Mikel Merino, Martin Zubimendi and David Raya for eventual champions Spain, Bukayo Saka, Declan Rice, Eberechi Eze and Noni Madueke as their England representatives, while Gabriel and Gabriel Martinelli were also together for Brazil. The six players who were the sole Arsenal players for their nations were Martin Odegaard (Norway), Kai Havertz (Germany), Viktor Gyokeres (Sweden), Piero Hincapie (Ecuador), William Saliba (France) and Leandro Trossard (Belgium), who has since joined Besiktas for €20million (£17.1m, $22.9m).

Outside the trio of Spanish champions, the English quartet also made it to the final weekend of the tournament, winning the third-place play-off against France on Saturday, July 18. Saliba was injured and missed that match. Odegaard and Trossard reached the quarter-finals, Martinelli and Gabriel exited in the last 16, and Havertz, Gyokeres and Hincapie went out at the round of 32.

Mikel Merino was among three Arsenal players who won the World Cup with Spain (David Ramos/Getty Images)

Did any pick up injuries?

Saliba did not play in France’s 6-4 defeat against England due to a back injury that flared up in their semi-final defeat to Spain. The 25-year-old admitted he had been “gritting his teeth” through minor niggles for months, but without much rest, he reached breaking point, stopping the match of his own accord to be replaced. The extent of the injury and how long he will be sidelined are not yet known more than a week later.

Rice (hamstring) and Saka (Achilles) were Arsenal’s other fitness concerns heading into the tournament. Both needed managing by England coach Thomas Tuchel, missing some training sessions and matches, but were able to feature and score in that last game against France.

Saliba left the pitch due to a back issue in the semi-final (Franck Fife/AFP via Getty Images)

When will World Cup players return to pre-season training?

All players who have been involved in the World Cup receive a mandatory three weeks off after the end of their country’s involvement before they need to report for pre-season training. How they are integrated back into sessions and the warm-up matches will then be down to manager Mikel Arteta and his staff.

That three-week period comes to an end for those who were eliminated at the round of 32 (played between June 29 and July 3) this week. Brazil’s round-of-16 exit to Norway was on July 5, so Gabriel and Martinelli could report before Arsenal’s first official pre-season match away to Spanish side Girona on August 1. Odegaard should be expected back just after that trip, since the Norwegians were eliminated by England in the last eight on July 11.

Arsenal’s third and penultimate friendly, at home to Borussia Dortmund on August 9, is three weeks after the World Cup’s final weekend, so the eight players who made it that far can return after that fixture.

Following the 2024 European Championship, when England reached the final, Rice and Saka returned for Arsenal in the final pre-season friendly before starting in their opening Premier League fixture a week later. Whether Arteta decides to do the same with them this time, given the amount of football they have played in the past few years, will be a point of interest.

What about the rest of the squad?

For those not at the World Cup, Arsenal’s pre-season officially began this Monday, July 20.

Some players were involved in a training camp in Marbella, Spain, the previous week, which has become customary at Arsenal in recent years for players to start building their fitness early.

The players who did start their pre-season on Monday include Riccardo Calafiori, Cristhian Mosquera, Gabriel Jesus, Ben White, Jurrien Timber, Ethan Nwaneri, Myles Lewis-Skelly, Kepa Arrizabalaga, Illan Meslier, Christian Norgaard, Max Dowman, Marli Salmon, Reiss Nelson and Fabio Vieira.

Max Dowman in training on Monday (Stuart MacFarlane/Arsenal FC via Getty Images)

White’s 2025-26 season ended in early May with a medial cruciate ligament knee injury; he told Arsenal’s social channels: “I’ve been training every day. Knee’s all good. Started training with the team last week.”

Timber, who missed out on a World Cup squad place with the Netherlands after being absent for almost all of the club campaign’s final two months because of an ankle issue, said: “Getting there slowly. (I was) rehabbing during the summer, hopefully back soon.”

When are the first pre-season friendlies? Is there a tour?

The World Cup ending on July 19 has left little room for a pre-season tour. The number of Arsenal players at the tournament not only makes travel across the world less worthwhile, but has also contributed to a truncated pre-season.

So, in a somewhat old-school manner, Arsenal will be playing two warm-up matches elsewhere in Europe as well as their usual two at their Emirates Stadium. They are as follows (kick-offs are UK time):

• Girona (away). Saturday, August 1 (7pm)
• Real Betis (neutral — Aviva Stadium, Dublin). Wednesday, August 5 (7.30pm)
• Borussia Dortmund (home). Sunday, August 9 (2pm)
• Como (home). Wednesday, August 12 (7.30pm)

The Premier League champions then face FA Cup winners Manchester City in the Community Shield on Sunday, August 16 (3pm). It will be played at the Principality Stadium in Cardiff rather than at Wembley this season because of concerts at England’s national stadium.

For the third time in six seasons, Arsenal will then play the Premier League’s first game of the season on a Friday night (August 21, 8pm). They are hosting 2025-26 Championship winners Coventry City, having previously travelled to Brentford in 2021 (a 2-0 loss) and Crystal Palace in 2022 (a 2-0 win).

Last Wednesday, July 15, Manchester United fan Dee, who has attended matches since 1989, when he was 13 years old, and has held a season ticket since 2000, received an email about ticketing from the club titled ‘ACCOUNT Restriction’.

“My first reaction was shock and worry,” Dee explains of the message.

Like other fans The Athletic has spoken to for this article who received similar notifications — prompting anger on social media — Dee does not want us to use his full name, because he is concerned that speaking publicly might affect his chances of accessing tickets in the future.

The email, which The Athletic has seen, reads:

Dear Dee, 

Demand for tickets at Old Trafford remains extremely high, and the club has a responsibility to ensure tickets are accessed and used fairly by supporters. One of the most regular complaints we receive is around automated activity on our website, impacting genuine supporters when trying to purchase tickets. 

Following a detailed review of activity across our ticketing and digital platforms, we have identified sustained activity associated with your account, or accounts that appear to be controlled by you, which may indicate a breach of the club’s terms and conditions. 

As a result, your account has been temporarily restricted from making further transactions. Any tickets currently held for upcoming matches have also been deactivated while we complete our review.

We understand that receiving this communication may be concerning. No final decision has been made, and there may be legitimate explanations for the activity identified. This process is intended to give you the opportunity to provide further information so that your circumstances can be reviewed fully and fairly.

To allow us to undertake a full review, please email a written response by 8am on Monday, July 27.

• Confirmation of every device regularly used to access your account, including mobile phones, tablets, laptops and desktop computers.
• Confirmation of whether any of these devices are also used to access other ticketing accounts. Please provide the names of the account holders and explain why you access those accounts.
• Confirmation of whether your account is regularly accessed from multiple locations. Please provide details of each location.
• A brief explanation of how your account is accessed and managed, addressing each of the points above.
• A copy of valid photographic identification.

This investigation is based on activity between March and Sunday, July 12, your response only needs to cover this timeframe.

Dee sent a detailed response to all the questions, explaining which devices he accesses his account from and confirming he does not use any automated software, bots, scripts or third-party tools to access tickets.

He listed the names on his account, explained his relationship to each of them and said the accounts are not used for any commercial purpose or to circumnavigate the club’s ticketing policies. He confirmed the locations from which he accessed his account and set out, in detail, why he was in these locations.

“I have never sold my tickets to anyone,” Dee tells The Athletic.

Three days later, he received an email from the club lifting the temporary restrictions “following a full assessment of the material provided”.

Dee is one of hundreds of United fans who have had similar emails from United, and many are expressing unhappiness about them.

Manchester United fans wait for the players outside Old Trafford last season (Naomi Baker/Getty Images)

What has the reaction been?

Negative. Social media lit up with angry and anxious supporters saying they had received emails. Most replied to the message stating their case, but others said they would not bother. Some lashed out at United’s fan representatives — volunteers who have been working behind the scenes to try to help.

With trust between supporters and the club dented, some have accused United of treating them like suspects but with no evidence presented to them, the implication of the emails being that some accounts were being used for the improper purchasing of tickets. Some expressed the view that the emails were disproportionate and that the club had taken a block-first-ask-questions-later approach.

“The net has been cast very wide,” one fan representative told The Athletic. “I’m all for stopping touts, but the sentiment feels as bad as when the club removed concessions and priced remaining tickets at £66.”

Another fan, J, got the notification and was also subsequently cleared. “The anxiety I felt just from the email made me feel like I’d lost everything,” he says. “I told my family that I might not be able to go to the football, due to a reason that I had not been part of. I’ve never touted tickets or anything of the sort.”

“We were hit with the emails last week regarding suspicious activity but with no evidence to properly challenge what we’d done,” explains another supporter, O. “We panicked and appealed, which was rejected by the club within the hour, and then given 72 hours to re-appeal. Again, no evidence was given. We’re in limbo, stressed and anxious, knowing we’re about to lose a hobby, along with the European away credits collected over the years. I appreciate they need to tackle touts, but this isn’t the way to do it.”

“I was in complete disbelief,” explains another fan, who travels to all games from Northern Ireland. “I was about to pay for something at a till, and when I got my phone out I saw the email from United and it knocked me sick.

“To read what felt like accusations and a portrayal of you that simply isn’t true, with no evidence in the email to substantiate any of their claims, is bad enough. Then to get to the bottom of the email and read that my son was banned as well… basically guilt by association.”

The supporter has appealed.

What have the club said about this issue?

In an explanation message to Dee, United said: “A very small percentage of users interact with our ticketing platform in ways that can closely resemble activity associated with attempts to circumvent our systems. While we recognise that your account activity was entirely legitimate, it shared characteristics that required further review.

“We appreciate that this process may have been frustrating. However, we hope you understand why, in the interests of protecting genuine supporters, we have employed a specialist external company to help carry out these investigations where automated monitoring identifies unusual activity.

“Our review process is designed to ensure that these cases receive human assessment rather than relying solely on automated data, helping us distinguish between genuine supporters and those attempting to misuse the club’s ticketing systems. In your case, following that review, we are satisfied that this was a false positive.”

The Athletic put the points raised in this article to United.

The club say one of the biggest complaints they have had from fans for years now is to do with ticket touting, which has become more widespread and focused on bot activity, particularly around members’ ticket releases for home fixtures and season-ticket-holder releases for returned away tickets.

United hold back 200 tickets from each away allocation (typically 3,000) for their players, and not all of these are taken. They then put these back on the market in phases in the week leading up to a given game and say that when they do, bots are snapping them up. United say a small number of season-ticket holders are passing on their usernames and passwords to friends, who then make applications from their account. This behaviour replicates that of a bot, which is why they have been flagged.

The club hired an external specialist at the end of last season on a trial basis to help analyse account login data and fans’ behaviour online to try to tackle the issues. This arrangement was made permanent in the middle of June. United say everything they are seeing is because of that analysis and that they did not know people were sharing usernames and passwords.

There is an understanding within the club about the anxiety caused by that first batch of emails, which were received out of the blue. Subsequent correspondence has been amended.

United deny this is revenue-driven or that they want to reduce the number of season tickets. The club also say the correspondence they are sending out is a request for information, not a sanction. But there is a restriction on people’s apps while United wait for the information requested, with an actual person (rather than a machine) going through the cases.

The club also sent 20,000 similar emails to members (not season-ticket holders) at the end of last season and say 95 per cent of recipients did not reply. Their position is that they are trying to protect the integrity of the ticketing system for everyone’s benefit.

Who are the greatest players in Manchester United’s history? The Athletic gave Andy Mitten the task of compiling his top 25, and we are counting them down this summer, in reverse order.

He explains his thought process here.

When I told Nemanja Vidic he was under consideration to be on this list of Manchester United’s 25 greatest players, he joked it would be a talking point in the bars of his hometown of Uzice, Serbia. “I think Uzice will be proud,” he replied confidently.

Later, he declared he should only be on the list if he was alongside Rio Ferdinand. That wasn’t his decision, but, truthfully, it helped get another player into this list.

Vidic has a point, though, for he and Ferdinand, who became the best central defensive partnership in world football as United became English, European and world champions in 2008, were the sum of both their contrasting talents.

Vidic signed from Spartak Moscow for £7.2million ($12.6m) in 2006. After a year, Ferguson said: “We’ve done well there. He has that mentality of the proper, authentic defender. Watch Vidic in training, and he’ll batter (Louis) Saha and then pick him up, as if to say, ‘This is my job, this is what I do’. I’ll be yelling from the touchline, ‘Watch the tackling, watch the tackling’, and Vidic will shout, ‘Sorry boss, sorry boss’. But he’s not sorry at all, he just loves defending.”

Vidic has the distinction of having the highest win percentage of any established Manchester United player in history. Of his 300 games for the club, the Reds won 204 of them — 68 per cent. The most important of those arguably came in Moscow on May 21, 2008, the Champions League final against Chelsea.

He deserves inclusion because he excelled for a team that became the best in the world. He became one of United’s most important players and, to this day, the only defender to be named Premier League Player of the Season twice.

There are some superb central defenders who have not made our list, which just highlights the level Vidic reached. There were 90s legends Steve Bruce, Gary Pallister and Jaap Stam, a world-class defender who left too soon, not that he had much say in it.

“Jaap Stam came in and did very well, but he was never really replaced until Nemanja arrived in a move that turned out to be great value for money,” defender Paul Parker told me in 2011. “Vidic is very consistent and rarely makes mistakes, but if he does, then his recovery rate is very high. One advantage Vida has over Steve Bruce, who he reminds me of, is his pace. Another is his experience of playing international football and club football in several countries. You need that now at a club like United.”

And Ferdinand? In 2012, I went to Villarreal to interview their Brazilian striker Nilmar. Asked to name the best he’d ever played against, he said: “Rio Ferdinand for Manchester. I played against him for Lyon. He’s fast and his positioning was perfect. Thiago (Silva) is very good at Milan too.”

Manchester United won the Champions League in 2008 with Nemanja Vidic and Rio Ferdinand at the heart of their defence (Laurence Griffiths/Getty Images)

“Rio is technically better on the ball, a leader in the team who always talks,” defender Gerard Pique, who had to leave United to get the first-team minutes he deserved at Barcelona, told me in 2010. “Rio is deceivingly strong — I saw that in the gym at Carrington, but on the pitch he’ll get closer to strikers to stop them turning, whereas Vida is more aggressive. He sees every game as a battle in which he must win. Vida is solid. You would fancy him to win any 50-50 ball. You would still fancy him if two opposing players went for the same ball as him. They are two of the best centre-backs in the world and probably the best central defensive partnerships in the world, certainly a reason United don’t concede many goals.

“I learn from him and Rio every time I watch them play. It’s the nuances, the little details which help improve my game. They share many similar qualities: both are tall, quick, hard players who read the game well and anticipate attacks, yet there are differences and they complement each other.”

“Rio was a classy player who read the game well,” John O’Shea told me in 2024. “He didn’t wait and smash a player; he’d just get to the ball first by reading it well. A good operator who’d talk and organise. In later years, he’d end up complementing Vida so well.”

Rio was the smiley joker, Vidic more serious. He’d watched his home town be bombed by NATO when he ran to escape a missile before he became a footballer and established his name at Red Star Belgrade — where Vidic saw a 20-year-old friend and team-mate die of a heart attack in training.

“Good on and off the pitch,” is how Vidic describes his relationship with Ferdinand, who’d signed from Leeds United for a record fee for a defender in 2002. “We didn’t socialise together much but we had an understanding and liked to talk about football. It’s important that two players who play alongside each other get on well.

“I’d say the same of central defenders and forwards; you need to get on. Ninety per cent of the conversations I had in my life with Rio were about football. Rio was keen and driven — he wanted to talk. He’d not won any trophies for three years as a United player before I arrived and he was desperate for a partner.

“My point is that we all had the same target then. We were there to play for the biggest club in the world, we knew what the aim was — to win the biggest trophies. At smaller clubs you don’t have the same aims but you still have aims and expectations, but at Man United, where every team plays 100 per cent against you, you should always play like it’s your last year: 90 per cent is not enough and the current players should play like that.

“You should be scared that you’re not going to be there next season and you must fight to stop yourself going because it’s only when you leave Man United that you realise how big Man United is.”