Sports

Brussels Stephex Masters: Piergiorgio Bucci’s remarkable second act

Published

1 day ago

August 26, 2026

Piergiorgio Bucci remembers vividly his first visit to the Piazza di Siena in Rome. His uncle had taken him to watch the Nations Cup. Bucci, then a young boy from outside Milan, watched the riders and horses as if he were witnessing something from another world.

“I still remember every jump I saw, every rider I saw,” he said.

Decades later, he was the rider winning in the arena.

Bucci rode Palietter vd N.Ranch to victory in May in the feature class at the Rolex Grand Prix at the CSIO Piazza di Siena in Rome, the same show he had first visited as a boy, long before he had horses, the experience or even the proper equipment to imagine himself competing there.

Even now, months after the victory, Bucci sometimes wakes up and asks himself whether it really happened.

“Did I really win the Grand Prix in Rome? Was that a dream or did it actually happen?” he said. “And I have to think to myself, yes, that happened. It was just incredible.”

That victory was the crowning moment of an extraordinary 2026 season. Bucci, at 51, is in peak form and competing at a level at which youth, reflexes and fearlessness are often treated as prerequisites. His season began with a Global Champions Tour grand prix victory in Mexico, followed by another strong performance on the same tour in Miami, and continued with Rome, where Palietter gave him the sort of win that a rider can easily spend an entire career pursuing.

Bucci said he wasn’t surprised to now be winning so frequently at this level because he finally has horses capable of matching what he has always believed he could do.

“I know I have super horses,” he said. “And I know that I can do it.”

Bucci once again impressed at the World Championships last week and he so nearly won a medal. Hantano had jumped clear over four rounds, but agonisingly that run of clears came to an end at the very last fence in the fifth and final round of jumping. It cost him a silver medal, and they finished fourth.

Next stop this week is the Brussels Stephex Masters, where Bucci will ride Hantano in the Rolex Grand Prix.

Bucci has spent much of the year thinking not merely about producing results but about timing them — when to jump, when to rest, and when to leave a horse alone. The key to success is to arrive at a competition with a horse that is fresh and confident. Bucci knows exactly how much responsibility rests with the rider, too.

“I need to ride really good,” he said. “If I do that, my horses can be really competitive.”

With Hantano, he followed a deliberate programme designed around the World Championships. He increased the horse’s workload earlier in the year, jumped at La Baule — where they won — and Rotterdam, and then gave him time to recover.

“I spent a lot of hours, to try to understand what could be the best approach to the World Championships,” Bucci said. “Its absolutely the goal of the year.”

Bucci won the feature class at the Rolex Grand Prix at the CSIO Piazza di Siena in Rome. (Rolex Series)

Bucci’s career did not begin with an obvious route into elite show jumping. His family did not ride. There was no established jumping tradition in his hometown. Bucci simply loved horses.

“I was born with it,” he said. “Like a kid that loves cats or dogs.”

As a child, he played with plastic horses. He watched Western movies, not necessarily because he cared about cowboys or the films themselves, but because they contained what he wanted to see: horses and people riding them. Then, when Bucci was 12 years old, a trekking centre opened near his hometown.

Bucci went there and quickly discovered that enthusiasm could be exchanged for access. The owner noticed his passion for horses and asked him to help around the stable. He mucked out, he cleaned, he helped with whatever needed doing and, in return, he was given opportunities to ride.

“I took clients out on long rides and loved it,” Bucci said.

The horses available to him were not made for jumping, but Bucci and his friends at the trekking centre started to teach them how to jump.

“We had no idea what we were doing and we were jumping in Western saddles, which isn’t normal,” said Bucci. “We taught ourselves.”

They then bought English saddles, experimented and kept jumping, but there wasn’t any immediate success.

Bucci spent two years at the very first level of competition.

“It was very bad,” he said. “But I was really stubborn.”

Stubbornness would become one of the defining characteristics of his career. He kept going and eventually he reached the highest levels of the sport in Italy, winning Nations Cup competitions and major grand prix classes. In 2009, he and the Italian team won a silver medal at the European Championships, yet success brought its own frustration and Bucci felt stuck.

“I wanted to become one of the best show jumpers in the world,” he said. “And I had to think about what should I do to become one of them.”

His answer was to leave Italy. He moved to the Netherlands, where he would spend the next 16 years. Bucci wanted to immerse himself in the centre of the international show jumping world. He reasoned that if he wanted to compete with the best, he needed to live among them.

“I could see a handful of the top 10 show jumpers in the world a few days a week at competitions and in training,” Bucci said. “I think you can learn so much from watching the best in the world every week. I watched warm-ups, how horses were handled and trained. Plus, I met breeders, dealers and riders who would become friends.”

The Netherlands gave Bucci the proximity to excellence he had been seeking but, over time, another feeling developed: he missed home.

He missed the weather, the food, the restaurants, the people and the habits accumulated over a lifetime. Bucci had left Italy in his mid-30s, old enough to understand that a country can become part of a person in ways that are difficult to replace.

“I think it’s a culture, the habits,” he said. “When you live in a country for so many years, it’s very difficult to lose those habits.”

The decision to return was partly practical, too. Bucci believed that an Italian sponsor or investor might be more inclined to support an Italian rider competing under the same flag.

He returned in 2026 to just outside Milan, believing that he had taken what he needed from his Dutch experience.

Bucci is reluctant to attribute his results this year entirely to the move home. He calls the timing a coincidence, but he acknowledges that his mood is different.

“I feel every day more fulfilled,” he said.

And what about his two extraordinary horses, Palietter vd N.Ranch and Hantano?

“I knew when I saw a video of him and smiled, knowing that he was my type of horse, and when I first rode him, the feeling was straight away amazing,” he said.

He felt that he was sitting on an athlete — a horse with the talent to compete at the very highest level.

Palietter and Hantano, however, are profoundly different. Both are exceptionally careful and powerful, but Hantano has a more complicated jumping technique. He can twist his body and jump in an unusual way, making Bucci’s accuracy as a rider critical.

“If I ride Hantano perfect, he jumps only clear rounds,” Bucci said. “But there is little room for error.”

Palietter is more athletic and, Bucci believes, more forgiving when the rider takes a risk. That does not mean the horse is infallible, nor does Bucci consider himself to be.

In London recently, while competing in the Global Champions Tour grand prix, he had the first fence down after failing to be sufficiently accurate.

“My horse deserved to jump clear,” he said. “It was my mistake.”

That willingness to accept responsibility is central to Bucci’s philosophy. He does not believe he needs to prove himself to other riders, critics or spectators and he only wants to do the right thing by his horses.

“I never thought I need to prove anything to anyone — only myself,” he said.

There is still plenty he wants to prove though.

He will take Palietter to the Brussels Masters. Brussels offers a different atmosphere from Rome and La Baule, two of the sport’s historic destinations. Bucci admires the modern show’s scale, organization and ambition, describing it as a festival of show jumping, with world-class facilities, footing, hospitality and stabling.

Bucci does not feel fundamentally different from the rider he was at 30. In some respects, he believes he is in a better place. He takes greater care of his body now and no longer smokes. The greatest advantage, he says, is experience.

“I am more smart,” he said. “Before, I was just not thinking enough. Now I think more.”

But once the decision is made, the old Bucci remains.

“When it comes having to fight in the arena to win, I really enjoy that,” he said.

That is perhaps the simplest explanation for why, after so many years and so many miles, he is still here.

Sports

Bradley Barcola: Liverpool close in on Paris St-Germain forward

Published

3 minutes ago

August 27, 2026

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Liverpool are closing in on the signing of Bradley Barcola from Paris St-Germain for a fee that is expected to be in excess of £100m.

Sources have indicated to BBC Sport that talks have progressed in the last 48 hours and a full agreement is now close.

PSG had valued the France forward at £140m but the total package is expected to be below that figure.

Sports

Manchester United settle case with victim of alleged historic child sex abuse by ex-club employee

Published

9 minutes ago

August 27, 2026

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Manchester United have reached an out-of-court settlement with one of the people who alleges he was sexually assaulted by a club employee in the 1980s.

Billy Watts was a caretaker at United’s old training ground, the Cliff, where he held a number of other roles, predominantly as a kit man and groundsman. He left the club in 1989, shortly after an internal disciplinary hearing.

Watts, who died in October 2009, was subsequently named in the official inquiry into football’s sexual abuse scandal, published in 2021, after United reported a number of complaints to the investigation team.

In November last year, one of Watts’ alleged victims launched a civil case through the High Court for damages, alleging that he was the victim of a sexual assault, aged 14, at the Cliff in November 1986, shortly after Alex Ferguson’s appointment as manager. Unreported until now, the case was settled in March, without the club admitting any liability, and an undisclosed payout was made. Other clubs have typically paid low five-figure sums, from £10,000 to £20,000, in similar cases.

Watts was the subject of a disciplinary hearing in 1989 that led to him being “redeployed” from the Cliff to work at Old Trafford, United’s home stadium.

United have stated in the past that Watts, then in his 50s, left the club a few months later, apparently to take a job as a cleaner at a police station. The club have no official records relating to the disciplinary hearing, but felt sufficiently concerned to report Watts to the abuse inquiry, led by Clive Sheldon KC, that was commissioned by the English Football Association to deal with the “tidal wave” of complaints that rocked the sport after Woodward’s revelations.

“The club (United) was made aware in 2016 of allegations that in the 1980s the caretaker had made inappropriate comments of a sexual nature, physically pulled an individual into an office against his will, followed an individual into a sauna at the training ground and wrestled with him,” Sheldon’s report states.

“There was also an allegation that the caretaker had tried to touch another individual inappropriately in the showers; that the caretaker was referred to by youth team players as a ‘pervert’. There was a further allegation that the caretaker had tried to touch another boy and, when confronted, had said that ‘I’m only messing, shut up.’ The club referred the matter to the FA in 2016.”

A United spokesperson told The Athletic: “As we said at the time, we cooperated fully with the Sheldon review in an effort to make sure we were as comprehensive on this important matter as we could be. While it would not be appropriate to comment on individuals, we take any allegations of this nature extremely seriously and have met and listened to anyone who has come forward with dignity and respect.”

Sports

Bradley Barcola: The patience and perseverance behind his inexorable rise to the top

Published

16 minutes ago

August 27, 2026

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“He’s humble, he’s always happy, but quiet. If you compare him to Rayan Cherki, who also came through the academy at Lyon, it’s the opposite.

“Even when he was 17, Cherki was the loudest in the dressing room, everyone knew he was there. But Bradley, he was quiet.

“Bradley was always giving his best and you could see that he wanted to become better and better. I knew he was a good player, but now he’s a top player.”

Speaking to The Athletic from the Netherlands, Peter Bosz, the PSV head coach who spent 17 months in charge of Lyon between 2021 and 2022, shared his memories of coaching a young Bradley Barcola.

Paris Saint-Germain winger Barcola has attracted significant attention this transfer window, with Liverpool now reaching an agreement in principle to sign the 23-year-old. Arsenal have also held an interest in him.

This summer has shown that Barcola, a two-time Champions League winner, is a player in demand.

However, his footballing journey has not been straightforward. Instead, his story is one of perseverance and a constant desire to improve himself as a player.

Barcola first joined Lyon’s academy as an eight-year-old boy after starting out at local club Buers, in Villeurbanne, a city in the wider Lyon area.

He was at Lyon’s academy with his older brother, Malcolm, a goalkeeper four years his senior who plays for IR Tanger in Morocco’s top division and the Togo national side.

In Lyon’s academy, Barcola, who played alongside Cherki, Chelsea’s Malo Gusto and RB Leipzig centre-back Castello Lukeba, was viewed as an exciting talent, but not necessarily a player destined for greatness.

A slender and skilful centre-forward, who was known as “la sauterelle” (the grasshopper) because of his jinking running style, Barcola never played for an older age group during his time in the Lyon academy, where Cherki was the obvious star. Cherki made his debut and scored for Lyon’s first team at just 16.

For Barcola, it was more of a slow burn.

“Bradley was never one of those players who caught everyone’s eye straight away or exploded onto the scene overnight,” Cyrille Dolce, a former youth coach in Lyon’s academy, told The Athletic. “He built himself up year after year, away from the spotlight, before everything accelerated at just the right time. And that commands respect.”

He scored 11 goals in 17 league games for Lyon’s under-19s in the 2019-20 season and was rewarded with his first professional contract, signing a three-year deal, in September 2021. Aged 19, he was then handed his senior debut by Bosz two months later, replacing Cherki from the bench and setting up Lyon’s final goal in a 3-0 victory against Sparta Prague in the Europa League. Barcola signed a four-year extension at Lyon in January 2022. Under Bosz, he made a further 10 substitute appearances that season, as well as being picked to start twice.

Barcola began the following season on the bench, largely restricted to late cameo roles.

Recalling their time together, Bosz, who was sacked in October 2022, with Lyon ninth in the table, told The Athletic: “Bradley was a centre-forward, skinny, tall, a nice guy, but he was not as explosive as he is now. You could see he was still growing, but he was gifted, absolutely.

“The first time I played him, it was at right wing, because I didn’t have a place for him as a centre-forward. He was not a starting player. It was after I left that he really developed.”

Barcola in action for Lyon in January 2023 (Jean-Philippe Ksiazek/AFP via Getty Images)

Bosz remembered Malcolm’s joy at his younger brother making his debut.

“To see that was fantastic,” he said. “It was special that the two brothers were there at the same time.”

Former France international Jeremie Brechet coached Barcola for a year in Lyon’s reserve team, when the player was alternating between the club’s first and second sides.

“He was already a talented player, but he wasn’t yet the top forward you know today,” he told The Athletic. “He was an excellent finisher in front of goal and had outstanding athletic qualities. His speed and his ability to make repeated runs were impressive. What he didn’t yet have was consistency in maintaining those efforts throughout matches.

“That said, the beginning wasn’t easy. At first, with the reserve team in National 2 — the fifth tier of French football — he wasn’t producing particularly strong performances. Physically, it was difficult. I even remember that before he really burst onto the French football scene with Lyon, there were training sessions when the coach sometimes used him on the right side of defence. But he always managed to bounce back.”

With Bosz gone, Barcola was struggling for game time under Laurent Blanc, his replacement as Lyon’s head coach.

With Barcola unable to force his way into Blanc’s plans, a loan move was on the cards in January 2023, with a potential switch to St Gallen in Switzerland mooted.

However, things changed for Barcola following a winter training camp to Dubai in December 2022.

Organised for those players not involved at the Qatar World Cup, Lyon played in a tournament against Milan, Arsenal and Liverpool, with Barcola excelling.

“The revelation was a training session in Dubai,” Franck Passi, who was Blanc’s assistant, previously told The Athletic. “We didn’t have much time for attacking sessions, but in the last I had with Bradley and the other forwards, he was scoring a lot of goals. He showed all his talent.”

Passi urged Barcola to knuckle down and showcase his quality by scoring goals for Lyon’s second side. He told him that would help put him on Blanc’s radar.

However, it didn’t ultimately come to that, as the departures of forwards Kolo Toko Ekambi, who joined Rennes on loan, and Tete, whose loan spell came to an end, presented Barcola with an opportunity.

Toko Ekambi’s exit was acrimonious, as he was jeered by Lyon’s fans and then twice furiously kicked out at a dustbin in the tunnel after being subbed off against Strasbourg in his final game.

“Suddenly, Barcola was one of the few players available,” Brechet recalled. “He started three consecutive matches, and everyone realised just how talented he was.”

Dolce added: “It opened up a spot for him, and that’s often how a career starts — by being ready at the right moment — and he seized it immediately, without hesitation. Then came his first Ligue 1 goal. He built momentum, and gradually began to announce himself to the wider public, match after match. There’s a phrase I really like that was used to describe him: ‘le patient lyonnais‘ (‘the patient Lyonnais’). It sums him up well.”

Cementing his spot as a right-winger, Barcola was a revelation in the second half of that 2022-23 season for Lyon.

After making his first start under Blanc in a 2-0 victory away to Ajaccio, he scored five and set up nine in 17 appearances. The highlight of that memorable spell included a hat-trick of assists for Alexandre Lacazette, his hero growing up, in a 5-4 win over Montpellier at the Parc Olympique Lyonnais, in a game Lyon had been trailing 4-1. He also scored the only goal in Lyon’s win away at PSG.

👀 Avec 9 passes décisives toutes compétitions confondues, Bradley Barcola termine meilleur passeur de l’équipe 🔴🔵

➡ Sa percussion, ses accélérations et sa vista ont fait des dégâts 💥

Retour sur ses passes décisives cette saison ⤵ pic.twitter.com/e7B95mEtB4

— Olympique Lyonnais (@OL) June 20, 2023

As an academy graduate, Barcola quickly established himself as a fan favourite among the Lyonnais faithful.

However, that honeymoon period was only short-lived, as Barcola was lured away from his boyhood club by PSG on August 31, 2023, joining for €45million (£39m; $49m in 2023), with €5m in potential add-ons.

Lyon’s situation was not helped that summer, as the DNCG, French football’s financial watchdog, was closely monitoring their transfer activity under former owner John Textor. That contributed to the departures of Barcola and Lukeba. Gusto also left to join Chelsea.

“In six months, he went from being a nobody to a PSG player,” Passi told The Athletic.

Under Luis Enrique in the French capital, where he mainly operates on the left wing, Barcola found himself in a similar position, biding his time.

In his first season at PSG, he scored just five goals and registered nine assists in 42 matches across all competitions. He faced criticism for his wastefulness in front of goal, most notably at home to Newcastle United in the Champions League group stage.

“At the beginning, he was playing too much for the benefit of Kylian Mbappe and the others,” Passi said last week. “After, he understood that he had to play a bit more for him. Playing under Luis Enrique helped him elevate his level.”

Barcola’s first season at PSG in 2023-24 was up and down (Alex Pantling/Getty Images)

It was in his second season at PSG when Barcola really kicked on, scoring 21 goals and providing 21 assists in 64 appearances, and helping Luis Enrique’s side win six trophies in 2025.

Speaking at a press conference in September 2024, Luis Enrique credited Barcola’s humility with helping him respond to setbacks.

“Barcola is a very balanced person, humble, sensible and someone with very good family values,” Enrique told reporters, in quotes carried by beIN Sports.

Barcola has also referenced his family — he has five siblings — and a close-knit group of friends with helping him stay grounded.

In a November 2024 interview with Le Parisien, he spoke about his father’s influence.

“He talks to me a lot about appearance, about clothes,” he told the newspaper. “He tells me to be careful. But he’s right, I try to listen to him.”

In the same interview, he said he wanted to improve his finishing.

“I was more of a direct winger, but I didn’t have that killer instinct,” he told the newspaper. “The coach was the first to point it out. He always told me I was doing many things well, but reminded me that I was, first and foremost, a striker — and strikers are expected to score.”

Last season was another profitable campaign for Barcola, as he scored 13 goals and made seven assists in 49 games, as PSG won another Champions League.

Barcola taking on Liverpool in March 2025 (Julian Finney/Getty Images)

“He’s improved in every aspect of the game,” Brechet said. “He’s become even stronger in one-on-one situations, he’s more dangerous running in behind. Defensively, he’s improved as well.

“He’s improved in the air, although he can still get better there.

“Perhaps the area where he can still develop is becoming even more decisive in the biggest matches. That means converting more of the chances he creates because he’s always been a player who creates a huge number of opportunities.

“But he’s always managed to achieve the goals he’s set for himself over the past few years, so I have complete confidence in him.”

Bradley Barcola finishes with style ✨

France are on top against Senegal! pic.twitter.com/gmKAlONaGn

— ITV Football (@itvfootball) June 16, 2026

As a sign of his growing influence away from the pitch, Barcola appeared on the front cover of Esquire France last month, with the magazine saying he “embodied a new generation of footballers: friendly, talented, and discreet”.

Away from football, he enjoys playing video games in his spare time.

Barcola has been a regular in the France squad since receiving his first call-up for Euro 2024, and made an impact at his first World Cup this summer, showing his trickery down the left wing and scoring three goals in eight games.

Barcola scored three times for France at the 2026 World Cup (Justin Setterfield/Getty Images)

Bosz said he was delighted to watch Barcola’s career trajectory from afar.

“He was a tiny player physically when he was with me,” he said. “He is still skinny, but he’s strong, he’s so fast, and he’s using his speed fantastically.

“A lot of good players want the ball to their feet, and they want to make things happen. But he is also a player who can play without the ball, asking for it deep behind the defensive line. So that makes him a complete player. He can score goals, he’s technically skilful, and he can dribble inside or outside. He’s a top player.”

“I’m from Lyon myself, so it genuinely makes me happy to see players from Lyon succeed,” Brechet added. “His success is fully deserved because he worked hard, made all the necessary sacrifices and always bounced back. Even when things were difficult, he never doubted himself. So I’m really, really happy for him.”