For England, the chance to win their first Test series since 2024 comes after yet another off-field drinking incident.

Carse was removed from the squad for this Test after a night out in Derby on Saturday, with police investigating allegations of an assault. Carse is in the Durham side for their ongoing County Championship match against Gloucestershire.

The home side steamrollered Pakistan at Headingley in Joe Root’s first Test back as captain. It was always likely Pakistan would improve on their performance from Leeds, simply because the tourists could not play much worse.

Pakistan were boosted by the return of captain Babar Azam from a hand injury, in the side for Salman Ali Agha who skippered in Leeds. Babar’s first impact was to call correctly and play finally got under way at 12:20 BST.

The tourists’ trio of fast-medium seamers were ideally suited to the conditions and they showed much greater control than last week.

England were sometimes wasteful – Dan Lawrence ran himself out and Harry Brook was bowled driving – and sometimes unlucky – Emilio Gay was caught down the leg side. For the most part, the batters were happy to roll up their sleeves, another encouraging sign early in Root’s second reign.

The result was a compelling contest, an arm wrestle with neither side ever able to claim they held the upper hand.

England’s total seems at least competitive, yet Pakistan have the chance to gain a foothold if they bat well. This could turn into a tight Test.

Home matches: Inter, PSV, RB Leipzig, LASK.

Away matches: Arsenal, Roma, Shakhtar Donetsk, AEK Athens.

Dates and times of matches to be confirmed by UEFA.

Which game most excites you?

Serie A champions Inter at the Bernabeu looks like the most exciting game of the group for Madrid fans, and stars like Nicolo Barella and Lautaro Martinez should provide a stiff test.

There also will be a lot of emotion around Mourinho’s reunion with Inter — who he coached to a historic treble of Champions League, Serie A and Coppa Italia back in 2009-10.

Jose Mourinho, pictured at the Bernabeu during Wednesday’s 4-1 win over Real Sociedad (Denis Doyle/Getty Images)

Adding to the occasion will be intrigue around Inter’s new English brigade of John Stones, Djed Spence and Curtis Jones, and how they fare against their international team-mates Jude Bellingham and Trent Alexander-Arnold.

Which game worries you?

Madrid’s most difficult game by far looks to be the trip to last year’s beaten finalists Arsenal, who were interested in buying Vinicius Junior this summer before he signed a new contract.

(Carl Recine/Getty Images)

Mourinho going back to London, home of two of his other former teams Chelsea and Tottenham, is sure to be box office off the pitch.

However, during the 90 minutes Madrid may struggle to deal with the physicality and efficiency of Mikel Arteta’s super organised Arsenal team.

Two seasons ago a Madrid side coached by Carlo Ancelotti lost 3-0 at the Emirates, on the way to a 5-1 aggregate quarter-final exit.

The hope around the Bernabeu is that Mourinho will be able to put together a new Madrid team better able to handle such challenges, but this game might come a bit early in that rebuilding project.

What is Mourinho’s biggest issue to confront in the tournament?

Mourinho’s challenge on his return is to revitalise the team, incorporating his new arrivals and finding a way to get the best out of Kylian Mbappe, Vinicius Junior and Bellingham.

The Madrid squad includes lots of options for different positions, and Mourinho has already spoken about the challenge of keeping all his big players happy. Just to pick one example, new right-back Denzel Dumfries of the Netherlands has played both opening La Liga games, leaving Alexander-Arnold on the bench.

The league phase should allow at least some time for experimentation and rotation, meaning Mourinho can work out his best tactical system while avoiding any nasty shock results — and upsetting the always demanding Bernabeu stadium and club president Florentino Perez.

Which team do Madrid most want to avoid in the latter stages?

Real Madrid will never admit to wanting to avoid any club, and assuming Mourinho’s return goes to plan they will see themselves as favourites no matter who they play against.

At least some around the Bernabeu would prefer to avoid their La Liga rivals Barcelona and Atletico Madrid in European competition, given all the noise and controversy that would surely surround such Clasico or Derbi ties.

However, others at the club, including their coach, might actually revel in the opportunity of such high-profile matches.

What would be considered a successful finish?

Given their historic record of being champions of Europe on 15 occasions, Madrid go into every season declaring that only winning the trophy once again can be counted as success.

The last two seasons have seen some struggles through the league phase followed by deserved quarter-final exits to Arsenal and Bayern Munich.

Last year’s league phase was especially dramatic with a shock defeat by Benfica (then coached by Mourinho) in their final game, leading to a play-off where they again faced the Portuguese side.

Mourinho reached the semi-finals in each of his three seasons at Madrid during his previous spell between 2010-2013.

Even though reconstruction work is required to build a more competitive team, making the last four this season could be seen as just about acceptable at the Bernabeu.

Until Saturday Newsletter 🏈 | This is The Athletic’s college football newsletter. Sign up here to receive Until Saturday directly in your inbox.

Yep, Week 0 college football starts today. Division I, in fact. Weekend schedule below.

We’re Back: Expect surprises, forever

Entering any given season, lots of things feel certain. Of course conference favorites will win their leagues. Of course flawed teams outside the top 10 won’t make postseason pushes. Of course the Heisman will go to the biggest-name QB.

Four months later, we look back and think: Of course preseason No. 20 Indiana was always going to win the Big Ten and everything else, thanks in large part to the imported quarterback of a 6-7 Cal team.

OK, extreme example. Maybe the most extreme ever. The point stands, though. Last year, most FBS conference favorites didn’t win their leagues. Exceptions: Boise State, JMU and Tulane.

Portal-era madness, right? Well, I looked back a decade prior at 2015, when FBS’ only league favorites to follow through were Alabama and Arkansas State. Having found evidence in favor of my eternal theory that CFB rarely changes as much as we think, I decided against pushing my luck by checking another season.

With these things in mind, when making this season’s predictions, I barred myself from picking any teams that are projected in their conference’s tippy-top tiers. That led me to this Playoff prediction:

1. Notre Dame: Ha! I can pick one of the best contenders without breaking my rule! Lifehack! I’m taking this team to win everything, apparently giving me a lot in common with its fans.
2. Indiana: Ha! I can pick the defending national champion because it’s a clear third in the AP Top 25 among Big Ten teams! The exercise got way harder after this. See:
3. Ole Miss: No. 6 in the SEC, per BetMGM. But QB Trinidad Chambliss is the player I believe in the most, and I like a roster that spent the last eight months angry at the same thing (Lane Kiffin) together.
4. Ohio State: Remember, the CFP seeds teams purely by ranking, with top-four byes no longer only for conference champs. As you can see, the middle of the bracket is where I put obvious teams.
5. Georgia: Obvious.
6. Oregon: Obvious, but pretty low for the AP No. 2 team I described on Tuesday as long overdue for a championship.
7. Texas: You know, one of these obvious teams probably won’t make it, based on history. Which one? Back to surprises:
8. BYU: My Big 12 champ, since I couldn’t pick Texas Tech … but also maybe even if I could?
9. LSU: I filled in my predictions back when it looked like Kiffin might import the Seattle Seahawks roster, but let’s roll with it.
10. Texas Tech: The Big 12 being a two-bid league might require the Red Raiders to go 12-1, based on their weak schedule, but their odds of making it are just so high.
11. Virginia Tech: As discussed in this newsletter, picking anyone besides Miami to win the ACC feels ridiculous, but my rule was ironclad. James Franklin has a rough conference schedule, and BetMGM’s win total is 6.5, but I’m betting on the vibes.
12. New Mexico: My rule banned teams like Boise State, James Madison, UNLV and seemingly half of the American. Jason Eck’s Lobos improved from 5-7 to 9-4 in Year 1, then had relatively great (by G6 standards) retention.

I’m not alone in picking the Irish to win their first title since 1988, as they were the most popular pick in our staff’s season predictions. Our readers, however, went with Oregon … and Austin Mock’s math prefers Ohio State. Wide-open season! (Cue “oF cOuRsE tHe MeDiA lOvEs NoTrE dAmE.” Clearly, my media bias is in favor of New Mexico.)

Among the other group predictions in that roundup, I picked the Buckeyes to reach the title game (a rematch of two years ago), accidentally made a popular pick by taking Jeremiah Smith to win the Heisman and wasn’t the only Lobos voter, though I’m alone on the Hokies.

We were also asked to deliver bold predictions, so I went with: “Lincoln Riley doesn’t have to play rival Notre Dame, but his last game at USC will be a loss to rival UCLA.”

The most adventurous prediction in there comes from our Matthew Ho: “Texas misses the Playoff, and Arch Manning enters the transfer portal after a lackluster season instead of entering the NFL Draft. He heads to Florida under Jon Sumrall.” Now we’re cooking.

See 29 other powerful proclamations, plus many other season previews on the site, including:

• An impressive, one-click rundown of all 138 FBS teams. Yes, I did the same thing as you, scanning straight to my alma mater. Seth Emerson described my Kennesaw State Owls fairly.
• Speaking of wide-open, in more detailed Playoff picks by Bruce Feldman, Stewart Mandel and Ralph Russo, each picked a different national champ, adding Indiana and Texas to our mix.
• Here are Austin’s statistical Playoff odds on all of FBS, from Texas Tech (72 percent chance of making the bracket) to UMass (technically not 0). This link will update all season.
• Annual reminder: Betting on the Heisman in August is a ludicrous idea. “The only preseason favorite in the past 16 years to walk away with the trophy was Marcus Mariota.”
• New mock draft by Nick Baumgardner. You know, if the Browns were to have the No. 1 pick, Arch should just transfer to Florida regardless.
• Good time to catch up on which players have transferred where! The biggest roster changes you wisely ignored.
• And yes, Boise State is in the Pac-12 now. Realignment refresh! The G6’s geography is suddenly disgusting.

Now for some news and stuff, and then … a much bigger (and more imminent) Week 0 schedule than you might realize.

Quick Snaps

👸 First, three of my three favorite Dolly Parton things I’ve read this week:

• A 15-song playlist, detailed. I grew up in the South, but not on country music, so this week’s listening has felt like investigating what’d always been omnipresent.
• “From savant to country music punchline to memefied global icon.” My former colleague Natalie Weiner’s three short essays on the early, middle and latter years.
• And that time Dolly congratulated Three 6 Mafia for winning an Oscar at her expense, praising the Memphis rap vanguards for bringing it home to Tennessee.

🚫 On a less reverent note, it’s time to summarize the latest roster business. Maybe for the last time before the presumed January portal! Wouldn’t that be nice?

• The Big Ten and SEC have been joined by other conferences (Big 12, Sun Belt, likely others) in banning players with “pro” and/or “draft” aromas. An era of boutique rule enforcement by conferences? (Reminds me of cable TV dissolving into 19 streaming apps. It’d be cool to combine it all back into cable TV. We could call it the NCAA.)
• LSU, the employer of both Kiffin and Will Wade, is the SEC school that might not love those bans? I can’t believe it.
• Per the surely befuddled NFL: You can’t get drafted (or sign a UDFA deal), return to college and try to get drafted again.
• As Stew explains in his new mailbag, the NCAA has to grit its way through this mess, caused by 2025 seniors reasonably wanting to be grandfathered into June’s announcement of five-year eligibility.

📰 Other news:

• ESPN’s removing the bottom-line ticker from college football game broadcasts. Let’s see how long that lasts.
• The NCAA has halved its suspension of a Tennessee linebacker who wasn’t part of April’s NFL Draft.

🎨 In an era of AI garbage, this is cool as hell: The Idaho Vandals enlisted a student to create oil paintings as weekly game graphics.

🎤 Athens, Ga., is known for live music. The loudest guy with a mic, however, is Kirby Smart during practice.

The Watch Grid: Full circle (and very full sched) for Week 0

In 2014, ESPN assembled an Aug. 23 game between Eastern Washington and Sam Houston State, a lone FCS showcase set days before FBS’ opening Thursday.

It was an instant hit, so North Dakota State-Montana would be 2015’s version. (Months later, NDSU beat Jacksonville State for the FCS title. This will be relevant.) Then in 2016, Cal-Hawaii joined alongside the third annual FCS kickoff, truly establishing the modern Week 0.

(A smattering of early games was briefly a thing in the mid-2000s, and Nebraska waxed Penn State in an August 1983 standalone, but neither altered the sport’s calendar like Week 0, which might just become Week 1.)

From 2017 onward, Week 0 began sprawling annually, all the way up to this weekend’s dozens of games, including eight in FBS on Saturday.

Two FCS teams that each played twice in those mid-2010s kickoff games, the foundations upon which Week 0’s annual pre-buffet was built: North Dakota State and Jacksonville State. And now look at them, playing each other in Week 0, both as FBS teams.

On that note, what follows is the Watch Grid, a schedule guide I’m going to share with you each week. It’s from the same ugly spreadsheet I’ve been editing and screenshotting since 2016. Readers have told me they like it, for reasons that mystify me. In 2021, its weekly Sickos Game of the Week honor, which spotlights football intended only for the hardiest of viewers, spawned the Sickos Committee.

The Watch Grid only cares somewhat about things like team quality or rankings ramifications. Instead, it’s my guesstimate of which games will be most watchable in each time slot. If your team isn’t rated highly, it’s probably because your incredible squad will win a boring blowout.

So here we go. I think this is the top-to-bottom best Week 0 ever. I won’t usually include nearly this many non-FBS games, but after an offseason of courtroom crap, we deserve to explore the country:

Tonight and tomorrow, Central Arkansas-UT Martin and Idaho-Cal Poly pit closely matched teams that could make FCS playoff runs. Also tonight, Ferris State (Mich.)-Pittsburg State (Kan.) might be the Division II game of the year, in case you happen to have access.

As for Saturday:

• Another instant referendum on Bill Belichick, again delivered by TCU (-9.5). This time, UNC’s roster isn’t as heavy on the exited Michael Lombardi’s dubious transfers, but has loads of Lombardi-approved freshmen. A bad loss in Ireland would have everyone wondering: Tar Heels interim Bobby Petrino?
• In the middle might be your best chance all year to look at the Fargodome’s FBS era. Long-awaited, yet risky. (Why not spotlight USC there? Because the Trojans are 39.5-point favorites. Have fun, if that’s how you party.)
• Remember last year’s Week 0, when nobody expected anything of Stanford-Hawaii, but we got one of the season’s best games?
• As for those two Sickos games: Valparaiso (Ind.) could be FCS’ worst team, but opponent Lawrence Tech (Mich.) ranks 301 spots lower in Bill Connelly’s 771-team ranking. Also, FCS power South Dakota State might be better than dozens of FBS teams, while FCS lightweight Stetson (Fla.) might be worse than a dozen NAIA teams. 😬
• And this weekend’s most consequential game might not involve Belichick. In December, maybe we look back on Memphis-UNLV (-4.5) as the game that decides the final Playoff spot.
• Also, did you notice there’s a Sunday game on TV?

More FCS: What to know about this season. Defending champ Montana State intends to take NDSU’s place.

Speaking of Sunday, see you that morning for my first postgame newsletter since January.

And give “The Audible” a watch or listen for more Week 0 picks.

Love Until Saturday? Check out The Athletic’s other newsletters, too.