The top stories making Sunday’s back pages in the UK…
The Sun: Liverpool plan a second swoop for Croatian starlet Marko Rog.
Also: Jason Puncheon was backed by Alan Pardew for an England call-up before the last international break. But the Crystal Palace star reckons his manager is a Three Lions candidate himself.
Sunday Mirror: Charlton are going to hand defender Morgan Fox a new deal – as they fear Manchester United will try to sign him.
Also: FIFA boss Sepp Blatter has found an unlikely ally as he faces a criminal corruption probe – his jilted ex-wife.
And: Manchester United legend Jaap Stam has his heart set on a return to the Premier League – as a manager.
The People: James McCarthy was a wanted man last summer and London beckoned, but he could not be happier to have stayed at Everton.
Daily Star Sunday: Louis van Gaal says English teams are hampered in the Champions League because of the Premier League “rat race”.
Also: Everton centre-back John Stones is the perfect combination of ex-England defenders John Terry and Rio Ferdinand. That is the assessment from a man who watched and trained with Stones every day at his former club Barnsley, David Flitcroft.
Mail on Sunday: The wait may soon be over for John Terry. The former England defender was again sidelined by Jose Mourinho as Kurt Zouma and Gary Cahill stayed in the centre of his defence at Newcastle on Saturday.
Also: The FA have rejected Mauricio Pochettino’s claim that they had exhausted Harry Kane by playing him in the European Under-21 Championship in Slovakia this summer.
Sunday Express: Brendan Rodgers last night rounded on the high profile critics – many of them former Liverpool players – who want him sacked.
Also: England boss Roy Hodgson is in a tug of war with the Republic of Ireland to secure the international services of highly rated Aston Villa midfielder Jack Grealish.
Metro: Manchester United are interested in signing Lyon forward Nabil Fekir next summer, according to reports.
Also: Pele has claimed that Manchester United made a transfer approach to sign him when he was playing for Santos.
Sunday Telegraph: Barring the briefest of blips when they won their opening Premier League game under David Moyes to gain a meaningless lead at the top of the table, Manchester United have not touched such dizzy heights since Sir Alex Ferguson delivered the last of his domestic titles in 2013.
Also: Claudio Ranieri briefly slipped back into his native Italian as he searched for the right word to describe Alexis Sánchez. “Meraviglia,” he finally said, almost purring. The exact translation is “a wonder” and few who witnessed Arsenal inflict a first Premier League defeat here on Leicester City would disagree.
Sunday Times: Real Madrid and Barcelona have identified two of the Premier League’s most creative players as key transfer targets. Eden Hazard, England’s Player of the Year, and Philippe Coutinho, Liverpool’s outstanding individual last season, are wanted by the Spanish giants.
Also: Not since the glory days of Sir Alex Ferguson have Manchester United fans been able to sing about being top of the league. But, at the end of a near perfect day for the red half of Manchester, order was duly restored by City’s heavy defeat at Tottenham and United’s ultimately comfortable victory over Sunderland.
And: Lionel Messi, the four-time world footballer of the year, could be out for the next eight weeks after suffering a knee injury during Barcelona’s 2-1 victory over Las Palmas.
The Observer: Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini, who was favourite to succeed the Fifa president until a dramatic intervention by the Swiss attorney general, are both now understood to be under formal investigation by Fifa’s independent ethics committee and could be suspended within days.
Also: Brendan Rodgers claimed there was a conspiracy to oust him from the Liverpool manager’s job after the pressure on his reign eased with a 3-2 win over Aston Villa.
The Independent on Sunday: For Brendan Rodgers, this may have been a stay of execution or it may be a turning point but, whatever it was, this was far and away Liverpool’s best performance of a fraught start to the season.
Also: Crisis averted. Jose Mourinho says he does not hold with the ‘c’ word, but even he must be reconsidering that opinion as Chelsea stared a fourth loss in seven Premier League games in the face.
