Source photos: Steven Bisig, Dylan Martinez, Stefan Wermuth. REUTERS/Illustration/Jeremy Schultz
Coming up this week: Arsenal v Manchester United carries fresh edge in the Premier League; the NFL thins to its final four on Conference Championship Sunday en route to the Super Bowl; alpine skiing reaches its rawest test at Kitzbuhel as Marco Odermatt chases the missing entry on his CV while Mikaela Shiffrin tightens her grip on slalom.
Here’s your Inside Track to the action:
SOCCER
Arsenal face revived United as old rivalry flickers back to life
Arsenal fans before a match this season. Action Images via Reuters/Andrew Couldridge
Back in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the Premier League was largely a two-way battle between Manchester United and Arsenal, with the two clubs sharing the title between them for nine seasons between 1996 and 2004.
It was a visceral rivalry, forged in the bone-crunching duels of Roy Keane and Patrick Vieira and devoured around the world as appointment television.
When Arsenal came out on top to win the league in 2004 — for the third time, with four runners-up slots in that period — it would have seemed fanciful in the extreme to suggest that 22 years later it would remain their last league success.
United continued to add to their tally for a while, but they have now gone 13 years since claiming the last of their record-equalling 20, as Chelsea, Man City and Liverpool dislodged them to become the “big three.”
This season, however, after three successive runners-up finishes, Arsenal are well-placed to end the drought as they lead the league standings by seven points heading into Sunday’s game against United. Until last week, that fixture would have been everyone’s idea of a home win, as United lurched from one crisis to another and Arsenal marched on.
Suddenly, however, there is a different feel to it — and though it may not quite be at the level of Arsenal’s Martin Keown screaming into the face of Ruud van Nistelrooy after the Dutchman’s penalty miss at a febrile Old Trafford in 2003, there is nonetheless a feeling of anticipation for United fans who have seen one draw and five defeats against the Gunners in their last six league meetings.
Manchester United interim manager Michael Carrick after their match against Manchester City. REUTERS/Phil Noble
In a flash, United are right back in the fight for a Champions League slot – a point behind fourth-placed Liverpool – and they and their fans will travel to London with real belief.
Arsenal, having blown strong league positions in recent seasons, would have to implode pretty spectacularly to do so again, but there will undoubtedly be tension in the air at the Emirates Stadium on Sunday for what, for the first time in a long time, is looking like appointment TV.
Arsenal v Manchester United, English Premier League, London — January 25
NFL
Four left standing as NFL season reaches its penultimate week
Seattle Seahawks running back Kenneth Walker III scores a touchdown against the San Francisco 49ers. Steven Bisig-Imagn Images
After months of attrition, noise and nuance, only four NFL teams remain in the Super Bowl hunt— and Conference Championship Sunday rarely needs embellishment.
In Denver, the AFC’s top seed finds itself in unfamiliar emotional territory. The Denver Broncos are hosting their first AFC Championship Game since January 2016, but the script took a sharp left turn last weekend. A bruising divisional win over Buffalo came at a cost, with rookie quarterback Bo Nix leaving the field on crutches and now watching from the sideline with a fractured right ankle.
That leaves the keys to the season in the hands of Jarrett Stidham, a postseason debutant asked to steer a top seed through the most unforgiving moment on the calendar. Across from him stand the seasoned and pragmatic New England Patriots.
Denver Broncos quarterbacks Jarrett Stidham (8) and Bo Nix (10)) during their game against the Buffalo Bills. Ron Chenoy-Imagn Images
The night game shifts the spotlight west, where the Seattle Seahawks sit one win from a fourth Super Bowl appearance — and their first in 11 years. Seattle have been the NFC’s most consistent force this season — methodical rather than flashy, a team that rarely beats itself. Standing in their way are the Los Angeles Rams, the most recent champions left in the field who are still carrying the muscle memory of lifting the Lombardi Trophy in February 2022.
All of it funnels toward February 8 and Super Bowl LX at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, but Sunday is where the season truly shows its hand.
AFC Championship, Denver, USA — January 25
NFC Championship, Seattle, USA — January 25
ALPINE SKIING
Once a season, skiing drops the glamour and shows its teeth
Switzerland’s Marco Odermatt at the FIS Alpine Ski World Cup last week. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse
Skiing always arrives wrapped in glamour: mirrored goggles, long lunches, the soft-focus promise of après. But once a season, the sport shrugs off the polish, cracks its knuckles and reminds everyone what it really is. That moment is Kitzbuhel.
This weekend’s Hahnenkamm races are alpine skiing’s crown jewels — a feverish convergence of noise, nerve and near-misses on the Streif, arguably the sport’s most ferocious test. The crowds will come in their tens of thousands, the cowbells will clang, the beer will flow, and the world’s best skiers will stare down a 3.3km strip of ice.
The Streif is not simply hard; it is unyielding. Sections pitch at gradients of up to 85 percent. Jumps fire skiers 80 metres through the air, and it is a place where reputations wobble and legends are chiselled.
Mikaela Shiffrin celebrates at the FIS Alpine Ski World Cup in November. REUTERS/Angelika Warmuth
The American great can all but lock up the slalom crystal globe this weekend, a record-extending ninth of her career. One race remains before the Games, and she holds a commanding 268-point lead over Switzerland’s Camille Rast, with only 300 still available.
Shiffrin has won six of the season’s seven slaloms; Rast claimed the other. The maths is simple, the message even simpler: Shiffrin arrives at the Olympics as the woman everyone must beat.
Ski World Cup, Kitzbuehel, Austria and Spindleruv Mlyn, Czechia — January 23-25
EXTRA TIME
What else we’re watching
Handball: Africa is not global handball’s natural heartland, but momentum is building as 16 teams meet in Kigali this week for the African Men’s Handball Championship (January 21–31), with five places at the 2027 World Championship in Germany on offer and early Olympic stakes already in view for 2028. Egypt remain the continent’s benchmark, chasing a fourth straight title in a competition historically dominated by Egypt, Tunisia and Algeria. But signs of change are emerging, with Uganda debuting, Benin returning for a second time and Cape Verde — runners-up in 2022 just two years after their debut — hinting at a broader African horizon.
Egypt and Algeria in the 2004 handball African Championship. REUTERS/Amr Abdallah Dalsh
Ultra: The Ultra Trail Angkor returns to Siem Reap on Saturday, January 24, threading runners through the Angkor Wat temple complex — a UNESCO world heritage site and one of Southeast Asia’s most visited landmarks — with distances ranging from an 8 km (5 mile) run to a full marathon, though the centrepiece remains the 100 km ultramarathon, which starts at 4 a.m. Building on a long local tradition that has seen half marathons staged at Angkor since 1996 and the full marathon introduced in 2014, the event has grown into an international draw, attracting around 1,700–2,000 runners last year.
Scottie Scheffler playing in the TOUR Championship last year. Brett Davis-Imagn Images
Golf: World number one Scottie Scheffler is making his 2026 PGA Tour season debut this week in La Quinta, California, where competitors in the event known as “The American Express” will play on three courses with a cut after the third round. Scheffler was named the PGA Tour’s player of the year for a fourth consecutive season in 2025 after a six-win campaign that included two major triumphs. Other notables in the 156-player field include Justin Rose, Matt Fitzpatrick, Max Homa, Rickie Fowler, Adam Scott and defending champion Sepp Straka.
NASCAR drivers at the Daytona International Speedway last year. Peter Casey-Imagn Images
Motor Racing: Engines roar to life and sleep takes a back seat as the 24 Hours of Daytona launches the North American racing season in spectacular fashion. The around-the-clock marathon begins Saturday at 1:40 p.m. ET (1840 GMT) at Daytona International Speedway in Daytona Beach, Florida, and doesn’t end until the waving of Sunday’s chequered flag. With a 60-car grid pounding the high banks, the race is a relentless test of speed and strategy.
Sign up here.
Editing by Yasmeen Serhan and Toby Chopra
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
