The best of this week’s wildlife photographs from around the world

In charting the game’s transformation into a geopolitical weapon, new book serves an urgent and crucial purpose

Stick to football. It doesn’t really work does it? The big problem with sticking to football is that football doesn’t stick to football. Instead, football keeps sticking to other things, such as nation building, geopolitics, contrived Hollywood bro-ship vehicles and cruelty.

Before that football stuck to European industrial wealth and colonial governance. In the future football is promising to stick to rootless global product, the unceasing scream of the digital hive mind, and everything else. Tricky isn’t it. Does anyone just want to talk about VAR?

(Stones Throw)
The Austrian-Iranian singer’s new wave style hits harder than ever on an excellent album inspired by a treatise from a French anarchist collective

Old-school European glamour emanates from this excellent album by Austrian-Iranian pop singer Sofie Royer – the stuff of chilled rosé on an Antibes balcony or discos in the Rimini summertime, away from the crassness of influencers and classlessness of fame.

Royer, who sings in English, French and German as well as songwriting, producing and playing most of the instruments, released one of the gems of 2022 with her second album Harlequin , which mooched elegantly through yacht rock, new wave, and untrendy 70s chansons. After the fantastic Italo-disco single Mio , this follow-up increases the tempo to a brisk yet distracted power-walk. It’s a concept album of sorts inspired by the book Preliminary Materials for a Theory of the Young-Girl by the French anarchist collective Tiqqun, about “consumer society’s total product and model citizen”, namely young women.

The former Tottenham and France captain discusses his ups and downs at Spurs, Ange Postecoglou and his new life in Los Angeles

• Read exclusive extracts from Hugo Lloris’s autobiography

Hugo Lloris lived in the intense pressure cooker of international football and the Premier League for so long that there is lightness and even relief as he describes how today began for him in Los Angeles. “I woke up this morning and had breakfast with my kids,” he says with a grin as he chats away happily at home. “I then took them to school and obviously the weather is amazing. Just before our interview I went for a walk and I was still in shorts and a T-shirt … in November.”

Lloris laughs in mild disbelief. We speak on Monday, the day before America goes to the polls, and the 37-year-old goalkeeper says: “Tomorrow is the big day and what’s really surprising when I am walking around the neighbourhood is seeing that people are not afraid to show who they’re voting for. You see the signs outside their houses. We are more private in Europe.”

The president-elect benefited from working-class hostility to a remote elite. Liberals need to reargue their case

Yes, we all know it looks terrible. We have heard what Donald Trump has promised . But could there be silver linings to these ominous clouds? The election was two days ago. Tomorrow is another day, and this strange, faulty, thin-skinned but tough-as-nails character is notable for one thing: unpredictability.

The essence of Trump is that he is not a politician but an egotistical wheeler-dealer. He is not a strategist, let alone an ideologue. Dealers are judged by their deeds, not their words. They react to circumstance by talking, negotiating, not policymaking. Trump is said by his friends to be aware of the mistakes he made last time round. That he is desperate not to do so again is good news.

Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist

Test your recall of football, rugby union, tennis, NFL and more from the last seven days in sport

Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine As Light wowed Cannes with its portrayal of the struggles of women in Mumbai. She talks about inequality, misogyny – and being haunted

There is nothing ostensibly special about Mumbai, according to Payal Kapadia. There is no iconic building to photograph, no ancient history to mine. “It’s a post-colonial city that didn’t exist before the British came and joined seven islands, purely for capitalism.”

But for the director, who has become one of Indian cinema’s biggest names, there is a magic at the heart of the country’s financial capital, one imperceptible to the naked eye. “Mumbai is defined by the people who travel from all across India to live and work there,” Kapadia says. “The city is in a constant state of flux.”

England has been the most successful nation in senior events, but competition has become stiffer in Europe, while the US has won the world over-50 teams two years running

England’s success in senior events has been outstanding in recent years, but there are indications that the golden era, which was already ­challenged by US over-50 team victories in 2023 and 2024, may be undermined ­further by individuals and teams from Eastern Europe.

At the European individual 65+ championship in Lignano Sabbiadoro, on the Adriatic coast in Northern Italy, the holder, GM John Nunn, was the strong favourite, but finished only sixth with 6.5/9. The grand­master and eminent author from Bude in ­Cornwall was unbeaten, and his fourth-round win was in his ­vintage attacking style, but a run of four ­successive draws spoiled his chances.

Israel’s national security ministry urges citizens in Dutch city to stay in their hotel rooms after ‘very violent’ incident’

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has directed two rescue planes to be sent to Amsterdam after “a very violent incident” targeting Israelis citizens, his office has said, after attacks linked to a football game were reported.

Israel’s national security ministry has also urged its citizens in the Dutch city to stay in their hotel rooms, the prime minister’s office said in a second statement.