Salah-less Liverpool Plays Inter in Champions League. Barcelona, Bayern, Chelsea All in Action

Liverpool's Mohamed Salah passes manager Arne Slot, left, as he takes part in a training session in Liverpool, England, Monday, Dec. 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Jon Super)
Liverpool's Mohamed Salah passes manager Arne Slot, left, as he takes part in a training session in Liverpool, England, Monday, Dec. 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Jon Super)
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Salah-less Liverpool Plays Inter in Champions League. Barcelona, Bayern, Chelsea All in Action

Liverpool's Mohamed Salah passes manager Arne Slot, left, as he takes part in a training session in Liverpool, England, Monday, Dec. 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Jon Super)
Liverpool's Mohamed Salah passes manager Arne Slot, left, as he takes part in a training session in Liverpool, England, Monday, Dec. 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Jon Super)

After leaving Mohamed Salah at home, Liverpool needs to show it can win without the Egyptian forward as Arne Slot's team takes on Inter Milan in the Champions League on Tuesday.

On a night when Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Chelsea and Tottenham are all in action, the focus is on Liverpool after Salah said Saturday it “seems like the club has thrown me under the bus.” Liverpool's response was to leave him out of the squad for its trip to Italy, The Associated Press said.

Liverpool's poor recent form boosts Inter's chances of picking up a fifth win in six games. A win for 13th-place Liverpool would put Slot's team back into the hunt for the top eight seedings for the knockout stages.

After losing its last Champions League game 3-0 to Chelsea, Barcelona aims to recover at home to struggling Eintracht Frankfurt. It will have to do without defender Ronald Araujo, who is suspended after his red card against Chelsea and has also been unavailable for personal reasons.

Seventh-place Chelsea is unbeaten in four Champions League games and visits Atalanta aiming to strengthen its hold on a top-eight spot offering direct entry to the round of 16. Bayern can earn its fifth win of the league stage by beating Sporting Lisbon in an early kickoff.

Tottenham, which lost 5-3 to Paris Saint-Germain last time out, has an easier task against Czech team Slavia Prague. Atletico Madrid visits PSV Eindhoven, Monaco hosts Galatasaray and Union Saint-Gilloise plays Marseille.

One game starts in an unusually early window at 1530 GMT (10:30 a.m. ET) as Kazakhstan's Kairat Almaty hosts Greece's Olympiacos.



SEA Games to Open in Thailand with Tightened Security

Security was heightened at the Southeast Asian Games after Thailand-Cambodia border clashes reignited. Chanakarn Laosarakham / AFP
Security was heightened at the Southeast Asian Games after Thailand-Cambodia border clashes reignited. Chanakarn Laosarakham / AFP
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SEA Games to Open in Thailand with Tightened Security

Security was heightened at the Southeast Asian Games after Thailand-Cambodia border clashes reignited. Chanakarn Laosarakham / AFP
Security was heightened at the Southeast Asian Games after Thailand-Cambodia border clashes reignited. Chanakarn Laosarakham / AFP

The Southeast Asian Games officially open in Bangkok on Tuesday with security for athletes tightened due to fresh border clashes between Thailand and Cambodia.

The SEA Games run until December 20 in Bangkok and the nearby coastal province of Chonburi, with thousands of athletes from 11 southeast Asian countries competing in events ranging from football and fencing to skateboarding, sailing and combat sports, reported AFP.

They include world-class performers such as Olympic weightlifting gold medallists Hidilyn Diaz of the Philippines and Rizki Juniansyah of Indonesia, and Thailand's badminton silver medallist Kunlavut Vitidsarn.

The Thai King and Queen are scheduled to open the Games ceremony at the Rajamangala National Stadium in Bangkok Tuesday evening, with a performance South Korea–trained Thai artist BamBam.

Far from the competition, renewed combat this week over a long-standing border dispute between Thailand and Cambodia has killed six Cambodian civilians and three Thai soldiers, and wounded more than 20 others.

Citing safety concerns, Cambodia last month withdrew about half of its athletes, pulling out of eight events including football, wrestling, judo and karate.

Thailand's deputy Prime Minister Thammanat Prompao said Tuesday that Thailand will "ensure the highest level of security" for Cambodian at athletes during the ongoing border tensions.

Security personnel will be deployed to guarantee their safety, he said, though specific operational details were not disclosed.

Thailand is hosting the SEA Games, which take place every two years, for the first time since 2007. They were first held in Bangkok in 1959.

The SEA Games are known for inclusion of non-Olympic sports from the region such sepak takraw, foot volleyball played with a rattan ball and pencak silat, a martial art popular in Indonesia.


Salah a 'Disgrace' for Liverpool Outburst, Says Carragher

08 December 2025, United Kingdom, Liverpool: Liverpool's Mohamed Salah practices during a training session at the AXA Training Center, ahead of Tuesday's UEFA Champions League soccer match against Inter Milan. Photo: Tim Markland/PA Wire/dpa
08 December 2025, United Kingdom, Liverpool: Liverpool's Mohamed Salah practices during a training session at the AXA Training Center, ahead of Tuesday's UEFA Champions League soccer match against Inter Milan. Photo: Tim Markland/PA Wire/dpa
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Salah a 'Disgrace' for Liverpool Outburst, Says Carragher

08 December 2025, United Kingdom, Liverpool: Liverpool's Mohamed Salah practices during a training session at the AXA Training Center, ahead of Tuesday's UEFA Champions League soccer match against Inter Milan. Photo: Tim Markland/PA Wire/dpa
08 December 2025, United Kingdom, Liverpool: Liverpool's Mohamed Salah practices during a training session at the AXA Training Center, ahead of Tuesday's UEFA Champions League soccer match against Inter Milan. Photo: Tim Markland/PA Wire/dpa

Former Liverpool defender Jamie Carragher labelled Mohamed Salah "a disgrace" on Monday after the Egypt star's stunning outburst at Reds boss Arne Slot.

Salah said he had been "thrown under a bus" and had no relationship with Slot after he was left on the bench for last Saturday's 3-3 draw at Leeds.

It was the third successive game that Salah had been kept out of the starting line-up by Slot amid the forward's loss of form this season, AFP said.

In response to Salah's astonishing rant to reporters, Liverpool axed the 33-year-old from the squad for Tuesday's Champions League clash at Inter Milan.

Speaking on Sky Sports' Monday Night Football, Carragher, a 2005 Champions League winner with Liverpool, said: "I thought it was a disgrace what he did after the game.

"Some people have painted it as an emotional outburst. I don't think it was. I think whenever Mo Salah stops in a mixed zone, which he has done four times in eight years at Liverpool, it's choreographed with his agent to cause maximum damage and strengthen his own position.

"He's chosen this weekend to do this now, and he's waited I think for a bad result... everyone involved with the club (feeling) like they're in the gutter, and he's chosen that time to go for the manager and maybe try to get him sacked."

Salah is a two-time Premier League champion with Liverpool and has also won the Champions League during his iconic eight-year spell at Anfield.

But, although he only signed a new contract in April, Salah hinted he might have played his last game for Liverpool as he prepares to jet off to the African Cup of Nations after their Premier League clash with Brighton at Anfield on Saturday.

Carragher added: “...Whether he will play for Liverpool again, I don't know.I hope he does, because he's one of the greatest players we've ever had, but if you continue like that, and statements like that, if he doesn't play, who knows."


Like a Movie in the Mind: Norris Paints a Picture of Title-Winning Moment 

McLaren's Lando Norris is interviewed the day after becoming the 2025 Formula One World Champion in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, December 8, 2025. (Reuters)
McLaren's Lando Norris is interviewed the day after becoming the 2025 Formula One World Champion in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, December 8, 2025. (Reuters)
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Like a Movie in the Mind: Norris Paints a Picture of Title-Winning Moment 

McLaren's Lando Norris is interviewed the day after becoming the 2025 Formula One World Champion in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, December 8, 2025. (Reuters)
McLaren's Lando Norris is interviewed the day after becoming the 2025 Formula One World Champion in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, December 8, 2025. (Reuters)

Lando Norris has an idea for a painting, one that would capture everything he saw and felt in the final laps before he became Formula One world champion.

The 26-year-old McLaren driver would hang it on his wall as a permanent record of what can only be described as an out-of-body experience as he headed for the chequered flag at Abu Dhabi's Yas Marina circuit on Sunday.

Speaking to reporters in a hotel room a day after the most momentous event of his life, Norris related how memories and sensations, and thoughts of family and friends, had played out like "the montage of my life" in his head.

The last two laps before crossing the line in third place, all he needed to secure the title, were the best memory of all. "I really want to get someone to do a painting of me. I need to find an artist but from my view," the Briton said.

"My eyes, coming around, with the visor and the bumps and everything, seeing all the papayas (McLaren colors) and just seeing the chequered flag, and that moment of coming around the last corner, lifting off and then I can have both my gloves here (in front of his face) because I started to cry...

"I want to save that moment. Because that was really the 'it' moment."

LIKE THE LAST MOMENTS OF A LIFE

McLaren's late Brazilian triple-champion Ayrton Senna once described a 1988 lap of Monaco in similar terms of wonderment -- relating how he felt he was no longer driving the car consciously but in another realm.

Norris would not put himself in such a league, but what he described carried echoes of the past.

Three laps from the end he had wondered how it would hit him to be champion, and he feared he might not feel anything.

And then it happened, a highlights reel in the mind.

"It's like a movie, when you get those flashbacks at the end and you see that style of last moments of someone. It's not the last moments for me but it was like that," he said.

"I was watching me ... just being able to watch me and watch me drive around but all within the space of a couple of minutes.

"I'm watching from above. I'm just watching from a bird's-eye, helicopter view."

Norris, who won in Monaco this year, recalled childhood karting and video games with his father Adam. He imagined his mother, Cisca, watching in the garage and the tears welled up.

He revealed that before the weekend he had looked up videos of how other champions - compatriot Lewis Hamilton who has been there seven times and Sebastian Vettel a four-times winner of the prized trophy - had celebrated their successes. In the end he did it his way, without copying anything.

"I'm happy I didn't in the end because what played out was just what I felt - spontaneous, more just all in the moment. And that made it extra special," he said.