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Welcome to The Tap-Inn. Where you can tap in to the world of soccer with me, your Irish Tap-Inn bartender, Joe. 🍻
Europe’s soccer season is drawing to a close and the trophies are being handed out quicker than breakfast shots and made-to-order t-shirts at a bachelor party.
Here's what we got on tap today:
🥃 Ranking all eight (yes, eight) trophies an English club can actually win
🏆 And the FA Cup winner is?
🇺🇸 A genuine USMNT legend turns 55 today
Ready? I thought so. Let’s pour.
🥃 TOP SHELF
Fun fact: Chelsea is the only club to have won every single trophy named below.
The 8 different trophies in English soccer (and the ones that actually matter)
Every bar has its trophies.
The "Creamiest Guinness” certificate. The “Best Pub In The World” plaque. The “Sexiest Bartender Ever” award (12 years running, I’ll have you know).
They all sit on the same shelf. But absolutely none of them are worth the same.
“Are you gonna tell me now that the ‘Creamiest Guinness Award’ is the bartender equivalent of the Champions League?”
Something like that anyway.
An English club can win eight different trophies — four at home, four in Europe. Some are celebrated with bottles of Dom Pérignon. Others with budget energy drinks.
The single most important thing to know before we rank them though is that cups and leagues are won very differently.
The league is won by playing 38 games over 10 months. If you’re sitting on the top shelf at the end, you’re champion, period.
A cup is usually won by playing 6 or 7 knockout games. Lose once and you’re gone, no second chances.
Let's pour over them both.
At home: the four English trophies, best to worst
The Premier League 👑 — The big one. 38 games, one table, zero playoffs. The hardest trophy to win because of the need for consistency from August right through til May. 2025/26 winner: TBD — Arsenal or Man City.
The FA Cup 🏆 — The oldest soccer cup in the world and one of the most prestigious. 747 different amateur and professional teams entered this season. 2025/26 winner: Man City.
Carabao Cup 🍺 — AKA The English Football League (EFL) Cup. Open to all 92 pro clubs. Big clubs field second-string sides and pretend not to care — right up until they're in the final. 2025/26 winner: Man City.
The Community Shield 🛡️ — A single match at Wembley between the previous season's Prem champs and FA Cup winners. Played in August as the domestic season’s curtain-raiser. 2025/26 winner: Crystal Palace.
In Europe: the four continental trophies, best to worst
To qualify for these competitions, a team needs to finish in the top seven or eight places in the Premier League. The higher you finish, the higher a tier of competition you’ll be placed in.
And don’t shoot the bartender, but even though the below are called leagues, they’re completely different to the Premier League format. They’re actually a blend of a league/group stage followed by knockout cup-style soccer… not confusing at all…
The Champions League ⭐️ — Europe's elite. Win this and you're the best team in the continent. The trophy every top club in Europe wants more than anything. 2025/26 winner: TBD — PSG or Arsenal.
The Europa League 🥈 — Europe's second tier. Win it and you qualify for the Champions League the next season. 2025/26 winner: TBD — Aston Villa or Freiburg.
The Conference League 🥉 — Europe's third tier, only launched in 2021 to give clubs from smaller leagues a shot at a European competition. 2025/26 winner: TBD — Crystal Palace or Rayo Vallecano.
The UEFA Super Cup 🤝 — A single match between the previous season's Champions League and Europa League winners. Played in August as a bit of a glorified pre-season exhibition. 2025/26 winner: PSG.
⏰ TLDR: An English club can win eight different trophies, four domestically and four in Europe. The three everyone wants are the Premier League, the Champions League and the FA Cup.
And yes, the judges have confirmed I’m an absolute shoe-in for the 2026 Creamiest Guinness and Sexiest Bartender double (again).
On tap:
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🗞️ THIS WEEK IN SOCCER
Blink and you’ll miss it.
City lift the FA Cup
Manchester City 1-0 Chelsea. The Citizens lifting the cup for the eighth time. For 70-odd minutes, Chelsea defended like their lives depended on it. Five at the back, every blue shirt camped inside their own half.
Then in the 72nd minute, January signing Antoine Semenyo produced the moment of magic: a Haaland cross into the box, and the Ghanaian winger improvised an audacious backheel finish into the bottom corner (see above). Sumptious.
Tha’s a Carabao Cup and FA Cup for Pep this season — the “domestic cup double.”
Title race going down to the wire
Arsenal head into the final week of the Premier League season two points clear of Manchester City. Two more wins from their final two games and the trophy is theirs.
The weekend's other big stories:
Aston Villa 4-2 Liverpool (Friday) — Villa booked their Champions League spot in style with Ollie Watkins bagging two. Liverpool's late-season slide continues.
Newcastle 3-1 West Ham (Sunday) — Two for Will Osula pushes the Hammers to the brink of relegation.
Man United 3-2 Nottingham Forest (Sunday) — United wrap up third with Michael Carrick set to stay on as head coach after a successful four-month interim spell and Bruno Fernandes also tied the all-time Premier League single-season assist record at 20.
Coming up next:
Tonight, 3pm ET: Arsenal v Burnley — title on the line.
Tuesday, 2:30pm ET: Bournemouth v Manchester City — City must win to stay in the race.
Tuesday, 3:15pm ET: Chelsea v Tottenham — If Spurs win or draw, West Ham are relegated.
Three minutes from immortality and…?
Fun fact: number of days Hearts of Midlothian were top of the Scottish Premiership: 250. Number of days Celtic at the top: 33.
Can you guess who won the league?
As the two teams at the top of the table faced each other on Saturday, Hearts were on course to lift their first league title since 1960 and end a 41-year stranglehold by Celtic and Rangers, who between them have won every single Scottish title since 1985.
They walked into Celtic Park on Saturday needing just a draw, and they had one — right up until 87th minute. Celtic scored two late goals to seal a famous 3-1 win and Celtic’s fifth title in a row.
Heart-broke ain’t the word.
📝 TRIVIA ON TAP
Emery road leads to Istanbul
Aston Villa are off to Istanbul on Wednesday to face Germany's Freiburg in the Europa League final.
It's Villa's first European final in 44 years, and they've got the ultimate Europa League cheat code in the dugout: head coach Unai Emery is a four-time winner of the competition (with Sevilla in 2014, 2015 and 2016, plus a fourth with Villarreal in 2021).
True or false: if they win, it'll also be the first time the Villans have ever lifted a major European trophy.
Answer at the bottom 👇
🌎 WORLD CUP COUNTDOWN: X DAYS
Vini Jr. pointing at people who should send The Tap-Inn to their friends who know nothing about soccer. Just a thought…
Cut from a different cloth: every 2026 WC kit ranked
Forty-eight teams. Eighty-nine kits. And ESPN have kindly rated every single one here. My three to keep an eye on if you're shopping:
🥇 Portugal away (Puma) — A white base with a lagoon-green wave graphic sweeping diagonally across the chest. Ronaldo's last World Cup shirt. Get yours.
🥈 Germany home (Adidas) — Adidas’s farewell before Nike takes over in 2027. A tribute to the iconic 1990 & 2014 World Cup-winning jerseys. On sale here.
🥉 Argentina home (Adidas) — Classic sky-blue and white stripes with three shades of blue, one for each World Cup win (1978, 1986, 2022). Buy here.
🔥 QUICKFIRE
Brad Friedel saving a penalty at the 2002 World Cup.
Sound like a pro
Phrase: "An Aguero moment"
Origin: May 13, 2012. Final day of the Premier League season. Manchester City need to beat QPR to win the title — their first in 44 years. They need a goal when with the last kick of the season, Sergio Aguero rifles the ball into the net to win the league. Sky Sports commentator Martin Tyler screams "AGUEROOOOOO!" into the mic and one of the most iconic moments in soccer commentary is born.
Definition: A last-gasp, season-defining goal in stoppage time.
Usage: "Hearts were just minutes away from the title. Then Celtic produced a complete Aguero moment and ripped it out of their hands."
See also: Why soccer loves a late goal
On this day
May 18, 1971. Happy 55th birthday to Brad Friedel, born in Lakewood, Ohio.
A genuine USMNT legend. 82 caps. Three World Cups (1994, 1998, 2002), saving two penalties in open play in 2002 as the USA reached the quarter-finals, the country's deepest run since 1930.
Then he went to England and spent 18 years in the Premier League, setting a record that may never be broken: 310 consecutive appearances. Eight straight seasons without missing a single league game. Happy birthday, big man.
Goal of the week
Shotgunning a beer after scoring a late match-winning goal? There was only ever going to be one winner…
Keep up the good work, Samuel.
📝 TRIVIA ANSWER
False
Aston Villa are former Kings of Europe — Tony Barton's side beat Bayern Munich 1-0 in the 1982 European Cup final in Rotterdam, with Peter Withe poking home the only goal of the game to be crowned champions of the continent.
Just check out those scenes when the winning goal went in. More of the same for Villa on Wednesday? We’ll have to wait and see.
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