European soccer weekend: What to watch in the main leagues

What to watch in the leading soccer leagues in Europe this weekend:

ENGLAND

The pressure on Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho will ratchet up if the team loses at Burnley on Sunday for a third straight defeat in the Premier League.

United has lost to Brighton and Tottenham in its last two games — conceding three goals each time — to put Mourinho on the defensive and in an irritable mood.

Burnley can be a tough place to visit, but Sean Dyche's side is having its own problems this season as its small squad juggled Premier League and Europa League competition. Burnley, which went out of the Europa League at the playoff stage on Thursday night after a 1-1 second-leg draw against Olympiakos, is looking to end a run of back-to-back losses in the Premier League.

Four teams have a 100 percent record after three games and two of them meet this weekend, with Watford hosting Tottenham. Liverpool travels to Leicester for the early kickoff on Saturday and Chelsea hosts Bournemouth later that day.

Defending champion Manchester City hosts Newcastle in Saturday's late game after picking up seven points from a possible nine.

— By Steve Douglas

ITALY

Roma's visit to AC Milan on Friday is being labeled Serie A's first "American derby" since both Roma and Milan are under U.S. ownership now.

While Roma has been in American hands since 2011, when a group of four Boston executives took over control of the capital's club from the Sensi family, Milan's transformation is much more recent.

U.S.-based hedge fund Elliott Management took over control of Milan last month after the club's former Chinese owner, Li Yonghong, missed a deadline to repay part of a loan.

Both sides are coming off disappointing results. In its only match so far, Milan squandered a two-goal lead in a 3-2 loss at Napoli while Roma had to come back from two goals down to draw with Atalanta 3-3 on Monday.

Also this weekend, Cristiano Ronaldo seeks his first Italian league goal in his third appearance when Juventus visits Parma. Ronaldo didn't score until his fourth Spanish league appearance with Real Madrid last season — although he did score in other competitions during that span.

Napoli, which is perfect like Juventus, visits Sampdoria — the Genoa club which is playing its first home match since a bridge collapse in the port city killed 43 people.

— By Andrew Dampf in Rome

SPAIN

Surprising newcomer Huesca faces its toughest test yet when it visits defending champion Barcelona in the third round of the Spanish league.

After making its first-division debut with a 2-1 win at Eibar, the small club from northeastern Spain followed up with a 2-2 draw at Athletic Bilbao to stay near the top of the standings early on. Another good result Sunday at Camp Nou would be a resounding statement for the club which a decade ago hadn't even made it to Spain's second division.

Barcelona and Real Madrid are the only teams with a perfect start after two rounds. Real Madrid will go for three in a row against Leganes in a Madrid derby on Saturday.

The Valencia derby between Levante and Valencia — still winless despite high hopes after a great season a year ago — takes place Sunday at Levante's stadium, and a few hours later Real Betis will host Sevilla in the Seville derby.

Saturday's game between promoted Rayo Vallecano and Athletic Bilbao was postponed because of safety concerns at the stadium used by Rayo in Madrid.

— By Tales Azzoni in Madrid

FRANCE

Defending champion Paris Saint-Germain travels south to play promoted Nimes on Saturday, 25 years after they last met in Ligue 1.

PSG is likely to be tested both by an ambitious Nimes, which has won two of its opening three matches, and by a hostile crowd. PSG sometimes struggles when playing away at teams in the south, such as Nice and Montpellier, because fans there traditionally reserve a vitriolic welcome for PSG's players.

PSG is level on nine points and goal difference with Dijon, a small club in eastern France only formed 20 years ago. Dijon will look to continue it remarkable start with a home win against lowly Caen on Saturday.

Elsewhere, Monaco hosts Marseille on Sunday night in an important match for both teams — who have picked up just four points each so far. They met in the fourth round of matches last season, too, with Monaco crushing Marseille 6-1 at home.

Also, striker Mario Balotelli returns to add much-needed firepower to Nice's attack away to Lyon on Friday. Coach Patrick Vieira's Nice side has only picked up one point, with Balotelli suspended for the first three matches.

— By Jerome Pugmire in Paris.

GERMANY

Goals are all but guaranteed when Borussia Dortmund gets the Bundesliga's second round of games underway at Hannover.

Not one of the 52 previous meetings between the sides ended 0-0. Dortmund, which opened its league campaign with four goals against Leipzig, also boosted its attack with the addition of former Barcelona striker Paco Alcacer, who could make his debut on Friday.

Defending champion Bayern Munich visits Stuttgart on Saturday, when Borussia Moenchengladbach visits Augsburg and Bayer Leverkusen hosts Wolfsburg.

Leipzig hosts promoted Fortuna Duesseldorf on Sunday, before Schalke hosts Hertha Berlin.

— By Ciaran Fahey in Berlin.

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ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — Yankees general manager Brian Cashman says Sonny Gray admitted he expressed a desire to play in New York at the behest of his agent so as not to harm his free-agency value and didn't voice his dislike of the Big Apple until after the 2018 trade deadline had passed.

Gray was acquired by Boston in a trade from St. Louis last month and spoke of his 1 1/2 seasons in New York during a Zoom news conference on Dec. 2.

“New York was, it just wasn’t a good situation for me, wasn’t a great setup for me and my family,” he said. “I never wanted to go there in the first place.”

His agent denied Cashman's allegations in an email to The Associated Press.

Gray was traded from Oakland to the Yankees in July 2017 and went 15-16 with a 4.52 ERA with New York. He was dropped from the rotation in August 2018 after he smirked when fans booed as he walked off the Yankee Stadium mound in the third inning of a 7-5 loss to Baltimore. He was dealt to Cincinnati in January 2019.

“After the deadline was over, he asked to meet with me. He said, 'Hey, can we talk?'” Cashman said Sunday night after arriving at the winter meetings.

Cashman recalled meeting with Gray in the clubhouse office of Chad Bohling, the Yankees' senior director of organizational performance.

“He said, 'I thought you were going to trade me,'” Cashman said. “I was like, publicly I’m out trying to get pitching, starting pitching and bullpen. Why would I trade a starter when we need pitching badly? ... And he goes, ‘Well I got to tell you, I’ve never wanted to —' that’s when he told me he never wanted to be here. He hates New York. This is the worst place. He just sits in his hotel room."

“I said, Well it’s a little late now,” Cashman recalled. “So then I told him, I said, but you said you wanted to be traded here. And he said, 'My agent, Bo McKinnis, told me to do that. He told me to lie. It wouldn’t be good for my free agency to say there are certain places that I don't want to go to.'”

“And I told him: Nothing I can do about it now. I wish you’d told me well beforehand. I wish we knew this before we even tried to acquire you that you never wanted to come here," Cashman said. "We tried to do our homework. … And I said so now we’ll just have to play the year out and this winter I’ll do whatever I can to move you and we moved him to the Reds.”

Cashman said the Yankees had a minor league video coordinator who had been roommates of Gray at Vanderbilt and that Gray had mentioned to his former roommate: "Tell Cash, get me over to the Yankees. Blah, blah, blah. Like I want out of Oakland. I want to win a world championship. Blah, blah, blah. So, and it wasn’t just him. He was communicating that to a number of different people that was getting to us, that he wants to be a Yankee."

McKinnis refuted Cashman's comments.

“So Brian is trying to make people believe I told Sonny to, in Cashman’s words, `lie' to the minor league video guy to try to get Sonny to the Yankees, even though, per Cashman, Sonny did not want to be with the Yankees, to subsequently somehow help Sonny’s free agency,” McKinnis wrote in an email to the AP.

“This makes zero sense,” McKinnis added. “If any player does not want to play for a certain club — thus potentially not performing at their best if they were with that team — it does not help their career and future free agency to lie their way into a trade to that club. Brian’s claim makes no sense. Further, the words, `I want out of Oakland,' have never been said by Sonny. He loved his time with the A’s.”

Now 36, Gray has become a three-time All-Star and is 125-102 with a 3.58 ERA over 13 seasons with the Athletics (2013-17), Yankees (2017-18), Reds (2019-21), Minnesota (2022-23) and Cardinals (2024-25). The right-hander waived a no-trade provision to accept the deal to the Red Sox.

“What did factor into my decision to come to Boston is it feels good to me to go to a place now where you know what, it’s easy to hate the Yankees, right? It’s easy to go out and have that rivalry and go in it with full force, full steam ahead," Gray said. "I like the challenge. I appreciate the challenge. I accept the challenge. But this time around it's just go out and be yourself. Don't try to be anything other than yourself and if people don't like it, it is what it is. I am who I am, and I'm OK with that."

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FILE - St. Louis Cardinals' Sonny Gray pitches to a San Francisco Giants batter during the first inning of a baseball game, Sept. 24, 2025, in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vásquez, file)