GENEVA (AP) — The joy that flowed across north London for Arsenal clinching a Premier League title capped a European soccer trend this season that started in a Swedish fishing village.
From stunning first-time champions to teams ending their decades-long run without a league title.
It was a season like no other in modern European soccer, sparking euphoric celebrations by fans who hardly believed their success would ever happen or feared it never would again.
Arsenal fans' wait through 22 years of mostly underachievement for another Premier League title ended late Tuesday when second-place Manchester City drew a must-win game at Bournemouth.
It had been 40 years in Denmark for AGF from Aarhus to regain the title this month and 61 years in Austria for LASK from Linz.
First-time champions included 128-year-old club Thun in Switzerland and 87-year-old Mjällby in Sweden, who set the ball rolling in October.
Why has this happened for unheralded teams that could now play in the elite and lucrative Champions League next season?
A more democratic and low-cost access to knowledge and data about running clubs and scouting players has helped, Olivier Jarosz told The Associated Press on Wednesday. He advises potential investors and teams across Europe.
If so, there could be more unheralded teams lifting trophies in small provincial towns next season.
First it was Mjällby, then weeks later Viking sealed its first Norwegian title for 34 years. That was in November, when Nordic soccer seasons end to avoid the midwinter weather.
If Mjällby was a Cinderella team that played in the third tier nine years earlier, Viking’s story was the revival of a past champion from decline.
Viking had to topple the new power in Norway, Bodø/Glimt, the Arctic Circle team that itself wrote Champions League lore this year by beating Manchester City, Atletico Madrid and Inter Milan.
Denmark made it a hat trick this month when AGF was guided to success by coach Jakob Poulsen, like Mauro Lustrinelli at Thun, a former star player who came back to his old club.
Three of the most dominant clubs in European leagues were dethroned. Ludogorets won 14 straight titles in Bulgaria, Qarabag won 11 of the past 12 in Azerbaijan, and Ferencvaros was a seven-time defending champion in Hungary.
The new Bulgarian champion is Levski Sofia, whose previous title was 17 years ago, just weeks after the club was bought by a former Goldman Sachs investment banker, Atanas Bostandjiev.
In Azerbaijan, Sabah won its first title just nine years after the club was created. Second-place Qarabag played in the Champions League this season, and beat Benfica which led to Jose Mourinho returning to coach his former club.
There was another power shift in Hungary this spring. Ferencvaros, coached by Ireland great Robbie Keane, was edged by one point by Győri ETO, whose previous title was 13 years ago.
LASK is the new champion in Austria, which was in Salzburg’s grip for a decade before the Red Bull-affiliated club went into decline three years ago.
In Romania, Universitatea Craiova won its first title since 1991, with 11-goal top scorer Assad Al Hamlawi from the Palestinian national team.
Two of the best stories just missed a Hollywood ending in France and Scotland.
Lens chased the financial juggernaut of Qatari-owned Paris Saint-Germain all the way into May pursuing a first title since 1998.
Heart of Midlothian suffered the most emotionally crushing end, leading the Scottish Premiership standings from September until the 87th minute of a showdown at Celtic on Saturday. It was the third last-day heartbreak for the low-budget, fan-owned Edinburgh club since its previous title in 1960.
No two titles were exactly alike but a trend across the 54 national leagues in Europe could be seen, Jarosz, who is based in Switzerland, told the AP in a telephone interview.
Clubs are now better run with access to good education about management structures, including from the 800-member European Football Clubs group, and data systems to analyze players for possible transfer deals.
“It's possible to create a good team on a small budget anywhere in the world,” said Jarosz, a director of LTT Sports.
UEFA creating a third-tier European competition — the Conference League — in 2021 also has an impact. It has both raised some clubs' ambitions and revenue, and also stretched the playing resources of others.
Jarosz believes the impact of new investors at smaller clubs — such as Brighton's widely admired owner Tony Bloom taking a stake in Hearts — brought a different mindset into the soccer industry.
For those that rose, staying at the top will be hard as wealthier rivals become predators.
“Since they became successful," Jarosz said, "they will get raided for staff and players.”
AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer
Arsenal supporters gather to celebrate at the Arsenal stadium after Arsenal's soccer team won the Premier League title in London, Tuesday, May 19, 2026.(AP Photo/Alberto Pezzali)
AGF Aarhus celebrate with the trophy after the Superliga soccer match between AGF and Viborg FF in Aarhus, Denmark, Sunday, May 17, 2026. (Bo Amstrup/Ritzau Scanpix via AP)
Former Arsenal player Ian Wright celebrates with Arsenal supporters at the Arsenal stadium after Arsenal's soccer team won the Premier League title in London, Tuesday, May 19, 2026.(AP Photo/Alberto Pezzali)
WASHINGTON (AP) — When acting Attorney General Todd Blanche signed off on a nearly $1.8 billion fund meant to compensate President Donald Trump's allies for alleged political prosecution, he may have pleased his boss.
But the eyebrow-raising move — the latest in his push to prove his loyalty to Trump — has agitated the same Republican lawmakers he would need to secure the permanent job.
Blanche insists he’s not auditioning for the job of attorney general. But a succession of splashy steps the Justice Department has taken under his watch since he took the position on an acting basis last month, including an indictment of former FBI Director James Comey, has left no doubt about the impression he’s hoping to make on the president who appointed him.
The fund in particular has put Blanche at the center of a Republican firestorm at a time when he aims to establish himself as the perfect person for the job for the remainder of Trump’s term. And it sharpened concerns from Democrats and other Blanche critics that he has not shed his mantle as the president’s personal attorney.
“So the nation’s top law enforcement official is asking for a slush fund to pay people who assault cops? Utterly stupid, morally wrong — Take your pick,” Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the former majority leader, said in a statement.
A former federal prosecutor in New York, Blanche came to public prominence for his lead role on Trump's defense team, including during the Republican's hush money trial in New York. That perch afforded him, he has said, a firsthand look at what he contends was the weaponization of the criminal justice system against Trump.
He was brought into the Justice Department as deputy attorney general, the No. 2 job, then was elevated last month after Trump ousted Pam Bondi.
Now he finds himself the latest Trump-appointed attorney general to simultaneously confront expectations from subordinates to uphold institutional norms and demands from the president to do his bidding.
Trump's first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, was forced out after the 2018 midterms after infuriating the president over his recusal from an investigation into ties between Russia and the 2016 presidential campaign. Another, William Barr, resigned after their relationship fizzled over Barr's refusal to back Trump's baseless claims of massive election fraud. Bondi was removed after struggling to bring successful prosecutions against Trump's political opponents.
Two weeks after becoming acting attorney general, Blanche announced the appointment of Joseph diGenova, an 81-year-old former Justice Department prosecutor from the Reagan administration, to a special position inside the department. He'll oversee a Florida-based investigation into whether former law enforcement and intelligence officials conspired over the last decade to undermine Trump.
“At some point, at the right time, that will be made public and the American people will see exactly what happened to this administration and President Trump over the past decade," Blanche told Fox News.
Prior government reviews of the FBI's Trump-Russia investigation, a centerpiece of the current conspiracy investigation, have failed to produce criminal charges against senior officials or evidence of criminal conduct by them. It's not clear what, if any, new information the continuing investigation has developed.
The Justice Department also last month obtained an indictment charging Comey, a Trump foe whose prosecution the president has long called for, with threatening Trump through a social media photo of seashells in the numerical arrangement of “86 47" — a case legal experts say will be challenging for prosecutors. Comey has said he wouldn't be surprised if the Justice Department pursues additional indictments.
In other moves, Blanche announced an indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit that has been the target of conservative outrage, with misleading donors about its activities, and has publicly defended a Justice Department crackdown on leaks to the news media, including subpoenas to reporters.
Arguably the most audacious demonstration of loyalty to Trump came this week when the Justice Department announced the creation of a $1.776 billion fund to compensate people who feel they've been unjustly investigated and prosecuted, coupled with a guarantee of immunity from tax audits for Trump and his eldest sons.
As Republican concerns grew, Blanche held a tense meeting with GOP lawmakers Thursday. Shortly afterward, Senate Republicans abruptly left Washington without voting on a roughly $70 billion bill to fund immigration enforcement agencies.
Blanche, who defended the fund at a congressional hearing this week, has said anyone who believes they've been persecuted can apply for compensation regardless of political affiliation. But the fund has been widely understood as a boon to Trump allies investigated during the Biden administration.
“It’s pretty clear that he’s not the attorney general for the United States as much as he's the attorney general for President Trump,” said Stephen Saltzburg, a George Washington University law professor and senior Justice Department official in the 1980s. He said Blanche would get an A+ if report cards were issued for fealty to Trump.
David Laufman, a former chief of staff to the deputy attorney general in President George W. Bush's administration, said that rather than protecting the Justice Department's independence, Blanche has been a “willing and ardent accomplice for carrying out any partisan or corrupt scheme the White House may devise.”
Blanche’s supporters dismiss the suggestion he is trying to curry favor with Trump to secure the permanent job.
“What he is doing is he is seeking justice based on facts and the law,” said Jay Town, who served as a U.S. attorney in Alabama during the first Trump administration. “And I don’t think that will ever change about him, whether he is the attorney general going forward or doesn’t spend another day in the administration. He is an honorable man and anybody that knows him knows that to be true.”
Blanche also says he is not angling to keep his job or feeling pressure to placate Trump.
He has told reporters he would be honored to be nominated but, "if he chooses to nominate somebody else and asks me to go do something else, I will say, ‘Thank you very much. I love you, sir.’ I don’t have any goals or aspirations beyond that.”
In recent days, he's functioned as the fund's public face and most visible defender, a role consistent with his comfort in the spotlight. He sometimes holds multiple press conferences a week and grants interviews to a variety of news outlets, a contrast to Bondi, who largely stuck to Fox News appearances.
His defenders say his experience as a federal prosecutor has made him a more sophisticated communicator for the department than Bondi, but his statements have at times invited backlash, including his refusal to rule out that violent Jan. 6 rioters could be eligible for payouts.
Though Blanche will appoint the five commissioners tasked with processing claims, his precise role in the fund’s implementation is unclear. He told CNN it was developed through negotiations with Trump’s private lawyers, not him.
For some Democrats, that's a difference without a distinction.
“Mr. Attorney General, you are acting today like the president's personal attorney," Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat, told Blanche during a combative exchange in a Senate hearing, "and that's the whole problem."
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche arrives for a closed-door meeting with Republican senators who are expected to abandon a proposal for $1 billion in security money for the White House complex and President Donald Trump's ballroom after it has failed to win enough party support, at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, May 21, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche arrives for a closed-door meeting with Republican senators who are expected to abandon a proposal for $1 billion in security money for the White House complex and President Donald Trump's ballroom after it has failed to win enough party support, at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, May 21, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
