Man City Academy Shining After Selling £170m Worth Of Talent In Summer

Tencent's growing focus on overseas assets and markets is in sharp contrast to its much slower dealmaking pace at home since the regulatory clampdowns intensified, and the divestment of a clutch of domestic portfolio companies.

Certainly the idea of having up to seven academy graduates on a pitch during a Premier League game seemed far-fetched at best. Yet on Saturday, Southampton arrive at the Etihad Stadium having spent more than £40million on four of City's kids in one summer.

Former RB Leipzig boss Domenico Tedesco and Manchester City... Pep Guardiola insists it is too early to tell whether... 'How can I as a manager teach him?': Pep Guardiola explains... EXCLUSIVE: Goal machine Erling Haaland earns a mammoth...

The day after Overwatch 2 launched, a community manager posted a status update blog saying, "We have made the decision to remove phone number requirements for a majority of existing Overwatch players. Any Overwatch player with a connected Battle.net account, which includes all players who have played since June 9, 2021, will not have to provide a phone number to play."

You can enable SMS Protect by logging into your Battle.net account, going to Account Details >Phone Number and entering your phone number. Click Continue and you'll receive a verification code via text. Enter the code and your account will be verified. 

Cole Palmer has followed Foden's lead and is now fully integrated into Guardiola's squad. At least one Premier League club asked to take the tricky forward on loan this term but were met with a firm no. 

However, any Overwatch accounts that are not linked to a Blizzard account will still need to link their account to a phone number, as will new players. The blog post says this measure help protect the community against cheating.

The long-awaited sequel to Blizzard's hero shooter, Overwatch 2 introduces 5v5 PVP gameplay, a new battle pass system and, eventually, new story missions, though those won't be coming until next year. 

Tencent's new strategy indicates how China's tech titans are looking to emerge from the regulatory shadows after two years of crackdown and uncertainty that weighed on their sales at home and triggered a massive selloff in their stocks.

Tencent's pursuit of bigger stakes in its existing gaming portfolio or new targets would give the company a bigger say in such firms' businesses and also help it secure the intellectual property rights of popular games, said the four sources.

Former RB Leipzig boss Domenico Tedesco and Manchester City... Pep Guardiola insists it is too early to tell whether... 'How can I as a manager teach him?': Pep Guardiola explains... EXCLUSIVE: Goal machine Erling Haaland earns a mammoth...

The Ubisoft deal comes just after deep-pocketed Tencent in June acquired Copenhagen-based Sybo Games, the developer of hit mobile game Subway Surfer, and in August took a 16.25% stake in Japan's "Elden Ring" developer FromSoftware.

Guardiola is also convinced that top scorer Erling Haaland will eventually suffer a dip in form. Haaland has 19 goals in 11 matches for City this season and has surpassed all expectations during his first two months at the club.

However, it is now aggressively seeking to own majority or even controlling stakes in overseas targets, notably in gaming assets in Europe, the four people with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters.

Is Overwatch 2 free-to-play? Overwatch 2 is free to download and play. You can acquire the season one premium battle pass for 1,000 credits (a $10 purchase), and buy cosmetics in the shop with that same currency. If you've bought the Watchpoint Pack (available on PC,

How to set up SMS protect Blizzard has shifted from its original stance that all accounts would need a verified phone number in order to launch the game. Blizzard originally stated that "certain types of phone numbers, including prepaid and VOIP, cannot be used for SMS Protect." The decision, which was intended to combat cheating and other disruptive behavior pkvgames was criticized for leaving new and existing players behind: Of US adults ages 18-29, 38% have a prepaid plan, according to YouGov data. 

Overwatch 2 server issues Launch day was rough for Overwatch 2. The game was hit by two distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, according to Game Director Aaron Keller, exacerbating server stability issues that are common with new game releases. As a result, players were waiting in queues tens of thousands of people long just to get into the game, and once they were in, they were getting kicked out of matches and sometimes out of the server entirely -- stuck back at the end of the queue.
'We had an all-staff meeting on Monday where I highlighted three big organisations - in mobile phones, video rentals and photography - that soon got knocked off their perch by taking their eye off the ball and stopped focusing on what is important.

And clearly worth paying for - Southampton also saw a £15m bid for striker Liam Delap rejected. Almost a third of a record-breaking transfer window, totalling revenues of around £170m, came from selling academy products.