Story byThe best of 2025: Our staff pick their favourite pieces (by their colleagues)The Athletic UK StaffWed, December 31, 2025 at 5:16 AM UTC·23 min readIt was the year Newcastle United, Crystal Palace and Tottenham Hotspur fans experienced the joys of winning a trophy, the season when the English teams who never usually win, won. But grief also enveloped the year. A few months after becoming Premier League champions, Liverpool was a club in mourning after Diogo Jota and his brother, Andre Silva, died in a car crash in July, a tragedy that affected the club, the city and the sport. They will — as was shown when Wolverhampton Wanderers visited Anfield last weekend — always be remembered. AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAs the year ends, we wanted to look back on the excellent work of our writers over the past 12 months as they covered not just football, but tennis, Formula One, cycling, cricket and athletics, too. We asked The Athletic UK‘s team to nominate their favourite articles written by their colleagues, and so here are the pieces selected by our writers, editors and producers. Article: The Art of Scanning in football.