MIAMI — Newly hired coach Javier Mascherano will not have much time to prepare Lionel Messi and his Inter Miami teammates for a jam-packed 2025 schedule that includes a few high-profile games even before the team kicks off the MLS season on Feb. 22 with an afternoon home match against New York City FC.

Mascherano, a former Messi teammate at ...Read more

CHICAGO — Trinity Rodman is tired of being asked about her dad.

By this point in her career, the 22-year-old U.S. women’s soccer team star is used to the questions. It’s hard to avoid. Her father — Basketball Hall of Famer Dennis Rodman — is one of the most famous American athletes.

Only hours after winning an Olympic gold medal in ...Read more

What's wrong with Manchester City?

I have a theory, although it's not going to be a popular one with the team's Emirati owners. The problem might be the coach, whom the club recently signed to a two-year extension that, based on the value of his previous contract, is likely worth more than $50 million.

And Pep Guardiola has earned that. In ...Read more

MIAMI — Lionel Messi, fresh off accepting his MLS MVP trophy, kicked off the holiday season by traveling 6,870 miles to Azerbaijan this week and brought along teammates Luis Suarez, Sergio Busquets and Jordi Alba for a private charity event in the capital city of Baku.

Azerbaijan is a landlocked country in Southwestern Asia, bordering the ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — On Saturday, the Galaxy won the MLS Cup. On Monday, the team began building toward next season, exercising contract options on five players, declining options on two others and opening negotiations on new deals with two players whose contracts have expired.

By MLS offseason standards, that's nothing more than some minor tweaks, ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Major League Soccer was unable to showcase its most prized jewels at its championship game.

Lionel Messi didn’t toy with defenders in the MLS Cup final. He didn’t make any of those passes that no other player could make. He didn’t create any magic.

Messi didn’t do any of that because he wasn’t here. His team, Inter ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — The Galaxy are back.

After a decade-long slump in which it lost almost as many games as it won, the team capped an improbable rise from near-worst to first Saturday, capturing a record sixth MLS Cup with a 2-1 victory over the New York Red Bulls at Dignity Health Sports Park.

With playmaker Riqui Puig, who tore the ACL in his ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Until he sustained a season-ending knee injury last week in the Western Conference final, Galaxy playmaker Riqui Puig was having a tremendous season.

So I heard.

I watched Puig play only twice this year, once in the Galaxy's season-opening 1-1 draw with Inter Miami and a second time in his team's Fourth of July defeat to LAFC ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — When Mark Delgado made his MLS debut, he was just 17 and even he acknowledges his approach to soccer was unsophisticated.

"Just being a young kid and running around," he said.

Fortunately for Delgado, his team, the now-defunct Chivas USA, had a rookie assistant coach named Greg Vanney. And while Vanney could do little for the ...Read more

MIAMI — From the moment Inter Miami was launched five years ago, co-owners David Beckham and Jorge and Jose Mas were bullish on the desire to someday play against the world’s elite teams.

They finally will get that chance at the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup, a 32-team tournament featuring many of the most famous teams in the sport and being ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — The most impactful player in Saturday's MLS Cup final won't even be on the field at Dignity Health Sports Park.

Riqui Puig, the dynamic midfielder who makes the Galaxy's offense go, has been limping around the team's training sessions on crutches this week after tearing the ACL in his left knee in the Western Conference final. ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Angel City has parted ways with general manager Angela Hucles Mangano after the team missed the playoffs for a second time in three seasons.

The decision is the first significant move under new controlling owner Willow Bay, who joined with her husband, Disney CEO Bob Iger, in investing in the team last July. More changes are ...Read more

MIAMI — Javier Mascherano’s introductory meeting with the media as Inter Miami coach on Tuesday opened with a revelation from managing owner Jorge Mas: The legendary Argentine defensive midfielder came extremely close to joining the club in August 2019 for the final year of his playing career in 2020 with the intention of shifting into a ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — To truly understand how far the Galaxy have come in reaching the MLS Cup final on Saturday, you first must know where they started.

The Galaxy headed into last season having lost more games than they'd won since 2017. They'd made the playoffs twice in six seasons and had gone a team-record nine years without playing in the ...Read more

PHILADELPHIA — Carli Lloyd was announced as one of the newest members of the National Soccer Hall of Fame on Tuesday, earning first-ballot induction for her great career with the U.S. women’s team.

Undoubtedly the best women’s soccer player to come from the Philadelphia area — and perhaps the best of any gender — the Delran, N.J., ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Galaxy playmaker Riqui Puig will miss the MLS Cup final and the start of the 2025 season after tearing the ACL in his left knee during Saturday's 1-0 Western Conference semifinal win over the Seattle Sounders, the club announced Sunday.

There was no official timeline for Puig's return, but recovery from a ruptured ACL can take ...Read more

For much of this year, a big photo of Sophia Smith adorned a SEPTA bus shelter at 18th Street and JFK Boulevard.

The location wasn't coincidental. It was a Comcast ad at the corner where the company's global headquarters stands among Philadelphia's tallest skyscrapers.

But why did the city's biggest company, one as devoutly local as it is ...Read more

MIAMI — Bienvenido a Miami, Javier Mascherano. Welcome to Miami.

The pressure is on. The skeptics are watching.

Inter Miami announced Tuesday that Mascherano, the 40-year-old former Argentina national team star, was hired as the club’s fourth coach in five years after the unexpected resignation of Tata Martino, the runner-up for 2024 MLS ...Read more

RENTON, Wash. — Is it Pete Carroll with the Seahawks? Maybe Don James with UW? Could it be someone who oversaw an Olympic sport, or a high-school hoops team?

Trying to figure out who the best coaches are requires far more nuance and guesswork than ranking the top athletes — and ranking the top athletes is tough enough.

But what if I were ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Will Kuntz's life changed with a letter.

He was a small-college basketball player at Williams College, an even smaller liberal arts college in Massachusetts, when he found himself alone in a dorm room flipping through the school's alumni directory out of sheer boredom. On that list of former Purple Cows — that's the school's ...Read more