“The card looked perfect.” Nick Bruce and his son “freaked out” when they pulled an autographed Lionel Messi card from a pack around the Christmas holidays at their Ferndale, Mich., home. It was a normal reaction for sports card enthusiasts discovering a rare autographed card of a superstar athlete. “Perfect” for Bruce meant sharp edges…
For the last four years, The Athletic has polled some of the top soccer executives around the league for their thoughts and predictions ahead of a season. The answers have proved it’s no easy task to foresee what’s going to happen next in MLS. Last year, exactly zero of the 30 executives polled tipped the…
Tuesday night, Lionel Messi did what he usually does. On a Champions League stage, he delivered a sensational highlight and helped his club advance, with Inter Miami dismissing Sporting Kansas City (4-1 on aggregate) to move to the Concacaf Champions Cup last 16. But hours earlier, Messi was in less familiar territory, having received his…
The new MLS season is here and so is a new batch of kits for every team in the league. This year, we’re handing out superlatives for each new design (and lumping together all the ones that offer little more than the current template from leaguewide kitmaker Adidas). Every team has one new design this…
MLS’s 30th season kicks off Saturday a few miles away from where the league’s 29th campaign ended. The LA Galaxy won MLS Cup a shade over two months ago, but rival LAFC will lift the curtain on 2025 when they host Minnesota United Saturday afternoon. It marks the start of a season that will feature…
The graphics sprang up across social media, some in the yellow and blue of Saudi Arabian team Al Nassr, others in the flamingo pink of MLS side Inter Miami. The source of engagement was hardly new: Messi vs Ronaldo, the forever war of global football. Except, this time, it was not about Cristiano and Lionel,…
Last week, Julie Stewart-Binks sat in an empty lounge on the rooftop of a hotel near her apartment in New York City. She is about to watch a clip from her time as a Fox Sports host and reporter. It is a moment that she thinks about often, but one that she has never wanted…
Shopping for sports fans can be harder than one might think. Chances are the fan in your life already has a variety of hats, jerseys and who knows what else to rep their favorite teams and players. But there’s a massive array of sports related items out there that the person on your list may…