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…
The expanded Club World Cup begins in 100 days, with the 32-team tournament taking place in the United States from June 14. It is the first time the club edition of the World Cup will mirror the national team version of the tournament. There have been worries about the additional workload on players — FIFPro…
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 2025 Club World Cup will feature 32 clubs from across the globe who will go through group stages and then knockout rounds. This differs from the previous format, which saw one team each from six continental confederations and the league champions from the host nation fight it out. There have been concerns over the…