Argentina striker Julian Alvarez joined Atletico Madrid from Manchester City in a deal reportedly worth more than $103 million on Monday, ending his trophy-laden, two-year spell at the English champions.

City manager Pep Guardiola said last week that Alvarez told him he wanted to leave for a new challenge.

Alvarez left Argentine team River Plate in 2022 for 14 million pounds (now $17.8 million) and helped City win the Premier League in both seasons he was in England, as well as the Champions League, the FA Cup and the Club World Cup.

In 103 appearances in all competitions, Alvarez scored 36 goals.

However, despite being first choice for Argentina, where he played alongside Lionel Messi, he was behind Erling Haaland in the City pecking order.

City could reportedly get up to 95 million euros ($104 million) for the 24-year-old Alvarez.

“Today I say goodbye to this amazing club, with a lot of emotion,” he said. “These have been two very special years. During this time, I have grown and learnt a lot — both as a player and as a person.”

City director of football Txiki Begiristain said Alvarez’s “attitude has been first-class since he first walked through the door here.

“That’s why he has improved so much,” Begiristain added. “The trophies he has won already tell their own story — he is a winner. I look forward to watching him develop further in the remainder of his career.”

City’s only signing in this transfer window is Brazil winger Savio.

Asked if City would be replacing Alvarez in the squad ahead of the new season, which starts on Friday, Guardiola said last week: “I don’t know yet. We talk every day, we see what happens.”

AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer

The smaller Chase Stadium in Fort Lauderdale opened in 2020. The larger Miami Freedom Park stadium being built in Miami is expected to open in time for the 2026 season. When it opens, that stadium will become the team’s home base.

For the past few years, South Florida fans have been traveling to Fort Lauderdale to watch the team’s games. What’ll they do now? The team will keep on playing at Chase Stadium for the 2025 season. Here’s a guide to what comes next.

Will Inter Miami abandon Chase Stadium once bigger digs open in Miami?

No. Chase Stadium, formerly DRV PNK Stadium, will continue to serve as the team’s headquarters, training facilities and youth program.

Will soccer legend Lionel Messi play at the new venue, Miami Freedom Park?

The Argentine superstar joined the team last summer. Messi’s $150 million contract expires at the end of 2025 but has an option for 2026. But it remains unknown whether he will stay beyond the 2025 season.

In June, Messi said Inter Miami likely will be his “last club.” The World Cup champion told ESPN he had no plans to join an Argentine club before ending his playing career. “I think Inter Miami is going to be my last club,” he said. “It was a difficult step to leave Europe to come here. Having become a world champion helped a lot, and also to see things differently. But I don’t think about it. I try to enjoy. That’s why I enjoy everything much more, because I am aware that there is less and less to go and I have a good time.”

Is Miami Freedom Park a stadium only?

Most definitely not. The $1 billion project known as Miami Freedom Park will transform a former golf course into a sprawling entertainment site with the stadium as its anchor. The 131-acre project calls for a 58-acre park, shops, restaurants, three hotels and office buildings. The taxpayer-owned site sits just east of Miami International Airport.

In 2018, Miami voters said yes to a plan authorizing city officials to lease the property so private developers could build Miami Freedom Park. Nearly four years later, in April 2022, Miami commissioners approved the deal. The city will collect $2.67 billion in rent over the course of the 99-year lease. Construction began last year.

Will Fort Lauderdale be sad to see the team make the move to Miami?

“It’s disappointing to know that the games will be played in Miami,” Fort Lauderdale Mayor Dean Trantalis said. “But the administrative offices and the youth academy will remain in Fort Lauderdale. The team will still practice in Fort Lauderdale. And many of the players will remain (at their homes) in Fort Lauderdale. Very little will change. Many of the games will still be played in other parts of the country and the world anyway.”

What ever happened to the park Miami Beckham United promised to build next to Chase Stadium?

The 20-acre park has yet to break ground. But it will get built, city officials say.

The park was part of the deal Beckham United made with Fort Lauderdale to build a stadium on taxpayer-owned land. The project has stalled partly because the team is using the 20-acre parcel for overflow parking.

When will the new Fort Lauderdale park open?

That remains to be seen. Fort Lauderdale entered into mediation talks last year with Beckham United to iron out several matters, including a dispute over whether the city should pay a $6 million tab for demolition costs of the former Lockhart Stadium.

So far, the mediation has not led to a resolution.

What does the city’s district commissioner have to say?

Commissioner John Herbst says he’d like to see construction on the park begin in spring 2025. But he’s worried the groundbreaking might be delayed another year until the team moves to Miami.

“We’re four years behind schedule now,” Herbst said. “If we let them keep using the space, my community is going to be denied the use of that park for another year.”

Susannah Bryan can be reached at sbryan@sunsentinel.com. Follow me on X @Susannah_Bryan

And when it does, South Florida soccer fans should find it a little easier to make their way to games and other events thanks to a new road that will be partly funded by $8 million in state tax dollars.

Gov. Ron DeSantis shared the news Thursday from a stage set up at Chase Stadium in Fort Lauderdale, current home base for Inter Miami and its superstar player, Leo Messi.

“We’ve never given state money to build a soccer stadium,” DeSantis said. “Our role as the state government is not to give money to a team, but to create an environment where everyone can be successful. And infrastructure is a big part of that.”

Florida will dedicate $8 million in funding from its Job Growth Grant Fund to Miami-Dade County to help build a roadway that’s going to help get people where they need to go and relieve traffic at Miami Freedom Park, DeSantis said.

“We don’t want a situation where people aren’t going to be able to get there,” the governor added. “We’re creating a nice artery where people can get to where they need to go. This will lead to even more tourists wanting to come visit the state of Florida.”

In the audience were team owners Jorge and José Mas, Fort Lauderdale Mayor Dean Trantalis and State Rep. Chip LaMarca, R-Lighthouse Point. Team owner David Beckham did not attend.

Messi, who was also absent, got a shout-out from DeSantis nonetheless.

“When they brought Messi on, that was the best thing ever,” the governor said.

Jorge Mas, the team’s managing owner, beamed while DeSantis spoke.

“I think today is an extremely important announcement,” he said after the governor invited him to say a few words. “Inter Miami was built on a dream.”

That dream, he said, was to bring professional soccer to South Florida.

Miami Freedom Park will include the county’s largest park at 58 acres, Jorge Mas said.

“The stadium is 100 percent privately funded,” he added. “It’s going to house hotels. It’s going to house offices. It’s going to house businesses.”

And, he added, it’s going to house a new soccer stadium that will be finished in fall of next year, just in time for the 2026 season.

Inter Miami’s corporate headquarters will remain in Fort Lauderdale after the team’s eventual move to Miami.

The Fort Lauderdale stadium opened in March 2020, but the plan was always to build a bigger stadium in Miami. The $1 billion project known as Miami Freedom Park also calls for a 58-acre public park and more than 1 million square feet of space for three hotels, office buildings, and an entertainment district with shops and restaurants.

In 2018, Miami voters said yes to a controversial plan to lease a mammoth city-owned property that once served as a golf course and develop it into Miami Freedom Park. The property sits just east of Miami International Airport

In 2022, Miami commissioners approved a 99-year lease deal with Miami Beckham United, paving the way for the 25,000-seat soccer stadium that will eventually become home base for the Inter Miami team.

Construction began last year.

Susannah Bryan can be reached at sbryan@sunsentinel.com. Follow on X @Susannah_Bryan

Four young kids kicking a soccer ball on a beach in Portugal partly explains why America is where it is with the beautiful game.

The group of four became six. Then eight. Then nine. Girls. Boys. Men. Women. No cones. No lines. No goals. No nets. No officials. No coaches. No sanctioning fees. No schedule.

Just a ball.

Dribbling. Bouncing. Bending. Passing. Tapping. Even to the untrained eye the ball control, and eye-foot coordination, looked damn near perfect.

Similar anecdotal examples are all over the place in Portugal, a modest nation of 10.4 million people. A person in America with its population of 336 million may go years without seeing such a scene here in the United States.

“You can’t force a kid to play on the streets here,” FC Dallas youth and boys’ academy directory, Chris Hayden, said in a phone interview.

America and its relationship with soccer has only been solidified since the early ‘90s. That’s roughly the time when we decided to care about a sport that is deified in every other nation on earth, and the game has grown steadily here ever since.

Americans who grew up in the ‘80s, or before 1995-ish, could not have conceived the state of the game would be where it is today in this country. A viable, stable professional league. A growing market to watch the leagues all over the world. Hosting World Cups. American players playing in the top leagues overseas.

America is good at fútbol, and still not even close to the best. The results this summer illustrate where we really sit. One month after it failed to get out of pool play at the Copa America tournament by losing two of its three matches, the U.S. Men’s National team lost 4-0 to Morocco in the quarterfinals of the Olympics.

(Men’s soccer in the Olympics is a 23-and-under tournament; it’s this way to essentially protect the value of FIFA’s cash elephant that is the World Cup).

This is a men’s national team issue that is in neither crisis nor is it an embarrassment. The USMNT should be a bit better than it’s played this year.

The U.S. women’s team has no such issues, for now. It’s at the top of the food chain, due primarily because this country heavily invested in the sport for girls ahead of the rest of the world. The U.S. defeated Germany 1-0 on Tuesday in Paris to advance to the gold medal match.

The rest of the world is catching the U.S. women, a development the sport needs. It’s hard to see the U.S. ever catching up to the rest of the world on the men’s side.

“We have improved and we’re getting better, but the challenge is the bar continues to be raised,” Hayden said. “And that bar is being raised by countries that had a 100-year head start (compared to the United States).

“It’s a little bit like basketball. You’re seeing European players all over the NBA now, and countries that haven’t been really playing for that long really improving, but they’re still behind the U.S.”

Hayden said the days of a kid “coming off the beach” in Europe and South American to immediately take to their youth national teams and dominate are “a thing of the past.”

Any country that has a dime to spend is mimicking some of the American system of development, and investment. Because nearly every team in these countries is a “selling club;” they’re developing talent with the goal of cashing in the lucrative “transfer fee” game.

One of the persistent challenges that the American system faces is the American-born player knows how only to play with a coach in their ear. When the American kid plays, it’s most likely a practice outlined by a coach, or game that follows a “plan.”

There is little room for the player to adopt a natural, individual, feel for the game, like a kid on a basketball court.

“The player in some ways has never been better, but it’s a double-edged sword,” Hayden said. “It’s not organic the way it was in the ‘70s or ‘80s. You’re seeing some of that now in Europe, too.

“Clubs are now trying to develop those areas for ‘free play.’ Because you do need that. The free flow and the creativity. You don’t want to coach those qualities out of them.”

It’s hard to coach it out of the American kid because they likely didn’t have it in the first place.

The net result of this is the state of the game has never been better in the United States, but the same can be said of France, Spain, Italy, Germany and the rest.

©2024 Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Visit star-telegram.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

In truth, he probably should not have been playing at all. Kane missed the end of the Bundesliga season with Bayern Munich because of a back injury. It was serious enough that it made him questionable for the team’s Champions League semifinal against Real Madrid in May.

He was not the only player to be hampered. Jude Bellingham was still suffering from the aftereffect of a dislocated shoulder in November and may need surgery. For months, Bellingham has been wearing strapping on his shoulder that enables him to play freely. Some good news for Real Madrid fans is that Kylian Mbappé is unlikely to need surgery on his nose after breaking it while playing for France at the Euros.

Spanish goalkeeper Unai Simon had an operation on his wrist shortly after the tournament, which had been needed for some time. He managed to get through Spain’s victorious Euro 2024 campaign by using painkilling injections.

It was a similar story at the Copa América. You will have seen the pictures of Lionel Messi in tears, his ankle looking about twice the size it should have been after injuring it in the final. He already had to nurse his way to that final after suffering a groin problem in Argentina’s second game against Chile.

His Inter Miami teammate, Luis Suárez, also  had to miss the MLS All-Star Game with what has been described as knee discomfort, presumably related to the chronic knee issue he has had to manage for the past few years.

But perhaps more than all of that, many of the biggest players just looked exhausted.

“It’s so tough with crazy schedules and then coming together for the end of the season for one last tournament,” Bellingham said after the final. “It’s difficult on the body — mentally and physically you are exhausted.”

Bellingham, 21, played 54 games for club and country in a season that spanned 11 months, from the second week in August to the middle of July. Real Madrid manager Carlo Ancelotti tried to manage Bellingham’s game time, giving him the odd week off here and there, but even when he was left on the bench at times, Ancelotti pressed him into action — shoulder strapping and all.

It is no wonder Bellingham was tired, but his workload was relatively light compared with others. Manchester United’s seemingly indestructible Bruno Fernandes got through 5,399 minutes last season. William Saliba of Arsenal in the Premier League and Germany’s captain, Ilkay Gundogan, also got more than 5,000 minutes under their belts. “It has been a very demanding season,” Gundogan said during Euro 2024.

Julián Álvarez might not have played the same number of minutes (3,480 for Manchester City), but his schedule has been brutal. His season began Aug. 11, playing for Manchester City until May, with his longest break between games coming in at 13 days. Fifteen days after the FA Cup final, he appeared in his first pre-Copa game for Argentina. He played two friendlies before starting all but one of its games during the tournament, then, after a break of 10 days, he was on the team for Argentina’s opening game at the Olympics, that marathon game against Morocco.

All of which backs up the point being made by FIFPro, the global players’ union, and some of the leading European leagues as they issue a legal complaint against FIFA, accusing soccer’s governing body of presiding over an international calendar that is “beyond saturation.”

FIFPro said: “The schedule has become unsustainable for national leagues and a risk for the health of players. FIFA’s decisions over the last years have repeatedly favored its own competitions and commercial interests, neglected its responsibilities as a governing body and harmed the economic interests of national leagues and the welfare of players.”

It is worth pointing out that complaints from Premier League teams about overwhelming scheduling ring hollow. They conduct lengthy preseason and postseason tours, which involve heavy travel. Chelsea is playing five games in 13 days in a preseason tour spanning the United States. Tottenham Hotspur and Newcastle United flew to Australia the day after the last Premier League season finished.

The point remains that the approach of FIFA — and most other governing bodies, including UEFA — to scheduling has consistently been “more is more.” The expansion of the World Cup from 2026, the revamped Champions League format, the new Club World Cup, the Nations League and whatever other brilliant wheezes they can dream up, all mean it is technically possible for an elite men’s player to play 87 games next season. No player will actually be on the field that many times, but it illustrates the point FIFPro is making. There is too much soccer, and even if you do not really care about player burnout, the overwhelming amount of games devalues the whole thing.

“You start in August and until May you don’t stop,” said Spanish soccer player Mikel Oyarzabal. “Then in June there is the national team and after that a Club World Cup. They will finish up in July and then, a few weeks later, the league starts again. It needs to be turned back, but it is not up to us. We have to adapt as best we can.”

Clubs generally do their best to regulate the number of games their key players appear in, and have a variety of methods to judge when the players are reaching their capacity and need a rest. But the sheer number of games — and their importance — means it can be difficult to determine which ones a player can miss.

There is also the desire from the players involved to play in games that from a medical perspective, they probably should not have done. Everyone who played through injury at the Euros and the Copa this summer probably would have rested had they been run-of-the-mill league games.

FIFPro has also raised concerns about excessive painkilling injections that are often given to players to squeeze a few more minutes or games out of them. The risk is not the injections themselves, but that they mask the pain that serves as the body’s way of letting the player know they are injured.

The point is that at the major tournaments this summer, despite brilliant play, thrilling moments and new heroes, the overall spectacle was diminished because the biggest stars either got injured, were playing with existing injuries or were tired.

“We are human beings, not machines,” former Liverpool and West Ham goalkeeper Adrián said. “We need a balance, for the fans to enjoy football, too. We need to be fresh and able to play. There are no movies without actors.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Ronaldo has scored more goals, but Messi has won more World Cups. Ronaldo has more Champions League titles, but Messi has more league championships. Ronaldo has his own self-funded museum … and now Messi has “The Messi Experience: A Dream Come True,” a unique multimedia look at the Argentine’s life and career.

The exhibition, available at The Hangar Coconut Grove, 3385 Pan American Drive, Miami, takes visitors on an immersive, interactive exploration of everything Messi, from a recreation of his childhood bedroom in his family’s humble home in Rosario, Argentina, through his triumphs with Barcelona and the Argentine national team.

It was originally set to close in June, but tickets are available through the end of August. And there’s even a Back-to-School promotion: Get 15% off by using code BTSMESSI through Wednesday, Aug. 14.

At one point in the exhibition, a phone rings and the speaker on the other end of the line invites the 13-year-old Messi to come to Spain, launching his unparalleled career. In another place the exhibition explores his short-lived and emotional decision to resign from the national team.

“It’s super important that when you learn about his life you know it wasn’t all great,” said David Rosenfeld, cofounder of Primo Entertainment, the Miami-based company that worked with Messi to put the exhibition together. “So he takes you on that roller coaster. The empowerment that we’re trying to show here, especially for kids, is never give up and it could happen. That’s kind of the message.”

The exhibition features nine interactive installations as well as thematic installations and physical games. Rosenfeld said planning for “The Messi Experience” began more than 2 1/2 years ago, before the player’s greatest triumph, Argentina’s World Cup win in Qatar in 2022, and before his move to Inter Miami and MLS last summer.

But those events necessarily forced some alterations. The tour opens with a recreation of Argentina’s victory parade through the streets of Buenos Aires while in another room there is a much-larger-than-life replica of the World Cup trophy Messi kissed after Argentina defeated France on penalty kicks.

“We would have done it regardless,” Rosenfeld said. “Obviously him winning the World Cup and coming to Miami exponentially helped everything. But he was already Messi.

“We were confident with the fact that he was such a big brand and he was such a big athlete, this was going to be successful.”

Rosenfeld said Messi did not oversee the design of the exhibition nor what’s included, but he did participate in the creation of certain installations and signed off on the project.

“It’s an experience based on his life and his career so he had to have a hand in what’s told, how it’s told,” Rosenfeld said. “He was a big part of it.”

“The Messi Experience” opened April 25 in Miami and has drawn more than 50,000 visitors, Rosenfeld said. The others are in Los Angeles and Buenos Aires, Argentina.

For more information, visit themessiexperience.com.

©2024 Los Angeles Times. Visit latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Nevertheless, Miami coach Tata Martino said the Saturday night match in Houston against Mexican power Tigres was a perfect barometer to see how his team measured up with another Cup favorite. He found out that defending the Leagues Cup title will not be easy for his team.

Tigres edged Miami 2-1 to win the group in front of a pro-Tigres crowd of 46,080 at NRG Stadium. These two teams could meet again in the quarterfinals, as they are in the same quarter of the bracket.

To read the full report, click here for miamiherald.com

BORDEAUX, France (AP) — An early goal was enough for France to beat Argentina 1-0 and reach the men’s soccer semifinals at the Paris Olympics on Friday, in a match where fighting broke out between the players immediately after the final whistle.

There was shoving for a couple of minutes before the players were broken up. Some France players appeared to sprint down the tunnel moments later. But they came back out a short time later and did a lap of honor.

Argentina’s players were booed throughout the match by a hostile crowd, which celebrated early on when striker Jean-Philippe Mateta headed home in the fifth minute for coach Thierry Henry’s team, which will face Egypt in the last four on Monday in Lyon.

Mateta was celebrating with captain Alexandre Lacazette when they noticed the skirmish. Lacazette rushed back to help break it up, as did Henry and counterpart Javier Mascherano, who appeared to block one of his own staff members from joining in.

“I went to shake the opposing coach’s hand and all of a sudden I saw a lot of things happening,” Henry said. “I don’t like seeing this kind of thing. It wasn’t necessary.”

As France fans continued celebrating, stewards and a handful of riot police formed a ring around the pocket of Argentina fans inside the stadium.

A racism scandal had heightened pre-match tensions, following a video of Argentina players singing an offensive song about French players of African heritage as they celebrated their Copa America victory last month.

Henry was annoyed that Enzo Millot — who had been substituted — got a red card for his part in the fracas.

“We didn’t want to lose a player (to suspension) but it was pointless, he wasn’t even playing (at the final whistle),” Henry said. “I’m really not happy about that. We were all united, the only drawback is getting a red on the bench.”

Henry is a World Cup and European Championship winner with France, as well as English club Arsenal’s all-time record scorer. He praised his team’s resolute mentality.

“Sometimes in a competition you win with pain,” he said.

It was a night of wasteful finishing from two-time Olympic champion Argentina, summed up when Luciano Gondou blazed over deep into stoppage time.

But the miss of the game — and perhaps the tournament — went to striker Giuliano Simeone. He somehow headed well over from meters out in an evenly contested first half.

Tensions briefly flared during first-half stoppage time when Mateta went to check on a teammate getting treatment inside Argentina’s penalty area and was pushed away. Lacazette smoothed things over quickly and Argentina goalkeeper Geronimo Rulli put an arm around him.

There was a loud cheer when Mascherano was shown a yellow card and, as the second half ticked on, the jubilant home goaded their opponents by singing “Ils sont où les Argentins?” (Where are the Argentines?)

They weren’t on the scoresheet.

Argentina striker Julián Álvarez shot over and threw his head back in disbelief. A World Cup champion, twice a Copa America and Premier League winner, Alvarez failed to score in this tournament.

France thought it scored again with a few minutes left in regulation time, but Michael Olise’s effort was ruled out when a video replay showed midfielder Maghnes Akliouche fouling an Argentina player moments earlier.

France won its only Olympic title in 1984, the year it also won the European Championship.

Argentina, the 2004 and ’08 Olympic champion, was given a hard time by the Bordeaux crowd.

The first few Argentina players came out to booing before kickoff. The stadium music system then drowned out much of the jeering.

Argentina’s national anthem was also met with a chorus of jeers and whistles, and home fans booed Argentina’s players after the kickoff when they touched the ball.

Earlier Friday, Argentina’s handball team was jeered as it entered the South Paris Arena arena. Last week, Argentina’s men’s rugby sevens players were raucously and constantly booed by a Stade de France crowd of 69,000 during a quarterfinal against the home team.

Despite the off-field tensions leading into this soccer quarterfinal, security measures were not increased and the local police prefecture said security forces stuck to the initial plan.

Over 400 police and gendarmerie officers were deployed on for the match, in addition to 100 military personnel, and security forces used drones to help make the event safe.

The atmosphere outside the stadium was anything but tense, however. Fans of both nations mingled with each other without any signs of hostility, some with Argentina flags or jerseys with soccer superstar Lionel Messi’s name on the back.

The match itself was a rematch French fans have been waiting for since Argentina’s dramatic penalty shootout win in the 2022 World Cup final. But because it’s primarily an Under-23 tournament, superstars like Messi and Kylian Mbappé were not playing.

France fans made up most of the 42,000 crowd. Bordeaux is a six-time French champion that has now been relegated two divisions to the fourth-tier amateur league by France’s soccer finance watchdog, DNCG, after filing for bankruptcy.

France great Zinedine Zidane burst onto the scene with Bordeaux, known as “Les Girondins” by soccer fans around France.

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AP Summer Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games

Don Garber never pretended to know everything about soccer, but he did know business, and that’s served him well as the head of Major League Soccer for the past 25 years.

Garber celebrates his anniversary as MLS commissioner this month. After he helped rescue the league from collapse in 2001, MLS has steadily grown in profile in the United States and internationally.

“I was an experienced sports marketing executive. I had enormous energy. I loved this sport overall, and I really loved the opportunity that MLS would provide for me personally,” Garber said. “But even to this day, I don’t weigh in on coaching decisions, I don’t drive the technical direction of the league. I influence it, because I feel like I understand strategy, how research can inform decisions, how to create consensus, how to work harder than anybody to get to a preferred outcome. But I’m not a an expert in the sport, and I don’t pretend to be.”

During Garber’s watch, the league has expanded from 12 to 30 teams with the addition of San Diego FC next year. He introduced the league’s marketing arm, Soccer United Marketing, encouraged the construction of soccer-specific stadiums and spurred the growth of an academy system to develop players in the United States.

Two clubs, LAFC and Inter Miami, home of superstar Lionel Messi, are valued at over $1 billion. Total attendance at MLS matches at the halfway point of this season was 6.5 million, up 13% over the same period last year.

Before he came to MLS, Garber was head of NFL International. In 1999, NFL team owners Lamar Hunt and Robert Kraft approached Garber and asked if he might be interested in serving as MLS commissioner. It was a controversial pick, given that Garber had no soccer background.

The league, launched in 1996, was in trouble. It was bleeding millions and by 2001 it appeared on the verge of folding. But Garber persuaded the Hunt and Kraft families and Philip Anschutz to bankroll the league’s teams.

“There were so many challenges but I think the first was legitimacy, relevance, value and position in the major league landscape here in our country, where we were able to, you know drive opportunity, opportunity for players, opportunity for employees, opportunity for fans, opportunities for community,” Garber said. “And I think we achieved that.”

Hunt, who owned the NFL’s Kansas City Chiefs and FC Dallas and the Columbus Crew, passed away in 2006. The Hunt family, which still owns the Chiefs and FC Dallas, remains close to Garber. Clark Hunt even introduced Garber when he was inducted into the National Soccer Hall of Fame.

“He’s definitely a visionary,” Hunt told The Associated Press. “And he’s someone who doesn’t take no for an answer. If there’s a problem that doesn’t appear to have a solution, he’s going to push and he’s going to find a way to make it happen. I really think those qualities are very important and very helpful to Don in leading Major League Soccer.”

Among Garber’s notable accomplishments is the league’s academy system. All MLS teams now have academies to develop talent, something that had historically been lacking in the United States.

Recently, Philadelphia Union prosect Cavan Sullivan made his debut with the senior team at age 14. In a unique deal, the Union signed him to a contract that will allow him to transfer to Manchester City in the Premier League when he is old enough.

Manchester City allowed the Union to continue to develop Sullivan, signifying confidence in the team’s guidance of the teenager’s career.

The league got a big boost with the addition of Messi, the eight-time Ballon d’Or winner, who was signed by Inter Miami last year. But it’s not just Messi. A record 48 MLS players participated in the recent Copa America and the European Championships.

After a quarter-century, Garber can’t settle on the initiative he’s most proud of. He prefers to look at the totality of his tenure.

“MLS has driven the rise of a soccer nation in America and Canada. And that sounds like it’s amorphous, but it’s not. That’s the most important accomplishment, that we built a powerful soccer nation. We’ve been the driver of the growth of the beautiful game in our region at so many different levels,” Garber said. “We have become a respected league in the eyes of players, fans and institutions that govern the sport. I am most proud of that. ”

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AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer

PARIS (AP) — On the sidelines of the Paris Olympics, FIFA has been doing business with its future hosts of the men’s World Cup including Saudi Arabia.

FIFA said on Monday it received in Paris the formal bid books from leaders of the seven member federations which are the exclusive bidders for the World Cups of 2030 and 2034.

The 2030 World Cup is being co-hosted by Spain, Portugal and Morocco plus three South American neighbors — Argentina, Paraguay and inaugural 1930 host Uruguay — who will each stage one of the tournament’s 104 games.

Saudi Arabia is the only candidate for the 2034 World Cup, which was fast-tracked by FIFA last year.

The two bids are set to be confirmed at a Dec. 11 online meeting of FIFA’s 211 member federations.

First, the proposed World Cup project plans must be detailed in hundreds of pages which FIFA aims to publish later this week. They must include plans for stadiums, hotels, training fields, transport and national security.

“FIFA will thoroughly assess the bid books and publish its evaluation report” due in the last quarter of the year, the world soccer body said in a statement.

World Cup bidders also must now submit to an assessment of their human rights obligations to host the tournament. FIFA was invited in May to work with independent experts to assess the candidates.

FIFA’s human rights policy was introduced eight years ago after it awarded the 2018 and 2022 editions to Russia and Qatar, respectively, and was first applied for the 2026 tournament candidates.

The United States, Canada and Mexico will co-host the 2026 World Cup, the first with 48 teams instead of 32. They beat rival bidder Morocco in a 134-65 vote decided in 2018 in Moscow.

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AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer