USA forward Alyssa Thompson joins the Women's Super League champions from Angel City on a five-year contract.

The former Chelsea midfielder has been on a long, gruelling journey, but he has earned a long-awaited international recall Ruben Loftus-Cheek was riding high. The 2018‑19 season had been very good for him. The midfielder scored 10 goals for Chelsea and there was one game to come: the Europa League final against Arsenal. Beyond that, he had an eye on the Nations League finals with England and the chance to add to his 10 caps. Four of them had come at the 2018 World Cup in Russia; memories that will never fade. He was only 23. He was about to take the next step. And then it all fell apart. Loftus-Cheek is addressing the media at St George’s Park. He could be forgiven for pinching himself after being given an England recall on Tuesday as a late replacement for the injured Adam Wharton. Did anyone expect Thomas Tuchel to turn to him for the World Cup qualifiers against Andorra and Serbia? Did Loftus-Cheek dare to dream himself? His previous call-up had been in March 2019 when he was forced to withdraw through injury. The last of his caps was against USA in November 2018. Continue reading...

Chelsea are progressing in talks with Angel City as they attempt to sign USA forward Alyssa Thompson before Thursday's transfer window deadline.

Knighthead’s ambitions are big but it will be telling to see how a profit-driven approach collides with an independent regulator I grew up in a Britain coloured grey. During the 1970s, even though memories of the war had faded into the distance and rationing had long ended, scarcity still hung in the air. Clothes were handed down, treats were rare and the country felt smaller and more muted than the one talked about in history books. Geoff Dyer’s memoir, Homework, captures it perfectly, a postwar Britain where Airfix models seemed exciting and front rooms kept “for best” epitomised a place looking inwards, slightly embarrassed about its ambitions and potential. America existed for me in a weekly burst of Technicolor on TV. When Entertainment USA arrived in the 1980s it brought news of Disneyland, Hollywood, pizzas the size of tabletops, Pelé playing for New York Cosmos, and skies that seemed permanently blue. It appealed to all the appetites of a teenage boy in Grimsby. Later, discovering Jack Kerouac, the lure deepened – open roads and adventure felt a world away, but I had to get there. One afternoon, aged 16 in the local library, I found a book on scholarships, sent out 100 letters, and received 99 rejections. That one positive reply eventually sent me to high school as an exchange student and began a lifetime of transatlantic travel that continues to this day. Over the next three decades I crossed the ocean for work, meeting bosses, pitching to investors and building businesses with an American footprint. I have always admired the optimism, scale and willingness to take a punt that seems hard-wired into the US mindset. Continue reading...

Trio made comments in new docuseries episode Pulisic: Critics ‘disrespected me in a lot of ways’ Tim Weah, Christian Pulisic, and Mark Pulisic (Christian’s father) all delivered searing takes on ex-US men’s national team players who criticized the team during their recent run of bad form, with Weah deeming the pundits to be “evil.” The trio made the comments in the latest epsiode of the Pulsic docuseries on Paramount+, the final episodes of which were released this week. The new episodes cover the national team from the 2024 Copa América, in which the US underperformed by exiting at the group stage, up through the 2025 Nations League final, where the US lost against Panama and Canada en route to a disappointing fourth-place finish in a competition they had won in each of the previous three editions. Following that tournament, Pulisic kicked off a media firestorm when he announced that he would skip the 2025 Gold Cup, the team’s last competitive tournament before next year’s World Cup on home soil, due to fatigue after a second-straight 50-game season with Milan. Continue reading...

Real Madrid issue a statement to strongly reject plans to play Villarreal's La Liga match with Barcelona in the United States, saying it "sets an unacceptable precedent".

The Spanish FA approves plans to host December's La Liga match between Villarreal and Barcelona in the USA.

Derby County sign USA striker Patrick Agyemang from Major League Soccer side Charlotte FC on a four-year deal.

The iconic New York football club which brought football legends Pele, Franz Beckenbauer and Johan Cruyff to the USA is revived.

Liverpool had rejected numerous offers for attacker Arsenal strengthening after Champions League success Olivia Smith is poised to become the world’s first women’s player to break the £1m transfer barrier after Liverpool accepted a world-record offer from Arsenal for the 20-year-old Canada forward. The fee agreed between Arsenal and Liverpool, according to sources, exceeds the $1.1m paid by Chelsea for the USA centre-back Naomi Girma in January. Continue reading...

Squad strife and a lack of team ethic have left a talented nation laden with doubt as they hunt a first major trophy “I want people to stop asking me: ‘Why haven’t France won anything when you’re one of the best teams in the world?’” Marie-Antoinette Katoto, like all her teammates, has only one dream this summer: to win the Euros. To do that, though, they have to come to terms with a history of tournament failures with the most recent one coming at the home Olympics last year, when they were knocked out by Brazil at the quarter-final stage. “We have had opportunities and twice failed to win it at home in France. We have to have the humility to admit that,” admits Sakina Karchaoui, one of the team’s vice-captains, referring also to the 2019 World Cup on home soil, when they lost to the USA in the quarter-finals. Continue reading...

After years of drift and false starts, the US men’s team is carving out identity and intensity under their new coach – just in time for a home World Cup There is something cosmically funny about all of this. Late last summer, the United States men’s national team went out and hired the most qualified manager it could find. The one with the most impressive coaching resume far of anyone US Soccer had ever employed on the men’s side. The most expensive, certainly. By a multiple. The man brought in to arrest the tailspin the USMNT had slowly slipped into after the 2022 World Cup. To finally unlock that elusive next level. To help a golden generation, or at least a shiny one, come good at last. To salvage something, anything, from a World Cup played mostly on home soil a year from now. Not to squander it all. And what should Mauricio Pochettino add to the US national team’s brew of aptitudes and attitudes but pluck and grit? The very same underdog mentality, the ferocity and fitness, that had once taken the US from global laughingstocks to merely unembarrassing and then to internationally competitiveness. Continue reading...

Missing stars and short on sparkle, the USMNT have still found something vital at this Gold Cup: a renewed sense of belief, identity and collective fight You can, as they say, only beat the teams in front of you. You can only play with the guys you’ve got. And you can only overcome the challenges you are confronted with. When the United States men’s national team gathered to embark on the ongoing Concacaf Gold Cup in early June, success at the regional championship was tricky to define for the seven-time champions. They would, after all, be appearing absent 10 regulars and entering an event that hardly offered up the world’s strongest opposition. Continue reading...

The United States struggled in friendlies but went on to win all three of its Gold Cup group games. On Sunday against Costa Rica, they face their biggest test yet. For as much as the Gold Cup gets denigrated, it’s a much tougher tournament than it might appear. The ongoing tournament is the 11th edition in the last two decades, and this year’s US are just the 10th team to make it through three group matches unscathed (Panama became the 11th on Tuesday). US manager Mauricio Pochettino has to be pleased with his team’s performance. After rough showings in the pre-tournament friendly matches, a 5-0 win over Trinidad and Tobago was cathartic, while a 1-0 win over Saudi Arabia and a 2-1 victory against Haiti also showed that the US are trying to make winning a habit as their manager has asked. Continue reading...