Latest news with #AmericanSoccer
Yahoo
29-06-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
American midfielder Johnny Cardoso uncertain for CONCACAF Gold Cup quarterfinal against Costa Rica
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — American midfielder Johnny Cardoso is uncertain for Sunday's CONCACAF Gold Cup quarterfinal against Costa Rica because of an ankle injury. The 23-year-old started friendlies against Turkey and Switzerland this month, didn't dress for the Americans' tournament opener against Trinidad and Tobago and made late-game substitute appearances in group stage games against Saudi Arabia on June 19 and Haiti last Sunday. Advertisement 'We need to assess,' coach Mauricio Pochettino said Saturday. "Today, he didn't participate with the team. He suffered a little issue in his ankle, and we'll see tomorrow if he can be on the bench or not." The winner of Sunday's game plays Canada or Guatemala on Wednesday in St. Louis. ___ AP MLB:
Associated Press
29-06-2025
- Sport
- Associated Press
American midfielder Johnny Cardoso uncertain for CONCACAF Gold Cup quarterfinal against Costa Rica
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — American midfielder Johnny Cardoso is uncertain for Sunday's CONCACAF Gold Cup quarterfinal against Costa Rica because of an ankle injury. The 23-year-old started friendlies against Turkey and Switzerland this month, didn't dress for the Americans' tournament opener against Trinidad and Tobago and made late-game substitute appearances in group stage games against Saudi Arabia on June 19 and Haiti last Sunday. 'We need to assess,' coach Mauricio Pochettino said Saturday. 'Today, he didn't participate with the team. He suffered a little issue in his ankle, and we'll see tomorrow if he can be on the bench or not.' The winner of Sunday's game plays Canada or Guatemala on Wednesday in St. Louis. ___ AP MLB:
Yahoo
26-06-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
How the NWSL is approaching its first season without a draft: 'This opened up a door'
The 2025 NWSL season marked a milestone: For the first time since the league was founded in 2013, the NWSL began the season without a draft. Last summer, the NWSL ratified a new collective bargaining agreement with a number of key changes. But one of the biggest changes was the league's decision to eliminate the drafts, both for entry-level players and for expansion teams. At the halfway point of the season, as the league heads into a lengthy international break, Yahoo Sports spoke with some key figures who either played a part or were affected by the draft change. Advertisement NWSL senior director of strategy Carlin Hudson said that the NWSL held a draft because of its roots in the United States, where that's the norm for most professional sports leagues. 'We always had this interesting balance between the global soccer game and the American way by being an American soccer league,' Hudson said. 'We had an entry draft for our entire existence, and we decided that we didn't have to do the same thing that everyone else does in America.' Similar to the WNBA, the NWSL is a relatively small league with limited spots. Unlike the NBA, MLB and MLS, which have layers of farm teams that feed into the senior team, or NFL, which has expansive rosters, NWSL teams didn't have enough room for all of their draftees, and draftees don't have much to fall back on when they get cut. Riley Tiernan played at Rutgers before signing a preseason contract and then a long-term deal with ACFC. (Photo by Ian Maule/NWSL via Getty Images) (Ian Maule via Getty Images) Now, the new system allows teams to sign players directly, factoring in the needs of both the player and the team. The result, Hudson said, is a lot more agency for the players, who can 'take the future into their own hands.' Advertisement One of the motivators for this change was the influx of young talent through the NWSL's Under-18 Entry Mechanism, a system put in place in 2021 following an antitrust lawsuit from Olivia Moultrie. Unlike the draft, the under-18 process gave players much more control to choose their teams, something that Hudson called 'incentive misalignment.' 'We didn't want to encourage players to come out as soon as possible. We want to make sure the players are coming into our league at the time that's right for them,' she said. 'Playing in college is really important, and we see players really achieve and grow a lot in college, and then, when the time is right, they can come into the league.' Part of this year's success has been due to what Hudson calls an 'incredible rookie class,' some of whom have started for their teams from the jump. Advertisement Angel City rookie Riley Tiernan is a quintessential example: The forward, who spent four seasons at Rutgers, signed a preseason contract with ACFC before eventually signing a long-term deal with the club. She now has seven goals this season and is in the running for the NWSL's golden boot. Tiernan told Yahoo Sports that her initial goal was just to prove her place on the team during preseason. 'I knew that it was a small opportunity and that there was a lot that could come from it, and it was like my time to prove myself, that was it, I needed to show myself. I think my mentality was just to show up every day and work my butt off and do as much as I could to prove to them that I deserve to be there,' she said. 'And it ended up paying off.' Portland Thorns defender Jayden Perry, another dominant rookie, said she was able to 'advocate' for herself more, but said that the lack of a draft came with plenty of obstacles. Perry, who has been starting center back in eight of the 13 games this season, signed a one-year deal out of UCLA before eventually signing an extension last month. Advertisement 'Everyone's process is so different,' Perry said. 'There's just so much unknown with it all because it's the first year having it.' Building a community Seattle Reign rookie Maddie Dahlien has had a strong start to the season. The 20-year-old forward, who joined Seattle after three seasons at the University of North Carolina, has three goals and two assists, and has started 12-of-13 games. Dahlien's decision to leave UNC a year early was deliberate, based on the Reign offering her a three-year contract. 'For me, I wasn't going to leave school unless I got a contract, so I think those were in the conversations pretty early,' Dahlien said. 'I knew Carolina was gonna be an amazing place for me to develop, so if I didn't have the opportunity to develop elsewhere, then I don't think that would've been a reality for me.' Advertisement Though she said she didn't think about it much at the time, Dahlien said that the elimination of the draft was a major factor in her decision to go pro a year early. 'The draft is definitely an intimidating process. You don't know where you're gonna end up, and you kind of have to think about where you're gonna be selected in the draft, and then you also don't really get to talk to the teams on if they see you getting a contract right away,' Dahlien said. 'For me, this opened up a door of being able to have conversations with clubs, seeing how they wanted to develop me, seeing where they thought I was in their future.' Location is an important factor as well. As players sign with teams, they're also able to choose where they want to live and start their careers. 'It can be very challenging to not know when your life is going to be uprooted as a professional athlete, and we're really proud of the fact that players get to decide where they want to live and build their lives around a location,' Hudson said. 'We don't think that that's something you have to sacrifice to be a professional athlete.' Advertisement Dahlien added that getting to work with different teams allowed her to get a better sense of where she was committing — she was able to see how the Reign operated before signing with the team. 'You were able to explore all the pieces, location, all the factors that you wouldn't really get to explore in the draft. And I think that's so important just because it's the next three years of my life, depending on the deal,' Dahlien said. 'I think it's just really important for players to have that decision going forward.' Perry, who signed her extension through 2028, said that she is excited to keep 'building more of a community' in Portland now that she knows she'll be there for the long term. 'I'm excited to try new food places and just explore Portland more, now that I'm locked in here,' she said. Maddie Dahlien left UNC a year early when the Reign offered her a three-year contract. (Photo by) (Ryan Sun via Getty Images) Wading through uncertainty Hudson has a unique perspective on the NWSL draft: Prior to joining the league office, she was drafted out of Yale and spent time with the North Carolina Courage and Washington Spirit on short-term contracts. Advertisement 'In some ways, the draft can be helpful to players who are more like me, where I was essentially throwing my hat in the ring by declaring for the draft,' she said. 'I was drafted second to last, went into the training environment. I didn't have a contract and was competing for a contract.' Hudson said that the league is hoping to find ways for players to 'self-identify' their interest in the league moving forward, to replicate that effect. As an alum of Rutgers — a Big Ten school, but not a typical women's soccer powerhouse — Tiernan said she felt that some players tended to get missed in the recruiting process. 'A lot of the time, the bigger-name schools, they get more of the attention,' Tiernan said. 'But I think that there's a lot of talent within the schools that get overlooked. I think everyone should be given a fair chance.' Advertisement Still, the NWSL has a problem with space, and can't sign every player that gets drafted. 'That piece of it, the fact you could get drafted and still not be signed, exists in some leagues but doesn't exist in every American league. So I think that that occasionally can be really confusing for players,' Hudson added. Some of that confusion still exists, even in the current format. 'There's just so much uncertainty, cause you could go to a team and they don't sign you and then you're kind of left out to dry,' Perry said. 'I was lucky enough that the Thorns reached out, took a chance on me.' Jayden Perry has scored three goals in eight games this season for the Portland Thorns. (Photo by Jack Gorman/NWSL via Getty Images) (Jack Gorman via Getty Images) Tiernan, the only player of the three who started on a trial basis, said that she didn't have any changes for the current process, but noted that her journey to the NWSL was a hard one. Advertisement 'It was definitely a very mentally challenging time for me, probably one of the toughest things I've had to go through mentally. Just the in-between of not knowing where I stood and having really no idea of whether or not I was gonna be a part of the team,' Tiernan said. Tiernan, who didn't get her contract offer until four weeks after the tryout process began, said that the stress of not knowing whether she would get a spot was difficult. But all of that changed when the process was finally over. 'I literally was crying the night before they offered me a contract, just because I was so overwhelmed and it was such a long process,' Tiernan said. 'It was all worth it once I got pulled into the office, and they offered me a contract. I forgot about all the tough stuff I had to go through and just focused on the good.' Looking for ways to 'innovate' As with any major change, there are some drawbacks. Eliminating the draft meant no ceremony, something that Perry said was especially disappointing. Perry attended last year's draft while supporting UCLA teammate (and now Thorns teammate) Reilyn Turner, and was hoping to get her own this year Advertisement 'Selfishly, I wanted there to be a draft,' Perry said. 'I wanted to hear my name called and go through all of that, and I've always kind of been picturing that since I knew I wanted to play pro.' Hudson said that's something the NWSL has thought about: 'We still have that question of, how do we make sure that our fans are introduced to the new players coming into the league?' Part of that is also finding a distinction in the players coming into the league — like rookies coming from college, as opposed to U-18 players or players entering from other leagues. The NWSL Rookie of the Year Award, for example, has always been given to players coming from college. (Nearly all of the previous Rookies of the Year have been first-round draft picks; only one, Bethany Balcer in 2019, was undrafted.) 'Even the term 'rookie' is something that's based out of the draft class,' Hudson said. 'I think that we're probably going to continue to use the word rookie, and we'll see how that evolves, but it's just inherent to the American landscape.' Advertisement Despite the lingering challenges of the new system, Hudson and the rookies are all optimistic about the new process going forward. 'It's provided the teams with as much flexibility as the players,' Hudson said. Teams have to focus more on scouting, while also trying to make their programs more appealing to incoming players. Hudson said that the shift is allowing clubs to 'innovate' when it comes to recruitment. Not having a draft also allows teams to find players that fit well into their current lineups, rather than drafting players in positions that a team might not really need. 'I think the Reign had a little bit of trouble on the attack last year, and so just being able to hopefully try to help and contribute this year was definitely something that went into my decision,' Dahlien said of her ability to fill in on Seattle's roster. (The Reign scored 27 goals last year; they are already at 17 halfway through this season.) Advertisement Tiernan echoed that, saying that Angel City 'definitely needed some more forwards,' specifically a striker. Perry, meanwhile, was a great fit for Portland after longtime center back Becky Sauerbrunn retired. 'That's obviously a major role to be filled, cause she's such a great player, and they also had some other girls leave. So I knew that coming here I would have a good chance to be able to prove myself,' Perry said. 'That definitely played into my decision.' Without the draft, the onus is on teams to attract players, rather than the draft being a 'crutch,' per Hudson. 'We're starting to see clubs really be able to flex their muscles in the areas where they believe they are best, and it has led to our clubs creating more of a player-friendly environment as well to make themselves as attractive as possible to players,' Hudson said. 'They are competing with one another. They don't have rights to the No. 1 draft pick anymore.'
Yahoo
18-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Empty seats are everywhere at the Club World Cup. But does this miss the real point?
If there's a lesson to be learned from the Club World Cup so far, it's that images of nothingness can still generate hysteria. Empty seats – which are apparently a festering scourge upon the game of football, a tragedy representing the plastic bankruptcy of American soccer fandom and/or the Club World Cup, an issue demanding alarmist coverage delivered with brows fully furrowed – have been commonplace in the competition's opening dozen games. Headlines (including from this very publication) have followed. Social media is awash in panoramic photos from a nation of press boxes, informing you incredulously that this image, so obscene in its emptiness, was taken a mere 45 minutes before kickoff – or (gasp) even closer. Why do we, the fans, observers, journalists, and other people who simply watch these games, care? What is it about the sight of a whole lot of plastic folding chairs with nobody in them that inflames our passions? Since when did we all become Clint Eastwood at the 2012 Republican National Convention? Advertisement Related: Trent Alexander-Arnold takes first step of Real Madrid high-wire act | Barney Ronay Empty seats mean unrealized revenues from tickets, concessions, merchandise, parking and exploitative fees, but that stuff isn't affecting our bottom line. The marketing strategy that demanded premium prices for those seats was misguided at best and laughably hubristic at worst, but it was not ours. There were plenty of inflated promises about guaranteed sellouts, the 'greatest spectacle in club football history', involving the '32 best teams in the world' that are being made to look completely silly in hindsight – but we weren't the ones who promised them. At most, the extent of our involvement with an empty seat at the Club World Cup is sitting next to one. Still, the tenor of the zeitgeist contains a strange mix of worry, sadness, and above all, cynicism. The empty seats are taken as a physical sign that while Fifa may care a little about games taking place in front of passionate fans, it cares far more about the money it gets from selling the TV rights, advertising space, and other considerations – often to the sovereign wealth fund of the country hosting a future World Cup, or the previous one. In theory, the empty seats prove that fans and atmosphere – the things that make soccer what it is – are of secondary importance. I would suggest that these critiques, while valid and true, miss the point. We are just talking about seats here. Not all of them are empty, and many of them are in very, very large stadiums. So far, Club World Cup venues have been about 52% full on average, using attendance figures as announced by Fifa. (In reality, those figures are likely far more representative of the number of tickets sold or distributed rather than butts in seats, but they at least give us an idea.) Going by the median percentage, which downplays the outliers, stadiums have been at 43% capacity. Advertisement Those are ugly numbers. If a professional club team (or several) consistently played in front of stadiums that were half-full or less, one might question whether they're playing in the right stadiums. If this dynamic sounds vaguely familiar to you, you may be a fan of MLS. The US first division began its life by living a week-in, week-out version of this very problem – a new competition that nobody knew quite what to make of, with most teams playing in massive NFL or college football stadiums in which even decent crowds were made to look minuscule and sparse. The league slowly but surely learned its lesson – nearly every one of its 30 teams plays in their own intimate grounds, the largest of which top out at about 30,000. It's not a league of constant sellouts, but the environments have improved markedly. It's a lesson Fifa should have learned, given they're hosting this tournament in MLS's backyard. There were plenty of raucous Brazilian fans on hand at the cavernous MetLife Stadium on Tuesday for Fluminense's draw with Dortmund, but the 84,000 capacity venue was still half-full. It leaves you to wonder how much more intense the occasion might have been just down the road at the 25,000-capacity Sports Illustrated Stadium, home of the New York Red Bulls (which is also more easily-accessible by public transit). Myriad other factors have affected turnout. There are well-founded fears of Ice raids, which may well have kept immigrant fans – undocumented or not – away from stadiums. For traveling fans, visa processing times have been a nightmare. In the case of teams like Ulsan Hyundai, Urawa Red Diamonds and Mamelodi Sundowns, the competition is far enough away to make travel all but impossible. For domestic fans, many games take place in the middle of workdays. And that's without even getting into ticket prices, which started in the hundreds of dollars and have only dropped as the dynamic pricing model has kicked in with kickoffs looming. Related: David Squires on … gimmicks and surprise guests as the Club World Cup kicks off Seen one way, the 22,137 who attended Chelsea v LAFC in Atlanta left 70% of the stadium empty. Seen another way, thousands of Atlantans (as well as Chelsea and LAFC fans) showed up despite all the mitigating factors listed above, in the middle of a Monday work day, for a game in a competition that nobody seems to know what to make of, involving an MLS team that plays 3,000 miles away and who only officially qualified weeks ago. I submit to you that, given all that, the attendance was a minor triumph. Chelsea will play in front of fewer fans when they visit Bournemouth's Dean Court this upcoming Premier League season. Advertisement Similarly, perhaps it should be celebrated that just under 35,000 came to see Flamengo play Esperance de Tunis later that night in Philadelphia, or that 40,311 dealt with the well-known traffic and crowd issues at the Rose Bowl to watch Monterrey v Inter. These are not the sellouts Fifa promised, but those promises, like many Fifa boasts, were stupid. The enthusiasm evident in the crowds themselves tell the rest of the story. When crowd sizes rankle, perhaps the problem is one of perception; of Fifa's uncanny ability to get in its own way. Football's world governing body has allowed the luxurious excesses of the World Cup – as in the actual one, the one that will take place next year – to cloud its vision of what this tournament, what the club game, is and can be. The World Cup has prestige. So much prestige, in fact, that fans can be assured that no matter which teams they're going to see, they will be watching a seminal moment in the modern history of those countries' sporting stories; and perhaps a milestone in the life of a country itself. Being a club fan is far more intimate, even for the biggest clubs in the world. It's a regular, everyday devotion that simply doesn't fit with Fifa's maximalist tendencies. Maybe that's why empty seats at these games have become such a focal point – they're an uncomfortable reminder that the world of every club is only so big.
The Guardian
18-06-2025
- Sport
- The Guardian
Empty seats are everywhere at the Club World Cup. But does this miss the real point?
If there's a lesson to be learned from the Club World Cup so far, it's that images of nothingness can still generate hysteria. Empty seats – which are apparently a festering scourge upon the game of football, a tragedy representing the plastic bankruptcy of American soccer fandom and/or the Club World Cup, an issue demanding alarmist coverage delivered with brows fully furrowed – have been commonplace in the competition's opening dozen games. Headlines (including from this very publication) have followed. Social media is awash in panoramic photos from a nation of press boxes, informing you incredulously that this image, so obscene in its emptiness, was taken a mere 45 minutes before kickoff – or (gasp) even closer. Why do we, the fans, observers, journalists, and other people who simply watch these games, care? What is it about the sight of a whole lot of plastic folding chairs with nobody in them that inflames our passions? Since when did we all become Clint Eastwood at the 2012 Republican National Convention? Empty seats mean unrealized revenues from tickets, concessions, merchandise, parking and exploitative fees, but that stuff isn't affecting our bottom line. The marketing strategy that demanded premium prices for those seats was misguided at best and laughably hubristic at worst, but it was not ours. There were plenty of inflated promises about guaranteed sellouts, the 'greatest spectacle in club football history', involving the '32 best teams in the world' that are being made to look completely silly in hindsight – but we weren't the ones who promised them. At most, the extent of our involvement with an empty seat at the Club World Cup is sitting next to one. Still, the tenor of the zeitgeist contains a strange mix of worry, sadness, and above all, cynicism. The empty seats are taken as a physical sign that while Fifa may care a little about games taking place in front of passionate fans, it cares far more about the money it gets from selling the TV rights, advertising space, and other considerations – often to the sovereign wealth fund of the country hosting a future World Cup, or the previous one. In theory, the empty seats prove that fans and atmosphere – the things that make soccer what it is – are of secondary importance. I would suggest that these critiques, while valid and true, miss the point. We are just talking about seats here. Not all of them are empty, and many of them are in very, very large stadiums. So far, Club World Cup venues have been about 52% full on average, using attendance figures as announced by Fifa. (In reality, those figures are likely far more representative of the number of tickets sold or distributed rather than butts in seats, but they at least give us an idea.) Going by the median percentage, which downplays the outliers, stadiums have been at 43% capacity. Those are ugly numbers. If a professional club team (or several) consistently played in front of stadiums that were half-full or less, one might question whether they're playing in the right stadiums. If this dynamic sounds vaguely familiar to you, you may be a fan of MLS. The US first division began its life by living a week-in, week-out version of this very problem – a new competition that nobody knew quite what to make of, with most teams playing in massive NFL or college football stadiums in which even decent crowds were made to look minuscule and sparse. The league slowly but surely learned its lesson – nearly every one of its 30 teams plays in their own intimate grounds, the largest of which top out at about 30,000. It's not a league of constant sellouts, but the environments have improved markedly. It's a lesson Fifa should have learned, given they're hosting this tournament in MLS's backyard. There were plenty of raucous Brazilian fans on hand at the cavernous MetLife Stadium on Tuesday for Fluminense's draw with Dortmund, but the 84,000 capacity venue was still half-full. It leaves you to wonder how much more intense the occasion might have been just down the road at the 25,000-capacity Sports Illustrated Stadium, home of the New York Red Bulls (which is also more easily-accessible by public transit). Myriad other factors have affected turnout. There are well-founded fears of Ice raids, which may well have kept immigrant fans – undocumented or not – away from stadiums. For traveling fans, visa processing times have been a nightmare. In the case of teams like Ulsan Hyundai, Urawa Red Diamonds and Mamelodi Sundowns, the competition is far enough away to make travel all but impossible. For domestic fans, many games take place in the middle of workdays. And that's without even getting into ticket prices, which started in the hundreds of dollars and have only dropped as the dynamic pricing model has kicked in with kickoffs looming. Sign up to Soccer with Jonathan Wilson Jonathan Wilson brings expert analysis on the biggest stories from European soccer after newsletter promotion Seen one way, the 22,137 who attended Chelsea v LAFC in Atlanta left 70% of the stadium empty. Seen another way, thousands of Atlantans (as well as Chelsea and LAFC fans) showed up despite all the mitigating factors listed above, in the middle of a Monday work day, for a game in a competition that nobody seems to know what to make of, involving an MLS team that plays 3,000 miles away and who only officially qualified weeks ago. I submit to you that, given all that, the attendance was a minor triumph. Chelsea will play in front of fewer fans when they visit Bournemouth's Dean Court this upcoming Premier League season. Similarly, perhaps it should be celebrated that just under 35,000 came to see Flamengo play Esperance de Tunis later that night in Philadelphia, or that 40,311 dealt with the well-known traffic and crowd issues at the Rose Bowl to watch Monterrey v Inter. These are not the sellouts Fifa promised, but those promises, like many Fifa boasts, were stupid. The enthusiasm evident in the crowds themselves tell the rest of the story. When crowd sizes rankle, perhaps the problem is one of perception; of Fifa's uncanny ability to get in its own way. Football's world governing body has allowed the luxurious excesses of the World Cup – as in the actual one, the one that will take place next year – to cloud its vision of what this tournament, what the club game, is and can be. The World Cup has prestige. So much prestige, in fact, that fans can be assured that no matter which teams they're going to see, they will be watching a seminal moment in the modern history of those countries' sporting stories; and perhaps a milestone in the life of a country itself. Being a club fan is far more intimate, even for the biggest clubs in the world. It's a regular, everyday devotion that simply doesn't fit with Fifa's maximalist tendencies. Maybe that's why empty seats at these games have become such a focal point – they're an uncomfortable reminder that the world of every club is only so big.
