Racial Stereotypes Of African Footballers Persist. A World Cup Is A Good Time To Talk AboutThem

Assumptions about natural differences between black and white athletes are entrenched in the global talent trade. Florian Schmetz/Unsplash

BY UROCS KOVAC AND IKECHUKWU EJEKWUMADU

With a Somali referee being denied entry into the US, and the surge of online racist abuse after 2026 World Cup matches, racism and exclusion in football are once again in the news.

Overt anti-Black racism in football is well reported and researched. Less visible but important structural issues remain little scrutinised, though.

The 2026 World Cup is a perfect moment to examine the deeply entrenched – but often hidden – logic of the global market of footballers that reproduces racist stereotypes about Black athletes.

Assumptions about natural characteristics of African athletes persist in football transfers. Africans are often regarded as physically strong athletes with raw talent that are lacking in discipline and technical refinement. But these assumed characteristics are far from natural – they are actively nurtured.

One of the less obvious places that this happens is in west African football academies that seek to empower young footballers, but effectively reproduce stereotypes.

We are a sport sociologist and an anthropologist who have been researching football-related migrations from west Africa to Europe since 2014. We’ve worked with aspiring footballers in Nigeria, Senegal and Cameroon. Most recently, we interviewed coaches at four football academies in Nigeria, as well as 24 football migrants in Europe. We asked the coaches about their selection strategies, and the footballers about their aspirations and career paths.

Our combined findings show that racial inequality still exists in global football. It can be detected in young footballers’ dreams, football academies’ business models, and the demands of the global market.

Strikingly, it is often reproduced through practices that are framed positively – opportunity, empowerment, inclusion – rather than through overt racism alone. This makes racial inequality in football particularly durable – it happens through strategies that many experience as allowing for social mobility.

This matters, because we cannot fully comprehend racism in sports without understanding the deeply rooted dynamics that fuel it.

‘Whiteman country’

In many west African countries, football has become one of the most attractive ways for young men to migrate overseas. Confronted with a lack of stable economic opportunities and glaring global inequalities, they seek “greener pastures” overseas, where they hope to start earning a living and providing for their families.

The footballers travel everywhere, including Asia and the Gulf States. But the most desirable destination remains Europe. This is because of the enormous popularity of European elite football leagues and the visibility of elite African footballers in European clubs. There’s a perception that European football offers the best prospects for social and economic mobility.

In western Cameroon, Europe is often called “whiteman country”. It’s a catch-all term for “the west” that has ambiguous connotations. Young people see it as a place of prosperity, comfort and economic opportunity, but also of anti-Black racism, overwork and inequality. Many see it as a key destination – often unavailable because of strict border policies – that holds opportunities.

Natural athletes

Myths about Africans as being natural-born athletes persist in the global market.

For instance, one European coach we interviewed in Cameroon emphasised that Africans were immensely talented – they had “rhythm in their blood”. They also reportedly lacked discipline. The coach consistently compared European footballers – allegedly untalented but inclined to work hard – with African players – supposedly very talented but not geared to hard work.

In Nigeria, coaches we interviewed routinely emphasised that Africans had “natural” abilities for sports. Most prominent were myths about physical strength and endurance that were supposedly inherent in African bodies.

Moreover, talented young players were often labelled as “diamonds in the rough”, raw materials with potential but in need of refinement. The labels make for disturbing parallels with images of Africa as full of natural minerals ready to be exploited.

These examples are not isolated or anecdotal – racial stereotypes about African athletes have been documented in studies over and over and over again.

They are also not isolated to football. Similar myths have been documented in many disciplines, like boxing, rugby, American football, and long-distance running.

Cultivating difference

These stereotypes have a profound influence on how football talent is nurtured on the continent.

Our interviews reveal that football academies in Nigeria strategically cultivate footballers that fit global stereotypes of the Black athlete. This is to create value in the global market.

They argue that physical qualities are the most important thing foreign scouts look for in African footballers. So academies strategically select young men who are physically strong, tall, and with high endurance. In the process, they may overlook players with high technical skills and tactical awareness.

In one instance, an academy spent years developing players, but found it difficult to sell the small players, despite their technical prowess. They eventually disbanded the team and selected a new crop of youngsters. This time they had to be at least six foot tall.

The academies, we found, also model the development of players on successful African internationals. They might focus on scouting and developing defending midfielders – a position that benefits from exceptional physical strength. Or they nurture physically imposing strikers like Romelu Lukaku or Victor Osimhen. The academies say they’re exploiting and creating a niche in the global market that’s especially fitting for Africans.

This matters, because football academies, coaches and agents play key roles as gatekeepers in the global market. They promise young footballers – often from underprivileged backgrounds – empowerment and inclusion through access to global markets.

The market is big and complicated, and not all academies reproduce these tropes – at least not consciously. But racial stereotypes clearly continue and have a profound impact on how athletes are selected and cultivated.

Racial capitalism

For a long time, prominent postcolonial thinkers have developed theories about the racial order of the global economy.

US political scientist Cedric Robinson used the term “racial capitalism” to explain how capitalism was built on a foundation of colonialism, slavery, and racial differentiation. That created a society where racialised groups are exploited to extract profit. Capitalism exploits people on the basis of imagined racial differences.

Indian feminist critic Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak wrote about “strategic essentialism” to highlight how people may deal with these structures. Marginalised groups sometimes use simplified ideas about who they are. This can help them gain recognition or improve their opportunities.

These ideas are remarkably relevant nowadays, and essential for understanding how racial inequalities endure through sports.

Global football shows how markets commodify bodies, commodify difference itself, and continue to fuel these inequalities. It also shows how people respond to this, and how talk of empowerment and inclusion can reinforce inequalities.

These issues are made visible through sport, but they are not exclusive to it. They are also not inevitable.

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Far Removed From Today’s Global Juggernaut, Soccer Was Born In The Well‑Heeled Boarding Schools Of 19th‑Century England

A soccer match in progress in 1885. Hulton Archive/Getty Images

BY THOMAS ADAM

PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL SCIENCE,

UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS

Over the past two centuries, soccer – or football, as it is called in much of the English-speaking world – has become a truly global phenomenon that connects fans on all continents. It is also, come World Cup time, a deeply nationalist affair that pits teams and their fans from various countries against each other.

Yet today’s deeply competitive professional and spectator sport that spans the globe has far more local origins. As an expert on global history and author of a 2025 book on the subject, I know the game’s roots date back to early 19th-century England – and with a very specific social cause.

When English high school students and teachers created football as a sport in the first decades of the 19th century, it was to provide students at prestigious elite schools such as Eton with an opportunity to let off steam and excess energy. Students at such private boarding schools – they are called public schools in the United Kingdom – came mostly from wealthy families and were sent there not just for their education but also for socializing with their peers.

But boarding school students were often hard to control. Overprivileged students had a tendency to see teachers and headmasters not as authority figures but as people of lower social standing. Rebellions were common and pitted spoiled students against helpless teachers. Enter soccer: A strenuous physical activity such as kicking the ball across a field appeared to teachers as a means to regain control over their students and to redirect their energies.

The origins of soccer

Ballgames that pitted two groups of people against each other were nothing new in Britain.

“Folk football” existed long before it became a school sport. However, these early ballgames were unregulated, raucous and violent encounters of two parties formed by inhabitants of two villages or two neighborhoods. They did not need to involve an actual ball but something that could be kicked across a field or through the streets of a town.

Such events have little in common with modern-day soccer. They could involve hundreds of people. Playing fields were not marked. And the goal was to kick the ball once across a marker, such as a hedge or a field line. These ballgames were not about scoring but about taking on the opposing team by all means available. Such sporting affairs were known to anyone in England in the first half of the 19th century.

The games migrated from there to school grounds.

At Rugby School, a public school in central England whose name was given to the modern game of rugby, students in the 1820s began playing a game that involved the kicking of a ball. Students engaged in these games because they gave them tremendous freedom.

The game was not yet codified, and teachers let students organize games without interfering in their play. Football offered both students and teachers what they craved most. Paradoxically, what for students was freedom was for teachers a useful means of control.

Teachers allowed the game to become a cherished activity of students because it took the students’ minds off other temptations. Tired and exhausted students, teachers reasoned, were good students who abstained from committing mischief and sexual behavior they deemed inappropriate.

The development of different games

Since the game lacked rules, and teachers kept a hands-off attitude toward the game, it gave students an opportunity to make their own rules. And these rules were the result of collective decisions of students.

From the 1840s to the 1860s, students produced rules that regulated how the ball could be handled, how many members a team should have and how scores were counted.

Students at Rugby School were the first to codify the game. These rules of 1844 allowed players to use their hands for controlling the ball. The rules produced by students at Eton in 1847, by contrast, outlawed the use of hands for propelling the ball.

But these were just a few of the many sets of football rules that students wrote in the three decades from the 1840s to the 1850s. And these codes did not yet clearly distinguish between a game that was focused on propelling the ball with hands – a key aspect of the modern game of rugby – versus a game that was focused on using only one’s feet, a key aspect of soccer.

The result was a great diversity of rules for a game that high school students played for fun. However, the game – mandatory for all high school students – was also used as an instrument of institutionalized bullying of younger students by older ones, with physical attacks on younger students built into the game. In effect, football of this time was a participation sport without any spectators.

Students played games on meadows and fields in the near surroundings of the public schools. These playing fields often did not have markings for borders or goals. Walls, trees and bushes marked the borders. Gates and doors were used as goals.

The codification of what became soccer

Public school graduates took their versions of the game with them to the next level. At Cambridge, students began in 1837 to iron out some of the modern-day rules. There, three iterations of unified football rules were created over the course of the next 19 years. The third set in 1856 culminated in a game of kicking a ball with one’s foot.

In 1863, representatives of football clubs from the larger London area met to discuss the formation of a football association and a common set of rules. Ebenezer Cobb Morley, who served as captain of the London-based Barnes Football Club, convinced the other participants to accept unified rules that banned the use of hands for propelling the ball.

The 1863 rules of the Football Association stipulated that players were not permitted to “carry the ball,” to “throw the ball” nor “to take the ball from the ground with his hands while it is in play.” These rules provided the basis for modern-day soccer.

The game’s professionalization

The London rules of 1863 did not replace existing football rules, and these rules did not find acceptance everywhere. The 1863 London meeting did not include representatives of the public schools that were resolved to continue playing football according to their traditional rules. Rather than unifying football regulation, the London variant added just one more set of rules.

However, the London meeting showed a maturing game. The participants did not come from boarding schools but from football clubs that had formed independently of public schools. And these participants were not teenagers but adults.

Morley was 32 years old when he presided over the meeting that had become necessary because football was transforming into a competitive sport that pitted teams of different football clubs against each other. And for such competitive games, unified rules were needed.

In 1872, the honorary secretary of the Football Association, Charles W. Alcock, suggested the creation of the Football Association Challenge Cup Competition.

The introduction of this tournament helped transform football from a pure enjoyment into a competitive sport, first played by amateurs and later by professionals. With growing crowds of spectators came stadiums.

That’s the kind of highly professionalized and dynamic game that will feature in this year’s World Cup. And what a far cry it is from the chaotic boarding school pitches of 19th-century England.

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Why Government Support For Religion Doesn’t Necessarily Make People More Religious

BY BRENDAN SZENDRO

FACULTY LECTURER IN POLITICAL

SCIENCE, MCGILL UNIVERSITY

The IRS will offer religious congregations more freedom to endorse political candidates without jeopardizing their tax-exempt status, the agency said in a July 2025 court filing. President Donald Trump has previously vowed to abolish the Johnson Amendment, which bars charitable nonprofits from taking part in political campaigns – although the latest move simply reinterprets the rule.

Celebrating the change, House Speaker Mike Johnson highlighted an argument that’s popular among some conservatives: that the Constitution does not actually require the separation of church and state.

Thomas Jefferson, who coined the phrase, did not intend “to keep religion from influencing issues of civil government,” Johnson wrote in a July 12 op-ed published on the social platform X. “The Founders wanted to protect the church from an encroaching state, not the other way around.”

Officials in several red states have challenged long-standing norms surrounding religion and state, ranging from introducing prayer and Bibles in public classrooms to attempts to secure government funding for religious schools.

Conservative thinkers have long pushed for closer ties between religion and the government, arguing that religious institutions can create strong communities. In my own research, I’ve found that mass shootings are less likely in a more religious environment.

For critics, of course, attempts to lower the wall of separation between church and state raise constitutional concerns. The First Amendment states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” What’s more, critics fear that recent attempts to lower barriers between church and state favor conservative Christian groups over other faiths.

But as a scholar of religion and politics, I believe another reason for caution is being overlooked. Research indicates that strong relationships between religion and state can be a factor that actually decreases religious participation, rather than encouraging it.

All or nothing

Some scholars suggest that religious institutions operate like businesses in a marketplace, competing for believers. Government policies toward religion can change the balance of power between competing firms the same way that economic policies can affect markets for consumer goods.

At a glance, it might seem like government support would strengthen religious institutions. In reality, it can backfire, whether or not the government promotes one particular faith above others. In some cases, adherents who cannot practice religion on their own terms opt out of practicing it entirely.

In Israel, for example, Orthodox Jewish institutions receive government recognition that more liberal Jewish denominations do not. Orthodox authorities are allowed to manage religious sites, run public religious schools and perform marriages. Many couples who do not want to get married under Orthodox law, or cannot, hold a ceremony abroad or register as a common-law marriage.

In fact, many scholars refer to Israel as an example of a religious “monopoly.” Because the government sponsors a particular branch, Orthodox Judaism, Jewish citizens sometimes face an “all or nothing” choice. The country’s Jewish population is sharply divided between people who are religiously observant and people who identify as secular.

Government involvement can also hurt religious institutions by making them seem less independent, decreasing people’s trust. In a 2023 study of 54 Christian-majority countries, political scientists Jonathan Fox and Jori Breslawski found that some adherents felt that religious institutions become less legitimate when backed by the government. In addition, support from the state decreased people’s confidence in government.

Their findings built on previous research showing that the public is less likely to contribute to faith-based charities and attend religious services when the government offers funding for religious institutions.

In fact, many of the world’s lowest rates of religiosity are found in wealthy countries that have official churches, or had one until relatively recently, such as Sweden. Others have a history of separating people of different faiths into their own schools and other institutions, such as Belgium and the Netherlands.

History lessons

Perhaps the strongest example of how government support for religion can decrease religious participation is found in the former Soviet Union and its allies.

During the Cold War, Soviet officials sought to stamp out religious activity among their citizens. However, policies to repress independent religious institutions worked hand in hand with policies to co-opt religious institutions that would work with the government. Access to religious spaces made it easier for officials to spy on members and punish clergy who protested their rule.

In Hungary, the Communist Party sponsored government-run Catholic churches that were cut off from the Vatican. In Romania, the regime integrated formerly Catholic Churches into a state Orthodox Church. In the former Czechoslovakia, meanwhile, the Communist Party paid clergy’s salaries to keep them subservient.

To this day, many countries in the former Eastern Bloc have low rates of religious participation. In Russia, for example, a majority of citizens call themselves Orthodox Christians, and the church wields influence in politics. Yet only 16% of adults say religion is “very important” in their lives.

While scholars can point to the legacy of overt repression as a source of low religiosity, government support of religious institutions is also a lingering factor. Most post-Soviet states inherited systems that require religious groups to register, and they only provide funding to faiths that the government considers legitimate. Similar policies remain common in southeastern and central Eastern Europe.

In recent years, some countries in the region, including Russia and Hungary, have experienced democratic backsliding at the hands of populist leaders who also politicize religion for their own gain. Because of low rates of religious practice in such countries, religious leaders may welcome government support.

Free market for faith

Most wealthy countries have witnessed steep declines in religiosity in the modern era. The United States is an outlier.

Overall, the percentage of Americans belonging to a religious congregation is declining, as is the share of Americans who regularly attend worship services. However, the percentage of Americans who are intensely religious has remained unchanged over the past several decades. Around 29% of Americans report praying several times a day, for example, and just under 7% say they attend religious services more than once a week.

Some religion scholars argue that the “free-market approach” – where all faiths are free to compete for worshippers, without government interference or preference – is what makes America relatively religious. In other words, they believe that this so-called “American exception” is because of the separation between church and state, not in spite of it.

Time will tell if conservatives’ push for collaboration between religion and the government will continue, or have its intended effects. History suggests, however, that governments’ attempts to strengthen particular religious communities may backfire.

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Why America Is Buying Up The Premier League – And What It Means For The Future Of ‘Soccer’

BY KIERAN MAGUIRE AND CHRISTINA PHILIPPOU

When the Premier League broke away from the rest of English football in 1992, its 22 clubs generated £205 million in its debut season, and the average player earned £2,050 a week. Thirty years later, despite having two fewer clubs, the league’s revenue had increased by 2,850% to £6.1 billion and the average player earned £93,000 a week.

At the heart of this extraordinary growth is an American revolution. In the Premier League’s inaugural season, football was still in recovery from the horrors of the stadium disasters at Hillsborough and Heysel. Owners tended to be from the local area and with a business background. The only foreign owner was Sam Hamman at Wimbledon, a Lebanese millionaire who bought the club on a whim having reportedly been much more interested in tennis. The season ended with Manchester United (under Alex Ferguson) winning the English game’s top league for the first time in 26 years.

Now, if the Texas-based Friedkin Group’s recent deal to buy Everton goes through, 11 of the 20 Premier League clubs will be controlled or part-owned by American investors. The US – long seen as football’s final frontier when it comes to the men’s game – suddenly can’t get enough of English “soccer”.

Four of the Premier League’s “big six” are American-owned – Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal and Chelsea – while a fifth, Manchester City, has a significant US minority shareholding. Aston Villa, Fulham, Bournemouth, Crystal Palace, West Ham and Ipswich Town also have varying degrees of American ownership.

And it’s not even just the glamour clubs at the top of the tree. American investment has also been significant lower down the football pyramid, led by the high-profile acquisition of then non-league Wrexham by Hollywood actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenny, and Birmingham City’s purchase by US investors including seven-time Super Bowl winner Tom Brady. American investment in football has reached places as geographically diverse as Carlisle and Crawley in England, and Aberdeen and Edinburgh in Scotland.

So why the American obsession with English football? And how real are concerns that these US owners could collude to “Americanise” the traditions of the Premier League – whether by reducing the risk of relegation, introducing some form of “draft pick” system, or moving matches and even clubs to other cities?

The Premier League’s first US owner

Manchester United was the first Premier League club to come under American ownership – after a row about a horse.

In 2005, United was owned by a variety of investors including Irish businessmen and racehorse owners John Magnier and J.P. McManus. Their erstwhile friend Ferguson, the United manager, thought he co-owned the champion racehorse Rock of Gibraltar with them – a stallion worth millions in stud rights. They disagreed – and their bitter dispute was such that Magnier and McManus decided to sell their shares in the football club.

The Miami-based Glazer family – already involved in sport as owners of NFL franchise the Tampa Bay Buccaneers – had already been buying up small tranches of shares in United, but the sudden availability of the Irish shares allowed Malcolm Glazer to acquire a controlling stake for £790 million (around £1.5 billion at today’s prices).

The fact Glazer did not actually have sufficient funds to pay for these shares was a solvable problem. In the some-might-say commercially naive world of top-flight English football before the Premier League, Manchester United was a club without debt, paying its way without leveraging its position as one of the world’s most famous football clubs. Glazer saw the opportunity this presented and arranged a leveraged buy-out (LBO), whereby the football club borrowed more than £600 million secured on its own assets to, in effect, “buy itself” in 2005.

Despite the need to meet the high interest costs to fund the LBO, United continued winning trophies under Ferguson – including three Premier League titles in a row in 2007, 2008 and 2009, as well as a Champions League victory in 2008. Amid this success, the club felt that ticket prices were too low and set about increasing them, with matchday revenue increasing from £66 million in 2004/05 to over £101 million by 2007/08.

Commercial income was another area the Glazers were keen to increase. United set up offices in London and adopted a global approach to finding new official branding deals ranging from snacks to tractor and tyre suppliers – doubling revenues from this income source too.

But in this new, more aggressive world of “sweating the asset”, the debts lingered – and most United fans remained deeply suspicious of their American owners. (Following their father’s death in 2014, the club was co-owned by his six children, with brothers Avram and Joel Glazer becoming co-chairmen.)

Today, despite its partial listing on the New York Stock Exchange and the February 2024 sale of 27.7% of the club to British billionaire Sir Jim Ratcliffe for a reputed £1.25 billion, United still has borrowings of more than £546 million, having paid cumulative interest costs of £969 million since the takeover in 2005. But with the club now valued at US$6.55 billion (around £5bn), it represents a very smart investment for the Glazer family.

Indeed, while the prices being paid for football clubs across Europe have reached record levels, they are still seen as cheap investments compared with US sports’ leading franchises. Forbes’s annual list of the world’s most valuable sports teams has American football (NFL), baseball (MLB) and basketball (NBA) teams occupying the top ten positions, with only three Premier League clubs – Manchester United, Liverpool and Manchester City – in the top 50.

With NFL teams having an average franchise value of US$5.1 billion and NBA $3.9 billion, many English football clubs still look like a bargain from the other side of the pond.

The risk of relegation

The latest to join this US bandwagon, the Friedkin Group – a Texas-based portfolio of companies run by American businessman and film producer Dan Friedkin – is reported to have offered £400m to buy Everton, despite the club’s poor financial state.

“The Toffees” have been hit by loss of sponsorships as well as two sets of points deductions for breaching the Premier League’s financial rules, leading to revenue losses from lower league positions. While the new stadium being built at Liverpool’s Bramley-Moore dock has been yet another financial constraint, it will at least increase matchday income from the start of next season.

A wider reason for the relative bargain in valuations of European football clubs is the risk of relegation – something that is not part of the closed leagues of most US sports. While the threat of relegation (and promise of promotion) has always been an integral part of English and European football, the jeopardy this brings for supporters – and a club’s finances – does not exist in the NFL, NBA, Major League Soccer and similar competitions.

The Premier League, with its three relegation spots at the end of each season, has featured 51 different clubs since it launched in 1992. Only six clubs – Arsenal, Spurs, Chelsea, Manchester United, Liverpool and Everton – have been ever present, with Arsenal now approaching 100 years of consecutive top-flight football.

Other Premier League clubs have experienced the dramatic cost-benefit of relegation and promotion. Oldham Athletic, who were in the Premier League for its first two seasons, now languish in the fifth tier of the game, outside the English Football League (EFL). In contrast, Luton Town, who were in the fifth tier as recently as 2014, were promoted to the Premier League in 2023 – only to be relegated at the end of last season.

While it is difficult to compare football clubs with basketball and American football teams, the financial difference between having an open league, with relegation, and a closed league becomes apparent when you look at women’s football on both sides of the Atlantic.

Angel City, a women’s soccer team based in Los Angeles, only entered the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) in 2022 and is yet to win an NWSL trophy. But last month, the club was sold for US$250 million (£188m) to Disney’s CEO Bob Iger and TV journalist Willow Bay – the most expensive takeover in the history of women’s professional sport.

In comparison, Chelsea – seven-time winners of the English Women’s Super League and one of the most successful sides in Europe – valued its women’s team at £150 million ($US196m) earlier this summer. While there are a number of factors to this price differential, the confidence that Angel City will always be a member of the big league of US soccer clubs – and share very equally in its revenue – will have made its new owners very confident in the long-term soundness of their deal.

A further attraction for American investors is the potential to enter two markets – one mature (men’s football) and one effectively a start-up (the women’s game) – in a single purchase. In the US, the top men’s and women’s clubs are completely separate. But in Europe, most top-flight women’s teams are affiliated to men’s clubs – with the exception of eight-time Women’s Champions League winners Olympique Lyonnais Feminin, which split from the French men’s club when Korean-American businesswoman Michele Kang bought a majority stake in the women’s team in February 2024).

While interest in, and hence value of, the WSL is now growing fast, the women’s game in England is dwarfed by viewer ratings for the Premier League – the most watched sporting league in the world, viewed by an estimated 1.87 billion people every week across 189 countries.

These figures dwarf even the NFL which, while currently still the most valuable of all sporting leagues in terms of its broadcasting deals, must be looking at the growth of the Premier League with some jealousy. This may explain why some US franchise owners, such as Stan Kroenke, the Glazer family, Fenway Sports Group and Billy Foley, have subsequently purchased Premier League football clubs.

Ironically, for many spectators around the world, it is the intensity and competitiveness of most Premier League matches – brought on in part by the threat of relegation and prize of European qualification – that makes it so captivating. However, billionaire investors like guaranteed numbers and dislike risk – especially the degree of financial risk that exists in the Premier League and English Football League.

European not-so-Super League

In April 2021, 12 leading European clubs (six from England plus three each from Spain and Italy) announced the creation of the European Super League (ESL). This new mid-week competition was to be a high-revenue generating, closed competition with (eventually) 15 permanent teams and five annual additions qualifying from Europe. According to one of the driving forces behind the plan, Manchester United co-chairman Joel Glazer:

By bringing together the world’s greatest clubs and players to play each other throughout the season, the Super League will open a new chapter for European football, ensuring world-class competition and facilities, and increased financial support for the wider football pyramid.

The problem facing the Premier League’s “big six” clubs – and their ambitious owners – is there are currently only four slots available to play in the Champions League. So, their thinking went, why not take away the risk of not qualifying? However, the proposal was swiftly condemned by fans around Europe, together with football’s governing bodies and leagues – all of whom saw the ESL proposal as a threat to the quality and integrity of their domestic leagues. Following some large fan protests, including at Chelsea’s Stamford Bridge, Manchester City was the first club to withdraw – followed, within a couple of days, by the rest of the English clubs.

Under the terms of the ESL proposals, founding member clubs would have been guaranteed participation in the competition forever. Guaranteed participation means guaranteed revenues. The current financial gap between the “big six” and the other members of the Premier League, which in 2022/23 averaged £396 million, would have widened rapidly.

For example, these clubs would have been able to sell the broadcast rights for some of their ESL home fixtures direct to fans, instead of via a broadcaster. All of a sudden, that database of fans who have downloaded the official club app, or are on a mailing list, becomes far more valuable. These are the people most willing to watch their favourite team on a pay-per-view basis, further increasing revenues.

At the same time, a planned ESL wage cap would have stopped players taking all these increased revenues in the form of higher wages, allowing these clubs to become more profitable and their ownership even more lucrative.

American-owned Manchester United and Liverpool had previously tried to enhance the value of their investments during the COVID lockdowns era via ProjectBig Picture – proposals to reduce the size of the Premier League and scrap one of the two domestic cup competitions, thus freeing up time for the bigger clubs to arrange more lucrative tours and European matches against high-profile opposition.

Most importantly, Project Big Picture would have resulted in changing the governance of the domestic game. Under its proposals, the “big six” clubs would have enjoyed enhanced voting rights, and therefore been able to significantly influence how the domestic game was governed.

Any attempt to increase the concentration of power raises concerns of lower competitive balance, whereby fewer teams are in the running to win the title and fewer games are meaningful. This is a problem facing some other major European football leagues including France’s Ligue 1, where interest among broadcasters has dwindled amid the perceived dominance of Paris St-Germain.

So while to date, American-led attempts to change the structure of the Premier League have been foiled, it’s unlikely such ideas have gone away for good. The near-universal fear of fans – even those who welcome an injection of extra cash from a new billionaire owner – is that the spectacle of the league will only be diminished if such plans ever succeed.

And there is evidence from the women’s game that the US closed league format is coming under more pressure from football’s global forces. The NWSL recently announced it is removing the draft system that is designed (as with the NFL and NBA) to build in jeopardy and competitive balance when there is no risk of relegation.

Top US women’s football clubs are losing some of their leading players to other leagues, in part because European clubs are not bound by the same artificial rules of employment. In a truly global professional sport such as football, international competition will always tend to destabilise closed leagues.

Why do they keep buying these clubs?

Does this mean that American and other wealthy owners of Premier League clubs seeking to reduce their risks are ultimately fighting a losing battle? And if so, given the potential risks involved in owning a football club – both financial and even personal – why do they keep buying them?

The motivations are part-financial, part technological and, as has always been the case with sports ownership, part-vanity.

The American economy has grown far faster than that of the EU or UK in recent years. Consequently, there are many beneficiaries of this growth who have surplus cash, and here football becomes an attractive proposition. In fact, football clubs are more resilient to recessions than other industries, holding their value better as they are effectively monopoly suppliers for their fans who have brand loyalty that exists in few other industries.

From 1993 to 2018, a period during which the UK economy more than doubled, the total value of Premier League clubs grew 30 times larger. And many fans are tied to supporting one club, helping to make the biggest clubs more resilient to economic changes than other industries. While football, like many parts of the entertainment industry, was hit by lockdown during Covid, no clubs went out of business, despite the challenges of matches being played in empty stadiums.

Added to this, the exchange rates for US dollars have been very favourable until recently, making US investments in the UK and Europe cheaper for American investors.

So, while Manchester United fans would argue that the Glazer family have not been good for the club, United has been good for the Glazers. And Fenway Sports Group (FSG), who bought Liverpool for £300 million in 2010, have recouped almost all of that money in smaller share sales while remaining majority owners of Liverpool.

Despite this, the £2.5 billion price paid for Chelsea by the US Clearlake-Todd Boehly consortium in May 2022 took markets by surprise.

The sale – which came after the UK government froze the assets of the club’s Russian oligarch owner, Roman Abramovich, following the invasion of Ukraine – went through less than a year after Newcastle United had been sold by Sports Direct founder Mike Ashley to the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund for £305 million – approximately twice that club’s annual revenues. Yet Clearlake-Boehly were willing to pay over five times Chelsea’s annual revenues to acquire the club, even though it was in a precarious financial position.

Clearlake is a private equity group whose main aim is to make profits for their investors. But unlike most such investors, who tend to focus on cost-cutting, the Chelsea ownership came in with a high-spending strategy using new financial structuring ideas, such as offering longer player contracts to avoid falling foul of football’s profitability and sustainability rules (although this loophole has since been closed with Uefa, European football’s governing body, limiting contract lengths for financial regulation purposes to five years).

Chelsea’s location in the one of the most expensive areas of London, combined with its on-field success under Abramovich, all added to the attraction, of course. But there are other reasons why Clearlake, along with billionaire businessman Boehly, were willing to stump up so much for the club.

From Hollywood to the metaverse

While some British football fans may have viewed the Ted Lasso TV show as an enjoyable if slightly twee fictional account of American involvement in English soccer, it has enhanced the attraction of the sport in the US. So too Welcome To Wrexham – the fly-on-the-wall series covering the (to date) two promotions of Wales’s oldest football club under the unlikely Hollywood stewardship of Reynolds and McElhenney.

The growth in US interest in English football is reflected in the record-breaking Premier League media rights deal in 2022, with NBC Sports reportedly paying $2.7 billion (£2.06bn) for its latest six-year deal.

But as well as football offering one of increasingly few “live shared TV experiences” that carry lucrative advertising slots, there may also be more opportunity for more behind-the-scenes coverage of the Premier League – as has long been seen in US coverage of NBA games, for example, where players are interviewed in the locker room straight after games.

According to Manchester United’s latest annual report, the club now has a “global community of 1.1 billion fans and followers”. Such numbers mean its owners, and many others, are bullish about the potential of the metaverse in terms of offering a matchday experience that could be similar to attending a match, without physically travelling to Manchester.

Their neighbours Manchester City, part-owned by American private equity company Silverlake, broke new (virtual) ground by signing a metaverse deal with Sony in 2022. Virtual reality could give fans around the world the feeling of attending a live match, sitting next to their friends and singing along with the rest of the crowd (for a pay-per-view fee).

Some investors are even confident that advancements in Abba-style avatar technology could one day allow fans to watch live 3D simulations of Premier League matches in stadiums all over the world. Having first-mover advantage by being in the elite club of owners who can make use of such technology could prove ever more rewarding.

More immediately, there are some indications that competitive matches involving England’s top men’s football teams could soon take place in US or other venues. Boehly, Chelsea’s co-owner, has already suggested adopting some US sports staples such as an All-Star match to further boost revenues. Indeed, back in 2008, the Premier League tentatively discussed a “39th game” taking place overseas, but that idea was quickly shelved.

The American owners of Birmingham City were keen to play this season’s EFL League One match against Wrexham in the US, but again this proposal did not get far. Liverpool’s chairman Tom Werner says he is determined to see matches take place overseas, and recent changes to world governing body Fifa’s rulebook could make it easier for this proposal to succeed.

The potential benefits of hosting games overseas include higher matchday revenues, increased brand awareness, and enhanced broadcast rights. While there is likely to be significant opposition from local fans, at least American owners know they would not face the same hostility about rising matchday prices in the US as they have encountered in England.

When the Argentinian legend Lionel Messi signed for new MLS franchise Inter Miami in 2023, season ticket prices nearly doubled on his account. And while there is vocal opposition to higher ticket prices in England, this is not borne out in terms of lower attendances for matches against high-calibre opposition – as evidenced by Aston Villa charging up to £97 for last week’s Champions League meeting with Bayern Munich.

Villa’s director of operations, Chris Heck, defended the prices by saying that difficult decisions had to be made if the club was to be competitive.

For much of the 2010s, with broadcast revenues increasing rapidly, many Premier League owners made little effort to stoke hostilities with their loyal fan bases by putting up ticket prices. Indeed, Manchester United generated little more from matchday income in the 2021-22 season, as football emerged from the pandemic, than the club had in 2010-11 (see chart above).

However, this uneasy truce between fans and owners has ceased. The relative flatlining of broadcast revenues since 2017, along with cost control rules that are starting to affect clubs’ ability to spend money on player signings and wages, has changed club appetites for dampened ticket prices. This has resulted in noticeable rises in individual ticket and season ticket prices by some clubs.

However, season ticket and other local “legacy” fans generate little money compared with the more lucrative overseas and tourist fans. They may only watch their favourite team live once a season, but when they visit, they are far more likely not only to pay higher matchday prices, but to spend more on merchandise, catering and other offerings from the club.

Today’s breed of commercially aware, profit-seeking US Premier League owners – pioneered by the Glazer family, who saw that “sweating the asset” meant more than watching football players sprinting hard – understand there is a lot more value to come from English football teams. The clubs’ loyal local supporters may not like it, but English football’s American-led revolution is not done yet.

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Mauricio Pochettino Instills Hope That The USMNT Can Win The World Cup In Fiery Press Conference

USMNT Coach Mauricio Pochettino

BY MARK HARRIS, OUTKICK

Mauricio Pochettino isn't just looking for the U.S. men's national team to play in the 2026 World Cup and perhaps make a little noise in the tournament, he was brought in to do far more than that. He and the U.S. Soccer Federation have their sights set on winning the World Cup on U.S. soil, and Pochettino isn't shying away from letting the entire world know it.

Pochettino was formally introduced as the USMNT's newest manager on Friday, and when asked what he's hoping to accomplish between now and the start of the World Cup in less than two years, he laid out the loftiest of goals.

"We are winners. We are going to compete, and compete is completely different than to play…We have time, and we need to really believe in things, in big things," Pochettino explained. "We need to believe that we can win all the games, that we can win the World Cup."

That brief quote personifies the change in culture that the U.S. men's team must undertake if it wants to not only perform well in the World Cup, but be taken more seriously on the global stage.

You could take any former managers of the USMNT and ask them what they are hoping to accomplish in the World Cup, and everyone would deliver some form of coach-speak about ‘playing to our highest level.’ Not Pochettino, he actually said the words "win the World Cup."

Words, of course, are only words, and legitimately contending for a World Cup in 2026 is the loftiest goal imaginable, but Pochettino, not shying away from said goal, is already instilling excitement among U.S. supporters. The first item on the list to get the American squad moving in the right direction is to re-gain confidence.

"Of course the confidence was a little bit low after the Copa América," Pochettino said, referring to the U.S. being bounced from the group stage of the tournament this summer "I think it's a very good generation of players. We need to show that we play like a collective on the pitch."

Pochettino has never coached at the international level, but he brings more accolades to the USMNT managerial position than anyone else who has manned the role before. The 52-year-old managed Chelsea last season, took Tottenham to the Champions League final in 2019, and previously won a league title with Paris Saint-Germain.

Former Chelsea Manager Pochettino Named US Soccer Men’s National Team Coach

Mauricio Pochettino

Former Chelsea manager Mauricio Pochettino has been named the new coach of the United States (USA) men’s team, US Soccer announced in a statement.

Pochettino, who parted ways with English Premier League side Chelsea in May after one season in charge, will take the reins of the national team ahead of the 2026 World Cup, which will be co-hosted by Mexico, Canada and the United States.

The Argentinian, a former Paris Saint-Germain and Tottenham Hotspur manager, said his decision to join US Soccer was not just about football, but about the journey the country was on and he could not pass up the opportunity.

“The energy, the passion, and the hunger to achieve something truly historic here – those are the things that inspired me,” he said in a statement on Tuesday.

“I see a group of players full of talent and potential, and together, we’re going to build something special that the whole nation can be proud of.”

US Soccer Sporting Director Matt Crocker said Pochettino was a “serial winner with a deep passion for developing players”.

“His track record speaks for itself, and I am confident that he is the right choice to harness the immense potential within our talented squad. We are thrilled to have Mauricio on board as we embark on this exciting journey to achieve success on the global stage.”

USA have been without a permanent coach since a humiliating early exit from the Copa America on home soil in July led to the sacking of Gregg Berhalter after his second stint as head coach.

The 51-year-old boss was first appointed in 2018 and led the Americans to the knockout stages of the 2022 World Cup, but just weeks later found himself embroiled in a bitter public row with one of the team’s brightest emerging talents, Gio Reyna.

US Soccer’s search for a new coach began when Berhalter’s contract expired at the end of 2022 and included names such as Canada coach Jesse Marsch, but they ultimately rehired Berhalter in June last year with the full support of the players.

However, it proved unsuccessful as the US failed to progress beyond the group stages of the Copa America after a shock 2-1 defeat to Panama and a crushing 1-0 loss to Uruguay.

Pochettino will take over after Mikey Varas, who has been appointed interim coach, oversaw friendlies against Canada last Saturday and New Zealand on Tuesday.

USA drew 1-1 with New Zealand in Cincinnati after Christian Pulisic’s goal was cancelled out by Ben Waine’s late equaliser.

They will next play friendlies against Panama on October 12 and Mexico three days later.

How Apartheid, European Racism And Pelé Helped Cultivate A Culture Of Diversity In US Soccer That Endures Into Messi-Era MLS

Patrick "Ace" Ntsoelengoe

BY JOHN M. SLOOP

PROFESSOR OF COMMUNICATION

VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY

North America’s most diverse professional league kicks off on Feb. 21, 2024, as Major League Soccer returns after a winter break.

The league, commonly known as the MLS, has long prided itself as a standard-bearer for racial and national diversity: Last season saw players from 81 countries across six continents compete for teams. Members of racial minorities make up 63% of players and 36% of head coaches, according to the latest diversity scorecard from the University of Central Florida’s Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport.

As a soccer scholar and author of the book “Soccer’s Neoliberal Pitch,” I know that this diversity is in part by design and has deep roots. Indeed, the MLS had, as a model of diversity, an earlier attempt to get Americans to embrace the “beautiful game”: the North American Soccer League, or NASL.

The fall and rise of the NASL

Most often remembered for bringing Pelé to the U.S., the NASL was arguably the first serious attempt to develop a truly professional “major” soccer league in the country. It ran from 1968 to 1984 and peaked in popularity the mid-1970s.

With minimal audiences at the gates and a TV contract that was scrapped early on because of dismal ratings, the league struggled early on. A full dozen of the 17 inaugural teams folded after the first year, leaving just five competing in the second season. Growth was slow – by 1973 there were nine teams, and games had an average attendance of about 6,000 fans.

Most team owners and league commissioner Phil Woosnam believed the NASL needed more sizzle to appeal to an American market. To that end, the league decided to make a number of alterations. Rules were tweaked to increase the number of goals, and more traditional American sports add-ons – tailgating and cheerleaders, for example – were encouraged to help improve the atmosphere.

But the impulse to alter both the substance and meaning of the game had mixed results, at best. Although the NASL was able to enlarge its audience among a subset of fans through these stylistic distractions, others felt alienated by the focus on razzmatazz.

As Newsweek reported at the time, first-generation immigrants – the demographic expected to make up the supporting base – stayed away. Polls revealed that these traditional soccer supporters perceived the quality of play in the league to be so inferior that they weren’t interested in attending games.

Likewise, European players often found the innovations of the NASL off-putting. After playing his first game for the Portland Timbers, Pat Howard – a former player for the English team Everton – found himself thinking, “What kind of football is this? I mean, there were blinking cavalry charges up the wings, ducks behind the goal, firecrackers going on.”

A study commissioned by the NASL convinced the league that it would have to increase the skill level of the game if it hoped to grab the largest possible viewership. And that is when the story of the league’s diversity really takes off.

A league of nations

The New York Cosmos, owned by Warner Communications, was one of earliest NASL teams to reach out to international star power, luring Pelé out of retirement to play three seasons for a reported US$4.7 million.

The Cosmos followed the signing by bringing in other global stars, such as Germany’s World Cup winning captain Franz Beckenbauer, Italian Giorgio Chinaglia and Brazilian Carlos Alberto.

Other global stars who signed for different teams included elite global players such as Johan Cruyff, Gerd Müller, Peter Osgood, Bobby Moore, Eusébio and George Best. It represented a who’s who of the soccer world, albeit an aging one.

The impact on the league was immediate. It resulted in increased attendances and a higher media profile in the U.S.

It also set a course for rosters featuring players from around the world – and not only through the import of fading stars.

NASL teams needed to strike a balance – and balance their budgets – by searching for players who were talented but also undervalued. And this often meant bringing in African and African diaspora players. They were aided in their search by overseas racism, both implicit and state-sponsored.

European teams in the 1970s had relatively low numbers of Black players playing in them.

It led players like Trinidad and Tobago’s Leroy DeLeon to choose the NASL rather than sign contracts with European teams. As DeLeon recounted, he decided to join the New York Generals in 1969 after a recruitment trip to England in which he only saw one Black player, West Ham’s Clyde Best. By contrast, the Washington Darts, the team DeLeon later joined, had seven Trinidadians on the roster.

Escaping apartheid

Meanwhile, under the apartheid laws in South Africa, Black and white players were prohibited from playing one another. To Black South Africans, the NASL represented a chance to escape the racism of their homeland.

Patrick “Ace” Ntsoelengoe was one of many Black South Africans who viewed the NASL as being the only route toward international fame. Fellow Black South African Webster Lichaba, who played in Atlanta in the early 1980s, relished his treatment in the U.S.: “You were allowed to eat in any restaurant; you went into any club if you wanted to; you stayed in any area you wanted to. … It was different, a different lifestyle altogether. You were treated as an equal.”

Kaizer Motaung, who played for the Atlanta Chiefs and later returned to South Africa to found the successful Kaizer Chiefs football club, noted: “America was an eye-opener for me. I am in a foreign country, but here are Black people holding high positions being respected worldwide.”

And it wasn’t only Black South Africans who made the move. Apartheid resulted in a sporting boycott of South Africa, preventing the country from playing in international games. As such, the NASL represented an opportunity for white South Africans to play in front of a wider audience.

As soccer scholar Chris Bolsmann has noted, both Black and white players later went back to South Africa, energized to act against apartheid and confident of their ability to succeed in joint struggles again racism.

While some overseas players returned home after their playing careers ended, others stayed to help the grassroots game in the U.S. Trinidad and Tobago goalkeeper Lincoln Phillips, who played for the Baltimore Bays, went on to coach Howard University’s men’s soccer team – the first from a historically Black college or university to win an NCAA soccer championship in 1974 – and later helped found the Black Soccer Coaches Association, an organization designed to help move Black coaches up the administrative ladder in soccer.
A lasting soccer experiment

While the North American Soccer League never turned soccer into a religion in the U.S. and was not without its own race issues – not least the gap in wages between predominantly European elite players and cheaper African and Caribbean players – it nonetheless leaves a legacy of diversity in U.S. soccer that continues today.

As soccer author Ian Plenderleith has argued, the NASL was the first soccer experiment of “mixing several ethnic backgrounds” into one team.

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Africa's World Cup Qualifying Draw Launches New Format And At Least 9 Teams Towards 2026 Event

Moroccan players celebrate their victory over Spain during the World Cup Round of 16 soccer match between Morocco and Spain, at the Education City Stadium in Al Rayyan, Qatar, on Dec. 6, 2022. Image: Martin Meissner/Associated Press

BY GERALD IMRAY

ABIDJAN, IVORY COAST (AP) -- Nigeria and South Africa were drawn in the same World Cup qualifying group on Thursday in a re-shaped African competition that will lead to at least nine teams at the 2026 showpiece in the U.S., Canada and Mexico.

The enlarged 48-team World Cup in three years’ time means Africa’s places are up from five to nine, with the possibility of a 10th African team making it through an inter-continental playoff.

In the new African format, just the winners of the nine six-team groups are guaranteed a place at the World Cup. The four best second-place teams enter African playoffs and the one that comes through those makes it to an inter-continental mini-tournament, where the two final teams at the World Cup will be decided.

World Cup semifinalist Morocco, the first African or Arab team to make the last four after its surprising run in Qatar last year, is in a group where its sternest tests will likely come from 2012 African champion Zambia and Niger.

The African qualifiers will be played from November to October 2025.

Benin, Zimbabwe, Rwanda and Lesotho are the other teams in Group C with Nigeria and South Africa. Zimbabwe was included in the draw after FIFA lifted an international ban on the country on Tuesday. Zimbabwe was suspended in February 2022 because of government interference in its soccer federation.

Morocco, Zambia and Niger are in Group E with Republic of Congo, Tanzania and Eritrea, which is ranked 200 out of FIFA’s 211 teams.

The draw followed the Confederation of African Football’s general assembly in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, the West African country that will host the next African Cup of Nations in January-February.

Defending African champion Senegal will play Congo, Mauritania, Togo, Sudan and South Sudan in Group B. The Sudanese neighbors will play each other in World Cup qualifying having split into independent states in 2011 after decades of civil war.

Egypt is in Group A and is expected to be pushed by Burkina Faso for the qualifying place there. Egypt played at the 2018 World Cup in Russia after a 28-year absence but missed Qatar.

Morocco, Senegal, Tunisia, Cameroon and Ghana were the five teams from Africa to qualify for the World Cup last year. While Morocco made history to get to the semis, Senegal lost in the last 16 and the other three didn’t get past the group stage.

Ghana faces a tough qualifying path in Group I against Mali, Madagascar, Central African Republic, Chad and Comoros, the tiny island archipelago that beat the Ghanaians in the group stage of the last African Cup and sent them to an early and embarrassing elimination.

Tunisia is with Equatorial Guinea, Namibia, Malawi, Liberia and Sao Tome and Principe in Group H.

Cameroon faces Cape Verde, Angola, Libya, Eswatini and Mauritius in Group D.

Algeria is with Guinea, Uganda, Mozambique, Botswana and Somalia in Group G.

At CAF’s general assembly, FIFA president Gianni Infantino announced a new African Football League featuring eight clubs from across the continent would kick off on Oct. 20.

The African league was meant to be launched in August with 24 teams and prize money of $100 million but was delayed and has been reduced to a much smaller competition.

Infantino said it would eventually evolve into a “big version” but didn’t give any details on which clubs would initially take part or if it would still be the richest tournament in Africa, as CAF president Patrice Motsepe promised at last year’s general assembly in Tanzania.

AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/Soccer and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

With Messi In Miami, Is Los Angeles Still The MLS Home For Global Stars?

BY ELIAS BURKE

Save for a few isolated examples, when a soccer superstar came to America; they usually came to Los Angeles.

This started in earnest with David Beckham, who became the league’s first designated player in 2007, making Los Angeles Galaxy the global symbol of American club soccer for much of the past 16 years. Zlatan Ibrahimovic brought the world’s eyes back to Carson in 2018, launching the El Trafico rivalry with an upstart Los Angeles FC with a debut brace from the bench.

More arrivals in Los Angeles continued its status as the place to be for stars coming to MLS: Carlos Vela. Chicharito. Gareth Bale. It could even be a place for up-and-coming players to further develop – the opportunity to sign a player of Riqui Puig’s pedigree and age (he signed wit the Galaxy as a 22-year-old with experience in Spain’s youth teams and in the Champions League with Barcelona) was usually reserved for destination markets like Los Angeles and New York (which has its own record of stars including Thierry Henry, Andrea Pirlo and David Villa). Even Douglas Costa, signed with a big reputation.

This trend could easily continue this summer: LAFC has a designated player slot is available, offering the prospect of a European star to play for the league champions while enjoying the best of one of the world’s most famous cities.

But with Messi on his way to Inter Miami, the July 4 edition of El Trafico felt simultaneously huge, with a league-record 82,110 turning out at the Rose Bowl, and somewhat small, overshadowed by the potential impact of Messi’s arrival.

In fairness to the LA clubs, the Messi situation was unique; he owned a home in Miami and had tight familial ties with the city. In 2018, two years before Miami’s first season in MLS and five years before eventually signing, Messi hinted that his future might lie in South Florida.

But now that he’s actually coming here, Miami could well establish itself as the pre-eminent football destination in the States, which could have a more profound effect on Los Angeles further down the line. At least in the near term, Messi will arrive in an MLS where both LA clubs are suffering despite lofty expectations at the start of the year.

As the reigning MLS Cup champion, LAFC started the season in inspired form which has tailed off considerably following a CONCACAF Champions League final defeat to Club Leon. To explain their plummet in form, head coach Steve Cherundolo has pointed to the fatigue caused to his players by their congested schedule. Through June, LAFC played eight games, winning only twice, and are now playing three times in seven days before pausing the league schedule ahead of their first Leagues Cup match later this month. The recent decline in productivity of star attackers Denis Bouanga and Vela has heightened pre-season concerns about the failure to replace last season’s top goalscorer Cristian ‘Chicho’ Arango.

Approximately 10 miles south, it was almost the opposite: Galaxy’s lofty aspirations were grounded as Greg Vanney’s side started the season without a win in their opening eight games. Galaxy will play the rest of the season without designated player and captain Javier ‘Chicharito’ Hernandez thanks to an ACL injury. Out of contract at the end of the year, Hernandez has likely played his last game for the Galaxy.

In Tuesday’s edition of El Trafico, Puig, alongside forward partners Tyler Boyd and Douglas Costa, would inspire the blue, gold and white to their sixth league win against LAFC in 16 league meetings. Their 2-1 victory and the accompanying drama, excitement and sense of occasion created by the sell-out crowd reminded all that tuned in why Los Angeles has historically been the destination for European players.

Still, both clubs will face obstacles to improvement. The Galaxy’s issues are the most immediate, as the club faces sanctions for this season’s secondary transfer window due to undisclosed contract agreements made in 2019. The club would have been unable to close a deal for Messi even if they had made any headway. Highly-rated executive Will Kuntz was recruited as a free agent owing to his experience in the league office and as a key part in developing LAFC into a perennial contender to help get the club back on track, but the exact front office hierarchy, with Vanney occupying head coach and sporting director roles and Jovan Kirovski in place as technical director, is yet to be publicly communicated by the club following Chris Klein’s departure as president.

LAFC may be better off in that regard, but are also the MLS club (other than Miami) perhaps most affected by growing influence of Saudi Arabian clubs, which have recently tempted Karim Benzema, N’Golo Kante and Roberto Firmino, among others, to sign for big paychecks. With a designated player slot available and a need to address their recent struggles in front of goal, there were not many players on the market this summer who would have better suited Cherundolo’s style of play than Firmino, the former Liverpool No. 9, who excels in tight areas and creating opportunities for wide forwards. The Brazilian striker left Anfield a legend, and at 31 years old, he still has much to contribute to a team with title aspirations. With the sheer amounts of money available to Saudi clubs, the trend of top players who might have opted for Los Angeles in years gone by choosing the Middle East is only likely to continue.

Still, if somebody needed to be convinced of the growing potential of Los Angeles as a soccer market, last week’s El Trafico ticked every box. These are clubs with talented players, die-hard fanbases with the potential to sell out every home game, tied together by a prime location and a derby match that continues to create fireworks.

Historically, this pitch has elevated these clubs over any other outside of Europe’s top five leagues. But with the emergence of Miami and Saudi Arabia, which plans to outlast similar projects like the Chinese Super League’s expansion a decade ago, are there early signs Los Angeles is losing its magic touch? Or is another club with the ability to contest the Los Angeles clubs what is needed to help MLS grow?

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