Angel City have confirmed the signing of former Manchester United captain Katie Zelem on a deal through to 2026.

Zelem, 28, joins after leaving United following the expiration of her contract at the end of June, bringing an end to a chapter that saw her make over 160 appearances for the club.

A product of United’s academy, Zelem initially left in 2013 due to the absence of a senior women’s team, moving on to Liverpool and later Juventus. However, she rejoined United in 2018 when the club re-established its women’s side, quickly becoming a cornerstone of the squad.

Named as captain ahead of United’s debut season in the Women’s Super League, Zelem played a pivotal role in the team’s rise, leading them to promotion in 2019 and their first-ever Champions League qualification in the 2022-23 campaign. She also helped United clinch the FA Cup with a victory at Wembley last season against Tottenham Hotspur.

Welcome to LA, Katie!
#AngelCityFC announces that England WNT midfielder Katie Zelem has signed with the club through 2026 via free agency. Zelem, former team captain for Man Utd, joins the club as the first signing of the August transfer window.https://t.co/T4nF5Qx2nH pic.twitter.com/KU2QpNTRA9

— Angel City FC (@weareangelcity) August 12, 2024

United finished fifth…

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Top Cinq: An Olympics parfait

Can the Olympics happen every year? I know, I know, the fact that they happen every four years (well, every two years in between Summer and Winter editions) make them more special, but, man — that was a fun month. 

There were too many great moments to fit into one newsletter, so here goes an impossible top-five list … reverse chronologically, because I am a weak man who can’t decide what’s best: 

5. U.S. women’s hoops dominance, then drama
This team won its eighth straight gold medal yesterday, but it wasn’t the romp we expected: The Americans prevailed 67-66, and that one-point difference existed only because French guard Gabby Williams’ foot was on the line when she banked in a long two-pointer as time expired:

UNBELIEVABLE ENDING IN PARIS.

Gabby Williams banked it in at the buzzer but her FOOT WAS ON THE THREE-POINT LINE. TEAM USA WINS BY A SINGLE POINT.#ParisOlympics pic.twitter.com/DJI7YxfVMl

— NBC Olympics & Paralympics (@NBCOlympics) August 11, 2024

It was a fitting finale for this golden era of U.S. women’s hoops, as David Aldridge wrote, and…

After nearly three weeks and more than 1,000 medals, the Paris Olympics have awarded their final gold.

From the ambitious opening ceremony to the handoff to 2028 host Los Angeles, the Paris Games delivered numerous memorable moments. Acclaimed stars cemented their legacies and new faces became Olympic fixtures.

But some stellar performances and viral memes stood above the rest. To highlight and celebrate the best of the 2024 Games, a group of 20 staff members of The Athletic voted and compiled this list of our “Olympic Superlative” winners. (It should be noted this is not a definitive list — but a fun exercise.)

So with that, here’s who stayed winning in our eyes.

Most dominant performance

(Photo: Elsa / Getty Images)

Winner: Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone (five votes)

This category was for the athlete (or team) who put together the best, most undeniable Olympic campaign.

McLaughlin-Levrone, the American hurdler and sprinter, won gold in the women’s 400-meter hurdles, setting a world record at 50.37 seconds. On Saturday, she closed her Games with another gold in the women’s 4×400 relay, pulling away from the field in her leg, which was just a tenth of a second off the world record.

Runners-up: Simone Biles and Armand “Mondo” Duplantis (three votes each)

Biles, the American…

Ben Francis is showing The Athletic a photograph on his phone, but he can’t quite pinpoint when it was taken, so pings off a text to his father seeking clarification.

It turns out the picture dates from the early 2000s with a young Francis standing next to his brother Joe, both clad in Aston Villa replica training gear, and the club’s former European Cup-winning striker Gary Shaw with an arm round each.

Satisfied, the 32-year-old scrolls further through his camera roll.

“This one’s from Wembley when we got promoted,” he says, showing a video of him and his Canadian wife, Robin, jumping up and down after Villa secured promotion to the Premier League against Derby Country in 2019. “That was an amazing day. My wife didn’t know what was going on, but she has to be a Villa fan now.

“Our boys are 18 months old now. This season might be a little bit early for them, but as soon as they’re old enough to take it in, I’ll get season tickets and take them to Villa Park all the time.”

It is Monday afternoon and The Athletic has been invited to Gymshark, the exercise apparel company Francis founded in 2012.

Its origin story is well-known but still remarkable. Francis began Gymshark as a teenager…

Steph Curry, Kevin Durant and LeBron James not only brought the United States an Olympic gold medal.

They delivered massive viewership numbers as well.

NBC said on Sunday that the U.S. Men’s Basketball Team’s thrilling 98-87 victory over France averaged 19.5 million viewers on NBC and Peacock based on fast national data from Nielsen and Adobe Analytics. The company said it was the most-watched gold medal game since the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. The game peaked at 22.7 million viewers from 5-5:15 p.m. ET in the final quarter of the game.

It was the fifth consecutive gold medal for the U.S. in basketball. The gold medal game was a massive viewership jump from the final in Tokyo, which drew 9.3 million viewers as well as Rio (11.7 million).

“We got our moment,” said James following the win. “It’s a basketball world. Everybody loves the game. We just hope that we continue to inspire people all over the world.”

The U.S-France meeting was also the most-streamed event of the Paris Olympics across NBCU digital properties with an average minute audience of 2.7 million viewers.

NBC on Sunday also announced the viewership for the women’s gold medal soccer game: The U.S. Women’s National Team’s 1-0 victory over Brazil averaged approximately 9.0 million viewers on NBC and…

North Carolina women’s soccer coach Anson Dorrance — the all-time Division I leader for NCAA championships by a coach in any sport (21) — is retiring after 45 seasons leading the program, the school announced Sunday.

Dorrance, 73, led UNC’s women’s program to a record 22 national championships — the first of which came in 1981 before the NCAA oversaw women’s soccer  — and ended his career with a 934-88-53 record. He was also the United States women’s national team’s coach from 1986 to 1994, including in 1991 when the U.S. won the first women’s World Cup.

“As many of you know I modeled our program after Dean Smith’s basketball program, and retiring at this time is a credit to his thinking, as well,” Dorrance said in a statement. “He would re-evaluate his tenure, not after the season, but after he had time to re-charge his batteries prior to the next season. When he didn’t, he retired. After last season I initially was excited about the chance to bolster our roster, which we most certainly have done, but as preseason training camp went on, I realized I didn’t have the same energy it takes to give 100% to this year’s team.

“The players and staff, the university, Carolina athletics and our great fans deserve more, and the respect I have for the…

A lawyer for Algerian boxer Imane Khelif says the gold medal-winning boxer has asked prosecutors in Paris to look into online harassment she faced during the Olympics about her gender and presence at the Games.

The lawyer, Nabil Boudi, said in a statement on Instagram that his firm had filed a complaint with the online hate unit of the Paris prosecutor’s office. It was not immediately clear where the complaint would lead. The Associated Press reported Sunday that under French law, it would be up to prosecutors to decide if an investigation is merited and who might be at fault.

Khelif faced a torrent of negative attention on social media after she won her first bout in the 66-kilogram (145-pound) division with an unusually swift stoppage. Her opponent, Angela Carini of Italy, quit the bout within 46 seconds after squarely taking some hard punches from Khelif, including one to the nose that left her complaining that she couldn’t properly breathe.

Khelif was assigned female at birth and the International Olympic Committee has repeatedly affirmed her qualifications to compete in a women’s division. But the knockout drew attention to a decision by the International Boxing Association last year to disqualify Khelif and another boxer, Lin Yu-ting, from its world championships….

No medal is ever guaranteed at the Olympics, but if ever a team was close to certain of being on the podium, it would be the U.S. women’s basketball team.

Team USA has medaled at every Olympics in which it has participated, dating back to a silver in 1976. In total, the team has earned nine gold medals, one silver and one bronze with an all-time record of 75-3.

An era of dominance was ushered in at the 1996 Atlanta Games, where Team USA won the first of its seven consecutive gold medals.

The current roster is no different, with each player either already having won an Olympic gold medal or being a World Cup champion in the past.

Because I married into a French-American family, I’ve been experiencing the 2024 Paris Games from two perspectives this month — both as an Olympic tourist and as a temporary Parisian local. 

When I landed in Paris two days before the opening ceremony, the streets were eerily silent and locals were irritated and upset about the sometimes severe inconveniences to prepare for the Games. But over the past two weeks, my wife and I have seen the city come alive. We’re enjoying the energy and spectacle of a city transformed.

PARIS — When the final whistle came, mercifully, Crystal Dunn collapsed forward onto her knees and pounded her fists into the grass. The bench emptied onto the field, the stadium — fans long eager, and waiting, for a fifth Olympic gold medal — erupted. But in that moment, Dunn was alone and thinking of her own journey to this point.

“You think about all the sacrifices you made,” she said. “Yeah, this game is hard but it’s not just this game. It’s everything you went through. It’s the whole tournament, the buildup.”

For Dunn, it’s not just the buildup of the last year after this program went through a historically disastrous early departure from the 2023 World Cup. It’s not just the last three months, when new head coach Emma Hayes was finally installed at the helm of the U.S. women’s national team program. For Dunn, the player who has the longest history with the senior national team, it’s everything she has gone through since 2013. The rosters she made, the rosters she didn’t. The tournaments they won, and more often, the tournaments they didn’t. The highs and lows. The injuries. The comebacks. All of it.

And on Saturday evening in Parc des Princes — sacrifices and buildup behind her, a 1-0 win against Brazil on the scoreboard, 106 minutes…