Don Garber is a storyteller.

Over lunch at a Midtown Manhattan rooftop restaurant last month, as he chronicles his journey from Bayside, Queens to the NFL offices on Park Avenue to MLS commissioner, it is clear he knows it is the little details that make a story sing.

He didn’t just work at a gas station in high school, it was Barney’s Gulf, a sponsor of the Tony DePhillips Little League baseball team he played for. He didn’t just deliver newspapers, he learned how to properly fold up the Long Island Press to toss while riding his Stingray bike. He reels off the names of characters he has met along the way, like his wife Betsy’s boss at public relations firm Ruder and Finn, who told her she could find Betsy a better match “than this knucklehead”. “We’ll be married 39 years,” he notes. Or the man who ran the farmstand he worked at during summer break while a student at SUNY Oneonta.

He drops a few surprises, too. Garber’s resume may start at a vocational school near LaGuardia Airport, but his first year and a half after college was spent sleeping in a Ford van, working at bars and installing irrigation lines to pay his way across the U.S. and Mexico with some buddies.

“Old guys have great stories,” Garber says, with a smile.

Next month will mark 25 years for…

Paul Dalglish filled an eclectic mix of roles across 17 years working in North America.

A two-time MLS Cup winner with Houston Dynamo as a player, his coaching career took him from Tampa to Austin, Salt Lake City, Ottawa and Miami.

There were stints as head coach, technical director, general manager and club president. Now, having relocated to the UK with his family, the son of Liverpool legend Sir Kenny Dalglish has started a new chapter as a football agent.

A catch-up with old school friend Ben Mawson, the co-founder of global music management company TaP Music, led to the launch of TaP23.

“I was at a crossroads when Ben came to me,” says Dalglish, who had been considering his options after parting company with Miami FC in November 2021.

“When you work in America, there’s no relegation or promotion. The only way you stay somewhere is if you’re average. If you do well, you get a better club. If you don’t do well, you get fired. America is so big and the clubs are so spread out. It can be very disruptive in terms of uprooting the family. The only time I really got to spend with the kids when I wasn’t working and they weren’t in school was two weeks at Christmas.

“It was a conversation with my wife who said this opportunity is going to be much better for family…

Click here to follow the Copa America on The Athletic and get relevant stories in your personalised feed. 

---

In the hours before Maxime Crepeau stared down Lionel Messi and Argentina, the Canada goalkeeper’s mind drifted far away from the immense challenge the World Cup champions presented.

There were tactical plans to review on how best to implement new Canada head coach Jesse Marsch’s press. There were typical warm-ups to do. And there were necessary messages as a team that had to be communicated throughout the locker room.

But none of those teammates had overcome the kind of hurdles recently that Crepeau did. And so he needed to appreciate the fact he was starting in a wildly important game for Canada — finally — in a way none of the other players could understand.

“My wife and I shared a moment before the game,” Crepeau said quietly. “We’ve come a long, long way.”

Crepeau was a lock for Canada’s 2022 World Cup roster for months before they even qualified. There was no doubt he was going on the plane to Qatar as Canada’s backup goalkeeper, even if, at the time, a case could be made that he offered more athleticism and quality than longtime Canada No 1 Milan Borjan.

That is until Crepeau raced out to cut off Philadelphia Union striker Cory Burke in the 2022…

The cities of Atlanta and Charlotte are separated by less than 250 miles. It’s a straight shot down Interstate 85. The buildup to this newfound Southern derby saw both the social media teams of Atlanta United and Charlotte FC taking jabs at each other.

Bragging rights were at stake, but Atlanta United held firm that they were the true kings of the South. Golden paper crowns were handed out as fans entered Atlanta United’s state-of-the-art Mercedes-Benz Stadium on Sunday afternoon. The home supporters wore them proudly, but after Charlotte’s 3-2 win, which was Atlanta’s fifth consecutive loss at home, a procession of men, women and children exited the stadium feeling more like court jesters than Southern royalty. 

The next day, head coach Gonzalo Pineda was relieved of his duties. Another loss at home had sunk Atlanta United toward a new low.

Once a fortress for the club and an intimidating ground for visiting MLS teams, Atlanta United’s home stadium has lost its luster as Atlanta United has become a middle-of-the road team. Six years after winning an MLS Cup and revolutionizing the league, Atlanta United is now accustomed to hitting rock bottom. Once the shining example of MLS’ aggressive expansion model, the club has become synonymous with underachieving. 

To fire…

The Champions League final is the biggest club game on the calendar and the climax of the football season.

On June 1, Real Madrid, the 14-time winners of Europe’s elite club competition, will play German club Borussia Dortmund at Wembley Stadium in London. According to UEFA, the game will be shown in more than 200 territories and will reach 450million people worldwide, with an estimated global average viewership of around 145m.

The most ardent of football supporters, be it in the United States or the United Kingdom, will devour any match if it is on TV, whether that is the Premier League, Ligue 1, Major League Soccer (MLS) or the Women’s Super League (WSL).

Fortunately for fans, most games are now available on TV — but just how much do those in the U.S. and the UK pay to tune in?

As part of TNT Sports’ deal with UEFA, the broadcaster has to make the Champions League final free to view in the UK, giving supporters a small reprieve from the monthly costs associated with watching football on TV.

Regular fixtures, however, are seldom made available for free, and following your team on TV, or another league, is not cheap.

For the figures in this article, the platform’s baseline cost is not factored in. For example, the cost of basic cable in the U.S. is not included in the…

U.S. men’s national team winger Tim Weah has joined Brooklyn FC’s ownership group. In August, the club’s women’s team will begin playing in the USL Super League, the new first-division women’s soccer league, and the men’s team will move to the second-division USL Championship in 2025.

Weah, 24, was born in Brooklyn and grew up about an hour away in Rosedale, a neighborhood in the southeastern corner of Queens. As of 2022, his family still had a home in Springfield Gardens, about 40 minutes from where Brooklyn FC will play its home games next season at Maimonides Park in Coney Island.

“I am grateful for the opportunity to join Brooklyn Football Club’s ownership team and strengthen our connection to the people of New York, the borough I was born in, and the city I love,” Weah said in a statement. “BKFC is a grassroots-oriented club, focused on providing not only top-level professional football but new pathways and opportunities for women and men off the pitch as well.”

GO DEEPER

Inside the Queens neighborhood Tim Weah calls home

Weah has been a key member of the U.S. team over the last four years. He played in nine World Cup qualifiers, starting eight, and scored the opening goal of the 2022 World Cup tournament.

Weah just completed his first season with…

When Jesse Marsch was announced as the new head coach of the Canadian men’s national soccer team on Monday, the press release contained a fact that raised eyebrows. March’s official formal title would not be simply “head coach of the Canadian men’s national team,” or even “Manager of the Canadian men’s national team.”

Rather, he will be on the books as the “MLS Canada Men’s National Team Head Coach.”

Why is MLS named specifically in the job title of a national team head coach? The answer is multifaceted and has more people up in arms than you might think. 

Why did Canada Soccer include MLS in the job title? 

In its hiring announcement, the Canadian federation notes that Marsch’s hire was made possible due to “major philanthropic contributions” from the country’s three MLS clubs – CF Montreal, Toronto FC and the Vancouver Whitecaps. It also says that similar naming conventions for official jobs are common in other areas, specifically citing that the head coach of the country’s women’s golf team is in fact known as the Stollery Family Women’s National Team Head Coach. 

It is also common for colleges, universities and hospitals to name positions after certain donors. However, it is all but unheard of in soccer. It is difficult to imagine, for…

This year’s Copa América will be closely watched, but the ensuing Olympic Games in Paris will have just as much to say about the broader state of the U.S. men’s player pool. Unlike the women’s side of the Olympic tournament, the men’s competition relies on players under the age of 23, though every team is allowed to bring up to three over-age players in the 18-man squad.  

If the team that U.S. Olympic coach Marko Mitrović selects comes close to matching the program-best 4th place finish in 2000, it would be a potential indicator that the U.S. can now consistently produce top-end talent. If the U.S. is embarrassed in Group A, though, some will fear that 2026 will be the program’s high point for quite some time.

After the draw in March, Mitrović touted a “big pool of players that we are following” for potential inclusion. He stressed that he wants to bring “the best 18 players” he can, and didn’t show his hand yet about areas where he feels he can sacrifice depth given the squad limitations of an Olympic tournament.

GO DEEPER

USMNT to play France in Olympic tourney opener

With that in mind, here’s a crib sheet of Olympic-eligible players to track in the coming months. This list focuses on MLS players, and with good reason: A full half of the most recent…

Tori Penso and Rebecca Welch are among the 21 referees who have been chosen to officiate football matches at this summer’s Olympic Games in Paris.

Penso, 38, became the first woman to referee a regular season Major League Soccer match in 20 years back in 2020.

The American official also took charge of the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup final in Australia.

Welch, 40, became the Premier League’s first female referee when she took charge of Fulham’s 2-0 defeat to Burnley on December 23. She has been refereeing since 2010 and became the first woman to officiate a match in the men’s Championship — the English second tier — at the start of 2023.

Welch told The Athletic in 2021: “My gender has never held me back in refereeing. There’s never been a point where I’ve come away from a game feeling that they have treated me a certain way because I’m female. They might treat me a certain way because I’m a referee and they don’t agree with a decision but I’ve not come under that scrutiny.

“I know other people who have. Ninety-eight per cent of people won’t bat an eyelid when a woman turns up to referee their game, but there’s another two per cent who will. In years to come, there won’t be that exposure around it. That sounds negative, but it’s really not. It…

American soccer has dealt with two high-profile instances of extreme weather disrupting professional games in the last week. In both cases, despite conditions making it impossible to play at anything close to normal, the games went on.

The most recent of the two happened on Wednesday, when steady and heavy rains flooded the field at Snapdragon Stadium in San Diego, Caif. before the U.S. women’s national team’s Gold Cup semifinal match against Canada. Conditions meant the ball could not travel on the ground farther than a couple of feet in most parts of the field, which played a direct role in the United States’ opening goal.

JAEDYN SHAW RIDING THE STORMMMM pic.twitter.com/0gq2tkR2sa

— Attacking Third (@AttackingThird) March 7, 2024

“It was honestly insane,” Shaw said. “We had such a good warmup … the ball was moving really fast, and we were excited to just play and have a really intense game, and then we came back out and we were like, ‘What’s happening?’”

Asked if the game should have been played, USWNT interim head coach Twila Kilgore said, “Probably not.”

The previous Saturday, an MLS match between Real Salt Lake and Los Angeles FC was similarly affected, but by a different form of precipitation. That game, which was held at America First…