FIFA has confirmed the 12 stadiums that will stage the inaugural Club World Cup in the United States next summer.

The Athletic reported last week that FIFA president Gianni Infantino had promised global broadcasters that the Club World Cup venues would be announced by the end of September. FIFA has not announced a broadcast partner for the tournament.

Infantino confirmed the full list of venues on Saturday evening at the Global Citizen Festival in Central Park, New York.

“Football is the most popular sport on the planet, and in 2025 a new era for club football will kick off when FIFA stages the greatest, most inclusive and merit-based global club competition right here in the United States,” Infantino said in a FIFA press release.

Lumen Field and the Rose Bowl are the only west-coast venues selected for next summer’s tournament. Lumen Field is the 68,000-capacity home of MLS side Seattle Sounders, NWSL club Seattle Reign and NFL franchise the Seattle Seahawks. The Sounders are one of the teams competing at the 2025 competition and are expected to play at least one game at Lumen Field.

Coming to the USA in 2025 #TakeItToTheWorld | #FIFACWC pic.twitter.com/ocAOgy87Fl

— FIFA Club World Cup (@FIFACWC) September 28, 2024

There are only two west-coast stadiums selected…

The San Diego Wave hired Landon Donovan as its new interim head coach, the team announced Friday. Donovan replaces outgoing interim head coach Paul Buckle, whose original commitment to the team only ran through the summer window. Donovan holds a USSF A senior license and will coach the Wave through the end of the 2024 NWSL season while the club continues its search for a permanent hire.

Donovan is one of the most decorated U.S. men’s soccer players in program history with 57 goals in 157 international caps, as well as winning the MLS Cup six times. He was vice president of soccer operations for the San Diego Loyal in USL until the club folded in 2023 due to an inability to find “a viable near- and long-term stadium solution in the market.” Before that, Donovan was the Loyal’s head coach from 2019 to 2022.

“Landon’s level of knowledge, understanding and experience as both a player and a coach, provides us with a leader that can help guide this club to where we want to be — in a playoff position and competing for a Championship. His passion for this city and growing the game, along with having a player-first mentality, make him a natural fit for this club,” said Wave general manager Camille Ashton via a club statement.

Donovan will take over immediately, coaching…

As is customary after a summer of major tournaments, various international managerial jobs are now vacant.

As is customary, the rumour mill has gone into overdrive.

As is customary, there doesn’t appear to be any common theme across the names linked to major jobs.

Take the England job. According to the bookmakers’ odds, the four most likely names are Eddie Howe, Graham Potter, Lee Carsley and Mauricio Pochettino. Two are homegrown managers who have performed solidly at club level. One is the current England Under-21 manager, who has limited club-coaching experience. The other is a foreign manager — albeit one with considerable experience in English football — who has coached major clubs.

The apparent contenders for the United States men’s national team job are equally varied. There is a raft of MLS candidates — Jim Curtin, Steve Cherundolo, Wilfried Nancy. Then there is David Wagner, a former U.S. international who hasn’t coached in the country. There is Herve Renard, an international specialist currently coaching the France women’s side at the Olympics. There’s also Thierry Henry, who is doing the equivalent with the France men’s side, and…

Carli Lloyd, the two-time World Cup winner and double Olympic gold medallist, recently wrote an article for Women’s Health magazine. She spoke movingly of her secret journey of unexplained infertility and IVF treatment, culminating in a joyous development: she is now pregnant, and expecting her first child in October.

Post-retirement and now aged 41, Lloyd wrote that her “heart has come alive” and explained how, for the first time, she feels able to open up and allow herself to be vulnerable.

This is not Carli Lloyd, the player, that people think they know.

“People had to get used to that,” she tells The Athletic. “They had to understand me a little bit more. But the fanbase and media only saw the competitor Carli. They only saw me with raging, bulging eyes, like I wanted to hurt somebody and be the ultra, uber-competitor. And that was the way that I was going to be able to survive.

“And when I look back at my career and reflect, ‘Would I have done things differently?’, I do think I maybe would have tried to enjoy things a little bit more. But I had to have a guard up, because I had some coaches that kind of stabbed me in the back. And you’re part of a team where everybody’s competing with one another. So that guard stayed up until I announced my…

In 1971, tens of thousands of fans filled Estadio Azteca in Mexico City to watch soccer. It was two decades before the U.S. women took home the inaugural FIFA Women’s World Cup championship title after defeating Norway 2-1 but the players that fans were filling the seats to see were women.

“This is unbelievable,” says 1999 World Cup hero Brandi Chastain in the opening scene of a new documentary, ‘Copa 71’. “Why didn’t I know about this?”

If Chastain didn’t know about the tournament, it’s likely the average fan didn’t either. That’s what the new documentary hopes to change.

The film, which is out in the U.S. on Friday, tells the story of the unofficial women’s World Cup held in Mexico in 1971. The tournament featured players from six countries, drawing massive crowds to Latin America and unprecedented coverage of women’s football. Yet, all the footage from the pioneering event was lost to history… until now.

The film is as entertaining as it is infuriating. It outlines how Copa 71 came to be, retelling how those governing soccer explicitly kept women out of the world’s favorite game. While the success of the tournament is one to marvel at 53 years later, it also demonstrates how the women’s game was robbed of 20 years’ worth of potential…

Dear readers,

The Premier League and Champions League are over for another season but the summer of 2024 is packed full of live action and transfer fun and games — and we’ll cover it all in detail on The Athletic.

From Europe’s major clubs travelling across the world (and to the United States in particular) to all the moves (and nearly moves) of the summer transfer window, plus two major international tournaments, Emma Hayes starting her reign as USWNT head coach and the Olympics, our team of reporters will bring you in-depth coverage of the things you care about.

We’ll be on the ground in Germany for Euro 2024; across the U.S. for Copa America, MLS, NWSL and Premier League pre-season; in Paris, France for the summer Olympic Games’ football action, and everywhere in between — ensuring you don’t miss a thing when it comes to the beautiful game.

The club content you know and love won’t stop either. Our trusted team of reporters will hit the phones to bring you the latest moves in the transfer window as we embark on an ambitious project to cover the summer ins and outs like never before.

And it doesn’t stop there.

You might already follow our NFL, NBA or NHL coverage, but did you know we also cover a range of other sports, including golf, Formula 1 and tennis? Mark out…

U.S. Soccer has partnered with LGBTQ+ charity You Can Play Project for the sixth consecutive year to “celebrate and support the LGBTQ+ community during Pride Month in June,” the federation’s release said.

As part of the partnership, the U.S. women’s and men’s teams will wear jerseys with rainbow-themed numbers inspired by Pride during the matches in June. Signed jerseys from each member of the two teams will go up for auction on Friday, May 31 through U.S. Soccer, with all proceeds going to the You Can Play Project, which works to “help promote a safe and inclusive environment for the LGBTQ+ community,” U.S. Soccer said in a press release.

One of the auction pages set up is for USWNT midfielder Korbin Albert, who shared anti-LGBTQ+ content on social media and subsequently apologized earlier this year after pressure from past and present USWNT players, including Megan Rapinoe.

“I want to sincerely apologize for my actions on social media,” she wrote in part on Instagram in March. “Liking and sharing posts that are offensive, insensitive and hurtful was immature and disrespectful which was never my intent.”

Albert, 20, is a midfielder with French Division 1 Féminine club Paris Saint-Germain. She was part of the USWNT’s squad for the CONCACAF W Gold Cup and…

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…

US Soccer has appointed Natasha Patel to lead analysis across its men’s, women’s and youth teams.

Patel, the highly-regarded assistant academy director at Championship club Southampton, will begin her role at the start of June ahead of a busy summer with the USMNT competing on home soil at Copa America, and the USWNT heading to Paris for July’s Olympic games. She previously worked as Southampton’s head of performance analysis and carried out the same role at New York Red Bulls in MLS.

Patel will be reunited with US Soccer sporting director Matt Crocker, who was also previously at the English club as director of football between 2020 and 2023.

She joins with the federation set to host the 2026 World Cup in the U.S. and also preparing to open its first National Training Center the same year.

In an interview with the Training Ground Podcast in March, she said: “Any club, any organisation that I want to go into longer-term has to be aligned with my values and future ambitions.

“You give so much time and energy, I think you really want to be fully involved — and I’m all-in in everything I do.

“Hopefully that takes me to meeting more people and new experiences. You only get one life and I want to make sure I enjoy it and maximise it – with myself, but also my friends…

Guinea’s under-23 football team have secured their place in the 2024 Olympic Games, where they will play the USMNT in Group A.

Guinea defeated Indonesia 1-0 in Thursday’s play-off — Ilaix Moriba scored the only goal of the game from the penalty spot — in Clairefontaine to become the 16th and final qualifier for the men’s tournament in Paris.

The match was a play-off between the sides from the African and Asian federations, with Guinea joining fellow African nations Egypt, Morocco and Mali in the finals.

The U.S. will play Guinea in their third group stage match in Saint-Etienne on July 30, after opening their campaign against hosts France in Marseille on July 24 and playing New Zealand in Marseille three days later.

In the women’s tournament draw, the USWNT have been drawn in Group B alongside Germany, Australia and Zambia.

However, Zambia’s women’s team may be prevented from participating due to an ongoing political crisis within the country’s football association.

FIFA, world football’s governing body, has said the Football Association of Zambia (FAZ) faces being suspended — and therefore Zambian…