Nebraska lands commitment from elite 2027 QB prospect Trae Taylor
Matt Rhule and the Nebraska Cornhuskers continue to score big on the recruiting trail, this time landing a verbal commitment from one of the top quarterback prospects in the nation.
Trae Taylor, a four-star prospect and the No. 7-ranked QB in the 2027 recruiting class, per 247Sports.com, announced his commitment to Nebraska on Thursday. The 6-foot-3, 186-pound signal-caller is the program's first commitment in the 2027 recruiting cycle.
Taylor, who threw for more than 3,000 yards and 20 touchdowns during his sophomore season at Carmel Catholic High School (Mundelein, Illinois) last year, committed to Nebraska over Illinois, LSU and Texas A&M.
During his commitment announcement, which was streamed live on 247Sports' YouTube channel, Taylor picked up an Illinois hat, stood up and placed it on his head while saying, "I'm going to stay home and go to Illinois." After a brief pause, he removed the hat, tossed it to the side, and then proceed to grab a Nebraska cap, which he showed off along with a Nebraska shirt underneath his hoodie.
"Coach Rhule and Coach Thomas, they've all been very genuine, and I feel like they can get me better both on and off the field," Taylor said when asked by 247Sports why he chose Nebraska. "I really believe that they can get me to the next level, which is the NFL, where I want to be at."
Nebraska quarterbacks coach Glenn Thomas served as Taylor's primary recruiter throughout his recruitment, and he was able to spend time with him and current Huskers starting QB Dylan Raiola during his recent visit to Lincoln.
"I feel like Nebraska is the best place for me," Taylor added following his commitment announcement, "and we've got the best fans in the nation."
Rhule and the Cornhuskers are set to welcome the nation's 20th-ranked recruiting class this season, per 247Sports.com, and are already off to a nice start in the 2026 class with three verbal commitments, highlighted by four-star safety prospect CJ Bronaugh, who is the No. 72-ranked recruit in the class, per 247Sports.com.
Taylor follows Ohio State pledge Brady Edmunds as the second elite-level signal-caller to announce his commitment in the 2027 recruiting class.
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New York Times
27 minutes ago
- New York Times
Adrien Rabiot interview: Man Utd interest, Juventus development and his mother's influence
Had things panned out differently last summer, Adrien Rabiot might have spent this season playing for Manchester United. United have been long-term admirers of the tousle-haired French midfielder and made the latest in a long line of approaches to him last year following the end of his five-year spell at Juventus. But instead, he made the bold and eyebrow-raising decision to join Marseille. Advertisement Given the drastically contrasting trajectories the two clubs have pursued over the intervening months — Marseille brilliantly securing automatic Champions League qualification for only the third time since 2013, United slumping to their lowest league finish since 1974 — it is not a choice that he has had much reason to reflect on. 'It really could have happened two years ago, when I was coming to the end of my contract at Juventus and I finally decided to extend by a year,' he says. 'We had great talks, and there were written offers. But in the end, it didn't happen. 'Last year as well, when I was free, they came back in again. I had good talks with them again. But it's true that it was a bit tricky. The situation they're in at the moment… I felt a bit of reticence about whether United were going to be able to go on and achieve great things. Because they're in a bit of a hole at the moment.' Rabiot says his focus is always on what is coming rather than what might have been. 'I have no regrets in my career,' he adds. 'I've always been very happy with the choices I've made. I've always enjoyed myself. At PSG, I won. At Juve, I won and I learnt a lot. 'I arrived at Marseille and I had a great season. I helped the club to fulfil its objectives by qualifying (for the Champions League) in my first season. So no, no regrets.' Were his curiosity about life at United ever to be piqued, Rabiot would not have to look far for someone who could give him the inside track on the club. Former United prospect Mason Greenwood made a comparably headline-grabbing switch to Marseille last summer. Greenwood and Rabiot struck up a fruitful on-pitch understanding at Stade Velodrome, spending a significant portion of the campaign playing as twin No 10s in a 3-4-2-1 system concocted by Roberto De Zerbi. Advertisement Whereas Rabiot had free rein to pick his next club, Greenwood's choices were narrowed by the fact he left United after allegations of attempted rape, coercive and controlling behaviour and assault occasioning actual bodily harm. Greenwood strongly denied all the allegations, and the UK's Crown Prosecution Service ultimately discontinued proceedings against him. The 23-year-old Englishman made an immediate impact at Marseille and finished his maiden campaign as Ligue 1's joint-top scorer alongside Ousmane Dembele with 21 goals, only losing out on the official prize because he had scored more penalties than the PSG forward. Despite having been publicly rebuked at times by De Zerbi for a lack of effort, Greenwood has made a major impression on Rabiot. 'Mason is an incredible player,' says the midfielder. 'If he hadn't had all of his problems, I think he'd have an image like (Jude) Bellingham. Mason would be the star. 'Because he's an exceptional player. He can score with his right foot and his left foot, he has an exceptional shot, he can dribble. We're very lucky to have him. When he's really focused, he does really great things.' With his 6ft 3in height, elegant technique, boundless stamina and powerful running style, Rabiot has long appeared to possess the kind of attributes required to thrive in the English top flight, a championship he follows closely. 'English football is very attractive,' says the France international, who briefly spent time on Manchester City's books as a youngster. 'Everyone knows that it's the best league and the football it produces is a spectacle every weekend. There are lots of very good teams, and the league is uncertain. 'You know that the team in 18th place is capable of beating the team in first or second place. At the start of the season, you really don't know who's going to win (the league) and who's going to get into Europe. It was really tight right until the end. Advertisement 'And then there are new teams that emerge every year, which makes it a really top league. So yes, I've always got an eye on the Premier League.' Rabiot's signing last September was a massive coup for Marseille, who had finished eighth in Ligue 1 the previous season and consequently had no European football to offer him. The club's famously passionate fans, thrilled by the furious reaction to the switch back in Paris, welcomed him with open arms. He immediately found common ground with De Zerbi, whose arrival from Brighton & Hove Albion had generated a similar level of excitement. 'I clicked with him straight away,' Rabiot says. 'He's someone who talks a lot, who exchanges, who explains his ideas and who tries to find the right position for every player. 'He works a lot tactically. He spends his days at the training centre, from morning to night. He's football crazy. That's something that I appreciated because to really succeed, you have to have that passion, that determination, that desire, that ambition. 'We hit it off straight away, and we talked a lot. He asked me, as the most experienced player, to lift the team up and bring the other players along with me. That's what we did. 'Everyone knows the coach De Zerbi is. He was at Brighton and did great things. In Italy, he has a reputation. He must have received a lot of offers. He's been very important this season for Marseille and I think that the French league is lucky to have a coach like him here.' In a testament to De Zerbi's tactical creativity, Rabiot began the season playing in a two-man midfield, then moved to the right of a midfield three, then shifted to a more attacking role in the 3-4-2-1 system introduced by the Italian in November. He finished the campaign playing in the No 10 position in a 4-2-3-1 formation. Advertisement Rabiot has tended to play in more of a box-to-box role throughout his career, but his more advanced positioning enabled him to finish the campaign with 10 goals and five assists in all competitions. 'He's a coach who tries to adapt and who tries to find the best position (for you) with regard to the players around you,' Rabiot says. 'That's why he moved me around so much. 'We talked and we tried things. At the end, I was playing higher up, closer to the striker, and it was really good because it's a position that suited me really well. 'He's a coach who gives you the keys (to the next game) in training. He'll say: 'This team will play in this way. Put yourself in this zone, do this, do that'. That's where he's good — it's almost like he knows how the match is going to unfold before it's even happened.' Rabiot's five years at Juventus were ideal preparation for working under a coach as tactically meticulous as De Zerbi. The Frenchman was 24 when he arrived in Turin in 2019 and was widely perceived as something of an enigma. He had left his formative club PSG after being frozen out of the first-team squad halfway through the season for refusing to sign a new contract. He had also been sidelined at international level by France coach Didier Deschamps after rejecting a place on the standby list for their triumphant 2018 World Cup campaign. After winning a ninth consecutive Serie A title in Rabiot's first season, there were no further major trophies beyond a pair of Coppa Italia wins in 2021 and 2024. He nevertheless finished his spell at the club strongly under Massimiliano Allegri, who appointed him vice-captain in 2023, and says that his half-decade in northern Italy opened his eyes to the demands at the very highest level. 'It was an important step in my career,' Rabiot says. 'It was a period when I gained maturity and when I took on the mentality that they develop at Juventus: work, selflessness, sacrifice. They're things that you learn and that become part of you. Advertisement 'My time at Juventus was very useful to me. It allowed me to grow up a huge amount. I experienced great things, I won titles. But it's also the people I worked with, the players I played with. 'I think of the players who were there when I arrived — the Cristiano Ronaldos, the Gigi Buffons, the Giorgio Chiellinis, the (Leonardo) Bonuccis. They're players who have that mentality, and they transmit it. They were examples for me.' Twenty-five years before Rabiot's move to Juventus, another industrious French central midfielder had crossed the Alps to hone his trade during a five-year spell in Turin. Deschamps joined Juventus from Marseille in 1994 and has credited his own experience of Italian football with enabling him to develop the fierce winner's mentality that has since become his trademark. Deschamps brought Rabiot's two years of international exile to an end in September 2020 and the midfielder has since become one of his principal lieutenants, forming part of France's first-choice XI at both the 2022 World Cup and Euro 2024. 'When I first came in, I was very young,' says Rabiot, who was 21 when he won the first of his 53 France caps in November 2016. 'So inevitably, you don't have the experience and all the things I might have now that enable you to have a relationship with a coach. 'The more experienced players who had been here for longer had a different kind of relationship with him. Little by little, that kind of relationship develops through the moments you spend together and the tournaments you play in. 'Now we have a relationship where we're able to say things to each other. There's real trust between us. For a national coach, I think it's important to have players you can lean on and say things to.' Having turned 30 in April, Rabiot is one of the oldest and most experienced members of the current squad. With youngsters such as Desire Doue, Bradley Barcola, Warren Zaire-Emery and Rayan Cherki all in the foothills of their international careers, he now finds himself being looked up to in the same way that he looked up to his battle-hardened former Juventus team-mates during his early days in Turin. Advertisement 'For me it's about setting an example on the pitch,' says Rabiot, who was speaking before France's remarkable 5-4 defeat by Spain in the UEFA Nations League semi-finals. 'Showing that when you arrive here, you have to give everything, whether it's in training or matches, and having that mentality of always wanting to win for France. 'Knowing that the collective is more important than any individual, that we're all together, whether we win or lose. Showing those values and trying to transmit them. It's an important role to have with certain players as one of the older players in the team.' Rabiot has been advised by his mother, Veronique, since the very beginning of his career. She took the lead after Adrien's father, Michel Provost, suffered a severe stroke in 2007 that left him with locked-in syndrome and she has succeeded in carving out a reputation as a formidable negotiator. 'She's always supported me,' Rabiot says. 'She's always been by my side and she's always said: 'You concentrate on your football and what happens on the pitch. I'll handle everything else.' 'For a footballer, there are things that can get into your head because there are so many things you have to manage around you. Sometimes you don't know who to delegate that to. It can be a weight. 'Straight away, my mother was there to manage everything going on around me and to leave me to focus on the pitch. That's what's enabled me to advance in the way that I have and to have the success I've had. 'She's always been very ambitious. She wants the best for me, and she's always done things as I've asked her to. That's important because maybe with other people, people from outside the family, things wouldn't have worked out like that. 'She's very professional and meticulous, in the same way that I am. We take after each other a lot.' When Rabiot returned to the Parc des Princes to face PSG in March, both he and his mother were targeted by abusive chants and banners that made crude references to his late father, who died in 2019. In an Instagram post, Rabiot told PSG president Nasser Al-Khelaifi: 'You can't buy class.' The Rabiot family subsequently announced their intention to take legal action against those responsible for the abuse, while French Football Federation president Philippe Diallo told AFP the abuse was 'disgraceful and appalling'. Advertisement It is not the first time Veronique has found herself in the spotlight, having long been caricatured in the French media over her uncompromising stewardship of her son's career. Given everything the family has been through, seeing her publicly criticised must hurt. 'Yes, of course,' Rabiot says. 'But whether it's her or me, we've built tough shells. Because in this environment, you have to be armed. 'On that level, she's exceptional too because she doesn't let anything get in, she's focused on her objectives, and it doesn't matter what people might be saying around her. 'If she's convinced that something is the right choice and she's doing the right thing, she'll do it and she won't be intimidated by what's happening externally. 'You have to have a rock-solid mindset, and she does, notably because of the things we've been through together in our family. They are things that have forged us, and on that level, she's unbeatable.'
New York Times
an hour ago
- New York Times
Cristiano Ronaldo wins Nations League aged 40: ‘For Portugal, if I had to break a leg, I would'
In the end it was the 40-year-old man who was crying. Not the child with the runners-up medal. They were tears of joy as Cristiano Ronaldo, overcome with emotion, dropped to his knees after Ruben Neves converted the penalty that won Portugal the UEFA Nations League for the second time in six years. Love him or loathe him, Ronaldo has a magnetic attraction to silverware and nothing gives him greater satisfaction than celebrating success with his country. Advertisement His third trophy with Portugal was won on a night when the subplot involving him and Lamine Yamal was too good to ignore. Comparing players across different generations is always difficult, especially when the game changes so much over time. But what about when two great players from different generations end up playing in the same game? 'One is coming in and another is exiting the stage. If you want to see me as another generation, then that's OK,' Ronaldo said on the eve of Sunday's final in Munich. It's hard to see Ronaldo any other way when Yamal is on the pitch with him. Yamal, after all, is only 17 years old. Ronaldo is 40. Yamal's father is younger than Ronaldo, and Yamal is only three years older than Ronaldo's eldest son, Cristiano Jr, who plays for Portugal Under-15s. A 23-year age gap on the pitch is unprecedented at a level of the game where fortysomethings are typically enjoying retirement or management and 17-year-olds are nowhere to be seen. That said, there's nothing about Ronaldo or Yamal that's typical. One of them belongs near the top of any conversation about the greatest ever footballers ('I am the best in history,' Ronaldo told the journalist Edu Aguirre in February). The other is a teenage phenomenon who is one of the leading contenders for the Ballon d'Or at an age when he still isn't old enough to drive a car in Spain. 'Two galaxies colliding' was the headline above the match preview in the Spanish newspaper Marca. Ultimately, though, it was a 22-year-old left-back who played like he was on another planet. Nuno Mendes, the Portugal and Paris Saint-Germain defender, was the best player on the pitch by a distance, so much so that he did more to shape the narrative around the Ronaldo and Yamal contest than anyone else, including both of them. After scoring Portugal's first equaliser with a powerful angled drive, Mendes set up the second, which Ronaldo converted to register his 138th goal for his country in 221 caps. Either side of those two goals, Mendes was outstanding up against Yamal, handling the Barcelona winger as well as – if not better – than anyone we have seen up until now. Yamal was withdrawn during the interval in extra-time, by which point he had spent longer chasing Mendes than Mendes had spent chasing him. Quite simply, it wasn't Yamal's night and you got the feeling that it might turn out that way as early as the fourth minute, when Ronaldo, of all people, dispossessed him and launched a Portugal counter attack. Advertisement There's no need for a post-mortem into where it all went wrong for Yamal. He's still a kid. In fact, maybe we already expect too much from him and assume he will be brilliant every time he sets foot on the pitch, just as he was against France in the semi-final in Stuttgart on Thursday night. That, however, is not how elite football works. 'Let him grow, do not put him under pressure, so we can enjoy a talent like this for many years,' Ronaldo warned beforehand. How much longer we will enjoy Ronaldo's talent is anyone's guess. In the eyes of many, he has been out of sight and out of mind ever since leaving Manchester United in December 2022 to sign for the Saudi Pro League side Al Nassr. For Portugal, however, he remains a permanent fixture in their starting line-up and you get the feeling that will continue to be the case until the day he decides otherwise, rather than any manager. Against Spain, he only touched the ball 22 times and registered just one shot. In fact, he was on the periphery of the game for the first hour and generally making little in the way of a meaningful contribution, to the point that you briefly found yourself wondering whether Roberto Martinez, the Portugal coach, would have the courage and conviction to substitute his captain in search of some more dynamic movement up front and the second equaliser they badly needed. That thought didn't last long. Or, to put it another way, it lasted about as long as it took Mendes to sprint away from Yamal on the Portugal left and deliver a deflected cross that looped up invitingly for Ronaldo. Although Marc Cucurella was close by, realistically there was only going to be one winner and Ronaldo volleyed home. His pace has gone now but the instinct to be in the right place at the right time when a chance comes along is as strong as ever. It was the 938th goal of Ronaldo's career – a silly number, really – and extended his own record as the leading scorer in international football in the men's game (138). 'I have not seen anyone like me. Numbers don't lie,' he said in that same interview with Aguirre in February. There's an argument we haven't seen anyone like Yamal either, certainly not in the modern game at his age. This was his 21st cap for Spain (15 direct goal involvements) and he has already played 106 times for Barcelona, scoring 25 goals and registering 34 assists for his club (per Transfermarkt). Advertisement To put those figures into perspective, when Ronaldo was Yamal's age he was still eight months away from winning his first cap for Portugal and he had featured in only 16 first-team matches for Sporting Lisbon (Lionel Messi hadn't made his debut for Argentina either at that age, in case you were wondering). Yamal's numbers are off the scale in that respect and if he continues on this trajectory, by the time he reaches Ronaldo's age he will be… don't worry, we're not going to project nearly a quarter of a century of football on the back of two seasons as a teenager. What we wouldn't rule out, though, is that Ronaldo will still be playing for Portugal at that point, keeping an ever-patient Goncalo Ramos out of the team at the age of 63. Ramos replaced Ronaldo in the 88th minute against Spain – a decision that Ronaldo essentially made himself when he dropped to the floor in the centre circle, bringing the game to a halt and cursing into the night sky after his body finally gave up on him. 'I had already felt it during the warm-up, I had been feeling it for some time,' he explained, via Record. 'But for the national team, if I had to break a leg, I would. It's a title, I had to play and I gave my all, I went as far as I could. I helped with a goal.' Whatever anyone thinks of Ronaldo, his desire to play, score and win burns as fiercely as ever, and the joy on his face in the scenes of celebration at the end was almost child-like. Yamal, Ronaldo said afterwards, is a 'phenomenon' who is going to 'win many titles and have a very long career.' It's hard to argue with any of that. Whether Yamal will be winning them at the age of 40, though, is a different matter. ()
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
A new home for Everton Women, all summer targets signed: ‘We have something here'
May 18, 2025. Everton Women manager Brian Sorensen exists in two universes. There is Sorensen Redacted, the version disseminated on Everton's socials. The Danish manager standing in the epicentre of the Goodbye Goodison Park celebrations, accepting the pressure and privilege of making the storied stadium his side's new home. Advertisement Then there is Sorensen Unfiltered or, as Sorensen sees it and those close to the head coach attest, 'just me, Brian'. The man who declared in front of 40,000 or so weepy-eyed Evertonians that 'it's big shoes to fill, but we already made Anfield our training pitch. So we're looking forward to it'. Everton Women have won their four matches at Anfield since 2019 by an aggregate score of 7-1, after all. Amid the bittersweet blue pyro of Goodison's farewell, Sorensen wore a mischievous grin. He winked. The crowd cheered. Three weeks later, in a small office at the top of the Liver Building in which Everton have their headquarters, vestiges of that mischief dance across Sorensen's face when this moment is recalled. 'I don't think about whether I can say something, if I'm successful enough to say it. I just enjoy the ride,' says Sorensen. So, he's enjoying it? A flash of a grin. Advertisement 'The first question I used to get in an interview with an agent and a potential player is: 'Are the men('s team) still going to be supporting you?'. Now, I don't get those questions. Because action speaks louder than words.' Sorensen reclines in an office chair, fresh off the final day of his League Managers Association management diploma. Sporting a retro cream Everton hoodie and bright blue and yellow Nikes, he oozes dangerous levels of zen. 'My last assignment was due on Thursday, I was doing it Wednesday night,' he says. This is not so much procrastination as an example of Sorensen's innate calm, born out of his upbringing in Arden, Denmark. The small railway town was home to his very large family. From the time he was born until Sorensen was 15, days were spent on his grandmother's farm, alongside a rotating compilation of his father's seven siblings and Sorensen's 36 cousins. 'We didn't buy anything from the store,' says Sorensen, who is an adept carpenter like his father and builds climbing frames for his six-year-old daughter, Rose, in their back yard in the south of Liverpool. 'We did everything, built everything, grew everything, we had all types of animals. So you couldn't take things too seriously or dwell too much because we need to put food on the table. Advertisement 'My wife (Camilla) sometimes kills me because things that don't affect me or I can't affect, I'm like, 'Why stress about them? It'll all work out, you know?'. 'I really, hate micromanagement,' he adds. Autonomy, instead, is his currency, a lesson gleaned from his grandmother. 'She's my role model. How she could control 20 kids at one time, on a farm, I have no idea. You give people the tools but trust them to use them right.' Since April 2022, when Sorensen joined Everton from Denmark's Fortuna Hjorring, the past three seasons have turned on savvy survival. Annual squad budgets ranged between £3million and £4m ($4m and $5.4m) due to the club's wider financial plight. Injury crises across Sorensen's first two seasons exacerbated an already gossamer-thin squad. Everton's budget for the start of 2024-25 ranked the lowest in the Women's Super League (WSL), with all seven summer recruits arriving on free transfers. That Everton kept well away from any potential relegation wreckage in all three seasons under Sorensen (they've finished sixth, eighth and eighth) is a testament to the Dane's capacity to build from very little. Advertisement 'All the players we've recruited have done super well for us, they're good people,' he says, 'but I had to play people out of position because I had to take the good players who were available, waiting for clubs to announce their released lists. That's where we've struggled all these years. I had no budget.' This summer, things are different. The WSL summer transfer window does not officially open until June 18 but six new signings have already committed to Everton, with a possible two more to follow. As we speak, an international player, whom Sorensen says he had been attempting to recruit since last October, waits in a room across the hall, ready to put pen to paper. This has been the speed of operation since the Friedkin Group's (TFG) takeover in January. That same month, Everton completed the permanent signings of midfielder Hayley Ladd and striker Kelly Gago from Manchester United and Nantes, along with three loan moves. For the first time in nearly 12 months, Sorensen had a full bench. In April, Sorensen and his assistant manager, Stephen Neligan, signed new contracts, followed by new deals for defenders Kenzie Weir and Clare Wheeler. The following month, Everton confirmed the women's team's historic move to Goodison Park, leaving behind Walton Hall Park, along with the appointment of Hannah Forshaw as chief executive of Everton Women. 'Active' is how Sorensen describes the period. Which feels something of an understatement. Advertisement 'For the first time since I've been here, I got all of my targets,' he adds. 'That's never happened before because we're not in the top of the ranking order.' Sorensen assembles his hands to form a food chain. 'There's Chelsea, Arsenal, Manchester City and Manchester United, then the powerhouses in Spain, France and Germany, then some Italian teams because they pay more.' He drops his hand lower. 'Then there's us.' Under TFG, the ambition is to reposition Everton into the top echelon, as well as be a landing spot for England internationals. No English club was represented in Sarina Wiegman's England Euro 2025 squad outside the top four (although Arsenal forward Michelle Agyemang was included after a season on loan at Brighton & Hove Albion). Only six Everton players from last season regularly started for their international teams. Sorensen has faith the shift will occur sooner rather than later. He tells the story of TFG's first meeting at Finch Farm in January in front of the club's entire staff and playing teams. 'The first thing they said was they want to support the women's team,' Sorensen says. 'Then they began speaking about the men's team, the academy, so on. That was the first sign of, 'OK, they actually want to support us, they're taking it seriously'.' Advertisement The move to Goodison has been a catalyst — for recruitment but also commercial opportunities. 'Thousands of people (at Goodison on May 18) had probably never watched Everton Women,' Sorensen says. Now? Gates of 10,000 is the ambition, roughly five times the average attendance (2,000) Everton clocked during the 2023-24 season, the second lowest in the WSL. The limitations of Walton Hall Park — 2,200 capacity (half that under a roof) and council ownership meant little could be done to enhance the matchday experience — take some blame. Another avenue for revenue generation is selling shares in Everton Women to investors, similar to Alexis Ohanian's minority stake in Chelsea Women. 'I look at Angel City or Kansas City (in NWSL), the valuation they built from scratch,' Sorensen says. 'We have the best league in the world. If people can understand and see the growth, if they have the American mindset that this is something you should invest in now rather than later, then I don't see why it's not possible to do that in this country.' Or at Everton. 'We have something here,' Sorensen says, reeling off a list: the country's 'best stadium'. A clear playing style. Last season's fifth-best defence in the WSL, despite having a rotating cast that included six different centre-back partnerships, five right-backs and three left-backs. Advertisement Sorensen also knows the value of the collective. His family lived within 15 miles of each other, all skilled tradespeople: plumbers, carpenters, bricklayers. 'The whole family would go over to one sibling's house, do it up in two months, then go to the next one,' he says. Sorensen's recruitment doctrine has roots here, valuing people and teamwork skills above all else, sounding out the opinions of players over those of agents for character references. With most recruitment work finished, Sorensen's summer plans are relaxed. In late May, he travelled back to Denmark with Camilla, their six-week-old son, Milas, and Rose, the latter spending her days on the tractor with her grandad, navigating the fields Sorensen grew up on. Now back in Liverpool, there's a new garden to build, a workout gym for himself and his wife. 'I need to get fit,' he quips. He's already constructed an outdoor gymnastics setup for his daughter, fit with climbing walls, monkey bars, a rubber floor and a television so she can stream practice videos. 'She walks more on her hands than her legs nowadays.' Advertisement This article originally appeared in The Athletic. Everton, UK Women's Football 2025 The Athletic Media Company
