Rangers track forwards as King nears St Mirren move
Forwards on Rangers' radar as Jamaica defender closes in on St Mirren move...
Rangers are tracking Westerlo forward Matija Frigan, 22, while a move for Maccabi Tel Aviv striker Dor Turgeman, 21, remains on. (Record)
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But Rangers have been told to up their £4m offer for Turgeman. (Football Scotland)
St Mirren are set to sign Jamaica defender Richard King, 23, after agreeing a fee with his club Cavalier. (Record)
But a move to St Mirren is not on for Bournemouth goalkeeper Alex Paulsen, 22. (Herald - subscription required)
Free agent goalkeeper Ross Doohan, 27, cut short his holiday to join up with the Scotland squad for Monday's friendly with Liechtenstein. (Scotsman - subscription required)
Liechtenstein head coach Konrad Funfstuck wishes he "had those kind of problems" as he laughed off Scotland's goalkeeping crisis. (Sun)
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Lewis Ferguson insists there will be no panic from Scotland as they take on Liechtenstein in Vaduz on Monday evening three days on from losing at home to Iceland. (Herald - subscription required)
Former St Johnstone assistant Andy Kirk has replaces Colin Cameron as Barry Robson's assistant at Raith Rovers. (Courier - subscription required)
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World Cup 2026 – What you need to know with a year to go
The Athletic FC ⚽ is The Athletic's daily football (or soccer, if you prefer) newsletter. Sign up to receive it directly to your inbox. Hello! Today marks exactly a year until the start of the 2026 World Cup. We're here to explain the numbers, the politics, the finance, the geography and the key players behind the globe's biggest sporting event — and the biggest tournament FIFA has ever staged. On the way: In the spirit of a certain fast-food outlet, FIFA's approach to the 2026 World Cup was to supersize it. The 48-nation event is the largest in the tournament's history. It's the first to be spread across an entire continent, with 4,800 kilometres between Mexico City, the southern-most host, and Vancouver, furthest north. FIFA's projected earnings are leaping from $7.6bn in the four-year cycle to the last World Cup in 2022 to $13bn this time around. Extra large was the cry. Advertisement A year today, the competition gets going in Mexico City, with the first of 104 matches. FIFA already owns the biggest sporting event on the planet — a television audience of 1.5bn for the final in Qatar three years ago was 11 times the U.S. audience for the 2025 Super Bowl, and five billion people are expected to watch worldwide in 2026 — but by expanding from 32 teams and naming Mexico, Canada and the United States as joint hosts, soccer's world governing body is consolidating that status. The U.S. in isolation is an example of the sport's capacity to grow at an exponential rate. When the country staged the World Cup in 1994, Major League Soccer did not even exist. Today, the division contains billion-dollar clubs, some of whom rank among the game's most valuable. It boasts Lionel Messi, the finest player of his era (and arguably any other). Mauricio Pochettino is the USMNT's head coach, as high-profile a name as they have ever been able to recruit. Soccer has taken time to crack the States, but it's getting there, and FIFA sending both this year's Club World Cup and next year's World Cup to North America is a concerted commercial push on that front. There's no getting away from the political manoeuvring involved in allocating these tournaments, but the fact remains: when the World Cup kicks off, it's the only show in town. FIFA's selection of countries to host its showpiece is increasingly becoming a bone of contention. That was true of Russia in 2018 and true of Qatar four years later. It's most certainly true of Saudi Arabia, which won the bidding unopposed for the 2034 World Cup. Many argue football's administrators are brushing over serious matters such as human rights concerns. Handing the 2026 edition to the U.S. alongside Mexico and Canada involved much interaction between FIFA and the White House. 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