
MLS All-Stars to face best of LIGA MX in Austin
It's the fourth time using that format for the showcase, previously done in 2021, 2022 and 2024.
"We are thrilled to once again host LIGA MX at the 2025 MLS All-Star Game, showcasing the best talent from our leagues," MLS executive vice president Camilo Durana said.
The match at Q2 Stadium will mark the first major professional All-Star Game played in the Texas capital.
"It is always a great honor for LIGA MX to participate in an event like the MLS All-Star Game. It fills us with excitement to return to this stage to showcase the quality of our players and continue to connect with our fans in the United States," LIGA MX director of operations Francisco Iturbide said.
The MLS roster will consist of 26 players: 12 selected by fan vote, 12 selected by Austin FC and MLS All-Star coach Nico Estevez, and two selected by MLS Commissioner Don Garber.
MLS players won the first two All-Star contests against LIGA MX. LIGA MX won last year's event 4-1 in Columbus, Ohio.
--Field Level Media
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Belfast Telegraph
16 hours ago
- Belfast Telegraph
Lots of soul searching in off season for Ulster's also-rans as they plot renewed assault on 2026 glory
For the most part, it was an underwhelming campaign this year. Here we assess the state of the nine counties The curtain has come down on the 2025 All-Ireland Senior Football Championship but already the focus has switched to next year's Championship. Yet with several teams still having to appoint new managers, a huge raft of players spending part of their summer in places like the United States and Australia and the likely injection of more new players, it could be said that wholesale preparations for the 2026 season have still to be stepped up.


The Guardian
a day ago
- The Guardian
‘They have 24 months to milk the hell out of it': will Son signing open up Asia for MLS?
South Korean baseball fans have long been accustomed to organizing their weekends around MLB schedules – now it is time for the country's soccer supporters to do the same with MLS. Son Heung-min has started his two-year contract with Los Angeles FC, coming just after the attacker helped Tottenham Hotspur become the biggest club in his homeland (even if claims of close to 13 million fans are surely wildly overexaggerated) and one of the biggest in his home continent. Now it is the time to see what he can do in Los Angeles on the field and what the club can do off it. 'They've got 24 months to milk the hell out of it,' Sasi Kumar, a former Singapore international and founder of sports marketing agency Red Card Global, told the Guardian. 'The commercial opportunities are obvious, staring LAFC in the face.' Son has been the main man in Asian soccer for years: a golden boot and Puskas award recipient who lifted one of European football's biggest trophies as a captain of a major club just months ago. Having one of the biggest stars in the world's most popular league for so long was a matter of national pride in Korea and appealed across Asia. It fueled his superstardom. Son has helped to ensure that, now, pretty much every talented young Korean star wants to go straight to England's top tier. MLS does not enjoy anywhere close to the same stature – there has traditionally been little interest in the league in Asia, and it was barely mentioned as a possible destination for the 33-year-old. There has been a debate in Korea going back a few years when and where Son should go – a club like Barcelona was the one often mentioned. Even when the forward struggled for form and fitness last season, there were still options in Europe, where most expected him to stay. A move to Saudi Arabia was always unlikely. For a player who has never played in the K-League, going to a rival Asian competition may not have gone down well in his homeland where he has been the face of more than 30 brands. Still, MLS was not, initially, a popular choice. 'At the beginning, the fans' reaction was divided as some wanted Son to stay in Europe and play in the Champions League for at least one more season,' said Lee Seung-mo, a Seoul-based author and journalist. 'However, after Son explained why he chose LAFC and MLS, now the majority of fans understand and support his decision.' Being based Stateside also makes sense ahead of the World Cup, likely to be Son's fourth and last appearance at the tournament. Lee admits that not all the fans who have watched Son in England will watch him in the US. 'It won't be 100% the same in MLS in terms of viewership as the Premier League has the most fans of any league but most Son fans will want to watch MLS.' Those years at the top of the game have made Son into such an icon in his homeland that he can transcend any competition he plays in. 'His image cuts across different demographics, geography – everything,' said Kumar. 'Whenever Spurs played you got Asians from all of Asia supporting him, he's such a loveable character, you didn't need to be a Spurs fan to like him,' Sign up to Soccer with Jonathan Wilson Jonathan Wilson brings expert analysis on the biggest stories from European soccer after newsletter promotion LAFC has advantages. While MLS may not be the EPL, the USA is also not the UK. Economically, South Korea already has a strong connection with the US, sending almost 20% of exports in an export-based economy to the United States in 2024, compared to just 1% for Great Britain. 'The Korean market is so connected to the US; it is a huge market for Korean beauty products, electronics, cars, phones etc,' Kumar said. 'Son has provided a platform and opportunity to enter the market with a huge asset. The obvious thing for LAFC is to tour Asia and they should actively look in different markets for brand and content partnerships. LAFC's commercial team will be working overtime how to sell digital assets, image rights and work with global brands like Samsung and Kia.' Such Korean companies have always been involved in sports (the was – and, to a large extent, still is- based on corporate ownership and Hyundai has been hugely influential in the Korean Football Association over the years) and there should be plenty of knowhow on the opposite side. 'What is well known about American sports in general is that they are arguably the best in sports marketing, and I'm sure LAFC and MLS both will try their best in Korean market,' said Lee. The fact that LA have made such a big deal of the signing has gone down well. Steve Han is a LA-based Korean content lead for Fifa and host of Fairpoint podcast and has witnessed the excitement. 'At the introductory press conference, there were Korean journalists who attended with LAFC shirts on,' Han told the Guardian. 'For years, LAFC have already been one of the most well-branded clubs in MLS. Even the contents that the club pushed out so far have really got the fans excited. The stage is set for Son to put the icing on the cake now.'


The Guardian
2 days ago
- The Guardian
Final Draft review – could you do 3,240 sit-ups then have a lovely old chinwag?
In a giant TV studio somewhere in Japan, a retired baseball player and a former rugby star are 40 minutes into a competition to see who can do the most sit-ups. Lying with their feet hooked to the top of a steep, bright-pink slide that has long since become a river of sweat, they must respond to a buzzer every five seconds by hauling themselves up using just their abs and hitting a button with their foreheads. They've both done that more than 500 times – when someone eventually misses a rep, their feet detach and down they go. If this were Squid Game, the slide would end with a lethal drop. But instead it's Final Draft, a wholesome and emotional Japanese reality sports contest for ex-sportspeople, so all that's at risk is the right to remain in the competition. As a long sequence of incredibly gruelling elimination showdowns whittles 25 contestants down to the one who will win ¥30m (about £150,000), Squid Game is an influence, but so are Gladiators and Ninja Warrior, as well as modern Netflix sports fests like Physical: 100 and Ultimate Beastmaster. Mature British viewers might think of 1970s BBC stalwart Superstars, the multi-event contest between athletes from different disciplines that briefly threatened to turn parallel bar dips into the UK's national sport. Watching from outside the UK, the barrier to entry here is that, unless you're so keen on water polo, kabaddi, American football or ultimate Frisbee that you watch those sports' Japanese domestic leagues, you will have heard of very few of the contestants. Perhaps Japanese viewers won't be that familiar with them either, since the lineup mixes champions with those who never quite made it. So who cares which of these ripped strangers will be the best at running up a mountain or traversing a monkey bar course? The endeavours in Final Draft are long grinds but the contestants are a happy, humble bunch and, watching them in adversity, we get to know and like them. Emerging personalities include gentle-natured bodybuilder Kenta Tsukamoto, and Hozumi Hasegawa, a wise, wiry boxer with three world-title belts. Olympic wrestler Eri Tosaka's determination and cunning makes her the most likely of the female contestants to defy the odds in a contest that has a few too many events based on pure physical strength. The star, though, is retired baseball hitter Yoshio Itoi, who looks less like a sportsman and more like the singer in a revered art-pop band– with his high cheekbones, debonair grin and the sort of floppy hair most 43-year-olds don't have the looks to get away with. Yet he soon proves to be fearsomely strong. Think Bryan Ferry on creatine, or Brett Anderson if he could deadlift a speaker stack. Final Draft needs alluring characters like Itoi-san, because there is a lot of time to fill. The season runs to an endurance-sapping six episodes, or enough time to perform 3,240 sit-ups: the events last for ever, and then in between the epic bouts of grunting and grappling, there's a lot of chat. The post-exertion interviews tend towards the bland, earnest and obvious: 'I was surprised,' people say after something happens that is to some extent unexpected. 'I was happy,' they report when an event goes well. The 10-second skip button is your friend as every eliminated contestant gives more or less the same speech about how much they respect their conquerors. To try to keep us entertained, the show employs every reality-contest trick it can think of, from splitting the gang into two groups with either luxury or basic accommodation, to allowing tearful Zoom calls with proud loved ones back home. Eventually, it all leads us to what the show is really about, which is the quiet tragedy of the sportsperson whose career is over. Having had to stop doing the thing they loved due to age, injury or just not being good enough, none of these people have known what to do with their 30s and 40s, and have ended up running fledgling businesses that provide paltry incomes, or working low-level jobs with bosses who are younger than them. Over dinner, or in the panting aftermath of another painful stamina test, they bond over the sadness of dead dreams and regrets that their glory days weren't greater. That prize money would fund a precious new start. So it does matter whether or not a guy with a sprained ankle can push a giant medicine ball up a slope, and the finale – a three-way tug of war, each labouring to drag themselves to victory, inch by agonising inch – is gripping despite being a much longer scene of grimacing sports personalities trying to pull each other over with ropes than you ever thought you could tolerate. Stick with Final Draft and your hard work is, eventually, rewarded. Final Draft is on Netflix now.