Leagues Cup LIVE: Chivas trail Charlotte; Galaxy host Cruz Azul
Key Fixtures 2025-08-04T01:02:56Z
And we're underway between New York Red Bulls and Rayados!
2025-08-04T00:19:32Z
GOAL
Chivas are level in Charlotte thanks to a ferocious Richard Ledezma strike from outside of the box!
2025-08-04T00:12:08Z
GOAL
Thanks to a fortunate deflection in front of the Chivas goal, Charlotte take the lead against the Mexican giants!
2025-08-04T00:01:24Z 2025-08-03T23:57:21Z
Underway in Charlotte!
2025-08-03T23:54:34Z
FULL-TIME
Juárez take down Cincinnati in a penalty shootout!2025-08-03T22:48:59Z
Zaha appears to be starting up front for Charlotte this evening as they take on Chivas!
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New York Times
9 minutes ago
- New York Times
Favorite highlights from the Freaks List, plus the coaches' poll debuts
The Pulse Newsletter 📣 | This is The Athletic's daily sports newsletter. Sign up here to receive The Pulse directly in your inbox. Good morning! Time to pick a favorite college football player. College football, despite some recent upheaval, is a sport of rites and traditions. Rivalries, bowl games and sentient Pop-Tarts weave a beautiful, funny and stupid tapestry. We love it. In that tapestry each year is Bruce Feldman's annual Freaks List, which comes at a perfect time. The entire draft cycle has petered out for a bit. Excitement for the upcoming season is boiling. No better junction to talk about some of the sport's most eye-popping players. Advertisement Bruce picked 101 Freaks — which, to be clear, is a very complimentary term in this space — and we cannot fit all of them here, of course. I'm picking a few that jumped out with some notes appended: 1. Ohio State WR Jeremiah Smith It's legitimately funny how entrenched Smith is as the best player in the sport right now. He was an NFL player the moment he stepped onto a college field last year and helped the Buckeyes win a national title. His measurables are absurd: 11-foot broad jump, 38-inch vertical jump and 23.5 mph speed, all at 6-foot-3 1/2. He also gave up Wendy's for the season, which is impressive. 2. Alabama OT Kadyn Proctor Proctor is a unique character in the NIL era, having transferred from Alabama to Iowa and back to Alabama without playing a down for his home-state Hawkeyes. He's also an elite prospect, and I could not get over his stats in the weight room: 'This summer, he squatted 815 pounds, benched 535 and power cleaned 405.' He's also 6-foot-7 and 366 pounds. None of this is normal. 26. Toledo TE C.C. Ezirim My favorite genre on this list is the small-school athletes that I might not have known before the season if not for Bruce's reporting. Ezirim is a specimen, 6-foot-7 and 245 pounds, and can hit 22 mph on the radar gun. If he has a big season, expect every NFL scout to drool uncontrollably. It's a great day. See all 101 Freaks here. So many great anecdotes in there, too. Spurs lock up Fox De'Aaron Fox agreed to a four-year, $229 million extension with San Antonio yesterday, cementing the star point guard as a long-term partner to wunderkind Victor Wembanyama. It also creates a bona fide two-timeline system for the Spurs, who picked point guard Dylan Harper in this summer's draft. Fox allows them to compete now; Harper, Wembanyama and Rookie of the Year Stephon Castle are all under 21. Read our full story for more analysis. Advertisement Texas rules the coaches' poll The Texas Longhorns are No. 1 in the first football coaches' Top 25 poll of the year, finishing just ahead of defending national champion Ohio State. Scott Dochterman says No. 20 Kansas State is underrated, while the aforementioned second-ranked Buckeyes might be overrated. Can't wait to argue about all this until Labor Day. That Week 1 matchup between No. 6 Clemson and No. 9 LSU is looking delicious for the general public and terrifying for me. See the full rankings here. More news 📫 Love The Pulse? Check out our other newsletters. 📺 LL(S)WS: All Day 10 a.m. ET on ESPN networks Consider this more of a placeholder to let you know the kids are playing this week. The baseball boys start today's action at 10 a.m. with regional play — much of the day airs on ESPN — while the Little League Softball World Series starts and ends the day on ESPN 2 with ESPN+ programming in between. Here's the full schedule. 📺 MLB: Reds at Cubs 8:05 p.m. ET on TBS The NL Central race is tight as we approach the final stretches of the season. Every game is nervy. Chicago is just three games back of the MLB-best Brewers. 📺 WNBA: Wings at Liberty 7 p.m. ET on NBA TV Paige Bueckers against the league's second-best team and defending champions? Yes, please. We'll see how Dallas looks after trading DiJonai Carrington to the Lynx on Sunday, too. Get tickets to games like these here. Jim Bowden doled out MLB trade deadline superlatives across the league. Come for the blockbusters, stay for the niche awards. The Twins' trade deadline fire sale still doesn't feel real, and Dan Hayes' report on Griffin Jax actually requesting a trade minutes before the buzzer — and getting it! — was wild. What sports merch could Giannis Antetokounmpo actually want or need? Victor Wembanyama cards, it turns out. Advertisement We have more star NFL trade proposals today, this one for Commanders wideout Terry McLaurin. I loved this story from Tim Spiers on the soccer players and managers destined to play for certain clubs because of their names. Shout out to David Moller Wolfe signing to play for Wolves. Also from across the globe, the story of Son Heung-min's final game for Tottenham — where he became maybe the best Asian soccer player ever — was touching. A beautiful ending. Naomi Osaka's trial run with her new coach is working. Really, really well. Most-clicked in the newsletter yesterday: The back-and-forth between Noah Lyles and Kenny Bednarek at the U.S. track championships. Spicy. Most-read on the website yesterday: The Freaks List, of course
New York Times
9 minutes ago
- New York Times
Victoria Mboko: The Canadian tennis talent who can't stop winning arrives at her home event
Ripping a backhand past a former Wimbledon quarterfinalist to clinch a first Grand Slam win on the opening day of the French Open is a pretty good way to make tennis fans stand up and take notice. Or maybe Victoria Mboko, the 18-year-old, American-born, Canadian-raised daughter of Congolese parents, has been announcing herself for months now. Maybe folks just weren't listening closely enough. Advertisement Everyone is now, as she backs up her run to the French Open third round with a last-four place at the WTA 1,000 Canadian Open in Montreal, one rung below a Grand Slam. As her Roland-Garros debut approached, Mboko played the same brain game she has been playing through a startling climb up the tennis biosphere. She tells herself that what is happening isn't actually happening. 'Kind of just play it down,' she said during an interview after her 6-1, 7-6(4) win over Lulu Sun of New Zealand on a Sunday May. Three days later, she knocked out rising German Eva Lys 6-4, 6-4, to move into the third round at her first major. Her run ended there in a defeat to Zheng Qinwen, the 2024 Olympic gold medalist, but Mboko had shown everyone who had missed her rise that they should have been paying more attention. 'Pretend like you're playing somewhere else, that you're not at a Grand Slam,' she said of her strategy there. It's another clay-court tournament. That way, I don't put as much pressure on myself and the points. I let loose and I kind of go for my shots a little bit more,' she said. If playing make-believe before walking onto the biggest stages in tennis could lead to Mboko taking a spot next to Bianca Andreescu, Leylah Fernandez, Denis Shapovalov, Felix Auger-Aliassime, Milos Raonic and others in the Canadian tennis firmament, then Mboko probably ought to keep doing it. Her performance in Paris, and then in Montreal, where she has knocked out two-time major champion Coco Gauff and surged into the top 50 of the WTA rankings, showed every bit of what has generated all the buzz about Mboko becoming the latest in a string of Canadians from immigrant families who have made it to the top of the sport. 'We know Canada is a very multicultural country and we are very accepting of everyone,' Andreescu, who has become a mentor to Mboko, said during an interview in Rome. Advertisement 'I think it's a beautiful thing that we're all from different different cultures, different backgrounds, but at the end of the day Tennis Canada really has built this program in the acceptance of everybody, no matter who you are.' The youngest by seven years of four tennis-playing siblings, Mboko has been winning more than just about anyone in professional women's tennis since the start of the year. She finished last year ranked 350th, with her coaches believing fully in her potential but also wanting her to take it slow, given her struggles with knee injuries in recent years. Now they have another problem on their hands. Mboko has won so many matches that she has already played more than she has ever played before. She started the year winning 22 in a row on the ITF World Tennis Tour, two rungs below the WTA Tour. She lost one, then won another five, this time at a WTA 125 event, the next rung up, in Porto. She has won matches in Rome, Ga. and Rome, Italy at the Italian Open. Her record on the year is 49-9, as she prepares to face 2022 Wimbledon champion Elena Rybakina in Montreal. 'I have been doing exactly the same thing I've been doing every other day. I like to keep the same routine when I'm in a tournament,' she said after her win over Gauff, who had beaten her in three sets at the Italian Open. 'I think I'm a little bit superstitious in that way, in that sense, but I just like to keep everything super simple. I like to do the exact same thing every day in a tournament.' 'That's a lot,' Marko Strillic, one of three coaches she works with at the Canadian Tennis Federation, said during an interview at the Italian Open. 'If she keeps winning, you have to figure out a way to manage the schedule so that she doesn't get hurt. This is for the long term.' That was before Mboko cruised through French Open qualifying to earn her main draw debut, and then knocked through Sun as though she knew she would all along. Mboko was all business again against Lys, but for a couple of service breaks she quickly recovered from. Advertisement Her brother Kevin, 27 and a tennis coach in suburban Toronto, said that from the moment she woke up, she set her mind on only one thing: winning. 'She looked at us and said, 'I got to win today,'' he said in an interview after she did just that. 'We were trying to bring her down a little bit, telling her that it's all right, to just go out there and have fun, enjoy the experience. 'She was like 'No, I got to win.' That's how she was during her hit before walking onto the court, and it's how she was through the 79-minute match. Rain, wind, muddy balls, nothing really budged her off her game. 'It's been really calm between the days,' she said. 'That's how my coach wanted it to be.' She woke at a quarter to seven ahead of her match against Lys, ready to roll. There was quick breakfast, a ride to Roland Garros, a physical warm-up and then a 30-minute hit at 9:30 a.m. 'Then I just chilled in the locker room until my match,' she said. All week, all month, really, there has been a 'no big deal' sensibility to Mboko. She credited the presence of her sister and brother for that. 'There is so much happening even behind the scenes,' she said. 'I feel like my family has been doing a good job of keeping me, I guess, isolated from it all. I have just been enjoying the moment. I have been enjoying time with my sister and my brother. I don't have so many people around me, and it's kept me very calm and very comfortable.' At some point, this is going to get complicated, but for Kevin and everyone else closest to Mboko, this rocket ride both is and is not surprising. Her oldest sister Gracia, 28, who has been courtside all event, played tennis for the University of Denver. She said that she and her brothers always knew that their baby sister had something they did not. Gracia recalled a local women's tournament at their home club in Burlington, a city in the Greater Toronto area of Ontario, that she played in when she was 17. Advertisement At the last minute, another slot opened up, and a pro at the club asked Victoria, who was just 9 and had come to watch, if she wanted to play. Victoria jumped at the opportunity and eventually faced her sister. Gracia won, 6-0, 6-0, but the way Victoria behaved, it was as though she had expected the results to go the other way. 'It's that belief in yourself that the very top of the one percent have,' Gracia, a consultant in private equity, said Sunday after watching her sister win. 'It's: 'not only should I win this match, I'm going to go do it.' And then she does it.' At least she does now. For the past couple of years, a knee injury caused by both rapid growth and a bad fall on a tennis court has made that difficult. She spent much of last year based in Belgium at the academy of Justine Henin, the former world No. 1 and four-time French Open champion. She played little for the first six months of the year. Getting healthy was the priority. Even then, she ended the year losing more than she won, dropping three of her last four matches. 'Last year ended very poorly,' said Kevin. 'I didn't see any of this coming. No one did.' Their father, Cyprien, a retired mechanical engineer who worked nights in part so that he could drive his children to their tennis obligations, was there too. Victoria's mother, Godée, an accountant, was back home, dealing with a heavy end-of-the-month workload, as was her other brother, David, a 25-year-old data scientist. The Mbokos moved from the Democratic Republic of Congo nearly three decades ago, to escape the First and Second Congo Wars of the mid-1990s. Visa issues kept the family separated, with Godée in Montreal and Cyprien in North Carolina. Godée then moved to N.C., where the family lived for several years and where Victoria was born, before all moving to Toronto when she was still a baby. Advertisement Victoria didn't let the losses in the final months of 2024 get to her. 'I just thought new year, new me,' she said during an interview in Rome. She decided to play like the version of herself that she has long believed in: an aggressive, athletic player who likes to take control of points and dictate the action. In Miami, she beat Camila Osorio, a 23-year-old tour mainstay, and pushed Paula Badosa, the No. 10 seed at Roland-Garros, to a third-set tiebreak. Mboko has also showed off a precocious variety, mixing in drop shots and slices, including a hard, slicing forehand. Her coach is Nathalie Tauziat, who got to No. 3 in the world with a game moulded around variety. But Mboko can also crack her serve at 120 mph. Not surprisingly, she grew up worshipping Serena Williams. In Rome, she cruised through the first set in her second-round match against Gauff, lacing backhands and forehands through the court on the Campo Centrale like a seasoned veteran. Gauff turned the match into one of her long-distance track races, getting so many balls back that Mboko was huffing and puffing between every point. But the world No. 2 came away seriously impressed. She 'felt like playing myself,' Gauff said in a huddle after the match, especially with how well Mboko covered the court. 'On the movement, I would say she's up there with me on that,' Gauff, probably the best mover in the sport, said. Gracia Mboko said her sister came away from that loss both devastated and determined. 'She told me she was so out of steam, that she couldn't believe how Coco was getting every ball back,' she said Sunday. 'She kept saying, 'I got to get in shape.' It motivated her.' It certainly did. When she faced a double-fault-stricken version of Gauff in Montreal, she kept her foot on the accelerator after winning the first set 6-1. She knew that Gauff would raise her level, try to make her nervous, try to impose her experience on the match. Mboko didn't let her. She stayed even until 5-4, then broke Gauff to win the second set and the match. Advertisement Mboko learned plenty from that first loss to Gauff. She knew she had let the world No. 2's grit frustrate her, thinking about the last point when she was supposed to be thinking about the next one. Her coaches are onto this. 'They'll start to snap me right back into it,' she said. 'They'll actually say: 'stay present, stay focused, or close it right here.'' With 49 wins in a year, Mboko isn't exactly unfamiliar with closing it. Now she is doing it on the biggest stage in the sport.
Yahoo
19 minutes ago
- Yahoo
What did James Franklin say about Drew Allar, Penn State football at Big Ten Media Days?
Penn State football quarterback Drew Allar may be most anticipated player on arguably the most highly-regarded team in the nation. No surprise that his head coach spent a good chunk of his Big Ten Football Media Day podium time Wednesday in Las Vegas talking about him. James Franklin started his 15-minute session with a curious and praiseworthy statistic about the senior QB who has been heavy on superlative passing numbers but light on signature victories. Franklin's note: Allar is one of only two FBS quarterbacks since 1956 with 800-plus career pass attempts, 50-plus touchdown passes and 10 or less interceptions (Baylor's Bryce Petty, 2011-14, is the other). Of course, Allar, who certainly rates as one of college football's top returning QBs, hopes to be much more than gaudy numbers for a team that continues to be lauded with hype and honors and should boast its highest preseason ranking in more than 25 years. Allar joined Franklin in Vegas at this week's annual three-day preseason football festival along with Penn State teammates Nick Dawkins and Zakee Wheatley. Franklin weaved from one topic to another Wednesday, from his new staff to his transfer portal receivers to renovated Beaver Stadium to all of that preseason hype. "Let's be honest. Who really cares about preseason rankings?" he said with a smile. "They mean nothing." One media questioner, though, got him talking about Allar, and he made the most of the opportunity. 'I'm just proud of him. Drew has made tremendous growth every single year, all the way back to recruiting," Franklin said. "I don't know if a lot of people remember but Drew, when we first started recruiting him, was a three-star recruit, kind of a throwback recruit. Kept getting better, kept moving up the charts. "And has gotten better every single year, really in every single area. He's 6-foot-5 and 230 pounds now, can make every throw on the field, has shown he can hurt people with his feet. And has really made tremendous strides as a leader, holding himself to a really high standard and willing to have tough conversations with his teammates. "He's made significant leaps every year and we expect him to take another significant leap this year. Most people had him projected as a first-round draft choice last year and he decided to come back to school. Unfinished business, collectively, as a team, but also as an individual. I'm a big Drew fan. 'He's really what's it all about. It's team, team, team. It's community. It's Penn State. Proud of him." Frankin's media session furthered another promising Penn State week as far as preseason hype and expectations − the Lions boasting their most talented, experienced and possibly deepest team yet under Franklin. On Monday, Penn State received more prominent picks to win their first league title in nine years, including from USA Today Sports Network and the Preseason Big Ten Football Poll. Franklin also garnered Big Ten preseason coach of the year predictions in these rankings. On Tuesday, the Lions garnered the most players (tying Ohio State) on the Big Ten 16-member preseason "honors" list: quarterback Drew Allar, running back Nick Singleton and defensive end Dani Dennis-Sutton. Singleton was the only running back chosen. Allar was one of two quarterbacks (with Illinois' Luke Altmyer) and Dennis-Sutton was one of two defensive lineman (with Indiana Mikail Kamara). Frank Bodani covers Penn State football for the York Daily Record and USA Today Network. Contact him at fbodani@ and follow him on X, formerly known as Twitter, @YDRPennState. This article originally appeared on York Daily Record: Big Ten Media Days: James Franklin on Drew Allar, Penn State football
