Insigne reveals 2026 World Cup goal after disastrous Toronto spell
The Italian believes there is more yet to accomplish, and is even aiming to play a role in helping his country qualify for the 2026 World Cup in the United States, Canada, and Mexico.
Advertisement
Insigne scored just 15 goals in 66 MLS matches for Toronto, despite being one of the highest paid players in league history.
The former Napoli star was brought in along with compatriot Federico Bernardeschi to help catapult Toronto back into the upper echelon of MLS but the Canadian club failed to qualify for the playoffs in all three seasons the duo donned the red shirt together.
Toronto terminated the contracts of the two attackers earlier this month.
Yet Insigne says he still hopes to play a role in helping Italy qualify for the World Cup in 2026.
"I hope to return to play as soon as possible," Insigne said this week. "The goal is the 2026 World Cup.'
Advertisement
Insigne last featured for Italy in 2022, and it is unclear what his next move is following his TFC exit.
📸 Tim Nwachukwu - 2023 Getty Images
Hashtags

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


USA Today
16 minutes ago
- USA Today
Inter Miami provides Lionel Messi injury update: How long will he be sidelined?
Lionel Messi is expected to miss some playing time with Inter Miami, but it's unclear how long he could be sidelined due to his upper, right-leg injury. Messi has "a minor muscle injury," Inter Miami announced on Aug. 3 in a statement. The announcement did not include a timetable for his return. Inter Miami's next match is in the 2025 Leagues Cup tournament – Aug. 6 against Pumas UNAM at Chase Stadium – with a prime opportunity to advance to the knockout stage. It's likely Inter Miami will play their next match without their eight-time Ballon d'Or winner and Argentine World Cup champion. Here's everything you need to know about Lionel Messi's latest injury, including Inter Miami's upcoming schedule and two matches Messi could play with Argentina in early September: Will Messi play in Inter Miami's next Leagues Cup match? Inter Miami coach Javier Mascherano will have a press conference on Tuesday, Aug. 5, a day before their next match, where Messi's status for the Aug. 6 match could be announced. What injury does Lionel Messi have? Messi has an upper, right-leg injury – which Inter Miami described as a "minor muscle injury." When did Messi get injured? Messi was injured in the opening minutes of Inter Miami's Aug. 2 Leagues Cup match against Necaxa. Messi attempted to charge forward into the penalty area with possession, but was tripped up and fell to the pitch. Messi made the move in the 6th minute of the match, and was removed as a substitute in the 11th minute. He walked off on his own into Inter Miami's locker room after a trainer massaged his upper, right leg upon evaluation. How much time will Messi miss due to injury? It's unclear how long Messi will be out or how many matches he would miss due to this injury. Inter Miami has prime opportunity to advance in Leagues Cup Inter Miami is in third place – behind Seattle Sounders and Portland Timbers – in the MLS side of the Leagues Cup table after the first two matches. Only the Top 4 clubs from MLS and LIGA MX will advance to the knockout stage. Simply put, Inter Miami would advance if they beat Pumas by any score. With five points in the standings, Inter Miami is ahead of six other MLS clubs with four points. A win to reach eight points would be enough to advance. Could Messi return if Inter Miami advances in Leagues Cup? The best-case scenario for Inter Miami is they advance to the knockout stage, and Messi returns to play in the Leagues Cup quarterfinals on either Aug. 19 or 20. But it's still too early to guess if Messi would recover in time. What is Inter Miami's upcoming schedule? After Inter Miami plays against Pumas, they will have two MLS regular-season matches before the Leagues Cup quarterfinals – if they qualify. Here's Inter Miami's upcoming schedule through August: Will Messi play with Argentina in September World Cup qualifiers? Argentina has already qualified for the 2026 World Cup, but still has two more qualifying matches to play: Sept. 4 vs. Venezuela and Sept. 9 vs. Ecuador. The Sept. 4 match is one to keep an eye on: It will be played in Argentina, and could possibly be Messi's last match in his home country.
Yahoo
44 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Porteous completes LAFC move from Watford
Defender Ryan Porteous has completed a £752,000 ($1million) move from Watford to Los Angeles FC. The centre-back made 82 appearances for the Hornets after joining them from Scottish Premiership club Hibernian in January 2023, and spent the the second half of last season on loan at Preston North End. Scotland international Porteous has signed a three-year contract with the Major League Soccer club, with an option for another year. Transfers - August 2025 Latest Watford news, analysis and fan views Listen to Watford content on BBC Sounds
Yahoo
44 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Analyzing preseason friendlies is maddening, but right now it's all we have
Glory for Manchester United, who lifted the Premier League summer series on Sunday despite twice being pegged back by Everton to draw 2-2 in Atlanta. A degree of relief for West Ham, who beat Bournemouth to finish second in the competition despite all the gloomy prognostications about their campaign to come. In Seoul, meanwhile, there was a very Tottenham moment as they followed the glee of last week's 1-0 win over Arsenal with a 1-1 draw against Newcastle in which James Maddison was stretchered off with a knee injury described by his manager Thomas Frank as 'bad'. It all looks real, it sounds real and yet everybody knows it isn't real. That even now, in this age of data and minute analysis, there remains an element of randomness, is one of soccer's great joys as a sport. But that tendency is magnified in pre-season. Related: Tottenham fans will only appreciate me when I am gone, says Daniel Levy The Premier League has been away for 10 weeks now. For those hooked on its soap opera, the wait is intolerable. The Club World Cup, the England men's team being dreadful in June as they so often are, the Under-21s continuing their unfamiliar excellence, even the women's Euros … none of it quite offers the same hit. Obsessing over transfers suffices only for so long; eventually there is a need to see them play. And so there are pre-season games, and there is is analysis. The best of it is skeptical, acknowledging the absurdity of making judgements on 45 minutes. The worst of it is breathlessly insistent – of Bryan Mbeumo and Matheus Cunha, the two senior players United have managed to sign, appearing together against Everton. What does it mean that Rasmus Højlund was only on the bench? Does that mean Benjamin Šeško is more likely to sign? The front three, with Mbeumo dropping deep and Cunha and Bruno Fernandes at times running beyond him, looked fluent. Fernandes and Mbuemo set up Amad Diallo, overlapping from wing-back to score the opener. This is the way Ruben Amorim's 3-4-3 is supposed to work. In that, at least, there is a sense of something tangible, a United that is, at last, able to execute their manager's attacking plan. But Ayden Heaven's own goal was a reminder that United remain as self-destructive as ever. Perhaps more significant was the equaliser conceded after Manuel Ugarte lost possession, the lack of urgency to get back. Did this happen because it was only a friendly and United are nowhere near peak fitness yet? Or because this is an irredeemably feckless bunch of players? This is smoke on a foggy day. Will any of it be relevant when the season begins for real? United fans will remember ruefully just how good they looked in pre-season under Louis van Gaal in 2014, only for the season itself to prove anticlimactic. The problem with assessing pre-season games is that different sides are at different stages of readiness. Some expect to hit the ground running from week one; others are building to peak in March or April, the differences magnified two weeks before the opening day. Some managers are working on specific plans and are less bothered by the whole, some are just hoping to get semi-competitive minutes into their players' legs. Related: Fifa facing multibillion-pound compensation claim from former players In the old days, before Premier League teams went on foreign tours and everybody was desperately promoting themselves to a global audience, pre-season was about team bonding as much as anything else: the team that drinks together wins together, as the adage had it. The stories are legion: the Everton winger Peter Beagrie driving a motorbike through a plateglass window in San Sebastián; Sunderland's diminutive but extremely tough full-back John Kay terrifying a much larger local who had threatened him by casually eating the antiseptic cubes from a urinal in Bristol; Arsenal's French midfielder Gilles Grimandi joining five of his English teammates on a night out in Switzerland where the first round comprised 35 pints of lager and a dry white wine. Many managers, you suspect, would quite relish a return to the days, if not of booze, then at least of pre-season being a largely private affair rather than a projection of the club to the world. Very occasionally something consequential happens, such as Chelsea conceding four in the second half to an experimental New York Red Bulls led by Jesse Marsch in the summer of 2015, the first sign that something had gone badly wrong for José Mourinho's side since winning the Premier League two months earlier; within five months, Mourinho had been sacked. (It was also the debut first-team appearance for Bournemouth and US national team midfielder Tyler Adams, then 16 years old.) Pre-season is very much the phoney war, the jockeying, the probing. It matters to the clubs, but to outsiders it is essentially like watching an artist mix his paints. There's anticipation and a vague technical interest, but it means nothing until it starts being applied to the canvas. This is an extract from Soccer with Jonathan Wilson, a weekly look from the Guardian US at the game in Europe and beyond. Subscribe for free here. Have a question for Jonathan? Email soccerwithjw@ and he'll answer the best in a future edition.