Sports

Soccer’s World Cup will be staged in six countries on three continents in its centenary edition in 2030, an unexpected and complex alteration to its traditional format that was approved on Wednesday in a meeting of FIFA’s governing council.In the unusual arrangement, three South American countries — Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay — each will host a single opening match on home soil and then join the rest of the field for the remainder of the tournament, which will take place in Spain, Portugal and Morocco.The six countries had initially joined forces regionally in separate bids for the hosting rights to the 100th anniversary World Cup, a globe-stopping, monthlong soccer festival that produces billions of dollars in revenue for FIFA every four years.The offer from the South American nation...

John Jaso knew he wanted to retire, so he started shopping for sailboats. It was the 2017 season, and Jaso, the Pittsburgh Pirates’ first baseman, would spend his downtime at home browsing on boat websites. And when the Pirates visited a team near a body of water, he would wander the marinas and imagine himself on the open water.One June morning in Baltimore, before a 7:10 p.m. first pitch against the Orioles, Jaso rented a car and drove to Annapolis, Md. There, he found the boat he’d been looking for: a 2014 Jeanneau 44 DS. He had it surveyed, bought it and had it shipped to his off-season home in St. Petersburg, Fla. He made it back to the stadium in time to go 2 for 4 with an R.B.I.Four months later, when the Pirates’ season ended without a playoff berth, a handful of reporters wandered...

The Boston Celtics continued an offseason remodeling Sunday by agreeing to acquire All-Star guard Jrue Holiday from Portland.With the Trail Blazers looking to move Holiday after netting him in the Damian Lillard blockbuster last week, the Boston front office struck quickly. In a trade that will reshape the Celtics’ vision for the coming season, the team agreed to send Malcolm Brogdon, Robert Williams III, Golden State’s 2024 first-round draft pick and an unprotected 2029 first-round pick to Portland. OFFICIAL: Trail Blazers Acquire Robert Williams III and Malcolm Brogdon Learn More: pic.twitter.com/PsjgMh2b9y — Portland Trail Blazers (@trailblazers) October 1, 2023The Celtics weren’t alone in pursuing Holiday after it became clear the Blazers planned to find a new home for him. The 33-ye...

Players in Spain’s women’s soccer league have called off a strike that delayed the opening of the season after reaching an agreement with the league over minimum salaries, a rare moment of harmony in what has been an acrimonious period in Spanish soccer.The agreement, confirmed early Thursday, would raise the minimum salary for players in the league to 21,000 euros, or about $22,500, from 16,000 euros this season, a significant increase but still far short of what their male counterparts make.The minimum is scheduled to rise to €23,500 for the 2025-2026 season, with the potential for an even higher benchmark “if enough profits are obtained from commercial assets,” such as sponsorship, according to a statement from the unions representing the players.Spanish soccer is in the midst of a turb...

About a half-hour before a mid-August Brooklyn Cyclones game, a family of three, a reporter and a middle-aged man dressed in a Jedi robe walked into an elevator at Maimonides Park. As the door closed and they began their ascent, the Jedi turned to the others and asked, “So, what planet are you all from?”“Um, Brooklyn,” responded the matriarch of the family. The Jedi proceeded to hum “Mad About Me,” by the Mos Eisley Cantina house band, Figrin D’an and the Modal Nodes, as if to tell them he was from the planet Tatooine.When the elevator doors opened and they stepped out onto the concourse, they joined hundreds of other Jedi knights and Padawan learners fanning out across the ballpark, mingling with the mere mortals who came equipped with scorebooks, pencils and baseball gloves. Out beyond t...

ROME — Rory McIlroy has finished in the top 10 in eight of his last 10 major championship appearances, including two solo runner-ups. Incredibly impressive stuff. And bru•ta•lly fruitless. This is a man who, now 34, openly speaks of being on the back nine of his career, and who, when he lays his head down at night, likely lends one last silent thought to the fact that he hasn’t won a major in a decade. As far as year-in and year-out play goes, he’s arguably the best player in golf over the last 10 years – and the most disappointing.So, yes, he might take things a little personally.McIlroy stood behind the 16th green at Marco Simone Golf & Country Club on Sunday as a product of all his parts. The talented — he scored more points than anyone in the 2023 Ryder Cup, going 4-1. The emotiona...

When FIFA announced several years ago that it would take the preparations for soccer’s 2026 World Cup in-house, it argued the change would streamline the planning for a sprawling championship that would be larger and more complex and require greater expertise than ever before. That the change would also grant FIFA greater control over the $11 billion in revenue it expects from its biggest cash cow was perhaps even more important.But as teams begin their campaigns to qualify for the tournament, cities across the United States are growing frustrated with the tortured pace of FIFA’s preparations and communications and a lack of clarity about their roles in what will be the biggest, and richest, sporting event ever staged on American soil.Cities and stadiums still do not know, for example, how...

Bill Kulik is a longtime Spanish language radio broadcaster for the Philadelphia Phillies. But listeners tuning in wouldn’t always know that.Instead of calling baseball’s championship by its Spanish name, “La Serie Mundial,” he calls it the World Series. He recently described a player’s up and down career as “a roller coaster” instead of “una montaña rusa,” the proper phrase in Spanish. And when saying something was quite funny, he said “bien funny.”This is the distinctive linguistic world of Mr. Kulik, a broadcaster nicknamed El Gringo Malo (The Bad Gringo), whose on-air persona is irreverent and even silly. Though most of what Mr. Kulik says in front of a microphone is in Spanish, he sprinkles in generous doses of English and Spanglish, a blending of the two languages.Of the 16 teams — o...

Sign up for the Until Saturday newsletter | Jayna Bardahl and The Athletic’s college football staff deliver expert analysis on the biggest CFB stories five days per week. Get it sent to your inbox.It’s been a while since we’ve had a season without a clear-cut No. 1 team this deep into the fall.Several teams can make a case, and there are still many big games to be played. But at this point, it’s time for a change. Texas is the new No. 1 in this week’s Athletic 133.There are two reasons for it. The first is Texas itself. The Longhorns went to Alabama and handled the Crimson Tide in what is the most impressive single win of the season. Texas also took care of business with blowouts of Baylor and Kansas in the last two weeks. Yes, Texas had a brief scare against Wyoming, but the other teams i...

Neymar’s endorsement was not, perhaps, the most ringing. Back in Brazil to play for his national team this month, he had been asked — not for the first time — to address the lingering suspicion that, in leaving Paris St.-Germain for Saudi Arabia and Al-Hilal, one of the finest players of his generation might not have chosen the most challenging coda to his career.Neymar’s immediate instinct was to dismiss the premise. “I can assure you the game in Saudi Arabia is the same: The ball is round, we have goal posts,” he said with a slight smile and a nervous laugh. “For the names that have gone to Saudi Arabia, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Saudi league was better than the French,” he added. He was still smiling then, but it did not feel quite as warm.Clearly, the accusation — one thrown not j...