Arteta won’t talk title race after Newcastle loss​​

Pep Guardiola signed a new two-year contract to extend his stay as Manchester City boss, the club announced Thursday.

Guardiola, 53, agreed to a deal that will keep him at the Etihad Stadium until 2027. His contract was due to expire at the end of the current campaign.

The extension means Guardiola will celebrate 10 years at City in the summer of 2026, having arrived from Bayern Munich in 2016.

“Since the beginning of the season, I’ve been thinking a lot,” Guardiola said. “I want to be honest, I thought this [season] should be the last one. But the problems we had in the last month, I felt now was not the right time to leave. I didn’t want to let the club down.

“Manchester City means so much to me,” Guardiola said. “We have experienced so many amazing times together. I have a really special feeling for this football club. That is why I am so happy to be staying for another two more seasons.”

City, according to sources, were concerned Guardiola might step down at the end of the season. His decision to stay is a major boost, particularly with director of football Txiki Begiristain leaving the club in the summer.

Begiristain was instrumental in engineering an era of unprecedented success at the Etihad. He’ll be replaced by Hugo Viana, who will make the move from Sporting Lisbon where he worked with new Manchester United coach Ruben Amorim.

Guardiola is the most successful manager in City’s history, having won 15 major trophies including six Premier League titles and the Champions League. This season, he’s aiming to become the first manager in English football history to win five consecutive top-flight titles.

“It has always been an honour, a pleasure and a privilege to be here,” Guardiola added. “I have said this many times before, but I have everything a manager could ever wish for, and I appreciate that so much. Hopefully now we can add more trophies to the ones we have already won. That will be my focus.”

City, who are on a run of four straight defeats in all competitions for the first time since 2006, sit second in the table, five points behind leaders Liverpool.

“Like every City fan, I am delighted that Pep’s journey with Manchester City will continue; allowing his dedication, passion and innovative thinking to continue to shape the landscape of the game,” City chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak said in a statement.

“His hunger for improvement and success remains insatiable and the direct beneficiaries of that will continue to be our players and coaching staff, the culture of our Club, and the English game at large.”

A source told ESPN that Guardiola’s new deal does not contain a break clause, despite the threat of relegation from the Premier League if City are found guilty of breaching the competition’s financial rules. City are facing 115 charges — which they deny — at a hearing in London that began in September.

The hearing is set to conclude in the coming weeks before the independent commission delivers its verdict next year.

Indiana Fever star Caitlin Clark is part of the ownership group trying to bring an NWSL expansion team to Cincinnati.

Cincinnati is one of a handful of finalists bidding for an NWSL expansion team that is expected to be awarded before the end of the year. The team would begin play in 2026, joining a previously announced expansion team in Boston to bring the NWSL to 16 teams.

“The NWSL Cincinnati bid team is thrilled that Caitlin Clark has joined our ownership group in pursuit of bringing a women’s professional soccer team to our city,” the NWSL Cincinnati bid team said in a statement to ESPN.

“Her passion for the sport, commitment to elevating women’s sports in and around the Greater Cincinnati region, and influence as an athlete and role model for women and girls around the world, make her a vital part of our compelling bid to become the 16th team in the NWSL.”

Clark was selected first in the WNBA draft this year by the Fever after breaking the NCAA scoring record at the University of Iowa. She won WNBA Rookie of the Year in 2024 and became the first rookie since Candace Parker in 2008 to make the All-WNBA First Team.

The ownership group of MLS team FC Cincinnati is leading the bid. Also in contention are groups from Cleveland, Denver, Nashville and Philadelphia. Cincinnati is considered one of the favorites in the process because of its ownership backing and existing infrastructure, sources told ESPN, with a stadium already purpose-built for soccer.

Cleveland, Denver and Philadelphia all hope to build stadiums and play in temporary venues upon launching in 2026 if their bid is accepted, multiple sources said.

The group in Cleveland, which multiple sources also consider to have a strong bid, recently announced that it acquired the downtown land on which it intends to build a stadium.

Multiple sources said the expansion fee for the 16th NWSL team could approach $100 million. Boston and Bay FC, which began play this year, each paid $53 million to enter the league after being selected in 2023.

The most recent process started earlier this year with about a dozen serious inquiries in the first stage of bidding.

Moments after scoring one of the most iconic goals in NWSL history in her team’s most important game to date, Orlando Pride forward Marta clutched her fist and unleashed a passionate scream before beating her chest and then, with her two thumbs, pointing to the famous No. 10 on the back of her purple jersey.

Even at 38, the six-time world player of the year was still the otherworldly star making defenders helplessly fall to the ground as she figuratively gestured: “Are you not entertained!?”

Marta was celebrating what turned out to be the winning goal of the top-seeded Pride’s 3-2 semifinal victory over the No. 4 seed Kansas City Current on Sunday at Inter&Co Stadium in Orlando to punctuate the most captivating semifinal playoff round the NWSL has seen.

Now, the two best teams in the league will square off in the final on Saturday in Kansas City, Missouri, where the Pride will face the No. 2-seeded Washington Spirit. Everything about this NWSL postseason has been entertaining — and deviated from the league’s unpredictable norm.

The higher seed has won every game of the playoffs, an obvious statistic in a vacuum but a shocking fact for a league whose unofficial brand is chaos. When Orlando and Washington meet on Saturday, it will mark the first time since 2019 that the top two seeds reached the final. It’s also the first time the Shield winner has made the final in five years.

Coming off historic parity in 2023 — a season in which first and last place were separated by only 13 points, and the No. 6 seed won the title — this year has been about the stars and the individual and team level. The top four teams were in a class of their own, with the fourth-place Kansas City Current finishing 16 points above the fifth-place North Carolina Courage. Orlando finished 40 points above the last-place Houston Dash.

All four top seeds advanced in the opening round of the playoffs, which led to an incredible semifinal round in which the margins were thin. Washington knocked out NJ/NY Gotham FC on Saturday in a penalty shootout thanks to the triple-save efforts of Spirit goalkeeper Aubrey Kingsbury. Orlando held on to survive a late Kansas City onslaught in 19 minutes of stoppage time.

Each of the weekend’s victors leaned into their strengths to prevail: The Spirit rallied for an equalizer in second-half stoppage time on a combination between two rookies — Makenna Morris and Hal Hershfelt — to claw back into a game late, as they have so many times this year.

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Aubrey Kingsbury makes three PK saves to send Spirit to NWSL final

Aubrey Kingsbury saves all three shots during penalty kicks to send the Washington Spirit to the NWSL final.

Orlando’s role players put in huge shifts — including unheralded Haley McCutcheon, who scored in her second straight playoff game — as Marta and star striker Barbra Banda scored memorable goals.

Speaking ahead of Sunday’s semifinal about what might separate two of the best teams the league has ever seen, Kansas City coach Vlatko Andonovski said the game probably would come down to a moment of brilliance. He was right — although it was moments, plural.

The same can now be said about Saturday’s championship, one that with no hyperbole might be the most anticipated in league history.

Orlando set a league points record (60) and both teams finished the regular season with 18 victories, also a league record. Both squads feature global stars, headlined by U.S. international forward Trinity Rodman for the Spirit, and each team has a ludicrous amount of roster depth.

The midfield battle will be a scrap, with Hershfelt patrolling from a deep area for the Spirit and McCutcheon and Angelina counteracting her for Orlando.

Banda — and, as she reminded the world again Sunday, Marta — can single-handedly change a game, but so too can Rodman, who delivered the winning assist in extra time as a rookie in the 2021 final, when the Spirit won their only trophy to date.

Wide areas could decide the winner Saturday, as they partly did throughout the semifinals. Both goals before the penalty shootout in the Gotham-Spirit semifinal came on the heels of individual brilliance on the flank.

The Pride gave up an early goal to Kansas City on Sunday in a transition moment that ended with Current forward Michelle Cooper getting to the endline on the right flank and crossing the ball to Debinha for the finish. Orlando quickly answered when McCutcheon redirected a cross from winger Ally Watt, who sized up Current rookie defender Ellie Wheeler one-on-one in the right channel.

Expect Saturday’s final to be a chess match between two of the best coaches in the league who each came to this moment on two wildly different roads.

Spirit head coach Jonatan Giráldez left the glory of Barcelona, which he led to the two most recent European crowns, to take on the challenge of the NWSL starting halfway through this season. He has pulled all the right strings even while dealing with mounting injuries, including season-ending issues for three starters.

Pride head coach Seb Hines played for Orlando’s MLS club before becoming an assistant through three different Pride coaching regimes. He took over as interim in 2022 as the Pride were at another low point and turned a hopeless club into a team that was difficult to beat and, for the first time in years, a place players wanted to be. Hines is stoic; Giráldez wears his heart on his sleeve — or at least did in a rowdy, chippy semifinal.

The Pride and Spirit were separated by only four points in the regular season. Orlando clinched the NWSL Shield in October with a 2-0 home victory over a Spirit team depleted by injuries (which were compounded by midfielder and captain Andi Sullivan tearing her ACL in that game). Marta made the difference on that day, too, scoring the winning goal from the penalty spot.

Afterward, she was reduced to tears as she celebrated her first U.S. domestic club trophy since winning the 2011 title in a now defunct league.

“I stayed here because I want to make history with this team,” Marta said after that Shield-clinching victory on Oct. 6. “And then we did tonight, and then we go for more.”

As Hines said after Sunday’s semifinal victory, the Pride and the Spirit were the two best teams this year and they deserve to be in the final. They each proved that again in the semifinals as they came from behind and leveraged every bit of depth and star power on their respective rosters.

On Saturday, they meet again in a heavyweight fight likely to be decided by a few moments of brilliance. If even a modicum of energy from the playoffs thus far is brought to that game, it guarantees to entertain.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — For years, the global debate around the NWSL’s on-field product has centered around whether it is the best women’s soccer league in the world.

Recently, however, NWSL commissioner Jessica Berman and an ever-expanding league office have mulled a more provocative question: Can the NWSL — a women’s soccer league that is barely a decade old — be one of the best sports leagues in the world? More bluntly: Can it be relevant and compete with MLS and the NHL? Or even the NFL or the NBA?

The answers to those questions might be less important than the fact that they are being asked. That line of thinking suggests the NWSL might finally be embracing that its core ingredient is the most important to the success of any league: it is, above all, entertainment. And the NWSL has an abundance of entertainment.

Saturday’s NWSL Championship between the Orlando Pride and the Washington Spirit in Kansas City, Missouri, is a battle of the league’s top two teams. Orlando set a record for points (60) and unbeaten games to start a season (23), while both teams won 18 games in the regular season, jointly setting a league record.

Both Orlando and Washington narrowly prevailed last weekend in the most entertaining round of semifinals the NWSL has ever seen. It wasn’t just that all four teams played good soccer, and no, it didn’t matter that it was women’s soccer, either. The two games were sport at its most dramatic, captivating height.

Berman noted as much when she spoke at Audi Field on Saturday. The semifinal sold out in 72 hours. The Spirit’s quarterfinal also sold out despite overlapping the Washington Commanders NFL game being played in the area. “There was a time when that wouldn’t be in the realm of possibility,” Berman said.

What she said next matters more: “To really experience the energy of what I think is the emergence of an NWSL fan that really loves the game; they’re not just here for the environment or the experience, or to support women or women’s soccer players, but [they are] really enjoying the fact that the game itself is competitive and these are the best athletes in the world.”

For a league that for years emphasized its role as a women’s platform, it’s a shift that the NWSL is now positioning itself more simplistically: as a sport worth people’s attention, no strings attached about supporting a good cause.

The semifinals were must-see TV for the most casual sports fan. The Spirit won a penalty shootout over defending champ NJ/NY Gotham FC after Washington goalkeeper Aubrey Kingsbury stopped all three shots she faced. It was a tense, heated game in front of a raucous sold-out stadium in the nation’s capital — a crowd of 19,000-plus that erupted when the Spirit tied the score in second-half stoppage time.

A day later, the top-seeded Pride defeated the Kansas City Current behind an unforgettable, viral goal from six-time world player of the year Marta. That was the artistry before the drama: Orlando survived a late surge from Kansas City to win 3-2.

The league’s diehards know this well: Chaos is the ethos of the NWSL. And chaos is often entertaining.

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Marta & Banda ‘can’t wait’ for NWSL championship game vs. Washington

Marta and Barbra Banda speak about reaching the NWSL championship game vs. Washington Spirit.

This is the league where last-place teams win championships the following season (as Gotham did in 2023), results frequently change in the final minutes (the term “NWSL After Dark” was coined years ago to recognize the league’s unpredictable games), and just about anything weird can happen, including a player flipping the double bird to a referee on broadcast TV (yes, really).

Previous iterations of NWSL leadership too frequently failed to embrace the totality of the league’s gripping cinema. They also did not have the luxury of media rights deals that showcased the league’s product to the masses.

This season was the first of a four-year rights deal that the NWSL struck with ESPN, CBS, Amazon and Scripps (ION). The agreements meant that the majority of NWSL games were on TV this year and in places where sports fans already are.

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Bonmati slams Liga F for failing to market itself like NWSL & WSL

Barcelona’s Ballon d’Or-winning midfielder Aitana Bonmati says the Spanish Liga F is far behind the NWSL and WSL when it comes to promoting itself to potential fans.

ESPN calls itself the worldwide leader in sports, CBS is a major home of professional and college football, and both already broadcast several other soccer leagues, meaning the NWSL could (in theory) meet soccer fans where they already were. Amazon’s Prime Sports is a growing player in the space, and ION already successfully broadcasts WNBA doubleheaders as it now does for the NWSL.

Compare this to 2017, when the NWSL announced a historic media rights deal with A&E (including giving up equity in the league to A&E) that placed a weekly featured national TV game on Lifetime, the home of murder mystery romance movies on a loop. The league simultaneously launched the “Pass The Ball” campaign with celebrities talking about NWSL athletes as role models, which sounded more like an appeal for charity than an advertisement for an exciting product.

The partnership between the NWSL and Lifetime seemed great at the time, but the bar was low. The league had come from the depths of being broadcast on sketchy YouTube streams and a handful of games on cable. The message of going all-in on Lifetime was also clear: Women are the primary demographic of that channel, so of course women’s soccer would be a hit, right?

In retrospect, the thinking — of the Lifetime deal, but more so of how the league positioned itself, and what it thought to be its target demographic — was self-limiting. Fast-forward to today and the NWSL’s slogan is in its second year of a marketing campaign called “We Play Here,” which clearly positions the league as the home of world-class athletes.

The league’s front office has multiplied from a handful of hard-working folks in Chicago in the early years to approaching 100 now stationed in Manhattan in New York. Multiple senior executives at the league came from the NFL, and Berman joined from the NHL in 2022.

The billionaires buying up teams come with a wealth of sporting experience, too. Laura Ricketts, of the Ricketts family that owns MLB’s Chicago Cubs, purchased the Chicago Red Stars last year. The struggling franchise has a lot of work to do, but this year’s NWSL record crowd of nearly 40,000 at Wrigley Field represented an ambition and execution previously unthinkable in that market and, in large part, within the league.

Carolyn Tisch Blodgett was confirmed as an investor in and the new governor of Gotham FC days before the team’s championship win last year. The Tisch family has part-owned the New York Giants for the past three decades.

Earlier this year, Tisch Blodgett told ESPN that she treats Gotham as the same long-term investment as the Giants. She also sees a pathway toward making the club a globally recognizable brand, something other team owners have echoed.

“I’ve been really clear with my team that my vision is to build one of the best global sports franchises, period,” she said earlier this year. “That’s across men’s and women’s, that’s across sports, that’s across continents. When you think about the best global sports brands out there, there are no women’s teams on that list, and it’s just a matter of time until it is.”

One of the teams playing in Saturday’s NWSL Championship is attempting a similar trajectory. The Spirit are owned by Michele Kang, who also now owns French power Olympique Lyonnais and second-division English side London City Lionesses. Kang has been vocal about the need to invest in more infrastructure in the women’s game, and just this week she announced a $30 million investment in U.S. Soccer’s women’s and girls’ programs.

The key to a great sports product whether women’s soccer, American football or any other sport is entertainment. The NWSL is full of that, and it will be on display again Saturday in what might be the most anticipated final in league history.

Can the NWSL be a great sports league? There’s still growing to do, but at last, the league might finally be asking the correct questions.