Great start. Very nice goal from Pepi with a great cross from Pulisic. Good to see Reyna back on the starting lineup too. Hopefully that means we can move past all that drama.

Bayern hired Tuchel which is hilarious. Borussia Dortmund and Munich play on the 1st with BVB up 2 points at the top.

Surely Tuchel can’t destroy two teams in 1 season right? I am in complete shock that he landed the Bayern job after the huge mess he created in Chelsea. Hopefully Dortmund and Union Berlin can make them pay for that mistake of a hire.

Would love it. Dortmund is my team but if it is not them Union Berlin is awesome.

Not many clubs have a stadium built by their supporters. Love the season Union Berlin is having!

Aaronson with a very nice goal. I know it’s Grenada, but it’s an away game in concacaf so I’m very happy with this start to nations league play.

You've outdone yourself. I thought you were clueless on footie but it turns out you're actually a spastic. Tuchel left Chelsea with a far better reputation than he had when he went into the club. He was hired by Bayern prematurely because he's the best manager available and they knew that if Real get knocked out of the CL he'd be lined up to get the job from Carlo.

He may have left with a better reputation, but he didn’t leave Chelsea in a better spot than when he took over. Lampard laid the foundation for that Champions League season. When the new ownership group gave Tuchel some blank checks to go out and build his own team he lost his job in less than 10 games. I guess Bayern might just be hoping he can come in and finish off another Champions League team he didn’t build, but if they give him an open checkbook in the summer window I’m gonna laugh my ass off. The regression Chelsea clearly showed in Tuchels time there should not have been a good enough resume to push Nagelsmann to the side.

Messi in Talks for $400m Saudi Deal, Telegraph Says

(Bloomberg) — Saudi Arabia is preparing to offer football star Lionel Messi a $400 million annual contract to play with the Saudi Pro League this summer, the Telegraph reported.

The deal, which is being negotiated by Messi’s father, would far exceed the more than $200 million deal Cristiano Ronaldo signed to play in Saudi Arabia until the summer of 2025.

The Argentine World Cup champion was suspended on Tuesday by his current club Paris Saint-Germain for two weeks after traveling to Saudi Arabia without permission from the organization. Messi had previously agreed to a deal in principle to stay with PSG, but following the disciplinary action, he will not renew his contract, BBC reported.

Read More: The Country Where Bankers’ Pay Is Booming - Saudi Arabia

The potential signing would be the latest move by Saudi Arabia to upend the world of professional sports. In addition to the recent signing of Ronaldo, the country has financed the LIV Golf league and its sovereign wealth fund purchased Premier League club Newcastle United.

The Saudi sovereign wealth fund also mulled adding Formula 1 motor racing to its sports investments, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg News in January.

The PIF’s investments in sports and competitive gaming — and moves to bring major sporting events to the kingdom — are partly an attempt to boost Saudi soft power, while critics say such deals are “sportswashing,” an attempt to improve the nation’s image and divert attention from a poor human rights record.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/messi...164407327.html

Lol. CR7 is going to throw a fit

I totally understand some players that are pretty good and take a bunch of money to play soccer in SA or in China or something like that. But these guys who already have more money than they could possibly spend I don't really understand why they take these deals. So many great places to play around the world. Weird to me.

Napoli wins the league for the first time in 33 years and the vibes are immaculate.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="sl" dir="ltr">3rd ⭐️ 🇦🇷<br>3rd ⭐️ Napoli <br>😭😭😭<br><br> <a href="https://t.co/nN00zIYNyv">pic.twitter.com/nN00zIYNyv</a></p>&mdash; KEVIÑCHO (@KEVINCHO_TV) <a href="https://twitter.com/KEVINCHO_TV/status/1654260191544713218?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 4, 2023</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

You just knew that once Ronaldo went to Saudi Arabia for that coin, Messi wouldn’t be far behind.

These guys are entering the last part of their careers and both have completed basically everything they could., especially Messi.

Now that Messi has a World Cup, he has nothing else to really shoot his legacy further. He’s done it all.

Now he’s just cashing out.

That is absolute insanity. Four hundred MILLION dollars!? The Saudis are really banking on a post-oil future for their country but this doesn’t seem like the best approach..

That’s actually footage from a celebration in Croatia in 2011 it looks like for Hajduk Split’s 100th anniversary. Croatians love their pyrotechnics. Napoli still going crazy nonetheless today. Happy for them.

Seems like it's just part of a larger sportswashing plan. Having the world not see the Saudi royal family as tyrannical dictators is probably invaluable to them.