MIAMI: British football legend David Beckham said he will buy a US team to play Major League Soccer and bring it to the city of Miami.
Beckham spoke to reporters alongside MLS commissioner Don Garber, who said Beckham and the league would work with Miami Dade county to build a world class stadium for the club.
"I wanted to create a team where we can start from scratch," Beckham said, explaining his decision to bring the expanding league's 22nd soccer club to Florida.
"I know there was a team here 10 years ago that unfortunately folded, but I know that Miami is ready for football again," he said.
"I wanted to create a team that would be very personal to me.
"We're planning to bring a team that will be a global team," he said, arguing that in the past 10 years American soccer has made huge progress as both a sport and a business.
Beckham thanked Garber and Miami Dade's Mayor Carlos Gimenez, and said he would not seek public funding for the team's stadium, having raised money from private partners.
He said one of his partners would be British pop music and television impresario Simon Fuller, who managed Beckham's wife Victoria when she sang with the Spice Girls.
Beckham to bring MLS football club to Miami
Beckham to bring MLS football club to Miami
Siniakova ends Andreeva Indian Wells defense in third round
- Siniakova, a former doubles number one, will face either Ukraine’s Elina Svitolina or American Ashlyn Krueger for a place in the quarter-finals
INDIAN WELLS, United States: Unseeded Katerina Siniakova ended a frustrated Mirra Andreeva’s Indian Wells title defense on Monday, rallying for a 4-6, 6-3, 6-2 victory over the eighth-ranked Russian.
The 18-year-old Andreeva had opened her repeat bid with an imperious 6-0, 6-0 demolition of Solana Sierra.
But she was in trouble early and often against 44th-ranked Siniakova in a rollercoaster contest that featured seven service breaks for each player and 43 break chances between them.
When she sailed a swinging volley long to surrender the second set, Andreeva threw her racquet in disgust.
She regrouped to break Siniakova for a 3-2 lead in the third, but Siniakova won the next four games.
The Czech saved a pair of break points in the final game before sealing the match with a shot that struck the net cord and dribbled over as Andreeva could only watch, disappointment sparking another outburst from the Russian as she departed the court.
Siniakova, a former doubles number one, will face either Ukraine’s Elina Svitolina or American Ashlyn Krueger for a place in the quarter-finals.
In other early matches, fifth-seeded American Jessica Pegula shook off a slow start to beat Latvia’s Jelena Ostapenko 4-6, 6-3, 6-2.
Pegula, coming off her fourth career WTA 1000 title at Dubai last month, fired 11 aces with just one double fault as she rallied for the win.
“I think today I had to kind of snap myself back and kind of lock in to not let that get away from me,” said Pegula, who said she was in danger of letting negativity and frustration get the better of her.
“I didn’t think I was playing bad. It was just letting a couple chances, couple breaks here and there (get away), maybe a couple shots that I could have been more aggressive on.”
Later on Stadium Court, world number two Iga Swiatek took on Greece’s Maria Sakkari — the woman she beat in the Indian Wells finals in 2022 and 2024.
Australian Open champion Elena Rybakina, who lifted the Indian wells Trophy in 2023, played Ukraine’s Marta Kostyuk in the final match of the night.
