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
Sabalenka debuts engagement ring during Indian Wells win
- World number one sported the striking oval-cut diamond ring for the first time in competition after getting engaged to Georgios Frangulis late on Tuesday
INDIAN WELLS, California: Aryna Sabalenka’s performance in a 6-4 6-2 second-round win over Japan’s Himeno Sakatsume was not the only thing that dazzled at Indian Wells on Friday, with the world number one also showing off her shiny new engagement ring.
The 27-year-old sported the striking oval-cut diamond ring for the first time in competition after getting engaged to Georgios Frangulis late on Tuesday.
“It feels super comfortable and shiny,” she told reporters.
“We double-checked if there was a possibility to lose the diamond, and there was none. I was pretty confident wearing it, hoping it might even distract my opponent.”
Sabalenka, who has made the final of the WTA 1000 event twice in the last three years, said that while the proposal came as a complete surprise to her, the entire team was in on the engagement secret.
“I saw Georgios and I was crying half of the time, because I thought that I looked ugly, not prepared, and this is such a beautiful moment,” she said.
“I stopped everything, and I asked the videographer and the photographer to make sure that my face was not (in the pictures), just the ring, and side views and from the back, just so you guys wouldn’t be shocked by the way I looked.
“But it was a beautiful moment.”
Sabalenka was asked what she has learned about Frangulis, the CEO of global health-food brand OakBerry, and what he has learned about her since they began dating in 2024.
“What I have learned about him? He likes Oakberry a lot,” the four-times Grand Slam champion said. “What he has learned about me? That I’m crazy,” she added with a laugh.
