The Solheim Cup again belongs to the Americans.

The U.S. team successfully finished their leftover business from a year ago, winning the cup for the first time since 2017. The final score was 15.5-12.5, the biggest gap since 2017 when the Americans won by five points.

It was Lilia Vu who earned the clinching half-point. Down by one in her match to Albane Valenzuela, Vu sent the crowd at Robert Trent Jones Golf Course in Gainesville, Va. into hysteria with an approach shot at No. 18 hit to two feet. Valenzuela left her long birdie putt short, Vu smoothly hit her ball in and got the U.S. to 14.5 points.

Vu, wrapped in an American flag, told NBC that she felt like she had not done enough to help the team this week but that Sunday was her chance to make up for it.

“On the 18th hole, in the middle of the fairway, I saw we were at 14 points and I was like, oh shoot, I better birdie this. Let me try my best,” Vu said.

U.S. captain Stacy Lewis helmed a winning strategy all week, beginning on Friday with a pair of sessions that the U.S. won 3-1. The European team fought back to tie the U.S. in both sessions on Saturday, but it left the Euros still four points down and needing a dramatic Sunday singles rally.

That did not come, with Lewis putting many of her best players all week out first. While Charley Hull dominated world No. 1 Nelly Korda 6&4 in the opening match and Georgia Hall beat Alison Lee 4&3 in match No. 3, there was enough American firepower to earn the necessary points.

Megan Khang beat Emily Pedersen 6&5 for point No. 11, and Rose Zhang (4-0 this week without ever having to play the final two holes) took down Carlota Ciganda 6&4 for the 12th point. Allisen Corpuz beat Anna Nordqvist 4&3 for the 13th point. Andrea Lee earned a half-point against Esther Henseleit.

There were then tense moments as the Americans searched for the clinching point.

Celine Boutier, three down after 11 holes, rallied in her match against Lexi Thompson, making a birdie on No. 18 to win and narrow it to 13.5-9.5. Leona Maguire, curiously only used once in the first two days despite a stellar history in this event, got the Euros to 10.5 points with a 4&3 win against Ally Ewing. Then Maja Stark made a 10-foot par putt to half her match with Lauren Coughlin, leaving the U.S. a half-point shy.

A year ago the Solheim Cup ended in a 14-14 tie so the Europeans, winners of the 2019 and 2021 competitions, retained the cup. That left a sour taste in the mouths of the Americans, who spoke openly of their desire to finish the job this time around.

The event is typically held biennially but was held back-to-back years to get away from the Ryder Cup schedule.

Required reading

(Top photo of Rose Zhang: Gregory Shamus / Getty Images)

It is perhaps easy to hear Mauricio Pochettino say his new players must “believe” they can win the World Cup and roll your eyes.

It’s the sort of flashy soundbite in first press conferences that ambitious managers often produce.

What else could he say after all those months of international courting from his new employers, the red wine and steaks, the unprecedented financial package? “We need to look good in the group stages and maybe get to the round of 16”?

No, the Argentine is a winner and he talks like one. He is also aware that he faces two jobs with the United States men’s national team — not just the task of transforming the quality of the side in a relatively short time but also changing its mindset.

Asked about that limited time (just 10 international breaks and no tournament) before the U.S. co-hosts the World Cup in 2026, he said: “Everyone thinks that there is no time to prepare and arrive in the best condition at the World Cup.

“I’m on the opposite side. I don’t want to give an excuse. I don’t want to create an excuse for the players to say, ‘Yeah, but don’t have time to buy the new ideas and the new philosophy’. No. We are talking about football and the players are so intelligent and talented and can play differently.

“We have time and we need to really believe in big things. Believe that we can win not only a game, we can win the World Cup. If not, it is going to be very difficult. We want players that show up, day one at the training camp, and think big.

“That is the only way to create this philosophy or this idea to perform and put your talent in the service of the team. That is going to be our massive challenge.”

The crop of players he inherits are, by and large, an intelligent, realistic bunch. They’re also used to questions about what represents progress for this group. Interviews before and during this summer’s Copa America saw the topic arise frequently.

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“Getting past the quarter-final,” said midfielder Tyler Adams when asked in June what a positive outcome would look like. “We need to, in a pressure situation, win in a knockout (game). That’s going to measure a lot of our success.”

It was maybe not what some fans wanted to hear; a temporary lift from a war cry that promised silverware at the competition, widely billed as a dry run for the World Cup.

But if Adams was trying to set reasonable expectations, he was right. As it transpired, winning a knockout game would have been genuine progress for a team thrashed 5-1 by eventual Copa America finalists Colombia in a friendly on June 8.

Instead, the U.S. crashed out in the group stages, victims of an individual error from Tim Weah in the loss to Panama and then of lacking the quality to prevent that from proving fatal. Charged with beating Uruguay to progress, they just did not have enough.

Adams and the USMNT could not progress against Uruguay on July 1 (Robin Alam/ISI Photos/Getty Images)

So the scale of the task ahead should be of little surprise to Pochettino. It may sound nice but speaking, as he did, of emulating the serial success of the U.S. women’s national team seems fanciful too.

Deep down, he will probably know that as well. So, instead, he is publicly challenging his players from the very beginning to stop hiding. No excuses. No buying into the narrative that there just isn’t time.

It’s a gamble for the 52-year-old because the reality is the narrative is probably true and he will eventually be judged by his words and results. The U.S. has just lost to Canada and then could only draw with a New Zealand team 78 places below them in the world rankings this week.

Confidence is low and Pochettino knows that building some sort of collective belief is a crucial part of climbing off the ropes for this team and arriving at 2026 in the frame of mind to win big games.

It is unlikely he actually believes the USMNT will win the World Cup at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey in a little under two years. But a team often accused of lacking enough fight when it really counts needs to start thinking bigger and that’s the point.

The other part of his job is adjusting quickly to the entirely different demand of managing in international football, when the opportunities to build a team who will run through brick walls for you, as he did at his best at Southampton and Tottenham Hotspur, are limited.

“Every time we have the facility to be with them, we will be very clinical in giving them the information,” Pochettino added on Friday. “We need to be clever enough in the way we approach training to get the best from them.”

But even as he preferred, understandably, not to alienate some of his new players by listing the squad’s weaknesses in his official unveiling, another reality is that Pochettino must be ruthless.

He needs to find an elite goalkeeper fast. He needs to build a defence with the aggression and smarts that teams from his South American homeland display.

A better balance in midfield must arrive too, for a squad well-stocked with clever holding midfielders but short of consistent creativity. How long, for example, will he spend trying to unlock the puzzle of Gio Reyna?

Then he must unearth the striking solution that will drive a team that fluffed its lines in front of goal all too often at the Copa. Which of the promising group of youngsters that performed well at the Paris Olympics will he fast-track into his setup?

And he has to do all that while getting enough results along the way to take a partly sceptical U.S. fanbase along on the journey with him.

So don’t roll your eyes when Pochettino talks about believing the USMNT can win the World Cup. Maybe close them, instead, and offer a silent prayer for the divine intervention he might need to meet all his objectives in less than two years.

He will need every bit of help he can get.

(Top photo: Dustin Satloff/USSF/Getty Images for USSF)

The phrase ‘Monday Night Football’ may be no stranger to heavyweight clashes but an all-time NFL great taking on Deadpool has to be a first.

This is Tom Brady tackling Ryan Reynolds, League One’s big spenders going head-to-head with Hollywood FC — or simply, Birmingham City versus Wrexham.

No matter how we dress up a fixture recently described on X by Wrexham co-owner Rob McElhenney as “an absolute banger”, Monday night’s showdown is a big deal on and off the pitch. Two clubs who are the very embodiment of globalised football will meet in a sellout clash that is being broadcast live on both sides of the Atlantic.

“A really, really high-profile match,” says CBS Sports executive vice president Dan Weinberg before Birmingham host Wrexham, which will be shown on two channels as part of the network’s four-year deal with the English Football League (EFL).

“We’ve carried every Wrexham game this season and we’ll continue to lean into them as much as we can. They are impossible to ignore in this country with the celebrity influence they have and the visibility of Ryan and Rob. We are enthused by the growth of their profile in the market.

“These two clubs have owners that resonate very well in this country.”

Not so long ago, few would have batted an eyelid in the United Kingdom over this particular Anglo-Welsh contest, never mind in the United States. The two clubs have very little shared history, other than the £1million City paid for Bryan Hughes in 1997 that remains Wrexham’s record transfer fee.

Now, though, the power of celebrity — plus back-to-back promotions for Wrexham and last May’s shock relegation for Birmingham — means this League One fixture carries plenty of intrigue.

Deadpool star Reynolds and McElhenney, through the success of the Emmy-award-winning Welcome to Wrexham documentary, have turned a previously provincial club into a global sensation with two successful pre-season tours of North America under their belts.

Birmingham are no less fascinating thanks to the 2023 takeover by Knighthead, the U.S. investment firm fronted by co-owner Tom Wagner and supported by minority investor Brady, the seven-time Super Bowl champion.

Relegation at the end of their first season was certainly not part of the script but it has done nothing to dim the group’s huge ambitions, which include building a new stadium after buying a 60-acre plot of land around a mile from St Andrew’s.

City clearly don’t intend on hanging around for long in the third tier, judging from the £20million ($26m) they splashed on transfers this summer. Around half of that is understood to have gone on wrestling striker Jay Stansfield from Fulham’s grasp, with Birmingham paying between £12m and £15m before add-ons.

To put that figure into context, the previous record paid by a club in this division before the recent window was the £4million Sunderland paid for Wigan Athletic striker Will Grigg.

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Wrexham co-owner McElhenney will no doubt recall that particular signing due to it featuring heavily in series two of Sunderland ‘Til I Die, the Netflix show that first gave the comedy actor the idea of buying a football club.

His team have been no slouches with recruitment, either. The £2million spent during the summer window was an unprecedented outlay for Wrexham, made possible by last season’s annual revenue smashing through the £20million barrier. Blue-chip sponsors, such as United Airlines, contributed heavily to that club-record figure.

Both camps have been entering into the spirit during the build-up to Monday’s eagerly-anticipated encounter, with Wrexham enlisting the help of Eli Manning, a long-time NFL rival of Brady.

In response to Manning donning the Welsh club’s team shirt, Brady took to X and Instagram — where his combined following stands at 18 million — with a cheeky video featuring one of his prized Super Bowl trophies that ends with an appeal to McElhenney to “educate the Wrexham fans just a little bit on the history of the NFL?”

See you Monday! @BCFC @Wrexham_AFC @RMcElhenney @VancityReynolds https://t.co/Ny87RekOPR pic.twitter.com/YyvkWmL5JK

— Tom Brady (@TomBrady) September 14, 2024

AJ Swoboda, managing director of sports intelligence firm Twenty First Group, believes Wrexham are a prime example of how to tap into the U.S. market over the longer term.

“High-profile figures like Tom Brady or Ryan Reynolds will always help bring clubs into the spotlight,” he says. “Especially in crowded or foreign markets like the U.S.

“But, while celebrity owners generate a short-term buzz, long-term fan engagement requires sustained sporting success and smart marketing — largely digital — strategies.

“The Welcome to Wrexham docuseries has been key to growing Wrexham’s global fanbase but the club’s owners have then backed up these efforts through material sporting performance improvements.”

He cites how an analysis of Google Trends data over the last year shows Wrexham had 22 times the interest in the U.S. compared to Birmingham and 1.4 times that of Premier League neighbours Aston Villa, even though the latter have qualified for the Champions League.

“Tom Brady’s appeal and status should continue creating interest for Birmingham City in new markets,” adds Swoboda. “But, as with Wrexham, this attention needs to be converted into deeper fan engagement. Celebrity minority ownership is not as unique as it used to be.”

Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds became Wrexham’s owners in 2020 (Gilbert Flores/Variety via Getty Images)

As Wrexham co-owner McElhenney made clear when tagging Brady on X, Monday night’s clash under the St Andrew’s floodlights has all the ingredients to be a cracker — but, perhaps their biggest battle lies ahead.

In a recent report titled Connecting and Winning U.S. Fandoms: A Guidebook For European Clubs, fan data specialists CLV Group suggest that 36million U.S.-based soccer fans — or 44 per cent — are still undecided on which team to support. The group’s CEO Neil Joyce estimates a potential $1.1billion is up for grabs.

The big Premier League clubs or members of the European elite, such as Real Madrid, Barcelona and Paris Saint-Germain, are expected to hoover up a sizeable chunk of this bounty, but Joyce also believes clubs with high-profile celebrity owners, such as Wrexham and Birmingham, can earn a piece of the action.

“Wrexham’s story is phenomenal,” he says. “It has the underdog element, a club on the brink of extinction that starts to work its way back up. Americans love that kind of storytelling.

“Then, there’s the measurability of it all. United Airlines, one of the biggest airlines in the world, is on the jerseys. That kind of link makes a huge difference. I was on a flight with United earlier in the summer and they were handing out the (free amenity) bag with the Wrexham (pyjamas).

“It isn’t about just the match. It is the personalities around it. Look at how Taylor Swift has brought new fandom to the NFL (her partner Travis Kelce plays for the Kansas City Chiefs) in the same way Ryan Reynolds has brought Deadpool fans to Wrexham.

“Given the new EFL rights deal (with CBS), there will be a lot more exposure to Wrexham for sports fans in the U.S. They can tap into that. Same for Birmingham, with arguably the NFL’s greatest of all time.

“Look at Tom Brady’s adjacent sports investments. He has the (NFL team) Las Vegas Raiders, he has a WNBA team (Las Vegas Aces). Again, I’d be tapping into those fanbases and bringing them on the journey with Birmingham as well.”

As Joyce points out, central to making any potential inroads into the U.S. sports market is CBS Sports becoming the new home of the EFL. With 250-plus matches being shown live across the network per season for at least the next four years, the potential exposure is huge.

CBS does not reveal publicly viewing figures for individual matches but executive vice president Weinberg says he has been “really, really happy with the viewership in the first month”.

He believes a key factor in America’s increasing EFL curiosity is the promotion and relegation setup that sees clubs potentially move up and down the pyramid, such as how Birmingham dropped into League One last May and are now determined to bounce straight back up.

“The U.S. market has wrapped their arms around that,” says Weinberg, who is at pains to stress that showcasing all 72 EFL teams is important to the network. “It’s compelling and dramatic.”

Birmingham’s bid to win promotion straight back to the Championship is their season’s major plotline (Cameron Smith/Getty Images)

Recent years have seen a flurry of U.S. investors getting involved in the EFL. By last Christmas, 22 of the 72 teams were either wholly owned by or had minority investors from across the Atlantic. Fourteen of those had accepted new investment since Wrexham’s takeover in 2021.

“What Wrexham have done brilliantly is globalisation and diversification,” says Laurie Pinto, a specialist in football financing and club acquisitions. “That’s easier said than done. (Wrexham director) Shaun Harvey and others should get a lot of credit for that.

“There’s lots of people who think they can do the same. That’s the challenge: trying to make a global push with partners outside the UK to diversify the income stream.”

Asked if he felt future years will bring even more investment from North America, Pinto replies: “Yes, there is a lot more interest. Most of these American owners think global and they put money in.

“U.S. sport is expensive — if you want to buy a basketball, NFL or baseball team, we are talking in the billions.”

With the U.S. hosting the 2026 World Cup alongside Canada and Mexico, sports media analyst Larry Johnson believes the new four-year TV deal means EFL clubs are in a prime position to benefit.

“Viewership data from the last couple of World Cups shows a rise in popularity (in the U.S.) for sports in Europe,” he says. “They did quite a bit for La Liga and the Premier League, even a bit for the Bundesliga.

“All the arrows point towards the next World Cup pushing up the numbers on the Premier League and EFL. Wrexham have an opportunity here, especially if they get promoted this year, to really do something special.

“Wrexham are already drawing numbers. They had a friendly with Chelsea (in July 2023) on ESPN, one of the largest cable networks. It pulled 300,000 viewers. That’s comparable with a Major League Soccer game on the same network.”

As is perhaps inevitable in an age when regular-season games in the NFL and Major League Baseball are played in London, there has been talk of the Premier League or EFL possibly doing similar by switching one-off fixtures to the States.

Such a move would be hugely controversial. When the Daily Mail suggested this summer that Birmingham and Wrexham were in talks over a possible switch, Canada-born Reynolds was very quick to vehemently deny the story.

Wrexham’s international profile has led to high-profile friendlies against Premier League giants Chelsea (Lyndsay Radnedge/ISI Photos/Getty Images)

Nevertheless, such talk remains, with CLV Group’s Joyce believing it could help a European competition steal a march in attracting fans.

He says: “The monetary gain and attempts to capture the market would be a lot easier if European clubs played competitive games in the U.S. There is more than $1billion on the table.”

Such talk about growing audiences and realising potential is, of course, for the boardoom. On the pitch, all that will matter come Monday evening are the three points.

Dan Scarr joined Wrexham in the summer from Plymouth Argyle, where he won the League One title in 2023. He is a lifelong Birmingham fan who spent three years on the playing staff at St Andrew’s after arriving late in the professional game at 22.

“What’s been going on there is crazy,” the defender tells The Athletic. “Good for the city and, being a Birmingham City fan, it is great for them. The atmosphere will be electric and it’s a sellout. There’s also the bragging rights between the owners, both being American and stuff like that.

“But we want to stop that (title-winning) parade. Everything else doesn’t matter.”

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(Top photos: Getty Images)