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Premier League Season Opens With 45% of Teams Owned by Americans

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Premier League Season Opens With 45% of Teams Owned by Americans

Manchester United and Fulham kicked off the 2024-25 Premier League season on Friday, and United won 1-0 at Old Trafford on a late goal by Joshua Zirkzee.

In a bit of scheduling coincidence, the owners of the two clubs will square off again Saturday on the other kind of football field, as the Glazer family’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers visit the Jacksonville Jaguars, owned by Shahid Khan, in an NFL preseason game.

The Glazers and Khan are among nine American ownership groups of Premier League teams, which will have a full slate of games this weekend. The list includes newly promoted Ipswich Town, which is owned by American financial firms ORG, Bright Path Sports Partners and Avenue Sports. They are all chasing Manchester City, which has finished atop the EPL standings for four straight years.

The second division Championship also has nine teams controlled by Americans after Mark Attanasio recently increased his stake in Norwich City through his Norfolk Holdings, which first took a stake in the team in 2022 and will now own 85%.

Americans have invested heavily in English football teams over the past two decades, starting with Malcolm Glazer’s leveraged buyout in 2005 that valued Man United at £790 million ($1.4 billion at the time). Stan Kroenke started buying shares of Arsenal in 2007 and took full control in 2011 at a $1.2 billion valuation.

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Man United ranked on top of Sportico’s global soccer team valuations at $6.2 billion, while Arsenal was eighth at $3.91 billion.

In 2010, John Henry’s Fenway Sports Group bought Liverpool for £300 million ($476 million at the time). FSG built a strong performer on and off the field, including three Champions League finals appearances in five years. The value is up more than tenfold to $5.11 billion and fourth overall.

Attanasio also owns MLB’s Milwaukee Brewers and follows a string of U.S. sports team owners to invest in the UK. They are attracted by the global reach of the clubs, but most of them want to see more restrictions on player spending, akin to the major leagues in North America. The lack of salary caps can trigger massive losses as teams spend in a fight to avoid relegation or gain promotion to the Premier League. At the top of the financial table, teams compete for a Champions League spot and to field the best squads to advance in European tournaments.

Only five English Premier League teams out of 20 made money after player trading during the 2022-23 season. The aggregate loss before taxes and finance costs was £530 million ($684 million based on current exchange rates), according to company filings. The NFL’s pre-tax profit: $4.6 billion.

Khan’s team investments offer a window into the economic structure of different sports leagues. In 2011, he spent $770 million to buy the Jaguars. The club turns a hefty profit each season that can top $100 million in a good year, and the Jags are now worth nearly $5 billion.

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Two years after buying Jacksonville, Khan bought EPL club Fulham for more than $200 million. Fulham was relegated to the Championship the following season, where it has spent six of 11 seasons under Khan. He has piled up $500 million in operating losses in the London club, and the team is likely worth one-tenth of the Jaguars.

The lousy economic model that exists across European soccer explains why Manchester United and Real Madrid are the only soccer teams to crack the top 30 among the world’s most valuable sports franchises, which skews heavily toward the NFL with its strict salary cap and $400 million-a-year TV checks, along with a few NBA and MLB teams mixed in.

Americans can’t kick their UK soccer habit, though. Brit Steve Parish runs Crystal Palace, but American John Textor owns the largest stake at 45%, and private equity titans Josh Harris and David Blitzer each own 18%.

Textor wants his own UK club to control and has entered exclusive talks to buy Everton from Farhad Moshiri after a pair of failed attempts to buy the club by American firms 777 and Friedkin Group. Everton lost $107 million during the 2022-23 season, its sixth straight year of losses that totaled $623 million, based on current exchange rates. The club escaped relegation on the last day of the 2022-23 season and finished 15th last year. Yet still, there’s a Yank who wants to purchase it.

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Minnesota braces for what’s next amid immigration arrests and in the wake of Renee Good shooting

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Minnesota braces for what’s next amid immigration arrests and in the wake of Renee Good shooting

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Already shaken by the fatal shooting of a woman by an immigration officer, Minnesota’s Twin Cities on Sunday braced for what many expect will be a new normal over the next few weeks as the Department of Homeland Security carries out what it called its largest enforcement operation ever.

Protesters screamed at heavily-armed federal agents and honked car horns, banged on drums and blew whistles in attempts to disrupt their operations in one Minneapolis neighborhood filled with single-family homes.

There was some pushing and several people were hit with chemical spray just before agents banged down the door of one home on Sunday. They later took one man away in handcuffs.

“We’re seeing a lot of immigration enforcement across Minneapolis and across the state, federal agents just swarming around our neighborhoods,” said Jason Chavez, a Minneapolis city councilmember. “They’ve definitely been out here.”

Chavez, the son of Mexican immigrants who represents an area with a growing immigrant population, said he is closely monitoring information from chat groups about where residents are seeing agents operating.

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People holding whistles positioned themselves in freezing temperatures on street corners in the neighborhood where 37-year-old Renee Good was shot and killed Wednesday, watching for any signs of federal agents.

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More than 20,000 people have taken part in a variety of trainings to become “observers” of enforcement activities in Minnesota since the 2024 election, said Luis Argueta, a spokesperson for Unidos MN, a local human rights organization .

“It’s a role that people choose to take on voluntarily, because they choose to look out for their neighbors,” Argueta said.

The protests have been largely peaceful, but the Twin Cities remained anxious. Minneapolis public schools on Monday will start offering remote learning for the next month in response to concerns that children might feel unsafe venturing out while tensions remain high.

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Many schools closed last week after Good’s shooting and the upheaval that followed.

While the enforcement activity continues, two of the state’s leading Democrats said on Sunday that the investigation into Good’s shooting death shouldn’t be overseen solely by the federal government.

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and U.S. Sen. Tina Smith said in separate interviews Sunday that state authorities should be included in the investigation because the federal government has already made clear what it believes happened.

“How can we trust the federal government to do an objective, unbiased investigation, without prejudice, when at the beginning of that investigation they have already announced exactly what they saw — what they think happened,” Smith said on ABC’s “This Week.”

The Trump administration has defended the officer who shot Good in her car, saying he was protecting himself and fellow agents and that Good had “weaponized” her vehicle.

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Todd Lyons, acting director of ICE, defended the officer on Fox News Channel’s “The Sunday Briefing.”

“That law enforcement officer had milliseconds, if not short time to make a decision to save his life and his other fellow agents,” he said.

Lyons also said the administration’s enforcement operations in Minnesota wouldn’t be needed “if local jurisdictions worked with us to turn over these criminally illegal aliens once they are already considered a public safety threat by the locals.”

The killing of Good by an ICE officer and the shooting of two people by federal agents in Portland, Oregon, led to dozens of protests across the country over the weekend.

Thousands of people marched Saturday in Minneapolis, where Homeland Security called its deployment of immigration officers in the Twin Cities its biggest ever immigration enforcement operation.

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Associated Press journalists Giovanna Dell’Orto in Minneapolis, Thomas Strong in Washington, Bill Barrow in Atlanta, and John Seewer in Toledo, Ohio, contributed.

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Netanyahu and Rubio discuss US military intervention in Iran amid ongoing nationwide protests: report

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Netanyahu and Rubio discuss US military intervention in Iran amid ongoing nationwide protests: report

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Secretary of State Marco Rubio discussed the possibility of U.S. intervention in Iran, according to a report.

The two leaders spoke by phone Saturday as Israel is on “high alert,” preparing for the possibility of U.S. military intervention in Iran, according to Reuters, citing multiple Israeli sources. A U.S. official confirmed the call to Fox News Digital but did not provide additional details.

The report comes as nationwide anti-regime demonstrations across Iran hit the two-week mark.

On Saturday, the Iranian regime triggered an internet “kill switch” in an apparent effort to conceal alleged abuses by security forces and as protests against it surged nationwide, according to a cybersecurity expert. The blackout reduced internet access to a fraction of normal levels.

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KEANE WARNS IRANIAN REGIME TO TAKE TRUMP ‘DEAD SERIOUS’ ON PROTEST KILLING THREAT AMID ONGOING DEMONSTRATIONS

Secretary of State Marco Rubio holds his end-of-year press conference at the State Department in Washington, D.C., Dec. 19, 2025. (Kevin Mohatt/Reuters)

On Sunday, Iran’s parliament speaker warned that the U.S. military and Israel would be “legitimate targets” if America strikes the Islamic Republic.

Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf issued the threat as lawmakers rushed the dais in the Iranian parliament, shouting, “Death to America!” according to The Associated Press.

President Donald Trump offered support for the protesters on Saturday, writing on Truth Social that “Iran is looking at FREEDOM, perhaps like never before. The USA stands ready to help!!!”

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IRANIAN MILITARY LEADER THREATENS PREEMPTIVE ATTACK AFTER TRUMP COMMENTS

In this frame grab from video obtained by the AP outside Iran, a masked demonstrator holds a picture of Iran’s Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi during a protest in Tehran, Iran, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (UGC via AP)

At a news conference Friday, Trump said Iran was facing mounting pressure as unrest spreads across the country.

“Iran’s in big trouble,” he said. “It looks to me that the people are taking over certain cities that nobody thought were really possible just a few weeks ago. We’re watching the situation very carefully.”

The president said the U.S. would respond forcefully if the regime resorts to mass violence. 

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“We’ll be hitting them very hard where it hurts. And that doesn’t mean boots on the ground, but it means hitting them very, very hard where it hurts,” he said.

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Protests in Iran intensify for the 12th day. (The National Council of Resistance of Iran)

Fox News Digital reached out to the State Department and White House for comment.

Fox News Digital’s Emma Bussey, Brie Stimson and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Four killed, 20 injured in overnight Russian strikes across Ukraine

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Four killed, 20 injured in overnight Russian strikes across Ukraine

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Russia fired more than 150 drones overnight into Sunday targeting close to two dozen locations across Ukraine, killing at least four people and injuring 20 more.

Ukraine’s Air Forces say they intercepted 125 drones aerially but confirmed that at least 25 strike drones struck their targets.

They added that Moscow’s latest barrage mainly targeted Kharkiv, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia and Dnipropetrovsk, all of which were targeted in Saturday’s overnight strikes as well.

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Local officials in the southern region of Zaporizhzhia say the strikes targeted residential areas and energy infrastructure. More than 385,000 homes were affected by electric, gas or water outages, at a critical time as temperatures plunged to 10 degrees below Celsius.

Regional lawmakers say service was restored to most of the affected households and areas by Sunday morning, but added that emergency work was still being carried out to restore power to the remaining homes.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of timing their attacks with the cold peaks of winter as to maximise civilian suffering.

“They struck targets that have no military purpose whatsoever – energy infrastructure, residential buildings. They deliberately waited for freezing weather to make things worse for our people. This is deliberate, cynical Russian terror specifically against civilians,” wrote Zelenskyy in a post on X.

He also noted that this week had seen heightened Russian assault on Ukrainian cities, announcing that his country’s defence forces recorded thousands of attacks using a variety of different weapons.

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“Over the course of this week, Russia launched almost 1,100 attack drones against Ukraine, more than 890 guided aerial bombs, and over 50 missiles of various types – ballistic, cruise, and even the Oreshnik medium-range ballistic missile.”

The Ukrainian leader thanked all units responsible for protecting the country and responding to attacks, and praised their tireless efforts and resilience.

He also called on allies to ensure his embattled country maintains “stable support”, in defence and diplomatic fields as coordinated dialogue efforts continue in search of peace.

Meanwhile, Russia says that one person was killed in Ukrainian strikes on the western city of Voronezh. Officials say a young woman succumbed to her wounds at an intensive care unit of a local hospital after debris from a drone fell on her house during Saturday’s attacks.

They added that at least three others were injured in the attacks which targeted more than 10 residential apartment buildings, private homes and a high school.

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The city of Voronezh lies just 250 kilometres from the Ukrainian border and is home to approximately one million people. The attacks, which Kyiv have yet to confirm, came after the Kremlin’s major offensive on Ukraine in the early hours of Saturday.

Additional sources • AP

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