The entirety of MLS was in action Wednesday night, and save for the handful of teams who featured a week ago, the 15-match slate marked the return to play from the World Cup break. Despite MLS’s assertion that it’ll “take it from here” after the summer tournament, there was bound to be an adjustment period after a full two months off, as some teams rediscover their rhythm while others work in new signings. And as part of the latter, that meant a spotlight on the league’s two new marquee names: the Chicago Fire’s Robert Lewandowski and Orlando City’s Antoine Griezmann.

Griezmann was by far the more impressive of the two on the night, scoring to open his MLS account while generally fitting in rather seamlessly. He appeared to benefit from Orlando having played a pair of friendlies before the season’s restart, one against USL’s Tampa Bay Rowdies and another against FC Dallas. The French World Cup winner scored in both, giving him a greater sense of interconnectedness with his new teammates before his official debut.

It showed in a shorthanded Orlando side’s impressive 4-0 win at the San Jose Earthquakes, with Griezmann scoring — officially, for the first time as a Lion — while also enjoying a high degree of effective link-up play in his 90-minute showing.

The 35-year-old opted for a spectacular opening five minutes in, attempting to lob from long range after catching new San Jose goalkeeper Angus Gunn well off his line, only to overhit his chance. In the 12th minute, he dropped a bit and played a great ball in behind, springing Tiago down the left on a 2-v-2 that ultimately didn’t pan out. In first-half stoppage time, it was another slick touch from Griezmann that nearly put Orlando in on goal, with the Atlético Madrid great clipping a ball to Griffin Dorsey, whose subsequent move was blocked.

Griezmann’s personal breakthrough came three minutes after halftime, thanks to a poor giveaway in the San Jose back. Orlando forward Justin Ellis, 19, pounced on a sloppy pass and quickly fed Griezmann, who displayed some quick feet and a lefty, near-post finish to put the result out of reach. The score was also Griezmann’s 300th career club goal in all competitions, as an added bonus.

GRIZI GETS HIS FIRST IN @MLS 🔥 pic.twitter.com/NfC5mfPZaS

— Orlando City SC (@OrlandoCitySC) July 23, 2026

Meanwhile, if Lewandowski wasn’t quite familiar with what kind of league MLS can be sometimes, he got a crash course quickly. Namely, it’s a league where a player of his caliber can go quiet in an anticipated moment, while a homegrown, babyfaced player donning the No. 59, Preston Plambeck, can become a hero.

Lewandowski endured 62 goalless minutes Wednesday night at Inter Miami in the Fire’s 3-2 defeat against a side missing Lionel Messi and Rodrigo De Paul, while new signing Casemiro watched from a suite next to Miami ownership. Miami did have Luis Suárez, though, and the Uruguayan star upstaged his Polish counterpart, scoring twice and forcing the save that yielded the rebound for Plambeck’s 87th-minute winner, the first goal of the 20-year-old’s career.

Plambeck!! 🔥⚽ pic.twitter.com/qih6dRENCB

— Inter Miami CF (@InterMiamiCF) July 23, 2026

Wednesday was Lewandowski’s second shot at his MLS debut, with the first, a home match vs. Vancouver and former Bayern Munich teammate Thomas Müller slated for last Thursday, postponed due to air quality as a result of the Canadian wildfires. Regardless of the setting and the opponent, there’s always going to be a heightened level of expectation on a player of Lewandowski’s stature, but there’s true pressure for him to perform right away given he’s replacing a player who leads the MLS Golden Boot race.

There wasn’t a more consistent source of goals in MLS prior to the World Cup break than Hugo Cuypers, who tallied 13 in all and at one point scored in 10 straight league games. Upon Lewandowski’s introduction, Fire coach Gregg Berhalter indicated Chicago would pivot to a two-striker system to accommodate both Lewandowski and Cuypers, but the two won’t feature together after all, with the latter headed to Monterrey, as previously reported by The Athletic.

So the onus is on Lewandowski to acclimate immediately and keep the club’s goal flow coming. That didn’t happen on his debut, during which he had only one decent look at goal but had it blocked and put out for a corner — though he was the player closest to an atrocious own goal committed by Miami goalkeeper Rocco Rios Novo for the opening score.

Just how everyone predicted! pic.twitter.com/tzmsY9ERnm

— Chicago Fire FC (@ChicagoFire) July 23, 2026

Given the track record at everywhere he’s played, he has the benefit of the doubt that those goals will come in time.

Chicago vs. Miami has the potential to be one of the league’s box-office fixtures once everyone is fully match fit and back in action. The league will surely hope to get such an occasion on Sept. 9, when the two sides meet at Soldier Field and Messi, Casemiro and De Paul are all integrated.

As for when Lewandowski and Griezmann will go head-to-head, MLS fans won’t have to wait much longer. Orlando welcomes Chicago to Central Florida on Aug. 19 — two days before Lewandowski turns 38 — in the first of two meetings remaining in the regular season, by which point both should have their MLS legs underneath them. As far as first impressions go, though, it’s advantage, Griezmann.

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“How have you not got a professional contract, playing like that?” a Surrey academy coach asks Savin Perera.

“You tell me,” Perera replies, greeting him with a handshake and a hint of a smile.

The coach pauses. “Keep the faith,” he responds as he walks off and into the pavilion.

Minutes earlier, the 27-year-old had guided the South Asian Cricket Academy’s (SACA) first team to an impressive eight-wicket victory over a strong Surrey second XI with an unbeaten 38. He is in the form of his life, the fifth leading run scorer out of all 33 leagues in the ECB’s Premier League (the highest level of semi-professional cricket in England) for Cavaliers and Carrington in Nottinghamshire.

Savin Perera helped SACA beat Surrey – and then signed a professional deal with Somerset (George Edwards/The Athletic)

Perera had heard this all before.

Despite representing England at under-19 level at the 2019 World Cup in New Zealand, and spending the following seven years having trials with over half of the 18 counties in England’s County Championship, a professional contract had eluded Perera. But a week later, Perera’s day finally came, as he signed a short-term deal with Somerset’s one-day squad for the Metro Bank competition.

He scored 58 on his debut against Nottinghamshire on Tuesday.

His story is exactly why SACA, a non-profit organisation founded in 2022 by then Warwickshire CCC performance coach Tom Brown, exists. At the age of 18, counties across England and Wales release hundreds of young cricketers not deemed ready to make the jump to professional setups. Many depart without due warning or further guidance.

Perera, on Middlesex’s books when he returned from New Zealand — where he played alongside England white-ball captain Harry Brook and international team-mate Tom Banton — received little in the way of contact or explanation when the county did not retain him.

There are now more than 70 cricketers of South Asian descent, all sharing similar experiences, on SACA’s books. Players take time off from work or away from their studies to travel across the country to train and play in SACA’s environment, hoping one innings with the right people watching is enough to change their trajectory.

Coaches are volunteers with vast amounts of experience and knowledge of the English game, eager to give back to the communities from which their own successes stemmed.

Tom Brown watches SACA’s preparations  (Steven Fletcher/South Asian Cricket Academy)

Brown takes every step with every player.

By the time warm-ups begin against Surrey he has spoken to players, coaches, analysts and opposition staff. Throughout the day he drifts between nets, laptops and conversations, acting as coach, mentor, motivator and, increasingly, agent.

At the end he leads the post-match appraisal, telling an attentive dressing room: “You took your opportunity against a quality side at a time of the year where things can progress very quickly.”

The players respond with cheers and applause, believing in themselves and each other that their big break could be just around the corner — as it proved for Perera.

Brown set up SACA after undertaking a PhD research project, funded by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB), into a theme he had noticed at Warwickshire.

“Fifty per cent of the talent pathway were of British-South Asian heritage, but none of the pros were — literally none,” says Brown.

The numbers at Warwickshire were extreme but did represent a broader theme across the country, where 30 per cent of recreational cricketers were of South Asian backgrounds, translating to just 5 per cent in the professional domestic game.

“We researched into what the lads were doing wrong and did not find anything that equated to the magnitude of the drop off,” says Brown. “There were a lot of things with the talent system that I wanted to highlight, and none of it was a short-term fix.”

SACA’s first team in a huddle before they fielded against Surrey (George Edwards/The Athletic)

Brown’s research coincided with a period of scrutiny on English cricket.

Movements such as Black Lives Matter and the ICEC report uncovering racism in English cricket made Brown’s findings hard to ignore, and gave him motivation to fill the void.

Brown, 33, founded SACA in the Midlands, with a squad of around 30 by the end of the first year. Four players earned county contracts in its first season. Four years later, that number stands at 19. SACA have five regional hubs across the country, plus its first, second and standalone women’s XI (the latter two new for 2026) who regularly play in friendlies against county academy sides.

The pressure to be ready to deliver at 18 or be overlooked is a harsh reality for many young cricketers, with counties “often just guessing” who to retain, Brown says. “It is a skill set game, and spin bowlers, for example, will not peak until their late 20s, so it’s a rough estimate based on predicting what might happen down the line,” he tells The Athletic.

“Many players have growth spurts in their late teens and will not be used to their body until much later, by which point the system will have given up on them.”

SACA in action bowling against Surrey (Steven Fletcher/South Asian Cricket Academy)

Bowling coach Gemaal Hussain, who played professionally between 2009-2014 for Gloucestershire, Somerset and Northamptonshire, sees it regularly.

“Talent can be overrated in your late teens,” he said. “There are other qualities that develop later on which allow you to play for longer at a higher level, and that’s what SACA aims to catch.”

While fielding at deep extra cover, SACA all-rounder Amogh Karpe, a 20-year-old Materials Science student at Oxford University, tells The Athletic he has “never enjoyed cricket more than my year here, after the unnecessary pressure I experienced in the county setup.”

SACA bids to create a balanced atmosphere of professionalism and fun to make its cricketers thrive, as many arrive still suffering from the weight of rejection. “My first game did not go well at all,” Karpe remembers, “and the rejection from Surrey was probably a huge factor, but the coaches put their arms around me and have brought back my best form.”

Against Surrey, players began to arrive three hours before the first ball was bowled.

They warmed up in the nets, and spent much of the fitness drills lead by physio Matthew Parker catching up and defying instructions, until ‘Parksy’ produced the football and allowed a hotly-contested and vocal match of ‘one-bounce’ to ensue.

SACA’s Matthew Parker attempts to lead their warm up (George Edwards/The Athletic)

But once the first delivery is bowled, SACA’s professionalism clicks into gear and it is immediately obvious why the environment is so successful.

Conversations between players turn to dot-ball percentages and obscure talents within the club cricket setup. Analyst Kevin Wan sets up his 20ft camera, allowing coaches to give instant feedback while identifying qualities that traditional scorecards miss, such as chances created and performances weighted against the quality of the opposition.

Those numbers are then cross-referenced against county squads.

If a county needs a left-arm spinner or a wicketkeeper, SACA’s coaching staff know which players fit the profile, and Brown is in constant contact with all 18 counties should trial chances arise. “SACA has become the 19th county,” says former Leicestershire batter Adil Ali, now a coach at SACA as well as at the county for whom he played.

The academy’s standing is reflected by those watching on. Surrey captain and former England opening batter Rory Burns observes throughout the day, breaking off for a 30-minute session in the nets before watching the rest of the game.

From left, Hisham Khan, Dylan Rawal, Khalid Hamidi and Amogh Karpe celebrate a wicket (Steven Fletcher/SACA)

Surrey’s highest scorer on the day is 23-year-old Nikhil Gorantla, a SACA graduate who joined in 2023 after falling out of Essex’s youth setup. He left the academy to join Surrey in 2025, largely thanks to Brown’s intuition.

“I had trials with three counties across the country until I managed to get in with Surrey,” Gorantla says. “After every good performance, Tom had something lined up for me, and the academy enabled me to continue playing at a high standard until I was ready to take my chance.

“It is so nice to come back and see new faces from only a year ago, knowing that many have taken the path I did, and seeing — based on their performance levels — just how ready they really are.”

For Brown and his coaches, there are few better advertisements for the academy than lining up against one of their own.

The difference between making it and missing out is not talent, but timing.

In 2024, Perera and Zen Malik looked in hot contention for contracts. Perera appeared the more ready but Malik scored 134 and 164 on trial for Glamorgan against Warwickshire and signed for the latter. Perera, on trials with four counties, fell short. A contract evaded him.

SACA all rounder Ajay Khunti was in the right place at the right time, too, scoring 122 in a four-day red ball game against Warwickshire this summer. The county side fielded close to its full-strength bowling attack that day, and his performance has put himself on the cusp of a contract with dialogue and trials lined up at Derbyshire and Yorkshire.

Khunti described being “thrown in the deep end” at 18 by Leicestershire, where he had been part of the academy setup since he was seven. He continued to play club and university cricket, one of the deciding factors at taking on a degree at nearby Loughborough University.

Khunti is now 25 and works in a double-glazing business with his brother. He describes how SACA gave him “a breath of life and the belief I could still make it, because it’s so tough to get back into the system once you leave.”

SACA performance coach Owais Shah leads the post-game appraisal (George Edwards/The Athletic)

Brown’s ambition with SACA was never to build a permanent institution, but to create a pathway. “It started as a six-to-eight year project,” he says. “But we have achieved our goals of representation, so it is about how we continue to help players and grow.

“It is possible to open the academy up to cricketers beyond South Asian heritage, but we must be careful that our funding from the ECB and the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC), along with various sponsors who love our work, will stay with us for that journey.”

As its young cohort prepare to disperse back to their realities across the UK, the words of performance coach and former England batter Owais Shah ring true: “If they are looking for any cricketers, that brand of cricket you showed will turn heads. You set the standard.”

Shah spoke with conviction, and his promise rang true. Along with Perera, leg spinning all-rounder Mohammed Rizvi, who took five wickets against Surrey, was announced on a similar short-term deal with Leicestershire on Monday.

SACA’s Mohammed Rizvi bowls his leg spin (Steven Fletcher/South Asian Cricket Academy)

Seven years on from leaving Middlesex, after countless trials and thousands of runs that appeared to be heading nowhere, being told to “Keep the faith” sounded like the last thing Perera needed to hear.

But SACA always had faith, and continue to reward aspiring cricketers striving to make it.

Until the final week of the World Cup, Chelsea’s transfer window had been quiet in comparison to the four previous summers of the BlueCo era. A little too quiet.

Not anymore.

Morgan Rogers is a Chelsea player after a deal worth £117million ($156.4m) was struck with Aston Villa inside 48 hours over the weekend. It makes the 23-year-old the most expensive British footballer ever — narrowly eclipsing Manchester City’s £116m signing of his fellow England midfielder Elliot Anderson from Nottingham Forest earlier this month — and subject of the fifth-biggest transfer fee in the history of the sport.

That headline number is jaw-dropping, obviously, and will inevitably become the prism through which Rogers is evaluated over the coming years. But what are Chelsea actually getting, right now, for all that money? What are the strengths and weaknesses of his game, and how are they going to fit with what’s waiting for him at Stamford Bridge?

Let’s take a closer look.

He’s tailor-made for the left ‘pocket’

Chelsea prize Rogers’ versatility. He is regarded as a player capable of operating in any of four main attacking positions that aren’t striker (left wing, No 10, right wing and as a false nine).

That was part of the story of his two-and-a-half years at Villa, who also loved his ability to play anywhere in the final third, but, from the start, manager Unai Emery envisioned him as an attacking midfielder to be deployed either centrally or in the left ‘pocket’, or half-space. Those two positions account for almost three quarters of his Premier League minutes over his final two seasons at the Birmingham club.

Rogers was often the No 10 in Emery’s 4-2-3-1 system but, even when he lined up on the left wing, the regular overlapping runs of left-back Lucas Digne allowed him to drift infield into that left pocket, where he could get on the ball, then drive into the final third and shoot or pass.

Here is a memorable example from a Premier League match against Brentford in December 2024.

Rogers receives a pass inside the Villa half and drives forward through the left channel before playing it on to striker Ollie Watkins. It comes back to him in one of his favourite shooting spots and he curls an unstoppable effort into the top far corner.

This left-pocket preference is a good foundation for on-pitch chemistry at Chelsea with his former Manchester City academy team-mate and close friend Cole Palmer, who does most of his best work in the right pocket.

Looking at the graphic below, their open-play touch maps from last season are almost mirror images of each other:

Regardless of what formation new manager Xabi Alonso settles on, expect Rogers to spend a lot of time operating in that left pocket — which raises the immediate question of what happens to Enzo Fernandez, who was most often deployed there last season. The summer transfer window is still young…

A scorer of great goals, but not a great goalscorer (yet)

Rogers managed 14 goals across all competitions in each of his two full seasons at Villa. In both of his completed Premier League campaigns, he overperformed as a scorer relative to the expected goals (xG) value of his chances, netting eight from 6.6 xG in 2024-25 and then 10 from 6.8 xG.

That is partly because Rogers takes on more low-xG shots than many of his peers. Only four players in the Premier League had more than his 23 attempts from outside the penalty area last season. He loves a pop from virtually any central area within sight of the opposition box, as you can see below:

He is very dangerous when shooting from that range, equally capable of whipping the ball viciously with his instep towards the far post or striking it on the valve with his laces, generating the power and trajectory that give goalkeepers very little ability to react when he finds the target.

He also requires very little time or space to unleash the latter, as Tottenham Hotspur discovered last season:

This longer-distance shooting could provide Chelsea with a powerful new weapon to counteract deep-lying opponents who set up to deny them access to more valuable real estate inside the penalty area. Even the threat of Rogers shooting from these areas will command attention, and potentially open up more space for his new team-mates.

At closer range, Rogers has demonstrated that he can be a composed finisher with either foot. He also has the intelligence to tailor his movement to get into prime scoring positions, as he did in a Champions League tie against Paris Saint-Germain in April 2025.

He initially jogs towards the No 9 position, but as the ball is worked from right to left he peels away to the back post, where a well-timed dart brings him a tap-in:

The quality of Rogers’ finishing suggests he could become an elite goalscorer, but he does not get himself enough of these simple chances, or shots in general; he averaged only 2.3 attempts per 90 minutes in the Premier League last season, taken from an average distance of 19.4 yards.

To increase his production, he needs to up his shot volume and crash the box more frequently.

His ball-carrying is exciting… but flawed

Rogers was one of the most prolific dribblers in the Premier League for Villa, and often one of the most thrilling to watch.

His rare ability and willingness to shift the ball onto his left foot as well as his right makes him harder than most attackers for defenders to predict, and he is fearless in delving into his extensive bag of tricks whenever he finds himself in a tight spot. When it works, it can be sensational. When it does not, it can be easy to take the ball off him.

Among the 10 attackers with the most attempted dribbles in the 2025-26 Premier League, Rogers ranked joint-fourth in total dribbles attempted (113) but only ninth for dribble success rate (31.9 per cent). That put him well below the division’s most adept high-volume dribblers: Everton’s Iliman Ndiaye, Yankuba Minteh of Brighton & Hove Albion and Manchester City’s Jeremy Doku.

It was a similar story in 2024-25, when he attempted more dribbles than any other Premier League attacker (147), but again ranked ninth for dribble success (40.8 per cent):

This is one area of Rogers’ game that will require immediate refinement at Chelsea.

Turning the ball over so frequently in a possession-focused team puts more pressure on his attacking team-mates to regain the ball quickly high up the pitch, and presents more opportunities for his defensive colleagues to be exposed by rapid counter-attacks.

Finding the balance will be vital. In space, Rogers’ ball-carrying through the middle third of the pitch can be hugely valuable to the west Londoners. He does not even necessarily need to become a more skilled dribbler, just a more judicious one.

He has flashed ability as a playmaker

Anyone who watched England’s dramatic World Cup semi-final defeat against Argentina saw Rogers’ capabilities as a crosser underlined by his brilliant assist for Anthony Gordon to score the opening goal. He can pick out team-mates with whipped deliveries or cutbacks with either foot and from either flank.

These balls account for some of his 24 combined assists across all competitions in his two full seasons at Villa. Many of the rest were passes from the No 10 zone or the left pocket.

Rogers’ playmaking is less about spotting the pass nobody else does and more about playing the right one, on time and on target. With the ball at his feet in the attacking third, he can generally be relied upon to survey his options and make the correct decision.

Here, in Villa’s 4-0 semi-final second-leg rout of Forest in May en route to Europa League glory, he smartly ignores the Watkins option under his nose to slide a ball across to the surging John McGinn, who scores:

Chelsea also got a close look at Rogers’ playmaking at Stamford Bridge last December, when he received a pass in space in a traditional No 10 position and threaded the ball through a narrow gap for Watkins to bundle in an equaliser:

Rogers only averaged 1.1 chances created per 90 minutes in the Premier League last season, significantly less than new team-mate Fernandez (1.7) and miles below the best creators in the division.

He may now get more opportunities to find incisive passes or crosses in a possession-focused side, but he currently profiles as more of a supplementary creator for Chelsea.

He’s one of the better athletes BlueCo have signed

In recent years, it has often seemed as if Chelsea do not appropriately value the importance of physicality and athleticism to team success in the Premier League. With one of the more technically gifted but smaller, lighter squads in the division, they have too often found themselves bullied by less talented but bigger, stronger opponents.

No single signing can erase those deficiencies but Rogers’ arrival will help. His muscular, near 6ft 2in (187cm) frame gives him the physical baseline to hold his own in both ground-level and aerial duels, and his speed across the turf should make him an asset in any pressing system Alonso deploys.

With the ball, Rogers’ athleticism can give Chelsea a new dimension.

Take the below sequence from Villa’s 4-3 win against Sunderland in April, which results in one of his most impressive goals for them: he is well behind the play when McGinn regains the ball near the touchline, but sprints the length of the pitch to get ahead of Watkins, who slips him through on goal.

Once there, he retains the composure to control the pass with his right foot and arrow a low shot into the bottom corner with his left:

Rogers’ conditioning makes him a legitimate threat to make those lung-bursting runs at any stage of a match. He is also highly durable, starting 74 of Villa’s 76 matches in the Premier League over the past two seasons. To do that, he demonstrated an ability and a willingness to play through the pain of minor injuries.

For a Chelsea squad which already contains several injury-prone players, that is welcome news.

He’s a massive bet at his price tag

Emery regarded Rogers as his best player. Villa considered him one of the top five attackers in the Premier League, and priced him accordingly when rivals signalled their interest. He had five years left to run on his contract, the third he had been given in less than two years. Only a transfer fee which has made him the most expensive English footballer ever was going to get this deal done.

All of which is separate from the question of whether Chelsea should have met this asking price.

They are clearly convinced that Rogers is the perfect profile of player to complete an attack which projects to feature Palmer, Joao Pedro and Estevao prominently next season, regardless of exactly how Alonso arranges them.

The true cost of Rogers to Chelsea is offset by outgoings; they have already raised in the region of £140million through the departures of Marc Cucurella, Andrey Santos and Jimmy-Jay Morgan, as well as the chunky compensation package obtained from City for their new manager Enzo Maresca. Alejandro Garnacho’s proposed loan move to Villa with a conditional obligation to buy (while technically unrelated to the Rogers signing) could also end up casting this deal in a more favourable light.

But this is an even bigger bet than the nine-figure transfer fees which brought Fernandez and Moises Caicedo to the club in successive windows in 2023, and not just in terms of the numbers. Those two were technical midfielders being signed to conduct a team focused on slow, patient possession. Rogers is an attacker who thrived in Villa’s much more transitional style:

Alonso wanted Rogers, so it’s fair to assume he has a plan to maximise him.

Perhaps the Spaniard can recalibrate Chelsea to better exploit transition situations without being undone by them. Perhaps he can re-mould his new star.

The path ahead is uncertain, and at such a price, the bar for this deal to be considered a success is set dizzyingly high.