Fenerbahce prepared to break the bank for Marcus Rashford, RB Leipzig hold out on Real Madrid over Yan Diomande deal, Arsenal open talks for Bruno Guimaraes.

Fenerbahce are ready to break the bank to lure Manchester United and England forward Marcus Rashford, 28, to Turkey this summer. (Sun), external

Ivory Coast winger Yan Diomande, 19, will not attend RB Leipzig’s pre-season training camp, with the club holding out for a 130m euros fee (£111m) in negotiations with Real Madrid. (Athletic – subcription required), external

Arsenal have opened talks with Newcastle over the transfer of Brazil midfielder Bruno Guimaraes, 28, who they hope to sign for a fee between £70m and £80m. (Telegraph – subscription required), external

Paris St-Germain are accelerating their pursuit of Barcelona and Spain forward Ferran Torres, 26. (Fichajes – in Spanish), external

Liverpool have no plans to sell Cody Gakpo, 27, despite Tottenham making their interest in the Netherlands forward known. (Mail – subscription required), external

Sunderland will not be selling Haiti striker Wilson Isidor, 25, this summer despite interest from a host of clubs – particularly West Ham. (Sky Sports), external

Barcelona and Germany goalkeeper Marc-Andre ter Stegen, 34, is set to join Dutch side Ajax on a one-year loan deal. (Sport – in Spanish), external

Aston Villa are plotting a £30m move for Barcelona and Spain midfielder Marc Bernal, 19. (Sun), external

Real Madrid and Brazil forward Endrick, 20, has caught the eye of Roma in this summer transfer window. (Fichajes – in Spanish), external

Newly promoted Coventry City are among three Premier League sides keen to sign Chelsea and Ukraine winger Mykhailo Mudryk, 25. (Mail – subscription required), external

Everton‘s English midfielder Tim Iroegbunam, 23, is interesting Hull City, Ipswich Town and Coventry City. (Teamtalk), external

Manchester United have told 22-year-old English midfielder Toby Collyer that he can leave this summer, with Championship clubs expressing an interest. (Sun), external

Tottenham‘s 18-year-old English winger Mikey Moore is on the verge of a loan move to Bundesliga side Cologne. (Teamtalk), external

The Athletic has live coverage of the 2026 MLB Trade Deadline.

Trade details: Tampa Bay Rays acquire C Liam Hicks from the Miami Marlins for INFs Adrian Santana and Brayden Taylor and RHP Jacob Kisting

The Marlins have supposedly been asking for some significant returns on their non-rental players, and it looks like they got a bite, as the Rays shipped a very impressive three-player package to Miami for Liam Hicks, a late-blooming catcher who is having the best season of his pro career.

Hicks is a bat-first catcher who’s always been able to hit, and now is doing so enough to make up for his below-average defense across the board. He rarely whiffs or strikes out, walking more than he’s struck out this year. His raw power is a 45 at best (on the 20-80 scouting scale), but he’s another example of the Marlins getting a hitter to pull the ball in the air a bit more to max out his in-game power, as he has 14 homers already this season. His previous career high was seven, and that came at Arkansas State in 2021.

His arm is a 40 and he’s thrown out 12 percent of opposing base-stealers in the majors, down from 17 percent in the minors, neither number being good. Offense behind the plate isn’t the Rays’ biggest need, but he’ll be an upgrade, and he isn’t even eligible for arbitration yet. He’ll be the latest in what has been a revolving door at catcher for the Rays, who have used 106 different catchers since 2000, the most in MLB.

I love this trade for the Marlins. I was a big Brayden Taylor fan when the Rays took him in the first round in 2023, but he was mediocre in 2024 and downright awful in 2025, hitting .173/.289/.287 as a 23-year-old SEC product in Double A. He’s repeated that level this year, so you have to take the performance with a few grains of salt, but his current .284/.384/.513 line is a real improvement, backed up by better contact rates across the board, notably against his nemesis, the slider. He’s always had a beautiful left-handed swing that produced consistent hard contact, and I thought he’d end up at least an above-average defender at third.

Adrian Santana is a small shortstop who’s an elite defender and controls the strike zone exceptionally well, but until this year it looked like he’d lack the strength to keep his batting average up or hit for any sort of power at all. He’s put on a good 10+ pounds of strength and is hitting the ball harder, enough now to see him hitting for that higher batting average, although I doubt he ever hits 10 homers in any season. With 70 defense and high contact rates, he should be an everyday shortstop in two to three years.

Jacob Kisting has now been traded twice in eight months, as the Twins sent him to the Rays in November for reliever Eric Orze. Kisting comes from a low three-quarters slot, but pitches north-south, a very unusual combination. He has a two-seamer with big life to his glove side, an above-average changeup and a fringe-average slider. He’s walked just 5.3 percent of batters he’s faced in High A this year. He is 23 and a college product — drafted in the 14th round in 2024 out of Bradley — so he really should have been in Double A by now. He could be a back-end starter, maybe more if he improves the breaking ball.

Los Angeles FC co-owner Larry Berg has been voted the next commissioner of Major League Soccer.

Berg, 60, will become just the third commissioner in the league’s history. He and former Fox executive David Nathanson were the two finalists to succeed Don Garber, who is expected to remain in the job through the end of the calendar year, at least (his contract runs through 2027). MLS owners voted Monday, and Berg received the required two-thirds super majority to be approved as the next commissioner, sources told The Athletic.

Garber has served as commissioner since 1999 and oversaw the growth of MLS from 12 teams to 30 this year, along with an increase in franchise valuations that make MLS one of the most valuable soccer leagues in the world.

Berg and Nathanson made final presentations to MLS owners on Monday at the league’s headquarters in New York City. Only primary governors were in attendance for the vote.

Berg, a former senior partner at Apollo Global Management, will have to divest his ownership stake in LAFC as he takes on the new role. He will be charged with leading MLS into its next era of growth. League owners already voted last year to flip the calendar to align MLS, and its primary and secondary transfer windows, with the top European leagues. The new schedule will also put MLS playoffs in May, which will give the league’s best product a marquee television window. The league also approved plans to alter the competition format, including the regular season and postseason.

The league has several critical decisions ahead, however.

League owners heard a presentation last week at the MLS All-Star game around alterations to the roster rules and budget guidelines, which would alter how teams are allowed to spend money. The aim is to streamline rules and make it easier for teams to spend throughout the roster to make MLS more competitive with Liga MX and other global soccer leagues. Getting those changes across the line — and doing so in time for the calendar switch in the summer of 2027 — is critical, but will require negotiations with the MLS Players Association on a new collective bargaining agreement.

The league will also soon go back to market for a new media rights deal. The current deal with Apple expires in the summer of 2029. MLS will be paid $200 million for its 2026 season and $107.5 million for the “sprint season” that will run from February to May 2027. The league will then receive $275 million per year for the final two seasons of the deal, which will be MLS’s first in the new summer-to-spring format.

Don Garber presents Larry Berg with a gift ahead of the 2021 MLS All-Star Game in Los Angeles. Next up: a transition of power (Jayne Kamin-Oncea / USA TODAY Sports)

MLS will try to convince a new partner — or potentially Apple — that it deserves far more money in the next deal. The league has claimed that viewership is up on Apple this year after coming out from behind the MLS Season Pass paywall, but Apple does not release numbers, so those claims are unverifiable. League owners and executives will likely point to record TV numbers for the World Cup to convince partners of the soccer audience that exists. But, to this point, the league has not done enough to show its product can pull in those types of audiences, and there is more competition than ever on TV, including Liga MX, the English Premier League and the UEFA Champions League.

That Nathanson was a finalist is indicative of how important media rights are to MLS’s future. The league lags behind competitors in the value of its domestic deal and needs to significantly increase revenues there in order to grow the business. (Longtime San Francisco 49ers executive Paraag Marathe was another finalist, though he withdrew from consideration and subsequently announced he was leaving his role with the 49ers to focus more on Leeds United and Rangers FC.)

Berg is intimately familiar with the changes needed with MLS. He was elevated to be co-chair of the sporting and competition committee, a group of owners charged with tending to the on-field product. Berg pushed to drive efficiency around decision making at the committee level, which often took years to get decisions across the line.

While some may view Berg as leaning toward the more aggressive arm of the debate within MLS’s board of governors, which has major philosophical differences between factions of owners, the LAFC owner was seen as more moderate within the committee. While he did push for changes, including spearheading the under-22 initiative, Berg has not called for radical changes to the league, like spending without a salary cap.

Still, Berg has not hidden from the fact that evolution is necessary.

“I don’t think anyone believes that not changing is a potential outcome,” Berg said in my book, The Messi Effect. “People have different views on what should be changed, and I respect that, but I don’t know that anybody’s coming up and saying, ‘You know what? We got a really good thing going. We don’t need to change a thing. We’re gonna risk it all.’ No one is in that mode. We all understand we’re a challenger league. We’re growing and we have to keep doing things. What those things are —­ people differ.”