Major League Soccer

Winger Cade Cowell has signed with the Mexican club Chivas Guadalajara, leaving the San Jose Earthquakes of Major League Soccer after five seasons. The 20-year-old, who has U.S. and Mexican citizenship, scored 10 goals in 104 MLS regular season appearances, including one goal in 23 regular season games last year. He left U.S. training camp last week, where the Americans are preparing for an exhibition against Slovenia this Saturday at San Antonio. Cowell has one goal in eight international appearances.

Lionel Messi, Luis Suárez, Sergio Busquets and Jordi Alba were all sitting together and smiling after a training session. This wasn’t Barcelona in 2014. This was Inter Miami on Saturday. It’s official: Messi, Busquets, Alba and Suárez are together again, this time in Major League Soccer. Preseason training for Inter Miami officially opened Saturday, with Suárez being seen in his new colors for the first time after signing a one-year deal last month to join the trio of his former teammates who arrived last summer.

National Women’s Soccer League Commissioner Jessica Berman says the process is underway to select a 16th team for the league, with an announcement possible later this year. The new team would begin play in 2026, joining another expansion team already awarded to an ownership group in Boston. Berman spoke in the hours before the NWSL draft in Anaheim, California. A pair of expansion teams that begin play this season, Bay FC in the San Francisco Bay Area and the Utah Royals, have the first two picks.

A team in North Carolina needed a coach. It hired Dean Smith. Such a move has worked out pretty well in the Tar Heel State before. And Charlotte FC hopes it works out again. Meet “the other” Dean Smith, a 52-year-old Englishman who is taking over as coach in Charlotte this season for his first stint in Major League Soccer. He’s fully aware of the legacy that Basketball Hall of Famer Dean Smith left during his 36 years leading the Tar Heels in Chapel Hill, about a two-hour drive from Charlotte.

Lionel Messi was not visible at Major League Soccer’s annual media day on Thursday. His shadow was. Messi is entering his first full season with Inter Miami, which creates an obvious storyline that seems to be on everyone’s mind as MLS teams enter their preseason training camps. And a franchise that hasn’t come close to winning an MLS Cup and didn’t even make the playoffs last season, even with Messi around for the last few months, suddenly seems like a frontrunner entering 2024. So, yes, Messimania continues, with no signs of slowing down.

Apple TV and Major League Soccer are expanding their collaboration, announcing Thursday that the looming MLS season will be chronicled in a new all-access docuseries similar to the ones that have given fans a deep, different look at golf, auto racing and tennis in recent months. The eight-part series is already in production and will span from the preseason all the way through the MLS Cup final in December. It remains unnamed, for now, and no start date has been revealed.

Winger Cade Cowell has left U.S. training camp ahead of a possible transfer from San Jose to Mexican club Chivas Guadalajara. The 20-year-old Cowell had been with the group practicing for a Jan. 20 exhibition against Slovenia at San Antonio. No replacement for Cowell was announced by the U.S. Soccer Federation. Seventeen players could make national team debuts against Slovenia.