Continental Postal Services of Hebland

The best World Cup day yet, plus another NBA star on the move

World Cup
The best World Cup day yet, plus another NBA star on the move

The Pulse Newsletter 📣 | This is The Athletic’s daily sports newsletter. Sign up here to receive The Pulse directly in your inbox.

Good morning! Avoid the post today. Inside: 

World Cupdate: What a night of soccer, lads

Every day, I enter this digital space and assume there’s no way the World Cup could be better than the day before. Most days, I’m wrong. Last night, I was extremely incorrect. Quickly: 

  • Three matches, with all three going to the final minutes or extra time. Germany, considered a Cup contender, is out after losing on penalty kicks to Paraguay. (The same Paraguay team that USMNT walloped, by the way). Japan is done, too, succumbing to a late comeback from Brazil, which scored in the 96th minute to win 2-1.
  • And the best match of the night went last, a Morocco win over the Netherlands, also on PKs. Ismael Saibari, who’s played his entire professional career in the Netherlands and was bloodied earlier in the game, sealed it with this:

See the live bracket here, and make sure you’re signed up for our World Cup newsletter while you’re at it. It’s going to be a wild three-week stretch. 

Three more matches today. Let’s move on to a busy news day, too:

News to Know

Another dizzying NBA day
NBA free agency still hasn’t started yet — the doors officially open this evening — but the league was active as hell yesterday. Two eyebrow-raisers: 

  • The Grizzlies traded Ja Morant to the Trail Blazers, ending one of the stranger superstar tenures in recent memory. Morant has both electrified and stupefied the league, the former for his on-court exploits and the latter emotion for his troubles off it. Still, Zach Harper thinks Portland won this trade.
  • Over on the Warriors, Draymond Green declined his player option, which is curious. It gives Golden State the flexibility to trade for Anthony Davis and acquire LeBron James in free agency, which would just be wild. I’m not ready to process that possibility yet, but John Hollinger detailed how it would actually happen.

There were plenty of other deals agreed to yesterday. See everything on our live blog.

Johnson announces ALS diagnosis
Former Titans running back Chris Johnson, the NFL’s record holder for scrimmage yards in a single season, announced yesterday that he’s been diagnosed with ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease. The 40-year-old announced it in a heartbreaking interview on “Good Morning America” while pushing for more research and funding for ALS treatment. His entire comments are truly worth a read.

Lions release Arnold
Detroit released cornerback Terrion Arnold yesterday, shortly after a Florida judge set the player’s bail at $1 million after his high-profile arrest on charges related to robbery and kidnapping last week. Under the ruling, Arnold — a first-round pick two years ago — would’ve been able to participate in Lions offseason activities. Read our full story.

More news:

📰 Find more news here 24/7.

Serves: Serena’s back, but is she back?

Matthias Hangst / Getty Images

A sentence I still don’t think is real in 2026: Serena Williams, the best women’s tennis player of all time, is playing a singles match at Wimbledon today, her first major appearance in four years. 

We’ve made plenty of fanfare ahead of her debut. But now it’s here. Reality brings questions. How are vibes on the grounds at the All England Club? Is Williams’ opponent, Maya Joint, shaking in her metaphorical boots? And I know she’s 44, but can Williams actually make a run here? 

I decided to actually get my questions answered, so I went to our Matthew Futterman, who’s in London covering the comeback. Matthew, naturally, told me he didn’t have the answers to all my questions. He did provide some color: 

💬 “The main thing I know is that with Serena back in the field, she is the story until she leaves the building, so to speak. She’s the GOAT. She takes up pretty much all the oxygen. The anticipation for her walking onto Centre Court Tuesday is big. It’s almost like Monday was a warmup.” 

I pressed him on her prospective performance, though, and he answered with some interesting layers. Here it is in full: 

💬 “There is so much that is basically unprecedented about this in the modern game. The only comparison is Martina Navratilova playing at 47 in 2004. Guess what? She won a match. There’s more depth now. But Williams is younger, and is still serving the ball in the 120s. But she has also had a second child since leaving the sport.

Also, no one knows the real impact of the new generation of weight-loss drugs on an elite tennis player. She has taken Wegovy and has raved about its effects. But the drugs do cause the loss of lean muscle mass. Will she be able to generate the same power? Bottom line, win or lose, it’s a pretty great story, and kudos to Serena for putting herself out there like this.

Sarah Shephard wrote a great piece this morning on how athletes in their 40s fare in returns to their chosen sport. And I have to admit I had Tiger Woods and Tom Brady on the brain while researching this. 

Williams faces Joint this afternoon, and is an underdog, per oddsmakers. The tournament has started already, though. A couple of notes:

Robert Prange / Getty Images

  • The grass is slippery, and Jannik Sinner barely won yesterday after a couple of falls. Read all about the landscape hardship here.
  • Coco Gauff breezed past Germany’s Tamara Korpatsch in straight sets, which isn’t newsworthy in itself. But it was Gauff’s first win on grass in two years. That means something.
  • And Naomi Osaka, pictured above, didn’t let Wimbledon’s all-white dress policy limit her fit. Read the story behind it. 

Let’s move on:

Watch Guide

📺 Tennis: Wimbledon
Noon ET on ESPN
Bookmark this time for Serena, but Wimbledon action will be on the Worldwide Leader for most of the day, starting at 6 a.m.

📺 World Cup: Round of 32
1 p.m.-9 p.m. ET on Fox and Telemundo
We have a beautiful mix of three matches: Ivory Coast-Norway (1 p.m.) and Mexico-Ecuador (9 p.m.) are true toss-ups, while France-Sweden (5 p.m.) presents an opportunity to watch maybe the tournament favorite in Les Bleus. I wonder how many collective goals Erling Haaland and Kylian Mbappe score today. 

📺 WNBA: Aces vs. Liberty
7 p.m. ET on Prime Video
This is the Commissioner’s Cup final, a landmark moment in the early WNBA season, and we could not pick a better matchup for it. These two teams have history, and in this current era, both present as a possible finals matchup any time they play. Just watch it. 

📺 MLB: Tigers at Yankees
7:05 p.m. ET on TBS and Prime Video
An elite pitching matchup tonight with Tarik Skubal against Cam Schlittler. New York needs a win. Detroit needs many wins or to figure out what to do before the trade deadline.

Pulse Picks

A “great” part of the 1990s in college football, as Chris Vannini detailed yesterday: the horrendous jerseys. See the worst here. 

Two more from our ’90s series: 

The top thing on everyone’s mind as NHL free agency nears: Will Cale Makar get $20 million AAV? Pierre LeBrun led his stuffed notebook with it. 

Is baseball getting a World Cup bump? After seeing the Norway row celebration at Citi Field, I vote yes. 

Saving self-promo for last: I posted a travelogue from my trip to the World Cup that actually turned into a food video. Watch that here (and be nice, please). 

Most-clicked in the newsletter yesterday: Our re-ranking of World Cup teams after Canada’s big win. 

Most-read on the website yesterday: Germany-Paraguay live blog.


Crédito: Link de origem

You might also like More from author
Leave A Reply

Your email address will not be published.