Manchester United target Julian Ryerson can leave Borussia Dortmund — and more

Following Borussia Dortmund’s elimination from the UEFA Champions League, it could leave the Black-Yellows with a shortfall of up to €27m, according to Bild, who add that Julian Ryerson would be allowed to leave the club for a reported €30m.

The Norwegian has been in excellent form this campaign with 14 assists in 32 games across all competitions, which has attracted interest from Manchester United, Newcastle United and Barcelona.

Only Bayern Munich stars Michael Olise (18) and Luis Diaz (13) have more Bundesliga assists than Ryerson (11) this term. The 28-year-old’s four assists against Mainz in February is only the fourth time a player has done so since detailed data collection began in 2004/05.

Additionally, Bild further report that Nico Schlotterbeck, Serhou Guirassy and Felix Nmecha are also candidates to leave, should they receive a suitable offer, as Sebastian Kehl and Lars Ricken look to overhaul the squad ahead of next season, with Kauã Prates and Justin Lerma, both 17, joining Die Schwarzgelben in the summer.

GGFN | Daniel Pinder

Before the MLS, Griezmann wants to deliver one last title to Atlético

Griezmann / @x.com/atletiuniverse/

French international Antoine Griezmann, the star of Atlético Madrid, has decided to postpone his move to the American club Orlando City during the first transfer window in the United States, which closes on March 26.

Before the MLS, Griezmann wants to deliver one last title to Atlético

According to information revealed by ESPN, Griezmann’s decision comes after Atlético Madrid qualified for the Copa del Rey final. The French forward has chosen to stay with his team to help them clinch the trophy before considering a new adventure in Major League Soccer.

The 2018 World Cup winner played a crucial role in Los Colchoneros’ qualification against FC Barcelona, scoring the second goal in the first leg. That strike only strengthened his resolve to finish the season in style with the Madrid club.

Griezmann also hopes to feature in the first leg of the Champions League Round of 16 against Tottenham, scheduled for March 18, with the ambition of propelling Atlético Madrid to the quarterfinals.

A true club icon, Griezmann is one of Atlético’s most influential players of the modern era. He ranks fourth in the club’s all-time appearances with 483 matches and remains Atlético Madrid’s top scorer with 210 goals.

Griezmann settles scores with Barça after Atlético's qualification

With each passing iteration, the World Baseball Classic gets bigger and bigger – in crowd size, attendance, cultural currency and participants.

Yet the world within it keeps shrinking.

As the sixth WBC gets underway this month, the pool play portion of the event will bear faint resemblance to the earliest iterations of the event, an apparent marker of its growth and the game’s elevated level of play worldwide:

Closer games. Fewer run-rule victories and shutouts. And the more than occasional upset of a perceived global power.

“Everyone can see that there’s so much talent all over the world,” San Diego Padres and Dominican Republic third baseman Manny Machado tells USA TODAY Sports. “It’s not just here, but all over the world. It means a lot to be the last team standing. I hope it’s us.

“It’s just such a cool event. You’re playing for not just your country, not for the fans, but the people in their countries and across the world. I get goosebumps just talking about it because it’s such a special event."

The inaugural WBC was a little lighter on goosebumps. Pool play games were contested not in big league stadiums but rather spring training sites, Scottsdale and Lake Buena Vista among the locales to determine quarterfinalists.

 And the games were, well, often over before they started.

In 2006, the nine countries and territories that supply the most major league talent – Japan, South Korea, USA, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Cuba and Canada – went a combined 15-0 against less-renowned baseball countries in pool play, with four shutouts and three run-rule wins.

Average score: 9-3, kicked off by Team USA’s 17-0 shellacking of South Africa behind Ken Griffey Jr.’s 4-for-4, two-homer performance.

Yet the gap has been shrinking in almost every iteration of the event since.

Have glove, will travel

In 2009, the less-heralded countries managed three victories in 13 games, including Australia turning the tables and run-ruling Mexico. The Netherlands, powered by a handful of major leaguers hailing from Curacao, scored the first big tourney upset, toppling the mighty Dominican Republic and bouncing them from the tournament.

And suddenly, the average margin of victory shrank from 9-3 to 7-3.

The trend continued through 2013 – when the average score between haves and have-nots shrank to 6-4 - and 2017, when the baseball-poorer countries endured just one shutout. Colombia knocked off Canada and took Team USA to 10 innings, while Australia fell in 10 innings to Venezuela.

China, which lost its first six WBC games against global powers from 2006 to 2013 by a combined score of 64-5, was suddenly playing baseball games in 2017, losing 6-0 to Cuba and 7-1 to China.

Meanwhile, players are seeing the upside of playing in a global event by representing homelands with which they have strong or even faint connections. Italy this year will feature Kansas City Royals sluggers Vinnie Pasquantino and Jac Caglianone as it aims to repeat – or exceed - its quarterfinal showing from 2023.

Israel, with major league old heads like Sam Fuld, Jason Marquis, Ike Davis and Ty Kelly alongside its “Mensch On The Bench,” made a startling 2017 run to the quarterfinals.

And stars spurned by their country of birth are nonetheless still pining to play. Eight-time All-Star Nolan Arenado, who starred for Team USA in 2017 and 2023, didn’t hear his phone ring this time as a star-studded group of American-born commitments poured in.

Instead, Puerto Rico manager Yadier Molina, his old St. Louis Cardinals teammate, called him up, asking to galvanize a squad beset by injury and insurance woes. Arenado, whose mother Millie is of Puerto Rican and Cuban descent, was all in.

“I didn’t expect (Team USA) to call coming off last year,” says Arenado, who produced a career-low .666 OPS for St. Louis before an off-season trade to Arizona. “I wasn’t going to play this year, but Yadi called me and my mom wanted me to do it.

“I love the tournament. The talent is sick. It just gets better and better.’’

SARASOTA, Fla. — Trevor Rogers initially assumed something was wrong. He certainly wasn’t aware what was happening in real time.

A pair of fielding errors forced the Baltimore Orioles southpaw to toss extra pitches and linger underneath the sun on Tuesday afternoon. Suddenly, his teammates converged near the mound. It wasn’t a meeting called by rookie catcher Samuel Basallo, either.

Rather, it was veteran first baseman Pete Alonso, the franchise’s prized $155 million offseason acquisition, who deemed the mound visit necessary in a seemingly meaningless exhibition game against Team Netherlands.

“I thought he saw something that I was tipping pitches,” Rogers said of Alonso calling his own mound visit in the second inning.

Not quite.

“It wasn’t about [Rogers] or anybody,” Alonso said. “It was like, ‘Hey, we just need to clean it up.’ If we want to go far in the playoffs, it’s all about doing the little things right even now, getting into good habits.”

What a refreshing sense of accountability from the eighth-year slugger.

Seriously.

Position players, especially first basemen, at the pro level rarely call their own in-game meetings. That responsibility almost always belongs to the catcher or on occasional instances, the shortstop, for defensive positioning. Don’t count Alonso part of that group.

Fans likely won’t remember the early March box score from Baltimore’s 8-5 exhibition loss to the Netherlands (actually a majority of Birdland will have little-to-no recollection since the game wasn’t broadcast locally back home), but if the Orioles goes on to make a meaningful run later in the year when the games count, moments like Alonso’s on-field accountability scene will be etched in the root of the club’s emerging culture under first-year manager Craig Albernaz.

Too often throughout the Orioles’ disappointing 2025 campaign (75-87) in which they missed the postseason with a last-place finish in the AL East, the Orioles lacked the leadership required to sustain the expected blows from a 162-game gauntlet.

Insert the Polar Bear.

“If you have that habit of playing good baseball, then it becomes second nature,” Alonso said. “But now in camp, we need to lock in on it and play clean baseball. That’s just a good habit. That’s just winning culture. If we play clean baseball, good things will happen.”

Since his early arrival to spring training ahead of most teammates, Alonso has served as one of the loudest player voices across the team’s complex along the western Florida shore. From the outset, Alonso often has barked constructive and playful criticism toward his pitching teammates and hitters alike.

Many, including myself, wondered exactly how Alonso’s presence would fit not just in the middle of the lineup, but also inside a clubhouse with a talented but largely unproven bunch.

So far, it feels like a pretty nifty fit.

Especially lacking in the Orioles’ clubhouse is postseason experience; under president of baseball operations Mike Elias, the club owns an 0-5 postseason record. Alonso brings valuable experience following his record-setting seven seasons with the Mets. He appeared in 16 postseason games, including the Mets’ run to the NL Championship Series in 2024 that included postseason series wins over the Milwaukee Brewers and Philadelphia Phillies.

Now in Baltimore, Alonso seems determined to help deliver the Orioles’ first postseason win since October 2014.

That winning formula starts during the early humid days of spring training.

“Pete’s sort of like, ‘We aren’t playing with the energy that we need to play with,’” Rogers said. “Coming from a veteran like that on March 3, really hampering down that we need to play with energy, especially [on] days like this, it’s really tough to get the body going, get yourself ready and the adrenaline pumping.

“So coming from a leader like that — oh, man, he’s going to help us a lot, especially telling us we need to pick up the slack.”

Inside the batter’s box, Alonso hasn’t missed a beat after launching 264 career home runs in New York.

The right-handed power hitter blasted his “third” home run of the spring, though his latest example of his renowned pop won’t count toward official Grapefruit League statistics since Tuesday was an exhibition with Team Netherlands warming up for World Baseball Classic pool play.

Who cares if stats won’t count from Tuesday’s exhibition? Alonso’s power and leadership are equally palpable, and exactly what the rebounding Orioles need.

There might be times throughout the regular season when Alonso, like how he did on Tuesday, has to do it all on his own.

His home run in the first inning represented the club’s only hit until he cracked a single up the middle in his next at-bat. With Gunnar Henderson departed for Team USA and Jordan Westburg and Jackson Holliday still rehabbing from their respective injuries, Alonso was the only projected opening day infield starter in Tuesday’s lineup with third baseman Bryan Ramos, shortstop Jeremiah Jackson and second baseman Thairo Estrada.

Alonso, whose 18.9 barrel percentage (a batted ball with the perfect combination of exit velocity and launch angle) ranked fifth in MLB in 2025, reached base in his two plate appearances, with his sharp line drive up the middle recording a higher exit velocity (110 mph) than his 384-foot home run (102.7 mph) that landed beyond the right field fence at Ed Smith Stadium.

When the club’s front office inked him to a five-year deal, the Orioles had confidence in what they were receiving in Alonso the power hitter.

But with roughly three weeks until opening day, Alonso is quickly emerging as the Orioles’ clubhouse leader. There couldn’t be a more clear example than his latest dose of accountability and his pleading with teammates Tuesday.

“It’s a great group and these guys make it super easy to come to the field everyday and bring that energy,” Alonso said. “As you progress in your career, you start to become the older guy. For me, it’s just remembering lessons. Having that rapport with [teammates], where it’s like, you can hold each other accountable and not get your feelings hurt, and that’s super productive and great.

“It doesn’t matter how you deliver it, as long as the message is delivered and [teammates] are receptive and pulling in the same direction … it’s fantastic.”

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