joe fiorentino

[Scott Dworkin @funder]

Trump signed an order saying babies born here to immigrant parents aren't citizens unless the paperwork is right.

The Supreme Court threw it out 6-3. He swore he'd demand a rehearing IMMEDIATELY. The rules gave him 25 days.

What happened on day 25 is the last of eight wins this week:
https://t.co/0W60OdJUT5

[Vfynn_🥷🏼 𐙚 @Vfynn_]

Zlatan Ibrahimovic on to Gianni Infantino’s plan to sell stakes in the FIFA World Cup:

🗣️ “Listen to me carefully, because most of these people in suits have never understood the game and never will.

They create a subsidiary. Call it FIFA Forward Enterprise. Keep majority control on paper. Sell 20% to investors who have never smelled grass. Then wave $20 million in front of every federation and pretend it’s democracy.

That is not structure. That is a magic trick for lawyers. FIFA keeps the majority. FIFA keeps the board. FIFA keeps “exclusive authority” over governance, the calendar, the rules, everything that sounds important on paper. The investors get no operational role. They are only buying a slice of the cash machine. FIFA even says the investors are buying into the subsidiary, not into FIFA itself, so “nothing changes.”

I have seen this movie before. Nothing changes… until the numbers start talking. Once private money owns a permanent piece of the World Cup’s revenue, the pressure never stops. More tournaments. Bigger formats. Different calendar. Different priorities. Because investors do not care about the soul of the game. They care about return. And when the federations are already bought with the $20 million “gift” and the bigger Forward payments, who exactly is going to say no?

This is the same FIFA that spent decades selling the World Cup under the table. I remember the 2015 arrests. Swiss police walking into the hotel in Zurich and taking officials out in the early morning. Racketeering. Bribes. Money laundering. Hundreds of millions paid for television rights, for marketing rights, for World Cup votes. South Africa 2010. Qatar. The whole circus under Blatter. Jack Warner. Chuck Blazer singing to the Americans. Blatter and Platini banned for that $2 million “gentlemen’s agreement” that suddenly appeared when it was convenient. The Ethics Committee, the indictments, the years of “we are cleaning the house.”

And now the house is cleaner, they say. Now instead of brown envelopes and secret payments, we have subsidiaries, minority non-controlling stakes, permanent capital vehicles, JPMorgan valuations, and carefully selected long-term partners. Same hunger for money. Same system of buying loyalty from the 211 associations. Only the language got more expensive.

Infantino stands there and talks about democracy and opportunity. I am Zlatan. I do not need the $20 million and I do not need the speech. Most of these federations do need the money. That is exactly why this structure is dangerous. You are not offering development. You are offering a transaction: take the cash, vote yes by September, and stay quiet while pieces of the World Cup become private equity assets.

Football does not belong to FIFA. FIFA belongs to football. The moment you put shareholders inside the commercial heart of the World Cup and call it progress, you have already admitted the game is for sale. They just found a prettier way to write the contract this time.

I played at the highest level. I saw real power and real money. This is neither. This is bureaucracy protecting itself while selling the one thing that still belongs to the people who actually love the game.

Keep your structure. Keep your valuations. Keep your minority non-controlling stakes. The World Cup was never meant to have owners in suits. It was meant to be bigger than all of you.

[Karly Kingsley @karlykingsley]

The next time Trump claims the 2020 election was stolen, just remember an actual timeline of what happened in 2020

[Protect Kamala Harris ✊ @DisavowTrump20]

RETWEET if you stand with Dr. Fauci!

[Keith Edwards @keithedwards]

Mitch McConnell's team reached out to me earlier today — through an intermediary, of course — asking me to take this down.

I won't. I don't bend the knee.

And if they don't like having their name and face attached to it, maybe they should ask themselves why that is.

[Keith Edwards @keithedwards]

Meet the senior staff running Mitch McConnell's DC office. You pay their salaries. You're entitled to know what they're keeping from us.

Let them know how you feel.

[CommBank Socceroos @Socceroos]

OFFICIAL: The final standings from the #FIFAWorldCup 2026 🪜

#Socceroos

[joe fiorentino @joeyfior]

@ryansprague @historyinmemes That woman is not Roseanne Katon playmate sept 78

[Sam Mahmood @TheSammahmood_]

The U.S. soccer federation is a poor return on invested capital.

I played soccer for 20+ years.

Grassroots.
Academy.
D1 college.
Pursued professionally after.

And I’ll say the quiet part out loud:

The US soccer infrastructure is broken.

In America, we treat playing D1 soccer like it is the peak achievement.

For most families, clubs, coaches, and players, the entire youth soccer machine is built around one goal:

Get recruited.
Get a scholarship.
Play college soccer.

But if the objective is to produce world-class players, D1 soccer is a terrible development path.

From 18-22, some of the most important technical development years of your career, you are preparing for a 3-4 month season built largely around athleticism, direct play, set pieces, fitness, and survival.

Now compare that to an 18-year-old in Spain, Argentina, Morocco, Italy, England, or France.

That player has likely been in a professional environment for years.

Training daily.
Playing meaningful matches year-round.
Competing against grown professionals.
Getting thousands more touches.
Learning how to solve the game under pressure.

The gap is massive.

And it shows.

American players are usually athletic.
They are usually fit.
They usually compete hard.

But at the highest levels, that is not enough.

The biggest difference is technical comfort.

We do not move the ball like Spain.
We do not combine like Argentina.
We do not play with the same fluidity, rhythm, and confidence you see from countries where the game is embedded into the culture from childhood.

That comes down to volume.

Volume of touches.
Volume of street soccer.
Volume of futsal.
Volume of unstructured play.
Volume of high-level training environments.
Volume of meaningful games.

In the US, youth soccer is expensive, overly organized, overly coached, tournament-driven, and too often built around winning games at 13 instead of developing players for 23.

Parents spend thousands.
Clubs charge thousands.
Travel teams fly all over the country.
Showcases become the product.
Recruiting becomes the scoreboard.

But the return on invested capital is poor.

We probably spend more money on youth soccer than almost any country in the world, yet the technical output does not match the investment.

That is a broken operating model.

And like any business, if the output is weak, you do not blame the customer.

You inspect the system.

The US has talent.
The US has athletes.
The US has money.
The US has facilities.

But the foundation is wrong.

We built a pay-to-play, college-recruiting machine and confused it for a world-class player development system.

Those are not the same thing.

Until we fix the grassroots layer, increase meaningful touches, make development less dependent on family income, and stop treating college soccer as the top of the mountain, the US will keep underperforming relative to its resources.

I’m not saying this to trash US Soccer.

I’m saying it because I lived it.

And if we actually want to become a powerhouse, we have to be honest about the infrastructure first.

[joe fiorentino @joeyfior]

@aishahsofey @Britneybakerok 1st, let’s lose the socks not sure who dressed you but you are off to a bad start

[Peyman Milanfar @docmilanfar]

Interesting video, taken with a very long focal length lens. The field of view is actually quite small, and the resulting picture appears flat. In fact, the buildings spinning fast in the background are miles away from the subjects in the foreground.

[joe fiorentino @joeyfior]

@shane_chaffin @Ravenismeee Shane, you made me laugh out loud thanks

[Anonymous @YourAnonNews]

These assholes drove right over the coating. It's not even a vehicular traffic coating (which is meant to be driven on), and they're wondering why it's pealing? Was it even cured? These people are fucking stupid and can't own up to their own mistakes.

[Aaron Rupar @atrupar]

here is Mamdani's entire speech at the Knicks parade, which is easily the best speech I've ever heard at an event of this sort

[Suzie rizzio @Suzierizzo1]

A man dressed in all black scaled the Department of Justice building and tore down the Banner of Trump. How do you feel about this?

[Amy Siskind @Amy_Siskind]

They hung a curtain after 1 am to try to hide the letters being taken down. AP got a photo nonetheless, and this morning Trump’s name is completely GONE!

[TaraBull @TaraBull]

Definitely not her first rodeo

[𝕊𝕦𝕟𝕕𝕒𝕖_𝔾𝕦𝕣𝕝 @SundaeDivine]

Nature is healing.

[Lovable Liberal and his Old English sheepdog @DougWahl1]

When they take down his name from the Kennedy Center- I think it should be broadcasted live on every network!

I'd watch!

Would you?

[Lucas Sanders 👊🏽🔥🇺🇸 @LucasSa56947288]

RETWEET if you be watching the final episode of Stephen Colbert tonight.