Canada headlines the second day of Women’s World Cup action as the Olympic champion takes on Nigeria in Group B, while Philippines face Switzerland in Group A and Spain meet Costa Rica in Group C.
In recent years, Africa has witnessed a remarkable cultural renaissance. From music and fashion to film and visual arts, the continent’s rich and diverse cultural scene is garnering international acclaim and has emerged as a force to be reckoned with, attracting global interest like never before.
The continent’s prolific creative industry will be in the spotlight at this year’s Africa Walk – a gathering of local companies, policy makers and curious foreign investors learning first-hand about the continent.
This year’s Africa Walk will be hosted in Nigeria and Senegal and is set to run from July 24 – 27 in Dakar, and July 28 – 31 in Lagos.
“The creative sector in Africa has witnessed a tremendous boom in recent years, establishing itself as one of the fastest-growing sectors in the global economy,” says Senegalese media personality Lehle Balde, who also shares her expectations for the Africa Walk.
“I am expecting a fusion of cross-cultural exploration and exchange … I expect attendees and investors alike to witness the true potential of our creative sector.”
In its third year running, the annual event provides a unique opportunity for foreign companies and prospective investors seeking to expand their operations in Africa to gain fresh perspectives on the continent. The organizers aim to challenge the negative stereotypes often portrayed in the media, offering a more nuanced and positive view of the continent’s potential for growth and development.
“We found out that their understanding of Africa is limited to the narrative they see on TV,” says Akintoye Akindele, whose firm Platform Capital hosts the event.
Themed “Unleashing the potential and value of the African Creative Industry,” the continent’s billion-dollar creative industry will be at the center of conversations at the event, which aims to shine a spotlight on the possibilities and untapped value that the industry holds.
Africa’s creative economy generates billions of dollars in yearly revenue and creates thousands of jobs, but the rapidly growing industry is yet to catch up with some of its global counterparts.
Europe, North America, Asia and the Pacific account for around 93% of an estimated $2.25 trillion generated globally each year by creative industries, as well as 85% of jobs created by the sector, a trade report by the Afreximbank found last year.
Africa and the Middle East “represent about 3 percent of this output, generating about US$58 billion,” the report added, while also saying that the most jobs from creative industries in Africa had come from South Africa, with more than one million people directly employed in the country by the industry, representing nearly 7% of its total workforce.
As an advocate for the continent’s cultural potential, Akindele is passionate about changing misconceptions surrounding the African creative industry at Africa Walk.
“There’s a myth about the creative industry (in Africa) – that it is not structured and that you cannot put money in there,” he said. “We want to debunk this myth by showcasing what is happening here from an investment opportunity, who is doing what, how they are using technology and how they are scaling.”
Nigeria’s Nollywood film industry and West Africa’s Afrobeats music genre are two of Africa’s most successful creative and cultural exports, receiving widespread recognition on the global stage.
Nollywood currently ranks as the world’s second most prolific film industry, producing thousands of movies annually and contributing significantly to Nigeria’s GDP.
In 2017, Nollywood film “The Wedding Party” became the first to exceed the $1.3 million mark after emerging as the highest grossing film at the Nigerian box office. Other blockbusters such as “Omo Ghetto: The Saga” and the recently released “Battle on Buka Street” have surpassed that record.
Similarly, Afrobeats has emerged as one of the most popular music genres worldwide, with artists such as Burna Boy and Wizkid commanding international attention and acclaim, inspiring the Grammys awards to add a category for the genre.
While Nigeria has dominated filmmaking and music production in Africa, other countries are rapidly emerging as creative hubs for art, fashion and tech.
Senegal, which co-hosts this year’s Africa Walk, also hosts one of the biggest art festivals on the continent, drawing thousands of artists, curators and art lovers.
“Africa is awake, and its potential is being harnessed, but there are dimensions,” says Nollywood actor and filmmaker Kunle Remi, who adds that “the cross-collaboration of our respective domains will continue to prove critical in the development of the entertainment economy in Africa.”
“I’ve always said that content is the new crude oil. Similar to the oil industry’s success, the creative industry requires a lot of refineries to produce the finest oil product. The same refining is highly needed for our creative industry now,” said the singer whose real name is Oladapo Daniel Oyebanjo.
Past editions of Africa Walk jointly held in Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa, have inspired rapid gains for the continent, its host Platform Capital said while celebrating its role in “securing over $200 million in investments for African companies.”
“Additionally, some of these companies have opened subsidiaries on the continent, hired local talent as part of their teams, and are consolidating their footprint by expanding across Africa,” Akindele said.
Oyebanjo is hopeful that this year’s event will boost similar investments in the creative industry and hopes to connect with partners who will “provide young talents with the necessary funding but also connect them with the right platforms and partners to maximize their potential.”
For Ghanaian TV host Riyah Abdul, who is also participating in Africa Walk, the continent has an untapped pool of creative talent.
“Africa is a continent rich in diverse cultures, traditions, and artistic expressions, and it has a wealth of creative talent waiting to be recognized and harnessed,” Abdul said. “I am expecting that by the end of this conference, Africa can unlock numerous social, cultural, and economic opportunities.”
At six feet, eight inches tall, amateur golfer Christo Lamprecht towered over most of the field at the Open Championship even before he teed off Thursday. By the end of the first round, the same applied to the leaderboard.
The South African, a student and two-time All American college golfer at Georgia Tech, tore round Royal Liverpool with a blistering five-under 66 to race to the front at the 151st edition of the major, where he was subsequently joined by England’s Tommy Fleetwood and Argentina’s Emiliano Grillo.
Having turned 22 in January, Lamprecht stamped his ticket to Merseyside with triumph at the Amateur Championship at nearby Hillside in June, a win that also secured him exemptions for next year’s Masters and US Open.
Third in the men’s world amateur golf rankings, Lamprecht is making his PGA Tour debut this week, but cut the look of a seasoned pro as he boomed his way around the historic links course, boasting the first round’s third highest average driving distance at 325 yards.
Six birdies helped Lamprecht become the first player in four years to hold the lead or co-lead on their maiden PGA Tour start since 2018, and the first on their major debut since Andrew Landry at the 2016 US Open, according to PGA Tour Communications.
He’s in uncharted waters, but seeing his name atop the leaderboard was not surprising to Lamprecht.
“As an amateur, yes, it is. But in my own head, no, it’s not,” he told reporters.
“I’m very hard on myself, and I think I earned my spot to be here. The way I played today I earned to be on the top of the leaderboard, as of now.
“It’s not a cocky thing to say. I just personally think I believe in myself, and I guess stepping on to the first tee box if you’re a professional or a competitor, you should be believing that you should be the best standing there.
I’m very proud of it. I’m a little bit surprised, obviously, naturally, but I played good golf today.”
Merseyside-born Fleetwood was roared round the course as he made a strong start to his pursuit of a fairytale first major title, shooting the lowest opening major round of his career.
The 32-year-old has won six times on the European Tour (DP World Tour) but has endured a string of near-misses in golf’s flagship events, including an Open runner-up finish at Royal Portrush in 2019.
A proud Evertonian, few winners would be more popular with locals come Sunday, especially given no Englishman has won his national Open since Nick Faldo in 1992.
“You can’t ask for more from the fans and the support,” Fleetwood said.
“They were great, from the first tee onwards, throughout the round, the way they were down the last hole there, the reception I got.
“Such a special opportunity to play so close to home, to have that support and play an Open – glad I gave them some good golf to watch.”
Grillo is similarly chasing a first major. A two-time winner on the PGA Tour, the 30-year-old’s best major finishes both came at The Open, as he tied 12th in 2016 and 2021.
The leading trio head a host of surprise names at the top of the leaderboard, with many of the game’s biggest stars enduring difficult starts.
France’s Antoine Rozner, Spain’s Adrian Otaegui and American Brian Harman sit one shot off the lead. At 50-years-old, 2009 champion Stewart Cink rolled back the years with a bogey-free 68, and he is joined in the group of five at three-under by last month’s US Open champion and American compatriot Wyndham Clark.
Local hero and Royal Liverpool’s own Matthew Jordan is joined at two-under by 2017 champion Jordan Spieth and his American compatriot Brooks Koepka, chasing his second major of the season after PGA Championship victory.
Rory McIlroy’s latest bid to end his nine-year major drought got off to a steady start, as the Northern Irishman – who lifted the Claret Jug the last time the major was hosted at Royal Liverpool in 2014 – shot even-par 71.
McIlroy is three shots ahead of Spanish world No. 3 Jon Rahm, who will need a big response if he is to add to his Masters triumph in April.
Two-time major champion Justin Thomas’ frustrating year continued, as he slid to an 11-over par, one short of the highest score of the field. It puts the American on track to miss the cut at three of the year’s four majors, with a tied-65th finish at the PGA Championship the only time he made the weekend.
Friday’s second round gets underway at 6:35 a.m. BST (1:35 a.m. ET).
United States officials have said Iran could be just weeks away from acquiring enough weapons-grade uranium to make a nuclear bomb. Now, the man who had been tasked with reviving a nuclear deal to constrain that program has been sidelined.
A prominent diplomat who has been steering the Iran nuclear talks for the Biden administration, Rob Malley, was last month placed on leave without pay, after his security clearance was suspended earlier this year during an investigation into his handling of classified material.
But on Friday, Deputy Envoy Abram Paley took over the official twitter handle for the Office of the Special Envoy for Iran. Paley tweeted “the entire team at the State Department remain engaged in implementing our policy on Iran.” The State Department website has also removed Malley’s name as the Special Representative for Iran.
In an interview Sunday, US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said he “could not speak to the current circumstances” of whether Malley would be returned to his post.
According to a US intelligence assessment published last week, Iran has rapidly expanded its nuclear program since the assassination one of its key scientists in November 2020, but it is not conducting activities that would be necessary to produce a testable nuclear device.
Malley’s sidelining has raised questions about the fate of a long-stalled nuclear deal with Iran, which is seen as more urgent than ever as Tehran proceeds with uranium enrichment, and as both the US and Iran brace for key elections next year.
The Islamic Republic will hold parliamentary elections next year, and the US is due to hold presidential elections. Progress on nuclear talks, as well as the fate of detained Americans in Iran, is likely to boost the incumbents in the polls, analysts have said.
Malley was one of the architects of the 2015 nuclear deal reached with Iran under the Obama administration. This was subsequently abandoned in 2018 by former President Donald Trump.
After Biden’s election, Malley was brought back in 2021 as Iran envoy and became a leading figure in talks to return to a deal.
Last year, a number of sticking points emerged in negotiations, and talks came to a standstill by September. Relations only worsened as the Iranian regime brutally cracked down on a protest movement at home and after it began supplying Russia with drones in its war with Ukraine.
Malley had been a polarizing figure even before his appointment as Iran envoy. In 2008, he resigned from Barack Obama’s presidential campaign after it emerged that he had met with members of the Palestinian militant group Hamas while working at the International Crisis Group (ICG) think tank, where he was president and CEO.
Malley’s critics, among them anti-regime Iranians in the diaspora, US conservatives and supporters of Israel, have accused him of being too sympathetic to the Islamic Republic and too hard on its archenemy, Israel.
Asked about Malley’s sidelining, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani said on July 3: “We do not comment on the internal issues of other countries,” referring to the US.
A former Iranian official was less inhibited. Javed Gurban Oghli, a retired diplomat, was quoted in Iranian media as saying that Malley had “inclinations toward Iran,” which, he said, turned “lobbies close to Israel” against him.
Gabriel Noronha, a former State Department official under the Trump administration who is now a fellow at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, says Malley’s methods were to blame.
“At the same time, Iran was rebuilding its economy and supercharging its nuclear program,” he said, adding that Tehran consequently believed it had had increased leverage over the US. “As a result, he failed to earn the Iranians’ respect or fear, dooming his negotiation prospects.”
But those who have worked closely with Malley disagree that the 60-year-old was too soft on Iran.
Ali Vaez, Iran Project Director at the IGC, said Malley’s actions were in line with the national security strategy of the US administration.
“With or without Rob Malley, the Biden administration believes that the only sustainable solution to the nuclear crisis with Iran is a diplomatic one,” said Vaez, who has known Malley for more than a decade and has reported directly to him at the ICG.
“Those who accuse this administration of ‘being too soft’ on Iran will have a hard time explaining why the US now has more, not less, sanctions on Iran than when President Biden came into office,” Vaez said.
Foad Izadi, associate professor at University of Tehran’s Faculty of World Studies, said Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi wanted a deal and may have been hopeful of reaching one with Malley as envoy.
“The fact that Malley was on the other side was a sign that maybe a similar situation (as the earlier rounds of talks that led to a pact) could be repeated after Biden became president,” he said. “But now we know more than two years after, that that was more or less wishful thinking.”
US talks with Iran are proceeding without Malley. While Paley is serving as acting Special Envoy for Iran, Brett McGurk, a US National Security Council official and veteran on Middle East policy, has been tapped as the leading official to constrain Iran’s nuclear program.
When Biden took office in 2021, he appointed McGurk as coordinator on Middle East and North African issues at the National Security Council. The administration began negotiations to re-enter an Iran nuclear agreement later that year.
Since then, McGurk has made several trips to Oman for indirect discussions with Iranian officials. The latest was in May this year, and Malley appears to have been sidelined from those talks.
McGurk has indicated that he is eager to see a deal take form again, but it’s unclear how his tactics may differ from Malley’s.
He has criticized Trump’s 2019 “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran, which further isolated the Islamic Republic and crippled its economy but failed to stop its nuclear program from advancing. He said that the added sanctions had Iran behaving “more provocatively, not less.” McGurk was also critical of Trump’s other Middle East policies, including those on Syria.
Vaez of the ICG expects no change on US policy toward Iran.
“US policy is informed by the administration’s national security calculations, and not any one person in the national security apparatus,” Vaez said. “With or without Rob Malley, the Biden administration believes that the only sustainable solution to the nuclear crisis with Iran is a diplomatic one.”
Noronha said Malley’s potential departure likely means that a “grand bargain” with Iran won’t be reached, “but the administration’s efforts to reach some limited deal are still proceeding.”
Condemnation grew in Iraq after a 300-year-old minaret, viewed as a heritage site by the Ministry of Culture, was demolished in the southern city of Basra on Friday.
Built in 1727, the 11-meter Siraji minaret, was demolished to create road expansion following complaints of traffic around the mosque, Basra Governor Assad Al Eidani said in a televised interview with Al Taghyeer news channel on Friday.
Al Eidani, who was in attendance when the centuries-old mosque was being demolished, said that that it was in the name of public safety as the minaret was in danger of falling.
He added that the leveling was a necessary step for road expansion in a growing city experiencing traffic jams.
Local residents and government officials were left furious with the decision to proceed with the demolition.
Iraq’s Minister of Culture Ahmed Al Badrani threatened legal action and called on Sunni and Shia parties to intervene.
The Sunni endowment, who own the land and the mosque, say that the demolition violated a long-standing agreement with the government of Basra to arrange a safe removal of the historic minaret and include it in a new mosque, rather than have it destroyed.
“Other solutions should’ve been found instead of demolishing it,” Ibrahim said.
“All countries preserve their history, unlike Iraq, which is demolishing its antiquities,” Ibrahim added.
Former Manchester City footballer Benjamin Mendy has asked for privacy to begin “rebuilding his life” after he was found not guilty on a charge of rape and a separate charge of attempted rape.
The 28-year-old former French international walked free from Chester Crown Court in northwest England on Friday following the acquittal in his second trial stemming from two charges left undecided from a previous court proceeding.
Mendy was found not guilty of six counts of rape and one count of sexual assault at the same court in January. But jurors at the time failed to decide on two charges, resulting in the second trial.
Outside court, Mendy said, “Alhamdulillah,” meaning “praise be to God” in Arabic.
His lawyer Jenny Wiltshire said her client was “delighted that both juries reached the correct verdict”.
“Benjamin Mendy would like to thank the members of the jury for focusing on the evidence in this trial, rather than on the rumor and innuendo that have followed this case from the outset,” she said.
“In the three years since the police started investigating this matter, Mr. Mendy has tried to remain strong, but the process has inevitably had a serious impact on him,” she continued, adding that the footballer would now “ask for privacy so he can begin rebuilding his life.”
“We remain steadfast in our commitment to prosecute rape cases wherever our legal test is met, no matter how challenging the case, and encourage anyone who is a victim to report to the police,” a spokesperson said.
“It is not the function of the CPS to decide whether a person is guilty of a criminal offense, but to make fair, independent, and objective assessments about whether it is appropriate to present charges for the criminal court to consider,” it said.
Mendy, who plays as a left-back, was suspended by Manchester City in August 2021 when the original charges against him were announced. His contract with the club expired at the end of the 2022-23 season.
He began his career playing professional leagues in France for Le Havre, Olympique de Marseille, and Monaco before moving to Britain to play for Manchester City.
The case of Emanuela Orlandi, the 15-year-old daughter of a Vatican employee who went missing in Rome 40 years ago, has taken another twist as her brother dismissed what he described as a “shameful” attempt by the Vatican and Rome prosecutors to cast blame on the family by suggesting a dead uncle was behind the teenager’s unsolved disappearance.
The case has gripped Italy ever since and sparked conspiracy theories involving everyone from the mafia, to international terrorists to the top ranks of the Catholic Church. It gained further international attention with the release last fall of Netflix’s “Vatican Girl” docuseries by filmmaker Mark Lewis.
Pietro Orlandi, who has dedicated his life to the search for his missing sister, made the comments at a press conference Tuesday, a day after the Italian news channel La7 ran a special report based on documents included in an investigative dossier the Vatican handed over to Rome prosecutors in June after reopening the case in January.
Among the documents was correspondence between Agostino Casaroli, then Vatican secretary of state, and a Colombian priest who had been the spiritual guide and confessor of the Orlandi family.
According to the documents turned over by the Vatican to the city of Rome prosecutor, which Pietro Orlandi and his lawyer Laura Sgro verified as authentic, Mario Meneguzzi, who was married to Emanuela’s maternal aunt, had sexually harassed Emanuela’s then 21-year-old sister Natalina, around the period the teen disappeared, suggesting he may have abused the missing girl.
The document about the uncle, which the prosecutor gave the Italian television program, suggests that the potential lead was overlooked, even though the Orlandi family says the claim against the uncle was investigated and his involvement dismissed. Now the Orlandi family fears that the Vatican dossier does not include investigatory leads they hoped the Rome prosecutor would follow – primarily that the Vatican was somehow involved.
Orlandi wrote on his Facebook page after the program aired that his hopes of hearing “some good news” had been dashed. “By the way, my uncle was 200 kilometers (124 miles) away on holiday with his family that evening when my father phoned him and he came straight away to Rome – things the Prosecutor’s Office knew very well because everything has been in the documents for 40 years. A shameful action that happened this evening.”
The Vatican has also responded to the documentary, with a spokesman saying “the Holy See shares the family’s desire to get to the truth about the facts and, to this end, hopes that all investigative hypotheses are explored.”
The spokesman also stressed that the unnamed priest had not broken any vows related to the sacred sacrament of penance, commonly known as confession, since the priest had spoken with Natalina both in a confessional and conversational setting
Emanuela disappeared on June 22, 1983 after a lesson at a music school adjacent to the Sant’Apollinare Opus Dei Catholic Church near Piazza Navona in Rome.
The teenager was the daughter of a prominent Vatican employee and lived inside the fortified walls of Vatican City, where her mother still lives.
On the 40th anniversary of her death, Pope Francis mentioned the saga in his Sunday angelus, expressing his “closeness to the family, above all, the mother,” adding that he prayed for them and “all families who carry the grief, the disappearance of a loved one,” which gave hope to Orlandi family that perhaps the documents in the Vatican dossier might uncover a new lead.
Natalina Orlandi told the press conference that her uncle had “tried” to approach her for around a month, but she refused and eventually involved her boyfriend at the time.
“Then it was over, we never looked back,” she said, adding that the family had maintained good relations with the uncle, his wife and their children. While admitting that she had a “poor” opinion of her uncle, who died a decade ago, she does not think he was involved in her sister’s disappearance. “We exclude the possibility,” she said.
Pietro Orlandi emphasized that his sister Natalina was 21 and Emanuela was 15 at the time. “That would be pedophilia, a whole different story,” he said, when asked if he also excluded the uncle as a suspect.
Laura Sgro, the attorney for the Orlandi family, said at the press conference that the authorities had also cleared the uncle.
“The Italian judiciary had already dealt with this affair in the early 1980s without arriving at any result,” she said. “I hope these are not the only papers, which are by no means new, that the Vatican prosecutor has sent to the Rome prosecutor.”
The uncle, Meneguzzi, was questioned by police in 1985, according to documents presented on the La7 program and at the press conference, and his whereabouts outside Rome were corroborated at the time – meaning that even though he did harass Emanuela’s sister, which is a matter of public record, he was never considered a suspect by the Italian authorities in the teen’s disappearance.
After Emanuela disappeared, the uncle returned to Rome and played an integral role in fielding calls to the house, many of which contained tips and leads from alleged kidnappers. Eventually the Vatican secret service took over that role and manned the phones, keeping records that are part of their criminal investigation, according to Pietro Orlandi’s statements in various interviews and books he has written over the last 40 years.
The Vatican Promotor of Justice Alessandro Diddi said when handing over the dossier in June to Rome police, that he had found “some investigatory leads that merit further consideration,” adding at the time that he had sent “all the relevant documents in the past weeks to the Prosecutor of Rome, so that he can review them and proceed in the direction he considers most opportune.”
Pietro Orlandi gave an emotional plea at the press conference, asking why neither the Vatican nor the Rome authorities were focused on the people he asked them to interview, and the angles that he and the family felt had not been investigated properly.
“Why focus on our uncle when that case was closed 40 years ago?” he said. Instead, the family is pushing for a parliamentary commission investigation, which has been suggested but not approved, in order to access the Italian secret service investigations that are currently sealed.
Sgro also said that the only way to find the truth about what is in the investigatory records is through parliamentary intervention, which is rarely granted for individual cases.
Emanuela’s disappearance has been tied by the family and others to the organized crime gang Band of Magliana, whose leader Enrico de Pedis was buried in the Opus Dei church near where she disappeared. His body was exhumed by permission from the Vatican in 2012 in an unsuccessful search for her remains.
The Vatican has twice searched for her body, once in 2018 on the grounds of the Holy See embassy to Italy in Rome, where human remains found under a sidewalk did not match Emanuela’s DNA, and again in 2019, when the Vatican agreed to open the tomb of two German princesses thought to be buried on Vatican grounds.
The princesses’ bodies were absent from the tomb in the Pontifical Teutonic College and there was no sign of Emanuela’s remains there either. Two ossuaries were later found under a secret door inside the tomb.
Tom Brady is an athlete who needs no introduction. He’s arguably the greatest NFL quarterback of all time, a man who personally won more Super Bowls – seven (six with the New England Patriots and one with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers) – than any other team as an organization ever has. He won more games, passed for more yards and for more touchdowns than anyone, ever.
Tom Brady did it all; he’s a paragon of excellence and a poster child for longevity. But he wasn’t quite perfect.
If there was anything that Tom Brady lacked, it was speed. On the eve of his iconic career, at the NFL scouting combine in 2000, he was timed as the second-slowest of the 18 quarterbacks in attendance.
Once drafted by New England, he would gain a little pace, but not much; mainly, Brady won games with his mind, his arm and the sheer force of his will. If it ever looked like his cleats were smoking, it would have been due to some kind of pyrotechnic residue from pre-game festivities and nothing to do with the speed at which he was advancing with the ball.
Brady was able to laugh about it; having burst through a gap in the Miami Dolphins defense in 2014, the then Patriots quarterback posted an ironic video clip that had been edited to the “Chariots of Fire” theme tune, the footage of his run mixed with images of a cheetah and a jet-powered car. He was so good at football that he didn’t need to be faster, but perhaps he wanted to be.
“If I couldn’t run that fast, I better figure out a vehicle that could move fast!” quipped Brady.
In 2024, Brady will line up as a team owner in the E1 Series, which is hoping to turn heads on the coastline and change our attitudes about renewable energy and water pollution.
Races that have been scheduled so far will take in Jeddah in Saudi Arabia, then Venice, Monaco and Rotterdam in Europe. The organizers are already eyeing future series in North America and Asia, where Miami, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Hong Kong, Macau and Tokyo are possible venues.
According to the co-founder of the E1 series, Alejandro Agag, who’s already created electric car racing championships with Formula E and Extreme E, the objective “is to be able to decarbonize lakes, rivers and eventually the ocean. We saw that there was a demand in the market to go cleaner in the water.”
“[This] championship is a platform to develop technology that can then be used on regular boats that people can use every day,” added Agag.
Brady can’t wait to get started. “I finished my football career and wanted to stay very involved in competitive sports,” the former quarterback explained. “Being down in this amazing climate here in Florida, I got into the boating culture, and I’ve always loved racing.”
It’s clear he’s already been seduced by the sleek and futuristic design of the ‘RaceBird’ boats, which rise out of the water on their twin hydrofoils to race at speeds of up to 93 kph (58 mph).
“You’re damn right I’m going to be in that cockpit at some point,” Brady enthused. “I love speed! I love driving fast! Absolutely, I’m going to be on one of those as soon as I can.”
But he’s quick to point out that he won’t be one of the pilots on race days. “Nope!” he chuckled, waving his hand to emphasize the point. “No way! Our team is going to be much better served having a real professional in there. I’ll be a good cheerleader when it comes to racing.”
Brady isn’t the first athlete to sign up to the E1 project; other team owners hail from other sports around the world, where they’ve achieved legendary status of their own, and there’s still room for more to join.
Chelsea soccer great Didier Drogba, a Champions League and Premier League winner from Ivory Coast, is involved, along with the 22-time grand slam tennis champion Rafael Nadal from Spain. Another team will be headed up by Mexican F1 star Sergio Pérez.
Agag concedes that their involvement is crucial to finding and growing an audience. “These sports personalities are literally and figuratively getting on board,” he explained.
In Formula One, many of the drivers are household names globally, but that’s not the case in powerboating.
“We thought we need to have great figures as team owners that will help us catch the attention of the public, competing against each other as team owners,” added Agag.
“It’s a novel idea; there’s no other sport in which tennis players, F1 drivers, soccer and football stars would be able to go head-to-head, and Brady is already a fan of their work.
“Most athletes love sports, and we love competitions, so we pay attention to a lot of them. I’ve known Didier quite a while; he’s been a long-time friend, an incredible player, and a great humanitarian, too. My mom has been the biggest tennis fan, so I’ve been watching tennis since I was two years old. Rafa is obviously a great competitor, I think his will to win is unmatched. So Rafa is someone I look up to and admire.
“We’re all very competitive people, and we’re going to want to make sure that we’re on top when it’s all said and done.”
Agag says that he’s only had a few meetings with Brady so far, but it didn’t take long for him to see why the quarterback was so successful in the NFL.
“For me, he’s a very, very impressive person. And we’re so lucky to have him.”
Brady himself believes that the leadership skills that he honed on the football field are easily transferrable to other sports.
“So much of it is about teamwork, the ability to communicate, really the ability to be on the same page, to have a degree of discipline where everyone’s working together to achieve a goal. There’s a very level playing field in this sport. We’re going to have to find ways to gain an advantage on the competition and it’s going to be a very fun journey,” said the former 45-year-old quarterback.
Having initially retired from the NFL in 2021, Brady returned for another season with Tampa Bay, but confirmed that he will definitely not be going back to the gridiron this time around.
“I’ve done my part in professional football,” said Brady. “I love looking forward to the amazing things I have ahead and different ways that I can make a difference in the world in a positive way.
“Hopefully, in the next chapter of my life, I’ll be able to do a lot of really enjoyable things that can create great awareness for the future generations, as well as keep up my very competitive instincts.”
Australia striker Sam Kerr, who is the face of this Women’s World Cup, will miss the opening two matches of the tournament after sustaining a calf injury in training.
One of the world’s best players, Kerr’s absence is a huge blow to the Matildas who played the Republic of Ireland in their opening World Cup game on Thursday.
“Unfortunately, I sustained a calf injury yesterday in training,” Kerr wrote on Instagram.
“I wanted to share this with everyone so there is no distraction from us doing what we came here to achieve.”
According to the Matildas, Chelsea forward Kerr will also miss next Thursday’s match against Nigeria, but should return for the July 31 game against Canada.
Kerr has been a key player for Australia throughout her international career, scoring 63 goals in 120 appearances for her country.
Kerr racked up five goals in four matches at the 2019 World Cup, including four goals against Jamaica in the group stage.
The 2023 edition represents her fourth World Cup, having debuted at the showpiece event in Germany in 2011 as a 17-year-old.
The 29-year-old Kerr has been equally pivotal in her club Chelsea’s success in recent seasons, picking up the Player of the Year award in England’s Women’s Super League in both of the last two seasons as the side won league and cup doubles.
Manchester City striker Mary Fowler, who scored the winner in a friendly against France last week, started in Kerr’s place.
The 20-year-old Fowler, wearing the number 11 shirt, started brightly alongside Arsenal’s Caitlin Foord as Australia dominated the opening exchanges against the Republic of Ireland.
Thursday’s match marks a first World Cup outing for Fowler, who in 2019 traveled to France with the squad at the age of 16 but didn’t play at the tournament. She burst onto the international scene aged just 15.
Even without its captain, Australia should still have enough quality to progress from the group stages.
Still, that is an improvement: last time, in 2019, it was less than eight cents per dollar, according to data provided by world governing body FIFA and global players’ union FIFPRO.
The gender pay gap will be very much alive and kicking at a tournament which begins on July 20 in Australia and New Zealand.
FIFA announced in June that, for the first time, about $49 million of the record $110 million Women’s World Cup prize money would go directly to individual players — at least $30,000 each for participating and $270,000 to each player on the winning squad.
The rest of the pot is going to be split between participating federations who will decide what share of this money to allocate to teams and players – if any at all. In addition to prize money, FIFA committed to paying $42 million to the federations and players’ clubs for Women’s World Cup preparations.
At the time, he said FIFA was embarking on a “historic journey for women’s football and for equality,” adding that the aim was equality in payments for the men’s and women’s World Cups in 2026 and 2027 respectively.
With its estimated worldwide audience of more than one billion viewers, the Women’s World Cup is one of the biggest sporting events on the planet.
Yet, this year’s edition kicks off in Australia and New Zealand with the sport at somewhat of an inflection point, not least because of the disparity between what women players are paid in comparison to their male counterparts.
Players such as Australia’s Sam Kerr, as well as Megan Rapinoe and Alex Morgan of the US Women’s National Team (USWNT) are celebrated as household names, while England’s Lionesses adorn billboards across the country.
The popularity of the sport is undoubtedly growing, but from Jamaica to Canada, South Africa to Spain, several teams arrive at this tournament having been locked in disputes with their federations.
Despite the huge progress made in recent years, the fight for respect and equity – or sometimes to even be paid at all – continues.
When Jamaica’s Havana Solaun threaded the ball into the net against Australia four years ago, she was mobbed by her teammates as they celebrated the first Women’s World Cup goal in their nation’s history.
Having overcome almost every conceivable obstacle – the team disbanded in 2016 before an unlikely heroine, Bob Marley’s daughter, Cedella, came to the rescue – here they were competing at the pinnacle of the sport.
Two months later, the players still hadn’t been paid by the Jamaica Football Federation (JFF). Eventually, they were – but four years on and history is beginning to repeat itself.
Just weeks before their first game, Jamaica’s players released a statement, expressing their “utmost disappointment with the [JFF],” saying that the women’s team had missed several friendly matches due to “extreme disorganization,” and that they had “showed up repeatedly without receiving contractually agreed upon compensation.”
The Reggae Girlz now have a contractual agreement with their national federation, according to Asher, but still had to release a public statement to ensure that they received the best possible support for a World Cup.
“The people holding the torch in [the equal pay] fight are normally the active players and that’s a really vulnerable space to be,” Asher said. “If you’re having to fight against people that are creating opportunities for you to play … it can get really messy.”
Soccer players’ pay is composed of many different elements: salaries from their club, match fees when representing their national team, prize money and sponsorship. As such, equal pay can become nebulous.
While Morgan and Rapinoe were the highest paid female soccer players last year, earning $5.7 million each on and off the pitch, their most successful male counterpart, Cristiano Ronaldo, was earning $136 million from both on-field and off-field revenue, Forbes estimated.
But Morgan and Rapinoe’s own estimated multimillion-dollar earnings are an outlier at even the highest echelons of the sport.
While top earners’ wages in countries such as the US and France average nearly $250,000 per year, salaries vary greatly between countries and can be less than $600 per month if any at all, according to a 2020 report by global players’ union FIFPRO.
The report also found that, across the board, top female players get paid the same or less in a year than what male soccer players of the same level receive per month.
The Women’s World Cup is an important source of income for players. But many who will be competing over the next few weeks have needed other jobs to sustain themselves.
A FIFPRO report released in June found two thirds of surveyed players reported having to take unpaid leave from another job to play for their national team in World Cup qualifying tournaments, such as the CONCACAF W Championship or the Women’s Africa Cup of Nations.
Almost a third weren’t paid by their national teams at all during these past 18 months, and for those who were paid, it was often dependent on participation and performance, creating instability.
“It’s not like an amusement park, we’re footballers, most of us are pro players,” Asher said, recalling that she worked as a coach at points during her career to help make ends meet.
“This is our career and that deserves compensation and a reward for the work that’s put through,” she said.
According to a 2022 FIFA Benchmarking Report, nearly a quarter (23%) of 225 clubs across 25 national leagues have mainly amateur players, while the rest work with a mix of professionals – who have an official contract with the club and are paid more than their incurred expenses – and amateurs.
More than half (53%) of the surveyed federations still don’t have regulations on players’ minimum wages.
Ahead of the Women’s World Cup, Infantino threatened a tournament broadcast blackout in five major European countries over unacceptable offers of media rights. Though it should be noted that FIFA isn’t short of money – its record-breaking revenue during the 2019-2022 cycle stood at $7.6 billion.
FIFA’s move to introduce individual prize money this year came after more than 150 players from 25 national teams, backed by their global union FIFPRO, sent a letter to soccer’s governing body last October calling for equal conditions and prize money.
“Many players at the Women’s World Cup come into the tournament as amateurs or semi-professional, which undermines their preparation and, in turn, the quality of football we see on the pitch,” said FIFPRO in the letter sent to Infantino in October 2022, adding that many players also had no agreement with their member associations to ensure guaranteed World Cup compensation.
The gender pay gap is typically referred to in monetary terms, measuring how much women earn for every dollar a man earns. But for the players, equal pay encompasses more than simply closing this gap to the salaries enjoyed by male footballers.
“I know that’s not realistic (immediately),” Asher said, highlighting the importance of facilities, scheduling and maternity leave. “Anything that creates space for a professional women’s player to show up and feel just as professional as a man.”
At the beginning of her career, Riley recalled playing in the World Cup was “just for honor,” rather than something that could provide financial security.
“It’s not just the increase in prize money,” she added. “But also, the equal conditions in terms of the delegation size and having single rooms. These are things that you would have thought we would have had a long time ago.”
Meanwhile, Canada’s players told a parliamentary committee in March that the team had been forced to cut training programs and staff, were paid significantly less than their male counterparts in 2021 – the year they became Olympic champions – and that there had been “disregard” for any attempt to establish a women’s domestic league.
And in 2022, when the men’s team qualified for the World Cup for the first time since 1986 and was eliminated in the group stages, Canada Soccer spent even more – $19.5 million on men’s national teams of all ages. The women’s national team qualified for the World Cup too, but their teams only got $14 million.
Such attitudes are deeply entrenched. Until relatively recently, women were not even able to play soccer in several countries around the world.
It was “quite unsuitable for females,” an English Football Association (FA) minute book said in 1921, and the organization banned women from playing at its clubs until 1971. The French Football Federation only recognized women’s soccer in 1970, and the Royal Belgium Football Association a year later.
Even today, most decision-makers in soccer continue to be men – UEFA’s executive committee has 20 members, 19 of whom are men, while FIFA’s Council has 37 members, 30 of whom are men. All but one of those women sitting on those decision-making bodies fill quota seats, specifically reserved for women.
And nearly three quarters (74%) of head coaches across all women’s soccer leagues are still male, with no women at all in top positions in Germany, Iceland, the Netherlands and Norway, according to the 2022 FIFA Benchmarking Report.
“I think it’s a mindset. It’s tradition,” Riley said. “The women’s game is still new.”
The recent history of women’s soccer is intertwined with its fight for equal pay and treatment.
Days before the start of the World Cup, England’s Lionesses announced they would put on hold discussions with their federation over performance-related bonuses until the end of the tournament.
Earlier in July, the English Football Association said it will not be paying bonuses to the players for their World Cup performance, on top of the individual prize money pledged by FIFA.
“We are disappointed that a resolution has still not been achieved,” the players said in a statement.
Four years ago, chants of “equal play, equal pay” echoed around the stadium as the USWNT lifted the World Cup trophy.
USWNT players reached an equal pay deal with US Soccer in May 2022, after six years of legal wrangling, dating back to a claim of wage discrimination filed in 2016 by five of the team’s stars – Carli Lloyd, Rapinoe, Morgan, Hope Solo and Becky Sauerbrunn – and a gender discrimination lawsuit that the whole team filed in 2019.
As a result, the USWNT earned more money from its male counterparts reaching the knockout stages of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar than it did from winning its own tournaments in 2015 and 2019.
“For six years, we had been in this fight and nobody wants to be fighting with their employer,” she added. “[But] long gone were the days of thinking that we just need to accept what’s given to us. So it was our duty to fight and to make the sport better … just like all the players before us had done.”
There were different challenges for the generation before Lloyd, the generation who advocated for and participated in the fledgling international tournaments of the late 1980s and early 1990s.
“In the old days, players paid to represent their country,” Reid said, recalling that every player had to contribute $850 when Australia traveled to China for the 1988 FIFA Women’s Invitation Tournament, a pilot World Cup.
While the sport has professionalized since then, those same issues still disfigure it.
“People want to know, what’s the progress been like from the last World Cup,” Asher said. “And I’m like: ‘We’re here doing it again.’”