Mumbai allrounder Shivam Dube has earned himself a maiden India call-up, figuring in the squad for the three-T20I series against Bangladesh at home in November. Kerala wicketkeeper-batsman Sanju Samson has got a recall, having played his only previous international game - a T20I against Zimbabwe in Harare - back in July 2015.

Regular captain Virat Kohli has been rested for the T20I series, and MS Dhoni continued to be absent. Rohit Sharma will lead the team in the T20Is.

The three games will be played between November 3 and 10 in Delhi, Rajkot and Nagpur.Kohli, however, was a part of the squad for the two Tests - Indore (November 14 to 18) and Kolkata (November 22 to 26) - as he leads a side featuring the first-choice 15 from the recent series against South Africa at home. Shahbaz Nadeem, who replaced an injured Kuldeep Yadav for the final Test of that series for his Test debut, was left out with the left-arm wristspinner fit for action again.

Jasprit Bumrah and Hardik Pandya didn't feature in discussions following their surgeries in the UK earlier this month for back injuries.

Hardik's absence, in particular, opened the doors for Dube's inclusion in the shortest format, chairman of selectors MSK Prasad said. "In our earlier T20 squad, we had Hardik, we also tried Vijay Shankar, we all felt that the role Shivam has to deliver in, he fits in much better. He bats aggressively, his performances in the India A series in West Indies and also against South Africa in the one-dayers was phenomenal. Dube has gone up by leaps and bounds and we are convinced."

Pant has been the natural heir to Dhoni, who hasn't featured in any international fixture since India's exit from the 50-over World Cup earlier this year, but Samson could well push him for a slot in the XI - both of them, however, are also capable of playing as specialist batsmen. In fact, on Samson's possible batting position, Prasad said, "Definitely he will play at the top."

"We're looking at younger options after the World Cup, so you can understand our thought process. We definitely had a chat with Dhoni and he also endorses our view of backing youngsters," Prasad said of 22-year-old Pant and 24-year-old Samson, whom he also called "a back-up wicketkeeper option".

T20I squad: Rohit Sharma (capt), Shikhar Dhawan, KL Rahul, Sanju Samson (wk), Shreyas Iyer, Manish Pandey, Rishabh Pant (wk), Washington Sundar, Krunal Pandya, Yuzvendra Chahal, Rahul Chahar, Deepak Chahar, Khaleel Ahmed, Shivam Dube, Shardul Thakur

Test squad: Virat Kohli (capt), Rohit Sharma, Mayank Agarwal, Cheteshwar Pujara, Ajinkya Rahane, Hanuma Vihari, Wriddhiman Saha (wk), Ravindra Jadeja, R Ashwin, Kuldeep Yadav, Mohammed Shami, Umesh Yadav, Ishant Sharma, Shubman Gill, Rishabh Pant (wk)

More to follow…

Hong Kong has lost hosting rights for the inaugural men's Cricket World Cup Challenge League B, because of "the ongoing demonstrations within the city of Hong Kong". The tournament will now be played in Oman between December 2 and 12.

The ICC, in a statement, explained that the political instability in Hong Kong had resulted "in logistical challenges and therefore [affected] the smooth running of the event", which has been postponed by a week from its original start date.

"We have worked extremely closely with Cricket Hong Cricket and our security advisors to assess the changing situation in Hong Kong. Unfortunately, due to the ongoing demonstrations, the consequential safety concerns and potential for disruption to event arrangements, we have decided the best course of action is to relocate the event," ICC head of events Chris Tetley said in a statement.

"The Men's CWC Challenge League B is one of three events over the next two and half years that these teams will compete in, with the aim of qualifying for the 2023 ICC Men's Cricket World Cup. I would like to thank Oman Cricket for stepping in to host this important event and I look forward to seeing a competitive, exciting competition in December. In the meantime we hope that conditions return to normal as quickly as possible in Hong Kong and we hope to have the opportunity to stage another event there in the future."

Bermuda, Hong Kong, Italy, Jersey, Kenya and Uganda will travel to Oman to take part in the 15-game event, which is the first of three Challenge League B competitions leading up to the 2023 World Cup, to be played in India.

The Challenge Leagues, A and B, are part of a number of new pathway events announced by the ICC in the lead-up to World Cup 2023. The top team in each Challenge League will secure a place in the men's World Cup qualifier playoffs, to be held in 2022, alongside the bottom four teams from the World Cup League 2. The top two teams from those playoffs will then take part in the final qualifiers in 2022, alongside eight other teams coming through from the ODI Super League and World Cup League 2.

For more details on the pathway to World Cup 2023, click here.

Conor McGregor has announced his comeback date.

The former two-division UFC champion said Thursday at a news conference in Moscow that he will return to the Octagon on Jan. 18 in Las Vegas. McGregor said he knows his opponent but would not reveal his name, because if he did UFC would "flip" it.

"Ask the UFC who the opponent is, because I do not give a f--- who the opponent is," McGregor said, speaking at an event for his sponsor Parimatch, a Russian betting website.

Sources told ESPN that Donald Cerrone and Justin Gaethje are the top two candidates to fight McGregor. Cerrone is the front-runner, sources said.

McGregor, UFC's biggest star, promised a "fully focused" version of himself for the fight at T-Mobile Arena, which is in 12 weeks. He said he has already started his preparation, including going to bed early every night and waking up early every morning.

The return bout, McGregor said, will be "the beginning of my season," and he plans to fight three times next year. McGregor said after January that he will seek to face the winner of the UFC 244 main event between Nate Diaz and Jorge Masvidal. McGregor is picking Diaz to win that fight. After that, McGregor said he wants to fight for the UFC lightweight title against the winner of a potential matchup between champion Khabib Nurmagomedov and Tony Ferguson.

McGregor (21-4) has not fought since falling by submission to Nurmagomedov at UFC 229 in October 2018. The Irishman said he wants the Nurmagomedov rematch to be in Moscow. Nurmagomedov hails from the Russian republic of Dagestan.

"That is the bout we want," McGregor said. "We want this bout in Moscow. The people of Russia deserve this bout to take place. The people of the world deserve this bout to take place."

McGregor, 31, has not won an MMA fight since 2016, when he beat Eddie Alvarez to win the UFC lightweight title. With that victory, McGregor became the first fighter in UFC history to hold belts in two weight classes concurrently. After that, McGregor moonlighted in 2017 as a boxer, fighting and losing to Floyd Mayweather Jr. by TKO in one of the most financially successful pay-per-view events ever.

At the news conference, McGregor said he regrets not being focused on his fight with Nurmagomedov and vowed to return to his previous form beginning in 2020.

"The people who believe in me deserve better," McGregor said. "It is an insult to the people that believe in me that I am not fully committed. So now I am coming back and I'm fully committed. And I am eager to come back and show the best of myself for my fans around the world."

During this layoff, McGregor has faced several legal issues, including most recently a second allegation of sexual assault, according to The New York Times. A publicist for McGregor has denied the allegation.

Borussia Dortmund wonderkid Youssoufa Moukoko, 14, became the youngest player to score in the UEFA Youth League when he netted in the 4-1 defeat against Inter Milan on Tuesday

It is the latest landmark for the teenager, who scored six goals on his under-19 debut for Dortmund in August.

After a record 50 goals in 28 matches for Dortmund's U17s last season, he was promoted to Borussia's under-19 team in the summer.

Moukoko could make his Bundesliga debut in the 2021-22 season, once he has turned 17.

And Germany coach Joachim Low has even said he is monitoring the player's progress.

"I've been speaking to [Dortmund U19 coach] Michael Skibbe for a while," Low said. "Everyone involved is well advised to wait and let him develop in peace."

Meanwhile, Dortmund's senior team also suffered defeat to Inter in their Champions League clash, losing 2-0 at San Siro, thanks to goals from Lautaro Martinez and Antonio Candreva.

The result could have been even worse for Lucien Favre's side as Martinez saw a penalty saved by Roman Burki.

When Ole Gunnar Solskjaer's job as Manchester United manager was made permanent in March, almost everyone involved with the club was pleased. The Norwegian, a United legend as a player, had won his first six league games in charge and then remained unbeaten for six more. I won't embarrass certain pundits by name, but they explained that this brief run showed that Solskjaer had imbibed the club's spirit as a player at Alex Ferguson's knee, and that he was a worker and fighter who "understood" -- in a way that his predecessor Jose Mourinho apparently couldn't -- United's tradition of attacking football.

United's players also liked Solskjaer's relaxation of Mourinho's tight controls while Ed Woodward, the club's executive vice-chairman, was delighted to make the popular appointment, which got the phalanx of Solskjaer's former teammates-turned-pundits off his back. Yet United have faltered almost since the day the appointment was made. Nine games into the season, they stand just two points above the Premier League's relegation zone. But in fact, the appointment was wrongheaded even when Woodward made it.

It's a statistical truth that having been a good footballer does not make you a good manager. When Woodward gets around to choosing Solskjaer's successor, he'll need a different method. In fact, he should learn from last season's sensations in the Champions League, Ajax Amsterdam.

The classic managerial appointment in football is a white, male, former high-level player with a conservative haircut aged between 35 and 60. Clubs know that if they choose someone with that profile, they won't be blamed too much even if the appointment turns out to be terrible because at least they will have failed in the traditional way. Yet there never has been any evidence to support the appointment of former high-level players.

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Way back in 1995, Stefan Szymanski, my co-author on Soccernomics, carried out a study of 209 managers in English football from 1974 to 1994, looking at which ones consistently finished higher in the league than their teams' wage bills predicted. "I looked at each manager''s football career, first as a player (including number of games played, goals scored, position on the field, international appearances, number of clubs played for) and then as a manager (years of experience, number of clubs played for, and age while in management)," Szymanski said. "Playing history provides almost no guide except that defenders and goalkeepers in particular do not do well: most managers were midfielders, while forwards are slightly more successful than the average."

Some former star players, like Kenny Dalglish and nowadays, Pep Guardiola and Zinedine Zidane, did well as managers. Others, like Bobby Moore (and more recently, Diego Maradona and Thierry Henry), have done badly. Taken overall, a good career as a player predicts neither success nor failure as a manager. The two jobs just don't seem to have much to do with each other. As Arrigo Sacchi, a terrible player turned great manager of Milan, phrased it, "You don't need to have been a horse to be a jockey."

A horse's knowledge doesn't help a jockey, either. Here is one player-turned-manager testifying anonymously in Sue Bridgewater's book Football Management: "I got the job and on the first day I showed up and the secretary let me into my office, the manager's office, with a phone in [it] and I didn't know where I was supposed to start. I knew about football, I could do the on-pitch things, but I had never worked in an office. I just sat there and waited for something to happen, but no one came in so after a while I picked up the phone and rang my Mum."

Even this man's claim that "I knew about football, I could do the on-pitch things" is dubious. Does Maradona know more about football than Mourinho? Did Roy Keane's knack for geeing up teammates on the field translate once he had become a jockey?

Mourinho remains, on a match for match basis, among the most successful coaches in football history. When Milan's then-coach Carlo Ancelotti noted his almost nonexistent record as a player, the Portuguese replied, "I don't see the connection. My dentist is the best in the world, and yet he's never had a particularly bad toothache."

Asked why failed players often become good coaches, Mourinho said, "more time to study." They also have to have provided some evidence that they are good coaches, because nobody is going to hire them based on their playing careers.

Even Ancelotti, who was a canny midfielder for Sacchi in Milan, seems to have changed his mind about the usefulness of having played. He told me in 2013, when he was coaching Real Madrid, that "experience as a player can help you just in one situation. I can understand what the players are thinking, but the job is different. You have to study to be a manager."

In Germany, former players have lost their monopoly on managerial jobs. On the German football federation's annual training course to certify professional coaches, an average of 16 of the 24 places are now reserved for people who didn't play professionally. The head of the course, Frank Wormuth, told Dutch website DeCorrespondent.nl that although it helps to know "the smell of the stables" in professional football, "that's only one aspect of being a coach. How are you pedagogically, analytically, communicatively? Ex-pros often have less of an eye for that."

Successful German coaches in 2019 include the national team manager Joachim Löw (who played 52 Bundesliga games), Thomas Tuchel of Paris Saint-Germain (eight games in the 2. Bundesliga) and Julian Nagelsmann, 32-year-old coach of RB Leipzig, who never played a professional match. Nagelsmann's career would have been unthinkable in most major football countries. It's their loss.

Solskjaer (who before United had a disastrous eight-month stint managing Cardiff) now follows Bryan Robson, Roy Keane, Gary Neville, Paul Scholes, Steve Bruce and Jaap Stam (currently in midtable of the Dutch league with Feyenoord) in having failed to absorb Ferguson's managerial skills from his time as a player under the Man United legend. It's almost as if there's a pattern here. Even Solskjaer's much-praised willingness to give his players more on-field freedom than Mourinho had wasn't necessarily a good sign. Mourinho is a high-control manager; Solskjaer a laxer one. The former method tends to improve organisation, whereas the latter allows more creativity. Each has its pros and cons.

One club that has finally figured out how to choose a manager is Ajax. The Amsterdammers used to cling to the notion that only former Ajax players could possibly know how to run the club. After years of failure, the notion was junked in 2016. The outsider coach Peter Bosz promptly put together a thrilling modern team that reached the Europa League final in 2017 but when Bosz left, Ajax replaced him with their former player Marcel Keizer, untested as a top-level coach. Only after Keizer's rapid failure did Ajax appoint another outsider, Erik ten Hag, and his appointment attracted none of the plaudits that Solskjaer received.

The uncharismatic, bald, former journeyman full-back spoke in a "country bumpkin" eastern accent, uttering almost impenetrable jargon about "half-spaces" and "the rest-defence." Yet he put together a brilliant team that reached the semifinals of the Champions League. Clearly, he benefited from the fortunes Ajax had spent signing players like Dusan Tadic, Hakim Ziyech and Daley Blind -- the quality of players almost always matters more than the quality of the manager -- but Ten Hag got his squad playing a hypermodern, well-thought-out system.

By "half-spaces," he meant the idea that a field doesn't simply divide into the usual three zones (left, centre, right) but into five. Like Guardiola, he thinks endlessly about which player in which line should occupy which zone, and when. "The rest-defence" refers to the number of players who have to be covering the three central defensive zones from the moment the team loses the ball. Ajax always have three, which is why this extreme attacking team is so rarely surprised on the counter. And Ten Hag has taught his defenders the difficult art of "defending forward" -- advancing towards the opponent with the ball and tackling him fast, so as to set up new attacks.

In the long term, clubs brave enough to appoint the Ten Hags and Nagelsmanns will gain an edge over the clubs appointing the Solskjaers and Keanes. But in the short term, appointing the popular ex-player will always be the easier choice.

LOS ANGELES -- Five years ago this week, in the first official statement from Los Angeles' newly-awarded Major League Soccer franchise, Henry Nguyen, the club's managing partner at the time, laid out a vision for something no team in the league had become.

"We believe this team can become one of the most outstanding clubs in [MLS] and a globally recognized brand," said Nguyen.

Considering the league had just folded Chivas USA after a disastrous 10-year existence sharing a stadium with the LA Galaxy in Carson, a healthy level of skepticism was understandable. Nobody would have blamed Nguyen for being more modest in his stated aspirations, but modesty was never going to be LAFC's style.

Since then, the organization has walked the walk. Not only does the team play some of the most attractive, attacking soccer in the league under former United States men's national team manager Bob Bradley, it does so in a beautiful downtown stadium where the in-game atmosphere is as good or better than any other sports team in town.

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LAFC set the single-season points record for an expansion team in 2018 and backed it up by turning in the most dominant regular season in league history in their second year. Mexican international Carlos Vela is re-writing the league's record book and leads a team with an exciting mix of diverse young talent, but for all LAFC's near-immediate success, there are two glaring boxes it has yet to check: beat the Galaxy and win a playoff game. Which is why Thursday's first-ever postseason "El Trafico" match (10:30 p.m. ET, ESPN) at Banc of California Stadium doesn't feel like just another conference semifinal. The stakes are much bigger than that.

These teams aren't just fighting to advance in this postseason; they're fighting for their place in the market. For LAFC, it would be hard for the team to classify the season as a success if it ends with yet another loss to the Galaxy. Conversely, a win would instantly become a seminal moment in club history and keep alive the possibility of finishing the year as the best team in league history.

But how did they get here? And how have they climbed so high so quickly?

On the day LAFC was formally announced, it hadn't yet settled on colors or unveiled a crest. Los Angeles Football Club was still just a placeholder name and when MLS commissioner Don Garber took the podium at the initial press conference, he wasn't there to introduce a team so much as a concept.

"We are here to announce a brand-new strategy for what we in [MLS] hope to achieve in this city," Garber said.

Garber and Nguyen were saying the same thing: Los Angeles had untapped potential. Historically, the Galaxy might have been the league's most successful franchise -- they've won a league-best five MLS Cups and have featured some of the world's most recognizable stars in David Beckham, Landon Donovan, Steven Gerrard and Zlatan Ibrahimovic -- but armed with two decades' worth of lessons from trial-and-error across Major League Soccer, a blank slate in the country's most important soccer market really was a special opportunity.

For starters, how would they approach the battle in LA?

"Great adversaries on the field create great fan interest and great media interest," said Peter Guber, a media executive and the team's executive chairman. "It engages in more people in the sport, engages in more conversation and dialogue. You have to win the hearts and minds of your fans and create that dialogue. So, we have respect for it.

"Every movie needs a hero and a villain. Every combination brings drama to it. We're in the drama business and that's part of the drama. Can we compete?"

LAFC proved right away there was more than enough interest for a second team in the market. The fledgling franchise has sold out every MLS game it has played at its 22,000-seat home and even though the Galaxy's Ibrahimovic has the league's top-selling jersey, LAFC gear is becoming easy to find out and about around LA.

In the "movie" that is the LAFC story, Zlatan has been the unquestioned villain. With eight goals in five head-to-head meetings, he's the main reason the Galaxy is unbeaten in the series (2-0-3). He came off the bench to score two memorable goals in a 4-3 win in the first-ever game between the teams last season and has five goals in two games this year.

In the three-plus years leading up to the team's on-field debut in 2018, the club delivered on just about everything it set out to do. Beautiful (and accessible) soccer-specific stadium? Check. Passionate supporter culture? Check. Recognizable star? Vela was viewed as a unicorn in the league office.

When Bradley became available after a brief stint as at Swansea City, where he'd become the first American to manage in the English Premier League, LAFC general manager John Thorrington made him his top target. Together, along with assistant general manager Will Kuntz and a staff featuring two full-time scouts in South America, they've built a team with a nice mix of promising international talent and MLS veterans. By any reasonable measure, Year 1 was an overwhelming success as they became just the fifth expansion side to reach the playoffs. "And we were still left bitterly disappointed at the end," said Thorrington.

Conceding three goals against the run of play in a 3-2 loss can have that effect, but as discouraging as the first-round loss to Real Salt Lake might have been in 2018, there was no denying the club had laid the groundwork to build a potential juggernaut. There were some roster tweaks needed, but most of the heavy lifting was done.

"I think for us, for the most part, the [offseason] language was 'continuity and depth,' said Thorrington. "Having lived through one season, we set this team up to be sustainably competitive. I think last year taught us lessons about where we fell short in our goal of being competitive in the short, medium and long term. And so a lot of it was just getting better: the proverbial freshmen becoming sophomores. So that's a lot of what you see. It's the same guys for the most part."

With that as a backdrop, improvement was expected, and again, LAFC raised the bar. It set the single-season record for points (72) and goal differential (+48), and tied the single-season goals record (85). Vela broke the single-season records for both goals (34) and combined goals and assists (49), the latter of which he broke with 10 games remaining on the schedule. He's a sure bet to be named league MVP over Zlatan and Atlanta United striker Josef Martinez, who won the MVP in 2018 and set the record Vela quickly broke.

On former LAFC teammate Benny Feilhaber's podcast, Vela explained how both he and the team raised their levels of play in Year 2.

"Well, I think that first and more important thing is that we know each other now," said Vela. "When you go to a new school, you don't know the rest of the class. To be a good team, you have to spend time training a lot. Know how your teammates likes to play and after that, it's easier for you to know where you have to be, who has the ball, do I make a run or do I wait for another one. It's easy to play like that."

There's plenty of credit to go around, but both Vela and left-back Jordan Harvey made a point to mention Ghanaian midfielder Latif Blessing as one of the key, unexpected developments. Last year, Blessing was a change-of-pace winger without much end product, and in the offseason there was some thought internally that maybe he could help the team as a right back. Instead, Blessing transformed into an indispensable part of central midfield alongside Colombian Eduard Atuesta and Canadian international Mark-Anthony Kaye.

Blessing, who was on the books for just $110,416 in 2019, was so good early in the season that Designated Player Andre Horta -- set to make nearly $1.3 million this year -- became an unnecessary roster accessory and was sold back to his former club in Portugal. That move opened the door for the acquisition of Uruguayan international Brian Rodriguez, a winger from Peñarol, the same club in Uruguay that produced the team's second-leading scorer, Diego Rossi.

"I think that's a credit to the [coaching] staff, recognizing these things, but then there's everything that went into building the roster," said Harvey. "They wanted to bring guys in here that have a level of soccer knowledge and IQ that they could take on these difficult nuances that Bob presents. And I think people are just more comfortable with that in Year 2."

When he signed with LAFC as a free agent, Harvey, now in his 13th MLS season, had already been part of two expansion teams (Philadelphia in 2010, Vancouver in 2011). He knew Thorrington from their time together as teammates in Vancouver, and though he didn't know Bradley well, his reputation as one of the greatest American managers of all time was appealing.

The same can be said for the LAFC-Galaxy series, which has already grown into arguably the best rivalry in the league. That drama Guber called for in 2014 has been delivered consistently even without the added pressure of competing in the postseason.

"Someone said to me, 'How will you ever going compete as the second team in the marketplace?'" said Guber. "I said, 'Well, by becoming the first team instead."

That chance has arrived.

Great rivalries are supposed to develop over time. Players come and go, fans grow old and bring their children, the games continue. Longevity is the appeal.

The New York Red Bulls and D.C. United have played 95 times since 1996, with United prevailing 43 times and winning 13 Atlantic Cup titles to the Red Bulls' 11. The Seattle Sounders-Portland Timbers rivalry dates to Seattle's 1-0 win over their southern foes on May 2, 1975. In total, they've played 102 matches across 44 years and five leagues, which equates to roughly three generations of bad blood and bruising tackles.

Then there's LA Galaxy vs. LAFC. It will have been just 572 days since the start of El Trafico when the two squads meet in the Western Conference Semifinals on Thursday at Banc of California Stadium (10:30 p.m. ET, watch live on ESPN). It took a little more than 18 months for these matchups to morph into one of MLS' strongest, tensest and most entertaining rivalries, with this week's game -- the first with real stakes -- promising to add to the rapidly developing plot. Get your tickets if you can.

Cheapest single ticket right now for El Tráfico VI with fees is over $300 on the secondary market.

...Also known as the price of two (Bundesliga) SEASON tickets at FC Bayern. pic.twitter.com/hAAj1HEsI2

— Zack Goldman (@ThatDamnYank) October 21, 2019

It's remarkable how quickly El Trafico has become a thing, but it shouldn't be all that surprising. Consider the squads. The Galaxy always thought of themselves as MLS' glamour franchise. They wanted to be the U.S.'s answer to Real Madrid, an American Galacticos that could export itself internationally. This is the team of David Beckham and Hollywood, a five-time MLS Cup winner that never wavered in its ambition, even if the results on the field suffered. The team projected style and class and largesse, regardless of results.

Then LAFC showed up, all black-clad and badass, bringing a downtown cool. This team was a startup that had history with the Chivas USA fanbase, only with a team and a front office that made all the right decisions. Banc of California Stadium, located just off the freeway and near public transportation, exudes confidence and embodies what MLS needs to be in 2019 and beyond. If the Galaxy wore the crown, LAFC were coming for it -- and coming for it fast.

The games between the two helped. In that first match, Carlos Vela scored in the fifth minute and again in the 26th while a Galaxy own goal saw LAFC jump to a 3-0 lead. The Galaxy clawed back through Sebastian Lletget, then Chris Pontius, down a goal with 15 minutes to play. Enter The Lion. Zlatan Ibrahimovic, less than 48 hours removed from landing at LAX, scored a laser from deep in the 77th minute, then won the game in stoppage time.

"Since an MLS Cup, I haven't felt that much energy," Andrew Alesana, a capo for Galaxy supporter group the Riot Squad, said of the match.

In the July rematch, LAFC again jumped to a 2-0 lead, only to watch goals from Romain Alessandrini and Ola Kamara after the 82nd minute tie the match. In August, Zlatan scored first, Vela tallied a penalty kick, and the teams tied. The Galaxy finished 2018 one point out of the playoffs, and those three matches with LAFC were the highlights.

Move to 2019, and there's a narrative that LAFC can't beat their rivals. A 3-2 loss at Dignity Health Sports Park did nothing to change that, especially considering that Bob Bradley's side had been the best team in the league by far up to that point. A wild 3-3 late August affair, featuring five first-half goals and a 53rd-minute equalizer from Vela, was the last match before Thursday's meeting. Tally so far: two Galaxy wins, three draws and zero LAFC victories.

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That's fun and all, but a good rivalry needs more than exciting games to attract the casual fan. It needs characters and villains. El Trafico succeeds there, too.

It starts with the big man. Ibrahimovic talks the talk and walks the walk. He's a physical specimen unlike any other that MLS has seen, a goal scorer nonpareil and kind of a jerk in the (mostly) most wonderful ways. There's a real venom in his comments about LAFC, an obvious dislike that occasionally crosses the line. On the other side, there's Vela, an elite enigma with the league's best left foot hidden behind a grinning, aloof expression. He's the MLS equivalent of ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ -- maddening, brilliant, whatever. Ibrahimovic and Vela get there in different ways, but they are equally captivating, and the rivalry benefits.

As for the name, well, El Trafico is a name that's perfect, dumb and perfectly dumb. Bob Bradley isn't into it, and that's fine. He's probably not wrong. It is silly. But it's memorable and special, too, something that stands out in a league dominated by FC this and United that. It is, like the rivalry itself, growing into something special.

Seattle vs. Portland boasts the history and the passion, and the Cascadia Cup is a thing of North American soccer brilliance. The Atlantic Cup, contested between D.C. United and New York Red Bulls, has some of that same flair. Same goes for the California Clasico (LA Galaxy vs. San Jose), Hudson River Derby (NYCFC vs. New York Red Bulls), Rocky Mountain Cup (Real Salt Lake vs. Colorado Rapids) and, even now, Hell is Real between FC Cincinnati and Columbus Crew SC. These all have their moments, occupying special places in the hearts and minds of an MLS club's most rabid supporters.

But if you're a neutral, El Trafico is perfecto.

Hosts South Africa will kickstart the 2020 U-19 World Cup on January 17, when they take on Afghanistan in Kimberley. The schedule for the 16-team tournament, to be played over 24 days across eight venues, was announced by the ICC on Thursday. Apart from Kimberley, the games will be played in Benoni, Bloemfontein and Potchefstroom with the final scheduled for February 9. There is free entry to all matches.

Along with Afghanistan, South Africa have UAE and Canada in Group D. Defending champions India are in Group A, slotted with New Zealand, Sri Lanka and first-time qualifiers Japan. Australia, the runners-up of the 2018 edition, are paired up with England, West Indies and another first-time team Nigeria in Group B while Group C sees Pakistan being joined by Bangladesh, Zimbabwe and Scotland. From each group, the bottom two teams will fight in the Plate tournament while the top two teams will proceed for the Super League stage.

Potchefstroom's JP Marks Oval will play host to both semi-finals and the final. There are also warm-up games scheduled between January 12-15 in Johannesburg and Pretoria.

Japan and Nigeria qualified for the tournament after emerging as champions of the East Asia Pacific and Africa regions. The other three regional qualifiers are Canada (Americas), UAE (Asia) and Scotland (Europe). With four titles, India have won the most U-19 World Cups. Australia have won three times, Pakistan twice while England, West Indies and South Africa have won once each.

In a lot of ways, T20 appeared to be the best developed element of Justin Langer's coaching repertoire when he replaced Darren Lehmann some 18 months ago.

In Western Australia, he had played a large role in making the Perth Scorchers the most feared T20 team in the BBL, turning the WACA Ground "furnace" into a fortress, mastering all the defensive skills of the game, using game analytics effectively and also making shrewd use of the parallel Scorchers and Western Australia programs to keep his playing list strong.

Yet for all the dramas surrounding Australia's Test team in the wake of Newlands and then the ODI team's underperformance since winning the 2015 World Cup, it is international T20 that has long looked to be a blindspot. They have never won the T20 World Cup, nor been much more than a middling team in the scattered bilateral series.

So when Langer looks to the method for success in the format where Australia will next have an ICC global event, in October and November next year, he will be leaning heavily on his experiences with the Scorchers, allied to the trove of lessons he has taken on board at international level. To attempt to win a World Cup at home carries great expectations, but also more than a few in-built advantages for the hosts.

"As we saw with the 50-over World Cup there's obviously some home ground advantage because we're used to the conditions, we're used to the dimensions of the grounds, we'll have a good mix of players who play Big Bash at all the different venues," Langer told ESPNcricinfo. "But to win the World Cup it's like winning an AFL Grand Final, everything's got to go right at the time.

"What we can look after at the moment is how we lead up to it, guys getting their job in the team. We've shown by selecting this team, very role specific, we want them in the short term, these six games coming up, but over the next year and couple of years to become the best in the world at what their role is, whether it's bowling at the death or finishing in the middle of the innings. The non-negotiables are still our fielding, that's got to be sharp.

"But if our guys can get really great at their roles, my experience of Big Bash and T20 cricket, is if you've got specialists who do their roles really well, you'll win more games than you lose."

Getting the best out of Steven Smith

Anyone who watched the Ashes for more than an hour or two would have been left with the conclusion that the game has seldom seen a genius like Smith, but a few weeks later and his selection in the T20 squad ahead of the likes of Chris Lynn raised a few eyebrows. In truth, Smith has been a fair proxy for Australia's fortunes in the format, occasionally dominating, but more often looking distracted between Test or ODI assignments.

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In seeking to get the best out of Smith, Langer believes that continuity in the format will allow him to focus his brilliant knack for problem solving with the bat, while at the same time becoming more of an area of personal hunger due to the trophy missing from Australia's cabinet. Equally, Langer's belief in a more unified white-ball squad between 50 and 20-over cricket - once again after the fashion of the Scorchers - will help Smith find the sense of normality that has always aided his batting.

"The two ways I've described Steve Smith are his hunger for the game and that's his batting in general and runs, but also his ability to solve problems," Langer said. "T20 is no different, you've got to solve a lot of puzzles and he's got this incredibly intuitive mind where he wants to solve the problem. I'm really confident he'll be a great success there. The only thing we have to manage with him and Dave Warner and a couple of the quicks is the fact they are in all three forms of the game and that can be a challenge in itself.

"My view is that in white-ball cricket, the closer we can get the two squads together the better, because you can use skills for both 50-over and T20 cricket if that makes sense. That's more how I look at it than one-day cricket taking a backward step. We'll probably use as many experiences in 50-over cricket to help us become better in T20 cricket and vice versa."

Moneyball methods

Perhaps the most significant contract signed before the start of the summer was not those for any of Langer's assistant coaches or even a new selector to join him and Trevor Hohns on the national panel, but instead a new deal with the cricket data analytics company CricViz for their extensive suite of information on Australia and their opponents.

CricViz is no stranger to Australian cricket, having worked closely with broadcasters and also teams such as the Melbourne Renegades (led by captain Aaron Finch and the coach Andrew McDonald), but the new partnership is a first for the national team. In the past CA has accessed intelligence from the likes of Cricket21 in addition to the work of the team analyst Dene Hills and his colleagues.

Langer, who relied heavily on the insights of the Scorchers' performance analyst Dean Plunkett, described CricViz and its work with Hills and company as "the Rolls Royce version" of what he had in Perth. "The data these days is incredible," he said. "Some of the stuff they give to us is unbelievable. What the trick is though, is to siphon it down and get the little gold nuggets that you work out for selection and that you can sell to the players, which makes sense to them, 'okay if you do this well, then you win a lot of games'."

Defensive skills of an attacking game

Something that Australia pioneered in the 1980s was an identification of the fact that limited-overs cricket, while commercially devised to showcase more aggressive skills to a new audience, was actually best played through rigid adherence to many of the game's less glamorous fundamentals. Tight fielding, alert running between the wickets and taking singles, and keeping wickets in hand were all hallmarks of the former coach Bob Simpson and the unfancied but ultimately victorious 1987 World Cup team.

Similarly, Langer's Scorchers were rigorous Roundheads as opposed to the Cavaliers back east, fighting out every game and often strangling the life out of opponents before they got room to free their arms and swing for the fences. For Langer the T20 game is a pressure contest every single ball, so anything that can enhance the sense of pressure or even claustrophobia on an opponent is, as he would put it, "like gold".

"That's just a good blueprint for playing great T20 cricket," he said. "I've said all along one of my important KPIs is how we throw, because it's indicative of our attitude and our athleticism. Our fielding and the defensive game - back then we had a very good bowling attack. We had Alfonso Thomas, we had Yasir Arafat who could bowl at the death particularly, and I think that helped guys like AJ Tye and Nathan Coulter-Nile to learn. And we were really good up front as well at the WACA.

"We had swing bowlers like Jason Behrendorff, we also recruited David Willey, we had Mitchell Johnson. So the blueprint's there, the next plan is to execute it really well. The running between wickets back then was something we prided ourselves on, it also puts the opposition under huge pressure when you're not only hitting boundaries but running hard between wickets.

"We also know that the rotation of strike is an incredibly powerful statistic in T20 cricket, and in fielding you're under the pump because you can't afford to make mistakes."

Leadership and learning

The humble beginnings of the Australian team last year after the Newlands scandal meant that new ways of playing, winning and conducting business all got the chance to grow without too much pushback about "this being the way it's always been done", and the T20 team have a similar opportunity. Under Finch, who grew in global respect as leader of the World Cup team having already fashioned a strong reputation as a leader with the Renegades, the Australian team should not be overly beset by ego or an unwillingness to learn.

At the same time, the fact that Australia were able to come through the trials of a long England tour that took in a World Cup and the Ashes, registering more than creditable results in each, has imbued Langer with quiet confidence that, given a year's run at it, they can build a winning T20 combination first on home soil and then again in India at the next T20 World Cup in 2021."There's still growth for the group, and it's the same with our captains, whether it's Finchy or Tim Paine they're doing a tremendous job for us and there's still growth in both of them," Langer said. "That's exciting for us, it's exciting for them, that's what gets us out of bed every day, doesn't it.

"But one of the things I love about the role is you've got to keep learning and keep getting better. The last 18 months I'm learning so much and that's what's exciting. Despite it being tiring and despite it being different pressures, I'm learning so much from this gig and in terms of leadership I'm loving that part of it."

Sam Billings has described the England vice-captaincy as "a huge honour" and recognition of his status as a "developing leader."

Billings has endured a frustrating year. Having started it with his highest score in international cricket - 87 in a T20I against West Indies in March - he then suffered a dislocated shoulder that ended his chances of making the World Cup squad. But, having missed five months of cricket, news that he has been made vice-captain for England's T20I tour of New Zealand has provided a pleasing boost.

Now he is looking forward to learning from England's captain, Eoin Morgan, and trying to establish himself in the side with a view to the T20 World Cup in a year's time.

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"It's great to get some recognition and it's a huge honour," Billings said from Christchurch as England acclimatised to a chilly start to their tour. "It's a great opportunity to be recognised as a developing leader. And there's an element of personal development about it, too.

"I captained the England Lions last winter and my county for the last two years. Eoin gave me a call a couple of weeks ago and said he'd love me to do it. I suppose he must see something in me. I'm looking forward to learning form him and implanting what I've done at Kent.

"But I'm in the side as a batsman first and foremost and then as a keeper. You have to be able to perform at that top level consistently in those roles firstly. The captaincy is an added bonus and one I really enjoy. It makes you take responsibility for yourself and other guys."

With England taking a young and inexperienced squad on this part of the tour, the promotion of Billings is not a total surprise. He is not only the sort of dynamic cricketer England are looking for in limited-overs cricket, but has the sort of positive outlook so admired and exemplified by Morgan. Still, there was no need to name a vice-captain on such a short tour and Billings' appointment - as vice-captain and keeper - ahead of the more experienced Jonny Bairstow underlines the respect the England management have in his qualities.

Now he says he is looking forward to seeing the new generation of players find their feet in international cricket, though his own eyes remain focused upon the T20 World Cup in Australia in 12 month's time.

"One great thing that's been created around this group it that's it's so easy for people to come in and express themselves," he said. "You're encouraged to play the way that got you here. Tom Banton, for example, had a brilliant summer and will be encouraged to play exactly as he has been. Pat Brown is another with a few tricks up his sleeve who has impressed over the last couple of years. It's great that we've that culture where people can really go in and excel.

"I've been on the fringes for the last four or five years. I've made some performances along the way, but we have such depth in our squad in terms of batsmen and keepers.

"The last innings I played was that 87 in the West Indies. But then I got injured and missed a lot of the year. So even though that innings in the West Indies was a long time ago, it's about continuing that momentum in an England shirt. For me, it's about enjoying it and it's good to be back playing. The injury has given me some perspective. I just have to make the most out of every opportunity. For me, as a player, my focus is on being in that T20 World Cup squad."