Liverpool have signed World Cup-winning midfielder Alexis Mac Allister from Brighton, the club announced on Thursday.

Mac Allister, 24, joins the Merseyside club as Jurgen Klopp's first signing ahead of an expected busy transfer window with the club looking to improve upon their fifth-placed finish in the 2022-23 season.

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Sources have told ESPN that the midfielder has put pen to paper on a contract until 2028 at Anfield.

The Argentina midfielder was a key figure for Brighton, contributing 12 goals and three assists in a season which saw the club secure Europa League qualification for the first time in their history.

ESPN reported on Monday that Liverpool wanted to complete a deal for the 24-year-old before he joined up with his national team ahead of their June 15 friendly against Australia in China.

Mac Allister also impressed at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, starting in all but one of Argentina's matches as they won the competition for the first time since 1986. The midfielder scored in his side's 2-0 group stage win over Poland.

"It feels amazing. It's a dream come true, it's amazing to be here and I can't wait to get started," Mac Allister told the club's website.

"I wanted to be in [from] the first day of pre-season, so it's good that everything is done. I'm looking forward to meeting my teammates.

"It was a fantastic year for me -- World Cup, what we achieved with Brighton -- but now it's time to think about Liverpool and try to be a better player and a better human being every day."

Sources told ESPN in April that Liverpool would end their lengthy pursuit of Borussia Dortmund midfielder Jude Bellingham and instead dedicate funds towards a rebuild of the squad after missing out on Champions League football for the first time since the 2015-16 campaign.

The club have already announced the departures of midfielders Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, James Milner and Naby Keita, alongside Roberto Firmino, who leaves Anfield after eight seasons at the club.

The signing of Mac Allister is the first act under new sporting director Jorg Schmadtke, who joined the club having previously worked with Wolfsburg, Cologne and Hannover.

Sources have told ESPN that Liverpool also retain an interest in Wolves midfielder Matheus Nunes, Nice's Khephren Thuram and Borussia Monchengladbach's Manu Kone.

Cristiano Ronaldo has said he is open to the idea of owning a football club after retiring from the game in "two to three years maximum."

The Portugal international is under contract with Saudi Arabian club Al Nassr until June 2025 but is already making plans about his future.

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"I don't rule out becoming a club owner," Ronaldo, 38, told reporters during an event in Madrid to sponsor URSU 9 bottled water, his new business venture. "It's something I thought about a few years back. I probably would like to own a [football] club. I'm at the end of my career, two to three years maximum."

Meanwhile, Ronaldo, who signed for Al Nassr in January after leaving Manchester United, celebrated the decision of former Real Madrid teammate Karim Benzema to join the Saudi Pro League.

Benzema, 35, voided his one-year contract extension with Madrid and instead signed for Saudi champions Al Ittihad.

"I knew that by me going to [Saudi] Arabia I would open the box," Ronaldo said. "Karim [Benzema] has gone there but I'm sure many others will follow. In two or three years, it [Saudi Pro League] will be one of the most important in the world. May all the stars come to Arabia, there are no problems with the league. What we want is competition."

One player who will not join them is Lionel Messi. The Argentina forward turned down a lucrative offer from Saudi team Al Hilal and confirmed on Wednesday that he is set to join Major League Soccer side Inter Miami CF as a free agent after his contract with Paris Saint-Germain expires on June 30.

Sergio Ramos, Jordi Alba, Sergio Busquets, N'Golo Kante, Angel Di Maria, Iago Aspas and Roberto Firmino are also reportedly being lined up to sign for clubs in the Saudi Pro League.

Pole vault is not a cheap pursuit but Lizzie Edden is developing a fine group of young athletes despite many of them coming from poor backgrounds

When Lizzie Edden tried to get involved with pole vault, she could easily have been put off by the expensive nature of the sport. But she went on to clear 3.95m at the British Championships and she is now developing an impressive group of vaulters at the Midlands Vaulting Academy.

The youngsters at the Midlands Vaulting Academy are not just talented athletes either. In many cases they come from deprived backgrounds. Given this, finding several hundred pounds to buy a pole is difficult for many of them.

“As a pole vaulter I told people in athletics that the reason I wasn’t making progress is because I’ve not got the right poles,” says Edden, “but there was this whole sense that ‘this is the point of pole vault and you only do it if you have money, because you need to buy poles’.

“I thought this was wrong,” she adds. “I don’t feel it should be the thing that you have to deal with and I never wanted any vaulter to be held back due to their background or the fact they didn’t have poles.

“I just want to make pole vault inclusive to everyone. I decided I didn’t want anyone else to have their progress hindered because they didn’t have the right poles.”

She adds: “We have lots of children in the Midlands Vaulting Academy who aren’t very privileged at home, or they have had some traumatic experiences or are in the case system. This has really given them a new purpose to life. It’s been the best thing we’ve ever done.”

Edden faced the same problems with lack of equipment and limited facilities when she set up the Midlands Vaulting Academy with Adam Lyons. But after working through the day as a teacher in Nuneaton she spent hours during the evenings applying for grants. In addition other help has found its way to the Academy via Neuff Athletic, for example, who sell poles to the Academy at a generous cost price.

The group is enjoying success already too with Charley O’Neill winning pretty much everything in the under-17 age group last year – such as English Schools, SIAB Schools International and England Athletics titles. O’Neill is one of Neuff’s athlete ambassadors as well and Edden says: “The other kids in the Academy absolutely buzz off her. They just want to be Charley.

“She’s in the care system too so athletics gives her a real boost in her life. Since we’ve had Charley, our group has grown to about 22 kids. The parents stand there too and say ‘we’d like our child to be like her’, which is really nice.”

During an age when some of the world’s leading athletes have, quite literally, a pole vault set-up in their back garden, Edden can only dream of such facilities and last winter her group had to travel to Loughborough to vault indoors due to Alexander Stadium in Birmingham being unavailable.

“In the UK there are so many barriers just to train,” Edden says. “There is not much backing from clubs (for pole vault). But you would never see a hurdler without hurdles.”

So what is her dream? “I’d love to have a bed and stick it in a barn or something and have the freedom to train on it and come and go when we like.”

Find out more about the Midlands Vaulting Academy here and Neuff Athletic here.

MIAMI -- Heat star Jimmy Butler vowed to set a better tone for his team in the wake of Wednesday's 109-94 loss to the Denver Nuggets in Game 3 of the NBA Finals, acknowledging that Miami -- playing in its first Finals game in front of a home crowd in nine years -- needed to come out with more energy and effort, especially after getting outrebounded 58-33.

The Heat now trail the series 2-1.

"I don't know," Butler said, when asked why the energy is lacking. "I can't answer that. Maybe we're at home; we think we did something. I don't know. It just can't happen. It won't happen again. It starts with myself. I have to lock in on the defensive end. I have to go up and get loose balls. I think if I start playing and doing that, then everybody else has to follow suit."

Aside from Nuggets stars Nikola Jokic (32 points, 21 rebounds and 10 assists) and Jamal Murray (34 points, 10 rebounds and 10 assists) becoming the first pair of teammates in NBA history to record 30-point triple-doubles in the same regular-season or postseason game, according to ESPN Stats and Information research, what irritated Heat coach Erik Spoelstra was that his team didn't play with the same kind of edge that has defined its unlikely run as a No. 8 seed in the Eastern Conference playoffs.

"I just think sometimes, for us, when we lose a lot of those physical battles, the effort plays, the loose balls, the rebounding battles, that's our identity," Spoelstra said. "And sometimes, that can affect the flow of the rest of your game. That's not an excuse. I think the thing that we've proven over and over and over is we can win and find different ways to win regardless of whether we have confidence, regardless of whether the ball is going in.

"We have a determination to impact the game and find a different solution or different way to win a game regardless of whether the ball is going in. It felt like, at times, some of those missed shots at the rim or in the paint, the makeable shots that we've made the last several months or weeks, that affected a little bit of our, whatever, going down the other end. And that hasn't happened a lot."

The postgame news conference room inside Kaseya Center was quiet as Heat players and Spoelstra tried to explain how Jokic, Murray & Co. were able to control the glass, especially as Denver pulled away in the second half. Veteran Miami guard Kyle Lowry said he felt Murray's early success helped Jokic get rolling later in the contest.

"I think the game started off with Jamal Murray, and it kind of made Jokic's game a little -- a little bit easier," Lowry said. "We had the help on Jamal. Jokic is going to get his. He's a two-time MVP. He knows how to play basketball. He's really talented.

"Sometimes, he's going to do what he's going to do -- 32-10-21, that's pretty good numbers. He's 7 feet. He can do pretty much everything. But I think Jamal set the tone for their group, and he was aggressive, assertive. And, you know, he set the tone, and it made things a little bit easier for Jokic."

In Butler's mind, the fix for Friday's Game 4 is simple: The Heat must come out more aggressive as they try not to fall into a 3-1 hole against a Nuggets team that played like it had a point to make all night on Wednesday.

"I feel like we just got to come out with more energy and effort, and that's correctible," Butler said. "That's on us as a group. No X's and O's can fix that. So come out, dive on the floor, get loose balls, get defensive rebounds and maybe, just maybe, it would have been a different game."

MIAMI -- This time of year, lots of old basketball videos circulate around social media. Interviews from years ago suddenly sound prescient based off of what's happening game to game in the NBA Finals. Big shots from previous Finals games mirror a key play from the current series.

Recently, footage of Denver Nuggets stars Jamal Murray and Nikola Jokic playing together at the 2014 Nike Hoops Summit in Portland, Oregon, made its way around Instagram. Neither of them were the featured stars in that game -- big men Karl-Anthony Towns and Jahlil Okafor were. But Murray and Jokic were paired together on the World team, and there are plays between them that look a lot like what they have been doing to the Miami Heat during these Finals.

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"I didn't see the clip," Jokic told ESPN after he and Murray became the first teammates in Finals history to record triple-doubles in the same game during the Nuggets' 109-94 Game 3 win Wednesday night at the Kaseya Center that gave them a 2-1 series lead. "But I do remember that we played together and that I didn't speak English at the time."

Jokic deleted all his social media accounts a few years ago, but he and Murray have long since spoken the same language on and off the court.

"A lot of guys play with each other," Nuggets coach Michael Malone said. "I think those two guys play for each other and off of each other, and they read each other so well."

Wednesday's performance was a highlight reel for what's become one of the best two-man games in the NBA.

There was the pick-and-roll: Jokic set an on-ball screen for Murray 32 times in Game 3, tied for their most in a game this season and tied for their second most since becoming teammates in 2016, according to Second Spectrum tracking data.

There was the dribble handoff, which resulted in 15 points -- after going for just 14 points in the first two games combined.

There was even some great defense as they combined to contest 31 shots in Game 3, of which the Heat made just seven, according to ESPN Stats & Information research.

Jokic finished with 32 points, 21 rebounds and 10 assists. Murray had 34 points, 10 rebounds and 10 assists. It was clinical. It was also beautiful.

"I'd say it's a trust and a feel," Murray said. "That's the best way for me to put it. It's not really X's and O's. It's just reading the game and trusting that the other is going to make the right play. If he throws it to me, he knows and expects what to see from me, and he knows the mood I'm in.

"If something is there, we go. If it's not, we don't force it. He makes tough shots look easy, and he's been doing it for a very long time."

"I think the consistency doesn't get talked about enough," Murray added.

Earlier in this series, Heat guard Kyle Lowry compared Jokic and Murray to the Hall of Fame tandem of Tim Duncan and Tony Parker. It was high praise, and it was warranted. But it took a bit for the basketball world to digest it, considering those two San Antonio Spurs won five championships together.

This is just Jokic and Murray's first Finals appearance, and they still need two more wins against an always-dangerous Heat team to earn their first championship.

But one player who was in Portland nine years ago when the beginnings of the Jokic-Murray tandem were forming completely agrees.

"They're like the old-school Spurs," Towns told ESPN. "They just keep walking you down."

In all honesty, Towns said he can't claim to have seen the potential of the duo during the week they spent as teammates on the World team during that camp. He remembers thinking Murray was special, because he saw how mentally tough he was and admired how he meditated before games. He says he even tried to get the Minnesota Timberwolves to draft Murray when they had a chance in 2016.

But destiny had other plans for Jokic and Murray, and it's playing out in these Finals.

"They've been together a long time," Towns said. "It's why they have such good chemistry. Every team that wins championships has had a stability that has allowed them to all get acclimated with each other at a championship level."

Noah Syndergaard's rough 2023 didn't get any better Wednesday night in Cincinnati, leaving Los Angeles Dodgers manager Dave Roberts to say the veteran right-hander might need a "reset" to fix his struggles.

Syndergaard allowed six runs and seven hits in three innings as the Dodgers' losing streak hit four with an 8-6 loss to the Reds.

Syndergaard, who signed a one-year, $13 million deal with the Dodgers during the offseason, watched his ERA balloon to 7.16. He has given up five runs or more in three straight starts.

He also has been dealing with a blister on his throwing hand, but Roberts said the struggles go beyond that.

"Noah has been going through it all year. It is not from lack of effort or preparation. It's just not working," Roberts said. "There's things with that blister. There was a fingernail break tonight. He's not going to make excuses. He understands about performance.

"We're going to sit down with him and try to figure out. Obviously, we can't continue at this pace of performance. There might be an opportunity to give him a reset to get this taken care of. You give up a lead. Get the lead again and give it up, it takes a toll on the offense. We couldn't overcome it."

Syndergaard has allowed six earned runs or more in four starts this season overall, tied with Cincinnati's Graham Ashcroft and the Oakland Athletics' Kyle Muller for most in the majors.

He previously had expressed displeasure with his performance this season, calling himself the rotation's "weakest link" last week.

Syndergaard, 30, missed all of 2020 after undergoing Tommy John surgery and has a 4.71 ERA over the past two-plus seasons. The right-hander went 10-10 with a 3.94 ERA last season with the Angels and National League-champion Phillies.

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.