FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Lionel Messi, Luis Suarez and their Inter Miami teammates took the field at their practice facility Thursday for another training session.
There wasn't much different about what they did. Dribbling drills. Some laughs. Interactions with coaches.
But this training was more important than most.
In a few days, Inter Miami will play one of the biggest matches of its five-year club history when the Herons take on French juggernaut Paris Saint-Germain in the Club World Cup round of 16.
The storylines will be plenty.
Inter Miami will be a heavy underdog against Paris Saint-Germain, winners of last month's Champions League final in a 5-0 thrashing of Inter Milan. It will be uncharted territory for Messi, who rarely has in his decorated career entered a match as anything other than the favorite.
It will be the first time Messi faces his former club since his exit from Paris Saint-Germain in 2023 after two seasons.
He also will be facing his former Barcelona coach Luis Enrique, now the coach of PSG, who has had a big influence on Messi and several Inter Miami stars.
Messi was coached by Enrique for three of his 17 seasons with Barcelona. The Spanish coach led Barcelona from 2014 to 2017. He won nine titles, including two La Liga trophies, three from Copa del Rey and one Champions League.
Messi, Suarez and Brazilian star Neymar played together under Enrique for three memorable seasons, forming the famed “MSN” trio that combined for 364 goals and 173 assists.
“He has been very important to my career," Suarez said of Enrique, “what I learned from him and just being around him. I had a competitive DNA before I played for him, but he upgraded it even more.”
Miami's Jordi Alba and Sergio Busquets also played for Enrique, and coach Javier Mascherano considers him a great friend.
“I have said this many times, but Luis Enrique is the best coach in the world,” Alba said after Miami's draw with Palmeiras on Monday, "not only just as a soccer coach, but also in the way he manages the whole group, which is spectacular. He’s a phenomenon. We’ll meet him and hug him, but when the referee blows the opening whistle, we’re going try to beat him, which is what all of us here are trying to do.”
Mascherano, 41, also played alongside Messi, Suarez & Co. when Barcelona won the treble under Enrique in 2015.
“I have a special relationship with him,” Mascherano said. "I have a special relationship with his family. Obviously, it will be very special facing him. It will be an honor for me facing a great coach. One of the greatest coaches I’ve had in my career.”
The knockout stages of the Club World Cup begin Saturday, and Inter Miami's showdown with PSG is Sunday at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta.
Despite entering the tournament on somewhat of a slump, Miami became the only Major League Soccer team to advance to the Club World Cup round of 16 after playing Palmeiras to a 2-2 draw earlier this week, finishing runner-up to the Brazilian club in Group A.
That was after the Herons secured a 2-1 victory over two-time European champion Porto on a trademark free kick by Messi, who along with his longtime teammates has driven Miami's belief that it can make a statement on the global stage.
Suarez noted how important advancing to the knockout stage was for the club's trajectory, but the Herons know the odds for Sunday's matchup. They know they'll be the underdogs.
They insist they're ready for the challenge.
“Now that we are facing likely the best team in Europe — the Champions League champion — we will try to maintain the same commitment and unity and play a great match," Mascherano said. “If there is something this sport has proven is that anything can happen in any match. And who’s to say that Sunday will (not) be our day. Sometimes, things happen."
AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer
Paris Saint-Germain manager Luis Enrique directs his players during the Club World Cup Group B soccer match between Seattle Sounders and PSG in Seattle, Monday, June 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Ryan Sun)
Inter Miami's Luis Suarez kicks the ball away from Palmeiras' Marcos Rocha during the Club World Cup Group A soccer match between Inter Miami and Palmeiras in Miami Gardens, Fla., Monday, June 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)
Inter Miami's Lionel Messi shoots on goal against Palmeiras' Richard Rios during the Club World Cup Group A soccer match between Inter Miami and Palmeiras in Miami Gardens, Fla., Monday, June 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Becky Pepper-Jackson finished third in the discus throw in West Virginia last year though she was in just her first year of high school. Now a 15-year-old sophomore, Pepper-Jackson is aware that her upcoming season could be her last.
West Virginia has banned transgender girls like Pepper-Jackson from competing in girls and women's sports, and is among the more than two dozen states with similar laws. Though the West Virginia law has been blocked by lower courts, the outcome could be different at the conservative-dominated Supreme Court, which has allowed multiple restrictions on transgender people to be enforced in the past year.
The justices are hearing arguments Tuesday in two cases over whether the sports bans violate the Constitution or the landmark federal law known as Title IX that prohibits sex discrimination in education. The second case comes from Idaho, where college student Lindsay Hecox challenged that state's law.
Decisions are expected by early summer.
President Donald Trump's Republican administration has targeted transgender Americans from the first day of his second term, including ousting transgender people from the military and declaring that gender is immutable and determined at birth.
Pepper-Jackson has become the face of the nationwide battle over the participation of transgender girls in athletics that has played out at both the state and federal levels as Republicans have leveraged the issue as a fight for athletic fairness for women and girls.
“I think it’s something that needs to be done,” Pepper-Jackson said in an interview with The Associated Press that was conducted over Zoom. “It’s something I’m here to do because ... this is important to me. I know it’s important to other people. So, like, I’m here for it.”
She sat alongside her mother, Heather Jackson, on a sofa in their home just outside Bridgeport, a rural West Virginia community about 40 miles southwest of Morgantown, to talk about a legal fight that began when she was a middle schooler who finished near the back of the pack in cross-country races.
Pepper-Jackson has grown into a competitive discus and shot put thrower. In addition to the bronze medal in the discus, she finished eighth among shot putters.
She attributes her success to hard work, practicing at school and in her backyard, and lifting weights. Pepper-Jackson has been taking puberty-blocking medication and has publicly identified as a girl since she was in the third grade, though the Supreme Court's decision in June upholding state bans on gender-affirming medical treatment for minors has forced her to go out of state for care.
Her very improvement as an athlete has been cited as a reason she should not be allowed to compete against girls.
“There are immutable physical and biological characteristic differences between men and women that make men bigger, stronger, and faster than women. And if we allow biological males to play sports against biological females, those differences will erode the ability and the places for women in these sports which we have fought so hard for over the last 50 years,” West Virginia's attorney general, JB McCuskey, said in an AP interview. McCuskey said he is not aware of any other transgender athlete in the state who has competed or is trying to compete in girls or women’s sports.
Despite the small numbers of transgender athletes, the issue has taken on outsize importance. The NCAA and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committees banned transgender women from women's sports after Trump signed an executive order aimed at barring their participation.
The public generally is supportive of the limits. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in October 2025 found that about 6 in 10 U.S. adults “strongly” or “somewhat” favored requiring transgender children and teenagers to only compete on sports teams that match the sex they were assigned at birth, not the gender they identify with, while about 2 in 10 were “strongly” or “somewhat” opposed and about one-quarter did not have an opinion.
About 2.1 million adults, or 0.8%, and 724,000 people age 13 to 17, or 3.3%, identify as transgender in the U.S., according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.
Those allied with the administration on the issue paint it in broader terms than just sports, pointing to state laws, Trump administration policies and court rulings against transgender people.
"I think there are cultural, political, legal headwinds all supporting this notion that it’s just a lie that a man can be a woman," said John Bursch, a lawyer with the conservative Christian law firm Alliance Defending Freedom that has led the legal campaign against transgender people. “And if we want a society that respects women and girls, then we need to come to terms with that truth. And the sooner that we do that, the better it will be for women everywhere, whether that be in high school sports teams, high school locker rooms and showers, abused women’s shelters, women’s prisons.”
But Heather Jackson offered different terms to describe the effort to keep her daughter off West Virginia's playing fields.
“Hatred. It’s nothing but hatred,” she said. "This community is the community du jour. We have a long history of isolating marginalized parts of the community.”
Pepper-Jackson has seen some of the uglier side of the debate on display, including when a competitor wore a T-shirt at the championship meet that said, “Men Don't Belong in Women's Sports.”
“I wish these people would educate themselves. Just so they would know that I’m just there to have a good time. That’s it. But it just, it hurts sometimes, like, it gets to me sometimes, but I try to brush it off,” she said.
One schoolmate, identified as A.C. in court papers, said Pepper-Jackson has herself used graphic language in sexually bullying her teammates.
Asked whether she said any of what is alleged, Pepper-Jackson said, “I did not. And the school ruled that there was no evidence to prove that it was true.”
The legal fight will turn on whether the Constitution's equal protection clause or the Title IX anti-discrimination law protects transgender people.
The court ruled in 2020 that workplace discrimination against transgender people is sex discrimination, but refused to extend the logic of that decision to the case over health care for transgender minors.
The court has been deluged by dueling legal briefs from Republican- and Democratic-led states, members of Congress, athletes, doctors, scientists and scholars.
The outcome also could influence separate legal efforts seeking to bar transgender athletes in states that have continued to allow them to compete.
If Pepper-Jackson is forced to stop competing, she said she will still be able to lift weights and continue playing trumpet in the school concert and jazz bands.
“It will hurt a lot, and I know it will, but that’s what I’ll have to do,” she said.
Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Becky Pepper-Jackson poses for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
The Supreme Court stands is Washington, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
FILE - Protestors hold signs during a rally at the state capitol in Charleston, W.Va., on March 9, 2023. (AP Photo/Chris Jackson, file)
