DOHA, Qatar (AP) — A scorpion kick by Lizbeth Ovalle, the most expensive player ever in women’s soccer, and Santiago Montiel’s long-distance overhead shot won the FIFA awards on Tuesday for best goals last season.
Both had their backs to the net when scoring the winners. Fans voted for Ovalle and Montiel to receive the Marta Award and Puskas Award, respectively.
Ovalle flicked the ball with her heels in a midair leap facing away from goal playing in the Mexican league for Tigres against Guadalajara.
The women’s award is named for Brazil great Marta who is now Ovalle’s teammate at Orlando Pride. Marta won the award last year and also had a goal nominated by FIFA for this year’s edition.
Ovalle, who is also known as Jacquie, moved for a women’s world record transfer fee of $1.5 million to join the Pride from Tigres in August.
Montiel scored for Independiente in a game in Argentina’s Primera Division against Independiente Rivadavia. He leaped in the air about 22 meters (yards) out rising to meet a bouncing ball after a defender’s clearing header from a corner.
FIFA is staging its annual Best Awards at a private dinner in Doha on the sidelines of Paris Saint-Germain playing Flamengo in the Intercontinental Cup game on Wednesday.
The awards for best player and best coach in men’s and women’s soccer were due later Tuesday.
AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer
FILE - Orlando Pride midfielder Jacqueline Ovalle (13) kicks the ball against NJ/NY Gotham FC defender Mandy Freeman, left, during the second half of an NWSL women's semifinal soccer match, Sunday, Nov. 16, 2025, in Orlando, Fla. (AP Photo/Kevin Kolczynski, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. stock market is drifting on Tuesday following mixed data on the economy’s strength, which did little to clear uncertainty about where interest rates may be heading.
The S&P 500 slipped 0.1% in early trading and remains a bit below its all-time high set last week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 4 points, or less than 0.1%, as of 9:35 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.2% lower.
Treasury yields also held relatively steady, following an initial swing, after one report said the U.S. unemployment rate was at its worst level last month since 2021, but employers also added more jobs than economists expected. A separate report, meanwhile, said that an underlying measure of strength for revenue at U.S. retailers grew more in October than economists expected.
The mixed reports initially sent Treasury yields lower in the bond market. The knee-jerk reaction among investors was that the data could encourage the Federal Reserve to see the slowing job market as the biggest threat to the economy, rather than high inflation, and cut interest rates further in 2026. But yields quickly recovered some of those dips and drifted up and down.
What the Fed does with interest rates is a top driver for Wall Street because lower rates can give a boost to the economy and to prices for investments, even if they also may worsen inflation. A report coming on Thursday will show how bad inflation was last month, and economists expect it to show prices for U.S. consumers continue to rise faster than anyone would like.
In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury held at 4.18%, where it was late Monday. The two-year yield, which more closely tracks expectations for the Fed, eased to 3.50% from 3.51%.
Also diminishing the effect of Tuesday’s reports was the possibility that the federal government’s recent shutdown may have distorted some of the data.
“The report on December’s employment data, released in early January ahead of the next meeting, will likely be a much more meaningful indicator for the Fed when it comes to deciding the near-term policy trajectory,” according to Kay Haigh, global co-head of fixed income and liquidity solutions in Goldman Sachs Asset Management.
Helping to keep the overall market in check were continued, mixed swings for stocks that have been caught up in the frenzy around artificial-intelligence technology.
Oracle rose 1.1%, and Broadcom gained 1.6%. They both had dropped to sharp losses last week, even though both reported stronger profits for the latest quarter than analysts expected.
But CoreWeave, which rents out access to top-of-the-line AI chips, fell 2.4%, and Nvidia slipped 0.2%.
Questions remain about whether all the spending that companies are broadly doing on AI technology will produce the kind of profits and productivity that make it worth the expense.
Elsewhere on Wall Street, Kraft Heinz rose 1.2% after saying Steve Cahillane, who was most recently CEO of Kellogg’s-owner Kellanova, will join as CEO on Jan. 1. After Kraft Heinz splits into two companies, which is expected to happen in the second half of 2026, Cahillane will lead the one that will hold onto the Heinz, Philadelphia and Kraft Mac & Cheese brands.
Pfizer fell 1.6% after saying it expects to make between $59.5 billion and $62.5 billion in revenue next year. That’s close to what analysts were expecting.
In stock markets abroad, indexes fell across much of Europe and Asia.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 dropped 1.6% after preliminary factory data showed manufacturing contracting slightly. Investors widely expect the Bank of Japan to announce an increase to interest rates later this week.
South Korea’s Kospi dropped 2.2%, while indexes fell 1.5% in Hong Kong and 1.1% in Shanghai.
AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.
Specialists Alex Weitzman, left, and Meric Greenbaum work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Thursday, Dec. 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
A television displays a news conference with Fed chairman Jerome Powell on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York, Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Traders work on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York, Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Currency traders pass by a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), top center left, and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won, top center, at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters, in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, Dec. 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
