departure

Ballymena United have confirmed they have parted ways with manager Jim Ervin.

Ervin took over at the Showgrounds in 2023 and in his first season, kept the club in the Premiership by way of a playoff.

Last season, they finished in the bottom half but it was enough to see Ervin sign a new contract until 2028.

Currently, the Sky Blues sit in eighth position in the table, but on Saturday they suffered a 3-1 defeat to bottom club Glenavon.

In midweek, they were also knocked out of the Count Antrim Shield, going down 4-1 at home to Cliftonville which ended a three-game unbeaten run.

“Ballymena United Football Club can confirm that the club has parted company with first team manager Jim Ervin, this morning,” the club confirmed in a statement.

“The board would like to put on record their upmost thanks to Jim and his staff for their efforts and support during his two and a half years at the Showgrounds.

“Jim will always be remembered as a legendary player for the club, and as manager for successfully guiding Ballymena United through one of the most challenging periods of our recent history.

“The club will now commence the recruitment process for the next first team manager.”

Current U20 manager Ciaran Caldwell will step in as interim boss with Patrick McEleney and Sean O’Neill assisting him for Tuesday’s BetMcLean Cup quarter-final against Larne.

Steve Cherundolo’s first season at LAFC ended in a penalty-kick shootout that decided one of the most compelling playoff games in MLS history. His final season ended in the same way last Saturday.

Cherundolo and LAFC won that first classic match, beating the Philadelphia Union in the 2022 MLS Cup final. They lost the second one, falling to the shorthanded Vancouver Whitecaps in a Western Conference semifinal that had more plot twists than an Agatha Christie mystery.

In between, Cherundolo proved to be one of the best coaches in league history, winning an MLS Cup, a U.S. Open Cup and more than 100 games in all competition in his short four-year stay. He took LAFC to a CONCACAF Champions League final and to the first round of the FIFA Club World Cup, compiling a resume no coach in MLS history can match.

And while his departure will clearly hurt, the club he leaves is in good shape with the core of its roster signed for next season. Of the 16 players Cherundolo used Saturday, just five — goalkeeper Hugo Lloris, defenders Nkosi Tafari and Ryan Raposo and midfielders Andrew Moran and Frankie Amaya — are out of contract.

General manager John Thorrington is expected to announce the club’s roster decisions later this week.

“Moving forward, we’ll see what it looks like for next season. I wish this club the very, very best,” said Cherundolo, who used 75 players, second-most in the league, during his four years in charge. “I can say with certainty it’s in a great spot for a very successful year again. And that would make me very proud.”

The coach, a Hall of Fame player who made three U.S. World Cup teams, announced last April he would be returning to his wife’s native Germany, where he spent the entirety of his 15-year club career, when LAFC’s season ended. That meant he entered the playoffs knowing his next loss would be his last one.

But he made clear last week he was just saying goodbye, not farewell.

“In four years I can be back here,” he said. “I am definitely not canceling that out.”

In the meantime, Thorrington is looking for a new coach for just the second time in franchise history. The first time he stayed in-house, replacing Bob Bradley with Cherundolo, manager of the club’s USL Championship affiliate.

That’s likely to happen again this time since two members of Cherundolo’s staff — Marc Dos Santos, a former Whitecaps manager, and former Galaxy and Chivas USA forward Ante Razov, an assistant with three MLS teams — are said to be among the favorites to take over and build on what LAFC has already accomplished.

“I think Steve himself would say that if he left and the culture crumbled, then he didn’t do a good enough job at building the culture,” defender Ryan Hollingshead said. “We know things are going to continue to chug along the right way and that’s partly because he’s helped make it that way. He put just the right spin on it and it’s created what has led to a bunch of success over the last four years.”

Results aside, if Cherundolo, 46, had been allowed to choose the explanation point to affix to the end of his MLS coaching career, it’s unlikely he could have selected a better one than Saturday’s game, one dramatic and entertaining enough to become an instant classic.

Playing before an MLS stadium-record crowd of 53,937, the Whitecaps took a 2-0 first-half lead and still led by a goal going into stoppage time. At that point first-year Vancouver coach Jesper Sorensen was so confident of victory, he subbed out captain Thomas Muller.

However, things quickly took a turn when defender Tristan Blackmon drew his second yellow card, leaving Vancouver with just 10 players. Son Heung-min needed little time to make the Whitecaps pay, bending in a spectacular free kick in the dying minutes for his second goal of the half — and his 12th in 13 games for LAFC — to send the game to extra time.

That’s when the game went from classic to epic, with Vancouver losing another player midway through that extra time after center back Belal Halbouni limped off with a leg injury. That allowed LAFC, which outshot the Whitecaps 26-9, to pepper the Vancouver goal, bouncing two shots off the posts and another off the crossbar.

Yet none found the back of the net, leaving the game to be decided on penalties, the cruelest, meanest, most unfair — and most exciting — way to determine a winner.

When Son, who finished the game massaging a muscle cramp, limped to the spot to send his team’s first penalty try off the right post, LAFC was in trouble. When Mark Delgado sent the third try over the net and into the crowd, LAFC was done.

“Sometimes football is crazy like this. That’s why we love football,” Son said before closing with “see you next season.”

That was something Cherundolo couldn’t say. But he left with his head held high just the same.

“If you look at the sum of four years with LAFC,” he said “we have a ton to be proud of.”

⚽ You have read the latest installment of On Soccer with Kevin Baxter. The weekly column takes you behind the scenes and shines a spotlight on unique stories. Listen to Baxter on this week’s episode of the “Corner of the Galaxy” podcast.

WASHINGTON — British political commentator Sami Hamdi is going to voluntarily leave the U.S. after spending more than two weeks in immigration detention over what his supporters say was his criticism of Israel. The Trump administration has accused him of cheering on Hamas.

Hamdi, who is Muslim, was on a speaking tour in the U.S. when he was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Oct. 26. He had just addressed the annual gala for the Sacramento chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, the day before his arrest.

In a statement late Monday, the organization said Hamdi had “chosen to accept an offer to leave the United States voluntarily.”

“It is this simple: Sami never should have spent a single night in an ICE cell. His only real ‘offense’ was speaking clearly about Israel’s genocidal war crimes against Palestinians,” said the chief executive of CAIR’s California chapter, Hussam Ayloush, in a statement.

Hamdi’s detention was part of broader efforts by the Trump administration to identify and potentially expel thousands of foreigners in the United States who it says have either fomented or participated in unrest or publicly supported protests against Israel’s military operations in Gaza.

Those enforcement actions have been criticized by civil rights groups as violations of constitutional protections for freedom of speech, which apply to anyone in the United States and not just to American citizens.

Zahra Billoo, executive director of CAIR’s San Francisco office, said Tuesday that the logistics of Hamdi’s departure were still being worked out but that it might happen later this week. Billoo said there were “no conditions to the voluntary departure” and that he’s not barred from seeking another U.S. visa in the future.

CAIR said Hamdi’s charging document in immigration court did not accuse him of criminal conduct or security concerns but only listed a visa overstay, which they blamed on the government revoking his visa.

Tricia McLaughlin, a Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman, said in a statement Tuesday that Hamdi had requested voluntary departure and “ICE is happily arranging his removal from this country.”

The State Department said due to “visa record confidentiality,” it could not comment on specific cases.

CAIR has said that Hamdi, 35, was detained in response to his vocal criticism of the Israeli government during a U.S. speaking tour.

The Department of Homeland Security said at the time of Hamdi’s arrest that the State Department had revoked his visa and that ICE had put him in immigration proceedings. Homeland Security later accused him of supporting the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attack in Israel.

In a statement at the time, McLaughlin cited remarks he made in a video posted online shortly after the Hamas-led attack in which he asked: “How many of you felt it in your hearts when you got the news that it happened? How many of you felt the euphoria? Allah akbar.”

Hamdi said later his intent was not to praise the attacks but to suggest that the violence was “a natural consequence of the oppression that is being put on the Palestinians.”

The State Department has not said specifically what Hamdi said or did that initiated the revocation but in a post on X the department said: “The United States has no obligation to host foreigners” whom the administration deems to “support terrorism and actively undermine the safety of Americans. We continue to revoke the visas of persons engaged in such activity.”

Santana writes for the Associated Press.