US team

gets settled

IRVINE, Calif. (AP) — The U.S. national team already knew it was in for a once-in-a-lifetime experience this month as the home team in a World Cup.

But when the 26 players took the field at Orange County’s Great Park to the cheers of several thousand fans who had turned out just to watch a mere practice, they were given another reminder of just how special this opportunity will be if they seize it.

The Americans projected cool and excitement as they settled into their training base for at least the next three weeks in Southern California.

Laviolette

to coach Kings

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Peter Laviolette will be the next head coach of the Los Angeles Kings, a person with knowledge of the negotiations told The Associated Press. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the Kings hadn’t yet announced the results of their search for a permanent replacement for interim coach D.J. Smith, who replaced Jim Hiller in March.

The 61-year-old Laviolette will take over his seventh NHL team when he joins the Kings, who have made the playoffs in five consecutive seasons. But they’ve also endured five straight first-round exits under three head coaches.

Iran’s players

wear pins

TIJUANA, Mexico (AP) — Iran’s World Cup team arrived in Mexico wearing lapel pins highlighting the victims of a deadly missile strike on an elementary school at the start of the war in the Mideast.

The players wore gold-colored pins with the number “168” on their jackets when getting off their plane Sunday in Tijuana, Mexico. It referred to the people killed, most of them children, when a Feb. 28 strike, likely launched by the U.S., hit the school in southern Iran.

Iran’s embassy in Hungary on Monday noted the pins in a social media post. The strike on the school was previously memorialized by the Iran team before a warmup game in March in Antalya, Turkey.