Vinícius Júnior's agents have informed Real Madrid of their client's financial demands if he is to continue at the club beyond 2027, a source told ESPN.

The player's representatives are hopeful of meeting Madrid executives in the coming days to continue discussions.

According to the same source, Vinícius is closer to extending his contract at Madrid than to making a potential move to Saudi Arabia, as has been widely reported in Spanish media.

The Saudi Arabian league wants to make the Brazil forward the highest-paid player in the world, but sources added that since December there have been no updates on a proposed move.

According to the source, the player's entourage is annoyed that the Saudi league has yet to make an official offer because the ongoing reports could hinder Vinícius' image.

While the source did not reveal the specifics of Vinícius' financial demands to remain in Madrid, it did confirm that the player would receive higher wages than Kylian Mbappé and Jude Bellingham, while adding that Vinícius, 24, recently received an important bonus after winning The Best FIFA Men's Player award in December.

Vinícius' current deal ends in 2027 and as ESPN has reported in the past, the player's wages are close to 10 million ($10.45 million) net per season plus add-ons.

ESPN reported last week that Madrid had approached Vinícius' entourage to begin contract renewal talks.

The source adds that Vinícius is in no hurry to renew despite having spoken publicly about his intention to continue at Madrid long term.

ESPN contacted Madrid for comment but has yet to receive a response.

Vinícius finished runner-up to Manchester City's Rodri for the Ballon d'Or. In his seventh season with Los Blancos, he has scored 16 goals and set up 12 more in 30 appearances this season.

NOTTINGHAM, England -- "Surprised?" said John O'Hare, who played 101 games for Nottingham Forest in the late 1970s and early 1980s. "I would say so. Astonished."

O'Hare was walking past the grandstand at City Ground, where Forest -- who currently sit third in the Premier League, behind only Liverpool and Arsenal -- would play Brighton that afternoon. Behind him, reminders of the club's past glory under the charismatic but contentious Brian Clough were on display, lettered in white against the red façade. "Champions of Europe 1979," one of them read, and "Champions of Europe 1980," the other. O'Hare played on those European Cup teams. A decade later, at the end of Clough's tenure, Forest advanced to two domestic cup finals. Then they went underwater.

O'Hare remains a presence, attending every home game. Like nearly everyone else, he didn't see this coming. Asked if he would have been content with a midtable finish this season, which began with only the three newly promoted clubs more likely to be relegated, according to the betting odds, he acknowledged it with a chuckle. It's an easy question. Is there anyone who wouldn't have been?

Instead, Nottingham Forest are challenging for a top-four finish and a place in next season's Champions League -- and even, since this whole thing seems like a fantasy anyway, becoming the only club outside the Premier League's Big Six besides Leicester City in 2016 to win the title in the 21st century.

The only ones who aren't perplexed by this are those making it happen. "We went on a really good run at the start of the season, picked up a lot of points early," explained Ryan Yates, the Forest captain. "That's obviously really big coming off the back of just staying up in consecutive seasons. There wasn't one moment, but I feel like the momentum grew, and the confidence grew with it."

Only a few months ago, Brighton and Brentford, whose owners are professional gamblers with a deep understanding of data analysis, were everyone's examples of how financially challenged upstarts could compete against Manchester City and Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea and Tottenham, the six clubs that, for reasons of history but mostly revenue, were invited to join the prospective Super League in 2021.

But how to explain Nottingham Forest? Owned by the Cretan billionaire Evangelos Marinakis, a colorful character who was charged with both match fixing and drug smuggling by Greek prosecutors only to be acquitted of both, Forest were promoted back into England's top tier in 2022. Almost immediately, they embarked on a comically chaotic journey.

That summer, the club signed 22 new players, the equivalent of two entire teams from goalkeeper to striker, setting a Football Association record. The $185 million spent in three months was more money than in the entire previous history of the club taken together. The season had barely begun when head of recruitment George Syrianos and scouting director Andy Scott, who had made those transfers, were fired by Marinakis. In January, Filippo Giraldi, Syrianos' replacement, brought in six more new players. By April, with the club in the relegation zone, Giraldi was gone too. Results, Marinakis warned, needed to "improve immediately."

They did, too: Forest stayed up that season by beating Arsenal at home on the penultimate weekend. To celebrate, perhaps, Marinakis and Ross Wilson, who was hired to replace Giraldi as sporting director, bought the contracts of 13 more players. The total spend amounted to some $240 million on 34 signings over 18 months. The spree seems extreme, and Forest a poor man's Chelsea, but amid the flops and miscalculations was some real quality. Most of the current club was acquired during those windows.

Forest stayed up again last season under new manager Nuno Espirito Santo despite a four-point deduction for breaching profit and sustainability rules with all those signings. And that, apparently, set the stage. "Look, we believed in ourselves last season," striker Chris Wood said. "At the start of this season, we wanted to go on and do better things than what we've been doing in the past. We know we've got a squad capable of that. So it's all about building, and continuing to strive for excellence, and being better every week."

Espirito Santo's Forest are far from the Premier League's most entertaining club. In stark contrast to the elaborate ball-control schemes of the other clubs at the top of the table, they play almost as though they're a man down, swapping possession for territory, letting the time tick by, waiting to exploit a lapse. They've lost just five games in the Premier League all season, yet have possessed the ball less than 40% of the time.

But is all that success an optical illusion? The week before the Brighton game, they were thrashed 5-0 at Bournemouth. And Brighton was on a roll; they'd lost only once since the middle of December. Yet they played into Espirito Santo's hands, fielding five attackers and only one true midfielder and deploying their defense daringly high. Forest countered early and often. Despite being out-possessed nearly 2 to 1, Forest scored two goals in the opening 25 minutes, Wood added a hat trick to put the game away, and then they tacked on two more as a coda after the 89th minute. And conceded nothing.

The researchers scurried to find the last time Forest had won a game in England's top flight by such a margin. Soon they had it: back before the Premier League, a 7-0 takedown of Chelsea on April 20, 1991. Clough had been the manager. One of the old-timers in the press room said it seemed like a good omen.

Just after noon on transfer deadline day earlier this month, sporting director Wilson was spending some of the window's final hours giving a visitor a leisurely tour of the renovated training grounds.

Uncharacteristically, Forest had brought in only a single player, the young Reading defender Tyler Bindon -- and he was heading right back to Reading on loan after his physical. As Wilson walked through the training room, he spotted Bindon on an examination table and called out a cheery hello. He could be relaxed, he said, because his business was done. That meant keeping Forest's best players throughout the January window: only James Ward-Prowse departed, recalled from his loan by West Ham.

For other clubs on the edge of the Premier League's upper echelon, Brighton and Brentford and Bournemouth and even Aston Villa, the template for success is to identify and nurture young talent, then move that talent on at a profit to finance the next round of acquisitions. "That, in turn, helps us to bridge the gap between the revenues we can generate from the match day operations and TV rights, and what the bigger clubs can do," said Paul Barber, Brighton's chief executive.

Marinakis is having none of that. His vision of Nottingham Forest is that of a two-time European Cup winner. (It should be noted that just two Premier League clubs, Liverpool and Manchester United, have been champions of Europe more often.) He fully expects Forest to regain their place among English football's elite.

Accordingly, overtures for Morgan Gibbs-White and Murillo, two crucial members of the current squad, were rebuffed even though Chelsea's reported $100m bid for Murillo would have been a record transfer for Forest. "The fans here understand this club's place in European history," Wilson said. "They understand that this is a club that has achieved big things in the past. They understand that there's an owner that wants to achieve big things in the future."

Marinakis, whose other holdings include the Greek club Olympiakos, which won last season's Europa Conference League, is a man of massive ambition. To his credit, he has made substantial changes to Forest off the field. The three buildings that constitute the training ground still look from the outside like they might have when Clough was around, but now they have baristas serving coffee and new equipment everywhere. "The room we're sitting in wasn't here seven months ago," Wilson said at one point. "There's a new player gym. There's a new medical area. There's a new restaurant, a new kitchen, a new team room, a new analysis room. Everything is new."

By some accounts, Espirito Santo also has had something of a makeover. At Wolves --where he managed from 2017 to 2021, a tenure that included consecutive seventh-place finishes -- he took little interest in analytics. (One club analyst at the time said he was only able to get him to consider data-driven findings by having first-team manager Ian Cathro present them, without the numerical underpinning, as his own ideas.) But after spending the 2022-23 season guiding Al-Ittihad to the Saudi Pro League title, he returned to England with a less rigid idea of how to win football matches. That includes using data, Wilson emphasizes, though Nuno still runs his club with the same comfortable certitude. "Nuno is a man who exudes an air of 'he knows what he's doing,'" Wilson said. "The players can feel that."

And in truth, Nuno's football has hardly changed even though instead of a relegation battle, he has European qualification in his sights. "Through the good and the bad, the manager has stayed extremely consistent to his values," Yates said. "He's not deviated. And when he has a calm head, it means we do too."

Much of the roster is made up of reclamation projects. Gibbs-White never fulfilled his potential at Wolves. Anthony Elanga was cast off by Manchester United. Wood signed on after two dismal seasons at Newcastle; Forest is, preposterously enough, the 15th club in his 19-year senior career. Neco Williams was deemed expendable by Liverpool. How many of them could start for one of the Big Six?

It turns out that might not matter. Despite such squad turnover a couple of years ago, Espirito Santo has since curated a small, extremely tight squad, then allowed the players to grow together. And for all his bluster, Marinakis has imbued the entire organization with a sense of mission. "You have to have the right players, the right dressing room, and the right support staff, from the owner down to the people at the training ground," Wood said. "That makes a big difference. I think they've done superbly well. It's a credit to the owner: buying into it, understanding the process, and making a great environment for us to work in. And then we've got to do it on the pitch."

That means handling Fulham, Newcastle, Arsenal and Manchester City in the next four fixtures. But in this season of relative equality in the Premier League, only Liverpool seems to be operating at a higher level. And Forest, the only visitors to win at Anfield in nearly a year, have taken four points off the league leaders, more than any other club.

This has been a fortunate season for Forest to be contending, the first that Manchester City wasn't primed to win the league, accumulate 100 points, or both since Pep Guardiola arrived in 2016-17. Manchester United and Tottenham are closer to the bottom than the top of the table, Chelsea remains inconsistent, and even second-place Arsenal doesn't seem particularly daunting. If not for a nine-point gap and Liverpool's form, Forest would be contending to be the next Leicester City.

And maybe, improbably, they still are. "I'm rooting for Nottingham to win," said Bill Foley, who owns Bournemouth. "I'm an admirer. They're doing great. They're an inspiration for us. We just want to be where they are."

It is taken for granted that the richest English clubs generate more revenue than all but a few clubs around the world -- but the rest of Premier League does too. That has helped clubs such as Forest become competitive. Even Brentford and Bournemouth -- which had little or no history in English football's top tier and never come close to playing in the Champions League -- have more financial might than, say, Borussia Dortmund, Porto, and Olympique Marseille, which have actually won it. Barber reports that Brighton last season not only turned a bigger profit, after taxes, than any other club in Europe's top leagues, but that it was the most profitable season in the history of the sport.

So while the Big Six still have much of the top talent, the rest of the clubs are arguably closer than they've been in years. It also helps not to be playing in Europe, especially for a manager who maintains a small squad.

Aston Villa finished fourth in the Premier League last season and qualified for the Champions League for the first time. This season, in the weekend games that followed Champions League competition on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, they've managed just one win against three draws and four losses. "You're playing so many games, and we're feeling the brunt of that this year," said Wes Edens, one of Villa's co-owners. "And they're really intense games. Forest is a little bit like what we were last year. They've outperformed and they've surprised people, but they're not playing in the Champions League yet. It is easier."

Apart from Villa and the prodigiously funded Newcastle last season, some combination of the same six clubs represents England in the Champions League year after year. And only four times since the 1980s has an outsider won the FA Cup. When a club does manage to do something remarkable, such as Leicester City in 2016 or Wigan's FA Cup run in 2013, it's nearly always limited to a single season. "The trick," Barber said, "is to sustain it. To carry it from one season to another to another. That's what's hard for clubs of our size to do. We'll see with Nottingham Forest whether they can repeat this."

It won't be easy. At least half a dozen Forest players have been linked in transfer speculation with one rival or another. Even if Marinakis doesn't want to let anyone go, the allure of playing at Old Trafford or the Emirates can be seductive to an emerging star. And while this has been the most challenging season in memory for the Big Six, all those clubs have money at their disposal. While Forest were doing nothing this window, for example, Manchester City were spending more than $200m.

It isn't only the players that are coveted: the pipeline of executives from smaller to larger clubs is every bit as robust. Last summer, sporting director Richard Hughes, who built Bournemouth's squad and hired Andoni Iraola from Rayo Vallecano to manage it, left that club for Liverpool. Simultaneously, Brentford's set-piece specialist Bernardo Cueva jumped to Chelsea. "In the end," Edens said, "resources matter."

But that evanescence is exactly why Forest are so compelling. They are a comet dashing across the sky, a unique phenomenon unlikely to soon come around again. As much as Marinakis will be discontented with anything short of world domination, those who have been close to the club for decades appreciate how special this season is already, whatever happens from here.

"We can't affect how other teams play," said Yates, who came to Forest's youth setup 20 years ago, aged 7. "Success for us would be maintaining the level we've been at wherever that leads us, Champions League or Europe or who knows. If we keep performing the way we are, we will look back and say that this season will have been a success."

METAIRIE, La. -- New Orleans Saints head coach Kellen Moore didn't make a firm commitment to quarterback Derek Carr in his introductory news conference Thursday.

"Derek's a tremendous quarterback in this league. I've had so much respect for him, the journey that he's been on, he's a starter in this league," Moore said. "He's a premier player in this league. ... Really excited to team up with him and go through this process and so just like any player on this roster, I just got here a few days ago and I'm excited to go through this journey with all of them."

Moore, 36, is the youngest head coach in the league and inherits a team that is expected to be significantly over the 2025 salary cap, although that number has not been set yet. The Saints must get cap compliant by the start of free agency on March 12, which includes addressing Carr's $51.4 million salary cap figure.

Moore called Carr a "tremendous starting quarterback in his league" when asked whether he felt the team had a decision to make at the position.

"We're fortunate to have him and we're excited to go through this process as we build this roster together," Moore said. "Again, I'm meeting these guys for the first time the last few days, really excited to meet more of them. This will be a lot of fun."

Moore said he hasn't met most of the players and staff members after officially accepting the job Tuesday.

Moore is coming off a one-year stint as the Philadelphia Eagles' offensive coordinator and a win in Super Bowl LIX. He said he plans to call plays in New Orleans and utilize motion and tempo.

"We like to use a lot of tempo every place that I've been," Moore said. "We'll use shifts and motions when we huddle, but we want to stress the defense. Now whether we have to throw it 50 times or run it 50 times, I really don't care, however we've got to win a football game. We'll do that based off who we have available to us and who's on our roster, but we want to be a team that stresses the defense, challenges them, utilizes our entire roster, the depth that we have and take advantage of all these different players' superpowers."

Moore worked with Eagles running back Saquon Barkley, who led the league with 2,005 rushing yards this season. In New Orleans, Moore will have running back Alvin Kamara, who just signed a contract extension in the fall.

"Tons of respect for Alvin as a player," Moore said. "Obviously one of the premier players in our league, his ability to play in the pass game and the run game, all the different versatile roles that he can play. A lot of people for a long time have been looking, 'How can we find an Alvin on our football team?' And so that's been a really important piece. It'll continue to be a really important piece. We're really fortunate to have him."

The Eagles beat the Saints 15-12 in Week 3 this season, and Moore said the win showed him the talent on his new roster and that he absolutely feels they are still contenders.

"Obviously injuries were a challenge this year and those things sometimes are challenging and uncontrollable circumstances and so we recognize there's so much good going on here," Moore said. "We want to embrace the good, don't lose any of the good while building this thing the right way."

Moore said, "It's a collaborative effort," when asked whether he'll be involved in the roster-building process, but didn't say whether or not he feels the team needs to rebuild this year.

"I think certainly we're going to compete for this division," he said. "We have a great opportunity in the NFC South and we're going to focus on that while building this team the right way."

Pat Riley's three-peat trademarks could have led to the Miami Heat president getting a sizable payday if the Kansas City Chiefs had won their third consecutive Super Bowl.

Turns out, the Basketball Hall of Famer doesn't keep that money.

Riley said he devotes his share of revenues gleaned from "three-peat" usage -- he has had trademarks on that term for about 35 years -- to various charitable organizations. Of particular importance to Riley and his wife, Chris Riley, are groups that help military veterans and their families, including the Special Operations Warrior Foundation in Tampa, Florida.

Riley has said the donations he and the Heat make to veterans' groups are "very minor in comparison to what they deserve."

"These are very patriotic, brave and proud people," Riley said Wednesday. "What they do in serving our country to keep us safe is one of the most courageous sacrifices an American can offer."

Riley and the Heat created what the team has called the "HomeStrong" initiative 20 years ago, and the team has routinely welcomed returning soldiers and first responders to Miami games over those two decades, plus further honor them with an on-court pregame ceremony. Riley also took the team's training camp in 2010 to military bases in northwest Florida.

The Special Operations Warrior Foundation -- which has received $200,000 in recent years from Riley and his wife, plus another $100,000 that a Heat donor earmarked to the charity of Riley's choice -- honors fallen soldiers and Medal of Honor recipients with grants for education as part of what it calls a "cradle to career" plan that backs the children of those soldiers from preschool through college.

It also provides financial grants to severely combat-wounded, ill, and injured Special Operations soldiers in need of medical care.

Riley has owned multiple "three-peat" trademarks since beginning to file for them in the late 1980s, when the Los Angeles Lakers -- who he was coaching at that time -- were seeking three consecutive NBA titles.

Riley struck a deal with the Chiefs on three-peat usage, just in case Kansas City had won its third straight Super Bowl. The Chiefs lost to Philadelphia 40-22 on Sunday, ending the three-peat bid.

Heat coach Erik Spoelstra and some players half-seriously said before the Super Bowl that they were rooting for the Chiefs, with hopes that Riley would gift the team with some wine. But Spoelstra added that there is obviously a deeper meaning, one that Riley has kept largely private.

"There's a great story to it," Spoelstra said.