LIVERPOOL, England (AP) — Everton striker Salomon Rondon agreed to terminate his contract with the club six months early on Friday.

The 33-year-old Venezuela international made just three starts since Frank Lampard took over at the end of January despite first-choice forward Dominic Calvert-Lewin spending much of that period injured.

Rondon was signed by former manager Rafael Benitez in mid 2021 and made 31 appearances. They included 13 starts but just three goals.

“Salomon Rondon has left Everton with immediate effect after reaching an agreement with the club to terminate his contract,” the club said in a statement.

His contract was to initially finish in June 2023.

___

AP World Cup coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/world-cup and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

PARAMARIBO, Suriname (AP) — Dutch colonizers kidnapped men, women and children and enslaved them on plantations growing sugar, coffee and other goods that built wealth at the price of misery.

On Monday, the Netherlands is expected to become one of the few nations to apologize for its role in slavery. Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte plans to speak in the Netherlands as members of his Cabinet give speeches in seven former Caribbean colonies, including Suriname.

Symbolism around crimes against humanity is controversial everywhere, and debates over Monday’s ceremonies are roiling Suriname and other Caribbean countries.

In Suriname, activists and officials say they have not been asked for input about the apology, and that’s a reflection of a Dutch colonial attitude. What’s really needed, they say, is compensation.

In 2013, the Caribbean trade bloc known as Caricom made a list of requests including that European governments formally apologize and create a repatriation program for those who wish to return to their homeland, which has not happened.

“We are still feeling the effects of that period, so some financial support would be welcome,” said Orlando Daniel, a 46-year-old security guard and a descendant of slaves.

Suriname is an ethnically diverse country where roughly 60% of its 630,000 inhabitants live below the poverty line and 22% identify as Maroon — ancestors of slaves who escaped and established their own communities.

The Dutch first became involved in the trans-Atlantic slave trade in the late 1500s but did not become a major trader until the mid-1600s, when they seized Portuguese fortresses along Africa’s west coast and plantations in northeastern Brazil. Eventually, the Dutch West India Company became the largest trans-Atlantic slave trader, said Karwan Fatah-Black, an expert in Dutch colonial history and an assistant professor at Leiden University in the Netherlands.

Hundreds of thousands of people were branded and forced to work in plantations in Suriname and other colonies.

Portugal became the first European country to buy slaves in West Africa with help from the Catholic Church in the 1400s, followed by Spain. Some experts argue that large-scale sugar production in what is now Brazil then gave rise to the Atlantic slave trade that saw an estimated 12 million Africans transported to the Caribbean and the Americas over some 400 years, with at least 1 million dying en route.

Britain was among the first countries to ban the slave trade, in 1807. Dutch slavery continued until 1863.

If, as expected, the government issues a formal apology on Monday, it will put the Netherlands, which has a long history of progressive thinking and liberal laws, in the vanguard of nations and global institutions seeking to atone for their roles in historical horrors.

In 2018, Denmark apologized to Ghana, which it colonized from the mid-17th century to the mid-19th century. In June, King Philippe of Belgium expressed “deepest regrets” for abuses in Congo. In 1992, Pope John Paul II apologized for the church’s role in slavery. Americans have had emotionally charged fights over taking down statues of slaveholders in the South.

A Dutch government-appointed board issued a report last year saying that “today’s institutional racism cannot be seen separately from centuries of slavery and colonialism.”

Politicians and civil-society organizations in Suriname say that July 1, 2023 would be a more appropriate date for the apology ceremony because it marks 160 years since the abolition of slavery in the country.

“Why the rush?” asked Barryl Biekman, chair of the Netherlands-based National Platform for Slavery Past.

Johan Roozer, chairman of Suriname’s National Slavery Past Committee, said that Legal Protections Minister Franc Weerwind, who has slave ancestors and is visiting Suriname Monday, should also be given reparations.

Romeo Bronne, a 58-year-old businessman in Suriname, said an apology is needed, but he wants to hear it from the king of the Netherlands or its prime minister.

“Slavery was a terrible period, and degrading acts were committed,” he said as he called for financial reparations to be spent on education, health and other public benefits. “We remained poor.”

Irma Hoever, a 73-year-old retired civil servant who lives in the capital, Paramaribo, said that the Dutch “do not understand what they have done to us.”

“They still enjoy what their ancestors did to this day. We still suffer. Reparations are needed,” she said.

Activists in the Dutch Caribbean territory of St. Maarten have rejected the anticipated apology and demanded reparations, too.

“We’ve been waiting for a few hundred years for true reparatory justice. We believe that we can wait a little further,” Rhoda Arrindell, a former government minister and member of a local nonprofit, said at a recent government meeting.

Like many nations, the Netherlands has been grappling with its colonial past, with the history of Dutch slavery added for the first time to local school curriculums in 2006.

“There is a sector in society that really clings to colonial pride and finds it difficult to acknowledge that their beloved historical figures have played a part in this history,” Fatah-Black said, referring to seafarers and traders long revered as heroes of the 17th century Dutch Golden Age, when the country was a major world power.

___

Coto reported from San Juan, Puerto Rico.

As the World Cup holds a game to decide third place — who cares? — and a tidal wave of unnecessary bowl games gets cranked up — really, who cares? — we’re reminded that sports, as great as they can be, have a few things we could definitely do without.

Modern pentathlon, anyone?

We’ll get back to that befuddling sport in a moment.

For now, let’s focus on a World Cup game of zero significance Saturday between Morocco and Croatia, plus the first of 42 major college bowls — only three of which mean anything — being played Friday in a country (the Bahamas) that has no real affinity for American-style football.

Morocco made a stunning run at the World Cup, becoming the first African team to reach the semifinals while sparking joyous celebrations in the Arab world and beyond.

For all intents and purposes, that electrifying performance ended with a 2-0 loss to defending world champion France in the semifinals Wednesday. The Moroccans should be at home now, reveling in the adulation of an appreciative nation.

Instead, they’ll be back on the pitch one more time in Qatar, deciding the tournament’s third-best team when they face a Croatian squad that lost to Argentina 3-0 in the other semifinal.

The players tried to act like this means something.

Trust us, it doesn’t.

Morocco and Croatia will long be remembered for making it to the semis. The winner of the third-place game is sure to be quickly forgotten.

Morocco coach Walid Regragui summed it up best.

“You are so disappointed,” he said. “You’ve just lost a semifinal and then two days later, you have to go back out there.”

Of course, when it comes to worthless contests, nothing beats the college football bowl system.

Four teams — Georgia, Michigan, TCU and Ohio State — have berths in the College Football Playoff. The Peach and Fiesta semifinals, followed by the national championship game, are the only major-college postseason games that matter.

Yet, over the next 2 1/2 weeks, there will be 39 more — essentially serving as huge bloc of holiday programming for ESPN and a few other networks, as monotonous and insignificant as all those Hallmark Christmas movies.

In a match-up of 6-6 teams that had never faced each other before and had little reason to travel to the Bahamas for their first meeting, UAB held on for what was admittedly a thrilling 24-20 victory over Miami of Ohio.

Beyond all the whooping and hollering from the players, the reaction to a game-winning tackle just short of the goal line was silence. The stadium appeared to be largely empty, as it should have been.

At least UAB and Miami got to enjoy a week in paradise.

Other bowls are set for decidedly non-paradise locales such as Boise, Idaho; Shreveport, Louisiana; Fort Worth, Texas; and Montgomery, Alabama.

Why?

While we’re at it, here’s a few other things we should sweep into the dustpan of sports history:

— The aforementioned modern pentathlon, which somehow remains an Olympic event even though only a few dozen people in the entire world seem to know what it is. We’re told it has something to do with mimicking the skills needed by a pre-20th century soldier: shooting, sword fighting, swimming, running and riding a horse. The riding part appears on the way out after a coach — apparently a fan of “Blazing Saddles” — was accused of punching a horse at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Here’s a better idea: Let’s just get rid of the whole sport.

— Roman gladiators are no longer a thing, which we can all agree is a good thing, right? There’s no need in a modern, supposedly civilized world for the “sport” (yep, I’m doing air quotes) of MMA, which is essentially two people in a cage attempting to beat each other to a bloody pulp, break someone’s arm or choke the other fighter into unconsciousness.

— All-Star games, of any kind. The NFL sort of wised up, eliminating its farce known as the Pro Bowl, though it still plans to have a skills competition and flag football game (FWIW, I won’t be watching that, either). Major League Baseball’s all-star game once served an actual purpose, matching the best players from two leagues that didn’t face each other during the regular season, but interleague play ended that. As for the NBA and the NHL, their midseason showcases are defense-free affairs that in no way mimic actual games.

— LIV Golf. One professional golf tour was boring enough. Why in the world would we need two? Especially one that’s funded by the repressive Saudi regime and led by the insufferable Greg Norman?

— Fishing is something you do to put a delicious meal on the table. It’s no more a sport than raising chickens or shucking oysters. Please quit trying to pass it off as such.

— Cornhole is a good way to get through the holidays without having to carry on a real conversation with annoying relatives. It serves no other real purpose. I shouldn’t come across cornhole matches on my TV at 2 in the morning when I’m having trouble sleeping.

Though, come to think of it, cornhole might serve one other purpose: a cure for amnesia.

___

Paul Newberry is the national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at pnewberry(at)ap.org or at https://twitter.com/pnewberry1963

___

AP sports: https://apnews.com/hub/sports and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

DOHA, Qatar (AP) — From a soccer-crazed country known for its world-class players and its repeated economic crises, Argentine fans are making great sacrifices to be in Qatar to see their team try to win the World Cup for the first time in 36 years.

Passionate and noisy, the euphoria in Doha has grown to the rhythm of “Muchachos” — the unofficial anthem of the fans — and with each victory of Lionel Messi and his team ahead of Sunday’s final against defending champion France.

In a corner of the Souq Waqif bazaar in the capital, locals and tourists gathered around a young woman clad in the Argentine sky blue-and-white stripped jersey juggling a ball with her feet. In a hand-written banner in English and Arabic, she asks for tickets to the World Cup final at Lusail Stadium. Passersby leave change on a hat placed on the ground.

“Soccer for me is everything,” said 24-year-old Belen Godoy, who has been in Doha for a month and attended nearly every Argentina game by buying resale tickets.

“I left my family. I spent all my savings,” she said. “I’ll return to Buenos Aires and I don’t know how I’m going to pay the rent … but no one can take away what I’ve lived.”

Nearby, Cristian Machinelli walked along one of the winding cobbled alleys of the labyrinthine bazaar draped in an Argentina flag decorated with images of Messi and late soccer great Diego Maradona kissing the World Cup trophy.

Maradona led the team to its last World Cup title, in 1986.

“I sold a Toyota truck for this,” the 34-year-old Machinelli said. “It’s what I’ve been spending here so far, and I have enough left to buy the ticket to the final. There’s no explanation, no reasoning, except that we Argentines are just crazy about soccer, and we’ll do any craziness to support (the team).”

There are no official numbers on how many Argentine fans have traveled to Qatar. Not all of them come from Argentina, however, with many living in Europe and the United States.

Although not always the majority in the stands, the fans’ encouragment during matches — chants accompanied by drums — seemed to help their team at crucial moments.

“When we lost against Saudi Arabia (in the first game) the people were behind us. We felt everyone’s support and that is matchless,” Argentina coach Lionel Scaloni said. “We’re all rooting for for the same side. We all want the common good — we’re all fans of the sky blue and white.”

Argentine fan Julián Santander attended that first game against Saudi Arabia at Lusail Stadium wearing a team jersey. His friends said he had brought the team back luck.

“I went to see Spain against Costa Rica. I have the Spain shirt because of my Spanish family, and they ended up winning 7-0. A friend told me to leave it on for Argentina,” the 23-year-old Santander said.

Since then, he has been rooting for Messi and Co. while wearing Spain’s red national team shirt.

After the first loss, Santander’s father, Osvaldo, also changed his wardrobe for Argentina’s crucial match against Mexico. He wore a black replica of a shirt worn by one of the Argentina goalkeepers during the 2014 World Cup.

“I was in mourning,” the 57-year-old Osvaldo Santander said. “We sacrificed jobs, studies, life, so much for our passion and they were sending us back home. Things turned around and now we’re just three days from a moment that who knows how it will play out.”

Reaching the World Cup final brought much-needed relief to a country mired in a bruising economic crisis with one of the world’s highest inflation rates and growing poverty rates.

“The plane and match tickets are very expensive. We’ve made a lot of efforts to be here,” Argentine fan Viviana Rodríguez said. “Argentina is going through such a difficult time politically and economically. Everything is 10 times more expensive.”

The 53-year-old Rodríguez and her son, 20-year-old Lautaro Longhi, joined a demonstration in Doha to ask FIFA for fair ticket prices for the final because resale options are selling for several times face value.

“They’re asking for the equivalent of a brand new car for a ticket. It’s a fortune,” Longhi said, worried that he might miss out on watching Messi lift the trophy.

In essence, every Argentine fan in Qatar feels as important as the 11 players on the field.

“It would be a good way to give closure to a life, although I don’t want to be apocalyptic,” Osvaldo Santander said. “As a fan, I’ve done all that I had to do — I traveled, I left loved ones behind, I spent a ton of money, I fought for the tickets. That’s what we’re here for.”

___

Associated Press writer Luis Andres Henao contributed to this report.

___

AP World Cup coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/world-cup and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

Twitter has been engulfed in chaos since billionaire Tesla CEO Elon Musk took the helm, cutting the company’s workforce in half, upending the platform’s verification system, reinstating previously banned accounts including those of white nationalists and suspending journalists who’ve been covering him.

While it’s not clear if the drama is causing many users to leave — in fact, having a front-row seat to the chaos may prove entertaining to some — lesser-known sites Mastodon and even Tumblr are emerging as new (or renewed) alternatives. Here’s a look at some of them.

(Oh, and if you are leaving Twitter and want to preserve your tweet history, you can download it by going to your profile settings and clicking on “your account” then “download an archive of your data.”)

MASTODON

Sharing a name with an extinct mammal resembling an elephant, Mastodon has emerged as a front-runner among those curious about life beyond the blue bird. It shares some similarities with Twitter, but there are some big differences — and not just that its version of tweets are officially called “toots.”

Mastodon is a decentralized social network. That means it’s not owned by a single company or billionaire. Rather, it’s made up of a network of servers, each run independently but able to connect so people on different servers can communicate. There are no ads as Mastodon is funded by donations, grants and other means.

Mastodon’s feed is chronological, unlike Facebook, Instagram, TikTok or Twitter, which all use algorithms to get people to spend as much time on a site as possible.

It can be a tad daunting to try to sign up to Mastodon. Because each server is run separately, you will need to first pick one you want to join, then go through the steps to create an account and agree with the server’s rules. There are general and interest- and location-based ones, but in the end it won’t really matter. Once you’re in, the feed is reminiscent of Twitter. You can write (up to 500 characters), post photos or videos, and follow accounts as well as see a general public feed.

“We present a vision of social media that cannot be bought and owned by any billionaire, and strive to create a more resilient global platform without profit incentives,” Mastodon’s website says.

Currently, the site has more than 1 million users, nearly half of whom signed up after Musk took over Twitter on Oct. 27, according to founder Eugen Rochko.

CLUBHOUSE

Remember Clubhouse, back when we were all under lockdown and couldn’t talk in person? It’s the buzzy audio-only app that got somewhat overshadowed by copycat Twitter Spaces, which also lets people talk to each other (think conference call, podcast or “audio chat”) about topics of interest.

Once you join, Clubhouse lets you start or listen into conversations on a host of topics, from tech to pro sports, parenting, Black literature and so on. There are no posts, photos or videos — only people’s profile pictures and their voices. Conversations can be intimate, like a phone call, or might include thousands of people listening to a talk by boldface names, like a conference or stage interview.

SUBSTACK and MEDIUM

For longer reads, newsletters, and general information absorption, these sites are perhaps closest to the blog era of the early 2000s. You can read both without signing up or paying, but some writers, creators and podcasters create premium content for paying subscribers.

TUMBLR

Tumblr, which was all but left for dead, appears to be enjoying somewhat of a resurgence. The words/photos/art/video site is known for its devoted fan base and has been home to angry posts from celebrities like Taylor Swift. It angered many users in 2018 when it banned porn and “adult content,” which made up a big part of its highly visual and meme-friendly online presence and led to a large drop in its user base.

Onboarding is simple, and for those who miss the early years of social media, there’s a decidedly retro, comforting feel to the site.

T2 or TBD?

Gabor Cselle, a veteran of Google who worked at Twitter from 2014 to 2016, is determined to create a better Twitter. For now, he’s calling it T2 and says the Web domain name he purchased for it — t2.social — cost $7.16. T2, which may or may not be its final name, is currently accepting signups for its waitlist, but the site is clearly not yet functioning.

“I think Twitter always had a problem in figuring out what to do and how to decide on what to do. And that was always kind of in the back of my mind,” Cselle told The Associated Press. “I decided to just go for it. I didn’t see anyone else really doing it.”

Twitter-style text and TikTok-style videos are one idea. Cselle says for this to work, the text really has to be “amped up” so it’s not drowned out by the videos.

“My bet is that it’s going to be easier and more efficient to build a better Twitter or public square now than fix the legacy problems at Twitter,” Cselle added.

Cselle, of course, is not the only one jumping to the opportunity. Project Mushroom, for instance, plans a “safe place on the internet — a community-led open-source home for creators seeking justice on an overheating planet” and says it has received 25,000 early signups to its yet-to-launch platform.

“My sense is that things are going to further fragment into more ideological platforms and some will die and then we’ll see some new consolidation emerge over the next couple of years,” said Jennifer Stromer-Galley, a professor at Syracuse University who studies social media.

NEWS SITES

One of Twitter’s most valuable features has been the way it allows people to find information within seconds. Was that just an earthquake? Twitter will tell you. Or at least it did.

While there is no perfect replacement for Twitter, staying up to date with local, national and international news is easier than ever. Apple and Google both offer news services that aggregate articles from a broad range of publication (Apple offers a premium subscription service that gets you access to more articles, while Google shows free stories first.) There’s also Flipboard, which works kind of like a personal magazine curated to your interests.

Of course, subscribing to individual publications (or downloading a free news app such as the AP’s AP News) is also an option.

Yes, you might have to pay for some of them and no, you won’t get a blue check mark with your subscription.