Raphael Stevens

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    Spain Women’s Team Will Play After Talks in Wake of World Cup Kiss

    Players’ participation had been in doubt after many signed a letter demanding an overhaul of the Spanish soccer federation in the wake of sexism scandals.Nearly a month after Spain’s World Cup-winning women’s national soccer team was thrown into turmoil over a forcible kiss, the players have agreed to come back and play their scheduled high-profile matches in the coming days.The players’ participation had been in doubt after many of them demanded an overhaul of Spain’s soccer federation to guarantee a “safe place where women are respected.” In addition to the furor over the kiss, by Spain’s top soccer official, Luis Rubiales, after the team’s World Cup victory in Australia on Aug. 20, the players had voiced longstanding complaints of sexism and of unequal treatment compared with their male counterparts.Mr. Rubiales has since stepped down over the episode, and the team’s coach, Jorge Vilda, was fired amid complaints of outdated training methods and controlling behavior. But the players continue to push for more changes within the federation as well as demands like equal pay and better-quality sports facilities.On Wednesday morning, after a meeting of players, government officials and soccer federation bosses that went on through the night, the president of the state-run National Sports Council said that 21 of the 23 players on the roster for U.E.F.A.’s Nations League matches against Sweden and Switzerland over the coming week had agreed to play.The Nations League matches are particularly important because they determine which three European countries can compete in the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris.“Twenty-one players are going to Sweden,” said the National Sports Council president, Víctor Francos, adding that “there are two players who don’t feel they have the spirit or the strength” to take the field.Under Spanish law, players can face fines of up to 30,000 euros, about $32,100, or suspensions of up to five years for refusing to take the field for the national team without a valid reason. Mr. Francos had warned this week that any players who defied the roster could be penalized.But on Wednesday morning he offered assurances at a news conference that “neither the federation nor the sports council” would initiate “a sanctioning process” against players who decided not to represent their country.Amanda Gutiérrez, the president of the women’s soccer union, FUTPRO, applauded the government’s commitment to addressing discrimination in the sport and the “reconciliation of positions” between the players and the federation.Speaking on behalf of the players, who must now focus on preparing for their match against Sweden on Friday, Ms. Gutiérrez said that a commission would be set up involving the government, the federation and the players to monitor the agreement reached on Wednesday.“It is the beginning of a long road,” she said, with consequences for “future generations.”The two players who did not agree to play in the matches — Mapi León, a defender, and Patri Guijarro, a midfielder — were among the 15 players involved in a rebellion last year against Mr. Vilda’s behavior. A dozen of them subsequently said they wanted to rejoin the team, and three were invited back, but neither Ms. Leon nor Ms. Guijarro asked to return.Ms. Leon said on Wednesday, “We are happy because changes are being made.” But Ms. Guijarro said, “We’re not mentally prepared to be here.”The emergency meeting that led to the agreement took place at the Oliva Nova Beach & Golf Hotel in Valencia, where the players had been summoned on Tuesday by the team’s new coach, Montse Tomé — the first woman to be chosen for the post — to prepare for the match against Sweden.Earlier in the week, Ms. Tomé had drawn up a roster for the match, even though the federation had not met the players’ demands.The roster did not include Jennifer Hermoso, the player whom Mr. Rubiales forcibly kissed on camera after the team captured the World Cup title. She filed a sexual-assault complaint against him this month, which cleared the way for prosecutors to open a case against him over the kiss.At the news conference, Rafa del Amo, the president of women’s soccer within the national federation, said of Ms. Hermoso, “I think that she has to be protected from pressure.”Many players had been upset over being included on the roster before their demands were met.When Misa Rodríguez, a goalkeeper, turned up for duty on Tuesday morning, reporters asked her whether she was happy with the roster.“No,” she replied.Most of her teammates declined to give remarks upon arriving at the venue.At the news conference on Wednesday morning, Mr. Franco offered assurances that the federation would immediately take steps to appease its players.“I’ve debated many things, many decisions that you will see shortly,” Mr. del Amo said.Both he and Mr. Franco said that the team’s new coach, Ms. Tomé, would remain in her role, a situation that had been in doubt because of lack of dialogue with players before the roster announcement and over support that she expressed for Mr. Rubiales on Aug. 25, when he said that he would not resign and railed against “false feminism.”Miquel Iceta, the minister for culture and sports, welcomed the agreement reached between the players and the soccer federation. “We want a principle of trust between the players and the Royal Spanish Football Federation to be re-established,” he said at a midmorning news conference.To that end, the government’s National Sports Council said that legislation would be drafted including gender-equality policies, pay equity and quality sports facilities for women’s soccer. 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    Jennifer Hermoso Excluded From Spain’s Soccer Team Roster

    The team’s new coach said she was trying to protect Ms. Hermoso, who was forcibly kissed by the Spanish soccer chief after the World Cup, by not putting her on the roster.Spain unveiled its roster on Monday for the first two matches of the women’s national team since the team’s World Cup win — and a postgame kiss that plunged women’s soccer into turmoil. The list excluded eight of the winning squad’s players. Jennifer Hermoso, who was forcibly kissed by the man who was the country’s top soccer executive at the time, was among those excluded.“We are with Jenni. We believe it’s the best way to protect her,” said the new coach, Montse Tomé, at a Royal Spanish Football Federation news conference, when she was asked why Ms. Hermoso had not been chosen to play in the UEFA Nations League, which is the qualifier for European teams in the 2024 Paris Olympic Games.Earlier this month, Ms. Hermoso filed a criminal complaint of sexual assault against the former soccer chief, Luis Rubiales, after he kissed her during the World Cup medals ceremony in Sydney, Australia.The decision by Ms. Tomé to exclude Ms. Hermoso and seven other world champions, three of whom have injuries and one of whom is now retired, from such an important competition comes amid a high-stakes standoff between Spain’s star players and the national soccer federation.In August, after its World Cup win, the team, including the players who were on Ms. Tomé’s roster on Monday, demanded changes to management and threatened not to play if changes were not made.On Friday, Ms. Hermoso and 20 of the 23 winning team members signed a joint statement with other Spanish players saying “it is time to fight” and reinstating their demands for a restructuring of “the leadership positions of the Royal Spanish Football Federation” to guarantee a “safe place where women are respected.” But they did not explicitly threaten not to play.By Monday night, with their demands as yet unmet, it was not clear if all the players on Ms. Tomé’s roster would agree to play or if they would boycott the matches, against Sweden and Switzerland that begin on Friday, in support of Ms. Hermoso.If they decide not to play, they could face consequences, including fines or temporary bans, according to the National Sports Council.“I trust they are professional world champions and they love their profession,” Ms. Tomé said, adding that she had talked with the players over the last few days.In a statement posted on social media on Monday night, the women’s players’ union, Futpro, said that the joint statement players issued on Friday made clear, “with no room for misinterpretation, our firm wishes not to be called up, for reasons that are justified.”“We regret that our federation puts us in a situation that we would never have wanted,” Monday’s statement said.Minutes later, A.F.E., Spain’s chief players’ union, also issued a statement, declaring its “astonishment at the lack of dialogue by the Royal Spanish Football Association regarding the majority position of the players who have been called up based on arguments that should be respected.”Ivana Andrés, one of the captains of the World Cup team, is currently suffering from a sports injury. She is one of the champions who are not on Ms. Tomé’s roster. In a televised interview on Monday evening, Ms. Andrés said, “The most important thing is that we want to play.”But “we want them to treat us with respect,” she added, referring to the federation.Some Spaniards also expressed dismay at the roster, including a well-known politician. “It’s not a call-up. It’s a threat,” said Gabriel Rufián, a member of Parliament with a pro-Catalan independence party.A Swiss player, Ana-Maria Crnogorčević, who currently plays for the Spanish team Atlético de Madrid, also shared her disbelief on social media. “This is insane,” she said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.Both the players and the federation have a lot to lose if Ms. Tomé cannot rally together a team in time for Friday’s match in Sweden.The sports commentator Guillem Balagué explained that Spain will jeopardize its Olympic ticket if the players boycott the match against Sweden. Only “the two finalists of the Nations League will, together with the French squad, be in Paris 2024,” Mr. Balagué said.Over the last month, the federation has taken some measures to pacify its star players. They urged Mr. Rubiales to resign, which he did. He appeared in court on Friday in connection with the sexual assault allegations filed by Ms. Hermoso. A restraining order was subsequently issued against him, forbidding contact with Ms. Hermoso. Jorge Vilda, the coach of the national team, was fired earlier this month. He had been accused last year of controlling and sexist behavior by team members.On Monday morning, the federation said in a statement that it guarantees a “safe environment for the players” and is committed to making changes within the organization. But it did not specify details of the changes it intends to make or a time frame.Though Ms. Tomé has replaced Mr. Vilda, becoming the first woman to hold the top job in Spain, her appointment is not without controversy. Ms. Tomé came under criticism when she participated in a standing ovation for Mr. Rubiales on Aug. 25, following a defiant speech in which he accused Ms. Hermoso of initiating the kiss and railed against “false feminism.”The statement issued by the players on Friday called for “zero tolerance” toward members of the federation who have “had, incited, hidden or applauded attitudes against the dignity of women.”“I shouldn’t have done it,” Ms. Tomé said of her participation on Monday. More

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    A Night at the Best Pickup Soccer Game in the World

    As the players idled by the chain-link fence at the side of the field, taking great gulps of air and water and conducting an immediate autopsy of the game that had just finished, they focused their attention on three outstanding bones of contention. Instinctively, they separated into dedicated working groups to tackle each one.The first considered whether a penalty that had not been awarded absolutely should have been, as an aggrieved plaintiff was claiming. The second investigated if a particularly egregious foul was premeditated (yes) and/or warranted (also yes). The third explored the knotty issue of how many deflections preceded the last of the game’s 12 goals — estimates ranged from two to “about a million” — and whether allowing the goal could, therefore, reasonably be considered the goalkeeper’s fault.Before that matter could be settled, the debrief was cut short. Each player had to dig into wallets or pockets to find five pounds — just over $6 — to pay their share for the use of the field. As they strolled stiffly to the parking lot, the squabbling gave way to discussion of plans for the rest of the evening, and for next week.This is all part of the ritual of the scrimmage, the scratch game, the kickabout. It is a conversation that happens thousands of times a week, across the world, after thousands of games like this one. The only difference here is the qualifications of those involved.A typical chat before any pickup game, anywhere in the world. It’s just that Alex Bruce, center, played more than 300 professional games.The 20 players who have just paid about $120 to play for an hour on an unremarkable synthetic field in south Manchester are used to rather different surroundings. Between them, they have made more than 1,000 appearances — and scored more than 100 goals — in England’s Premier League. They have played professionally in a dozen or so countries. Among their number are players who have won trophies, tasted the Champions League, represented their nations.They wear their fame relatively lightly. There are no replica jerseys bearing their names. Only a couple go as far as to use shorts emblazoned with club crests. Watch them play for a few minutes, though, and it is clear this game is hardly ordinary.The quality on display, as one player has put it, is “frightening.” As it should be: The victim of the contested penalty is Ravel Morrison, once of Manchester United and West Ham. The judge of the debate on the foul is Joleon Lescott, a Premier League and F.A. Cup champion with Manchester City.It is universally agreed that the game’s most gifted regular participant — and most unapologetically competitive spirit — is Stephen Ireland, who played for a decade with Manchester City and Aston Villa. The two players stretching out their calves, tuning out the bickering, are Papiss Cissé and Oumar Niasse, once of Newcastle United and Everton.They are part of a rotating cast of professionals — most of them retired recently enough that rust has not yet set in — who come here every week to take part in what may be the best game of pickup soccer in the world.Papiss Cissé, formerly of Newcastle United, rising above Bruce for a header.It was not designed to be anything of the sort. The weekly game started a couple of years ago, as coronavirus lockdowns began to ease, when a group of friends — most of whom had played semiprofessionally, on the lower rungs of England’s soccer pyramid — set up an amateur team, the Farmers, to play together on Sundays.This part of Manchester, though, is a relatively small world. The city’s leafy southern suburbs, and the gilded villages of north Cheshire, are home to dozens of professional players, both current and former. It did not take long before a couple of them, friends of friends, had accepted invitations to join in.From there, it spiraled quickly, said Kial Callacher, one of the team’s founders. Soon, the Farmers were winning some games by “30 goals or so,” he said. “After a while, it wasn’t really fun.” The team’s opponents, presumably, were of broadly the same view. Everyone involved decided it might be better if the ex-pros just played among themselves.So their hourlong games, held on Tuesday or Wednesday nights, were born. The guest list only grew more stellar. Some weeks might feature Antonio Valencia, John O’Shea, Danny Simpson and Danny Drinkwater, all of them Premier League champions, or Nedum Onuoha, formerly of Manchester City and now an ESPN analyst. Dale Stephens, a Premier League player as recently as last year, is a mainstay.The consensus is that Stephen Ireland, once of Manchester City, is the most talented regular participant.Cissé and Oumar Niasse, who both also had Premier League careers, might disagree.There are many more who spent years in England’s Football League. Few, if any, of the 66 members of the team’s WhatsApp group do not have at least semiprofessional experience. Games are, to put it mildly, competitive.“I’ll get an early night the day before,” said Joe Thompson, a regular participant who spent 13 years as a pro, mostly for Rochdale. “I’ll stretch in the afternoon, eat right, hydrate: all of the things I did as a professional. You don’t want to do yourself a disservice, or take liberties with the standard. You feel like you are constantly on trial. You have to be on the mettle or the group will let you know.”There is no shortage of candidates eager to see if they can handle it; so many are waiting to join that there is now a one-in, one-out policy on the WhatsApp group. Priority is given to prospective new entrants who have made the most appearances in the Champions League and the Premier League.For some, the appeal is at least partly practical. “It keeps people ticking over,” Thompson said. “If you’re out of contract, looking for a club, you can keep as fit as you like in the gym, but nothing replaces match sharpness.” Simpson has said it helped him remain “football fit” as he waited for a new club. Many in the group expect Morrison, most recently with D.C. United in Major League Soccer, to be picked up soon as a free agent.For a vast majority, though, the game meets a spiritual need. Thompson is not a typical case. Twice, during his career, he was found to have a form of Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. He returned to play on both occasions but retired on medical advice in 2019, at age 30. As a result, he said, he found it relatively easy to “make peace” with leaving the game.A single game last week produced 12 goals and at least three postgame inquests.Many find the transition much harder. Alex Bruce, a defender who represented 14 clubs in a career that spanned almost two decades, compared retirement to “dropping off a cliff.” “There’s no buildup, and then one day you’re at home, wondering what to do with yourself,” he said. As much as pining for the sport itself, players said they tended to feel bereft outside the confines of a locker room. “You’re institutionalized,” Bruce said. “You miss the environment.”The WhatsApp group — an ongoing stream of affectionate teasing, lighthearted criticism and off-the-cuff soccer punditry, according to members — offers a digital imitation of the daily rhythm of life inside a club. And the games themselves provide an outlet for the competitive urge. “It’s better than going to the gym and running on a treadmill on your own,” Bruce said.It is that, more than anything, that brings them all to an unremarkable field deep in south Manchester, whatever the weather.Being a soccer player is, of course, glorious, glamorous fun. But, Thompson said, “over the course of 20 years or so, it chips away at you.” The pressure is intense. The politics are toxic. There is little agency: A player’s fate can swing on an unfortunate injury, an unhelpful manager, a single bad decision.At the end, there is no sentiment whatsoever. “Most people don’t retire from the game,” Thompson said. “It retires them.” Soccer moves on, unforgiving. “You’re on a pitch, in the fresh air, with a ball,” one participant said as he watched his colleagues and friends slip into their cars. “It’s what it was like when we started playing.”Once a week, though, these players can engage with the game on their terms. There is no crowd. There is no money, other than the fee to use the field. There is no pressure, other than that which they put on themselves. They all carry the scars of a life spent playing a professional sport. Those days are over, now, but they do not want to say goodbye. What they want to do, instead, is to play.“You’re on a pitch, in the fresh air, with a ball,” Thompson said as he watched his colleagues and friends slip into their cars. “It’s what it was like when we started playing. I think for most of them, it’s an hour a week when they can feel free.”That is, they know, a precious thing. This summer, the group played a couple of exhibition games against local teams, operating under the moniker Inter Retirement. They have since been approached by a production company with the idea of launching a YouTube channel, of turning their private game into public content.They can see the merit in the suggestion, of course, but one drawback, above all others, gives them pause. The act of observation would change the nature of the event. It would turn soccer, once more, into work. They come to this field, once a week, because there are no cameras. There is no spotlight, no pressure.Here, at last, that they can play. More

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    After Rubiales’ Restraining Order, Spain’s Women’s Team Makes Demands

    The players’ demands came on a day that a restraining order was granted against Luis Rubiales, the former head of the federation, who forcibly kissed a star forward, Jennifer Hermoso.Shortly before the roster was due to be announced for the Spanish women’s first international soccer match since their World Cup victory, the Royal Spanish Football Association postponed the event until further notice.It became clear why five minutes later, when Spain’s star players made public a list of demands for a top-to-bottom reorganization of the federation, Spain’s soccer governing body.The events came the same day as a restraining order was granted against Luis Rubiales, the former head of the Royal Spanish Football Federation, the country’s governing body. Mr. Rubiales, who appeared in court Friday on charges of sexual assault against a star forward, Jennifer Hermoso, whom he forcibly kissed after the team won the World Cup in August, must stay 200 meters, or more than 650 feet, away from the player while the investigation continues.“We believe that it is time to fight to show that there is no place for these situations and practices in our football or our society, and that the structure needs to be changed,” the players’ statement said.The entire Spanish team signed the statement, which called for changes “in the leadership positions of the Royal Spanish Football Federation.” According to the statement, their demands are based on “zero tolerance” toward members of the federation who have “had, incited, hidden or applauded attitudes against the dignity of women.”The team had published an earlier list of demands in August. In that statement the players threatened not to play for Spain unless their demands were met. It was unclear what would happen if the new demands were not met.The high-stakes standoff between Spain’s star players and the national soccer federation comes as the tumult continues over that postgame kiss, which he said was consensual and she said was absolutely not. The kiss also caused widespread indignation and brought to light claims of deeply rooted discrimination and sexism in the Spanish game.Mr. Rubiales resigned on Sunday after weeks of agitation for him to do so. Jorge Vilda, the coach of the national team, was fired last week. He had been accused last year of controlling and sexist behavior by team members. Mr. Vilda has been replaced by Montse Tomé, a player and coach and the first woman to hold the top job in Spain. She is set to make her coaching debut next week in Sweden.Over the last few weeks, complaints of sexual assault and coercion have been filed against Mr. Rubiales by Ms. Hermoso, accusations have emerged of chauvinistic treatment by staff toward players and a strike has been staged by league players over low pay.The federation has taken measures to pacify its star players, who openly demanded changes in management in a statement published by their union on Aug. 25, just days after their World Cup victory against England at a game played in Sydney, Australia.Though Mr. Rubiales resigned, he remains defiant. In his court appearance on Friday, he denied any wrongdoing, according to a statement from public prosecutors.Since the World Cup win, women’s league players have also gained ground and called off their strike. On Thursday morning, after days of “tough” talks, according to league boss Beatriz Álvarez, an agreement was reached with players to raise minimum pay to 21,000 euros, or about $22,400, from 16,000 euros.Despite the raise, female players will still make far less than male players in Spain’s top division. According to A.F.E., the main soccer union in Spain, the minimum salary for first-division male players is 180,000 euros, or $192,000.The national team said it was not persuaded enough had changed, saying the federation still had work to do.Their statement refers to the kiss and the standing ovation given to Mr. Rubiales by members of the federation when he refused to resign, and says that members of the team have attended several meetings with the soccer association, expressing “very clearly” the changes the players believe are necessary “in order to advance and become a structure that does not tolerate or form part of such degrading acts.”On Friday night, the soccer federation posted a statement on its website, apparently in response to the demands published earlier by the women’s team, and reinforcing “its commitment to the world champions, for whom it feels enormous pride.”Describing the recent turn of events as “a particularly atypical scenario,” the interim president, Pedro Rocha, says, “a lot is at stake,” and, “to guarantee the future of Spanish football, it is essential to undertake transformations progressively and recover the dignity and credibility lost after the events of the World Cup.”Both the players and the federation have a lot to lose.If the Spanish team does not show up for the first match of the UEFA Nations League in Sweden next week, all hopes of competing in the Olympic Games in Paris in 2024 will be dashed.The sports commentator Guillem Balagué explained that Spain will blow its chance of an Olympic ticket if the players boycott the match. Only “the two finalists of the Nations League will, together with the French squad, be in Paris 2024,” Mr. Balagué said. More

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    Selling Saudi Soccer, One Like at a Time

    The standard of play in the Saudi Pro League doesn’t matter when no one’s watching the games.Neymar’s endorsement was not, perhaps, the most ringing. Back in Brazil to play for his national team this month, he had been asked — not for the first time — to address the lingering suspicion that, in leaving Paris St.-Germain for Saudi Arabia and Al-Hilal, one of the finest players of his generation might not have chosen the most challenging coda to his career.Neymar’s immediate instinct was to dismiss the premise. “I can assure you the game in Saudi Arabia is the same: The ball is round, we have goal posts,” he said with a slight smile and a nervous laugh. “For the names that have gone to Saudi Arabia, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Saudi league was better than the French,” he added. He was still smiling then, but it did not feel quite as warm.Clearly, the accusation — one thrown not just at Neymar, but at the dozens of players who have been enticed to the Saudi Pro League over the course of the summer — touches a nerve.That is no surprise. Nobody likes to be told that they have chosen the easy route. No athlete would tolerate the intimation that what they do, and where they play, does not really count. In general, soccer players fall philosophically somewhere between realism and cynicism, but even they tend to bristle when they are told their primary — their only — motivation is money. The early evidence, though, does not exactly play in Neymar’s favor.Neymar’s signing by Al-Hilal, like so many others this summer, was about attracting attention as much as talent.Associated PressEstablishing the comparative quality of different leagues is an inexact science. What makes one competition stronger than another? Is it the technical brilliance of the best teams? Is it incompetence of the worst? Or is it the cumulative accomplishment of the tournament’s constituents? Is it the peak, the trough, or the median?Or does it have nothing to do with the ability of the players at all? Is the best league the one that is most entertaining, or the most competitive, the one in which the greatest proportion of games are evenly balanced? (Other answers include: “The one in which you are most emotionally invested” and “The one with the highest production values and smartest marketing strategy.”)It is hard to believe, though, that the first installment of the new-and-improved Saudi Pro League outstrips France’s Ligue 1 — by common consensus the weakest of Europe’s five major leagues — on any of those criteria.(To be clear, it would be unreasonable to think it should. A whole competition cannot be transformed in a single summer, and even the Saudi authorities themselves accept it is an ongoing process. Those who have been working there for longer than Neymar regard the standard as hugely variable, still, with the strongest sides roughly on a par with mid-table Premier League teams, and the weakest some way below.)Still, Neymar — who missed more than 100 games through injury during his six seasons in France, a crude but not entirely irrelevant gauge of the intensity of that competition — cannot have failed to notice the difference.At Al-Nassr, Cristiano Ronaldo is the star even when he doesn’t score.Fayez Nureldine/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesOn Thursday, during Al-Ittihad’s win against Al-Okhdood, the Cameroonian striker Léandre Tawamba performed a nutmeg on another of the league’s high-profile recruits, the Brazilian midfielder Fabinho. The trick itself was neat, inventive, worthy of a ripple of applause. Fabinho’s reaction, though, was telling.He did not immediately snap at Tawamba’s ankles. He did not tussle with the forward, his brow furrowed in grim determination, as he surely would have done during his days at Monaco, or Liverpool. He chose, instead, just to stand and watch for a moment. So did the rest of Al-Ittihad’s midfield. The whole thing seemed to play out in slow motion.Any number of brief vignettes from the opening weeks of the Saudi season create the same impression. There are gifted players present, of course. There are moments of wonder. But for all the screaming headlines and the triumphalist spin that tends to greet another goal for Cristiano Ronaldo or another virtuoso improvisation from Karim Benzema, everything is undercut by quite how laissez-faire it all seems to be.That is not necessarily a bad thing, of course. Soccer does not have to be played in the pell-mell style that is de rigueur in England and Germany. Intensity does not always equal beauty. Argentina, for example, has long had a tradition of a slightly more thoughtful playing style. And besides, there are extenuating circumstances: Saudi Arabia, even on a September evening, is still really quite hot.More important, as Neymar and those who have made the same career choice this summer reflect on and come to terms with their decisions, there is a very good chance that the quality of the league does not matter in the slightest.Saudi Arabia did not spend the summer just signing superstars. Through its media rights partners, its soccer authorities also reached agreements with a host of international broadcasters. This season, the league’s games will now be available in more than 130 territories, among them the United States (Fox), Britain, Germany and Canada (DAZN), and, eager to see what real soccer looks like, France (Canal+).But that is not how the vast majority of people will engage with the Saudi league, because it is not how the vast majority of people engage with any league.Does it even matter that Karim Benzema and Al-Ittihad entered Friday atop the Saudi Pro League table? Maybe not to Saudi Arabia.Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThere has always been a discrepancy between live soccer’s value as content and the number of people who actually watch it. Even the most mouthwatering Premier League games attract only a couple of million viewers in Britain, and roughly the same number in the United States. (Where there are, you may have noticed, significantly more people.)Instead, most fans consume the sport in either an abbreviated form — game highlights — or an abstract one, as a rolling, character-based drama that plays out across various strands of the media. In recent years, social media has allowed those to dovetail: You can follow the plot interspersed with brief clips of Ronaldo scoring a penalty or Neymar fooling a defender or Fabinho not really bothering to tackle someone.It seems unlikely that Saudi Arabia is ignorant of that. The country’s approach has been sufficiently considered that it is reasonable to assume it has been factored into its plans. The way to win hearts and minds, in the digital age, is not to construct a league and imbue it with a slow-burn dramatic tension. That is hard, and takes time.It is much quicker, and much easier, to use a competition to generate digestible, fun-size content, the sort that can be quickly and easily shared on Instagram and TikTok and whatever Twitter is called now, the kind that generates neither an emotional nor an intellectual response but one that can be encapsulated in an emoji. If people do not watch the games, the standard is irrelevant. All that matters is that you hit that like button.Quite what that means for the future of the sport itself — of all sports, in fact — is not clear. Soccer’s authorities, the various feuding bodies in charge of the most popular pastime the world has ever known, have spent a surprising amount of time in recent years considering that very issue.For Neymar and the others, though, as for Saudi Arabia, the answer is no more pressing than whether the average game in the Saudi Pro League is as good as the average game in Ligue 1. Nobody is judging Saudi Arabia on what its billion-dollar, oven-baked competition looks like over 90 minutes. All it takes is a few seconds.Destination: TajikistanThe Asian Champions League schedule will send Cristiano Ronaldo and Al-Nassr to Tajikistan, Qatar and Iran.Fayez Nureldine/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAll through the fall of 2009 and the spring of 2010, it seemed impossible that Barcelona would not retain the Champions League title. Pep Guardiola’s team was, by some distance, the best in Europe. Lionel Messi, Xavi Hernández, Andres Iniesta and their teammates breezed through the group. They blew past Stuttgart and then Arsenal in the knockout phase.There are two interpretations for what happened next. José Mourinho, the coach of the Inter Milan team that knocked Barcelona out in the semifinals, would tell you that his tactical acumen derailed his great philosophical counterpoint’s attempt to conquer the continent once again.Everyone else would suggest that the explosion of Eyjafjallajökull, the volcano that sent an ash cloud over Europe and forced Barcelona to travel overland to the first leg of its semifinal with Inter in Milan, might have had something to do with it.All of which is a long-winded, self-indulgent way of saying that — from this vantage point — any serious rationale for Manchester City’s not winning a second straight Champions League needs to involve at least one volcano. It is hard, certainly, to see it losing to any of its supposed rivals over two legs. (A final, I will concede, can be a little more arbitrary.)Perhaps, then, it is time to concede that the UEFA Champions League is not the most interesting continental tournament this season. It is not even the most interesting tournament of that name. For intrigue, it cannot hope to compete with the Asian iteration of the competition.There are, as you might have read, pros and cons to Saudi Arabia’s sudden taste for soccer teams and players, but it is hard to argue that seeing an Al-Hilal team featuring Neymar play in Mumbai is not a benefit. That is not all. Karim Benzema’s Al-Ittihad is set to travel to Iran, while — a personal favorite — Cristiano Ronaldo and Al-Nassr will make the trip to Istiklol, in the Tajik capital of Dushanbe.Partly, the pleasure is sincere: The prospect of welcoming Neymar, in the flesh, for a competitive game, is one that millions of fans in India will treasure. Partly, though, it is vicarious.Quite how Al-Nassr tempted Ronaldo to Saudi Arabia is not clear; precise details of the pitch remain private. It is hard to imagine, though, that at any point anyone mentioned the bit about a game in Tajikistan, an autocracy so repressive that even the Premier League might think twice before allowing it to buy one of its soccer teams.CorrespondenceNot really a correspondence section, this week, so much as a brief note to say thanks to all of you who have been in touch in the last few weeks to seek clarification on the future of this newsletter/my general whereabouts. Each message has been gratefully received, and hopefully this edition settles some of the more outré conspiracy theories. If not, I can happily provide a contemporaneous photograph with a copy of today’s newspaper for verification. More

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    2026 World Cup: FIFA Delays Have Cities Worried About Planning

    With about 1,000 days until the opening game of soccer’s showcase event, U.S. organizers are waiting for answers, and action, from the sport’s governing body.When FIFA announced several years ago that it would take the preparations for soccer’s 2026 World Cup in-house, it argued the change would streamline the planning for a sprawling championship that would be larger and more complex and require greater expertise than ever before. That the change would also grant FIFA greater control over the $11 billion in revenue it expects from its biggest cash cow was perhaps even more important.But as teams begin their campaigns to qualify for the tournament, cities across the United States are growing frustrated with the tortured pace of FIFA’s preparations and communications and a lack of clarity about their roles in what will be the biggest, and richest, sporting event ever staged on American soil.Cities and stadiums still do not know, for example, how many matches they will host, or on which dates. Opaque rules about sponsorships have left local governments unable to secure deals to cover the millions of dollars of public money they have committed to spend. And delays in hiring could leave FIFA without the kind of seasoned operations, marketing and hospitality professionals required to put on its showpiece tournament.Even the most basic facts remain in question: Five years after the United States, Canada and Mexico were awarded the hosting rights to the World Cup, and more than a year after FIFA selected the 16 host cities, the date of the opening game is still not set.In interviews over the past two months, many officials overseeing World Cup preparations in several cities also expressed concerns about public relations missteps, leadership confusion and sudden changes of plans by FIFA that have left them scrambling to form and adjust their own plans. A few worried that soccer’s global governing body, now far behind the pace of preparations in the past two World Cups, in Russia and Qatar, might be squandering its greatest opportunity to entrench the sport in the United States market.A crucial bit of clarity could come in the next few weeks, when FIFA finally reveals the tournament’s full match schedule, including which city will host the final. FIFA has whittled its choice to two contenders: New York, a global powerhouse city with immense cultural importance, and Arlington, Tex., home to an ultramodern stadium complex and an 80,000-seat arena with a retractable roof to keep out the rain, and the heat. FIFA expects to make an announcement next month or, at the latest, in November, in order to meet its self-imposed deadline of releasing the schedule by the fall.All the while, there has been growing disquiet in several U.S. cities that FIFA’s lack of urgency is wasting valuable time.Alan Rothenberg, who as president of U.S. Soccer led the preparations for the 1994 World Cup and now works as a consultant to a group of 2026 host cities, said that FIFA had had “its hands full” and that had resulted in “more uncertainty and confusion among host cities than they’d like to have.”“The uncertainty makes it difficult to plan,” Rothenberg said. “When it all shakes out, it will be a spectacular event. It’s just a little frustrating.” His concern was echoed by officials in several U.S. cities; all asked to speak anonymously to describe confidential planning discussions.Mexico, a World Cup co-host, played at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Tex., outside Dallas, in a friendly match this month. The stadium is one of two contenders to host the 2026 World Cup final.Jerome Miron/USA Today Sports, via ReutersAsked about concerns from its partners, FIFA said in a statement that “the existing infrastructure and local know-how when it comes to major sporting events are impressive and reassuring.”“We are working hand-in-hand with our hosts to develop strong operational plans,” FIFA said, “and our efforts remain on pace to deliver an unforgettable event for fans in 2026.”Awarded to three North American neighbors on the eve of the World Cup in Russia five years ago, the 2026 World Cup was always going to be a monumental planning challenge.No previous sporting event will compare to its scale, profile and complexity: more than 100 games, played in 16 cities in three countries over about a month. The event has already required the coordination of multiple federal bodies both for security reasons and to ease the movement of fans as they follow their teams across the borders of the United States, Mexico and Canada. A State Department spokesman confirmed that the World Cup “will be categorized as a national security event.”The government’s efforts are being led by the National Security Council, which earlier this year started to coordinate interagency meetings that also included representatives of FIFA and U.S. Soccer, which until then had largely been sidelined by FIFA.The White House has been coordinating similar meetings for the Los Angeles Olympics, an event that does not take place until 2028. Yet that planning started years earlier, in part because the lines of communication were much clearer, and because Los Angeles established an organizing committee much earlier than FIFA.The World Cup’s procrastination, some of it related to the coronavirus pandemic but much of it self-inflicted, has come as FIFA has labored to find ways to reconfigure the event after expanding it to 48 teams from 32. It changed the tournament’s format for a second time in March, a move that will require it to stage 104 games in total, a major increase from the current 64.In previous World Cups, FIFA delegated much of the on-the-ground planning to local governing bodies, usually led by the host country’s soccer federations. But starting with the recent Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand, it took on those responsibilities itself; this year, that led to grumbling from soccer officials in those countries — sometimes publicly — about the new planning model, which granted FIFA almost total control over the event.With FIFA in charge of the 2026 preparations, U.S. Soccer has found itself largely excluded from major decisions, even as a FIFA office that was set up in Coral Gables, Fla., has struggled to recruit staff members and has failed to enlist the commitments of partners, tournament ambassadors and influencers who might carry the tournament’s messaging to new and wider audiences.Clouding matters even more was the sudden departure this summer of Colin Smith, the top FIFA official responsible for organizing the World Cup. Smith’s interim replacement, his former deputy Heimo Schirgi, is expected to visit the 2026 host cities this fall to provide much-needed answers and reassurance.In May, when FIFA held an event for the tournament’s brand identity in Los Angeles. The event, a prime opportunity to trumpet the tournament to consumers and sponsors, was a public relations dud, notable mostly for a lack of coordination with existing American soccer properties like Major League Soccer and U.S. Soccer, which were not engaged in amplifying the organizers’ message.A senior FIFA official directly involved with the 2026 tournament planning acknowledged “being behind the eight ball” but said the circumstances were not as dire as some critics were keen to portray. The official asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the planning and the potential embarrassment for FIFA.Some of the acrimony and frustration is related to money. By taking total control of organizing its biggest event, FIFA now has more leverage over how the World Cup can be commercialized. Its own revenue projections are almost double the pretournament figures for the most recent tournament in Qatar, which itself broke income records. But cities still mired in negotiations with FIFA over their share in revenue sources, like local sponsorships and hospitality packages, fear that they are missing out on the commercial benefits of hosting, the bulk of which will flow to FIFA.At the same time, FIFA’s relationship with the U.S. government also appears to have cooled. Its president, Gianni Infantino, was a frequent visitor to the White House during the administration of former President Donald J. Trump, and he made a welcome speech at a dinner hosted by Trump in 2020 at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.But Infantino has not visited the White House since Trump left office, and his relationship with the current U.S. leadership is not nearly as close. Infantino had hoped to meet with Secretary of State Antony Blinken at the Qatar World Cup late last year, but Blinken, there to attend games involving the United States, declined to carve out time in his schedule, according to a senior soccer official who was present at the time but was not authorized to discuss the events publicly.Rothenberg, who ran the planning for the 1994 World Cup, said some of the tension in host cities might ease once FIFA announces the tournament schedule. But he also said Infantino could help by loosening FIFA’s iron grip on the preparations.“Better that he just turns over some authority to us in the U.S. and stay in Qatar or Zurich,” Rothenberg said. “We know how to get things done. There’s a huge event going on virtually every day.” More

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    Spain’s Female Soccer Players Call Off Wage Dispute Strike

    The breakthrough in the labor dispute, which has delayed the start of the season and has added to a turbulent period in Spanish soccer, was an agreement over minimum pay.Players in Spain’s women’s soccer league have called off a strike that delayed the opening of the season after reaching an agreement with the league over minimum salaries, a rare moment of harmony in what has been an acrimonious period in Spanish soccer.The agreement, confirmed early Thursday, would raise the minimum salary for players in the league to 21,000 euros, or about $22,500, from 16,000 euros this season, a significant increase but still far short of what their male counterparts make.The minimum is scheduled to rise to €23,500 for the 2025-2026 season, with the potential for an even higher benchmark “if enough profits are obtained from commercial assets,” such as sponsorship, according to a statement from the unions representing the players.Spanish soccer is in the midst of a turbulent moment, touched off by an unwanted kiss by Luis Rubiales, the nation’s top soccer official at the time, on Jennifer Hermoso, one of the national team’s top players. The episode occurred last month after Spain’s 1-0 victory over England in the Women’s World Cup final in Sydney, Australia.The furor over Mr. Rubiales’s conduct — both the kiss and what came after — has put a spotlight on the various inequities and accusations of misconduct in the Spanish game, with claims of deeply rooted discrimination and chauvinism. The episode has been described in some quarters as Spain’s #MeToo moment.The negotiations were “tough, intense and long,” Beatriz Álvarez, the president of Spain’s fledgling professional women’s league, said during a late-night news conference in announcing the agreement that clears the way for the season to begin on Friday, after matches last weekend were called off.Despite the raise, female players will still make far less than male players in Spain’s top division. According to A.F.E., the main soccer union in Spain, the minimum salary for first-division male players is 180,000 euros, although Ms. Alvarez said that as the women’s league increases its income, “the conditions of the players will improve.”The unions, in their statement, made clear that they were looking for more than just increased compensation, highlighting the need to continue to work not just for higher pay but also for better maternity conditions and “harassment protocol.”The A.F.E.’s chief lawyer, María José López, who was involved in the negotiations, said that “types of behavior that could be considered harassment, such as a pat on the backside or a kiss, need to be redefined, and sanctioning procedures made more agile.”That could be interpreted as a reference to Mr. Rubiales, who is expected to appear in court on Friday in connection with a criminal case that could lead to sexual assault charges, and to the developments surrounding him since the World Cup victory that have deeply unsettled Spanish soccer.After he refused to step down in response to widespread criticism of his kiss, current members of the national team and dozens of other players said they would not take the field for Spain unless significant changes were made in the leadership of the Spanish soccer federation.Mr. Rubiales eventually resigned on Sunday, and Jorge Vilda, who was accused by players last year of controlling behavior, was fired as the team’s coach this month.The team is scheduled to play its first match since the World Cup next week, against Sweden, and it is not clear whether the players will consider the departures of Mr. Rubiales and Mr. Vilda to be enough to bring them back into the fold.The answer to that question may come on Friday, when Montse Tomé, who was chosen to replace Mr. Vilda and is the first woman to lead the national team, will name her roster for the match next week. More

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    They Shot at Her. They Forced Her From Her Home. She Won’t Stop Fighting for Girls.

    Khalida Popal, the former captain of the Afghanistan women’s national soccer team, woke up on the floor of her apartment near Copenhagen, drenched in sweat and shaking.She had collapsed and couldn’t speak. An ambulance rushed to her.It was two years ago last month, and the Taliban were taking control of Afghanistan. Female soccer players on the national team Popal helped create in 2007 were desperate to leave the country, fearing that the Taliban would kill them for playing the sport.Players were deluging Popal with requests for help, and she felt smothered by guilt. For more than 15 years, much of that period spent in exile, she had encouraged Afghan girls to participate in all areas of society, including sports, jobs and education.The message was everything the Taliban despised.“I feel responsible for these girls,” Popal said later. “I’d rather die than turn my back on them.”So on that blue-sky summer afternoon in 2021, Popal had a panic attack and thought she might be dying. But in a show of her resilience in a life marked by trauma, she waved away the medical workers and returned to her desk to continue coordinating an evacuation of players and their families from Kabul, the Afghan capital.Relying on a network she built through her activism, she helped rescue 87 people, including the senior national team. Months later, another 130.Popal is pushing world soccer officials to let the exiled Afghan women’s team represent the country in international competition. In July, she was in Melbourne for the Hope Cup, a game between the Afghan team and a team that represented the area’s migrants and refugees.Isabella Moore for The New York TimesNow Popal is on another mission, one that reached its height at this summer’s Women’s World Cup. She is trying to convince FIFA, soccer’s global governing body, to let players on the Afghan women’s national team represent their country again after the Taliban barred girls and women from playing sports.The players, after escaping Afghanistan with Popal’s help, are living in Australia, which hosted this year’s World Cup with New Zealand. Though the team is competing for the Melbourne Victory soccer club, FIFA refuses to recognize it as a national team because the Afghanistan Football Federation claims it does not exist. Under the Taliban, no women’s team does.“These players dreamed of playing football for Afghanistan and men just came and took that dream from them,” Popal said. “FIFA is saying, ‘We are sorry that you’ve lost your right to play football, girls, when you have done nothing to deserve it.’ It’s disgusting.”In an emailed statement, FIFA said it cannot recognize a national team unless it is first acknowledged by its national federation. FIFA has declared it a priority to ensure equal access to soccer without discrimination. But in Afghanistan’s case, it is just “monitoring the situation very closely,” according to its statement.A spokesman for the Afghanistan Football Federation said the organization could do nothing to help because the women’s national team dissolved when the players fled the country — an assertion the players reject.With coffee in hand and the energy of someone who has consumed far too much of it, Popal, 36, has been sharing the Afghan team’s story with everyone she can, in every way she can. While working for Right to Dream, a soccer nonprofit, and Girl Power, her own nonprofit, she organized a petition, which has been signed by more than 175,000 people since publishing online in late July. More than 100 politicians, across four countries, endorsed a letter she wrote to FIFA with the British parliamentarian Julie Elliott and Malala Yousafzai, the Nobel Peace Prize winner who was shot in the head by the Taliban when she was 15.Also, days before the World Cup began, Popal flew to Melbourne for a match that Melbourne Victory arranged, at her suggestion, between the exiled Afghan team and a team that represented the area’s migrants and refugees. They called the event the Hope Cup.Popal founded the Afghan women’s national team in 2007. Current members played in the Hope Cup in Melbourne in July.Isabella Moore for The New York TimesAbout 50 fans watched the Afghan players wave their nation’s flag and sing about their country. One Afghan wore a T-shirt that said, “Save our families,” because many players’ relatives were still hoping to receive humanitarian visas to live in Australia.Like a Hollywood publicist, Popal played cheerful yet determined host, rooting for the players, taking photos and speaking to reporters.“Khalida is reminding the world that we are still here, don’t forget us,” said Fati Yousufi, the Afghan team’s captain and goalkeeper. “I know a lot of us have said, ‘I want to be like Khalida one day, a strong and powerful woman.’”Anyone who wants to be like Popal should understand that her advocacy for the Afghan team has come with serious sacrifices.“It has taken a huge toll on her,” said Kelly Lindsey, an American whom Popal recruited to coach the Afghan national team in 2016. “But she won’t stop for a moment to take care of herself. Because if she did that, there would be no time for her to take care of others.”Creating the National TeamEven before the Taliban ruled Afghanistan, men would throw rocks at Popal when she played soccer in the street, claiming it was immoral for girls to play sports. Yet she always believed women could earn respect through soccer because it was a language men understood.During the Taliban’s first reign, from when Popal was age 9 to 14, she was stuck in a Pakistani refugee tent city, with soccer as her only outlet. When her family returned to Kabul in 2002 after a U.S.-led coalition drove out the Taliban, she was eager to grow the sport.Popal’s mother, Shokria Popal, thumbed through an album of photos from Khalida’s childhood. When Khalida was a girl, men threw rocks at her when she played soccer in the streets because they believed that women playing sports offended Islam.Her mother, Shokria Popal, a physical education teacher, helped recruit players, often contending with parents who called her a prostitute trying to destroy the culture. Teachers slapped Khalida in the face and tried to expel her for her work. But from the Popals’ efforts, high school teams were born. Five years later, the Afghanistan Football Federation accepted Khalida’s team as the women’s national team.It was too dangerous for the team to play in public because religious conservatives said the sportswear showed the shapes of women’s bodies, defying Islam. So the team practiced inside a NATO base, using hand-me-down equipment from the federation’s men’s teams and practicing on an active helipad. Helicopters kicked up dust that caked the players’ faces and coated their throats.The squad once lost an international match by 17-0. But to Popal, winning was not as important as the message.The team, which played its official matches outside the country, first made national news in 2010 when it played NATO soldiers in Kabul. Speaking to journalists, Popal denounced the Taliban. There was an immediate cost.Some of her teammates were forced to quit because their families hadn’t known that they were playing. Popal recalled receiving death threats, including from one caller who said he would cut her to pieces.Her father and one of her four brothers were slashed with knives and beaten with guns because, as the assailants said to them, they “were not real men for letting their daughter and sister play football,” her father, Timor Shah Popal, recalled.Popal at a training session in London in 2018.Daniel Leal-Olivas/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIn 2011, Popal was working as the head of finance and women’s soccer at the otherwise all-male federation, trying to blend in with her colleagues by wearing baggy clothes and speaking in rough slang, when she complained on national television that the women’s team wasn’t getting enough support. She blamed corrupt sports officials for it.Days later, she said, a truck rammed into the car she was riding in. Uniformed men fired shots through the windows, but she was not physically harmed. Then, when the Afghanistan Olympic committee’s headquarters were vandalized, Popal was among those blamed.Though she denied involvement, the police issued a warrant for her arrest. Hours before the government barred her from traveling, she boarded a plane to India.The Death of a BrotherPopal was on the run. Multiple times, she changed her phone number and her hotel, but threats found their way to her. One text message said, “We will not let your parents live. Come back for payback.”The next summer, she learned that her brother Idris had been shot and killed on the way to a university math class in Kabul, and was sure that the death was connected to her activism.She made her way to Denmark after the sportswear company Hummel, the Afghan team’s sponsor, helped her apply for asylum there. For a year, she lived in a refugee center surrounded by barbed wire fences. Gunfire from the adjacent military shooting range provided an unnerving soundtrack.Popal in a group hug with girls at the asylum center in Sandholm, Denmark, where she volunteers as a coach. Charlotte de la Fuente for The New York TimesEvery day, she woke up with her eyes swollen from crying. At night, she kept the lights on in her barracks because of a recurring dream that a man was at the foot of her bed, trying to kill her. She considered suicide.“I spent a lot of time looking at the birds and feeling jealous because they have wings to fly and I was just a useless body with no identity,” she recalled.With the help of a therapist and medication, her depression lifted. In exile, Popal eventually volunteered as the Afghan national team’s program director, organizing tournament appearances and hiring coaches. She also coordinated surreptitious exits to safe countries for gay players who feared persecution and forced marriages.But even women who remained with the team were not safe. In 2018, Popal saw federation officials sexually harassing players at a training camp in Jordan. Players told her that they had been sexually abused by those and other officials, including Keramuddin Keram, who was the federation’s president and a powerful politician. Popal reported what she had heard, but for eight months FIFA officials did nothing, according to Popal and Lindsey, the coach.Popal persuaded 10 players to come forward and obtained blueprints of the federation’s headquarters. That paperwork showed Keram had a secret bedroom attached to his office where, players told her, he beat and raped them.FIFA eventually barred Keram from the sport for life and the Afghan courts punished him and four others. The case was the first of its kind in the country, said Fawzia Amini, who was a senior judge on Afghanistan’s supreme court before fleeing Kabul in 2021.“Khalida is my hero,” Amini said when she and Popal were in Washington last year to accept the Lantos Human Rights Prize. Amini had been the judge assigned to the soccer federation’s sexual abuse cases.“Because of her, girls know how to go to the courts to fight for their rights,” she said of Popal.In Washington in 2022, Popal and Judge Fawzia Amini accepted the Lantos Human Rights Prize for championing human rights and women’s rights in Afghanistan and around. Popal travels extensively to accept awards, speak at conferences and meet with refugees.Kenny Holston for The New York TimesNews of the case reached other national team players, including those in Haiti, Argentina, Canada and Venezuela. They felt emboldened to speak up about sexual abuse committed by men in their sport, said Jonas Baer-Hoffmann, the general secretary of FIFPro, the union for professional soccer players that helped Popal with the abuse case.“Khalida started a big wave,” he said. “She’s changing the world.”She is also trying to protect others from what she endured.When she was a teenager, Popal said, she woke up after a routine surgery to find her limbs tied to the bed. A doctor was on top of her, fondling her.He stopped, she said, only when she vomited.“I want to be there for the girls,” she said, “because no one was there for me.”When Kabul fell two years ago, Popal worried about those girls. While faced with terrifying flashbacks from her own experiences fleeing the Taliban, she felt a duty to the generations of girls she had urged to test society’s limits.“Save me, sister,” the player Nilab Mohammadi begged her one night in a video call while holding a gun. “The minute the Taliban knocks on my door, I will shoot myself in the head.”Popal soothed her, promising help. She rushed to social media and television to warn players to erase evidence that they had played soccer. Burn your jerseys, she said. Delete your social media accounts.Popal on the phone at her parents’ home in Denmark while her mother, Shokria Popal, prepared dinner. Shokria Popal encouraged Khalida’s soccer ambitions and helped her recruit players in Afghanistan.Charlotte de la Fuente for The New York TimesHands trembling and heart racing, she called her wide network. A team of lawyers, politicians and human rights advocates joined her to evacuate the players. Some of those players were forced to leave family members behind, and Popal empathized. When she left Afghanistan, she never again saw her grandfather, whom she called the love of her life. He had told her she could become an independent woman and make a difference in the world instead of marrying at 13 or 14 and relying on a husband.Eventually, Popal helped more than 200 players and their family members make it safely out of Afghanistan, where girls and women have since lost the freedom to work, attend school and even to go outside without a man.“People fail to acknowledge what a strategically brilliant mind she is,” Lindsey said. “Without her, none of this happens.”‘Like a Mother Fighting for Her Kids’Popal’s work continues. On any given day, she may be on a train to Berlin or a long-haul flight to Australia, off to accept awards or speak at conferences or meet with refugees. She often wears dresses or skirts, with her long, wavy black hair flowing over her shoulders, to make up for the years she had to dress like a man.After one trip in the fall of 2021, Popal and her boyfriend, Russell Pakzad, visited her parents, who had received asylum in Denmark in 2016. The smell of lamb simmering on the stovetop wafted through the apartment as Khalida gave her mother, Shokria, the latest honor she had won, the FIFPro Hero Award.With a bittersweet smile, Shokria leafed through a pile of Khalida’s accomplishments: a magazine article from Afghanistan, with a portrait of Khalida clutching a trophy; a photo of Khalida and the national team in Pakistan. Her only daughter always gave her trouble, she said, starting when Khalida was a schoolgirl who refused to keep her opinions to herself.Popal holding her award from FIFPro.Charlotte de la Fuente for The New York Times“I just think you are so brave and fearless,” she told Khalida. “I don’t know where it comes from.”The next day, Khalida Popal’s phone had 252 unread messages, many from players on Afghanistan’s developmental team. Popal helped evacuate those players from Kabul by choreographing a journey to Pakistan that included the girls huddling inside an abandoned house while Taliban fighters roamed outside.Popal had relied on a connection at the Pakistan Football Federation to help the team cross the border and into a government-sponsored hotel. But now the Pakistani government wanted the players to move along.Popal sought help from Rabbi Moshe Margaretten of the Tzedek Association, a Brooklyn-based social justice group she worked with during the initial evacuation of players. “She really inspired me because she was like a mother fighting for her kids,” he said.Popal was on a train to Brussels from Paris when the rabbi got back to her.“Kim Kardashian paid for the girls’ flight!” Popal said, laughing loudly enough to startle other passengers.The players flew to London, and then settled in Doncaster, about 50 miles east of Manchester. It’s just one place Popal routinely visits newly transplanted Afghans.Though the players’ hotel was not open to the public, Popal strolled by the security guards in the summer of 2022 as if she were in charge. She had work to do: link the players to local soccer teams, set up job training and ensure that they had mental health services — the same help she had given the national team in Australia. That weekend, she took the players to the beach and to the European women’s soccer championship, pulling several coffee-fueled all-nighters to fit it in. No one gave her that kind of attention, she said, when she was a refugee.Popal, at center in the booth, enjoying a meal with members of Afghanistan’s developmental team in Doncaster, England in July 2022. She helped plan their escape from Afghanistan through Pakistan and then to England.Mary Turner for The New York TimesNarges Mayeli, one of the players, said Popal provided hope.“I have nothing in my life right now,” Mayeli said. “But the only thing that I know is that if I put Khalida as my role model, I’m going to be successful someday.”Gaining AlliesThe Women’s World Cup was ending in a day and Popal was eking out all the publicity she could get for the Afghan team before the world stopped watching.Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani activist, helped with that.Malala had flown to Melbourne from Sydney, where she and her husband, Asser Malik, had attended a World Cup game. After reading in The New York Times about Fati Yousufi and the Afghan team, she wanted to meet the players and help Popal in her efforts.On a tiny indoor field, with about a dozen television cameras present, Popal listened as Malala and Yousufi, the team captain, gave speeches. She took deep breaths and stared at the ground to fight back tears.Malala, who wore the Afghan team’s jersey to the World Cup final the next day, said FIFA needed to change its regulations to let the team compete because playing a sport is a basic human right.Malala Yousafzai, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, received a jersey from Fatima Yousufi, captain of the Afghan team, last month in Melbourne.Kelly Defina/Getty Images“It is time for people to decide that they are not standing on the Taliban’s side,” she said.Yousufi was next. Since her story became public, she had been featured at human rights and women’s rights conferences, and last May gave the commencement speech for Chapman University’s law school near Anaheim, Calif. (Yousufi once did not use her surname publicly, but does so now that her family has safely left Afghanistan.)“We are asking them to open the door, open the door for our team, open the door for Afghanistan women,” Yousufi said, referring to FIFA, as Popal and Malala nodded. “We don’t want to lose this opportunity.”Popal never thought she would work alongside someone with Malala’s stature, or that players, like Yousufi, would become forceful leaders worldwide.“It’s so lonely and tiring to do this on your own, which was what I did for a long time, but now I see that the new generation gets it,” she said, choking up. “It’s not all on my shoulders anymore.”Safiullah Padshah More