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    Greg Knapp, a Jets Assistant Coach, Dies at 58

    Knapp, the team’s new passing-game specialist, was hit by a car while biking over the weekend and never regained consciousness, his family said.Greg Knapp, the Jets’ passing-game specialist, died on Thursday from injuries he sustained while being struck by a car as he rode a bicycle in California last weekend. He was 58.In a statement released through the Jets on Thursday afternoon, Knapp’s family said he was immediately rendered unconscious.“Greg never regained consciousness,” his family said. “He was surrounded by his mom, his wife, his three daughters and his brother.”Knapp, a California native, joined the staff of Robert Saleh, who is in his first year as the Jets’ head coach, in January after spending the last three seasons with the Atlanta Falcons as a quarterbacks coach. He had been an offensive coordinator in Atlanta from 2004 to 2006.“Greg had such an inner peace about him that people always seemed to gravitate towards,” Saleh said in a statement on Twitter, adding, “In his short time here, I believe the people in this organization had a chance to experience that connection.”During his short time with the Jets, Knapp, who was also known as Knapper, had been preparing the team’s young quarterbacks, including Zach Wilson, the No. 2 pick in the 2021 draft, for the coming season.At last month’s minicamp, Knapp told reporters that he had been enjoying coaching the young quarterback group, which also includes the second-year player James Morgan and the third-year player Mike White, neither of whom has played in an N.F.L. game.“As I’ve gotten older, I can say, here, from my experiences, I can tell you this because I’ve got enough trial and error on it,” said Knapp, who has coached veteran quarterbacks like Peyton Manning, Michael Vick, Matt Ryan and Steve Young. “And they’re getting it, they’re learning. It’s pretty exciting and it’s invigorating for me.”Knapp spent the first nine years of his coaching career at Sacramento State, where he had played quarterback. He was entering his 26th year coaching in the N.F.L. Knapp began with the San Francisco 49ers in the 1990s and eventually was promoted to quarterbacks coach and then to offensive coordinator in 2001.In addition to two stints in Atlanta, Knapp made stops in Seattle, Denver, Oakland and Houston either as an offensive coordinator or a quarterbacks coach.He was the Broncos’ quarterbacks coach when Manning threw for 5,477 yards and 55 touchdowns during the 2013 season, both league records at the time, and in the 2015 season when Manning led the team to a Super Bowl win.Arthur Blank, the Falcons’ owner, was one of many of Knapp’s former colleagues who posted their condolences on social media on Thursday. In a statement on Twitter, Blank said that Knapp was a “wonderful person who had the love, admiration and respect” of everyone he worked with.“Greg’s infectious personality is most people’s first and lasting memory of him,” Knapp’s family said. “The phrase ‘He never met a stranger’ encapsulates Knapper’s zest for life. He had a unique gift to make everyone feel special, and to Knapper, they all were.” More

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    Olympics: Daniel Alves and the True Value of a Gold Medal

    The Olympics may be a major championship for women’s teams, but they remain an afterthought for the men.Daniel Alves has seen it all, done it all. He has won league titles in three countries, picked up nine cups, conquered Europe with his club and South America with his country. He has 41 major honors to his name, officially making him the most decorated player in history. But still, when André Jardine asked him to take on one last job, his eyes lit up.Jardine, the manager of Brazil’s Olympic men’s soccer team, had framed his pitch smartly. There was, he told Alves, still one thing missing from his career. For all that he had achieved, he had never been to an Olympic Games, much less won a medal. “Let’s complete your résumé,” Jardine said. At 38, entering a third decade as a professional, Alves could not resist.The appeal, for Jardine — only three years older than the player he has appointed as captain for Brazil’s campaign in Tokyo — is obvious. Men’s soccer at the Olympics is, essentially, an under-23 affair: A majority of each team’s squad in Japan can have been born no earlier than Jan. 1, 1997. But there are spaces reserved for three “overage” players.Jardine had been considering how best to fill those spots on Brazil’s roster when it emerged that injury would rule Alves out of the Copa América. Here, he felt, was the chance to draft a figure who is “respected by all Brazilian players, a leader, a winner,” a player not only with “lots of charisma” but with a wealth of experience to help guide his younger teammates. It was too good an opportunity to pass up. If anything, it felt like a sign. “The universe wanted it this way,” Jardine said.It is easy to understand why it struck such a chord with Alves, too. “Challenges like this really motivate me,” he said. “The Olympics are magical: You get emotional thinking about them. To represent my country, my people, in a competition as important as the Olympics is really, really incredible.”“The Olympics are magical,” Alves said. Not everyone sees it that way.Phil Noble/ReutersAnd yet — setting aside the warming, rosy glow of the idea of Alves’s adding yet another trophy to his personal palmarès, all in the name of defending his country’s honor — his presence at the tournament does not necessarily feed into the idea that men’s soccer at the Olympics is especially important at all.That is not to question his motives: Alves is in Tokyo to perform, and to win. His “ultimate ambition,” he has said, is to compete for Brazil in the World Cup next summer; only injury denied him a place in Tite’s squad for the Copa América this summer. This is a chance for him to stake a claim, to prove he can still cut it when surrounded by players a decade and a half his junior. He is not, by any stretch of the imagination, just along for the ride.But the sight of Alves, one of the finest players of his generation, in a cobbled-together under-23 team serves to highlight the inescapable sense that Olympic men’s soccer is something of a novelty act, simultaneously a major international tournament and an inconvenient afterthought, an honor with no clear meaning, a trophy with an asterisk.A glance at the other overage players joining Alves in Tokyo illustrates the issue. New Zealand has selected arguably its best player, in the burly shape of the Burnley striker Chris Wood, to give it the best chance of securing a medal. France, on the other hand, has chosen André-Pierre Gignac and Florian Thauvin, currently playing for Tigres, in Mexico, and the Montpellier midfielder Téji Savanier, none of whom might be regarded as their country’s best player.France called up 35-year-old André-Pierre Gignac for the Games.Franck Fife/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesArgentina and Romania, meanwhile, have named only one overage player each. One is a goalkeeper, and the other is a defender who does not currently have a club. Neither country has been tempted to send anyone who might count as a star. Or, rather, neither has been able to, because clubs are not mandated to release their players for the Olympics, because the Games do not feature on men’s soccer’s official, sanctioned calendar.Despite that, Spain seems to be taking the whole thing seriously: A clutch of players fresh from the semifinals of Euro 2020 have traveled to Japan, including Pau Torres, Dani Olmo and Pedri. Germany’s 22-man delegation, on the other hand, contains not a single player knocked out of the European Championship in the round of 16.All of the players in Japan will, of course, regard being at an Olympics — even in Tokyo’s diminished circumstances — as a rare privilege. Those who have competed in previous Games, even established stars of Europe’s major leagues, have been awed by the atmosphere (and, to an extent, the abandon) of the athletes’ village, star-struck by their sudden proximity to the biggest names in track and field.Lionel Messi won an Olympic gold medal at the 2008 Beijing Games, but almost no one counts it among his career highlights.Cezaro De Luca/EpaBut exactly what success — or failure — means in a soccer sense is less obvious. It is only a few weeks since Lionel Messi was celebrating winning his first major international honor with Argentina at the Copa América. At last, Messi had ended not only his long wait to achieve something with his country, but Argentina’s restless purgatory in the international wilderness. It was, all the stories said, the nation’s first major trophy since 1993.Except, of course, that it wasn’t. Argentina won gold in the Olympics in both 2004 and 2008. Messi was part of the latter team. That neither was mentioned highlighted the stark, and perhaps unfair, truth about Olympic men’s soccer: Ultimately it does not count, not really, not properly. It exists in an uneasy, liminal sort of zone, somewhere between a youth competition and an adult one, between authentic and ersatz.In the women’s game, of course, that is not the case. Or, at least, it has not traditionally been the case. The Olympics have at times been the most high-profile event in the women’s calendar, the grandest stage that the game could offer.When Abby Wambach, the former U.S. striker, released a book on leadership in 2019, she was trailed on the front cover not as a World Cup winner but as a “two-time Olympic gold medalist.” To some extent, that may have been an attempt to market her work to a non-soccer-specific audience, of course, but still: The choice of honor felt significant.Dzsenifer Marozsan helped lead Germany to its first women’s soccer gold in Rio de Janeiro in 2016. The title is on par with the World Cup in the women’s game.Ueslei Marcelino/ReutersThe team that the United States sent for its opening game of the Olympic tournament on Wednesday — a 3-0 defeat to Sweden, in which Megan Rapinoe suggested that the team had done some “dumb” things — contained only two changes from the side that started the World Cup final two years ago. So many of the biggest names in the women’s game are in Tokyo, in fact, that the tournament has the air of an all-star competition.The temptation is to believe that the event’s status will wane as the World Cup continues to grow, that the adage — that the Olympics is the pinnacle for sports that do not have one of their own — will hold, that no sport, ultimately, can have two pinnacles..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-uf1ume{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;}.css-wxi1cx{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}That is not necessarily true. Golf and tennis have both embraced their relatively new status as Olympic disciplines. Winning gold at the Olympics — competing at the Olympics — always means something. What it means, though — how much it means — is not fixed. Alves sees it as a step on a journey. Messi saw it as a road to nowhere. Rapinoe may well see it as a destination in itself. But all of that can change. The value of gold, after all, can rise and fall.CorrespondenceA frankly unlikely claim of clairvoyance from Carl Lennertz as regards to Lionel Messi’s signing a new contract with Barcelona. “I knew he’d re-up when his kids cried last year at the thought of leaving,” he writes. “I’m glad he chose family happiness.”Carl’s prescience is not without foundation, as it happens. It is rarely discussed in the context of transfers — which we tend to assume are determined by money and ambition and status, probably in that order, and nothing else — but family deserves to be in that mix, too. It is often why players choose one country, or one city, over another; or why, as in Messi’s case, staying is easier than going.That does not apply to only the finest players, either: One player I spoke with in the past few months wanted to sign a new contract, ignoring a potential Premier League move, because his daughter had just started school and he did not want to force her to make new friends. Footballers, in other words, are humans, too.Shawn Donnelly, meanwhile, has his finger on the pulse of all the major issues of the day. “If we are going to keep calling it a ‘back heel’, then we should start calling a toe poke a ‘front toe,’” he wrote. I am currently trying to teach my son the back heel, with considerable success: He now uses it as his default passing option, like some louche South American playmaker. And it has, in the course of that educational process, occurred to me that it does border on tautologous.And it falls to Mark Hornish to make the semiregular plea for some coverage of Major League Soccer in this newsletter. “It may surprise you to learn that the United States has a domestic league,” he wrote, with a healthy slice of sarcasm. “It would be great if you could turn your gaze on it in these coming weeks.” I will do my best, Mark. Leave it with me. More

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    Tom Brady Jokes About Election Results as Buccaneers Visit White House

    President Biden’s administration has revived a tradition of championship invitations that had grown sporadic under former President Donald J. Trump.WASHINGTON — Until a few hours before kickoff, Tom Brady was questionable for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ celebration of their Super Bowl title at the White House. He was the most prolific winner of titles and decliner of presidential invitations in league history.But when the band struck up and President Biden strode onto the South Lawn to meet the championship team, Mr. Brady, the quarterback and seven-time N.F.L. champion, was there, smiling in a dark suit and sunglasses, leading a small procession including his coach, his team’s owner and the commander in chief himself.A few minutes later he was back in the spotlight, tossing off political jokes like slant routes, mostly targeting Mr. Biden’s predecessor, Donald J. Trump, a longtime friend of Mr. Brady’s.Mr. Brady first needled Mr. Trump’s baseless claims that he actually won the 2020 presidential election, which many Trump supporters still believe. The quarterback said many people did not believe the Buccaneers could win the championship last year.“I think about 40 percent of the people still don’t think we won,” Mr. Brady said.“I understand that,” Mr. Biden said.Mr. Brady turned to Mr. Biden. “You understand that, Mr. President?” he said.Mr. Biden smiled. “I understand that,” he said again.“Yeah,” Mr. Brady continued. “And personally, you know, it’s nice for me to be back here. We had a game in Chicago where I forgot what down it was. I lost track of one down in 21 years of playing, and they started calling me ‘Sleepy Tom.’ Why would they do that to me?”Mr. Biden — whom Mr. Trump frequently called “Sleepy Joe” during the campaign — played along. “I don’t know,” he said.Mr. Brady, 43, is the most accomplished signal caller in N.F.L. history. After leading the New England Patriots to six championships in his first two decades in the league, he quarterbacked Tampa Bay to a 31-9 Super Bowl victory over the Kansas City Chiefs in February, shortly after Mr. Biden was inaugurated. It earned him and his teammates a request to visit the president at the White House.But as of Monday, White House officials could not say for sure if he planned to attend.Mr. Brady missed several presidential team visits under Mr. Trump and President Barack Obama after winning previous Super Bowls. He last trekked to a White House title ceremony in 2005, when George W. Bush was in office. His attendance this time around was rumored on Monday, then confirmed by photos posted to social media on Tuesday morning.Mr. Biden has in recent weeks also hosted the World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers, as his administration revives a tradition of championship invites that had grown sporadic under Mr. Trump after many players boycotted the festivities. An N.F.L. champion last visited the White House in 2017.On Tuesday, while Mr. Brady’s teammates stood on risers and baked in the heat of the White House lawn, the president praised the Bucs for their persistence in reeling off an unbeaten run to the championship after starting the season with seven wins and five losses.“This is a team that didn’t fold, got up, dug deep,” the president said. “It’s an incredible run.”He singled out Tampa Bay receiver Chris Godwin, who was born and raised in the same states as Mr. Biden. “Born in Pennsylvania, raised in Delaware,” the president said. “Where I come from, that’s a heck of a combination, man.”The president could not resist sprinkling in a few stories of his own, less accomplished football career. And he could not resist ribbing Mr. Brady — and himself — about their ages.“A lot has been made about the fact that we have the oldest coach ever to win a Super Bowl and the oldest quarterback to win the Super Bowl,” said Mr. Biden, who at 78 was the oldest person ever sworn in as president. “Well, I’ll tell you right now: You won’t hear any jokes about that from me. As far as I’m concerned, there’s nothing wrong with being the oldest guy to make it to the mountaintop.”Eventually, Mr. Biden gave way to the team owner, Bryan Glazer, and coach, Bruce Arians, and then to Mr. Brady and his comedy routine.When the laughter from the relatively small crowd on the lawn died down, Mr. Brady and the Buccaneers prepared to give the president a customary personalized jersey, with “Biden” across the back and the number 46, for Mr. Biden’s presidency. The band prepared to play Queen’s “We Are the Champions” while players, including the quarterback, posed for photos with onlookers including several Florida politicians.But first Mr. Brady had one more joke, about how he planned to make the most of the remainder of his time at the White House.“We’re going to challenge — 11 of us — 11 White House interns to game of football here on the lawn,” Mr. Brady said.“And we intend to run it up on you guys, so get ready to go.” More

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    End of Denver Broncos Ownership Dispute Could Lead to Team’s Sale

    On Monday, a Colorado judge dismissed a lawsuit that contested the succession plan laid out by the team’s owner, Pat Bowlen, before he died.The feud over the ownership of the Denver Broncos moved a step closer to resolution — and a potential sale of the club — Monday when a judge in Arapahoe County, Colo., dismissed a lawsuit that contested the will of the former owner Pat Bowlen, who died in 2019. More

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    Italy Wins Euro 2020, Leaving England in Stunned Silence

    A Euro 2020 delayed by the pandemic and then extended to a shootout ends, finally, with an Italian celebration on the field and stunned fans in the stands.LONDON — All day, there had been noise. The songs had started early in the morning, as the first few hundred fans appeared on Wembley Way, flags fluttering from their backs. They had echoed through the afternoon, as first tens and then a hundred thousand more had joined them, as shattered glass crunched underfoot.The songs started as soon as the train doors opened at the Wembley Park underground station, the paeans to Gareth Southgate and Harry Maguire, the renditions of “Three Lions” and “Sweet Caroline,” and they grew louder as the stadium appeared on the horizon, until it seemed as if they were emanating from the building itself.Inside, the noise rang around, gathering force as it echoed back and forth when it seemed England was experiencing some sort of exceptionally lucid reverie: when Luke Shaw scored and the hosts led the European Championship final inside two minutes and everything was, after more than half a century, coming home.Tens of thousands of fans, not all of them holding tickets, filled the streets around Wembley.Jane Stockdale for The New York TimesEngland’s Luke Shaw had them roaring when he scored only two minutes into the final.Pool photo by Facundo ArrizabalagaThere was noise as Italy scrapped and clawed its way back, taming England’s abandon and wresting control of the ball, Leonardo Bonucci’s equalizer puncturing the national trance. That is what happens when individual nerves bounce around and collide with tens of thousands more nerves: the energy generated, at some atomic level, is transformed and released as noise.There was noise before extra time, Wembley bouncing and jumping because, well, what else can you do? There was noise before the penalty shootout, the prospect that haunts England more than any other. It was a day of noise. It has been, over the last few weeks, as England has edged closer and closer to ending what it regards as its years of hurt, a month of noise.What all of those inside Wembley will remember, though, the thing that will come back to them whenever they allow — whenever they can allow — their minds to flick back to this day, this moment, is not the noise but the sudden removal of it, the instant absence of it. No sound will echo for as long as that: the oppressive, overwhelming sound of a stadium, of a country, that had been dreaming, and now, started, had been awakened, brutally, into the cold light of day.Many England fans had never seen their team lift a major trophy. Many, now, still haven’t.Jane Stockdale for The New York TimesSolipsism does not fully explain England’s many and varied disappointments over the last 55 years, but it is certainly a contributory factor. Before every tournament, England asserts its belief that it is the team, the nation, that possesses true agency: the sense that, ultimately, whether England succeeds or fails will be down, exclusively, to its own actions. England is not beaten by an opponent; it loses by itself.This, as it happens, may have been the first time that theory had the ring of truth. England hosted more games than any country in Euro 2020. Wembley was home to both the semifinals and the final. More important, Southgate had at his disposal a squad that was — France apart, perhaps — the envy of every other team here, a roster brimming with young talent, nurtured at club teams by the best coaches in the world. This was a tournament for England to win.In that telling of Euro 2020, Italy was somewhere between a subplot and a supporting cast. That is the solipsism talking again, though. Perhaps this tournament was never about England, desperately seeking the moment of redemption it has awaited for so long. Perhaps the central character was Italy all along.Leonardo Bonucci bundled in Italy’s tying goal in the 67th minute.Pool photo by Facundo ArrizabalagaIn the streets of Manhattan and elsewhere, Italy fans found hope in the shifting momentum.Monique Jaques for The New York TimesItaly’s journey does not have the grand historical sweep of England’s, of course — it won the World Cup only 15 years ago, and that is not the only one in its cabinet — but perhaps the story is actually about a country that did not even qualify for the World Cup in 2018, that seemed to have allowed its soccer culture to grow stale, moribund, that appeared to have been left behind. Instead, it has been transformed into a champion, once again, in the space of just three years.Roberto Mancini’s Italy has illuminated this tournament at every turn: through the verve and panache with which it swept through the group stage, and the grit and sinew with which it reached the final. And how, against a team with deeper resources and backed by a partisan crowd, it took control of someone else’s dream.In those first few minutes on Sunday at Wembley, when it felt as if England was in the grip of some mass out-of-body experience, as Leicester Square was descending into chaos and the barriers around Wembley were being stormed, again and again, by ticketless fans who did not want to be standing outside when history was being made, Italy might have been swept away by it all.All day the England fans had sung, their noise filling first the streets and the squares, and then the air inside Wembley.Jane Stockdale for The New York TimesThe noise and the energy made the stadium feel just a little wild, edgy and ferocious, and Mancini’s team seemed to freeze. England, at times, looked as if it might overrun its opponent, as if its story was so compelling as to be irresistible. But slowly, almost imperceptibly, Italy settled. Marco Verratti passed the ball to Jorginho. Jorginho passed it back. Bonucci and his redoubtable partner, Giorgio Chiellini, tackled when things were present and squeezed space when they were not.It felt England was losing the initiative, but really Italy was taking it. Federico Chiesa shot, low and fierce, drawing a save from Jordan Pickford. England sank back a little further. Italy scented blood. Bonucci tied the score, a scrambled sort of a goal, one borne more of determination than of skill, one befitting this Italy’s virtues perfectly.Extra time loomed. Mancini’s team would, whatever happened, make England wait. The clock ticked, and the prospect of penalties appeared on the horizon. For England, one last test, one last ghost to confront, and one last glimmer of hope. Andrea Belotti was the first to miss for Italy in the shootout. Wembley exulted. It roared, the same old combustion, releasing its nerves into the night sky.Andrea Belotti’s early miss opened the door to an England victory in the shootout.Pool photo by Facundo ArrizabalagaAll England had to do was score. It was, after two hours, after a whole month, after 55 years, the master of its destiny. It was, there and then, all about England. Marcus Rashford stepped forward. He had only been on the field for a couple of minutes, introduced specifically to take a penalty.As he approached the ball, he slowed, trying to tempt Gianluigi Donnarumma, the Italian goalkeeper, into revealing his intentions. Donnarumma did not move. Rashford slowed further. Donnarumma stood still, calling his bluff. Rashford got to the ball, and had to hit it. He skewed it left. It struck the foot of the post. And in that moment, the spell, the trance that had consumed a country, was broken.Jadon Sancho missed, too, his shot saved by Donnarumma. But so did Jorginho, Italy’s penalty specialist, when presented with the chance to win the game. For a moment, England had a reprieve. Perhaps its wait might soon be at an end. Perhaps the dream was still alive. Bukayo Saka, the youngest member of Southgate’s squad, walked forward. England had one more chance.But England soon missed, too. And when Gianluigi Donnarumma dove to punch away Bukayo Saka’s final shot, Italy was a champion again.Paul Ellis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAnd then, just like that, it was over. There was still noise inside Wembley, from the massed ranks clad in blue at the opposite end of the field, pouring over each other in delight. But their noise seemed muffled, distant, as if it were coming from a different dimension, or from a future that we were not meant to know.Italy’s players, European champions now, sank to their knees in disbelief, in delight. England’s players stared blankly out into the stadium, desolate and distraught, unable to comprehend that it was over, that the tournament in which everything changed had not changed the most important thing of all, that the wait goes on. And the stadium, after all that noise, after all those songs, after all those dreams, stood silent, dumbstruck, and stared straight back. More

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    England’s Bukayo Saka Urges Facebook and Twitter to Crack Down on Abuse

    After facing a torrent of racist abuse online, Bukayo Saka said he didn’t want anyone to deal with such “hateful and hurtful messages.”After Bukayo Saka missed a penalty kick for England’s national team on Sunday in the final of the European soccer championship, he and several teammates were overwhelmed by a wave of racist abuse.On Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, people posted monkey emojis and racist epithets to insult Saka, Marcus Rashford and Jadon Sancho, all Black players who missed their penalty kicks in the shootout against rival Italy. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Prince William and others swiftly denounced the ugly eruption of racist commentary, especially against a team that had come to symbolize England’s racial diversity.On Thursday, Saka, 19, spoke out for the first time since Sunday’s final. In a statement on Twitter, he condemned the online bigotry he and his fellow players have faced. After saying how disappointed and sorry he was with the loss, Saka took aim at Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, urging them to do more to crack down on the abuse.“To the social media platforms Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, I don’t want any child or adult to have to receive the hateful and hurtful messages that me, Marcus and Jadon have received this week,” Saka wrote. “I knew instantly the kind of hate that I was about to receive and that is a sad reality that your powerful platforms are not doing enough to stop these messages.”Saka’s comments added to growing calls for the platforms to take action against hate speech.On Wednesday, Mr. Johnson said he had warned representatives from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok and Snapchat that they would face fines under Britain’s planned online safety legislation if they failed to remove hate speech and racism from their platforms.England’s Football Association also released a statement, saying that “social media companies need to step up and take accountability and action to ban abusers from their platforms, gather evidence that can lead to prosecution and support making the platforms free from this type of abhorrent abuse.”Facebook, which owns Instagram, said it was removing comments and accounts that had directed abuse at England’s team and was providing information to law enforcement authorities. Four people have been arrested over online racist attacks aimed at England’s players, the British police said on Thursday.Twitter said it had removed more than 1,000 tweets and permanently suspended “a number of accounts” for violating its rules.Facebook and Twitter have long had trouble grappling with hate speech on their platforms. Last year, during the Black Lives Matter movement and just months before the presidential election, civil rights groups called on advertisers to boycott Facebook if it did not do more to tackle toxic speech and misinformation on its site.The issue became especially heated last year ahead of the presidential election, when President Donald J. Trump spread falsehoods about voting and made veiled threats against lawmakers. In January, after a violent mob stormed the U.S. Capitol, Twitter and Facebook barred Mr. Trump from their platforms for speech that they said had the potential of inciting more violence. More

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    Richard Sherman, N.F.L. Cornerback, Arrested

    The police arrested the N.F.L. cornerback on Wednesday morning. They said he had fled the scene of a single-car crash and had tried to enter his in-laws’ house by force.Richard Sherman, the free-agent cornerback who is one of the most visible stars in the N.F.L., was arrested early Wednesday morning in Redmond, Wash., and booked into jail after the police said he tried to break down a door to enter the house of his in-laws. More