Raphael Stevens

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    Belgium Beats Portugal at Euro 2020, Sending Cristiano Ronaldo Home Early

    A failed strategy sent defending champion Portugal out early at Euro 2020 and kept alive the title hopes of Belgium’s golden generation.The list of people who had let Cristiano Ronaldo down was, by the end, a long and illustrious one.Their transgressions had varied, in both nature and severity, and so had their punishments: Diogo Jota, failure to pass, hard stare; Renato Sanches, not getting out of the way of a free kick, baleful finger-point; Bruno Fernandes, speculative and wildly inaccurate shooting not entirely unfamiliar to Ronaldo himself, primal scream into Seville’s stifling night sky. More

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    Belgium Falls to Italy and Searches for a Silver Lining

    A loss to Italy at Euro 2020 sent another star-studded Belgian team home empty-handed. But not before it offered a peek at its future.Belgium’s players were still, their faces blank, as they heard the clock strike midnight. At the other end of the Allianz Arena in Munich, Italy’s players were being slowly consumed by their fans, released only once they had surrendered their white jerseys and their green training bibs and, in some cases, their muddied shorts for use as future sacraments. More

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    Denmark’s Secret at Euro 2020? There Is No Secret.

    Sometimes, timing and talent and teaching converge. Sometimes there is a story to tell and a path others can follow. And sometimes there is not.Jan Laursen was inside the Parken Stadium in Copenhagen on the afternoon Denmark lost to Belgium. The result, at the time, felt secondary. For most in the crowd, the game was a chance to show their affection not only for the absent Christian Eriksen, but for a team that had acted with such grace and courage even in the thick of primal horror. More

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    Jack Grealish: England’s Golden Boy

    Fans chant his name at Wembley and pressure his coach to play him. But what does England really know about Grealish? And what does it want from him?The Wembley Stadium crowd was calling for him, yearning for him, long before it had seen him. The second half of England’s game with Germany had reached a deadlock. The English had not troubled Manuel Neuer’s goal for some time; the Germans had mustered a single shot, and then retreated into their shell. Stalemate had set in. More

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    N.F.L. Fines Washington Football Team $10 Million

    The penalty of a $10 million fine follows an investigation into sexual harassment and abuse in the team’s front office.The N.F.L. on Thursday announced that the Washington Football Team would pay a $10 million fine to the league after a yearlong investigation into reports of the club’s rampant culture of sexual harassment perpetuated by managers and executives under the ownership of Daniel Snyder. The team also must reimburse the league for the cost of the investigation.Snyder will remove himself from day-to-day business operations of the club through at least mid-October, ceding that control to his wife and new co-chief executive, Tanya Snyder. Daniel Snyder, though, will attend games and continue to work on searching for a new team name and a new stadium. Vestry Laight, a firm that works with companies to address misconduct, which was already retained by the team, will provide the league with updates on the team’s human resources practices for the next two years.Roger Goodell, the league’s commissioner, “concluded that for many years the workplace environment at the Washington Football Team, both generally and particularly for women, was highly unprofessional,” the N.F.L. said in a statement. “Bullying and intimidation frequently took place and many described the culture as one of fear, and numerous female employees reported having experienced sexual harassment and a general lack of respect in the workplace.”The penalties are some of the harshest levied against an N.F.L. team and conclude an investigation into allegations of sexual harassment and abuse by men in the team’s front office dating to 2004. Beth Wilkinson, a lawyer based in Washington who led the investigation, shared her findings in an oral presentation that formed the basis of the league’s decision to penalize the team.“We are incredibly remorseful and incredibly sorry, and we want everyone to be treated with dignity and respect and professionalism,” Daniel Snyder said in an interview on Wednesday.“I’m mortified to think that’s happening in our building and our business,” Tanya Snyder added.Nearly 150 current and former employees of the football club were interviewed as part of Wilkinson’s investigation into reports of misdeeds that were detailed in several Washington Post articles last year, as well as reports in The New York Times in 2018 about abuse of cheerleaders. In addition to several incidents of inappropriate treatment of female office workers and cheerleaders by men employed by the franchise, The Post reported that two women had accused Snyder, 56, in separate episodes of harassment dating to 2004. He has denied those allegations.Snyder also reached a financial settlement in 2009 with a female former executive who had accused him of sexual misconduct during a trip on a private jet. He has denied any wrongdoing.The N.F.L. released only a brief summary of the team’s toxic internal culture, not a full accounting of allegations, so it is unclear how deep the dysfunction went.Lisa Friel, the N.F.L. Special Counsel for Investigations, said that Wilkinson was not asked to verify the accuracy of any allegations, or produce a written report of her findings to preserve the anonymity of the witnesses.“We felt it was best due to the sensitivity of the allegations and the requests for confidentiality,” Friel said, adding that a written report might have given away the identity of some of the employees.Snyder has conceded that he was too lax in his management of the team over the years, leaving much of the day-to-day running of the club to Bruce Allen, the former team president who was dismissed at the end of 2019 after a decade on the job.“I appreciate the people who came forward and intend fully to implement all of the recommendations coming out of the investigation,” Daniel Snyder said in a statement released Thursday.Lisa Banks and Debra Katz, lawyers who are representing 40 former team employees, said Wilkinson’s investigation “substantiated our clients’ allegations of pervasive harassment, misogyny and abuse.” They said the N.F.L. was protecting Snyder by ignoring their requests to make Wilkinson’s findings public. The $10 million fine, they added, “amounts to pocket change” for the club.“The N.F.L. has effectively told survivors in this country and around the world that it does not care about them or credit their experiences,” they said in a statement. “Female fans, and fans of good will everywhere, take note.”The allegations of widespread harassment within the Washington franchise have been acutely embarrassing for the league, which during the past two decades gained a reputation that it had failed to adequately reprimand players, coaches, staff and team owners who were accused of harassing or assaulting women.The team also decided to drop its nickname and logo last July after years of criticism from people who considered it a racist slur against Native Americans and of threats from major corporations to end sponsorships. The team is reviewing new names and logos.In the past year, Snyder also battled publicly with three longtime shareholders. Their boardroom brawl included dueling lawsuits, accusations of the smear campaigns and bullying.Months before the investigation into the leadership of the team and the conduct of its employees was completed, the league’s owners endorsed Snyder by unanimously voting to allow him to add $450 million of new debt so he could purchase the 40 percent of the team that he and his relatives did not already own.The fine against the Washington franchise for failing to properly manage its staff is the first financial penalty against a team in a sexual harassment case since Jerry Richardson was fined $2.75 million for making racist comments and sexually harassing female members of his staff while he was owner of the Carolina Panthers. The league fined Richardson after he had reached an agreement to sell the team in 2018 for $2.2 billion.The N.F.L.’s penalizing of Snyder fell short of suspending him. Only a handful of owners have been suspended, and typically because they were personally charged with crimes. Edward J. DeBartolo Jr. of the San Francisco 49ers was suspended for a year and fined $1 million after he pleaded guilty to one felony charge of failing to report an alleged extortion attempt by the then-governor of Louisiana, Edwin Edwards.Jim Irsay, the owner of the Indianapolis Colts, was suspended for six games and fined $500,000 after he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of driving while intoxicated following his arrest after a traffic stop in 2014.After the allegations of sexual harassment became public last summer, Snyder fired nearly every front office executive. He has tried to revive the club’s tattered image by hiring new executives, including Jason Wright, the N.F.L.’s first Black team president, and several women. A coed dance team will perform on game days, replacing the cheerleading program, which had been overseen by one of the since-fired executives who had been accused of sexual harassment.Snyder said he would adopt the recommendations put forth by Wilkinson, which include the detailed development of protocols for “victims to report anonymously and without fear of retaliation” any misconduct and the implementation of regular anti-bullying, discrimination and harassment training seminars.Fatima Goss Graves, chief executive of the National Women’s Law Center, said that none of the recommendations can prompt change without the release the investigation’s findings.“There is no reason to issue a significant fine without giving a full explanation of why,” she said. “It is hard to have meaningful accountability without transparency when the allegations go to the very top of the organization.”Kim Gandy, the former chief executive of the National Network to End Domestic Violence and a one-time adviser to the league, questioned whether $10 million is significant enough.“The fine represents only 2 percent of last year’s revenue, and less than three-tenths of 1 percent of the team’s value,” she said.In the interview this week, Snyder said he and his wife are down to a few dozen options for new names for the team and that a location for a new stadium will be chosen in about six months.Despite its rebuke of the Washington team, the league as a whole continues to be plagued by claims of harassment, not just in ownership circles, but among players and coaches. “We will review our own policies and practices,” the league said Thursday. 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    France Falls and Spain Survives as Euro 2020 Comes Alive

    Spain was cruising against Croatia, until suddenly it wasn’t. France was out, then back in, then out for good after a penalty shootout against Switzerland.It would be too definitive to declare that Monday, June 28, 2021 was the greatest day of tournament soccer in history. Over the last 90 years, after all, there will have been days that have brought an even grander torrent of jaw-dropping drama. More

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    England Beats Germany to Reach Euro 2020 Quarterfinals

    Two goals at Wembley deliver England to the Euro 2020 quarterfinals, and banish a generation of bitter memories.LONDON — The history, England’s players have said, did not matter. Not a single member of Gareth Southgate’s squad remembers the pain of 1990. Only one or two had the dimmest recollection of the bitter regret of 1996. For most, the shadow Germany casts over England in soccer stretches back only a decade or so, to 2010, the most recent update of England’s great inferiority complex.But that is not to say that it has not affected them. The maudlin sense of imminent doom that infects England before every major tournament. The self-flagellation and the endemic doubt and the frenzied querying of every decision, no matter how minor: that all stems back to those defeats, to those days when England was so close and yet so far, when Germany stood for all that the country — or at least its soccer team — could not be.It was that, all of that, which they had to overcome to make the quarterfinals of Euro 2020, in front of a raucous Wembley, a place on a hair-trigger, primed to celebrate or to castigate at the first hint of hope or of despair. And it was that, all of that, which came pouring out when Raheem Sterling tapped England ahead, just as the nerves were starting to jangle and the ghosts starting to hover.STERLING SCORES!ENGLAND GOES WILD 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🦁 pic.twitter.com/0GOz8ZRPC4— ESPN FC (@ESPNFC) June 29, 2021
    All of a sudden, Wembley was not half-empty; it was full, it was seething, and it was moving, a sea of people, bubbling and broiling and seeming to shake a stadium that had, a moment earlier, been full of tension and doubt, as it has been for almost 60 years.A few minutes later, Harry Kane settled it, and the place exploded again. The players may not remember, but the fans did, and now, at last, they could feel it all lifting off their backs: it was not just Germany that had been beaten, 2-0, but all of the reasons not to believe, all of the reasons to fear.England had not beaten Germany in a knockout game at a major tournament — when it really mattered — since 1966, the country’s crowning moment. Now, it had. Only then, in that moment, did the history no longer matter.Kane’s goal clinched England’s place in the quarterfinals against Tuesday’s Sweden-Ukraine winner.Pool photo by Catherine Ivill More

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    As France Chases Title at Euros, Its League Faces a $400 Million Hole

    French soccer teams could face economic disaster after a television partner said it would refuse to honor its contract. Transfers, salaries and budgets hang in the balance.French soccer’s new television deal was supposed to save the league and its clubs from a financial meltdown.Instead, it may have made a bad situation worse.Soon after France’s top soccer league, Ligue 1, announced this month that it had enticed Amazon to become its lead broadcaster, its longtime television partner, Canal Plus, reacted with fury.Canal Plus would neither pay for nor broadcast the two games per week it owned the rights to, the company said. Not at the premium price in its contracts, at least. And certainly not when Amazon was paying roughly $100 million less for four times as many games.“Canal Plus will not, therefore, be broadcasting Ligue 1,” the company said in a statement.The implications of the Canal Plus threat for the cash-strapped French teams could not be more serious. Already reeling from the effects of the coronavirus pandemic and the collapse last year of their league’s $1 billion television contract, clubs across France that had been planning to trim their budgets now face an urgent crisis.While Amazon has agreed to broadcast eight games a week for little more than $300 million per season, Canal Plus was on the hook to pay almost $400 million for the two games a week it had picked up in a previous rights auction. Now that it is refusing to pay, many clubs have entered the summer player-trading market worried less about sales and signings than about the possibility of bankruptcy.And they may have only weeks to find a way out.The chaos behind the scenes at the French league is in sharp contrast to the international image of French soccer, burnished by the success of its World Cup-winning men’s team. France started its quest for the European championship last week with a serene display against Germany, tied Hungary on Saturday in Budapest and remains the favorite to lift the trophy next month.Benjamin Pavard and France were held to a draw by Hungary on Saturday but the team remains a favorite to win Euro 2020.Pool photo by Bernadett SzaboMost of the players on France’s Euro 2020 roster play for clubs outside of France, but nearly all got their start with French teams. Now those same clubs are trying to plan for a future they cannot predict.Can they afford to sign new players to strengthen their squads? Can they even meet the payrolls for the ones they have? Or is it wiser now to be sellers — even in a depressed pandemic market? The answers may determine how many teams enter the season with their financial futures in doubt.“If you are not able to renegotiate player salaries you are risking bankruptcy — it’s as simple as that,” said Pierre Maes, the author of “Le Business des Droits TV du Foot,” a book on the soccer rights market.The deal with Amazon came as a shock to many who thought that a monthslong rights-fee dispute between the league and Canal Plus — a league partner since the network’s inception in 1984 — would be resolved by a win at auction for the French network. But Amazon was picked over a joint offer from Canal Plus and its Qatari partner, beIN Sports.Canal Plus executives have publicly expressed concern about Amazon, with Maxime Saada, the network’s chief executive, telling the business publication Challenges that the power of Amazon posed the “biggest danger” to the business model of Canal Plus. “We have to dodge them permanently,” he said. Perhaps underlining that power, a top French soccer official said the league was not prepared to turn down an agreement with a company as significant as Amazon, believing that a bet on the e-commerce giant was a bet on the future.But the outcome has introduced yet more uncertainty for a league that has been in a tailspin since it announced in 2020 that it would not be able to complete the 2019-20 season because of the pandemic. France was the only one of Europe’s top leagues to take the measure.Almost as soon as it returned to the field for a new season, though, the league was quickly convulsed by a second — and perhaps far more serious — crisis. Late last year, Mediapro, the Chinese-backed company with which the league had signed a record-breaking television contract, announced it could not meet its commitments. Less than three months after the start of its three-year deal, Mediapro surrendered the rights to French soccer and walked away.Canal Plus picked up the pieces, taking over Mediapro’s games at a discount, but it soon found itself in its own dispute with the league.The Canal Plus chief executive Maxime Saada, who said the company would not pay a multimillion-dollar rights fee or even broadcast French soccer games.Pool photo by Thomas SamsonAfter learning that the price Amazon had paid for the rights to its matches was lower than the one Canal Plus was contracted to pay for fewer (and less high-profile) games, the network argued that it should no longer have to spend 332 million euros ($394 million) for the rights that it sub-licenses from the Qatari broadcaster beIN.“Canal Plus will not pay 332 million euros for 20 percent of the matches, when Amazon broadcasts 80 percent for 250 million euros,” Saada told L’Équipe.While in many ways the situation in which Ligue 1 finds itself is particularly French, the collapse of the rights market in the country is only the most recent example of the plummeting value of soccer rights in Europe more generally. In recent auctions for television rights in Italy and Germany, the leagues in both countries ended up getting less than in their previous deals.England’s Premier League, the world’s richest domestic competition, required special government dispensation to roll over an agreement with its current partners to avoid a risky auction. And Spain’s top league will change the way it sells its rights to mitigate against what is likely to be a major drop-off in the price it can command.“My conclusion is that in France the bubble has burst and it’s actually what I’m forecasting to become a reality in other countries, too,” Maes said.The value of the Canal Plus rights is substantially lower since the collapse of the Mediapro deal, Canal Plus argued before the latest auction. It demanded that the league renegotiate the price or include its rights in the auction to find Mediapro’s replacement.The league refused and a court in France sided with it, saying Canal Plus had failed to demonstrate how it had been harmed.But while the network is preparing new litigation, and contends it can make its case, Amazon and the league are looking forward.“Ligue 1 football has a new partner and an exciting future,” Alex Green, the managing director of Amazon’s sports programming for Europe, said after the company’s biggest soccer deal to date was announced. “We won’t let you down.”For France’s top-flight teams, the joy of having a new, deep-pocketed partner has been quickly tempered by the potential loss of hundreds of millions of dollars from Canal Plus.Some French club executives, like the Olympique Lyonnais president Jean Michel Aulas, predict that Canal Plus will back down. “I do not see at all how Canal can deprive itself of having access to Ligue 1,” said Aulas, a member of the French league’s television rights committee.But, according to senior Canal Plus executives, the company is standing firm. Its first payment is due Aug. 5. At the moment, it has no plans to pay it.The rupture is significant. The relationship with Canal Plus — which has overcome previous disputes — has underpinned the economics of the French league for decades. The strain of the pandemic even led to intervention from government officials, including President Emmanuel Macron, who called on the network to play its role when the league’s finances started to teeter.Lille won the French club championship this season even as it moved to trim its budget.Denis Charlet/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesLigue 1’s president, Vincent Labrune, met with Canal Plus’s Saada several times before the auction, and warned him that a lowball bid for the broader rights package on offer could lose out should a rival emerge. Saada, and Canal Plus, considered that unlikely after the league failed to sell the rights in a January auction in which neither Canal Plus nor beIN participated. But the bad blood between the league and its main partner started to escalate.The bitterness, according to many commentators, clouded the negotiations and led to an outcome in which the only winner appears to be Amazon, which through the deal secured majority rights to a top European soccer league for the first time.“It’s very opportunistic because Amazon has profited from a very emotional situation,” Maes said.A league board member involved in the decision said Ligue 1 was confident Canal Plus would have to honor its contract, and that under French law action could be taken within 15 days if the money is not paid.But for French clubs who need to decide now on budgets, players and plans for next season, that may be too late. More