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    Luis Rubiales, Spain’s Top Soccer Official, Resigns Over World Cup Kiss

    Pressure had been building on Luis Rubiales, with prosecutors opening an investigation, his soccer federation calling for him to step down and FIFA suspending him.The head of the Spanish soccer federation, Luis Rubiales, resigned on Sunday, weeks after kissing a member of Spain’s women’s team on the lips after the team won the World Cup last month, setting off a national scandal and drawing accusations of abusing his power and perpetuating sexism in the sport.In a statement posted to X, formerly known as Twitter, on Sunday, Mr. Rubiales said he had submitted his resignation as the federation’s president and as vice president of UEFA, European soccer’s governing body.“After the rapid suspension carried out by FIFA, plus the rest of proceedings open against me, it is evident that I will not be able to return to my position,” he wrote. “My daughters, my family and the people who love me have suffered the effects of persecution excessively, as well as many falsehoods, but it is also true that in the street, the truth is prevailing more every day.”Mr. Rubiales, 46, was largely unrepentant about his actions, but pressure had grown on him and the group he leads, known formally as the Royal Spanish Football Federation, and it became clear that his position was untenable as the outrage against him showed no signs of abating.Spanish prosecutors opened a sexual assault case on Friday after the player Jennifer Hermoso, who said she was made to feel “vulnerable” and a “victim of an attack” when he kissed her, filed a formal complaint, and there were signs of opposition to his continued presence at the top of Spanish soccer at every turn.The soccer federation had called for him to resign “immediately,” female players had said they would not take the field for the national team as long as he was in charge, the men’s team had condemned his actions, and FIFA, soccer’s governing body, had suspended him for 90 days.Some commentators have described the events as a watershed moment in Spain’s #MeToo movement, as they put a spotlight on a divide between traditions of machismo and more recent progressivism that placed Spain in the European vanguard on issues of feminism and equality.The controversy centers on the conduct of Mr. Rubiales, who kissed Ms. Hermoso, one of the team’s star players, after Spain defeated England, 1-0, at the World Cup final in Sydney, Australia, on Aug. 20.He offered a tepid apology the next day, but by the end of that week he had dug in his heels and reversed course, insisting that Ms. Hermoso had “moved me close to her body” during their encounter onstage, feet from the Spanish queen. He also accused his critics of targeting him in a “social assassination” and declared that he would not step down.Ms. Hermoso has vigorously disputed his account and has received support far and wide, with players and others — including the United Nations’ human rights office — using the hashtag “se acabó,” or “it’s over.”The Spanish government was limited in its ability to punish Mr. Rubiales, but Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez described the soccer chief’s actions as “unacceptable,” and the secretary of the opposition People’s Party, Cuca Gamarra, described them as “shameful.”The scandal has taken some of the shine off the national team’s World Cup triumph, diverting attention from the rapid ascent to soccer glory by a squad that qualified for the tournament for the first time eight years ago after decades of mediocrity.On Sunday evening, Mr. Rubiales gave an interview on “Piers Morgan Uncensored,” in which he said he came to the decision to resign after speaking to friends and family. “They say to me, ‘Luis, now you have to focus on your dignity and to continue your life, because if not, probably, you are going to damage people you love,’” he said.Victor Francos, the president of Spain’s National Sports Council, said on Onda Cero radio that Mr. Rubiales’s resignation was “good news for the government” and “what the citizens were asking for.” Minutes earlier on Cadena Ser radio, he said the government was considering “legislative changes that can improve, strengthen and enrich public control over the federations.”“We must reflect so that certain things that have happened don’t happen again,” he said.But Mr. Rubiales was not without his supporters.When he spoke at a federation meeting in late August, his robust defense was met with loud applause by some in attendance, and his mother locked herself in a church and began a hunger strike to protest what she considered a witch hunt of her son.Before Mr. Rubiales was punished, the controversy led to the ouster of another high-profile figure in the world of Spanish women’s soccer: Jorge Vilda, the coach of the World Cup winning squad but a polarizing figure, who was fired on Tuesday.Mr. Vilda, who was hired in 2015 when his predecessor was ousted amid accusations of sexism, had been dogged by scandal in recent months. And last year, 15 star players refused to play on the national team, complaining about controlling behavior by Mr. Vilda and a general culture of sexism. More

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    Spain’s Female Soccer Players Strike Over Wage Dispute

    The season was scheduled to begin on Friday, but the players refused to play after talks with the league brought no agreement. The dispute comes amid a debate over sexism and soccer in Spain.Female soccer players in Spain are going on strike as the club season begins, a union representative said on Thursday, as a dispute over conduct by the head of the country’s soccer federation widened into a fight with their clubs over pay.Early this month, the women’s players’ union announced that if working conditions did not improve considerably before the start of the season on Friday, the women would not play the matches set to begin this weekend.The dispute is playing out amid broader upheaval in Spanish soccer, with the firing on Tuesday of the women’s national soccer coach, Jorge Vilda, whom players had criticized for his domineering management style, and the filing of a criminal complaint against Luis Rubiales, the head of the country’s soccer federation, by Jennifer Hermoso, a player on the national women’s team whom he forcibly kissed during a public celebration of the team’s World Cup final victory in Australia last month.Representatives of the Spanish women’s soccer league and unions failed to reach an agreement during meetings in Madrid this week, with pay being the biggest point of contention.Protesters holding red cards calling for the resignation of Luis Rubiales, the head of Spain’s soccer federation, in Barcelona this week.David Ramos/Getty ImagesThe players asked for three years of progressive increases to bring their minimum wage up to 30,000 euros (about $32,000) a year, but the league proposed an increase, over three years, to €25,000. The current minimum for female players in the country is €16,000, compared with €180,000 for their male counterparts, according to Spain’s chief player union, A.F.E.“The irresponsibility and lack of spirit and vision of the unions lead clubs and players to a strike that seriously damages the image of Spanish women’s football,” the women’s league said in a statement on Wednesday.Spain’s female soccer players have been demanding higher wages and better conditions for years. They reached their first collective bargaining agreement in 2020 and have since been pushing for the country’s soccer league to improve conditions. The players are seeking higher wages, contracts that continue during maternity leave, and access to the same nutritionists and physical therapists as the male players.The strike will affect games scheduled for Friday through Sunday and Sept. 15 to 17.Discussions are due to continue next week between the league and unions in the hopes of reaching an agreement. More

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    Sexism in Spanish Women’s Soccer: Bedtime Check-Ins and Verbal Abuse

    More than a dozen women described sexism ranging from paternalism to verbal abuse. “What you really need is a good man,” a former national captain said players were told.Last summer, when Beatriz Álvarez landed the job as president of the Spanish women’s soccer league, she asked to meet the chief of the country’s soccer federation by videoconference, she said, so she could remain home with her newborn child.After decades of being an inconsistently run afterthought, women’s soccer had recently become fully unionized and professional. Ms. Álvarez had much to discuss.But Luis Rubiales, the now-embattled president of the soccer federation, refused, Ms. Álvarez recalled in an interview. He told her to send someone else. She said he told her that, rather than attending a meeting, she should set an example by “devoting myself to my maternity.”Ms. Álvarez said the meetings went on without her. She said the incident was just one of many subtle and not-so-subtle reminders over the years that, in the eyes of Spain’s top soccer official, women should know their place.This power imbalance burst into public view after Spain won the World Cup last month and Mr. Rubiales forcibly kissed the star player, Jenni Hermoso, on live television. On Wednesday, Ms. Hermoso filed a criminal complaint with state prosecutors, advancing an inquiry into whether the kiss was an act of sexual aggression.The kiss unleashed widespread backlash and provoked a reckoning in women’s soccer in the country. On Tuesday, Spain fired its women’s national coach, Jorge Vilda, whom players had separately criticized for his domineering, even humiliating management style. Replacing him is Montse Tomé, 41, the first woman to hold that position in Spain.Jorge Vilda, Spain’s recently fired national coach, left, and Luis Rubiales, president of the Spanish Soccer Federation, at the Women’s World Cup in Auckland, New Zealand, last month.Molly Darlington/ReutersIn interviews with The New York Times, more than a dozen women involved in Spanish soccer described more than a decade of systemic sexism ranging from paternalism and offhand remarks to verbal abuse. Women said they got bedtime checks and were ordered to leave their hotel doors ajar at night. One high-ranking official quit after concluding that her hiring was just window dressing. And Veronica Boquete, a former national team captain, recalled that Mr. Vilda’s predecessor, Ignacio Quereda, told players, “What you really need is a good man and a big penis.”Mr. Quereda has denied being verbally abusive.With his kiss and his defiance in the face of suspension and public recrimination, Mr. Rubiales is the face of that system. Ms. Álvarez called him an “egocentric chauvinist” who never cared about the women’s league and ran the sport “based on belittlement and humiliation.”Mr. Rubiales did not respond to an interview request, and his soccer federation declined to answer questions from The New York Times or even forward them to Mr. Rubiales, citing his suspension by FIFA, soccer’s world governing body. He has described himself as a victim of “false feminism.” While players say they will boycott the national team unless Mr. Rubiales is gone, they also say that his departure would not be enough. The issues in Spanish soccer predate his arrival and require major changes to address, they say. Dozens of current and former players have signed a statement demanding management changes. They air their grievances and strategize in a WhatsApp group called Se Acabó, Spanish for “It’s Over.”Players want higher wages, contracts that continue during maternity leave and access to the same nutritionists and physical therapists as men. And they are discussing a potential strike to get them. Union officials say that the minimum wage for women is 16,000 euros (a little over $17,000), compared with 180,000 euros, over $193,000, for their male counterparts.A protest against Mr. Rubiales and his treatment of Jennifer Hermoso at the World Cup final in Madrid last month. The sign reads, “With you, Jenni. It’s over.”Isabel Infantes/ReutersAna Muñoz, the soccer federation’s former vice president for integrity, said that instead of prize money at the end of a competition she witnessed, players received tablets. “I have daughters,” she recalled Mr. Rubiales remarking. “I know what women would want.”Ms. Muñoz, who resigned in 2019 after a year on the job, recounted for the first time the reasons for her departure. “I was just there for decoration,” she said. “A flower pot.” She said she questioned the ethics of several Mr. Rubiales’s decisions, including a $43 million deal to move a soccer competition to Saudi Arabia. That move is under investigation, along with public allegations by his former chief of staff and others that Mr. Rubiales used federation money to host a sex party at a coastal villa in the south of Spain. (Mr. Rubiales has previously denied any wrongdoing in either case).Fifteen of the federation’s 18 board members were men, Ms. Muñoz recalled. When she called for the temporary removal of a member pending a criminal investigation into whether he had spent federation funds on home renovations and his wife’s business, she said she was swiftly voted down. She said she had no authority. “I couldn’t understand that a department of integrity didn’t deal with integrity issues,” she said.Players tried and failed to force change last year over the behavior of Mr. Vilda, the now-fired national coach.Ms. Boquete recalled that on the national team from 2015 to 2017, when she was captain and Mr. Vilda was coach, he insisted that, when women gathered for coffee, they do so where he could see them. She said he wanted to monitor their body language, whom they were meeting and whether they were complaining about him. Team captains were told where to sit at meals, she said, so he could maintain eye contact with them.Mr. Vilda also required players to keep their doors open at night until he could check that each of them was in bed. “If you go into the other rooms, maybe you’ll talk about him,” Ms. Boquete said. “He wanted to control everything.”It’s unclear whether that continued for the most recent national team. The players have declined to speak publicly amid the controversy. People close to the players said the women feared retribution. And in the few cases in which agents said their clients did want to talk, the clubs shut them down.Fifteen players ultimately banded together and refused to play under Mr. Vilda. Mr. Rubiales refused to fire him, and the federation responded by requiring that the players apologize for their actions before considering whether to allow them to return to the team.Beatriz Álvarez, president of the Spanish women’s soccer league, said that Mr. Rubiales told her to set an example by devoting herself to her maternity.Carlos Lujan/Europa Press, via Getty ImagesSome players were particularly angry last month, after the World Cup victory and the controversy over the kiss, when Mr. Rubiales not only refused to step down and apologize but also announced that he planned to renew Mr. Vilda’s contract and give him a raise. That plan came to a halt this week with Mr. Vilda’s termination, but Mr. Rubiales is clinging to his job. Though the federation has not fired him, it called his behavior at the World Cup “totally unacceptable.”Mr. Rubiales resisted the idea of professional women’s soccer from the beginning, records obtained by The Times show. In 2020, during discussions about creating a unionized, official women’s soccer league, the national federation under Mr. Rubiales opposed the idea, according to a document from Spain’s National Sports Council.Mr. Rubiales questioned whether clubs could afford the upgrade, recalled María José López, the top lawyer for Spain’s chief players’ union, who was involved in the discussions. But she suspected Mr. Rubiales really did not want to cede power to the women’s teams. “In particular, he didn’t want the clubs to negotiate TV broadcasting rights,” Ms. López said.Generations of female athletes have endured demeaning comments.When an unofficial Barcelona women’s team played its inaugural match on Christmas in 1970, the public announcer kept asking, “Has her bra broken?” as players ran the field, team members have recalled.The following year, José Luis Pérez-Paya, then the president of Spain’s soccer federation, said: “I’m not against women’s football, but I don’t like it, either. I don’t think it’s feminine from an aesthetic point of view. Women are not favored wearing shirts and shorts.”Dozens of current and former players have signed a statement demanding management changes.Catherine Ivill/Getty ImagesDecades later, Mr. Rubiales cracked a similar joke on live television. Monica Marchante, a Spanish sports commentator, recalled being on air with him as players wore T-shirts and shorts after practice. “They’re in their underwear,” he joked. In an interview, Ms. Marchante said she smiled politely but realized then that Mr. Rubiales was “old-fashioned and rancid.”Ms. Álvarez, the league president, said the soccer federation also tried to sabotage the opening of the 2022-23 women’s season by helping to orchestrate a referee strike that postponed the opening weekend. The federation, she said, is a “corrupt structure.”In January, when the Barcelona club team won the Women’s Super Cup, an important Spanish competition, Mr. Rubiales and other top federation officials skipped the medal ceremony. Players had to collect their medals from containers.Spain is far from alone in its treatment of female players. In 2004, FIFA’s president at the time, Sepp Blatter, suggested that women could enhance their sport by wearing tighter shorts. During a 2015 interview in Zurich, he repeatedly petted a Times reporter’s hair.European powers like England and Germany barred women from playing for years until 1970.“The Spaniards are not outliers,” said Andrei Markovits, a University of Michigan politics professor and the author of “Women in American Soccer and European Football.” “They are totally the norm.”Spain’s professional women’s soccer season kicks off this weekend. But on Wednesday, the attention was on an office in downtown Madrid, where league and union representatives were meeting to discuss salaries and working conditions. Union leaders say that, if no agreement is reached, a strike is possible that could delay the season. More

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    Jorge Vilda, Coach of Spain’s Women’s Soccer Team, Is Fired

    Players had accused the coach, Jorge Vilda, of outdated methods and controlling behavior. His boss, Luis Rubiales, is still embroiled in scandal over a nonconsensual kiss.The coach of the Spanish national soccer team that won the Women’s World Cup trophy last month was ousted on Tuesday by the country’s soccer federation, after months of complaints from players who accused him of outdated methods and controlling behavior.The firing of the coach, Jorge Vilda, comes as the fate of one of his most ardent supporters, Spain’s soccer federation chief, Luis Rubiales, hangs in the balance. Mr. Rubiales forcibly kissed a member of the national team at a medals ceremony in Australia, setting off a national controversy in Spain and highlighting sexism in the sport.The federation said in a statement that as one of the “first measures of renewal” announced by the interim president, Pedro Rocha, it had decided “to do without the services” of Mr. Vilda as sporting director and national women’s coach, a role which he accepted in 2015.The federation also thanked Mr. Vilda for his work with the national team and the success during his tenure, crowned by the World Cup victory. It said it was highlighting “his impeccable personal and sporting behavior,” which “was a key piece in the notable growth of Spanish women’s football.”The federation has called on Mr. Rubiales to resign, and Spanish prosecutors have opened an investigation into whether he could be charged with committing an act of sexual aggression. Players have said they would not take the field for the national team unless changes were made on a managerial level. And FIFA, soccer’s governing body, has suspended him for 90 days.Mr. Vilda, who was hired in 2015 after one of his predecessors was ousted amid accusations of sexism, had long been the subject of complaints from players regarding unequal pay and what they called his controlling behavior, as well as a general culture of sexism. Last year, 15 star Spanish players staged a protest, refusing to play on the national team unless Mr. Vilda was fired.That rebellion drew a stern rebuke from the Spanish soccer federation, which backed Mr. Vilda. Not only would it not fire him, the federation said, but the players must apologize for their actions before they would be allowed back on the team. The standoff ended with most of the mutinous players returning to the field.Mr. Rubiales backed Mr. Vilda at the time. In an interview with the Spanish newspaper El País in October 2022, Mr. Rubiales connected the success of the women’s team to Mr. Vilda’s coaching skills and dismissed the accusations of ill treatment. In a speech last month, he doubled down in his support for the coach, vowing to increase his salary to 500,000 euros ($543,000) after the World Cup win, Spain’s first in the women’s tournament.Mr. Rubiales has been at the center of a maelstrom over sexism in Spanish women’s soccer since he grabbed and kissed Jennifer Hermoso, a member of the national team, during the medals ceremony after Spain beat England, 1-0, in the final in Sydney, Australia.After the forced kiss, players again issued an ultimatum. The entire women’s team and dozens of other players signed a statement saying they would not play for Spain “if the current managers continue.” Alexia Putellas, who is widely recognized as one of the best players in the world, coined the hashtag #seacabo, or “it’s over.” Some people protested in the streets of Spain. On Monday evening, the Spanish men’s team captain, Álvaro Morata, flanked by his teammates issued a joint statement rejecting “the unacceptable behavior of Mr. Rubiales.”Some commentators have described the episode as a watershed moment in Spain’s #MeToo movement, highlighting a divide between the country’s traditions of machismo and more recent progressivism that has put Spain in the European vanguard on issues of feminism and equality.Mr. Rubiales has denied doing anything wrong, arguing that he has been a victim of “social assassination” and even suggesting that Ms. Hermoso had initiated the encounter, which she has strenuously denied. His mother went on a three-day hunger strike in a church in his hometown, Motril, in southern Spain, demanding that Ms. Hermoso “tell the truth.”Ms. Hermoso, for her part, has said that “at no time did I consent to the kiss that he gave me.”As the scandal mushroomed, the federation, known as the Royal Spanish Football Federation, called an emergency meeting. Mr. Vilda was one of the many men in the room who gave Mr. Rubiales a standing ovation.Later, however, Mr. Vilda tried to distance himself from Mr. Rubiales, saying that he regretted his boss’s “inappropriate conduct.” The Spanish men’s coach, Luis de la Fuente, also apologized for applauding. But the damage was done.The firing of Mr. Vilda comes on the same day as the Spanish government published the awarding of a Gold Medal for Sporting Merit of the Royal Order to the entire women’s team, including Mr. Vilda.But with a match against Sweden set for Sept. 22, and with none of Spain’s star players apparently willing to compete, the soccer federation cut Mr. Vilda loose. More

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    Judge Vacates Convictions in Bribery Case Over Soccer Broadcast Deals

    Hernán López, a former Fox employee, and an Argentine sports marketing company had been convicted of participating in a bribery scheme to secure rights to widely viewed tournaments.Less than six months after a federal jury convicted a former Fox employee and an Argentine sports marketing company of participating in a scheme to pay bribes in exchange for lucrative soccer broadcasting contracts, a judge in Brooklyn vacated the convictions on Friday.In a 55-page ruling, the judge, Pamela K. Chen, concluded that the federal wire fraud statute under which the defendants had been convicted did not apply to their actions.In a seven-week trial that ended in March, prosecutors alleged that Hernán López, who holds dual American and Argentine citizenship and who until 2016 worked for a unit of what was then known as 21st Century Fox, had been part of a scheme to make millions of dollars in secret annual payments to the presidents of national soccer federations in order to secure the rights to two widely viewed South American soccer tournaments.Mr. Lopez — who prosecutors also said had leveraged loyalty he garnered through bribes to help Fox beat out ESPN in its bid for the U.S. broadcasting rights for the 2018 and 2022 men’s World Cups — was convicted on one count of money laundering conspiracy and one count of wire fraud conspiracy. He faced up to 40 years in prison.Prosecutors said that Mr. López’s co-defendant, the sports marketing company Full Play Group, had paid bribes for the rights to multiple World Cup qualifiers, exhibition matches and tournaments. Full Play was convicted on six fraud and money laundering counts and could have faced stiff financial penalties.A key factor in Judge Chen’s decision, handed down late Friday, was the scope of a law under which the defendants had been charged, known as the honest services wire fraud statute.Until 2016, Hernán López worked for a unit of what was then known as 21st Century Fox. Fox has not been accused of wrongdoing.Brendan Mcdermid/ReutersJudge Chen cited a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in May, in which the justices threw out two fraud convictions stemming from public corruption prosecutions during Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s administration in New York. In one of the cases, Percoco v. United States, the justices considered whether a former aide to Mr. Cuomo could be prosecuted under a federal law that makes it a crime to deprive the government of “honest services” for conduct that took place after he left his government role.In light of that decision, and the absence of precedent applying that law to bribery of foreign employees of foreign nongovernment employers, Judge Chen wrote in her ruling that she was compelled to “find that the honest services wire fraud statute does not encompass foreign commercial bribery as charged against defendants.”“We are obviously pleased with Judge Chen’s thorough and correct decision,” John Gleeson, a lawyer for Mr. López, said in a statement on Saturday.Lawyers for Full Play wrote in a statement on Saturday that their client “greatly appreciates the court’s complete vindication.”The case in Brooklyn was one of many spawned by a yearslong corruption investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice into international soccer officials, which has led to more than two dozen convictions and over $100 million in forfeitures.Beyond the immediate acquittals of Mr. López and Full Play, the ruling could have significant implications for other defendants in the sprawling case. Two South American soccer officials were convicted after the first trial, in 2017, and could now seek acquittals, and at least four other defendants who have evaded extradition, including the Argentine owners of Full Play, could see the charges against them dropped. So far, the court has not spoken about those issues.John Marzulli, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York, said on Saturday that the prosecutor’s office was reviewing the decision. More

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    What the NBA May Need: a Soccer-Style Way to Banish Bad Teams

    Dave Checketts, a former Knicks executive, has seen firsthand the emotional, and financial, power of relegation through his post-N.B.A. career in European soccer.Dave Checketts believed he had experienced pretty much everything in his decades-long career as a sports executive. As the Knicks’ president, he had hired Pat Riley as coach in 1991, launching a memorable decade of championship contention at Madison Square Garden. As a founding owner of an M.L.S. franchise in Salt Lake City with his company, SCP Worldwide, he had negotiated a partnership with Real Madrid that helped to produce one of the early soccer-specific stadiums in the United States and an M.L.S. Cup title in 2009.But none of Checketts’s years in the N.B.A., N.H.L. (as owner of the St. Louis Blues for a few years starting in 2006) or M.L.S. had prepared him for a Sunday in May 2022 when Burnley, the English football club, was relegated from the Premier League for the first time in six years — in a stomach-churning, one-goal defeat, at home, on the season’s final day.“For a regular-season event, I’d never witnessed anything like that,” said Checketts, who had been appointed to the club’s board of directors in 2021. “It was gripping, and then, it’s over, you’re relegated, out of the top league. Fans were sobbing. It was a funeral service. But because I was at home in Connecticut, I could look at it from a distance, also see it as business strategy.”He recalled telling his wife, Deb, “The N.B.A. needs to do this!”In a calmer state, he recognized that North American professional basketball lacks the lower-league infrastructure of European soccer to consider for promotion/relegation, among other cultural and financial disqualifying factors. But in a recent discussion, Checketts, 67, spoke with The New York Times about the increasing connectedness of global sport.This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.How did your association with Burnley F.C. come about?Our M.L.S. team was not doing well the first two years. After we started badly in Year 3, I let everybody go. There was a young partner in our firm, Alan Pace, and I asked him to be interim C.E.O. Alan fell in love with the game. When he put together the deal to buy Burnley in 2020, he called and said, “The Premier League is telling me I’ve got to have someone who’s been around professional sports.” I put money in and joined his ownership group.Burnley was relegated from the Premier League in 2022 but won promotion in 2023. Checketts said he was the promotion-relegation system as “business strategy.”Richard Sellers/PA Images, via Getty ImagesAfter relegation in 2022, you experienced promotion, the flip side, with Burnley losing only three games in the second tier, or Championship. What was that like?There was a coach who had been there for a decade, Sean Dyche, who was so popular that there was a bar there named for him. But we were losing and Alan fired him with a few games left in the relegation season. The fans went crazy on social media; it was ugly. This guy’s an American — what does he know?Then Alan hired Vincent Kompany, who’d been a star at Manchester City and was coaching in Belgium. He shed payroll, went with young players and a new attacking system. When we won the Championship, they held a parade, which I was there for. Burnley is very industrial, one of the oldest clubs in the world. The stadium seats only about 20,000, but it felt like the whole city was there, tens of thousands.J.J. Watt, one of two former N.F.L. players — Malcolm Jenkins being the other — to invest in Burnley, was at the clinching game and got to carry the trophy. Why is English football suddenly attracting U.S. celebrities? (Watt’s wife, Kealia, who played in the National Women’s Soccer League, is also an investor.)Obviously, Ryan Reynolds’s buying Wrexham and the television series has been a huge factor, as well as “Ted Lasso” on Apple. But Americans have always had a fascination with England, anything with the royal family. And look, Americans are also used to watching what they think is the best in sport. It’s not surprising that with soccer’s growth there’s a fascination with the Premier League.If promotion/relegation would never fly in American pro leagues, including M.L.S., is there any sports entity where it could be workable?I think it’s an absolutely great idea to have a power conference in college football, and there you could have promotion/relegation, where the bottom three or four would go down, but would still be able to play major college teams. It would create incredible interest. But you’d need a central power source, like a pro commissioner, and the N.C.A.A. is not that.Speaking of borrowing from Europe, the N.B.A. is launching an in-season tournament, but it already has a tournament — it’s called the playoffs. Will this work?I think if you went out on the street, even in New York City, and asked, what is this N.B.A. tournament about, I doubt many would know. It’s a separate tournament, but the results count in the regular-season standings? They’re going to Las Vegas for the championship in December?Let’s say Phoenix goes to Vegas and wins the championship. Do they go home and have a celebration? In Europe, they certainly do celebrate winning any cup.It doesn’t feel like American fans need it, but [N.B.A. Commissioner] Adam Silver is never afraid to try something new, and maybe it will stimulate some interest.As the Knicks’ president, Checketts had hired Pat Riley as coach in 1991, launching a memorable decade of championship contention.Richard Perry/The New York TimesSome of the N.B.A.’s best players now are foreign-born. Might there ever be European team expansion?In 1990, when I was general manager of N.B.A. International, we were already identifying expansion cities, but I don’t think owners are spending any time on it anymore. It’s fine to go over and play a few games for marketing. But you start complicating things with collective bargaining, television contracts, labor laws. If we were looking at it 33 years ago and it hasn’t happened yet, I doubt it’s ever going to happen. Certainly not in my lifetime.On the aforementioned subject of American fans demanding the best in a particular sport, where is M.L.S. on becoming a true major league on the international stage?[Lionel] Messi has made an obvious difference this summer, but how long can he go and what happens after that? How many guys can be given $50 million? How do you get that huge network deal? For me, the financial side was impossible to carry on. (Checketts sold his stake in Real Salt Lake in 2013.)First of all, we play in the summer so foreign players have to leave to play for their national teams. It would also help if the best U.S. players stayed in M.L.S. except you usually have a national team coach who prefers they go to Europe because the game is so much better. So it’s a difficult challenge, but you do have the World Cup coming here in 2026 and it would help if the U.S. could be really competitive. This may be a make-or-break decade. More

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    A Shocking Soccer Kiss Demonstrates the Power of Scandal

    By generating public outrage, scandals make inaction costly: suddenly, doing nothing carries greater risks.After Luis Rubiales, the president of Spain’s soccer federation, forcibly kissed Jennifer Hermoso, a player on the national women’s team, in the wake of their World Cup win, many wondered whether it would be a #MeToo moment for Spain.Whether the televised kiss galvanizes a lasting movement against harassment and discrimination is yet to be seen. But the growing backlash against Rubiales highlights an often-crucial element of such public reckonings: scandal. During periods of social change, there is often a phase of widespread support for an overhaul in principle but a reluctance within the population to actually make those ideals a reality. Changing a system means taking on the powerful insiders who benefit from it and bearing the brunt of their retaliation — a hard sell, particularly for those who do not expect the change to help them personally.A scandal can change that calculus profoundly, as illustrated by the furor surrounding the kiss. Hermoso described it as “an impulse-driven, sexist, out-of-place act without any consent on my part.” (Rubiales, who has refused to resign, has forcefully defended his conduct and insisted that the kiss was consensual.)By generating public outrage, scandals make inaction costly: suddenly, doing nothing risks an even greater backlash. And scandals can alter the other side of the equation, too: the powerful have less ability to retaliate if their erstwhile allies abandon them in order to avoid being tainted by the scandal themselves. Action becomes less costly at the same time that inaction becomes more so.But although scandals can be a mighty tool, they are not available to everyone. Just as the growing backlash against Rubiales has shown the power of scandal, the events of the months leading up to it, in which many members of the Spanish women’s team tried without success to change a system they described as controlling and outdated, underline how difficult it can be to spark a scandal — and how that can leave ordinary people excluded from public sympathy or the ability to enact change.The unifying power of scandalTo see how this pattern plays out, it’s helpful to look at the influence of scandal in a very different context. Yanilda González, a professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, researches police reform in the Americas. In the 2010s, she set out to determine why, after Latin American dictatorships ended, democratic reforms often exempted police forces, leaving them as islands of authoritarianism.In her resulting 2020 book, “Authoritarian Police in Democracy,” she describes how police forces can be extremely powerful in political terms, sometimes using the threat of public disorder as leverage over policymakers who might seek to limit their power or threaten their privileges.Politicians were reluctant to incur the costs of pursuing reforms that might provoke a backlash from police. And public opinion was often divided: while some demanded greater protections from state violence, others worried that police reforms would empower criminals.But, González found, scandals could change that. Episodes of particularly egregious police misconduct could unite public opinion in demanding reform. Opposition politicians, seeing an opportunity to win votes from an angry public, would add to the chorus, and eventually the government would decide that change was the least costly option.The Harvey Weinstein scandal followed a similar pattern. For many years, Weinstein’s predatory behavior was an open secret in Hollywood. But then a Times article by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, in which multiple women detailed the abuses they had suffered at his hands, generated a massive scandal. The public outrage at Weinstein’s behavior meant that the old Hollywood calculus, in which it was safer to keep quiet about the powerful producer’s abuses than to try to stop them, no longer applied. Weinstein’s former allies abandoned him.That generated pressure for change that went far beyond Weinstein. A slew of other #MeToo scandals exposed powerful men as abusers, harassers, and general sex pests. A national reckoning followed.‘The kiss’ shows scandal’s power — but also its limitationsLong before the televised kiss, many members of the Spanish women’s team had lodged protests against Rubiales and the Spanish football association’s leadership. Last year, 15 members of the team, frustrated by unequal pay and general sexism, sent identical letters accusing the team’s coach, Jorge Vilda, of using methods damaging to “their emotional state and their health,” and saying they would not play for the national team unless he was fired.Those 15 women were some of the team’s best players. They were organized. And they were willing to sacrifice a World Cup appearance to achieve change.But they were not yet “Queens of the World,” as one magazine cover proclaimed them last week, with a World Cup win that would put them on the front page of every newspaper in the country. And they didn’t yet have a scandal. No single event had generated sufficient public outrage to shift power from the football association to the players. The Spanish football association, including Rubiales, reacted with outrage to the letters, and vowed to not only protect Vilda’s job, but to keep the writers off the national team unless they “accept their mistake and apologize.” Though there is no precise formula, to capture public attention a scandal often needs to involve an exceptionally sympathetic victim, as well as shocking allegations of misconduct. Kate Manne, a philosophy professor at Cornell and the author of two books on structural misogyny, has written about how some people will instinctively align themselves with the status quo, sympathizing with powerful men accused of sexual violence or other wrongdoing rather than their victims — a tendency she calls “himpathy.” To overcome that instinct, she said, victims often have to be particularly compelling, such as the famous actresses who came forward about Weinstein’s abuses.Of course, most victims of harassment and assault are not famous actresses, or queens of the world. Manne noted that Tarana Burke, the activist who founded the #MeToo movement, spent years trying to bring attention to the abuse of less privileged women before high-profile scandals galvanized global attention. “She was trying to draw attention to the plight of the Black and brown girls who can be victimized in ways that don’t ever scandalize anyone,” Manne said. Public outrage has tended to be reserved for high-profile victims. But if norms shift more broadly against abuse and impunity, there can be positive change for ordinary people as well. Famous actresses may have focused public anger on Weinstein, but the #MeToo movement also brought attention to abuses of some less-famous workers, such as restaurant staff.Once the machinery of scandal does kick in, the consequences can be significant. As my Times colleagues Jason Horowitz and Rachel Chaundler report, many Spanish women saw Rubiales’ action as an example of a macho, sexist culture that allows men to subject them to aggression and violence without consequence.As public anger grew, politicians weighed in on behalf of the players. Late Friday night, the entire team and dozens of other players issued a joint statement saying that they would not play for Spain “if the current managers continue.” The next day, members of Vilda’s coaching staff resigned en masse.On Monday, Spanish prosecutors announced an investigation into whether Rubiales might have committed criminal sexual aggression. The same day, the Royal Spanish Football Association, which Rubiales currently leads, called on him to resign.The question now is not just whether he will be fired or step down, but if the broader outrage will lead to real change in Spain. “When we have these women who are, you know, figuratively and literally on top of the world in professional sports — and it’s captured live on video — then we have the makings of a scandal,” Manne said. It is too soon to tell where that might lead. More

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    Pressure Mounts on Rubiales Over Kiss at World Cup

    Luis Rubiales has defied calls to resign, now echoed by his own federation. Soccer’s world governing body has suspended him, and prosecutors have opened an initial investigation.The pressure is on for Luis Rubiales, the president of Spain’s national soccer federation, to quit.Prosecutors opened a preliminary investigation on Monday into whether his kiss of the forward Jennifer Hermoso, during the medals ceremony after she and her teammates won the Women’s World Cup for Spain last week, was an act of sexual aggression.In an emergency meeting that went on late into Monday night, Spain’s regional soccer chiefs unanimously asked him to step down immediately. The president of the National Sports Council said in a televised news conference on Monday that Mr. Rubiales should have handed in his notice last Friday. And in Madrid on Monday night, hundreds of people took to the streets, waving red cards and demanding Mr. Rubiales’s resignation.But Mr. Rubiales has remained defiant. Since Friday — when he said “I will not resign” five times — he has been holed up with his family in his hometown, Motril.Mr. Rubiales, a former professional soccer player, had hoped to play a match with friends on Saturday evening at the town’s municipal stadium. Feminist groups threatened to protest outside the gates, and the town council ordered it canceled, saying it could not guarantee Mr. Rubiales’s safety.There are also some signs of backing for him in the town, however.Mr. Rubiales’s mother has been on hunger strike in a church in Motril since Monday, protesting against what she has called the “inhumane and bloody hunt” against her son. On Monday night, responding to a call by Mr. Rubiales’s cousins, people congregated outside the church in support, some with posters aimed at Ms. Hermoso saying: “Jenni, tell the truth.” A police estimate cited in the Spanish media put the crowd at around 200.On Monday, Spain’s public prosecutors opened a pretrial investigation to establish whether the nonconsensual kiss Mr. Rubiales pressed on Ms. Hermoso was an act of sexual aggression, a crime that is punishable by up to four years in prison. Ms. Hermoso was widely reported to have been given 15 days to come forward with a formal complaint that would allow the prosecutors to proceed.As a young man, Mr. Rubiales, 46, enjoyed a career as a soccer player in the Spanish league. He became president of the Spanish soccer players’ association in 2010 and then took over the presidency of the Royal Spanish Football Federation five years ago. On Tuesday morning, there was no news from Mr. Rubiales. If he refuses to go voluntarily, the federation he presides over may hold a vote of no confidence to oust him.The Spanish government, for the time being, has its hands tied. According to press reports, it can intervene only if the Court of Arbitration for Sport considers the kiss to be a “very serious infraction.” On Monday, the reports said, the court asked for more documentation before reaching a decision.In a news conference on Tuesday morning, the acting sports minister, Miquel Iceta, was questioned about what steps the government was taking to remove Mr. Rubiales. “We all want this matter to be resolved as soon as possible,” Mr. Iceta said. “But we must also ensure that it is done rigorously and with all the legal guarantees — among other reasons, to prevent an appeal that could reverse whatever decisions are made.” More