Raphael Stevens

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    N.F.L. to Drop Race-Based Measures in Concussion Settlement

    Black players’ dementia claims were being measured differently from white players’. The change could prompt a reassessment of hundreds of previously denied cases.The N.F.L. said it would scrap the use of a disputed race-based method of evaluating dementia claims made by former players in the league’s concussion settlement and pledged to evaluate for evidence of bias the hundreds of claims that had already been filed.The announcement came several months after the federal judge overseeing the roughly $1 billion settlement ordered the league and lawyers representing the 20,000 former players who are covered by the agreement to review the use of separate standards for evaluating dementia in white and Black players.In August, two retired Black players, Kevin Henry and Najeh Davenport, filed a civil rights suit and a suit against the seven-year-old settlement that accused the league of “explicitly and deliberately” discriminating against Black players by using separate race-based benchmarks to determine their eligibility for dementia-based payouts, which can be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.The judge dismissed their suits, but the cases brought light to the evaluations and prompted members of Congress to request data from the N.F.L. to determine whether Black players were being discriminated against. They also prompted an ABC News report and led more than a dozen wives of Black retired N.F.L. players to send the judge in the case a petition with nearly 50,000 signatures calling for an end to race-norming.As it has in previous responses, the N.F.L. denied that the use of the race-based norms was discriminatory. But in a statement Wednesday, the league said it was committed to eliminating the use of those norms and finding race-neutral alternatives with the help of specialists in neuropsychology. While those new measures have not been identified, the decision to review old dementia claims under new assessment tools could mean that potentially hundreds more players will receive payments from the settlement.“Everyone agrees race-based norms should be replaced, but no off-the-shelf alternative exists, and that’s why these experts are working to solve this decades-old issue,” the league said. “The replacement norms will be applied prospectively and retrospectively for those players who otherwise would have qualified for an award but for the application of race-based norms.”While some former players have blamed the N.F.L., some have also taken aim at Christopher Seeger, the lead lawyer for more than 20,000 former players, who the players say knew about the abuse of race-based benchmarks as early as 2018 and did not address the issue. Lawyers for Henry and Davenport, the two former players who accused the league of discrimination, asked the court to replace Seeger in March.The former N.F.L. players Ken Jenkins, right, and Clarence Vaughn III, center right, and their wives, Amy Lewis, center, and Brooke Vaughn, left, carried petitions demanding an end to the use of race-based benchmarks in the N.F.L. concussion settlement to the federal courthouse in Philadelphia in May.Matt Rourke/Associated PressIn a statement also released on Wednesday, Seeger apologized for not having recognized the problems caused by the use of separate benchmarks for Black and white players.“I am sorry for the pain this episode has caused Black former players and their families,” Seeger said. “Ultimately, this settlement only works if former players believe in it, and my goal is to regain their trust and ensure the N.F.L. is fully held to account.”That trust may take time to rebuild. Lacey Leonard, whose husband, Louis, 36, played for six teams over five seasons, said Seeger’s apology was not enough. Leonard received a settlement after filing a dementia claim because he has a host of cognitive issues, including memory loss, anger and depression. When the claims auditor found no problems with Leonard’s claim, the N.F.L. appealed the settlement, and his claim was reversed.“Honestly, it was a half apology,” Lacey Leonard said in a phone interview. “I think the N.F.L. owes more to disabled players. It’s disheartening that in 2021 that we are still fighting systemic racism.”The N.F.L. did not say how long it would take for the league, Seeger and the panel of experts to create a new system to evaluate dementia claims. More than $800 million in claims has already been approved by the settlement administrator for a range of neurological and cognitive diseases. That number could increase significantly if many dementia claims that were initially rejected are reversed and approved.It is unclear how many Black players may have been misdiagnosed or had diagnoses that were overturned. More than 7,000 former players took free neuropsychological and neurological exams offered in the settlement. Some of them were told they did not have dementia and might be unaware of how their exams were scored.Cyril Smith, a lawyer for Henry and Davenport, asserted that white players’ dementia claims were being approved at two to three times the rate of those of Black players. But Smith was unable to substantiate his claim because, he said, Seeger and the N.F.L. had not shared any data on the approval rates for dementia claims by white and Black players.Seeger said that data would be released when new tests for dementia claims and an investigation looking at whether players were discriminated against had been submitted to the court. More

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    Chelsea's Champions League Secret: N'Golo Kanté

    Every coach has a plan. But players still decide games, and only Chelsea has Kanté. In the Champions League final, that made all the difference.PORTO, Portugal — Another attack had broken down, another minute had passed, and by now there was just a hint of panic in Kyle Walker’s eyes. The Champions League title was slipping away. And so he did what he has been conditioned to do these past five years. He turned to the place that always gives him the answers.As Chelsea dallied over taking a goal kick, hoping to see a few more precious seconds ebb away as it closed out its victory, Walker and Manchester City’s coach, Pep Guardiola, held an impromptu summit on the touchline. It was not hard to work out the dynamic. Walker wanted to know what to do. What had Guardiola seen? Where was the breach in the line? How did they rescue this?Guardiola responded with a torrent of instructions, as he always does. He is never short of ideas. Ordinarily, he passes them on to one or other of his fullbacks — the closest players to him — and they diffuse them through the rest of the team. This time, though, was different.Walker could see Guardiola’s lips moving. He could hear the words coming out, just about, above the din of Chelsea’s jubilant fans. But there was a look of blank incomprehension on his face, as if Guardiola had accidentally addressed him in Catalan or issued his instructions as a rap.Pep Guardiola and his players, out of time and out of answers.Pool photo by David RamosWalker furrowed his brow and stared, hard, at his coach, in a vain attempt to make it all make sense. Whether what Guardiola said got through, whether it was put into practice or not, a couple of moments later Walker was back at the touchline, this time with the ball in his hands. He took a couple of steps, and then launched it long, deep into the penalty area. A beat later, the same thing played out.Manchester City, that byword for sophistication and planning and command under Guardiola, the outstanding strategist of his generation, had resorted to soccer’s final roll of the dice, its last resort for the damned: the long throw-in.In the biggest game in the club’s history, in his own long-awaited return to the Champions League final, the system that Guardiola has so obsessively, so painstakingly coded into his players’ double helixes for half a decade had not just failed. It had broken down completely.There is a reason that, in times of trouble, Manchester City’s players seek the counsel of the bench. For all that Guardiola’s teams are often characterized as freewheeling, expressive, adventurous, the reality is — and this is not a criticism — the contrary. Manchester City’s great strength is not its pioneer spirit. It is that it has the most detailed map.Or, rather, Guardiola does. Much of what makes City so brilliant is not spontaneous, off-the-cuff virtuosity. It has all been trained and honed and perfected. Those slick interchanges of passing, all of the players darting into precise pockets of space to unpick the fabric of a massed defense? That is not improvisation. It is programming.And so when things go awry, when the plan does not seem to be working, the reflex of Guardiola’s players is to ask for further directions. It is hard to watch City for any period of time and not notice it. It is a reflex now: When some issue arises, the first instinct is always to look to the bench, to be given an update. There is no real room for personal interpretation. Under Guardiola, the system is king, and Guardiola is the system.He is not unique in that. Soccer in the 21st century is a cult of the supermanager: not only Guardiola but José Mourinho, Jürgen Klopp and Antonio Conte, Julian Nagelsmann and Mauricio Pochettino and Thomas Tuchel, the freshly minted champion of Europe.Chelsea’s Thomas Tuchel brought his family onto the field to celebrate after the final, a year after they had consoled him after he lost in it.Pool photo by Pierre-Philippe MarcouTuchel with Roman Abramovich. Tuchel told reporters after the game that it was the first time he had met the owner who hired him in January.Pool photo by Michael SteeleThey have diverse approaches and distinct philosophies, but they are united by a core belief: that at its heart, soccer is a game of competing systems. What defines the identity of the victor and the vanquished are choreographed movements and passing patterns and detailed tactics of each team. They all believe that it is the coach who has agency, that whoever has the best system will win.And yet that does not quite paint the whole picture. It would be perfectly valid to analyze Chelsea’s slender and yet convincing victory in Porto on Saturday as a tale of two systems: the one inculcated by Tuchel, brightly conceived and adroitly executed, overcoming the one unexpectedly — and to some extent inexplicably — adopted by Guardiola.Rather than stand by the approach that had made City all but untouchable in England since January, Guardiola chose to dispense with the services of a holding midfield player. Instead, he played Ilkay Gundogan in that role, with an array of creative, ball-playing playmakers around him.The temptation is to assess that call in psychological terms. This was Guardiola second-guessing himself, as he tends to in this competition, because he is so obsessed with winning it. Or, conversely, it was Guardiola distilling his beliefs down to their purest essence, trying to use the grandest stage of all to showcase his latest idea, the four-dimensional chess move of the boss-level supercoach.In all likelihood, the rationale was probably more technical. Guardiola expected Tuchel to sit back and defend, which would have made a holding midfielder an unnecessary encumbrance. Instead, he would need more players who could pick their way through Chelsea’s back line. It was, if one sees the game as a struggle between systems, the logical move.Reece James, one of Chelsea’s homegrown champions.Pool photo by Manu FernandezThe problem is that the game is not a struggle between systems. Or, at least, that is not all it is. On a more fundamental level, a game is also a struggle between humans: a physiological one, a psychological one, an intensely and intimately personal one. It is an examination of your fitness and your talent, your reactions and resolve. Chelsea’s system might have been superior. But so too, crucially, were its individuals.Not simply because, where City’s players seemed diminished by the occasion, driven to a frenzy by their desperation to deliver the club its self-appointed destiny, Chelsea’s appeared to be inspired by it.Reece James and Mason Mount, fresh-faced and locally reared, improved with every passing minute. Kai Havertz, the goal scorer, gave a statement performance, one that warranted his captain César Azpilicueta’s assertion that he will go on to be a “superstar.” Jorginho seemed unruffled. Antonio Rüdiger was nothing but ruffle.But more significant still was the fact that while City’s players had to turn to the bench to solve their problems, Chelsea had someone on the field to do it for them. Arsène Wenger was probably underselling it when he described N’Golo Kanté’s performance as “unbelievable.”With metronomic, almost eerie regularity, City built attacks only to find out that at the key moment, Kanté was there, in just the right place to win a tackle, at just the right angle to block a pass, at just the right time to interrupt the plan. At time, it felt as if someone had passed Kanté a script. He did not wait for instruction from the side. He just went to where the danger was, and eliminated it.Kanté was, in his own way, no less decisive here than Lionel Messi was in the 2009 and 2011 finals, or Cristiano Ronaldo was in 2014. The fact he is still pigeonholed as a holding midfielder means this will not be remembered as “the Kanté final,” but it would hardly be unwarranted.Kanté seemed to understand City’s plan as well, or better, than its players did.Pool photo by Michael SteeleBut to focus exclusively on his destructive capabilities, formidable though they are, is to do Kanté a disservice. He was also, often, the one who led Chelsea’s counterattacks. He determined the shape of the midfield. His passing helped to destabilize City’s defense. For a few minutes in the first half, he did a passable impression of Frank Lampard, turning his hand to breaking into the City penalty area, timing his run late.He did what great midfielders do, and shape-shifted as the flow of the game demanded. No wonder, as tends to happen with Kanté, a meme appeared at one point, detailing the great midfield threesomes of the recent past: Barcelona’s Xavi, Andres Iniesta and Sergio Busquets; Real Madrid’s Casemiro, Toni Kroos and Luka Modric; and Kanté, all by himself.That was, in the end, the difference on Saturday night. One team had Kanté on it, and the other did not. Perhaps there is some system that Guardiola could have conjured to negate him or to bypass him, but it is not immediately clear what form that would take.Even in the era of the supercoach, it is not always the finer tactical details alone that explain a result. The system is not always king. A game can be defined by ideas, but it can also be defined by people. And when it is, the visionaries on the sideline do not — cannot — have all the answers, because there are some things that do not appear on maps, no matter how finely drawn. More

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    Champions League Final: Chelsea Beats Manchester City

    PORTO, Portugal — Manchester City’s players did not seem to want to leave. Not right away, at least. They stood, as if frozen in place, as Chelsea’s players heaved the prize City craves more than any other into the air. They could not go. To go, after all, would be to accept that it was real, that it was over.They had found themselves on the far side of the field at the Estádio do Dragão, silver medals draped around their necks. To get to the mournful safety of the locker room, they would have to walk past the seats that had, only a few minutes earlier, contained the massed ranks of their fans, hoping and willing that City might find a goal, that it might find salvation, that it might win a Champions League final it would go on to lose to Chelsea, 1-0. The seats were all but empty now. The fans had not stuck around to watch, to wallow.Slowly, the players mustered their last vestiges of energy and began their long, sorrowful march. Several were on the verge of tears. Several more were long past the verge. Others seemed glazed, scarcely able to move, as if they were buffering, trying to process what had happened, what this meant.It was just as they started to move that the fireworks went off, crackling and glittering and thudding into the sky. Soon, City’s whole team and its staff members were obscured, swallowed whole by a great cloud of cordite by fireworks that were supposed — were expected — to be for them. That is the thing about soccer, about sports. Sometimes, things do not turn out like they should.Kyle Walker and his teammates had to endure a celebration they had hoped would be their own.Jose Coelho/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIn a lot of ways, Chelsea and Manchester City are two sides of the same coin. They are the vanguard of the money that has swept into soccer over the last 20 years, brought by hedge funds and vulture capitalists and oligarchs and nation states. They are, depending on one’s perspective, either the great insurgents or the nouveaux riches.But they are, at the same time, fundamentally different. The Chelsea of Roman Abramovich has always embraced chaos. It has now won the Champions League twice, both times in seasons in which it changed its manager at the slightest hint of disappointment, in seasons when its ultimate triumph made little sense.The Chelsea that was champion of Europe in 2012 was managed by Roberto Di Matteo, who won the trophy without his captain and with a debutante left back. The Chelsea that repeated the trick in 2021 has a squad that is both vastly expensive and curiously incomplete. Its leading goal-scorer, domestically, is a defensive midfielder who only shoots, really, when he takes penalties. Its main striker does not score goals. He does not, at times, look like he knows how.Manchester City, by contrast, is a monument to control. In the 13 years since it was taken over by a member of the royal family of Abu Dhabi, it has sought to perfect every single aspect of being a soccer team. It has worked under the assumption that success is, effectively, a formula: that if all of the variables are regulated, winning is inevitable.And so City is the benchmark: it has the best youth academy, the best training facilities, it has a playing style that unifies the club from bottom to top. It has the most data and the biggest scouting network, it has the deepest squad and the greatest manager and the most sophisticated commercial operation and the largest network of sister clubs.Chelsea’s N’Golo Kanté, who dominated a midfield City had hoped to control.Pool photo by Susan VeraNone of it has come cheap. Quite how much all of it has cost is not possible to put a precise figure on, but it has cost not far off a couple of billion dollars, at the very least, to transform a soccer team that was a byword for disappointment into a gleaming advertisement for the modernity and mastery of its backers.It has worked. Under Pep Guardiola, City has risen to become the dominant force in English soccer. For three of the past five years, it has probably — by most metrics — been the best team in Europe, whatever that means, really: the most complete and the most consistent, the one with the highest ceiling.It is a constancy that has always evaded Chelsea, always too turbulent, too impatient, too comfortable with change. And it has been achieved by translating the control that defines the club into its playing style. Guardiola wants not just to have possession of the ball, but to have ownership of space itself: to dictate where passes go and where players do.All of it, each meticulously-selected piece of the puzzle, had been done with this moment in mind. The Champions League represents the ultimate fulfillment not just of Guardiola’s vision, but City’s. It is justification for all of that investment, vindication for all of those ideas, and it is reward for doing all of those things right.There is just one flaw. Success is not a formula. Not this sort of success, anyway, the success that relies on an alignment of the stars and the rub of the green and the minutiae of countless little moments. That is the undeniable, untameable nature of sport: that, in the end, there is always something that you cannot account for, something that you cannot control. That, sometimes, things do not turn out the way they should.Pep Guardiola, who has been in charge of some of Europe’s best teams for the past decade, failed again the win the trophy he values the most.David Ramos/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAnd so, in the game that represented that manifestation of its destiny, Manchester City sought to exert a supreme, almost obsessive, control, and found only chaos. Guardiola named a team full of attacking midfielders — one at left back, three in midfield, two more upfront — with the aim of starving Chelsea of first the ball and then hope. In the event, it was City who seemed frantic, uncertain, whizzing and whirling round the field at breakneck speed to try to slow down the game.It lost because Chelsea was the precise opposite. It is only six months since Thomas Tuchel, its coach, was fired by Paris St.-Germain, unable to recover from losing the Champions League final last season. He was tasked not only with replacing Frank Lampard, a beloved club legend who many fans thought deserved more time to prove his worth, but with shaping some sort of identifiable team from the morass of gifted, but drifting, players he inherited.He was told to fashion order from chaos, and this was his ultimate, his irrevocable proof. City barely laid a glove on Chelsea. It found its every path blocked, its every idea pre-empted, its every thought read. As Guardiola’s team grew more frenzied, Chelsea held its fire, bided its time, and waited for the moment to strike.Kai Havertz flicked the ball past City’s goalkeeper, Ederson, and turned it into the net in the 42nd minute.Michael Steele/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIts chance came just before halftime. For all those midfielders in Guardiola’s lineup, not one of them was in the vicinity of Mason Mount as he picked the ball up in his own half. Timo Werner, the nonscoring striker, darted into a channel, dragging City’s central defenders from their positions. Kai Havertz sprinted into the gap. Mount found him, and he bore down on goal, unencumbered, unaccompanied.That was enough. That was all Tuchel’s team needed. It would be Chelsea’s players, at the end, running around the field, running to their fans, running on fumes and on adrenaline, running nowhere in particular, running because joy that pure, that uncut, the joy of a dream realized, is beautiful chaos.And it would be City’s on that long march past those empty seats, through that cordite cloud stinging eyes already raw with tears, slowly coming to terms with the fact that — for now, at least — it is real, and it is over. This is the game they were gathered to win, the trophy that is the club’s ultimate purpose. This was their moment. But that is sports. Success is not a formula. Sometimes, things do not turn out as they should, as you expect. Sometimes, there is just a little bit of chaos.Pool photo by Susana Vera More

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    Wasn’t this game supposed to be in Turkey?

    The short answer to that question above is: yes. The reasons are more complicated and, like so many things these day, all related to the coronavirus.The Champions League final is in Portugal for the second year in a row. This time, like last year, it was a late solution, and each time it required the consent of officials in Turkey, which has now lost the chance to host the final two years in a row.A promenade in Istanbul earlier this week.Emrah Gurel/Associated PressThe decision earlier this month to move the final from Istanbul, which had recently re-entered a virus-related lockdown, came after discussions between European soccer leaders and British government officials, who had been seeking to bring the game to London, broke down over differences about quarantines and testing, among other issues.When those talks failed, Portugal’s soccer federation raised its hand and offered to be a safe harbor again. From my colleague Tariq Panja earlier this month:Discussions about a move were completed quickly. After City and Chelsea had confirmed the all-English final, and as talk swirled about a change of venue, Tiago Craveiro, the chief executive of the Portuguese soccer federation, reached out to UEFA. Officials at the soccer body were then reeling from that day’s sudden announcement that travelers from Britain faced severe restrictions for any travel to Turkey. That created a crisis that went well beyond questions about fan access.Players on both sides faced the prospect of having to isolate for 10 days upon their return to Britain, creating doubts over their participation in the European Championship, the national team competition organized by UEFA that is second in size and importance only to the FIFA World Cup.With Portugal on Britain’s green list — and thus subject to far less stringent travel rules — Craveiro offered to organize the final at short notice. Porto was picked because it did not get an opportunity to stage Champions League games last year when the event was confined in its Lisbon bubble. More

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    Pep Guardiola hasn’t been to the final in a decade. Really.

    Chelsea Manager Thomas Tuchel was in the Champions League final last season, when he coached Paris St.-Germain. His center back Thiago Silva started for him that day.But while Manchester City and Chelsea are annual fixtures in the competition, they (perhaps surprisingly) lack direct, or even recent, experience with the final. City’s Ilkay Gundogan has played in it. Chelsea’s Mateo Kovacic has watched it from the bench. Twice.But perhaps no one in today’s game is more associated with the game than Pep Guardiola, the Manchester City coach who started in it twice as a player and won it twice, spectacularly and memorably as the coach of Barcelona. What people forget is that despite all his (almost) all-conquering successes in later stops at Bayern Munich and more recently at City, Guardiola has not tasted the final since his last win with Barcelona in 2011.Rory Smith wrote this week about his ambitions, his missteps and why this weekend has been such a long time coming. More

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    Is the Champions League Final Christian Pulisic’s Moment?

    There is an American at today’s game. Two actually.Christian Pulisic is expected to feature for Chelsea, though it will be from off the bench, the high-water mark in stages for the high-water mark in American players in Europe.The other American, Manchester City goalkeeper Zack Steffen, most likely will be a spectator in Porto unless there is an emergency or two in his team’s camp. Steffen’s consolation is that he has already become the first American to win the Premier League.But for most fans in the United States, Pulisic will be the main talking point today. Even since he joined Chelsea from Germany’s Borussia Dortmund in 2019, for a $73 million fee that raised eyebrows on both sides of the Atlantic, he has battled to find his place in London, and his team.Chelsea and its fans have had little complaint about his play.Just last month, he scored the goal that provided a valuable point on the road against Real Madrid in semifinals.A week later he showed similar poise to set up a goal by Mason Mount that finished off Madrid.But the ongoing competition for places in Chelsea’s star-studded attack is never easy; a year after bringing Pulisic into a team that already had Mason Mount, who plays a similar game, Chelsea bought the German forwards Timo Werner and Kai Havertz.Injuries, too, have been a persistent issue for Pulisic, and that is perhaps part of the reason Chelsea Coach Thomas Tuchel has tended to see him as more of a second-half super sub than a 90-minute fixture in his team.But did his performance against Real Madrid, and some other strong outings this spring, change that impression? No. He will start on the bench as usual, but said this week that he would be ready when called.“I’ve learned a lot, I’ve come very far,” Pulisic said in an interview with CBS Sports this week. “There have been some real ups, also some times where I had some really difficult moments. I’m happy with my form now. I’m happy with the way I’m feeling. I’m confident.” More

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    Facts and figures: Time, television and the teams.

    The Champions League final offers the most storied prize in European soccer, but today’s finalists, Chelsea and Manchester City, have almost no experience in the game that awards it.[Here’s what you need to know about the game right now.]Chelsea has taken part in the final only twice. In 2008, it lost an earlier all-Premier League final to Manchester United on penalties in Moscow. Four years later, it finally lifted the trophy, beating Bayern Munich in a shootout.This is Manchester City’s first trip to the final, and comes after a string of supremely disappointing ending in recent years, including quarterfinal exits against Lyon (2020), Tottenham (2019) and Liverpool (2018). By last year, even the club’s players were openly wondering if they and their coach would ever get to grab hold of the trophy.Still, as the Premier League champion, and with a world-class player (and a world-class backup) at almost every position on the field, City is the betting favorite.Here are the basics:What time is the game? Kickoff is set for 3 p.m. Eastern at Porto’s Estádio do Dragão.How can I watch? The game will be broadcast in the United States by CBS Sports and on the Paramount+ streaming app. If you prefer commentary in Spanish, go to Univision or the TUDN app. If you are anywhere else in the world, check this comprehensive list of local broadcast partners from UEFA’s website.Is there V.A.R. in use in the Champions League? Yes. So brace yourself and warm up your hot takes. It could be a factor at some point.Is Christian Pulisic starting? (This question is mostly for American readers.) The team’s lineups should be out about an hour before kickoff. UPDATE: Nope. More

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    The police have made a list and are checking it twice.

    Largely peaceful in Porto ahead of Champions League final. But authorities taking no chances. Last minute debrief among local police and colleagues from UK. They’ll be out looking for known hooligans. They have lists of names and faces to look for. pic.twitter.com/jZMYcikcIp— tariq panja (@tariqpanja) May 29, 2021 More