Raphael Stevens

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    US Women's Soccer Team Clears Hurdle to Continuing Equal Pay Fight

    A judge approved a settlement between U.S. Soccer and its women’s team in their dispute over working conditions, allowing the players to resume their legal battle over compensation.A federal judge on Monday approved a partial settlement in the long-running dispute over equal pay between U.S. Soccer and its World Cup-winning women’s national team, but the players’ fight with the federation is far from over.The ruling by Judge R. Gary Klausner, of the United States District Court for the Central District of California, rubber-stamped an agreement on working conditions that the sides had reached last year. When he rejected the players’ core arguments about equal pay last May, Klausner let them continue their claims about unequal working conditions in areas like team flights, hotels, venue selection and staffing support.Before they could pursue an appeal of their equal pay defeat, the players needed to resolve those issues. With that agreement now in place, the players said, they will return to the core of their legal fight: an appeal of Klausner’s ruling that dismissed their demands for pay equal to what the men’s team earns.“Now that this is behind us, we intend to appeal the court’s equal pay decision, which does not account for the fact that women players have been paid at lesser rates than men who do the same job,” said the players’ spokeswoman, Molly Levinson.The women’s players sued U.S. Soccer in March 2019, contending they had been subjected to years of unequal treatment and compensation. Twenty-eight members of the team filed the initial lawsuit, which later grew to include anyone in a larger class of players who had been part of the women’s team since 2015.The players pressed their equal pay argument for years — through on-field protests, interviews and social media campaigns — as they piled up victories and two World Cup championships on the field. Then Klausner rejected them in a single devastating paragraph last May.In that decision, Klausner ruled that not only had U.S. Soccer not paid the women’s players less than their men’s counterparts, but also that he had been convinced that “the WNT has been paid more on both a cumulative and an average per-game basis than the MNT” over the years covered in the case.It is unclear how long an appeal of his decision could take, or even whether it will be decided in a courtroom or at the negotiating table.The women’s team’s collective bargaining agreement expires at the end of December. While the women won significant gains in their current agreement, the largest gap in compensation between men’s and women’s players remains the World Cup bonuses paid by FIFA, world soccer’s governing body. The bonus pool at the last men’s World Cup was $400 million, compared with $30 million for the women’s event a year later.While noting that it has no control over those payments, U.S. Soccer offered again on Monday to pursue a negotiated settlement that might end a legal fight that has damaged both sides financially and emotionally, and that has forced fans of both U.S. teams to take sides.“We expected the women’s national team to appeal the summary judgment ruling that determined U.S. Soccer has paid the USWNT fair and equitable compensation,” the federation said in a statement. “We remain hopeful that we can come to a resolution outside of the court system.” More

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    Britt Reid Charged With Felony D.W.I.

    Reid, a former assistant coach for the Kansas City Chiefs and the son of the team’s head coach, crashed into two cars in February, leaving a child seriously injured.Britt Reid, the former outside linebackers coach of the Kansas City Chiefs and the son of the head coach Andy Reid, was charged Monday with one count of driving while intoxicated when he crashed into two cars, leaving a child seriously injured. The collision occurred just days before the Chiefs played in the Super Bowl in February.If Reid, 35, is convicted of the charge, a felony, he faces up to seven years in prison. The legal action could also increase scrutiny on the Chiefs’ workplace. Reid crashed about a mile from the team’s complex at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Mo., and according to the charging document, Reid told police officers responding to the collision that he had just left work before it happened.On Feb. 4 at about 9 p.m., Reid crashed his truck into two cars that were pulled over on a highway entrance ramp. One of the vehicles had stalled, and the driver called a cousin for help.Shortly before the crash Reid was driving 83.9 miles per hours in a 65 m.p.h. zone, according to the charging document. Because the shoulder of the entrance ramp was narrow, the vehicles were sticking a foot or two out into the roadway. Reid told officers that he had been glancing over his shoulder preparing to merge before he struck the cars, and that he had not seen the first vehicle because its lights were off.The driver of the first car told the police that he had activated his hazard lights, but that they might have gone dead because the car’s battery was weak.Officers responding to the crash wrote in a statement that Reid smelled of alcohol and that his eyes were bloodshot. His blood alcohol concentration two hours after the crash was .113, the statement said. The legal limit to operate a motor vehicle in Missouri is .08.The effects of the crash were catastrophic. A 5-year-old girl in the second car that was struck sustained a severe traumatic brain injury, brain contusions and subdural hematomas, among other injuries. According to a crowd fund-raising campaign started for the girl, she remained in the hospital at least seven weeks after the crash. An adult who was in the same car had a concussion and facial lacerations.Reid was also severely injured. He sustained a “blunt force trauma injury to his groin” that required emergency surgery, according to the charging document.Jean Peters Baker, the prosecutor in Jackson County, Mo., said in an interview that felony driving while intoxicated was the highest charge Reid could be given. Missouri revised its criminal code in 2017, simplifying D.W.I. laws, and Baker said that under the old code Reid probably would have received additional charges.Baker said she did not have direct evidence about whether or not Reid was drinking at the Chiefs offices, but she said the authorities do have evidence from when he left Arrowhead Stadium.“Mr. Reid voluntarily appeared before the court for his initial appearance and was released on conditions of bond,” Reid’s lawyer, J.R. Hobbs, said in a statement. “A status conference will be set in the future, as is customary. There will be no further comment at this time.”A spokesman for N.F.L. did not respond to a request for comment.In a statement, a spokesman for the Kansas City Chiefs said the organization “remains steadfast in our concern for all who have been impacted by this tragic accident.” The statement added that the Chiefs were “regularly” in contact with the representative of the family of the girl who was injured.The crash occurred on the Thursday night before Super Bowl LV, which the Chiefs lost to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The Chiefs flew from Kansas City to Tampa, Fla., that Saturday, but Britt Reid did not join the team. The team put him on administrative leave, and shortly after the Super Bowl his contract with the Chiefs expired and was not renewed.Britt Reid was a Chiefs coach for eight years, starting when his father became the team’s head coach. He was also a graduate assistant coach with Temple University, and an intern with the Philadelphia Eagles while his father was the coach there.He has faced legal charges a number of times previously. In 2007, when he was 22, Reid pleaded guilty to gun and drug charges after he brandished a handgun at another driver in suburban Philadelphia. While out on bail before the case was decided, he was arrested after driving into a shopping cart in a parking lot and eventually pleaded guilty to driving under the influence and drug possession in that case. More

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    What Led Phillip Adams, Former N.F.L. Player, to a Shooting Spree?

    A small city that bills itself as Football City U.S.A. is grappling with the shooting deaths of members of a prominent local family by Phillip Adams who, many say, had been adrift after his N.F.L. career ended.He struggled to find work. His last-ditch chance to make an N.F.L. team fizzled. He had a child to support and little apparent direction in a life freighted with high expectations. His behavior was increasingly erratic. Then on Wednesday, for reasons no one yet knows for sure, Phillip Adams, a former N.F.L. cornerback, went to the Rock Hill, S.C., home of a prominent doctor and shot everybody he saw before fatally turning the gun on himself.Now, the football-loving community of 65,000 that bills itself as Football City U.S.A. is struggling to contend with Adams’s suddenly violent turn and its aftermath.Before he killed five people, including two children, and critically wounded a sixth person, Adams, 32, who shot and killed himself several hours after his rampage, had seemed adrift since he last played N.F.L. football almost six years ago, friends and associates said. He remained close to home, caring for his mother, Phyllis, a former high school teacher who became a paraplegic after a car accident a decade ago.But for all the pressures on Adams — and family members are openly questioning whether football damaged his brain — the many people who rooted for him throughout his career are grappling with the loss of Dr. Robert Lesslie and his family at the hands of a local son.“He was the role model that all coaches hoped they could coach,” said Jim Montgomery, who coached Adams in football at Rock Hill High School, the alma mater of numerous N.F.L. players. Montgomery said he spent most of Thursday answering phone calls through tears.The authorities said that Adams fatally shot Dr. Lesslie; his wife, Barbara; and two of their grandchildren, Adah Lesslie, 9, and Noah Lesslie, 5. James Lewis, 38, had been working on their home when he was killed, and a sixth victim, Robert Shook, is in critical condition.The police have yet to explain why Adams, who was described by friends as “chill” and almost reclusive, singled out the doctor, or whether the two men had any relationship.But Representative Ralph Norman, Republican of South Carolina, told Charlotte’s WBTV Thursday that he had learned from law enforcement officials that Dr. Lesslie had seen Adams as a patient. Sheriff officials would not confirm the relationship.“He was treating him and stopped giving him medicine and that’s what triggered the killings from what I understand,” said Norman, whose district encompasses Rock Hill.Members of the Adams family have their own theories. They wonder whether football may have damaged his brain in the same way that has led other players to turn violent and, in a few cases, take their own lives.On Thursday, Alonzo Adams, Phillip’s father, told WCNC, a Charlotte television station, “I think the football messed him up.” His sister, Lauren Adams, told USA Today that he had recently become uncharacteristically aggressive.“His mental health degraded fast and terribly bad,” she said. “There was unusual behavior.”Adams’s brain will be studied to determine whether he had chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or C.T.E., a degenerative brain disease associated with repeated hits to the head, according to Sabrina Gast, the coroner in York County. It can take months to receive a diagnosis for the disease, which has been linked to mood disorders, memory problems, impulsive behavior and other issues, and has been found in hundreds of former football players.Former coaches, colleagues, neighbors and associates who knew Adams described him in interviews as a hard-working athlete who never advanced beyond journeyman status in the N.F.L., but who remained a quiet, helpful presence in town.“In 43 years, if you would’ve told me that this would have happened with Phillip Adams, I would’ve put him in the last five of the thousands of kids I coached,” Montgomery said on Thursday. “It’s just a sad day.”Duane Belue, a longtime friend and neighbor of the Adams family, said Phillip was close to his mother. Though Phillip had bought a new truck, he did not appear to overspend, and he stayed with his parents for extended periods. Within the last year, the Belues said they noticed that Phillip’s behavior had changed. He was less approachable and would pace outside aimlessly.“We noticed in the yard, he was out walking, kind of sad,” Anne Belue said. “You can’t judge somebody that far away, but he was always real friendly before then.”A star player in high school and in college at South Carolina State, Adams was picked by the San Francisco 49ers in the seventh round of the 2010 N.F.L. draft. He sustained a severe ankle injury his rookie season that may have derailed his career.“The bone went through the skin,” said Scott Casterline, Adams’s former agent. “Luckily, he had a good surgeon who helped him. But when a team sees a devastating injury like that, they move on.”After the 49ers released him, Adams bounced around the league with stops in New England, Seattle, Oakland (where he sustained two concussions), the Jets and Atlanta.He had one more shot at landing a roster spot, according to Casterline. During training camp in 2016, the Colts called and asked Adams to get to Indianapolis to participate in practice the following day. Casterline urged his client to jump on the next flight, but Adams — who was always gung ho for football — was suddenly hesitant.“He made it to the Charlotte airport, but the flight had left already,” Casterline said. “I could tell his head was not in it. He’d given up on it.”Casterline described Adams as a loner, not one to go to clubs or drink alcohol. He also hinted at financial troubles. Adams earned $3.6 million during his career and, at one point, wanted to invest in a smoothie shop. Casterline, who said he thought of Adams as a son, told his client it was a mistake because many retail businesses fail.Last fall, Adams called his former agent and asked for help finding employment. Casterline said he tried to persuade him to relocate to Dallas and work at one of his companies.“I said to just come out here to Texas,” Casterline said. “He just wouldn’t do it. He had a son. He was a good father and it was difficult with the baby’s mother.”On Wednesday, the day of the shootings, Adams’s father, Alonzo, called Casterline and said he wanted to talk about his son. Casterline did not find the message unusual. Occasionally, Adams’s parents called if they were unable to find Phillip.“I called Alonzo back and left a message, not realizing it had already happened,” Casterline said.In a news conference on Thursday, York County Sheriff Kevin Tolson said evidence recovered from the home of the Lesslies led them to suspect Adams of the killings. The authorities said they evacuated the Adamses’ home and tried to persuade Phillip to surrender. They found him inside, dead of a self-inflicted gunshot.A mourner adjusted items at a memorial outside of Riverview Family Medicine and Urgent Care, where Dr. Robert Lesslie practiced medicine.Sean Rayford/Getty ImagesIt is often difficult to assign motive to cases where a gunman has not left a note or spoken specifically of his or her intent, even more so in cases that end with the gunman’s death.But some of Adams’s friends said he never got over how his N.F.L. career ended. Rather than catching on with one team and landing a big contract worth tens of millions of dollars, he bounced from team to team, often playing for the league minimum salary. The calls for his services stopped coming, a common fate in the N.F.L., because colleges produce dozens of cheaper, healthier replacement players every year.The disappointment of washing out was particularly acute for Adams, friends said, because he came from Rock Hill, which has given rise to so many N.F.L. players that it is known as Football City U.S.A.To Adams, even a six-year career — twice as long as the average — may have been a letdown when compared to those of other local players like Jadeveon Clowney, who was picked first over all in the 2014 draft and is a three-time Pro Bowl selection; tight end Benjamin Watson, who played 13 seasons with the Patriots, Saints and other teams; and Stephon Gilmore, a defensive leader on the Patriots.“We have a saying around here: You could pay $6 on Friday night or you can wait a few years and pay $600 to see the kids around here play,” said Gene Knight, a broadcaster who has covered the city’s sports for decades.Charcandrick West, who played with the Kansas City Chiefs from 2014 to 2018 and shared an agent with Adams, said he and Adams worked out together during a couple of off-seasons. West said Adams was reserved and proud of his Rock Hill roots.“I never saw him get mad at anyone,” West said. “He was all about his business, washing and folding his clothes, real neat.”West added: “I feel like every athlete tries to keep high expectations. When you’re from Rock Hill, such a great football town, he didn’t want to be known as the guy who bounced around.”Neighbors noticed that Adams’s behavior had changed in the past year. He was less friendly and would pace outside his Rock Hill, S.C., home. “We noticed in the yard, he was out walking, kind of sad,” Anne Belue, a neighbor, said.Sam Wolfe/ReutersCasterline, who has worked as an N.F.L. agent for decades, also said Adams had trouble grasping why he didn’t catch on with a team.“Sometimes, these decisions are political,” Casterline said of teams’ cutting players. “Someone who’s drafted in the first round is going to get the most opportunities. That weighed on him a lot. The Patriots cut him three times in one season. They needed him, they didn’t, they’d cut him and re-sign him. It’s good for the paycheck, but not for the psyche.”Knight, the local sports broadcaster, remembered Adams as “a fierce competitor on the field, but he was a gentleman off the field all the times I encountered him.”Knight had also been treated once by Dr. Lesslie, a popular and well-known physician in Rock Hill, when he struggled with food poisoning. He said Dr. Lesslie worked on him at 2 a.m., easing his symptoms with intravenous therapy.“It’s not two people whose paths I thought would cross in this manner,” he said. “And I think that’s what a lot of people are wrestling with in the whole craziness of this situation.”John Jeter More

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    Real Madrid vs. Barcelona: Too Big to Fall

    The Clásico has lost some of its luster as a season-defining day, but while its profile has fallen, its importance has not.It does not require a great leap of the imagination to envision the final few weeks of the season playing out like this:Atlético Madrid, shredded by nerves and running on fumes, surrenders its place at the summit of La Liga. Barcelona, restored and unbeaten since the turn of the year, supplants Diego Simeone’s team, reclaiming its crown.At the same time, Real Madrid, the familiar scent of European glory in its nostrils, breezes past Liverpool and edges Chelsea to win a place in the Champions League final. Real Madrid would, by most measures, be the underdog in Istanbul. Manchester City and Bayern Munich, certainly, are more coherent, more complete teams. Even Paris St.-Germain, its mission for revenge fueled by the brilliance of Kylian Mbappé, has more star power, more forward momentum, as it proved so thrillingly on Wednesday night in Munich.But it is Real Madrid, and it is the Champions League, and these things do not necessarily conform to logic. It and Barcelona, the twin, repelling poles of the Clásico, each may be no more than seven weeks from glory. Both have spent much of this campaign in what looked like free fall. It is hardly inconceivable that, in a few weeks, they will have come to rest, still at the pinnacle.That does not mean that the perception was an illusion. Barcelona’s financial strife is alarmingly real, even after the election of a new president. Its salary commitments are still greater than those of any other team. Its squad is still aging. It has still frittered away hundreds of millions of dollars in the transfer market. It has still squandered its legacy, still alienated the greatest star in its history, still lost sight of itself.Real Madrid’s situation is not quite as perilous, but here, too, are the telltale signs of institutional complacency and endemic drift. Its team is starting to creak with age. Its policy of paying premium fees for prodigious young talents — often with only a smattering of senior games under their belts — has not yet yielded the fruit the club imagined.Vinicius Jr. of Real Madrid, which is chasing a record 14th Champions League title.Juanjo Martin/EPA, via ShutterstockIts payroll, too, is littered with unwanted high-earners; Real Madrid’s finances have been stretched by the revamp of the Santiago Bernabéu that has forced it to play home games at its training facility for a year; its belief that it can sign both Erling Haaland and Mbappé over the next two summers seems fanciful at best and faintly hubristic at worst. Lulled by glamour and success, Real Madrid has allowed itself to be transformed into the personal fief of its president, Florentino Pérez.All of those issues were not imagined by a muckraking, scurrilous news media; they are not proof of some sweeping anti-Barcelona and yet somehow also anti-Madrid conspiracy. They are real, and they all manifest on Saturday, when the clubs will meet on the outskirts of the Spanish capital for the second Clásico of the season.When, 50 years from now, sports historians come to look back on European soccer’s imperial phase, examining how it became what David Goldblatt has described as the single greatest cultural phenomenon of the modern era, they could do worse than to start with those 18 days in 2011 when Real and Barcelona played one another four times.Even from the relatively shallow vantage point of 2021, those two and a half weeks have the air of a seed and a flower, a dawn and a dusk and the midday sun. It was, in the first decade of the 21st century, what soccer had been building toward. It would be what soccer, in the second decade of the 21st century, would measure everything against.Juan Medina/ReutersFelix Ordonez/ReutersThe War of 2011: Guardiola and Mourinho, Messi and Xabi Alonso and polite disagreements.Lluis Gene/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe Clásico was not only the meeting of soccer’s two great powers or the world’s two best teams. It was also the clash of its two brightest stars, Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, the supernova game. It was a battle of wills and a battle of minds: José Mourinho against Pep Guardiola, defense against attack, destruction against creation, darkness against light.These were days when soccer held its breath.It is somehow fitting, then, a decade later, that the most materially impactful Clásico of the last few years will take place on Saturday night in the Éstadio Alfredo Di Stéfano, rather than the Bernabéu. It is a reduced circumstance for a diminished game.The stakes are high. The winner will take prime position to dislodge Atlético Madrid from the summit of La Liga. The loser, as is the case whenever these two meet, will suddenly be flirting with crisis. It is, without question, the biggest game of the weekend. It is not, though, the centerpiece of the European season as once it was, the fixture that makes the world stand still.In part, that is because of the decline of the teams themselves. Barcelona and Real Madrid are no longer the two best teams on the planet. That honor, currently, falls somewhere between Manchester and Munich. It would be possible to build an argument that neither Spanish giant is, at this moment, in the top five.Even in a pandemic, even in a closed stadium, the world will be watching.Nacho Doce/ReutersThere is still Messi, of course, but there is no Ronaldo, no Xavi, no Andrés Iniesta, no Xabi Alonso. Both teams are in the throes of (reluctant) generational change, works in various stages of progress. The quality — aesthetic and technical — will not be as high as it was on Wednesday night, when P.S.G. stormed the Allianz Arena.But that is also because of the broader decline of La Liga. Spain has long since vacated its position of primacy. France is the world champion, and the world’s most prodigious producer of players. Germany — and, to some extent, the city of Leeds — is the wellspring of soccer’s ideas. England is home to its finest league. Spain, as a whole, has lost its place at the vanguard.And yet, for all that, it is not difficult to envision the season ending with celebrations on Las Ramblas and at the Plaza de Cibeles, with Barcelona anointed kings of Spain and Real Madrid restored to its traditional status as Rey de Copas.That such a denouement is possible is testament, first, to our tendency to assume that decline — soccer as a whole, in fact — runs in straight lines, to reverse-engineer an explanation for every event. If Barcelona wins a championship, rumors of its demise must have been greatly exaggerated. If Real Madrid wins the Champions League, its methods must work.Luka Modric and Real Madrid won the season’s first Clásico, 3-1, in October.Lluis Gene/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIt does not always, if ever, work like that. Sometimes things happen. Sometimes stars align. Not everything has a deeper meaning, and not every success illustrates some broader truth. Sometimes Liverpool wins the Champions League with Djimi Traoré at left back. Sometimes Croatia gets a golden generation. Had Real Madrid been paired with Manchester City, rather than Liverpool, in the Champions League quarterfinals this week, its almost mystical relationship with the European Cup would not seem quite so potent.But that Barcelona and Real Madrid can be so close to the summit after a season spent at the depths is also a reminder that how far, and how fast, you fall is only one part of the equation. The other is where you are coming from.Between them, Barcelona and Madrid account for seven of the last 14 Champions League titles. They were soccer’s animating force for more than a decade. Each, at different times in that period, reached heights that few teams have reached. Both remain fabulously wealthy, in terms of talent and in terms of revenue. Both retain many of the players who helped them to touch the sky. Their talent may have waned, but it has not evaporated.Eras do not end overnight. History does not run in a straight line. The Clásico of 2021 will be a shadow of the Clásicos of 2011. That Real Madrid and Barcelona have fallen is not in question. But it should be no surprise that there might yet be glory awaiting one, or both of them. They did, after all, have quite a long way to fall.Take a Stand, but Lose 3 PointsValencia supported Mouctar Diakhaby after he said he was racially abused, and then played on.Roman Rios/EPA, via ShutterstockIt is hard to identify the most dispiriting part of the episode last weekend in which Valencia’s Mouctar Diakhaby reported that he was racially abused by the Cádiz defender Juan Cala. Ordinarily, there would be a clear answer: that it happened at all. This time, though, there is another option: that it is hard to identify whether that was, in fact, the most dispiriting part.First of all, there is the fact that it was not the only episode of racist abuse of a soccer player that weekend: several more players, as always happens, were racially abused online. Then there is the fact that, even if Cala is telling the truth in his stringent denials of the accusation, if there has just been some sort of misunderstanding, we are still in a position in which it is easy to believe a soccer player might have been racially abused by an opponent, on the field, in 2021.And finally, there was the sight of Valencia — having initially walked off the field in solidarity with Diakhaby — returning to play out the game, without the victim, but against the accused perpetrator. Cala had asked to play on, and did so. Diakhaby, on the other hand, was understandably not in the right mind to continue.His club played on, it revealed later, because it had been warned — by some unidentified third party — that it would be risking a points deduction if it did not return to the field. If this is true, it does not reflect especially well on Valencia: How many points, exactly, is your player’s dignity worth?More important, the decision to continue (and to threaten to punish a team that will not) reflects appallingly on soccer’s antiracism posturing. All the slogans and all the campaigns in the world are worth nothing if, when presented with an accusation of racist abuse on the field, the immediate reaction is to try to stifle protest, to protect the product at all costs.As usual, this is an area in which soccer’s authorities — more than the players, certainly, and to an extent the clubs — are complicit. These decisions should not be ad hoc, rested on the shoulders of the individual who has endured abuse. If a player believes he has been racially abused, the referee should be under instructions to call off the game. There should be no threat of punishment, no gray area. It is for the sport as a whole to make a stand, on behalf of those who play it.Sign of the TimesIt’s spelled Haaland, with three As.Phil Noble/ReutersIn hindsight, maybe it was the context, not the act itself, that caused such consternation. The officials in Manchester City’s 2-1 win over Borussia Dortmund on Tuesday did not, it is fair to say, have a great evening: The decision to rule out Jude Bellingham’s goal — and, more to the point, to do so before the video assistant referee was able to contribute — did not exactly scream competence, after all.Still, the outrage that followed those fleeting glimpses of the assistant referee, Octavian Sobre, asking Erling Haaland to autograph his red and yellow cards felt a little overblown. The point of autographs has always eluded me — look at this scrap of paper that a person I have seen on television unthinkingly and resentfully scrawled on! — but it is hard to read the incident as anything other than entirely harmless and even, deep down, quite sweet.Why should an official not want a souvenir of what is likely to be one of the biggest occasions of his career? Who, exactly, is suffering here? Why would we automatically assume that Sobre, who has devoted decades to his job, would sacrifice the integrity of his decisions just because he happened to be a big fan of everyone’s favorite goal cyborg? (Sitting at the Etihad as the controversy unspooled, it was hard not to notice quite how much emphasis seemed to be placed on Sobre’s nationality, too.)As it turned out, of course, there was a wholly different rationale for it. Haaland was not particularly special. Sobre had also hoped to get an autograph from Pep Guardiola. He has been collecting them for years, then auctioning them on behalf of an autism charity he supports in his native Romania. At that point, the shouting was quieted, just a little.It would be nice to think that a lesson might be learned here: to gather all of the available facts before rushing to judgment; to avoid leaping to the most aggravating conclusion possible; to resist the temptation to meet the slightest perceived transgression with fury. You probably wouldn’t hold your breath, though.CorrespondenceAn open goal presented by Alexander Da Silva, who is (admirably) starting a “book club themed around soccer history, politics and tactics,” and wants advice on possible reading material. Well, Alexander, this one was critically acclaimed. It didn’t sell especially well, but if anything that just makes it more exclusive.As for other — some might say lesser, not me, but some — works, there is an abundance. So many, in fact, that I wonder if I should put some sort of list together: It’s a question we get reasonably frequently.A reading list, you say? Let me check in the back.Fethi Belaid/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIn short: Jonathan Wilson’s “Inverting the Pyramid” remains the compulsory work on tactical history. Depending on which sort of politics you’re interested in, there’s “Fear and Loathing in La Liga” (Sid Lowe), “Angels With Dirty Faces” (Wilson again, you can’t escape him), “Brilliant Orange” (David Winner) or Simon Kuper’s “Football Against the Enemy,” which is more than 25 years old now, but remains genre-forming. For more modern material, “The Club,” by Josh Robinson and Jon Clegg, encapsulates the Premier League era.I’d also recommend the James Montague canon: “When Friday Comes,” “Thirty-One Nil” and particularly his most recent, “1312: Among the Ultras,” all of which are fantastic. My favorite soccer book of all, though, remains “This Love Is Not for Cowards,” by Robert Andrew Powell.Mark Gromko, meanwhile, takes me to task for my “evident disregard for Manchester City. You are tired of the money, the organization, the style of play. Some of us, however, find watching the skill of the players, the coordination and precision of the teamwork, the depth of the squad, and the brilliance of the coach wonderful to watch.”There is no argument from me on any of that — though I’d contest that I’m tired of any of it; not emotionally stimulated is probably a better description — but I would hold off on any particularly ardent criticism. City will, of course, come much more into focus as they pursue all four major trophies — starting in a couple of weeks, in the Carabao Cup final — and we will be covering them in the detail they deserve. More

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    Two of Deshaun Watson’s Accusers Take Their Claims Public

    Over 20 women have filed civil assault lawsuits against the quarterback anonymously, but Tuesday two of the complainants gave emotional statements describing sexual abuse.Ashley Solis became a massage therapist to heal people’s minds and bodies, but after what she said happened to her in March 2020, she can no longer do what she loves without shaking. Her hands tremble when she places them on clients, forcing her to cut sessions short. She suffers from panic attacks, anxiety and depression.Until Tuesday, Solis had been known as Jane Doe, the first of 22 women who have accused the Houston Texans’ star quarterback Deshaun Watson of assault and sexual misconduct in civil lawsuits. She became the first of the women to identify herself, stifling back tears as she accused Watson of behavior during a session on March 30, 2020 — moving his body to expose his penis, then touching her hand with it — that mortified and embarrassed her, sending her into a “tailspin” from which she said she has yet to recover.“I was afraid,” said Solis, who took several long pauses to compose herself as she read from a statement at a news conference Tuesday at the office of her lawyer, Tony Buzbee, who is representing all 22 women. “I’m not afraid anymore. I’m here to take back the power and take back control. I’m a survivor of assault and harassment. Deshaun Watson is my assaulter and my harasser.”She added, “People say that I’m doing this just for money. That is false. I come forward so that Deshaun Watson does not assault another woman.”Watson has not commented publicly since the night of March 16, when the first lawsuit was filed. He said in a post on Twitter that he had “never treated any woman with anything other than the utmost respect” and that he had rejected “a baseless six-figure settlement demand” made by Buzbee before the first suit was filed.Another of the 22 women who have filed lawsuits, Lauren Baxley, also came forward Tuesday but did not attend the news conference held at Buzbee’s office in downtown Houston. She instead provided a letter she addressed to Watson that was read by one of Buzbee’s associates. Baxley echoed, in graphic terms, the pattern of lewd and coercive conduct he has been accused of and condemned him for being “nothing more than a predator with power.”“Every boundary from professional and therapeutic to sexual and degrading, you crossed or attempted to cross,” Baxley said.In her letter, which she said she wrote at the suggestion of her trauma therapist, Baxley said she was motivated not only to forgive herself for not speaking up sooner or for not being braver, but so that “you can know without excuse or justification that you have deeply and irreversibly brought terror to me and others.”Taken together, the two statements provided the most emotional declarations yet in the case against one of the N.F.L.’s best and most prominent players, who had become a fixture in the Houston community since he joined the Texans in 2017. By attaching faces and names to the flurry of civil court filings, the women appeared to counter some of the arguments made by Watson’s defense lawyers, who have pushed back against the legitimacy of the allegations made against Watson because they had been done so anonymously.After Tuesday’s news conference, Rusty Hardin, a lawyer representing Watson, took aim at the claims by Buzbee and Solis. Hardin released a series of emails that suggested that Buzbee “sought $100,000 in hush money on behalf of Ms. Solis to quietly settle the allegations the month before he filed the first lawsuit.” All of the accusers, according to the lawsuits, have filed claims seeking “minimal compensatory damages.”In one email from February, Scott Gaffield, general counsel at Athletes First, the agency that represents Watson, rebuffed Buzbee’s demand on behalf of Solis for $100,000 because “we don’t believe that the alleged facts show that Deshaun did anything wrong …”In addition to the 22 civil claims, the case against Watson widened last week when the Houston Police Department acknowledged that it had begun investigating Watson after a complaint was filed against him. Buzbee said Tuesday that at least one other person had also filed a complaint against Watson with the police. It is unclear whether either person is also a plaintiff in the lawsuits filed against Watson in Harris County, Texas.While nearly two dozen claims have been filed against Watson in less than one month, the legal machinations are only beginning. The cases are now assigned to several judges for review, but it is unclear when or if they will be consolidated, something that would streamline decisions on the anonymity of the accusers, any motions to dismiss, potential discovery and myriad other steps that might lead to trial.Other factors may shape the contours of the case, including any potential developments in the investigations by the police and the N.F.L., which began its own inquiry and can suspend Watson while it looks into the allegations against him. Though the accusations have mounted in a short span of time, the legal proceedings are in very early stages, according to Stephanie Stradley, a lawyer in Houston who writes frequently about legal matters concerning the Texans and the N.F.L.“If you were making a football analogy, the ball’s been kicked off and people are running down the field, but no one’s caught the ball yet,” she said. “These cases are hard enough as it is when the world isn’t watching. They can be kind of messy sorting out what the full facts are.” More

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    New Study Finds Covid Spikes After N.F.L. Games With Fans

    As the N.F.L. makes plans to return to stadiums at full capacity this season, researchers published findings that “fan attendance at N.F.L. games led to episodic spikes” in the number of Covid-19 cases.Major League Baseball, the N.B.A. and other sports leagues have started to let fans back into their stadiums and arenas, with most teams limiting attendance to 10 to 20 percent of capacity, but some allowing more. The N.F.L. has even grander plans. Last week, Commissioner Roger Goodell said the league hoped to open all of its stadiums at full capacity when the season kicked off in September.“All of us in the N.F.L. want to see every one of our fans back,” Goodell said in a conference call with reporters.Yet new research submitted to The Lancet, a scientific journal, in late March suggested that there was a link between the games that had large numbers of fans in the stands and an increase in the number of infections in locales near the stadiums. The study, which is being peer reviewed, is one of the most comprehensive attempts to address the potential impact of fans at N.F.L. games.The authors, led by Justin Kurland of the University of Southern Mississippi, used the number of positive cases not just from the counties where the 32 N.F.L. teams play, but also from surrounding counties to track the spread among fans who may have traveled to games from farther away. After adjusting the figures to eliminate potential false positives and days when counties did not report cases, they found surges in infection rates in the second and third weeks following N.F.L. games that were played with more than 5,000 fans in attendance. The study does not prove a causal link between fan attendance and Covid-19 cases, but suggests that there may be a relationship between the two.“The evidence overwhelmingly supports that fan attendance at N.F.L. games led to episodic spikes” in the number of Covid-19 cases, the researchers wrote.Jeff Miller, the N.F.L.’s executive vice president for communications, public affairs and policy, said in an interview that public health officials in cities and states where N.F.L. teams play found no “case clusters” following the 119 games held with fans in attendance. Miller added that a study done by researchers at the M.I.T. Sports Lab, which was unpublished and independent, found no notable increases in Covid-19 infection rates “in the appreciable time frame following the games.” That study also looked at Covid numbers from surrounding counties but compared them to “synthetic” data used as a control group and found little difference between the two sets of numbers.“Obviously, that was heartening,” Miller said. A study by the Florida Department of Health determined that Covid-19 infection rates were “slightly higher” in the Tampa area compared to the rest of Florida in the weeks after the city hosted the Super Bowl in February. Zack Wittman for The New York TimesMiller pointed to a study released by the Florida Department of Health that was not peer reviewed which determined Covid-19 infection rates were “slightly higher” in the Tampa area compared to the rest of Florida in the weeks after the city hosted the Super Bowl in February. A handful of people were infected after attending related N.F.L. events, but the state’s health department found that most transmission of the virus was “likely from private gatherings, in homes, or unofficial events at bars and restaurants.”About 1.2 million fans attended N.F.L. games last season, as owners bet that the games would not inflame the pandemic any further. Teams sanitized their stadiums and asked fans to wear masks and sit away from other groups.More than a dozen N.F.L. teams, including the three franchises in Florida and the two in Texas, hosted games with more than 5,000 spectators during the regular season. The Dallas Cowboys led the league in attendance in 2020, averaging more than 28,000 fans at its home games, followed by the Jacksonville Jaguars (15,919), Tampa Bay Buccaneers (14,483) and Kansas City Chiefs (13,153).Kevin Watler, a spokesman for the Florida Department of Health in Hillsborough County, home to Tampa’s Raymond James Stadium, said contact tracers found “very low numbers” of positive coronavirus tests among people who attended Buccaneers home games during the season, and researchers do not believe those people spread the virus to others.Dr. Rex Archer, the director of health for Kansas City, Mo., said health departments in the region detected no spread of the virus linked to Chiefs home games. The 1,000 or so fans who sat in club seats had to test negative to be allowed to attend, a requirement that prevented up to a dozen people per game from entering the stadium. Bars and restaurants, though, were harder to track because some were shut while others, particularly in neighboring Kansas, were not.“You could have 15,000 socially distanced fans at Arrowhead Stadium, yet some people packed into a bar,” he said.The league cited a separate study preprinted in February that showed that attendance at N.F.L. and college football games last season did not have a “significant” impact on the spread of Covid-19 but only tracked positive cases in counties where those games were held. The research submitted to The Lancet, however, tracked more extensive data from surrounding counties.Positive cases of coronavirus could not solely be traced to N.F.L. games in part because stadiums are not the only place fans gathered. “You could have 15,000 socially distanced fans at Arrowhead Stadium, yet some people packed into a bar” on game days, said Dr. Rex Archer, the director of the health department in Kansas City, Mo.Chase Castor for The New York TimesWhile Goodell is eager to see full stadiums in the fall, John Mara, the president of the Giants, was more measured. His team and the Jets will coordinate with the governor’s office in New Jersey before deciding how many fans can attend games at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford during the 2021 season.“As the vaccines continue to roll out, hopefully the positivity rate will be going down in the coming months,” Mara told reporters last week.In a statement, Miller of the N.F.L. said the league would, as it did last year, follow the recommendations of local, county, state and federal public health officials, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and “continue to uphold with the advice and partnership of medical and public health experts as we look to the 2021 season.”Trying to establish definitive causal links between a single event and a change in infection rates across a large metropolitan area is complicated. The authors of The Lancet study concede that their research only shows that two events — games with fans and increasing positive Covid-19 rates — coincided. Other events like political rallies, the reopening of colleges or holiday travel may have contributed to an increase in infections, especially in states where preventive measures like the wearing of masks were less widely adopted. Infections may have also increased because fans watched games with their friends in living rooms or at bars, gatherings that were beyond the N.F.L.’s control.“The strength of these studies is they are showing something, but the correlations can only point out the possibilities, not the causation,” said Bruce Y. Lee, the executive director of Public Health Informatics Computational and Operations Research at City University of New York School of Public Health. “It’s not just a football game and people go home. There are all these associated activities around the game.”To establish that N.F.L. games caused the spread of the virus, researchers would need contact tracing data on fans who attended games and then tested positive. That information is scarce, though, since many local health departments used their resources to educate the public on preventive measures and increase coronavirus testing. In Duval County, Fla., health officials said they did not study whether fans who attended Jacksonville Jaguars games were infected or whether the team’s home games increased the spread of the virus.In part because not everyone cooperated with contact tracers’ requests, even people who attended N.F.L. games and tested positive had difficulty determining whether they got infected before, during or after the games.Eight residents who tested positive for the virus told contact tracers that they had recently attended Cowboys home games, health officials in Tarrant County, Texas, said in November.Researchers in the study submitted to The Lancet found spikes in the number of positive cases after games that had more than 5,000 in attendance, a reason, they argue, that leagues and event organizers should welcome back customers cautiously.“We are not saying that the N.F.L. shouldn’t have opened up to fans,” said Alex Piquero, a sociologist the University of Miami and a co-author of the study. “But we have to understand the public health implications of opening up.” More

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    U.S. Men Fail to Qualify for Olympic Soccer Tournament

    Honduras dashes the Americans’ hopes of a trip to Tokyo, the latest in a string of qualifying failures for U.S. Soccer.The United States failed in its latest bid to qualify for the Olympic men’s soccer tournament on Sunday, falling to Honduras, 2-1, in a regional qualifying tournament in Mexico. A goalkeeping blunder proved to be the difference this time, but the feeling — and the frustration — was all too familiar.The defeat was a humbling end to yet another Olympic qualifying campaign for the United States men, and it means the Americans will miss their third straight Summer Games. A United States men’s team last appeared in the Olympics in 2008, and now has failed to qualify for the Games in four of the past five cycles.Goals by Honduras on either side of halftime — a bundled finish by the Brooklyn-born striker Juan Carlos Obregón Jr. in first-half stoppage time and a deflected goal as a disastrous mistake by goalkeeper David Ochoa minutes into the second half — proved decisive, and sent the Hondurans to their fourth straight Olympics. Honduras finished fourth in Rio de Janeiro in 2016, losing to the eventual champion, Brazil, in the semifinals.“The goal was to qualify for the Olympics, and we didn’t get the job done today,” defender Henry Kessler said.Mexico beat Canada, 2-0, in the tournament’s second semifinal to claim its third straight berth in the Summer Games.U.S. Soccer will still have a representative in Tokyo: Its world champion women’s team qualified last year and will be a favorite to claim its fifth gold medal in the sport when the Olympics open in July. American men’s teams have played in the Olympics four times but have never won a medal.Defender Justin Glad with Juan Carlos Obregón Jr. of Honduras, which was bidding for its fourth straight Olympic berth.Henry Romero/Reuters“Obviously, we’re devastated, absolutely devastated,” United States Coach Jason Kreis said. “In our locker room, the guys are like it’s a tragedy — a tragedy.”Unlike most tournaments, the Olympic qualifying event is all about the semifinals. In CONCACAF, the region that includes teams from North and Central America and the Caribbean, only the two semifinal winners advance to Tokyo, making victory in one of those matches the goal and rendering the final — Honduras will play the host Mexico on Tuesday — an afterthought.The make-or-break semifinal game played out under a scorching sun in Guadalajara, Mexico, where the temperature was 90 degrees at kickoff. The game paused for hydration breaks in each half.The Americans tried to take control early, and produced two good scoring chances. But as Honduras held firm and settled in, the Americans seemed to run short of energy and ideas. Honduras took the lead four minutes into first-half injury time, with a long, inch-perfect cross-field pass headed expertly into the path of a charging Obregón in the goal mouth. Using his thigh, and then his hip, he clumsily muscled it over the line past Ochoa in goal.Honduras doubled its lead less than three minutes into the second half when Ochoa — under dutiful but minimal pressure — drove a pass off forward Luis Palma that ricocheted into his own net. Scrambling to his feet, Ochoa quickly fished the ball out of his net, but the Americans’ day suddenly had taken on a grim aura.Midfielder Jackson Yueill, the United States captain, got a goal back in the 52nd minute with a rocketed shot from just outside the circle atop the Honduran penalty area. And Jonathan Lewis had three excellent chances to tie the score — one on a header cleared off the line, another lost to a mystery foul spotted by the Salvadoran referee — as the tension built and the time ticked away. But the goals the United States needed never arrived.The two games in Mexico on Sunday completed the 16-team Olympic men’s field, which already includes teams like host Japan; Brazil (the gold medalist at home in 2016) and Argentina from South America; France, Germany, Romania and Spain from Europe; Egypt, South Africa and Ivory Coast from Africa; Australia, Saudi Arabia and South Korea from Asia; and New Zealand from Oceania.Jonathan Lewis had several chances to score in the second half.Henry Romero/ReutersThe Olympic men’s tournament has been an under-23 championship since 1992, an accommodation with FIFA, the sport’s global governing body, to maintain the primacy of the World Cup as the sport’s showcase event. (The women’s Olympic tournament is, like the Women’s World Cup, contested by senior national teams.)But it remains an important barometer of a country’s ability to produce young talent, and for a regional force like the United States, which was still reckoning with its senior national team’s stunning failure to qualify for the 2018 World Cup in Russia, missing out again and again had become a referendum on the nation’s soccer progress.Once a regular in the men’s event, the United States last appeared in it at the 2008 Beijing Summer Games, when it won only its opening game against Japan, tumbled out after the group stage and finished ninth. But soon, missing the Olympics troublingly became the norm. The Americans, who had failed to qualify for the 2004 Athens Games, then missed out on both the London Olympics in 2012 and the Rio Games in 2016.Honduras took the lead on a goal seconds before the halftime whistle.Henry Romero/ReutersU.S. Soccer made reversing that recent history a priority this year. It hired Kreis, a veteran of several head coaching jobs in Major League Soccer, to lead the team, and tried to take full advantage of some of the talent produced by the league’s recent investments in player development. All 11 United States starters on Sunday play for teams in M.L.S., but some of the country’s best under-23 talent that — European pros like Christian Pulisic, Weston McKennie, Sergiño Dest and Gio Reyna, among others — were unavailable because their European clubs were under no obligation to release them for Olympic qualifying play.Still, the Americans beat Costa Rica (1-0) and thumped the Dominican Republic (4-0) in their first two games before an errant pass led to a first-half goal, and a 1-0 defeat against Mexico, in their group-stage finale. The defeat was a blow to the United States team’s momentum, and perhaps to its psyche, as it represented the team’s first big test of the event, but Kreis moved quickly to dismiss it and turn his team’s focus to the semifinal.“I think we’ve been searching for a little more sharpness in this whole tournament,” Kreis said after the loss. But the only thing that mattered, he added, was not that result but that “the most important game is coming.”It came on Sunday. And the Americans lost it. More

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    Champions League: Talent From Paris Leaks Away From P.S.G.

    A deep-pocketed club’s Champions League ambitions run up against a familiar obstacle: opposing rosters studded with stars who got away.Paris St.-Germain could not, in the end, have sped Tanguy Nianzou along much quicker than it did. He was captain of the club’s under-19 side when he was only 16. He was called up to the first team at 17, training alongside Neymar and Kylian Mbappé and the rest, and soon made his debut. He even started a game in the Champions League.And still, despite all those opportunities, he left. Nianzou had just turned 18 when, on July 1 last year, he was presented as a Bayern Munich player. P.S.G. did not even have the solace of being able to pocket a premium fee for a player it had nurtured. Nianzou’s contract was expiring. He walked out of his hometown club for nothing.His departure stung. It stung sufficiently that Leonardo, P.S.G.’s sporting director, was citing it as a sort of parable as recently as February, long before the teams were drawn to meet in the Champions League quarterfinals this week.“He played with us in the Champions League, and he has spent almost a year at Bayern without playing,” Leonardo said, undeterred by the fact that injuries — not a lack of quality — have limited Nianzou to 21 competitive minutes at Bayern. “The problem is thinking that there is paradise elsewhere. They say that P.S.G. lost a youngster, but sometimes I think it is not P.S.G. who loses, but the youngsters who leave.”P.S.G. had high hopes for Tanguy Nianzou, but when he turned 18 he signed with Bayern Munich.Christof Stache/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesLeonardo’s sensitivity — and his club’s — to Nianzou’s departure is only partially explained by the teenager’s talent. It is also because Nianzou is not the only prodigy P.S.G. has allowed to slip through its fingers. He is not even the only one at Bayern.Kingsley Coman became the youngest player to play for P.S.G. when he made his debut for the club in February 2013. He was the jewel of the team’s youth system, the standard-bearer for its future. A year later, he left on a free transfer. Last August, he scored the goal that won the Champions League for Bayern, against P.S.G.There are plenty of others like them. There are 11 players left in this year’s Champions League who either grew up in Paris or spent some time in P.S.G.’s youth academy. Only three play for the reigning French champion: Colin Dagba, Presnel Kimpembe and Mbappé, though of course he had to be restored to his hometown at great expense.Some of the others — Chelsea’s N’golo Kanté, Manchester City’s Riyad Mahrez and Benjamin Mendy, Borussia Dortmund’s Raphaël Guerreiro — grew up in the sprawling suburbs surrounding Paris but never caught the club’s attention. A few did: Like Coman and Nianzou, Dortmund’s Dan-Axel Zagadou and Real Madrid’s Ferland Mendy spent time at P.S.G.’s academy before leaving to make their names elsewhere.That would be galling enough; in reality, it is just the tip of the iceberg. Eleven more players born in P.S.G.’s backyard were eliminated from the Champions League in the round of 16, including Christopher Nkunku, Ibrahima Konaté and Nordi Mukiele at RB Leipzig and Jules Koundé of Sevilla.Dozens more can be found in Ligue 1 and across Europe, from Paul Pogba on down. P.S.G. is sitting on what is generally regarded as the richest gold mine of talent in world soccer, and yet it is allowing prospectors to spirit its treasure away by the truckload. Most of the time it receives nothing in return but the lingering, bitter taste of regret.It is understandable that Leonardo, for one, should have tried to blame the speculators. Scouts for rival French clubs have long trawled the Paris suburbs looking for the next big thing. In recent years, they have been joined by representatives of German teams and, before Brexit, Premier League clubs hoping to cut out the middleman.P.S.G. is not without Parisian stars: Kylian Mbappé returned from Monaco, and Presnel Kimpembe never left.Benoit Tessier/Reuters“The German clubs, mainly Bayern, Leipzig and Dortmund, attack young people and threaten French development,” Leonardo told Le Parisien this year. “They call parents, friends, family, the player himself, even with players under the age of 16. They turn their heads. Perhaps the rules should be changed to protect the French teams.”The problem, though, is not one that can be legislated away. Given the number of players emerging from Paris, it is unavoidable that P.S.G. should miss some of them, as it did with Kanté and Mahrez. What should concern Leonardo more is that — as Michael Zorc, Dortmund’s technical director, said — so many young players “see better permeability and greater potential for developing” away from P.S.G.A decade ago, when Qatar Sports Investments first invested in the French capital’s flagship club, it vowed not simply to acquire success; Nasser al-Khelaifi, the club’s president, spoke of wanting to find the next Lionel Messi, rather than buy the original. The owners put their money where their mouth was, investing tens of millions of dollars on the club’s youth system.But as P.S.G. has found in its pursuit of the Champions League trophy, the formula for success is rarely quite that simple. The club’s academy is regularly assessed as one of the best in France. In many ways, the amount of players it has produced for other teams is proof of its eye for talent and the quality of its coaching.All of that is irrelevant, though, if the leap from the academy to playing alongside Neymar and Mbappé is too great. It is here that P.S.G. has failed.What the stories of Coman and Nianzou and so many of the others have in common is that they made it to P.S.G., and all the way through the academy, only to find their path blocked at the last step: by a coach whose job was to focus on today; by an expensively acquired superstar brought in to win trophies; by a club moving too quickly to wait for youngsters to learn their trade.On one level, the loss of all that talent has delivered P.S.G. only a glancing blow. It has still established, with only one exception so far, an effective monopoly on the Ligue 1 title. It has made it to a Champions League final. It can call on some of the world’s finest players. Would Ferland Mendy or Guerreiro or Koundé have made much of a difference? Possibly not.But on another, more fundamental level, the impact has been considerable. Qatar has poured considerable time and resources into not only P.S.G. but French soccer as a whole, bankrolling the transformation of the club through Qatar Sports Investments at the same time it was effectively underwriting the league through broadcast deals with the Qatari broadcaster beIN Sports.It has always had a clear idea in its head of what it wanted P.S.G. to be — winner of the Champions League, mainly — but, 10 years since it arrived, it is not yet obvious that it knows how to get there. Coaches have come and gone, all of them different: the coaching superstar, the canny tactician, the pressing zealot, the former captain.The squad has a patchwork quality that suggests muddled thinking. Is it built around Neymar or Mbappé? Where do Moise Kean and Mauro Icardi fit in? Can any of these players do what the manager at the moment, Mauricio Pochettino, is likely to want them to do? Did they really suit Thomas Tuchel last season? P.S.G. is now, as it has been for a decade, a team in search of an identity.Coman, who had once dreamed of lifting the Champions League trophy with P.S.G., did it last year — with Bayern. The teams meet again in the Champions League on Wednesday.Pool photo by David RamosYet the easiest, most authentic identity has been at its fingertips all along: that of a team built around a Parisian core, young and dynamic and rooted to its location. Jürgen Klopp, the Liverpool manager, has spoken before about his ideal team being one that could compete for honors while being drawn exclusively from its own city. The pool of talent there, as almost everywhere else, renders that idea utopian. Everywhere, that is, except Paris.P.S.G. has failed to claim that birthright. As recently as 2018, coaches at teams in the banlieues expressed surprise at how disconnected the city’s biggest club was from the young players on its doorstep. Perhaps that can be blamed on conceit, a sense that Parisian prospects would always want to play for a Parisian team.Or perhaps it is representative of a broader failing at the club, one that places more weight on what Paris is seen to be than what the city actually is. In 2016, when P.S.G. revamped its stadium, it commissioned the architect Tom Sheehan to “breathe the identity of Paris into the Parc itself.” He drew a parallel between the new V.I.P. entrance at the stadium and the foyer of the Palais Garnier, the opera house.It is that tourist perception of Paris that Q.S.I. hoped would become the team’s identity: the celebrities in the stands, a soccer team as a glamorous boutique nightclub. But that is only one side of Paris. It has not engaged quite so willingly with the other side of Paris, the one that is found in the banlieues, the one that is not quite so easy to sell.Still, the talent keeps coming through. The club holds out great hope, in particular, for a 15-year-old central defender named el Chadaille Bitshiabu. French law prohibits him from signing a professional contract until he turns 16, on May 16, but all of the coaches who have worked with him are convinced he can make it. They can only hope it is with P.S.G. More