Raphael Stevens

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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

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    Jets Trade Sam Darnold to Carolina Panthers

    Darnold was the third overall pick in the 2018 draft, and this year the Jets have the No. 2 overall pick to use in finding his replacement.The verdict on the most significant decision facing Joe Douglas during his 22 months as Jets general manager arrived on Monday, and with it a point of demarcation on the franchise’s timeline of despair.Rather than retain Sam Darnold as the team’s starting quarterback, giving him an opportunity to bloom in a new offensive system with a new coaching staff, the Jets traded him to the Carolina Panthers, indicating that they will select his successor with the No. 2 overall pick in the N.F.L. draft this month.In return, the Jets will receive a sixth-round pick this year and second- and fourth-rounders in 2022, adding to the stockpile of draft capital amassed by Douglas as he attempts to rebuild a franchise that went 2-14 last season and that hasn’t made the playoffs since the 2010 season, the longest postseason drought in the league.“I want to publicly acknowledge the commitment, dedication, and professionalism Sam displayed while with the Jets,” Douglas said in a statement. “He is a tough-minded, talented football player whose N.F.L. story has not been written yet. While all these things are true, this move is in the short- and long-term best interests for both this team and him. We thank Sam for all of his work on behalf of this organization and wish him well as he continues his career.”It has been just under three years since the Jets, ever searching for a quarterback, chose Darnold third over all out of Southern California in the same draft that yielded Baker Mayfield for Cleveland, Josh Allen for Buffalo and Lamar Jackson for Baltimore.Darnold joined a Jets organization that had long tried and failed to identify and develop a dependable starter. He arrived at a time when, with the New England Patriots closer to the end of the Tom Brady era than the beginning, the prospect of contending in the A.F.C. East seemed a little less daunting.Instead of maximizing that opportunity, the Jets bungled it. They failed to surround Darnold with a sturdy offensive line, adequate playmakers and a consistent run game. They hired an offensive-minded coach, Adam Gase, whose failure to oversee a competent offense resulted in a 9-23 record and his dismissal after two seasons. Under Gase, Darnold regressed and inspired an infamous meme during a 2019 loss to the Patriots. Darnold threw four interceptions in the game, and the microphone he was wearing for the Monday Night Football broadcast caught him saying “I’m seeing ghosts” after one of the picks.In three seasons, Darnold completed 59.8 percent of his passes with 45 touchdowns and 39 interceptions, fifth most in the league over that span, according to Pro Football Reference.With Darnold gone, the Jets are primed once again to give this drafting-a-quarterback thing a try: According to the ESPN researcher Evan Kaplan, if the Jets take a quarterback at No. 2, they will become the first team since at least 1967 to select two quarterbacks among the first three overall picks in a four-year span.With Trevor Lawrence of Clemson expected to be taken with the first pick by the Jacksonville Jaguars, the leading contenders for the second selection are Zach Wilson of Brigham Young and Justin Fields of Ohio State.The Panthers, ready to move on from Teddy Bridgewater, have been searching this off-season for an upgrade, and they no doubt concluded that Darnold, 23, offered more appeal than choosing a quarterback with the No. 8 overall pick or trying to move up in the draft. With the status of one potential alternative, Houston Texans quarterback Deshaun Watson, in doubt because of accusations of assault and sexual misconduct leveled at him in multiple lawsuits, the Panthers opted for Darnold. He will get the chance to work with a sharp offensive coordinator, Joe Brady, and a better offensive line and cast of skill positions than he did with the Jets.Already this off-season, Douglas has made significant changes to reshape the perception of the Jets by hiring the dynamic Robert Saleh as the head coach and adding receivers Corey Davis and Keelan Cole and the edge rusher Carl Lawson, among others, in free agency. The optimal, though perhaps most difficult, path to contending in the N.F.L. is securing a great quarterback on a rookie contract, with its slotted salary and modest cap charge allowing a team to bolster other areas of its roster.The previous Jets general manager, Mike Maccagnan, tried to do that with Darnold and failed. Now comes Douglas’s turn. More

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    A Tainted Election, Charges of Gender Bias and Then Nothing

    A court confirmed claims about a tainted election for a FIFA post, but while the woman who filed the case was vindicated, there have been no consequences for the men involved.The ruling, when it eventually came, could not have been more clear.One of soccer’s six regional bodies had engaged in discriminatory behavior against a female official by hindering her chances of getting a seat on its board and a leadership position with the sport’s global governing body, FIFA.The official, Mariyam Mohamed, also convinced judges at sports’ top court that an influential Kuwaiti sheikh had actively interfered in elections held by the Asian Football Confederation in 2019 to achieve his desired outcome.The full ruling, which has not been published, was obtained by The New York Times. In it, a panel at the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Switzerland concluded that the inaction by Asian soccer officials over several months amounted to a “denial of justice” for Mohamed. Yet two months since the decision was announced, the impact of what on paper appears to be a powerful denunciation of ethics breaches and a disregard for women’s rights has had all the effect of a snowball hitting a tank.Nothing has happened.The tainted elections will not be rerun. The men who offered Mohamed inducements to drop out have not been punished. And soccer’s leaders have taken no action.FIFA said in an email it had no comment on the matter, even though in the aftermath of the verdict it insisted it would follow up on the court’s findings with soccer officials in Asia. Asian soccer’s governing body also declined to comment, saying its leaders had nothing to add to a January statement in which they had pledged the organization would review the findings.For Mohamed, the silence has been maddening.“It’s just a game for them, justice denial, the same process that I was in,” she said in a phone interview. “They’re waiting for time to pass by, and hoping I get fed up. Now the verdict has come and it’s just very sad. I don’t know where else to go now.”Mohamed, who first filed her complaints to the Asian federation’s disciplinary department in May 2019, says the months since her victory have felt like history repeating itself. She initially celebrated the triumph, but has come to realize it may amount to only a Pyrrhic victory.She has not been contacted by officials from the A.F.C., she said. Nor has she heard from ethics investigators from FIFA, even though the organization’s rules state that gender discrimination is “strictly prohibited and punishable by suspension or expulsion.”The case and its aftermath have highlighted how power works in global sports. It shows how a tainted Gulf royal linked to other cases of corruption has been able to exert significant control over one of soccer’s largest governing bodies even though he has no official role in its affairs. And it shows how a strategy of delay can be its own kind of injustice.Mohamed’s case had roots in FIFA’s response to its own problems with discrimination: To address a lack of women on its governing board, the organization since 2013 set aside specific seats for women, starting with one voting member in 2013 and now a minimum of one from each of FIFA’s six regional confederations.Mohamed, a former soccer player and coach from the Maldives, an archipelago in the Indian Ocean, had hoped to win the A.F.C.’s spot in a vote in Kuala Lumpur in April 2019. It did not take her long to realize that the power brokers of Asian soccer had already decided the election’s outcome.She filed her first complaints about the election to the Asian confederation’s disciplinary department a month later. Emails show the organization responded to her inquiries by insisting it had begun an investigation, though it appears little was done. The A.F.C., citing confidentiality, refused to supply any evidence of its investigation to the court.Then, at a hearing at the Court of Arbitration for Sport last July, the A.F.C. hardly put up a defense. Its lawyers offered no witnesses to challenge Mohamed’s testimony that a top confederation official and the head of the soccer federation of Qatar had been present in a luxury hotel suite when the Kuwaiti sheikh, Ahmad al-Fahad al-Sabah, told Mohamed he had decided that his preferred candidate, Mahfuza Akhter Kiron of Bangladesh, would be elected as the A.F.C.’s female representative to the FIFA Council.Mohamed was told she should drop her candidacy, and do so within 24 hours. She later claimed, in testimony that went unchallenged by the A.F.C., that Sheikh Ahmad attempted to mollify her by saying he had so much sway in international soccer circles that he could obtain for her “any other position of her choosing at the A.F.C. or FIFA” in exchange for her withdrawal.By this point, Sheikh Ahmad had no official role in soccer, having resigned his own position on the FIFA Council in 2017 after allegations emerged in a United States federal court that he had bribed Asian officials. But Mohamed’s decision to take her case to court provided a rare public glimpse into his continuing stature as a power broker in global sports through his role as the president of the Olympic Council of Asia, an organization created by his father in 1982.At a 2013 International Olympic Committee meeting, for example, Sheikh Ahmad’s support helped Thomas Bach secure the I.O.C. presidency and also deliver the 2020 Summer Olympics to Tokyo. Since he was indicted in a forgery case unrelated to sports in 2018, he has “self-suspended” from two prominent Olympic roles. But his opinion still carries weight.Ahead of the A.F.C.’s 2019 elections, his legal troubles did not seem to be an issue. A list of his favored candidates was distributed to A.F.C. voters on the eve of the elections and, aware of the talks with Mohamed and of Sheikh Ahmad’s preference for a different candidate, the leaders of several federations pressured Mohamed to drop out, she said.She declined to withdraw, but lost the vote anyway, 31-15. Every candidate on Sheikh Ahmad’s list, however, was elected either to seats on the A.F.C.’s executive board or, as in Kiron’s case, as a confederation representative to FIFA.After reviewing the evidence presented by Mohamed and her lawyers, the CAS panel made clear in the summary of its decision that it agreed with her version of the events. The panel confirmed that the 2019 elections had breached FIFA and A.F.C. rules on gender discrimination. It concluded that Sheikh Ahmad had tried to influence the outcome, and that the A.F.C. had denied Mohamed justice by not making a ruling on her complaint. It did, however, also say that by not bowing out of the elections, Mohamed ensured the sheikh’s efforts to influence the election in her case were not effective.But the court said it was powerless to order that the flawed elections be annulled, or to punish any of the individuals accused of interfering with them. Any decision on further action was for FIFA, and the A.F.C., to decide, the court said.Candidates and board members after the votes were counted in 2019.Fazry Ismail/EPA, via ShutterstockBecause of the rules governing the court, the panel’s full findings have been cloaked in secrecy since the verdict was announced on Jan. 25.“If nothing happens it is a disgrace for FIFA, the A.F.C., and undermines the authority of CAS indirectly,” said Miguel Maduro, the former FIFA governance head who gave evidence in Mohamed’s case. “This award and what follows tells us at once that CAS has exposed corruption at the highest level of elections in football and at the same time tells us they cannot do anything about it.“What does this tell us about entire structure of justice in sports? It’s an indictment.”Maduro added that at the very least, FIFA should have initiated an ethics inquiry after the ruling. To date, it has not.Such a move, though, would be extremely sensitive for soccer’s global leadership. The FIFA official responsible for overseeing the 2019 election, Eduardo Ache, told the CAS panel that soccer’s guidelines to improve female representation were mere recommendations. The panel said Ache’s evidence suggested he was “prepared to accept any discrimination provided at least one woman was elected to FIFA.”But pressing for discipline in the case also could be uncomfortable for FIFA’s president, Gianni Infantino, who relies on the support of national and regional soccer leaders to push his agenda. He recently spent two weeks touring Africa, for example, to ensure that his favored candidate, a South African billionaire with no high-level experience in soccer administration, was elected president of the continent’s regional confederation. And he is unlikely to press for discipline against the leader of Qatar’s soccer federation — reportedly present when Mohamed was offered inducements to step aside — or any other Asian leader a year before Qatar hosts the 2022 World Cup.The longer the full ruling in Mohamed’s case goes unpublished, though, the more it will give the appearance soccer’s leaders are trying to brush a problematic situation under the carpet, said Johan Lindholm, a professor of law at Umea University in Sweden who has published a book on CAS.“Whether it’s because of bad P.R. or there are other things going on, then you would probably want to keep it as secret as possible,” Lindholm said. More

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    FIFA Has a Plan for Africa. But Who Does It Serve?

    Our experts separate fact from fiction in the talk about an African super league. Plus, a Champions League update, World Cup qualifying upsets and Erling Haaland’s next move.A couple of weeks ago, a tweet caught my eye. It seemed, unexpectedly, to reveal that a continentwide African Super League was under construction. Cross-border leagues, as regular readers will know, are something that this newsletter generally supports: They are the most readily available way of addressing soccer’s chronic financial imbalance.On the surface, notwithstanding the complex logistics, Africa is a prime candidate for such a venture. Many of the continent’s domestic leagues struggle to find investment, to retain talent, to compete for interest with the European tournaments beamed onto their television sets. Africa’s major clubs would, I think, be stronger together.There is, though, always a below the surface. As a rule, whenever I want to know what it is, I ask my colleague Tariq Panja, who spends so much time in the depths that he could be a submarine. For the last week or so, we’ve been exchanging emails on the subject. This conversation is the result.Rory Smith: Something strange has happened, Tariq. A few weeks ago, someone drew my attention to a tweet from Barbara Gonzalez, the chief executive at Simba, one of the biggest clubs in Tanzania, that seemed to reveal a plan that would change the face of African soccer: a pan-continental super league.But that’s not the strange part. The strange part is that it turns out it’s the brainchild of Gianni Infantino, the FIFA president. As a general rule, making sure you’re on the opposite side of any argument from Infantino is a solid strategy. But in this case my instinct is to say that, at least as an idea, this kind of makes sense.Please explain to me why I am wrong, so that the world can be restored to its axis.Tariq Panja: As with everything when it comes to FIFA — and typically FIFA under Gianni Infantino — the devil is in the detail. Or, in this case, the lack of detail.Infantino first announced his big idea for Africa in 2019, but it had been dormant until this random tweet (more on that in a minute). But when Infantino first went public, people inside FIFA say there was no business plan: just Gianni firing from the hip, claiming it could generate $200 million in revenue. That’s a big number as far as African club football is concerned, but there is no evidence of where it came from.To be clear: African already has a continental competition, the Champions League. Egypt’s Al Ahly won its record ninth title last year.Amr Abdallah Dalsh/ReutersIt reminds me of the time Gianni walked into a FIFA Council meeting and told the board to sign a document that would allow him to sell the Club World Cup to private investors (who turned out to be SoftBank). The members, led by European officials, wanted details. An internal audit found the event was worth considerably less than Gianni had suggested.Now, back to the tweet: It turns out FIFA officials were surprised, too. Barbara González walked up to Gianni at the Confederation of African Football Congress and asked to have her photo taken with him. Five minutes later, she sent out the tweet. Now I’m not saying a league in Africa is a bad idea, but surely there must be a robust plan before such a major project is undertaken?RS: If nothing else, you have to admire the chutzpah of that, not least because Infantino strikes me as precisely the sort of person who would fall for the old “as you were saying” ruse.There does, as you say, have to be a robust plan: economically, of course, but in a sporting sense, too. The basic idea strikes me as sound. Certainly south of the Sahara, African club soccer struggles horribly for investment. That means that the vast majority of nations that produce a constant stream of players for European clubs rarely see any of that talent on show in domestic leagues. That, in turn, hardly entices fans to go and watch games live. And that completes a neat but vicious circle, because it means that, yes, clubs struggle horribly for investment.A Super League would address some of those issues. A better television deal, if nothing else, would enable clubs to invest in infrastructure. That might help nurture young talent and keep it for a little longer. It doesn’t seem impossible to me that a Pan-African league might be able to rival one of the talent-generating leagues in Europe — the Netherlands or Portugal, say — for quality in a relatively short space of time.Of course, there is one thorny issue that I haven’t yet had the nerve to bring up. I reckon I could come up with a fairly cogent list of 20 or so African teams that would have a good case for inclusion, thanks to history or support or location. But I am guessing that Infantino and CAF, which is now run by a staunch ally of his, might have a different system in mind?Infantino recently helped an ally, Patrice Motsepe, win the top job in African soccer.Themba Hadebe/Associated PressTP: The little we know so far is that there is an expectation that participating teams would have to invest at least $20 million per season, for five seasons. For clubs in Africa, that is a significant outlay, and it suggests it would not be the most popular teams, so much as the ones that have the backing of wealthy benefactors. But again: Beyond the odd tweet and Gianni’s off-the-cuff remarks, we have nothing concrete.There are other ways of trying to come up with likely participants. You could use the CAF club coefficient, which is essentially a points system for clubs in the region based on their historic success. But that would mean a league dominated by clubs from wealthier North African countries, with only a dozen or so of the continent’s 54 countries likely to be represented.RS: That lack of representation would, I think, ultimately be unavoidable. For a tournament like this to be valid, there are certain clubs that would have to be included. Al Ahly and Zamalek from Cairo, would be names one and two. Both Raja and Wydad from Casablanca, and Esperance and Étoile du Sahel, the twin totems of Tunisian soccer.You would certainly need South Africa’s Orlando Pirates and Kaizer Chiefs. And you could throw Mamelodi Sundowns in there, too: It is owned by Patrice Motsepe, Infantino’s ally and the new CAF president. Simba, of Tanzania, clearly expect to be involved. TP Mazembe, from the Democratic Republic of Congo, would have to be.Congo’s TP Mazembe, in black, and Morocco’s Raja Casablanca would both merit places in any pan-African super league.Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBeyond that, the continent’s powerhouse nations — Cameroon, Senegal, Algeria, Ghana, Ivory Coast and, particularly, Nigeria — would command at least one place each. Suddenly, the whole thing looks pretty full, even before thinking about Angola, Sudan and Ethiopia.TP: If there was a method to wrap this league into the existing pyramid, there would probably be far more buy-in. The idea that teams from across the region would have — at least in theory — a shot at one day making it into the competition would make the proposition far more palatable to those, even among the larger clubs, who are not enthused about it.Even then, there are the logistics of it: not only to create a level playing field, but a sensible calendar and schedule, given the enormous differences in weather and transport infrastructure across the region. Given the uncertainty and sense of unease among the African football community, there needs to be an urgent and transparent discussion about what this is, and what this is not. A series of clandestine meetings followed by a high-profile announcement that does not stand up to scrutiny is not enough.RS: There is, definitely, a back-of-a-cigarette-packet air to the idea. And worse still, it has the feel of something that is being imposed on Africa, rather than generated from within it. The problem of representation bears that out: this sort of thing is much easier to conceive if, deep down, you regard Africa as a single, homogeneous entity, grateful for your interest.And that — given Infantino’s apparent passion for the idea — makes you wonder what the purpose of it all is. Has it been suggested in an attempt to make African domestic soccer stronger, a challenging but essentially admirable aim? Or is there something else at play here?TP: There’s a suspicion that Gianni’s motivations may be less to do with securing the future of African soccer and more his hopes of creating a club competition that can rival and, eventually, overtake the Champions League. For that to happen, the expanded Club World Cup needs teams from all over the world who can compete with the powerhouses of Europe.Bayern Munich won the most recent Club World Cup. FIFA has plans to expand the event.Mohammed Dabbous/ReutersIn that light, Africa might just be the start, the canary in the coal mine. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but those involved should be clear about their intentions. And a defining project for the future of African soccer should be guided by those with skin in the game, no question, rather than a Swiss bureaucrat intent on a legacy project.RS: Ah, that’s a relief. I feel as though I am on much more solid ground now: the idea might have some merit, but the rationale behind it may not. That may not be good news for African soccer, which finds itself being used as a pawn in a broader power game, but it’s good news for my personal moral compass, because it means I don’t have to worry about being on the same side of an argument as Gianni Infantino.Pushing Back Another Bad IdeaNo one has proposed melting down the Champions League trophy to sell the silver. Yet.via ReutersThere was, just as there was always going to be, one last hurdle to clear. Most European soccer executives were expecting a blueprint for a new vision of the Champions League to be approved — both by UEFA, the competition’s organizer, and the European Clubs Association, Andrea Agnelli’s bad-idea factory — and announced this week.That had to be pushed back, though, when several of the continent’s major teams blew up the deal at the 11th hour: It turns out that actually they want to have final say on the competition’s commercial rights, too. Suddenly, it seems as if the new-look Champions League may end up being the lesser of two evils.Quite how that revamped competition will work is laid out clearly and concisely — and, crucially, in the form of a graphic — here. So clearly and concisely, in fact, that for the first time it is possible to say without fear of having missed something that this iteration of the Champions League will make the tournament immeasurably worse.Not, though, for the reasons so often given. Yes, there will be more meetings between the game’s superpowers, and for lower stakes. Yes, the whole thing is bloated. Yes, it will starve domestic competitions of oxygen. And yes, it still might serve to entrench the financial inequality that is the real enemy of the game’s ongoing health.But the main problem is much simpler: The redesign reduces the Champions League’s competitive integrity. It is, essentially, invalid to draw up a league table in which all of the teams play different opponents. It renders it meaningless. And it is quite likely that fans, who are not as stupid as they are taken to be, will notice.The Week the Tables TurnedNorth Macedonia’s Eljif Elmas, right, with Stefan Spirovski, after scoring the winning goal in a World Cup qualifier at Germany.Sascha Steinbach/EPA, via ShutterstockA few days ago, as England threatened to run up the score in a World Cup qualifier against San Marino, the poacher-turned-pundit Gary Lineker suggested it was time to admit that these mismatches — which characterize a substantial amount of international soccer — were of benefit and interest to precisely nobody.Instead, he said, perhaps it would be in everyone’s interests for some of Europe’s smaller nations to engage in a prequalifying tournament, playing one another for the right to face the continent’s elite, and England. The reaction — Do I really need to say this? You know what the reaction is, because it’s always the same reaction — was furious.To Lineker’s critics, those who accused him of trying to ghettoize soccer’s underdogs, what followed was karmic retribution. Luxembourg won at Ireland. Spain needed a late goal to avoid a draw with Georgia. Latvia tied Turkey. And, best of all, North Macedonia beat Germany, the country’s first loss in a World Cup qualifier for 20 years.It goes without saying that all of these results were welcome, impressive, and hilarious. But it does not mean that the idea Lineker espoused — one that has been around for years — should be dismissed.First of all: That is how qualifying works in Africa, Asia and North and Central America. It helps to thin the calendar a little, something that matters at a time when players are being run into the ground by all of the teams they represent. Second: The success of the Nations League has shown that games between smaller nations are more competitive, and therefore both more entertaining and more educational, than watching the same teams be steamrollered by the giants.And third: At the same time as all those shocks were rumbling through Europe, England was scoring five against San Marino, the Czechs ran in six in Estonia, and both Belgium and Denmark scored eight, against Belarus and Moldova. Worse still, a team managed by Frank de Boer scored seven against Gibraltar. Some of soccer’s lesser lights are competitive. Some are not. If only there was a way of selecting which teams fell into which categories.The Haaland ShakeDortmund, like everyone else, may have trouble holding on to Erling Haaland.Pool photo by Marius BeckerWe have been here before. On Thursday, it emerged that Mino Raiola and Alfie Haaland — respectively the agent and the father of Erling Haaland, the goal cyborg — were in Catalonia for a meeting with Joan Laporta, the freshly-minted president of Barcelona. The race for the hottest property in European soccer is, it seems, on.It is a move straight from the playbook that eventually led the younger Haaland to Borussia Dortmund, his current home, about 15 months ago. Expect Raiola and Haaland’s father to turn up in relatively short order in Madrid, too. They will almost certainly stop off in London after that: Chelsea harbors hopes of signing the 20-year-old Haaland. They may need two days in Manchester; they would not want to rush United or City.The fact that they are doing their due diligence on their client/son’s next home is, then, no surprise. More eye-catching is the fact that they feel Barcelona’s hopes of signing Haaland are valid, given that Dortmund has made it plain that it will not sell him for less than $150 million, and because Barcelona is, well, currently about $1 billion in debt.Laporta, clearly, feels he can make a deal work. Perhaps he can. Perhaps there is some way of shifting the money around enough for Barcelona to remain a viable candidate. The appeal is obvious: Signing Haaland would, almost at a stroke, turn Barcelona into major players again. But then so, too, is the problem: After all the club has been through, would it really be a good idea?The Final SprintAside from the virgin hope of opening day — and possibly the breathless frenzy of Christmas — this is the best part of the soccer season. The end of the March international break heralds not only the arrival of spring, but the start of European club soccer’s race to the summit. Over the next two months, closure will arrive.Better yet, this time around, we hit the ground running. The top two in both France and Germany will meet on Saturday: first, Lille visits Paris St.-Germain, the two of them level on points, and only a nose ahead of Lyon and Monaco. (I’ll have a story on Lille posting in a few hours.) No sooner has that finished, though, than RB Leipzig hosts a Bayern Munich deprived of Robert Lewandowski, and knowing that a win would close the gap at the top of the Bundesliga to a single point.RB Leipzig and Bayern Munich: back at it on Saturday.Pool photo by Alexander HassensteinIn England, meanwhile, the ultimate prize is off the table: It is a matter of when, not if, Manchester City claims a third title in four years. But the battle to finish second, third and fourth — and therefore obtain a place in next season’s not-yet-ruined Champions League — promises to be enthralling. My money would be on Manchester United, Chelsea and Leicester, in that order, but it’s so close that it wouldn’t be much of my money.CorrespondenceOnly space for one, this week, from Charles Knights. “I’m trying to figure out how much disappointment is warranted right now as a supporter of the United States,” he wrote. “How do you rate the U.S.A. men’s team’s failed attempts to qualify for Tokyo? There’s a lot of talk about the Olympics as a training ground for the next generation, but when I look at the U.S. squad, the next generation is playing senior friendlies in Europe.”This is only a personal perspective, Charles, and it is a distinctly European one: My view would, I think, be different if I was South American or African. But in the narrow context of soccer, I’m not convinced the Olympics matter particularly.The United States will miss its third straight Olympic men’s soccer tournament. Honduras is going to its fourth in a row.Refugio Ruiz/Getty ImagesIt is special for the players to win a gold medal, of course, particularly when it at least rivals the high-point of that country’s soccer achievements thus far (Nigeria in 1996, Cameroon in 2000, Mexico in 2012) or when it is Argentina (2004 and 2008), and the World Cup brings nothing but misery.But in terms of being used a signpost for greater things to come? In men’s soccer, no, not really. Put it this way: I had to check who won the gold at Rio in 2016. Turns out it was Brazil! They must have enjoyed that. It probably didn’t make up for what happened in a different tournament on home soil a couple of years earlier.Women’s soccer, of course, has historically placed much more importance on it — the cover of Abby Wambach’s autobiography describes her as a gold medalist, rather than a World Cup winner — but I wonder if that, too, will change with the increased focus on the Women’s World Cup. More