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    N.F.L. Opens Investigation Into Accusations Against Deshaun Watson

    Three women have filed lawsuits against the Houston Texans quarterback, accusing him of sexual assault.The N.F.L. on Thursday began investigating the conduct of the Houston Texans star quarterback Deshaun Watson, who has been accused in civil lawsuits of sexually assaulting three female massage therapists. The lawsuits were filed this week in Harris County, Texas.In a letter addressed to Tony Buzbee, the Houston plaintiffs’ lawyer representing all three women, Lisa Friel, a special counsel for investigations at the league, requested the cooperation of the accusers. Buzbee posted the letter to Instagram. A league spokesman said the matter was under review in relation to the N.F.L.’s personal conduct policy. That policy governs off-field behavior involving players and coaches.The Texans said in a statement Thursday that they would “continue to take this and all matters involving anyone within the Houston Texans organization seriously” and that the team would not comment further until the league’s investigation had ended. The N.F.L. often takes months to complete its investigations, which include interviews with accusers and N.F.L. employees, as well as law enforcement officials.Earlier on Thursday, Buzbee said on Instagram that a total of nine women had come forward with accusations against Watson, who has not spoken publicly about the allegations since he posted a statement to Twitter on Tuesday night, after the first complaint against him had been filed. Watson said 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.The third complaint, filed Wednesday night, echoed descriptions of behavior detailed in the two other suits filed against Watson. It said that Watson, 25, had pressured the woman to perform oral sex during a massage on Dec. 28 at an office building in Houston.Watson, who contacted the woman through a direct message on Instagram, started to aggressively dictate how she should massage him, the complaint said, and told her to work on his hamstrings, inner thighs and “inner glutes.” Watson then instructed her to move her hand across his genitals, the complaint said, and pushed her mouth toward his penis. According to the complaint, the woman was so shaken that she blacked out for a few minutes. Watson got dressed and left without apologizing, the complaint said.Watson has hired Rusty Hardin, a prominent defense lawyer also based in Houston. Hardin has defended other well-known athletes in the area, including Roger Clemens and James Harden. In a phone interview, Hardin declined to discuss the case and said only that he was still learning the details.After the league finishes its investigation, Watson could be fined or suspended if he is found to have violated the league’s personal conduct policy. He could appeal any penalties.In 2014, the league began hiring its own professional investigators, including Friel, a former prosecutor in New York City, to review allegations of bad behavior off the field, particularly related to sexual assault and domestic violence. Before then, the league typically relied on law enforcement agencies and resolutions in the courts to decide whether to penalize anyone.Ken Belson contributed reporting. More

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    El cohetero de la Real Sociedad mantiene viva la tradición

    En cuanto el balón cruza la línea de meta, Juan Iturralde se pone de pie. Corre al interior de su palco, dirigiéndose a la puerta. Solo se detiene brevemente, para arrebatar dos cohetes de una bolsa de plástico colocada con cuidado, y deliberadamente, en su camino. Su ubicación es estratégica: Iturralde está, fundamentalmente, en el negocio de las noticias, y cada segundo cuenta.Salta, tan rápido como se lo permiten sus rodillas, baja dos tramos de escaleras agarrando los fuegos artificiales. Luego atraviesa corriendo la Puerta 18 en el Reale Arena, sede de la Real Sociedad de fútbol español, y sale a la calle. Comprueba que los alrededores están despejados, mete el primero de sus dos cohetes en un lanzador de mano y da la noticia en el cielo nocturno de San Sebastián.Esta vez, es una historia alegre. Cuando el primer cohete resuena sobre su cabeza, Iturralde lanza otro y una lluvia de chispas cae a sus pies, luego, una nube de cordita se esparce a su alrededor. En la ciudad todos saben lo que significa ese código. More

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    The Rocketman of Real Sociedad Is Still Breaking News

    As soon as the ball crosses the line, Juan Iturralde is on his feet. He darts back inside his suite, heading for the door. He pauses only briefly, to snatch two bottle rockets from a plastic bag placed carefully, deliberately, in his path. Its location is strategic: Iturralde is, essentially, in the news business, and every second counts.He bounds — as fast as his knees will allow — down two flights of stairs, clasping the fireworks by their stalks. He sprints out of Gate 18 at the Reale Arena, home of the Spanish soccer team Real Sociedad, and onto the street outside. He checks that the coast is clear, slips the first of his two rockets into his hand-held launcher, and breaks his story across San Sebastián’s night sky.His news, this time, is good. As the first rocket shrieks above his head, Iturralde sets off another, another shower of sparks falling at his feet, another cloud of cordite writhing around his sleeve. Everyone in the city knows how to crack the code. More

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    Deshaun Watson Accused of Sexual Assault in Civil Suits

    Lawsuits filed Tuesday and Wednesday accused the Houston Texans quarterback of misconduct during massages last year. Watson said in a statement Tuesday that he had never “treated any woman with anything other than the utmost respect.”Deshaun Watson, the star quarterback of the Houston Texans, has been accused of sexually assaulting two massage therapists last year, according to two civil suits filed this week in Harris County, Texas.In the first complaint, filed late Tuesday, a woman accused Watson, 25, of accosting her and pressuring her to have sex with him during a massage at her home in Houston. The woman said Watson had responded to an advertisement for her massage services and had asked if she would be the only person home when he arrived. Watson denied the accusation in a statement posted to his Twitter account Tuesday night.On Wednesday, Watson was accused in a second complaint, by another woman who said that last year he pressured her to have sex with him during a massage.According to the first complaint, on March 30, 2020, Watson went to the woman’s home and, once on the massage table wearing only a small towel, instructed the woman to focus on his groin. Watson, according to the complaint, “moved his body so he could expose himself more.”The woman ended the massage abruptly and asked him to leave, the complaint said. She claimed that Watson had suggested that he could ruin her reputation if she tried to ruin his by speaking publicly about the encounter.Watson later sent a text message to the woman to apologize, according to the complaint. She did not respond.In a statement posted to Twitter on Tuesday night, Watson said that he “never treated any woman with anything other than the utmost respect” and that he looked forward to clearing his name. Watson also said that he had rejected “a baseless six-figure settlement demand” made before the accuser’s lawyer filed the lawsuit.The accusers seek “minimal compensatory damages,” according to the complaints. After submitting the first filing on Tuesday, Tony Buzbee, a high-profile and flamboyant plaintiffs lawyer in Houston who is representing both accusers, wrote on Instagram that the case was not about money but about “stopping behavior that should be stopped.”Buzbee, who unsuccessfully ran for mayor of Houston in 2019, did not describe the accusations against Watson in that Instagram post, but he separately told a Houston television reporter on Tuesday that “Watson went too far” with the first woman who had been giving him a massage.According to the second complaint, Watson contacted a massage therapist in Atlanta in August and made specific requests for what he wanted in a massage. Watson agreed to pay to fly the woman to Houston, and they met at The Houstonian Hotel in a suite Watson had reserved, the complaint said.Watson immediately disrobed, according to the complaint, and the woman asked him to cover himself. Watson became increasingly suggestive, urging the massage therapist to perform sexual acts, the complaint said, adding that she stopped the massage and Watson grabbed her. The woman left the room and went directly to the airport, according to the complaint, and Watson paid her for the massage but did not reimburse her for her flights.Several months later, Watson contacted the woman and said he was in Atlanta and asked if she was available, according to the complaint. She did not respond.The Texans said in a statement that they became aware of a lawsuit involving Watson through social media on Tuesday night. “This is the first time we heard of the matter, and we hope to learn more soon.”“The N.F.L. is aware of the reports and will decline further comment at this time,” Brian McCarthy, an N.F.L. spokesman, said Wednesday.Watson is one of the league’s best and most recognizable players, who during a 2020 off-season of social and political turmoil called for racial justice in a player-led video that urged the N.F.L. to support players’ protests. In early June, about a week after the police in Minneapolis killed George Floyd, Watson marched with the family of Floyd — who grew up in Houston — to protest police brutality.The sexual assault accusations come as Watson faces an uncertain future in Houston. In September, he signed a four-year extension to stretch his contract through 2025, but he has now requested a trade, vowing never to play for the Texans again. The team went 4-12 in 2020, with Watson throwing for the most yardage and touchdown passes of his career, even as the franchise replaced its head coach and general manager and cut ties with popular players.Texans executives stressed in January that they had no intention of dealing Watson, who, with a no-trade clause, can influence where he next plays. David Culley, who was hired as the Texans’ coach this off-season, told reporters in Houston last Thursday that the Texans were “very committed” to Watson, but he also said during a March 11 podcast interview that Watson is “our starting quarterback as of right now,” a quotation suggesting his status with the team might change. On Tuesday, the Texans prepared for that possibility, if not likelihood, by agreeing to sign the veteran free-agent quarterback Tyrod Taylor. More

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    Black N.F.L. Players Want New Advocate in Concussion Settlement

    Players said the lawyer for the N.F.L. retiree class knew that race-based criteria were used to deny Black players’ dementia claims. A review of eight such rejections seems to support their argument.Two retired N.F.L. players who have filed dementia-related claims in the N.F.L. concussion settlement, and have accused the league of discriminating against Black players, want their own representative to attend a mediation aimed at addressing the use of race-based benchmarks to determine eligibility for payouts.Kevin Henry and Najeh Davenport argued in a lawsuit that the separate scoring curves — one for Black athletes, another for white players — used by neuropsychologists to evaluate dementia-related claims “explicitly and deliberately” discriminated against hundreds if not thousands of Black players. But last week, Judge Anita B. Brody of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania dismissed their lawsuit and ordered a mediator to address her concerns about the practice.The players are seeking a new representative because they said Christopher Seeger, the lawyer for more than 20,000 former players in the class action settlement, knew about the abuse of race-based benchmarks as early as 2018 and did not address the issue.“It is not realistic to expect that concerns about race-norming will be addressed effectively by parties who do not view the current use of race-norming as a problem,” Henry and Davenport’s lawyer wrote in their request.The players say that Black former players may have had their claims denied because the benchmarks used to assess rates of cognitive decline deliberately make it harder for them to receive payouts worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, an accusation Seeger denied in a phone interview on Tuesday with The New York Times.Seeger said he was aware of a handful of objections to race-norming in the past few years. He said he intervened in at least one case and that the player received a $1.5 million payout as a result. However, “there has not been a systemic attempt to mistreat Black players in the settlement,” he said.To remove any ambiguity, though, Seeger said he would fight to have race-norming entirely stripped from the settlement.“I need the players to believe in me, I need them to believe in the settlement and I need them to believe they are treated fairly,” he said.Suspicions remain. As the representative for all 20,000 players in the settlement, Seeger signed off on the use of race-based benchmarks in 2014, when the settlement was being approved. The N.F.L. and Seeger note that the use of race norms is not mandatory, though Seeger acknowledged that some doctors charged with evaluating players may be under the misguided perception that it is.Kevin Henry, a longtime defensive end for the Pittsburgh Steelers, is one of two Black players who have petitioned for a new representative for retired players in the N.F.L.’s landmark concussions settlement.Matthew Odom for The New York TimesThe New York Times reviewed the confidential records of eight Black former players whose claims of dementia were denied. In the cases, which date to 2018, diagnoses made without regard to race showed significant enough decline in function for the players to be eligible for payouts.But a second doctor tossed out those diagnoses because the initial doctors had not used the race norms developed by Dr. Robert Heaton that have been standard in settlement claims.“The NFL guidelines are very specific in requiring the use of the Heaton norms for several tests,” an appeals doctor wrote in denying a dementia diagnosis for a player whose career spanned the 1990s and 2000s. To illustrate the point, the doctor listed the player’s test scores after race-based benchmarks were applied to show there was no “evidence of significant cognitive decline.”Lawyers who represent dozens of Black former players said that Black players with similar test scores as white players have been disqualified after racial benchmarks were used, a violation of their civil rights.“Unlike many civil rights cases, the use of Heaton’s race-based norms is discriminatory on its face,” Justin Wyatt, a lawyer for more than 100 players, wrote in a confidential filing in 2019 after one of his clients had his dementia diagnosis overturned. “By definition, Heaton’s race based norms have the effect of treating blacks differently than whites.”It is unclear how many Black players may have been misdiagnosed or had their diagnoses overturned. Cyril Smith, a lawyer for Henry and Davenport, claimed that white players are getting their dementia claims approved at two to three times the rate of Black players.But Smith was unable to substantiate his claim because, he said, Seeger and the N.F.L. have not shared any data on the approval rates of dementia claims by white and Black players.Seeger said this week that he will release that data once his investigation into the use of racial benchmarks in the settlement is completed in the coming weeks and that any claim that was “improperly affected by race-norming” will be reviewed.Smith and Wyatt said the only way to ensure that Black players’ claims have not been mishandled is to have every one of their neuropsychological exams rescored without the use of racial benchmarks. More than 7,000 former players took free neuropsychological and neurological exams offered in the settlement. Some of them were told they did not have dementia and may be unaware of how their exams were scored.It is unclear whether the N.F.L. will approve having every player’s exams rescored because the payouts that could result would be worth potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars each. More than $800 million in claims have already been approved for a range of neurological and cognitive diseases, and Seeger expects that amount to top $1 billion.The N.F.L. said in a statement that there is “no merit to the claim of discrimination,” citing the use of demographic adjustments as common practice in such examinations. It contended that the number of players potentially affected by the use of race-based benchmarks is a fraction of what has been alleged because, among other reasons, “many claims were denied for reasons that have nothing to do with the norms and any rescoring would have no impact on those denials.”The league added: “The N.F.L. nevertheless is committed to helping find alternative testing techniques that will lead to diagnostic accuracy without relying on race-based norms.”To assess cases of dementia, doctors must estimate what a person’s cognitive skills were years ago and compare them to the patient’s current condition. In theory, race-norms are designed to help doctors approximate the cognitive skills of Black and white people in the past.But using race to estimate one’s cognition is fraught because it does not account for factors like a person’s health, education or economic background. Many people — such as those who come from biracial families — do not fit neatly into a single racial category. N.F.L. players are also a unique group because almost all have attended at least three years of university. Comparing players to larger pools of white and Black Americans could be misleading, experts said.“Among the scientific community, it is now widely recognized that race/ethnicity represents a crude proxy for lifelong social experiences, and biologically based racial differences in I.Q. have been debunked,” Dr. Katherine Possin, of the Memory and Aging Center at the University of California San Francisco, wrote in the journal JAMA Neurology in December. “Even with the best norms, the diagnosis of cognitive disorders should not be decided based on a plug-and-play formula of cognitive test scores.”The debate over the use of race norms is not unique to the N.F.L. settlement. In the past, their use has led, intentionally or not, Black patients being denied treatment for many medical conditions, Darshali Vyas, Leo Eisenstein and David Jones wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine in August.The doctors said that problems with race-norming also exist in the criminal justice system, where it is used to help determine police intervention in communities and prison sentences. Some members of Congress want to eliminate algorithms that discriminate against women and people of color by deciding everything from the type of advertisements people see online to how their applications for jobs, credit cards and other products are treated.“Prior forms of racial discrimination based on human biases are now being embedded into algorithms that appear to be race-neutral but aren’t because they are based on data and racial profiling that went on in the past,” said Dorothy Roberts, a professor of Africana Studies, law and sociology at the University of Pennsylvania who studies the use algorithms. “Technology can be used to promote equality or perpetuate inequality. It depends on who’s in control of it and what data they are putting into the algorithms.” More

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    On Loving Drew Brees, and Deciding Not to Cancel Him

    While Brees was the New Orleans Saints’ quarterback, his deep connection to the predominantly Black city was threatened by his criticism of those who protested during the national anthem.New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees announced his retirement on Sunday in a family announcement posted to Instagram on the 15th anniversary of his signing with the N.F.L. franchise. The news brought to a close the most elite career in Saints history and a major chapter in the culture of the city, which lovingly revolves around the team’s ups and downs.Brees retired as a Super Bowl winner, the N.F.L.’s career leader in passing yards (80,358) and a shoo-in Hall of Famer — the only quarterback to have thrown for five 5,000-yard seasons. Still, the heartfelt send-offs on social media, from Saints fans and former teammates alike, tellingly teem with more personal odes than stat recitations.Receiver Michael Thomas, Brees’s go-to target for the last half-decade, called him the “definition of a leader,” in a lengthy, emotional statement. “You are my hero and many others’,” Thomas wrote. He concluded: “You’re an icon worldwide, but you’re my brother every day. I love you and I appreciate you.”It was a full-circle moment from Thomas, who despite his close relationship with Brees, or maybe because of it, called out the quarterback for comments he made after the police killed George Floyd, a Black man, last May. In June, Brees told an interviewer that while he supported social justice, he would oppose any N.F.L. protest that involved kneeling during the national anthem: “I will never agree with anybody disrespecting the flag of the United States of America or our country,” he said in comments that reiterated his stance in 2016, when players around the league joined Colin Kaepernick in kneeling during the anthem.In 2020, Brees clarified, then walked back the comment, in part because of the backlash from teammates like Thomas, who posted his own response on Twitter: “He don’t know no better.”As a born and raised New Orleanian, a young Black man and a near-rabid Saints fan, I both hold unreserved joy over Brees’s career and clearly understand the lingering ambivalence about his conservatism among progressive fans. Some of them, including close friends in my Saints fans’ group text, never bought Brees’s public penance last season, when he went on a virtual learning trek of sorts, joining in on the organization’s team-wide pivot to embracing calls for social justice and personally donating money to related causes. A couple referred to it as a redemption tour with scornful irony.The recompense was, however, enough for Thomas, who in a follow-up post on Twitter said of Brees: “He apologized and I accept it because that’s what we are taught to do as Christians. Now back to the movement! #GeorgeFloyd.”A critical mass of us who were turned off by the quarterback’s comments about the flag seemed to end up with sentiments closer to Thomas’s — wondering if we couldn’t lend the man a bit of grace and allow for growth in others once they are called out for taboos.After all, particularly for those of us who grew up in the Deep South, our list of friends and family members who only changed their minds about seminal social issues — segregation, interracial marriage, gay marriage, women’s rights and much else — once social mores had liberalized, is long. People can evolve. It’s also true that evolution is much more likely to happen if society is threatening to leave them behind.Brees joined with teammates in supporting the #SayHerName initiative to bring awareness to racial inequalities experienced by Black women in the wake of the police shooting of Breonna Taylor in 2020.Christian Petersen/Getty ImagesWhether we — or Thomas and the rest of the team — would have been in such a forgiving mood if Brees wasn’t performing at an incredibly high level, despite his age, is a counterfactual we will never fully be able to test. Still, there is a more ineffable connection to the city that Brees sincerely earned, one that garnered a well of good will deep enough to squelch any serious threat to how he will be remembered: the connection between his comeback and New Orleans’s hard-fought rebirth.As every televised segment recapping his career will show, when Brees came to our downtrodden franchise (habitually called the ’Aints), he was widely seen as damaged goods after tearing the labrum in his throwing shoulder. The devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina only months before his arrival had left New Orleans a deeply injured old river town, whose recovery many thought was unlikely, and that some actively bet against. In essence, each party — Brees, the fans rebuilding their homes and the failing franchise that nevertheless decided against relocation — was an underdog taking a chance on the others.After all the parties were repaid with winning seasons, a championship and nationally televised games — more excuses to tailgate and party in a city that loves nothing more — a natural, defensive bond was formed. “You told me that if I loved New Orleans, you would love me back,” Brees’s open letter saying goodbye reads. “No truer words have ever been spoken.” Maybe our shared memories, those created at holiday dinner tables or in the Superdome on Sundays (with people just as complicated), are why we give Brees and others more slack than some think is merited.At the height of my frustration with Brees, in 2016, I remember asking my mother — who desegregated her elementary school in New Orleans and was picketed for it (“Two, four, six, eight. We don’t want to integrate!”) — if it was right for me, for her, for our family, to keep cheering for Brees during games, to keep our season tickets, when he was being insensitive to our community’s grievances off the field?“Tal,” she told me with a rueful smile and a dash of resignation, “I’m sure if I talked with Drew I’d tell him, ‘I appreciate you being a good quarterback and a leader in this city, but I really, really think you’re wrong about such and such,’ and I’m sure he’d tell me, ‘Well, Sheryl, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your support and maybe we don’t see eye to eye on every issue, but I love this city and the Saints and hope we can make y’all fans proud.’”It was a lesson in how empathy and compartmentalization can trickily coexist: How fandom, for many, isn’t strictly contingent on sharing your favorite athlete’s politics. With the growing sense that the stakes are too high for such a truce, that may be changing.I met Brees soon after he’d taken the team to its first N.F.C. championship game in January 2007. He was roughly the age I am now and had come to meet a few middle schoolers in the rocky backyard of Lusher Charter School, an area that is now the Brees Family Field. I don’t remember caring about his politics, or any adults in my very civically active community caring much, either.When I think of Drew Brees now, I don’t think of him, the man, as much as I think of how many hugs, high-fives, kisses, conversation starters, weekend celebrations, indelible memories and lifelong doses of hometown pride for which he is responsible.There is no convenient equation that can take the balance of those sweeter realities and subtract from them the bitterness of his pre-2021 politics, to give us an answer on how we should feel. Maybe that’s OK. Maybe that’s just being human.Talmon Joseph Smith is a staff editor at The Times. More

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    Inter Milan Is Threatened by Challenges at Suning, Its Chinese Owner

    The storied Italian soccer club’s Chinese owners spent heavily on big stars, and now the it is winning again. But the bill is coming due, putting the team’s future in doubt.HONG KONG — The new, high-rolling Chinese owner was supposed to return Inter Milan to its glory days. It spent heavily on prolific scorers like Romelu Lukaku and Christian Eriksen. After five years of investment, the storied Milan soccer club is within striking distance of its first Italian league title in a decade.Now the bill has come due — and Inter Milan’s future is suddenly in doubt.Suning, an electronics retailer that is the club’s majority owner, is strapped for cash and trying to sell its stake. The club is bleeding money. Some of its players have agreed to defer payment, according to one person close to the club who requested anonymity because the information isn’t public.Inter Milan has held talks with at least one potential investor, but the parties couldn’t agree on a price, according to others with knowledge of the negotiations.Suning’s soccer aspirations are crumbling at home, too. The company abruptly shut down its domestic team four months after the club won China’s national championship. Some stars, many of whom chose to play there instead of in Chelsea or Liverpool, have said they have gone unpaid.China has failed in its dream of becoming a global player in the world’s most popular sport. Spurred in part by the ambitions of Xi Jinping, China’s top leader and an ardent soccer fan, a new breed of Chinese tycoons plowed billions of dollars into marquee clubs and star players, transforming the economics of the game. Chinese investors spent $1.8 billion acquiring stakes in more than a dozen European teams between 2015 and 2017, and China’s cash-soaked domestic league paid the largest salaries ever bestowed on overseas recruits.But the splurge exposed international soccer to the peculiarities of the Chinese business world. Deep involvement by the Communist Party make companies vulnerable to sharp shifts in the political winds. The free-spending tycoons often lacked international experience or sophistication.Now, talks of defaults, fire sales and hasty exits dominate discussions around boardroom tables. A mining magnate lost control of A.C. Milan amid questions about his business empire. The owner of a soap maker and food additive company gave up his stake in Aston Villa. An energy conglomerate shed its stake in Slavia Prague after its founder disappeared.Suning’s plight reflects “the whole rise and fall of this era of Chinese football,” said Zhe Ji, the director of Red Lantern, a sports marketing company that works in China for top European soccer teams. “When people were talking about Chinese football and all the attention it got in 2016, it came very fast, but it’s gone very fast, too.”Suning paid $306 million in 2016 for a major stake in Inter Milan. Suning is a household name in China, with stores stocked with computers, iPads and rice cookers for the country’s growing middle class. While it has been hurt by China’s e-commerce revolution, it counts Alibaba, the online shopping titan, as a major investor.On a brightly lit stage to announce the Inter Milan deal, Zhang Jindong, Suning’s billionaire founder and chairman, raised a champagne glass and talked about how the famous Italian team — which has won 18 championships since 1910 but none since 2010 — would help his brand internationally and contribute to China’s sports industry.Boasting about Suning’s “abundant resources,” Mr. Zhang promised the club would “return to its glory days and become a stronger property able to attract top stars from across the globe.”Zhang Jindong, right, Suning’s chairman and founder, with his son, Steven Zhang, at a match in Italy in 2017. Suning put Inter Milan’s stars  to work selling air-conditioners and washing machines.Claudio Villa – Inter/FC Internazionale via Getty ImagesUnder the leadership of Mr. Zhang’s son, Steven Zhang, now 29, the club spent more than $300 million on stars like Lukaku, Eriksen and Lautaro Martínez, an Argentine forward nicknamed The Bull for his relentless pursuit of goals.Suning also agreed to pay $700 million to England’s Premier League for the rights to broadcast games in China beginning in 2019, stunning the industry.Suning lavished money on a domestic club that it bought in 2015. It spent $32 million to acquire Ramires, a Brazilian midfielder, from Chelsea, and 50 million euros for Alex Teixeira, a young Brazilian attacker, who chose the Chinese team over Liverpool, one of soccer’s most popular franchises.The recruits were put to work selling air-conditioners and washing machines. In one advertisement, Mr. Teixeira urged viewers to buy a Chinese brand of appliances. “I am Teixeira,” he says in Mandarin, adding, “come to Suning to buy Haier.”The money, said Mubarak Wakaso, a Ghanaian midfielder, helped make China attractive. “The money that I’m going to make in China is far better than La Liga,” he said in a mix of Twi and English in an interview last year, citing the league in Spain where he once played. “I’m not telling lies.”Suning’s soccer bets were badly timed. The Chinese government began to worry that big conglomerates were borrowing too heavily, threatening the country’s financial system. One year after the Inter Milan deal, Chinese state media criticized Suning for its “irrational” acquisition.Then the pandemic hit. Even as Inter Milan won on the field, it lost gate receipts from its San Siro stadium, one of the largest in Europe. Some sponsors walked away because their own financial pressures. The club lost about $120 million last year, one of the biggest losses reported by a European soccer club.Back in China, Suning was slammed by e-commerce as well as the coronavirus. Its troubles accelerated in the autumn when it chose not to demand repayment of a $3 billion investment in Evergrande, a property developer and China’s most indebted company.Suning’s burden is set to get heavier. This year, it must make $1.2 billion in bond payments. The company declined to comment.Suning began to take drastic steps. Last year it abandoned its broadcasting deal with the Premier League.Jiangsu Suning players celebrate winning the Chinese Super League football championship last year. The team was shut down four months after the win.Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThen, in February, it shut down its domestic team, Jiangsu Suning, nearly four months after the team won China’s Super League title against an Evergrande-controlled team. At least one of the team’s foreign recruits has hired lawyers to help recoup unpaid salary, according to a person involved in the matter.One former Suning player, Eder, a Brazilian-born star forward, set the soccer world buzzing after media reports quoted him saying Suning had not paid him. On Twitter, Eder said the comments had been taken from a private, online chat without his permission. His agent did not respond to requests for comment.To save itself, Suning took a step that could complicate Inter Milan’s fortunes. On March 1, it sold $2.3 billion worth of its shares to affiliates of the government of the Chinese city of Shenzhen. The deal gave Chinese authorities a say in Inter Milan’s fate.Greater financial pressure looms for Inter Milan. It must pay out a $360 million bond next year. A minority investor in Hong Kong, Lion Rock Capital, which acquired a 31 percent stake in Inter in 2019, could exercise an option that would require Suning to buy its stake for as much as $215 million, according to one of the people close to the club.Inter Milan officials are looking for financing, a new partner or a sale of the team at a valuation of about $1.1 billion, the person said.The club until recently was in exclusive talks with BC Partners, the British private equity firm, but they were unable to agree on price, said people with knowledge of the talks.Without fresh capital, Inter Milan could lose players. If it can’t pay salaries or transfer fees for departing players, European soccer rules say it could be banished from top competitions.“We are concerned but we are not frightened yet about this situation — we are just waiting for the news,” said Manuel Corti, a member of an Inter Milan supporters club based in London.“Being Inter fans,” he said, “we are never sure of anything until the last minute.”Alexandra Stevenson More

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    Drew Brees Retires, His Focus on the Details Until the End

    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyOn Pro FootballDrew Brees Retires, His Focus on the Details Until the EndBrees, who won seven division titles as the Saints’ quarterback, including the most recent four, retired after 20 seasons with the most completions and passing yards in N.F.L. history.Drew Brees waved to fans after a playoff loss to the Buccaneers in the divisional round.Credit…Brynn Anderson/Associated PressMarch 14, 2021Updated 6:03 p.m. ETEvery great quarterback has a defining characteristic.Tom Brady, even at 43, still excels in big games. Aaron Rodgers and Patrick Mahomes, with their prodigious arms, complete throws others wouldn’t dare attempt. Peyton Manning, a presnap savant, could decode the most complex of defenses.Many will never come close to knowing what such excellence feels like, in any field. But when it comes to Drew Brees, another member of that exalted group of quarterbacks, trying to understand what distinguished him as he retired Sunday, exactly 15 years after he signed with the Saints — that feels a bit more accessible: Just grab a toothbrush and some toothpaste.“I’ve challenged people to do this before,” said Zach Strief, a former offensive tackle who helped protect Brees for 12 seasons in New Orleans. “Brush your teeth with 275 strokes tomorrow. Do it that many times, then try to repeat it for 20 years. That’s how he lives his life. His attention to detail is his superpower.”Over those 20 years, as Brees overcame a career-threatening shoulder injury to become one of the most statistically productive quarterbacks in N.FL. history, he trained his body and brain for optimal performance.Because he couldn’t dislodge his head from his shoulders to see over towering linemen, the 6-foot Brees often threw passes blind. “You just see a ball appear out of nowhere,” said the former receiver Lance Moore, who played eight seasons with Brees.Brees knew the coverage, the routes and where the ball was supposed to go, so it didn’t seem peculiar. It’s why every repetition in practice had to be perfect, and if it wasn’t, Brees and his receivers would stay after — communicating that need telepathically — until they aced it.Brees’s wife, Brittany, with their sons Bowen, left, and Baylen, middle, in 2012. Credit…Gerald Herbert/Associated PressHe reviewed the entire game plan after Saturday walk-throughs, drilling his cadence and progressions, dropping back without holding a ball, toiling alone in the Saints’ practice bubble. He arrived at the team’s training facility at 6 a.m. even if he played the night before. His wife, Brittany, would bring their children over at a certain time, and Brees would chase them around for a certain amount of time, and then they would leave at a certain time, so he could retreat to the darkness of the film room.“It’s unnerving at first to watch him as a young player, because you’re like, ‘Damn, how do I replicate this?’” said Marques Colston, a Saints receiver from 2006 to 2015. “It put you in a mode where you had to match his intensity.”Brees and Colston joined the Saints within weeks of each other in 2006. New Orleans drafted Colston that year, but Brees, after five seasons with the San Diego Chargers, chose the city. Identifying with its resilient spirit, he signed with the Saints to rebuild — his shoulder, his career, the organization, a region reeling from Hurricane Katrina.With those projects long complete, Brees, 42, leaves the game after 20 years of unbridling his superpower to maximum effect.“Over and above his outstanding performance, Drew came to represent the resolve, passion, and drive that resonates not only with Saints fans and football fans but our entire community,” Gayle Benson, the team’s principal owner, said in a statement.When Brees arrived, the Saints were a woebegone franchise coming off a 3-13 season in 2005, with one playoff victory in 39 years. Brees reached the N.F.C. championship game in his first year, delivered a Super Bowl in his fourth — beating the Hall of Fame quarterbacks Kurt Warner, Brett Favre and Manning along the way — and won seven division titles, including in each of the last four seasons. He transformed the national perception of the Saints and recalibrated locals’ expectations of offensive proficiency.Brees celebrating with the Super Bowl trophy in February 2010. The Saints had one playoff win in 39 years before his arrival.Credit…Barton Silverman/The New York TimesWhen Brees arrived, New Orleans was recovering from the devastation wrought by Katrina, so much so that after Coach Sean Payton got lost while showing Brees around the area on his free-agent visit, driving past ravaged communities, he figured Brees would sign with Miami. Instead, Brees settled in Uptown New Orleans, restored a century-old home, and committed to raising millions of dollars to refurbish parks, schools and athletic fields.When Brees arrived, his surgically repaired right shoulder was still ailing, and all throughout training camp and into the preseason his passes wobbled. Some teammates wondered whether he would ever recover. Payton did, too.As Strief remembers it, Brees went to throw a 20-yard out route early in the Saints’ third preseason game, and his pass skipped 5 yards short of the receiver. Payton asked the quarterbacks coach, Pete Carmichael, who coached Brees in San Diego, “Is this as good as he gets?”“I remember standing there thinking, like, oh wow,” Strief, who was hired last month as the Saints’ assistant offensive line coach, said. “Like, asking myself: ‘He’s an N.F.L. quarterback. How is that possible?’”As Strief discovered, Brees progressed at his own pace. Meshing with Payton, he threw for 4,418 yards that season, the first of seven times he led the N.F.L. in that category. No one has completed more passes or thrown for more yards, and only Brady has thrown more touchdowns.Some of Brees’s totals are bloated by the era, facilitated by rules changes, schematic innovations and a short-passing ethos. But in many years, the Saints needed Brees to throw just to offset their horrific defenses: Each of the five times New Orleans finished in the bottom seven in scoring defense, Brees led the league in passing. Over the last four seasons, as the Saints leaned more on their running game and a strong defense, Brees reinvented himself, throwing (even) shorter passes and fewer interceptions, never reaching double digits in that statistic after throwing 15 in 2016.“You just knew the ball was going to be perfect coming from Drew Brees,” the former All-Pro cornerback Aqib Talib said in a telephone interview. “He’ll just find ways to kill you.”Brees became more reliant on short passes in his final four seasons.Credit…Sean Gardner/Getty ImagesConsistent as Brees was, sometimes that focus blinded him from change swirling around him. Long a vocal supporter of the military, he equated kneeling during the national anthem to protest police brutality with denigrating the flag.As civil unrest roiled the country last summer, and as the league and its players grew more proactive about addressing systemic racism and social injustice, Brees reiterated that he considered it disrespectful to kneel. His comments angered teammates past and present, many of whom were mystified that someone generally so aware could be so insensitive. Brees later apologized, saying his comments “missed the mark.”“It hurt — like, dang, Drew, really? No way,” Moore said. “But sometimes it takes a situation like that for somebody to grow. I’m not going to allow something like that to erase the history we had together. I had to help teach him a lesson, and I think it was a moment of reflection for him.”Brees had ample time to ponder his future after the last three seasons, which all ended with a playoff defeat at the Superdome. Eliminated by the Rams in the playoffs after the 2018 season after officials missed a pass-interference call against Los Angeles, and by Minnesota in overtime after the 2019 season, when he missed five games with a thumb injury, the Saints lost to Tampa Bay at home in the divisional round in January in part because the Buccaneers converted two of Brees’s three interceptions into touchdowns.That day Brees, already managing the aftermath of the 11 fractured ribs and punctured lung he sustained in Week 10, was also playing with — as revealed in an Instagram post Brittany Brees would make two days later — a torn fascia in his foot and a torn rotator cuff. Struggling to move the offense downfield against Tampa Bay, Brees passed for 134 yards, his fewest in 18 postseason games by far, and if it all seemed like a discordant conclusion to a career steeped in splendor, that’s because it was — but yet it still sort of misses the point.So much of the Brees mythology focuses on what he lacks, things out of his control — the prototypical height of a quarterback, an Elway-esque arm, a second championship to enhance his legacy — instead of what he is, what he has, what he could do. And over the last two decades, as the N.F.L. transitioned into a passing league, no one summoned his superpower better to fulfill the position’s elemental responsibility — throwing a football accurately and consistently — finer than he did.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More