Raphael Stevens

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    World Cup Final: England and Spain’s Starting Lineups

    Spain is ready to go: It released its lineup almost two hours before kickoff, and the only change is notable. But so is England: It wasn’t far behind.Part of that might be that neither team had any surprises in their lineups. The most notable choices, in fact, are two players who are NOT starting.England’s team is unchanged from the semifinals, meaning Lauren James, a starter who missed the last two games because of a red-card suspension for stamping on a Nigerian opponent in the round of 16, will be on the bench to start. But so will Alexia Putellas of Spain, the reigning Ballon d’Or winner as world player of the year. She sits after a disappointing semifinal in favor of the tournament’s breakout Spanish star, Salma Paralluelo.She slots in up front in its starting XI:Cata Coll; Olga Carmona, Laia Codina, Irene Paredes, Ona Batlle; Jenni Hermoso, Teresa Abelleira, Aitana Bonmatí; Mariona Caldentey, Salma Paralluelo, Alba Redondo.England is visual form here, with outside backs Rachel Daly and Lucy Bronze listed as midfielders in a 3-5-2:Mary Earps; Jess Carter, Millie Bright, Alex Greenwood; Lucy Bronze, Georgia Stanway, Keira Walsh, Ella Toone, Rachel Daly; Lauren Hemp, Alessia Russo. More

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    Women’s World Cup Final Reminds England of Men’s Team’s Painful History

    The women play Spain on Sunday, hoping to end a nearly six-decade national wait for a World Cup win — a reminder of the travails of the Three Lions, the country’s long-suffering men’s team.In London, theatergoers have flocked to “Dear England,” a hit play that chronicles the drama and anguish of the men’s national soccer team in its long quest for another World Cup title, now at 57 years and counting. In Sydney on Sunday, the England women’s team might finally get the job done.England will face off against Spain in the Women’s World Cup final, the first for either team. While they are closely matched, England’s impressive march through the tournament has spurred hopes that “football’s coming home,” in the ever-optimistic words of “The Three Lions,” the unofficial anthem of the men’s team.That the Lionesses, not the Lions, might bring it home is a twist that has beguiled and bemused people in a country where the painful history of the men’s team — a litany of blown chances, unfulfilled promise and knockout losses (particularly to Germany and particularly after penalties) — is deeply engraved in the national psyche.“It’s hard to deny that this is really a big moment for the women’s game here,” said John Williams, a sports sociologist at the University of Leicester in England. “But it doesn’t take the monkey off the men’s backs. If anything, it makes them look even less formidable and more culpable, if women do the job.”In a country that claims to be the spiritual home of the game, winning is winning — and men and women, young and old, are rooting for the Lionesses. “As long as it’s England, I don’t care who’s bringing football home,” said Brad Jones, 25, a consultant from Bristol who was riding the underground in London on Friday.Watching the semifinal against Australia in London on Wednesday. “It’s hard to deny that this is really a big moment for the women’s game here,” a sports sociologist in England said.Frank Augstein/Associated PressYet the vexed history of the men’s team, in a country that also views soccer as a vital expression of male camaraderie, has prompted criticism that the women are not receiving the same treatment that their brethren would.The government has ruled out declaring a bank holiday — British parlance for a national day off — if England wins. Critics said that officials would do that without thinking if the men’s team ever claimed another World Cup. Neither Prime Minister Rishi Sunak nor Prince William, who is the president of the Football Association, plans to travel to Australia to watch the game.Queen Elizabeth II attended the World Cup final in 1966, the last and only time England won (prevailing against West Germany, 4-2, after extra time, on home turf). She presented the trophy to the England captain, Bobby Moore. Spain plans to send Queen Letizia and her 16-year-old daughter, the Infanta Sofía, to the final in Sydney.“When the Spanish team look up at the stands on Sunday morning, they will see their queen,” the columnist A.N. Wilson wrote scoldingly in The Daily Mail, a British tabloid. “When our brave Lionesses strain their eyes to see a British grandee,” he noted, “they will be forgiven for not recognizing anyone at all.”Even pubs may not be able to serve pints before kickoff, which is at 11 a.m. in Britain, because of restrictions on serving alcohol on Sunday mornings. The government rejected a theatrical call by the opposition Liberal Democrats to recall Parliament to pass legislation relaxing the rules. But a senior minister, Michael Gove, wrote to local councils to urge them to allow pubs to open an hour earlier than normal.Outside 10 Downing Street on Friday. The government has ruled out declaring a national holiday even if England wins the final.Susannah Ireland/ReutersFans, Mr. Gove said, should be able to “come together and enjoy a drink before kickoff for this special occasion,” adding, “the whole nation is ready to get behind the Lionesses this Sunday in what is England’s biggest game since 1966.”Strictly speaking, Mr. Gove has a point regarding the game’s significance. But the reality is more nuanced. The women already won the European title last year, which brought the first major soccer cup back to England since 1966.For the men, it is the losses, not the victories, that have defined the team’s narrative. In December, England was dismissed by France in a World Cup quarterfinal in Qatar. In July 2021, at the European final, it lost to Italy in a penalty shootout that left the crowd of 67,000 at Wembley Stadium in shock and despair.That heartbreak is captured in “Dear England,” as is another infamous missed penalty kick, by Gareth Southgate, an England player who is now the team’s coach, at a semifinal against Germany in 1996. The lingering shadow of those defeats is part of the lore of English football, which is balanced against the exuberant, diverse, and politically aware squad that Mr. Southgate has since assembled.England’s male players have forced Britain to confront fraught issues, kneeling before games to protest racial injustice, for example. After three young Black players missed penalty kicks in the 2021 defeat, they were subjected to racist slurs.The women’s team is less racially diverse than the men’s team, with only two Black players on the current roster. Professor Williams, the sports sociologist, said that representation reflected the development of women’s soccer in England as a suburban, middle-class sport, much as it is in the United States. But unlike the American women’s team — or, for that matter, the England men — the Lionesses have generally stayed out of the political fray.“None of the team are known for being politically outspoken,” Professor Williams said. “They don’t have the dimension that Megan Rapinoe brought to the U.S.A. team,” he added, referring to the star American winger who campaigns for gay and lesbian rights and has been vilified by some on the political right, much as some male England players have been criticized by right-wing figures in Britain for their political statements.England’s women are known mostly for their tight cohesion and relentless drive on the field. Their no-nonsense Dutch coach, Sarina Wiegman, is a former player who has already taken her home country’s team to a World Cup final, where it lost to the United States. She has no reluctance in running up the score against weaker opponents.England’s coach, Sarina Wiegman, center, before the start of the semifinal. A former player, she has already taken her home country’s team to the World Cup final, losing to the United States in 2019.Carl Recine/ReutersStill, merely by being women in a sport dominated globally by men, England’s players are part of a longer social story. The country’s Football Association barred women from professional soccer in 1921, in part out of a fear that the women’s game had become too popular during the suspension of men’s games because of World War I.The 1966 World Cup victory rekindled interest in women’s soccer, but the Football Association took over responsibility for the women’s game again only in the 1990s. Its profile has grown quickly in recent years as Premier League teams, particularly Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester City, have fielded elite women’s teams.Another storied club, Manchester United, reportedly wants to consult its female players — four of whom are members of the national team — in deciding whether to reinstate a star forward, Mason Greenwood, after charges of attempted rape and assault against him were dropped in February.To some sports commentators, that attempt to show gender sensitivity ended up as an ill-timed distraction for players prepping for a World Cup final.For all the advances in women’s soccer — whether increased television coverage or the improved quality of play — one difference is glaring: Men are paid more than women. Even England’s best players — the likes of the captain, Millie Bright; the striker Alessia Russo; or Lauren James, one of this tournament’s breakout stars — earn a small fraction in comparison with their male counterparts.Women’s games also tend to draw more families with children than men’s matches do, Professor Williams said, and the atmosphere can seem less tribal, aggressive and alcohol-fueled.“You’ve got some male fans who are saying, ‘It’s about time. The quality of women’s football is much better,’” he said. “But it’s clear there’s a rump of male supporters who say this is all a big waste of time. They say, ‘Watching football is a how we get away from women.’”Passing through Victoria Station in London on Friday, Lyndsey Jefford, 45, an elementary-school principal, said, “It’s made me really proud to see how well the women have done, though it still upsets me when people dismiss women’s football by saying the men play a different game.”Declan Bird, 24, who works in digital marketing, agreed that it did not much matter whether England’s men or women won the World Cup. And he pointed to a useful potential benefit of a women’s victory.“Hopefully,” he said, “it inspires the men’s team.”The midfielder Ella Toone scoring England’s opening goal in the 3-1 win over Australia on Wednesday.Jaimi Joy/ReutersNatasha Frost More

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    At Inter Miami, Lionel Messi’s Only Complaint Is the Humidity

    After taking the Leagues Cup tournament by storm, Messi, 36, had his first news conference since joining Inter Miami. It was clear he is now in a more relaxed stage of his career.The version of Lionel Messi who has become South Florida’s reigning sport king is not the playmaker in his prime that he was for Barcelona or the tortured captain-under-pressure that he was for Argentina. The Messi of Miami is, in his own words, happy. Very happy.Happy to have moved his family to a city where they used to vacation. Happy to greet legions of adoring fans. Happy to show his young new team, Inter Miami of M.L.S., how to win. Less happy, perhaps, to deal with South Florida’s crushing summer humidity.Those were Messi’s reflections in the first news conference of his career in the United States, a rite of passage for newly acquired star players that was supposed to take place when he arrived about a month ago. But Messi is not just any player. He is known to rarely speak to reporters. And the circuslike atmosphere that surrounded his first days in town was unlike anything M.L.S. had ever seen, even when David Beckham arrived in 2007.So Messi’s moment to meet the American press was delayed until now, after his team had won six straight games and he had scored nine goals for his new club. Inter Miami, which had the fewest points in M.L.S. regular-season play before it signed Messi, will now play the final of the new Leagues Cup tournament against Nashville S.C. on Saturday.“I think the team experienced a lot of growth,” the soft-spoken Messi said in Spanish, crediting the new coach, Gerardo Martino, the Argentine known as Tata who had coached Messi at Barcelona and on the Argentine national team, with helping the turnaround. (Two of his former Barcelona teammates, midfielder Sergio Busquets and defender Jordi Alba, have also joined him at Inter.)It was one of several understatements Messi delivered during a 20-minute news conference in which he took just 10 questions from a room packed with more than 70 reporters, a dozen television cameras and outlets from Argentina, Brazil and Spain. (“The best player in the history of world soccer just sat here!” one man exclaimed in Spanish to his viewers, pointing to a chair shortly after Messi left.)When a reporter asked about the ease with which Messi and Inter Miami have defeated their M.L.S. and Liga MX opponents in the tournament, hinting at the inferior level of competition he now faces compared with Europe, Messi spoke about “setting difficult goals” for Inter — and praised Liga MX and M.L.S. teams’ ability to compete.“The Mexican league is a very competitive league, where they have great, world-class players,” he said.Messi has scored nine goals in six games in the Leagues Cup tournament, including on Tuesday in a semifinal against the Philadelphia Union, one of the better teams in M.L.S. in recent years.Eric Hartline/Usa Today Sports Via Reuters ConIt was clear that Messi, 36, who led Argentina to its first World Cup championship in more than three decades last year, was in a more relaxed chapter of his career. Asked if he thought he might win the Ballon d’Or, the award given annually to the world’s best soccer player, for an eighth time, he said he was not considering it, especially “after having achieved the World Cup.”Messi did acknowledge that tearfully leaving Barcelona in 2021 for Paris St.-Germain was a rough transition. The move happened “practically overnight,” he said, making it difficult for him to get used to a new club and a city that was not a particularly good fit for his family.In contrast, his wife and three sons blessed coming to Miami, he said, characterizing it as a decision the family made together. Messi chose Miami over a reportedly more lucrative deal in Saudi Arabia, which is pursuing top talent, and over a potential return to Barcelona, which is in financial trouble.“It’s a city of many Latinos, and that makes everything easier,” he said. “All the time, they are showing you affection, closeness. That, already, is the most important thing, the healthiest thing, and the most beautiful thing to adjust and be able to enjoy what you do.”More than a hundred fans clad in Inter and Argentina jerseys waited outside the stadium to catch a glimpse of his departing car after the news conference, despite the rain.“One never completely adapts to this climate,” Messi had said moments earlier.James Wagner More

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    Australia Loved the Matildas. Will It Continue to Love Women’s Sports?

    Australian fans are mourning their team’s semifinal defeat at the Women’s World Cup. Beyond the ache, there are concerns about whether the support for women’s sports will last.The morning after Australia’s dream run at the Women’s World Cup ended one win short of the final, Denisse Lopez, 34, found a quiet spot to sit in Darling Harbour. She was still wearing the Sam Kerr jersey she had put on for Australia’s semifinal loss to England the night before. She carried a book and a croissant, a type of pastry she had denied herself, because of its origins, until her team had beaten France in the quarterfinals.Betrayed by her puffy eyes, Lopez admitted she had been crying. She had attended all of Australia’s matches in this World Cup, starting with their first group stage contest four weeks earlier, using airline miles to follow the Matildas up and down the country’s east coast. So strong was her belief in the team that she had secured tickets to the final but not the third-place match in Brisbane, where Australia will play Sweden on Saturday.“It just came out this morning,” Lopez, who lives in Melbourne, said of her tears. “The players started posting about the loss, and I was like, ‘Oh, I’m sad.’ Mostly, I feel flat and disappointed for the girls. But, you know, there’s one more game.”Hosting the tournament along with New Zealand, Australia was a cauldron of complex emotions after the hometown team fell shy of the outcome that many Australians did not know they wanted so badly until it came so close to happening. Disappointment was mixed with pride, but there was also some uncertainty about whether there would be the fan and institutional support needed to sustain Matildas fever beyond this quadrennial tournament being held on their home soil.This is a sports-mad country, but not necessarily a soccer-mad one. The Daily Telegraph, a local tabloid, cited a survey taken before the World Cup that said most Australians could not recognize any Matildas players besides Kerr, the team captain and star striker. Surely that is no longer the case, as breakout players like goalkeeper Mackenzie Arnold and forward Mary Fowler have become instantly recognizable through countless on-field close-ups. Thursday morning in Darling Harbour, fans approached Cortnee Vine, the substitute who scored the winning penalty kick in the quarterfinal, for a selfie as she appeared to be out for a walk with family members.Matildas fans cheered before Australia’s match against France in the quarterfinals.Dan Peled/ReutersBut Kerr’s plea, in the aftermath of a defeat that left her in tears, that her sport receive the kind of funding that is devoted to the Australian Football League or the National Rugby League was a reminder that there is no guarantee that this moment has permanence. Australia Coach Tony Gustavsson had referred to this as a “crossroads moment” for the country’s investment in women’s soccer to match that of some of its top opponents, such as England. Perhaps similarly recognizing the fragility of the bond between Australians and their Matildas, midfielder Katrina Gorry urged supporters not to jump off the bandwagon. And just 14 hours after more than 75,000 fans packed Stadium Australia in Sydney for the semifinal against England, the Matildas asked fans on social media not to forget that they still had one more match. Rana Hussain, a Melbourne-based inclusion and belonging specialist in sports, said the tension around what happens next contributed to her heartbreak as she lingered in the stadium after the final whistle on Wednesday night, not wanting the magic to be over. “It’s the fear that we go back to the old normal, especially after having a taste of what life feels like when we do fund and invest in women’s sport and what it does look like when the crowds turn up and to see that it’s possible,” she said in a phone interview. “We all kind of are holding our breath waiting to see, do we go back to business as usual? Or is this really the line in the sand that we’re all saying it is and hoping it is?”Hussain wrote on social networks that Australia would never look back after this run, which she admitted was as much to reassure herself as anything. She also encouraged fans to continue supporting Matildas players as they disperse to their club teams, sometimes in other countries, a common obstacle to sustained support after major international tournaments. The morning papers on Thursday predicted staying power. The lead headline of The Australian declared, “Dream Kerr-tailed but national love affair’s just begun.” The front page of The Telegraph asserted that despite the loss, “our girls in green and gold have changed the nation’s sporting landscape forever.”The semifinal broadcast reached 11.15 million Australians, more than 40 percent of the population, according to ratings figures released by OzTAM, Australia’s audience measurement source. The national average audience of more than seven million, which does not include viewers at pubs or other venues, made the game the most-watched television program since the measurement system began in 2001.Because women’s sports were born of exclusion, said Kasey Symons, a research fellow with the Sport Innovation Research Group at Swinburne University in Melbourne, they often generate a more welcoming and inclusive fan culture. She saw that happen during this World Cup, and said the passion of new fans contributed to the emotional hangover that she too was working through on Thursday morning.“I think a lot of people are trying to navigate some feelings they don’t really know too well,” Symons said in a phone interview. “There’s just this really overwhelming sense of validation that women in sport has value, and people have connected with that. So that’s a really emotional experience to see that and feel part of it, and that sense of belonging I think is a really important part of this.” The broadcast of Australia’s match against England on Wednesday drew more than 11 million viewers in Australia, not counting those who watched in bars or public gatherings like at Federation Square in Melbourne.Joel Carrett/Australian Associated Press, via Associated PressIn Darling Harbour, the FIFA fan festival was closed on Thursday, but Clare Roden, 46, a teacher who lives a two-hour drive down the coast, was asking a security guard for information about getting in on Saturday to watch the Matildas. She bought a ticket to the final last October, not thinking her team would be in it — but over the last week she started to believe it would happen. She still plans to go to the final between England and Spain, painful as it may be, but first needed to lock down her viewing plans for the third-place match.Lopez was hoping to make the trip up to Brisbane. After all, she had been at every other Matildas match this tournament.She is a newer fan who began watching soccer during the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, when pandemic-related restrictions in Melbourne kept her home. Australia’s win over Britain in the Olympic quarterfinals got her hooked, and as an immigrant from the Philippines, she felt connected to a game that is international. She began attending the Matildas’ friendly matches, some with crowds a fraction of what she saw during this tournament, and bought the FIFA 23 video game because Kerr was on the cover.Even after the agonizing defeat, Lopez found solace in rewatching the moment that had given the home crowd a final surge of hope: Kerr crossing the midfield line with the ball, gaining steam as she drove forward and then delivering a strike from over 25 yards out. Lopez posted a clip of that goal to Instagram with a caption to which most of Australia could relate: “Mentally we’re still here.” More

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    Kerr Scored. The Crowd Roared. But England Wasn’t Done.

    England advanced to its first World Cup final by leaning on the experience and the resilience of a champion.The entire continent of Australia had been waiting not so patiently for the moment that finally arrived in the 63rd minute of Wednesday night’s Women’s World Cup semifinal between Australia and England.Collecting the ball in her own half and crossing the midfield line, Sam Kerr was off. Head down, driving forward, she took a couple of quick dribbles, then a few more, then nudged the ball ahead of her right foot and fired. Her shot, struck hard and high from just outside the penalty area, soared past the reach of England goalkeeper Mary Earps.Kerr had wheeled away in celebration by then, even before the ball had settled into the net, and the home crowd inside Stadium Australia let out a deafening and sustained roar. Australia had pulled even with England, and for the first time in the match, it seemed as if the English might be on the ropes.THAT’S ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT 🤩GOLAZOOO SAM KERR 🇦🇺 pic.twitter.com/Gnts261nW2— FOX Soccer (@FOXSoccer) August 16, 2023
    Maybe a previous version of the team would have been. But this England team scored eight minutes later to pull back ahead, and then added a third goal in the 86th minute. It had, in less than half an hour, turned a tenuous moment into its most dominant finish of this tournament, a 3-1 victory over Australia that sent the Lionesses to their first World Cup final, where they will face Spain on Sunday.“We’ve got that in this team,” England defender Lucy Bronze said. “We’ve got resilience. We’ve got an inner belief that, I think, is bigger and better than we have ever had previously.”Bronze was part of the England squads that lost in the World Cup semifinals in 2015 and 2019, disappointments that she has admitted have lingered with her. Getting over that hump in this tournament was hardly a linear path, even after England won the European Championship last year on home soil.England arrived at the World Cup last month without three of its top players, all sidelined with knee injuries, and it has played its past two games without its initial breakout star here, midfielder Lauren James, who served a two-game suspension for stamping on a Nigerian player in the round of 16.Coach Sarina Wiegman also pointed out that her players have faced added attention since winning the Euros, which can bring new challenges and absolutely brings heightened expectations. On Wednesday, though, England looked all the better for that experience — a seasoned team that thrived, rather than crumbled, under pressure.Australia’s Mackenzie Arnold was beaten three times on Wednesday.Asanka Brendon Ratnayake/Reuters“I don’t think anything fazes us,” said midfielder Ella Toone, who scored England’s first goal, before halftime. “We’ve faced a lot of challenges this tournament that we’ve just got on with and got through.”Indeed, a theme of this tournament has been England’s finding a way to win, even as it has taken a while to find the dominant form many had expected. In their early matches, the Lionesses relied on strong defense and Earps’s steady goalkeeping as they struggled to score. Against Australia, though, it was their goals that silenced an expectant home crowd.Having the stadium backing the other team was nothing new, of course. Bronze referred back to England’s 2-1 quarterfinal win against Colombia, when the Lionesses fell into an early deficit in front of another crowd that also heavily favored their opponent. The visceral release inside the stadium after Kerr’s goal was at a different level. While those kinds of moments are expected from Kerr — even if she was not entirely healthy coming off her calf injury — defender Jess Carter said England’s back line was still disappointed to have allowed her goal, frustrated because they felt as if they should have handled it better.The next few minutes felt a little bit shaky, Wiegman admitted, as the replays of the goal on the stadium video screens wound up the fans again and the noise continued to reverberate. Kerr got another chance on a header, and then another. Earps appeared to signal to her teammates to settle down. The only way through, England knew, was to stick to the game plan, and hold its nerve.“I thought we did really well, but we have done that really well the whole tournament so far,” Wiegman said. “And then, of course, it didn’t take that long before we scored a second goal. And that helps.”Alessia Russo sensed her clinching goal was in even before it crossed the line.Mark Baker/Associated PressThat may be the quiet strength of these England players: They have won in different ways this tournament, changing their tactics to suit their opponents, adapting on the fly when those tactics aren’t working, holding teams off until someone, somehow, conjures a goal. But it was the way they responded to Kerr’s equalizer that demonstrated above all else why they will be playing in the World Cup final.Forward Lauren Hemp scored in the 71st minute, off a long and searching pass by Millie Bright, England’s captain. Fifteen minutes after that, Alessia Russo delivered the final blow: a low right-footed shot after a driving run up the center by Hemp.Just as Kerr had done, Russo wheeled away to start her celebration even before the ball had settled into the net. She knew, England knew, the job was done, and the final beckoned. On the bench, Wiegman finally let herself relax.“We are not,” she thought, “going to give this away anymore.” More

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    Lionel Messi and Inter Miami Advance to the Leagues Cup Final

    The goals keep coming, and a team that once looked poor keeps winning.After all the hubbub over Lionel Messi’s five goals in his first three games with Inter Miami, soccer fans relaxed a bit, knowing that the law of averages was bound to catch up to him.And it did, but only a little. In his next three games, Messi had four goals. He now has nine goals in six games. And Inter Miami, frankly poor before Messi showed up, has six straight wins in the Leagues Cup tournament and has advanced to the final.Let’s recap. Messi entered Game 1 against Cruz Azul of Mexico early in the second half. He scored deep into injury time to win the game, 2-1. He had two goals in a 4-0 win against Atlanta and two more in a 3-1 win over Orlando.It seemed like the good times might end in his first away game, at Dallas on Aug. 6. Messi opened the scoring with a shot from outside the box, but Miami trailed by 3-1 after an hour and by 4-2 with 10 minutes to play. But Messi curled in a free kick that was headed in for an own goal, then effortlessly spun another free kick over a leaping wall to tie the score. That took the game to penalties, and Messi duly scored the first of five perfect pens for Miami.Messi scored the final goal, a one-touch shot from close, in a 4-0 rout of Charlotte in the quarterfinals on Friday.In the semis in Philadelphia on Tuesday night, Messi scored an absurd goal from more than 35 yards out. He shot before anyone in the stands, or in the Philly defense, seemed to even consider the possibility that he would, or could. A despairing dive from keeper Andre Blake was far too late. That game ended in another rout, 4-1.That first small sample size of three games has become a slightly larger sample size of six games. And who can resist dividing nine by six and noting Messi’s 1.5 goal-per-game ratio? Surely such a high number is not sustainable? After all, last year’s leading scorer in M.L.S., Hany Mukhtar, averaged 0.7 goals a game, and even the amazing Erling Haaland had a 1.0 ratio in the Premier League last season.Yet Messi has defied logic before. With Barcelona in La Liga he averaged 1.35 goals a game in 2011-12 and 1.44 in 2012-13. A decade later he is exceeding those marks.Messi is getting the headlines. But which is the more remarkable headline: “All-Time Great Player Plays Well”? Or “Bad Team Suddenly Starts Winning”? It looked extremely unlikely that Miami would win six games in a row before Messi’s arrival, as its 5-14-3 league record attested. It has scored 21 goals in the Leagues Cup and surrendered seven. That plus-14 goal difference would be second best in the M.L.S. table, where the teams have played more than 20 games each.Inter has also added two former Messi teammates at Barcelona, midfielder Sergio Busquets and defender Jordi Alba, who has a goal and two assists so far. Robert Taylor, a Finnish wingback, seems invigorated by Messi’s arrival and has four goals and three assists in the Leagues Cup. But make no mistake, this is Messi’s story.Inter Miami plays Nashville, and its attacking star Mukhtar, on Saturday night. Miami is favored. But those are not the most surprising odds currently being offered.Win or lose Saturday, Messi and Miami return to the M.L.S. regular season on Aug. 26. Using any normal logic, they are dead and buried. They are last in the Eastern Conference, 12 points and six places out of the final playoff spot with 12 games to play. And even if they rally, the M.L.S. playoffs are difficult to win. Teams sneaking in the bottom two spots must win five rounds, four of them single elimination games.Surely even Messi couldn’t pull off that kind of parlay? Or could he? Oddsmakers currently have Miami as the third favorite to win M.L.S. at just 7-1. More

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    The Matildas and the World Cup Crack Australia’s Code Wars

    The World Cup has added a new dimension to a national sporting conversation often dominated by the rivalry between rugby and Australian rules football.Inside the vast sweep of the Melbourne Cricket Ground, almost nobody was paying attention to what was happening on the field. Those fans who remained in their seats were staring up at the big screens, absorbed by a game a thousand miles away. Many had given up the pretense entirely: They were on the concourse, gathered around any television they could find.The match they had come to watch at the M.C.G. was a significant one. Only a couple of games remained in the regular season of the Australian Football League, and the two teams in attendance, Carlton and Melbourne, were jockeying for position in the playoffs. The stakes were high enough to draw a crowd of almost 70,000 fans.For much of the first quarter, though, the spectators’ eyes and minds were elsewhere: In Brisbane, to be exact, where Australia’s World Cup quarterfinal with France had gone to a penalty kick shootout. The live sporting event playing out in front of them could not compete with the appeal of the Matildas. At this point, very little can.Over the course of the last three weeks, Australia has fallen — and fallen hard — for its women’s soccer team. The whole country seems to be decked out in green and gold. Images of Matildas players beam out from billboards and television screens and the front pages of every newspaper.One paper, The Courier-Mail of Brisbane, was briefly rebranded as The Kerr-ier Mail, in honor of Sam Kerr, Australia’s captain. Anthony Albanese, the prime minister, has expressed support for a national holiday if the team wins the World Cup.“We went out on a team walk in Brisbane before the France game,” defender Clare Hunt said. “And I had a moment where I thought: ‘Oh my God, this is actually happening.’ We were swarmed by the public, and they were chanting for us. We are a little separate from it, but when you’re in packed stadiums, when you see people on the streets, see people investing in women’s soccer, you realize what’s happening.”The Matildas’ games have consistently shattered records for television viewing figures. Their crucial group stage victory against Canada attracted an audience of 4.7 million people, making it the most-watched program of the year on the national Seven Network.The Australia team applauded fans after its quarterfinal win against France on Saturday.Dan Peled/ReutersTheir next game, against Denmark in the round of 16, was watched by a total of about 6.5 million people. It was the biggest television event of the year, on any network, for roughly four days: until the peak audience for Australia-France in the quarterfinals stretched beyond seven million.That figure does not include those who streamed it online or the vast crowds that gathered in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth to watch it en masse. By most estimates, it was the nation’s highest-rated sports event in a decade. The team’s semifinal match with England on Wednesday was cumulatively expected to surpass the 8.8 million who watched Cathy Freeman win gold in the 400 meters at the Sydney Olympics in 2000.The best gauge of how deep the Matildas’ impact runs, though, is in the reaction from Australia’s other major sports. For years, soccer, men’s or women’s, has struggled to compete for both attention and revenue in what is an unusually rich sporting ecosystem, fading in comparison not only to cricket, the national summer game, but to a panoply of winter sports, all of which are known, a little unhelpfully, as “footy.”“For a long time, the country was divided along the Barassi Line,” said Hunter Fujak, a lecturer in sports management at Deakin University. The line, named in tribute to the famed former player, coach and commentator Ron Barassi, is an imaginary, but potent, fissure. It runs from northwest to southeast, splitting Australia’s population, if not its geography, roughly in half.To the west of the line (Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth, Darwin, Tasmania) lies Australian rules football country. East of it (Sydney, Brisbane, Canberra) is rugby territory. The latter comes in two forms: rugby union, comprising teams of 15 players and broadly considered middle class; and rugby league, the more popular and more blue collar version played with teams of 13.Traditionally, relations between those various sports — the so-called football codes — are frosty. They have tended to hover, in fact, somewhere between resolutely competitive and downright hostile, a phenomenon known in Australia as the code wars. The battle is a prominent enough feature of the country’s cultural landscape for Fujak to have used it as the title of a book on the subject.“All of the codes have historically been resistant to each other’s success,” Fujak said. In part, the motivation is just business: Australia may be an immense country, but its population is relatively small.Members of the Freemantle Dockers watching the Women’s World Cup match between Australia and France on the stadium screens before their game in Perth.Paul Kane/Getty ImagesThe A.F.L. and the N.R.L. — the national rugby league tournament — are competing for the same limited number of eyeballs, broadcast deals, commercial revenue and governmental subsidy. The working assumption has always been that one’s rise must come at the expense of the other. “There are only so many people to go around,” Fujak said. “You would expect that of Coke and Pepsi, so why would the sports leagues be any different?”The enmity is so keenly felt, though, because it runs significantly deeper than mere mercantile instinct. “There’s a very strong rivalry at the cultural level,” Fujak said. “At a fan level, the sport you follow is inseparable from identity. For Victorians, being an A.F.L. fan is part of who you are, where you’re from.”In that power struggle, soccer has long been little more than collateral damage. If the A.F.L. and N.R.L. have cast themselves as not just authentically Australian but as a central pillar of a localized identity, soccer has been projected as an often unwelcome import.Though it has always been popular as a participatory sport, the game — as one notorious, offensive mantra put it — was long cast as a lesser form, simultaneously effeminate, foreign and homosexual. Craig Foster, a former Australia player and now a human-rights activist, recently told the BBC that the A.F.L., in particular, has been “antagonistic” toward soccer.That animosity has manifested in both the practical — refusing soccer teams access to its facilities, declining to allow its stadiums to be used as part of Australia’s doomed bid to host the 2022 men’s World Cup — and the petty.It was noted, for example, that the A.F.L. chose to release its schedule for this season at almost the exact minute Australia’s men’s team kicked off against Argentina in the men’s World Cup last year. The A.F.L. has always maintained it was just a quirk of timing.In the weeks leading up to the Women’s World Cup, it appeared little had changed. Though several rugby league stadiums were slated to host matches, the A.F.L. had not been willing to surrender its largest arenas, the M.C.G. and the Sydney Cricket Ground, two of Australia’s best-known venues.That posture, Fujak said, was not unreasonable: FIFA’s rules would have required the A.F.L. to vacate its two major arenas for two months at the very height of the season. “The demands were too onerous,” he said. Still, it did not exactly suggest that Australia’s other sports were about to show the Women’s World Cup, or the Matildas, much hospitality.Australia during the quarterfinals.Asanka Brendon Ratnayake/ReutersOver the last few weeks, that concern has been proved demonstrably false. “This is without doubt one of the most exciting times to be an Australian sports fan in the country’s history,” said Andrew Abdo, the N.R.L.’s chief executive. “The Matildas’ performances in the World Cup have made a monumental contribution to the rise of women’s sport in Australia.”In deeds, as much as in words, the A.F.L. has been no less effusive. It has moved kickoff times to accommodate Matildas games. On Saturday, it broadcast the France quarterfinal before, during and after games in Melbourne and Sydney.Matthew Nicks, the head coach of the Adelaide Crows, admitted he would rather “be watching the Matildas” than guiding his team in a game against the Brisbane Lions. He and his counterpart, Chris Fagan, were filmed watching the penalty shootout on a phone when they were supposed to be conducting their postgame media duties.Both codes of football, the commentator George Megalogenis wrote in The Brisbane Times, have been “dreading the moment that soccer holds the nation’s attention, and now that moment is here.” So compelling has the Matildas’ journey been, though, that they have melted away every last vestige of resistance.Foster, the former men’s player, believes that has been rooted more in pragmatism than a fundamental, lasting shift in the way the codes regard each other. The A.F.L. agreed to show the France game in its stadiums because “it was worried nobody would turn up” for the fixtures otherwise, he said.Fujak, too, suggested that willfully ignoring the tournament would have made the A.F.L. look “sulky and negative” at a moment of uplifting national unity. “It’s the most strategically astute sports league in the country,” he said. “It might be cynical, but I think they saw it as the lesser of two evils.”He wondered if the A.F.L. had made something of a calculation. “They’ve always played the long game,” he said. “Soccer has moments of success but, come the end of the tournament, it fades away again.”The risk, this time, is that the effect will be more lasting, that this tournament has on some level reshaped Australia’s entrenched sporting landscape. The code wars may rumble on, in some form, but the Matildas, at least, have risen above them. They have become, in three short weeks, a core part of the country’s identity. More

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    For Sweden, the Right Way to Play Is the One That Wins

    The World Cup semifinal between Spain and Sweden will be a battle of styles, of passing versus pragmatism. Opponents discount the latter at their peril.Peter Gerhardsson’s plans for Monday evening sounded blissful. He had set some time aside for a swim. He would have a bite to eat, and then retire to his room at Auckland’s palatial Cordis Hotel to listen to some music.He also wanted to make further inroads into “Resonance,” the German sociologist Hartmut Rosa’s examination of how we interact with the world. Gerhardsson is enjoying it enormously; his readiness to discuss it makes that abundantly clear. He figured he could fit all of that in and still be in bed by 9 p.m. He does have a World Cup semifinal to coach on Tuesday, after all.Should that last prospect have been causing Gerhardsson, the manager of Sweden’s women’s soccer team, any sort of stress or strain as he addressed the news media a day before his team plays Spain at Eden Park, he hid it extremely well.He has, after all, been here before: This is his fourth major tournament in charge of his homeland, and it is the fourth time he has made the semifinals. Sweden finished third in the 2019 World Cup, won the silver medal in the 2020 Olympics, and then reached the last four at last summer’s European Championship. By this stage, it is familiar ground.He was relaxed enough, then, not only to discuss his reading material but the philosophical imprint of Johan Cruyff; the art of scrapbooking; and his longstanding — if, being completely honest, slightly dwindling — tradition of calling his mother before games to solicit her advice. (He does not do it quite so often now, he said, because he is “old enough to make my own decisions.” Gerhardsson is 63.)Sweden Coach Peter Gerhardsson bristles at criticism that his team’s mix of set pieces and defense isn’t aesthetically pleasing. “It is good football for me.”Hannah Mckay/ReutersOnly once did he betray even the merest hint of irritation: at the lingering perception that Sweden’s progress to the semifinals past both the United States, the reigning champion, and a widely admired Japan side has come in a fashion that might not be described as aesthetically pleasing.Sweden’s leading goal scorer, for example, is Amanda Ilestedt, a central defender who would not have been regarded before the tournament as an obvious contender to win the World Cup’s Golden Ball. “Nobody was expecting her to do that,” her teammate Fridolina Rolfo said.Ilestedt, though, has now plundered four goals — a tally bettered in the tournament only by Japan’s Hinata Miyazawa — all from set pieces, either at the first or second remove. She has proved particularly adept at emerging victorious when the ball is ricocheting around the penalty area in the aftermath of a corner or free kick. Or, in Gerhardsson’s rather more poetic rendering, “picking up the fruit when it has fallen from the tree.”That, in part, illustrates why Sweden has proved such a magnet for euphemism. Gerhardsson’s team has variously but consistently been described throughout this tournament as “direct,” or “effective,” or “physical.” Jorge Vilda, the Spanish coach, added “strong” to that list.All of these words mean the same thing: Sweden is a set-piece team, a long-ball team, a percentages team. The allegation is unspoken, but it is loud, and it is clear: Sweden might be winning, but it is doing it in a manner that is — on some moral or spiritual or philosophical level — wrong.Somewhere beneath his placid surface, that suggestion clearly irks Gerhardsson. “One of our strengths is set pieces,” he said Monday. “Both in the offense and in the defense.” He became just a little more animated. “It is not just a strength: We have players who are very technically skilled at it. We practice a lot.”It is not all they are, he said, noting, “It is just one way for us to win games.” But even if it was, would that really be such a problem? Gerhardsson wanted to make this point very clearly: Set pieces, he said, “are part of the game.”They are, of course. His logic is impeccable. His job, and that of his players, is to win soccer matches. It is not to win in any particular style. No one type of play that achieves that goal is more virtuous than any other. Besides, aesthetics are subjective: Gerhardsson, for what it is worth, likes Sweden’s mixture of high pressure and dogged, intense marking. “It is good football for me,” he said.Sweden has eliminated two former champions, the United States and Japan, and stands two wins from its first Women’s World Cup title.Scott Barbour/Associated PressThe faint disregard for Sweden, instead, says more about soccer’s fashions than it does about the inherent worth of the team. Unlike its opponent on Tuesday, Spain, Sweden does not claim to espouse or symbolize any particular philosophy. It is concerned less with how the game as a whole should be played and more with how any individual match might be won.If it has an identity, indeed, it is a reactive one. “We are very good at adapting,” the midfielder and captain Kosovare Asllani said. “We have a very good team around the team. They do a lot of work for us to prepare the tactics to face any team in the tournament. We have different ways to face different games. They allow us to be fully prepared for anyone.”That flexibility meant the Swedes could not be physically intimidated by the United States and could not be undone by Japan’s slick, inventive counterpunches. They might have required a penalty shootout, settled only by the narrowest margin imaginable, to overcome the U.S., but against Japan they were in a position to grind their opponent down. Ilestedt opened the scoring from a corner. Filippa Angeldal settled the game with a penalty.It was put to Gerhardsson that Spain might best be thought of as a combination of those two opponents: just as strong, just as imposing as the U.S., but no less technically gifted than Japan. He agreed. Spain is a wonderful team, he said. He has always been a Cruyffian at heart, an admirer of the intricate, technical soccer that Spain has come to represent.He did not sound intimidated. He did not sound troubled at all, in fact. The thrust of the book by Rosa on his night table, as Gerhardsson explains it, is that we — as humans — are not good at accepting that we do not know what is going to happen. To him, that has always been the beauty of soccer: It is unpredictable.An unheralded Sweden team might get past the United States and Japan. It might run into Spain, long hailed as women’s soccer’s coming force, and be expected to be swept aside by its sheer philosophical purity. Or it might turn out differently. “Maybe they are the perfect opponents for us,” Gerhardsson said of Spain. He does not know. He is OK with that. He is, in fact, entirely relaxed about it. More