Raphael Stevens

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    Weston McKennie Is Right Where He Belongs at Juventus

    Credit…Marco Canoniero/LightRocket, via Getty ImagesWeston McKennie Is Right Where He BelongsWhat is most surprising about the American’s path to Juventus is not how far he has come, but how effortless he has made the journey look.Credit…Marco Canoniero/LightRocket, via Getty ImagesSupported byContinue reading the main storyMarch 8, 2021, 10:30 a.m. ETAs he sat down for lunch, Weston McKennie slipped his cellphone out of his pocket and onto the chair in front of him, hiding it beneath his legs. He was breaking the rules — he and his Schalke teammates were strictly forbidden from taking their phones into the cafeteria — but he was prepared to take the risk. There are some calls you do not want to miss.McKennie found himself glancing down every few seconds, checking his screen as surreptitiously as he could. Midway through his meal, it arrived. His screen lit up and his chair buzzed. McKennie grabbed his phone, stood and walked out of the room. “I was just like: ‘Sorry, I’ve got to take this,’” he said. You do not, after all, keep Andrea Pirlo waiting.The last few months have been full of moments like that for McKennie, instances in which the surreal somehow feels quotidian. His career, and his prospects, have undergone the sort of whirlwind transformation that can be difficult to process: the rise is so dizzyingly rapid and the curve so precipitously steep that after a while, the scale and speed of the journey as a whole is difficult to gauge.Signed to help Juventus in midfield, McKennie has instead become a ball-winning, goal-scoring fixture alongside stars like Cristiano Ronaldo.Credit…Miguel Medina/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIt is only in fleeting vignettes — little scenes from his last six months — that McKennie can catch a reflection of his new reality. Last summer, he was a 22-year-old midfielder from Little Elm, Texas, who had been a rare ray of sunlight in the otherwise stormy sky looming over Schalke, the troubled Bundesliga team where he had spent all of his professional career.His most recent season had been conflicted. Personally, McKennie had found it satisfying: He had made 28 Bundesliga appearances in a campaign interrupted by the pandemic, and had established himself as a mainstay of the United States national team. Collectively, it had been difficult. Schalke had collapsed in the second half of the season. It did not win a single league game between January and the summer.Even in that context, his performances had been good enough to catch the attention of the likes of Southampton and Newcastle, steady performers from the middle reaches of the Premier League. He was one of the few assets Schalke possessed that it could sell. He most likely knew the club needed money. He most definitely knew that cash was scarce in a pandemic-afflicted market.But then his agent mentioned that another team had inquired about his services. “It didn’t seem super-realistic,” McKennie said. “So I kind of brushed it off.” A couple of weeks later, though, the same suitor returned, the interest more concrete this time. “We have to make it happen,” McKennie instructed his agent, as he prepared to join Schalke’s preseason training camp. He was told to expect a call from Juventus, the grand old lady of Italian soccer, coached by Pirlo and home of Cristiano Ronaldo. Precisely, in other words, the sort of call you do not want to miss.McKennie made a name for himself in Europe at Schalke in the Bundesliga. But when the club fell on hard times financially, it cashed in on McKennie by loaning him to Juventus.Credit…Patrik Stollarz/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe conversation went well. Pirlo outlined why he wanted McKennie: There would be lots of games this season, plenty of chances for an energetic, dynamic, ball-hungry player to shine. McKennie did not need a hard sell. “It was more a case of me selling myself to him,” he said. “If that’s what he wanted, then that’s what I’d do.”And so McKennie finds himself where he is now: still a 22-year-old from Little Elm, Texas, but one that has made such an impression in the midfield of the biggest club in Italy — one not battling relegation but competing to win Serie A and the Champions League — that last week it exercised its option to turn his initial one-season loan into a permanent deal, paying $21.5 million for the privilege.It is the final seal of “approval” of his coach, Pirlo, who just so happens to be one of the finest exponents of the midfield art in recent history. “A legend,” McKennie calls him.Sometimes, he said, he overhears one of his teammates expressing disbelief at finding themselves playing in such rarefied air, competing with the heroes of their childhood. “They can’t believe how far they’ve come, that they’re playing in the Champions League,” he said. “And I think that, when I was a kid, I had never even heard of the Champions League.” McKennie is not fulfilling his dreams: Somehow, it is bigger than that, as if he is stretching the bounds of reality.McKennie has appeared in 22 of Juventus’s 25 games in Serie A, and six of seven in the Champions League.Credit…Massimo Pinca/ReutersIt is in those little moments that he can glimpse it. Sometimes, it is something grand that triggers it. When he was younger, he and his family, then living in Germany, where his father’s Air Force career had taken them, went to Camp Nou while on vacation. They explored a lot, he said, during the years they lived near Kaiserslautern, where they moved when McKennie was 6.“The stadium was closed that day,” he remembered. “But we persuaded the security guard to let us in. The team was training: all of those players, Xavi and Andrés Iniesta and Lionel Messi and Ronaldinho.” They stood and watched for a while. When a loose ball flew into the stands, McKennie scurried down to retrieve it and throw it back. That was their cue to leave.He had not been back to Barcelona until December. “It was strange that it was empty, just the players on the field, when I first went, and it was empty again now,” he said. This time, McKennie did not have to plead with security to let him in. He belonged not only in the stadium, but on the field. He scored that night.Sometimes, though, the realizations come in more intimate, more private settings. Those are the ones that catch McKennie by surprise. “I was sitting with Alvaro Morata after training the other day,” he said. “We were just watching Cristiano practicing his free kicks. And we turned to each other and said what a privilege it is, just to be able to do that: to watch him take free kick after free kick.”But while McKennie feels fortunate to find himself where he is, that should not be mistaken for luck. He is no mere tourist at Juventus, passing through, savoring these snapshots of life in the elite, an American on some sort of year abroad in Serie A.The perception, when he joined, was that he was destined to be an option of first reserve: that he would spend much of his time riding the bench, and when he was not, he would be a “hard six,” there to win the ball back and give it to someone with, well, more talent.Juventus made its acquisition of McKennie permanent last week. He may be there a while.Credit…Marco Alpozzi/LaPresse, via Associated PressIn reality, even McKennie is a little “surprised” at how important he has become. He has appeared in 22 of Juventus’s 25 games in Serie A, and six of its seven — so far — in the Champions League. He has emerged, too, as a creative, offensive force: He has scored at Camp Nou, in that rout of Barcelona, and at San Siro, in a win against A.C. Milan. He is comfortable enough in his surroundings to joke that Ronaldo, Aaron Ramsey and Dejan Kulusevski take turns acting as his translator (though his Italian is now good enough, he said, to understand most of what is going on.)At first, he said, he worried about living up to expectations, wondering “why they chose me.” It has taken only a few months for those anxieties to dissipate entirely, quietly shed as his rise gathered speed and height, as McKennie has proved that he belongs.That is what makes his transformation difficult to parse: that it has felt so smooth, so natural, that the line between remarkable and quotidian has blurred quite so readily, that it seems so obvious now not only why McKennie picked up, but why Pirlo called in the first place.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    F.C. Barcelona Elects Joan Laporta as President

    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyBarcelona Elects a President, and Hands Him a CrisisJoan Laporta won easily in a vote of Barcelona’s membership. But the new president will face thorny issues on and off the field almost immediately.Joan Laporta’s previous term as Barcelona’s president set the stage for a dominant era on the field for the club.Credit…Alejandro Garcia/EPA, via ShutterstockMarch 7, 2021Updated 6:10 p.m. ETSix days after a police raid on its offices led to the seizure of files and the arrests of four club officials, F.C. Barcelona elected Joan Laporta as its new president on Sunday.Laporta, a lawyer who previously served as Barcelona’s president more than a decade ago, defeated two rivals in what he labeled “the most important elections in the history” of Barcelona, one of Europe’s most decorated soccer clubs.He received more than 50 percent of the vote, defeating his closest rival, 54.2 percent to 29.9 percent. In video broadcast on the club’s television network, the two challengers, the runner-up Victor Font and Toni Freixa, congratulated Laporta in a show of unity, and Laporta enjoyed a champagne toast with his supporters. But Laporta’s reward — a billion-dollar organization facing tough decisions about some of its most popular players and a looming financial crisis made worse by the coronavirus pandemic — hardly seems like a prize.The most immediate challenges he faces are navigating the biggest debt crisis in European soccer, currently more than $1.3 billion; lowering the team’s salary bill, at the moment the highest in Europe; and avoiding the loss — perhaps as soon as this summer — of Lionel Messi, the club’s greatest player.Perhaps an even more important task, however, will be uniting a club once revered for elevating modern soccer into high art out of an era of infighting, dirty tricks and red ink. The series of unfolding crises have turned Barcelona from a model of commercial and sporting success into, at times, the punchline of a bad joke.Laporta’s predecessor, Josep Maria Bartomeu, resigned in October, just ahead of a vote to remove him. By then, more than 20,000 of Barcelona’s 140,000 members had turned in hand-signed forms seeking his ouster, and last week he was detained by the police as part of its investigation of the team’s internal affairs.But on Sunday, Bartomeu still lined up — along with everyday fans, team executives, former players and coaches, and even a handful of members of the current first team, including Messi — to cast his presidential vote. Even amid the team’s turmoil, the turnout represented the kind of quaint, one-fan-one-vote ethos on which Barcelona prides itself.The Barcelona star Lionel Messi was among the tens of thousands of club members who voted in Sunday’s election.Credit…Lluis Gene/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe election had been delayed by the ongoing repercussions of the pandemic. Restrictions on mass gatherings required Barcelona to change its voting process by spreading polling stations across Catalonia, and by allowing mail-in ballots for the first time in its history. But thousands of the club’s members still turned up in person to cast their votes during the 12 hours allotted for the balloting on Sunday.The club said more than 55,000 votes were cast by members who chose not only a new president but also board members who will serve until 2026. Even before the final ballots were counted, Font and Freixa conceded.“I want to congratulate Laporta for this victory, which does not allow for any discussion,” Freixa said. “We must now support our president.”Toni Freixa said the vote totals “legitimized” Laporta’s victory.Credit…Lluis Gene/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesVictor Font with a fan after he arrived to cast his vote at Camp Nou.Credit…Andreu Dalmau/EPA, via ShutterstockIn picking Laporta, Barcelona members appeared to have opted for a candidate who many remember fondly from his previous term. As Barcelona’s president from 2003 to 2010, he ushered in the start of a golden decade of success for the century-old club.His signature decision, elevating the untested Pep Guardiola from his role as coach of Barcelona’s B team to take charge of the first-team squad in 2008, proved to be a masterstroke. Guardiola rebuilt Barcelona around homegrown talents, including Messi, and combined them with established stars to produce a brand of soccer that captivated audiences around the world. The club collected more than a dozen trophies under Guardiola, including three Spanish titles and two victories in the Champions League, European’s soccer richest and most prized club competition.With the current team viewed as aging and below the club’s standard, Laporta will be expected to guide a similar revival. But this time, the outlook is bleaker than ever.More recently, Barcelona has become synonymous with negativity, with the bad news arriving in waves. Since June, the team has had to contend with the outsized impact the coronavirus has had on its finances; a scandal involving a club-financed social-media campaign that targeted Bartomeu’s rivals, including several popular players; a humiliating Champions League exit; a public falling out between Messi and Bartomeu that almost led to Messi’s departure before the season; and then, most recently, last week’s raid on Barcelona’s offices that resulted in the arrests of four team officials.Barcelona had to adapt its voting procedures because of the coronavirus, but many members still turned up at the club’s Camp Nou stadium to cast their ballots in person.Credit…Albert Gea/ReutersWith Barcelona facing the most urgent short-term debt crisis in European soccer, the new president immediately faces the twin challenges of keeping the club afloat while also following through on promises to keep it competitive with not only domestic rivals like Real Madrid and Atlético Madrid but also deep-pocketed foreign challengers like Manchester City, Paris St.-Germain, Liverpool, Chelsea and Manchester United, many of them bankrolled by Gulf nation states, Russian oligarchs or American billionaires.As a member-supported club, Barcelona does not have that luxury. Laporta will have to decide whether or not to forge ahead with a plan put together by the club’s executive team and Goldman Sachs to raise 250 million euros (almost $300 million) by selling a basket of club-owned assets to external investors. The move would be unusual and likely contentious — and it would require the backing of a membership fractured by the recent crisis.The new board also will need to recalibrate supporter expectations, and reverse course from a management style — including by Laporta during his previous tenure — that has drawn criticism for prioritizing short-term rewards, in the form of lavish spending and popular (and expensive) signings, over long-term financial stability.He will also have to restore the club’s battered reputation. At a sports business conference hosted by the Financial Times last month, Christian Seifert, the chief executive of Germany’s Bundesliga, took aim at Barcelona and its rival Real Madrid for their spending habits. “These so-called superclubs are in fact poorly managed, cash-burning machines that were not able, in a decade of incredible growth, to come close to a somehow sustainable business model,” Seifert said.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    Manchester United Stops Manchester City but Not Its Destiny

    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyOn SoccerManchester United Slows City’s March, but Only for a DayA rivalry victory may only prove a speed bump in the Premier League title. But European rivals will see hope in a blow to City’s rhythm.Manchester United’s celebrations started early on Sunday. City’s, presumably, are still to come.Credit…Pool photo by Peter PowellMarch 7, 2021Updated 3:28 p.m. ETMANCHESTER, England — Manchester United will recognize this feeling, the evanescent satisfaction of a battle won far too late in the day to have any hope of turning the tide of the war, the curious and complex pride that comes from celebrating a victory that highlights only how far you have fallen.It is only three years, after all, since United experienced pretty much the same thing, in pretty much the same place, if not quite in the same circumstances. Manchester City was supposed to claim the Premier League title that afternoon — the first of Pep Guardiola’s reign — at home against its rival, neighbor and longtime persecutor in the spring of 2018.The Etihad Stadium was packed and boisterous, relishing the prospect of the perfect scenario for clinching the championship, with United invited to play the part first of sacrificial victim, and then unwilling observer. What better way, after all, could there be to illustrate the power shift in Manchester, in England, and in Europe, than for City to win the league as United was forced to watch?United, that day, proved recalcitrant guests. Guardiola’s team raced into a two-goal lead, and then hesitated, a brief flash of the old City, the one practiced in the art of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, bubbling up to infect the new. United took advantage, surged back and won.It was clear and obvious at the time that this was a mere postponement of City’s celebrations — even José Mourinho, the United manager, congratulated Guardiola on his looming title win after the game — rather than a threatened cancellation. All concerned knew that City would be proclaimed champion, with ease, sooner rather than later. But for United, victory was a tonic, a solace, a shot across the bow, something to hold on to in the long night of the blue moon.Sunday was not quite a carbon copy. The details were a little different, for a start. It is much earlier in the season, for one, and City remains some way from having the championship mathematically sealed. The Etihad did not need to be silenced: Like every other stadium across Europe, it has been quiet for a year now, the noise and emotion of the fans an increasingly distant and sorrowful memory.United grabbed an early lead and then its best to keep Kevin de Bruyne and his teammates off balance.Credit…Pool photo by Laurence GriffithsThe effect, though, was much the same. United won a penalty inside 38 seconds, Bruno Fernandes converted it within two minutes, and then Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s team set about holding City at arm’s length. Early in the second half, Luke Shaw doubled United’s lead. Anthony Martial might have made it three, but the damage was done. For the day, at least.The extent of the damage will not, in all likelihood, extend beyond that. The 21-game winning run that preceded this result, City’s first defeat since November, makes the Premier League title a foregone conclusion. Guardiola’s team still holds an 11-point lead at the top of the table, with 10 games to play.This loss would need to presage a collapse that is all but unimaginable to prevent Guardiola’s claiming a third championship in four years. United can, once again, claim parochial primacy, but it is not enough to change the map of English soccer’s broader landscape.A few days earlier, United had been flat and uninspired — and a little fortunate — to take a goalless draw at Crystal Palace. Solskjaer’s players had won only twice in the Premier League since January, their stuttering form masked by the stuttering form of, well, everyone else, and in particular the apparently bottomless incompetence of Liverpool. This is not likely to be a corner turned. For United, victory in the derby was a welcome outcome, but nothing more, not really.Bruno Fernandes staked United to its lead with a second-minute penalty kick, but his team still trails City by 11 points with 10 games to go.Credit…Pool photo by Laurence GriffithsBut that does not mean this was a game devoid of significance. For City, certainly, it would be worth pausing to reflect not only on the fact of defeat, but the nature of it. Its loss in this fixture in 2018 was sandwiched by two losses to Liverpool in the Champions League, one comprehensive, one narrow and unfortunate, but both enough to end the club’s hopes of winning its first European crown.With the league title all but in hand now, that is where Guardiola’s focus will shift in the coming weeks. There are two domestic cups to be won, too, but it is that Champions League trophy that Guardiola — and much of City’s hierarchy — craves more than any other, that trophy which they believe will complete the club’s transformation into true European aristocracy.It has been hard, over the last couple of months, to see who might realistically stop City. Real Madrid and Barcelona are shadows of what they once were. Atlético Madrid is tiring, fast. The reigning champion, Bayern Munich, has developed a curious habit of giving almost all of its opponents a two-goal head start. Paris St.-Germain is undermined by inconsistency. No club has been quite so imperious this season as City; it is hardly bold to claim that this is, currently, and defeat notwithstanding, the best team in Europe.All of those teams, then, will have welcomed United’s victory as proof that City is not invincible. They will have seen glimpses that, for all the resources that Guardiola has access to and for all that he has managed them expertly through this compact, condensed campaign, City’s players are not immune to fatigue. Kevin de Bruyne, in particular, seemed unable to influence this game as he would have wished.Raheem Sterling and City will try their rhythm back on Wednesday against Southampton.Credit…Pool photo by Peter PowellRivals will have taken heart from the first 20 minutes or so, when City repeatedly played its way into trouble, unable to find its rhythm, or to piece together United’s plan. And, most of all, they will have noted how Solskjaer — an underrated tactician in games of this ilk — neutralized João Cancelo, the fullback who becomes a midfield playmaker and, in doing so, makes this iteration of City tick.Solskjaer’s antidote was a simple but nerveless one. He instructed Marcus Rashford to play high and wide on United’s left, forcing Cancelo into a choice: either come into midfield and leave space to exploit, or stay in his lane, and defang his own team’s attack. He chose both, and neither: It was no surprise that both of United’s goals originated on his side.Cancelo has been one of City’s great strengths this season. His role has been the innovation that has re-energized Guardiola’s system. On Sunday at the Etihad, Solskjaer turned him into what City has seemed to lack for weeks and for months: a weakness. It will make not the slightest difference to the destiny of the Premier League title race, of course. Most teams will lack the personnel or the inclination to be able to repeat the trick.But for those sides across Europe who stand in the way of Manchester City and a clean sweep of all four trophies, it will be something more than a solace, more than a tonic. For Guardiola, and for City, it is a reminder and a warning, that so high are their sights that one battle lost can cost the entire war.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    Perfection, Art and Pep Guardiola's Manchester City

    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyRory Smith On SoccerPerfection, Art and Manchester CityPep Guardiola’s team has won 15 straight Premier League games and hasn’t lost to anyone since November. But can clinical still qualify as cool?Pep Guardiola has rebuilt Manchester City into a team that meets even his high standards.Credit…Jason Cairnduff/Action Images, via ReutersMarch 5, 2021, 10:15 a.m. ETThe Equitable Building was supposed to be the last of Manhattan’s skyscrapers. When it opened in 1915, it cast — in a very real sense — everything around it into shadow: a 555-foot neoclassical cliff rising sheer from the street between Pine and Cedar, looming over Broadway, condemning a swath of the Financial District to a life of permanent shadow.Its construction spurred New York’s authorities into action. A year later, the city introduced its first zoning law, decreeing that any future skyscrapers would have to taper away from the street, so as to allow light and air to permeate to ground level. “No more would skyscrapers rise sheer and monotonous, stealing sunshine from the city,” Ben Wilson wrote in Metropolis, his global history of cities.But rather than herald the end of the skyscraper era, the zoning law started a boom. Architects scurried to design buildings that complied with the new regulations, capitalist monoliths with a human face. The results — the Chrysler, the Empire State and the rest — stand still as the jewels of Manhattan’s skyline, the beauty that makes them compelling a direct consequence of an obstacle overcome.That truth holds away from architecture: Often, the complications addressed and compromises reached, the workarounds explored and imperfections masked do not diminish that sense of wonder, but increase it. Necessity is not only the mother of invention, but of admiration and affection, too.The iteration of Manchester City that Pep Guardiola has crafted this season is, without question, a marvel of engineering: fine-tuned and slick and working in almost flawless, mechanical synchronicity.City celebrating one of its Premier League-leading 56 goals.Credit…Peter Powell/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe Premier League has been unable to resist: City has won 15 league games in a row, conceding only five goals in the process and building an unassailable 14-point lead over its nearest challenger, and this weekend’s opponent/victim, Manchester United. Guardiola’s team has one foot in the Champions League quarterfinals. It has already reached the same stage of the F.A. Cup, and the final of the Carabao Cup. If it beats United on Sunday at the Etihad, it will have won 22 games in a row. An unprecedented clean sweep of trophies shimmers on the horizon.But while it is impossible not to admire what Guardiola has built — one of the finest teams to grace English soccer, roughly two years after constructing what is possibly the greatest one the country has seen — it can be difficult to establish a deeper, more emotional connection with it. The way City plays fires the brain. It does not follow that it must therefore stir the soul.The club’s fans, of course, would put that down to nothing more than bitterness and envy. Its detractors might, in turn, ask what broader purpose establishing Manchester City among soccer’s elite had for its ultimate backer, Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the Emirati royal and deputy prime minister of Abu Dhabi, whose investment in City is most definitely nothing to do with a nation state.More significant — at least in this case — than either argument, though, may be the absence of complication and compromise from Manchester City’s story. It has the best coach in the world, one of the most expensive rosters in the world, the best facilities, the most advanced data, the finest youth system. As Arsène Wenger once put it, it has petrol, and it has ideas.Raheem Sterling and his teammates are, once again, headed toward a celebratory spring.Credit…Pool photo by Dave ThompsonThere were, true, a few teething problems in the early years of the Abu Dhabi project. But for some time now, City’s ascent to the summit of soccer has been remorseless, smooth and, perhaps, for neutrals, a little cold, a gleaming edifice rising sheer from the ground.The architectural term for what makes the Art Deco skyscrapers of the 1920s so iconic is, as it happens, setbacks. They are what lends those buildings their charm. Manchester City, in recent years, does not seem to have experienced many. Instead, its success has the air of a formula being cracked, an equation being solved. It is impressive, no question, but it is not compelling. Inevitabilities rarely are. The interest, though, is to be found in the blemishes hidden, and the challenges met.There is no point arguing that City’s resources have contributed to the club’s success, both in the long term and, more immediately, in a season in which fatigue and injury are having an outsized influence. All of the Premier League elite can spend fortunes on playing talent, but none of them can run a squad quite as deep in quality as Guardiola’s.He regularly leaves somewhere in the region of $350 million worth of talent on his substitutes’ bench. Even allowing for injury, he has been able to manage his players’ workload far better than most of his rivals. In February, he rotated in at least four players every game, and sometimes as many as seven. It never felt as if he had fielded a weakened team. Although City remains alive in four competitions, none of its players has yet played 3,000 minutes this season. Four of United’s, by contrast, have already passed that mark.Guardiola does not seek to deny that reality. “We have a lot of money to buy incredible players,” he said after victory in the Champions League over Borussia Mönchengladbach, remarks that were for some reason interpreted as a joke, but are, well, true. “Without good quality players,” he said, “we cannot do it.”But while it is the cost of the playing staff that attracts all of the attention, the envy and the criticism, the true impact of City’s resource advantage is a little less obvious. It is in the state-of-the-art training facilities, in the youth academy, in the network of clubs around the globe, in the astrophysicist hired to help the team’s data analysis, in a club that has been built, essentially, to provide the perfect working environment for Guardiola.It feels, at times, like Pep F.C., as one observer put it. And that, perhaps, explains the contrast between this City and Guardiola’s Barcelona: both dominant, era-defining teams, but one that captured the imagination and another that feels too surgical to do so.The difference is not necessarily in the moral relativism of the two clubs’ ownership, or even in their respective historical clout, but in their nature. Barcelona is a big, unwieldy, faintly chaotic institution, one that had been in turmoil before Guardiola arrived. Shaping it in his own image meant dealing with complications. City, on the other hand, was built for him, impeccable and flawless.That reading, though, misses one important aspect. Guardiola might have the best squad and a handpicked coaching staff and a raft of allies in the executive suites, and he may be able to access resources far deeper than any of his rivals can sustain, but his primary task — as it is for any manager — is still to handle people. And his ability to do that lies at the root of City’s imminent glory this spring.Guardiola with Phil Foden. He had to win back his players before they set about winning back their Premier League title.Credit…Pool photo by Andy RainIt would be a stretch to suggest there was a sense of mutiny around City last season. Guardiola’s power is too absolute, and his reputation too lofty, for rebellion to take hold. But there were, as Liverpool strolled away with the Premier League title, mutterings.There was a fiery exchange in the changing room after a defeat to Tottenham, several of his senior players complaining that he was too inconsistent with his team selection, complaints that ran beyond the background chuntering of the substitutes and the fringe players.It intensified in the summer, when City was outfoxed by Lyon in the Champions League. As the inquests played out in the news media, it emerged that there were some in the squad who were starting to waver in their loyalty to their coach, who felt he had shot himself in the foot in the competition he craves more than any other one time too many.Guardiola seemed to recognize it. He has always said, after all, that after four years either the players have to change, or the manager does. He hoped for the former, asking City to bring in four new signings. In the end, only three arrived: The club stepped away from a deal to sign Ben Chilwell from Leicester, and the left back Guardiola had requested never materialized.It did not, immediately, seem to solve the problem. City lost at home to Leicester, tied Leeds, West Ham and Liverpool, and then lost away at Spurs. That proved the final straw for Fernandinho, the club’s influential captain, who gathered the squad together — “only the players, I tried to show them our responsibility, what the club expects, what the fans expect” — for a few hard truths.Guardiola himself waited a couple more weeks. After a dispiriting draw at home to relegation-threatened West Bromwich Albion in December, he held a conclave with his key associates: Juanma Lillo, his assistant; Rodolfo Borrell, his first-team coach; Txiki Begiristain, City’s director of football; and Manel Estiarte, Guardiola’s all-purpose consigliere.For the first time, he had found himself watching his City team with distaste. “I didn’t like it,” he said later. Influenced by Lillo, in particular, the decision was made to revert to what Guardiola called his “ABC” principles. “To stay in position, and let the ball run, not you,” Guardiola said.His reputation as a visionary, of course, dictates that the switch has been interpreted as a tactical innovation: Guardiola had instructed his team to run less, or pass the ball more, or turned João Cancelo into the first fullback-stroke-No. 10, a position that will hopefully one day be known as a “false two.”João Cancelo is a perfectly Guardiola innovation: the playmaking defender.Credit…Shaun Botterill/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBut just as significant was the psychological impact: It represented a return to the ideas Guardiola had evangelized when he first arrived, the ones that some had felt were being lost. It was, perhaps, a tacit acknowledgment that he had diverged a little too much from the path that had brought City two Premier League titles.Gabriel Jesus, the Brazilian striker, was asked last week how Guardiola had changed this season. He could not be sure, he said, but the main difference was that Guardiola “doesn’t talk so much.” “There is less video now,” Jesus said.That, it turned out, was exactly what City needed: a slightly more stripped-down, simplified approach — not quite laissez-faire, not with Guardiola involved, but as close as he can feasibly muster.City does, to an extent, rise sheer and monotonous above the landscape of European soccer. Its polish is, perhaps, a little too gleaming, its finish a little too smooth, to have the sort of character that comes from blemishes.But it takes work to get that sort of sheen, no matter how costly, how plentiful and how fine the materials available, and that work is, ultimately, worthy of appreciation and admiration. Even the Equitable Building, after all, is now a National Historic Landmark.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    Washington Football Team Will Replace Cheerleaders With a Coed Dance Team

    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyWashington Football Team Will Replace Cheerleaders With a Coed Dance TeamThe change came after many accusations of sexual harassment from the women on the cheerleading squad.The Washington Football Team’s cheerleaders during a 2019 game.Credit…Mark Tenally/Associated PressKen Belson and March 3, 2021Updated 9:29 p.m. ETThe Washington Football Team has scrapped its cheerleading program after many accusations of sexual harassment from the women on the squad, which will be replaced with a coed dance team next season.The cheerleading group, founded in 1962 as the Redskinettes, called itself the First Ladies of Football and was the longest-running cheerleading team in the National Football League.Petra Pope, a former manager of the N.B.A.’s Laker Girls dance team, was hired this week to overhaul the Washington team’s game day entertainment. In an interview on Wednesday, Pope said she wanted to create a more diverse and athletic team and move away from traditional all-female cheerleaders wearing short skirts and waving pompoms.“This will be an all-inclusive, diverse, super athletic team,” Pope said. “We’re looking at everything. These dancers will be highly respected for their skill set.”Some other N.F.L. teams — such as the Los Angeles Rams, the Seattle Seahawks and the New Orleans Saints — already have dance squads that include men.The former cheerleaders can try out for the new dance squad, which will most likely be made up of 36 men and women, Pope said, adding that she would not know how many men would join the team until auditions were completed in the coming weeks.The shift is part of a broad rebranding of the franchise that includes changes to the team’s nickname and logo, the personnel in the front office and the game day entertainment. In July, the team dropped its longtime name and logo after complaints from Native American groups and others who considered the name a racial slur.The move to coed dancers comes three years after several cheerleaders told The New York Times that the team had been “pimping us out” by forcing them to cozy up to sponsors. They complained that the team director had required them to attend gatherings and present themselves as sex symbols to please male fans or sponsors, which the cheerleaders did not believe should be a part of their job.On a trip to Costa Rica in 2013 for the cheer team’s annual calendar shoot, five cheerleaders said, male sponsors were invited to photo shoots where the women were scantily clad or, at times, naked.Those cheerleaders said many women on the team had long been afraid of coming forward with accusations of sexual harassment because they feared that the team would get rid of the program, as some other teams had done when cheerleaders spoke out about concerns like low pay. In 2014, Buffalo Bills cheerleaders sued the team for not paying them for all the hours they worked, and their squad was soon disbanded.“It’s like the women there have been brainwashed to think it’s OK to be treated like garbage,” Allison Cassidy, a former Washington cheerleader, said in a 2018 interview. “So many of them are afraid that pointing out injustices will lead to the program folding, or that will lead to the collapse of their social circle, but it doesn’t have to be that way.”Former cheerleaders for the Washington team said they had been expected to mingle and flirt with fans in the corporate suites and at tailgate parties on game days. Cassidy and others said they had been sent to promotional events where they were sexually harassed by men and generally felt unsafe.Last year, cheerleaders made similar harassment accusations against the N.F.L. team. Later in the year, the team reached a settlement with several former cheerleaders, according to a person with knowledge of the deal who was not authorized to discuss it publicly.The Washington Post also published an investigation into the mistreatment of the team’s female employees, citing 15 former workers in the team’s front office as sources.The team’s owner, Daniel Snyder, fired several top executives who were connected to the harassment accusations, and he hired a Washington-based law firm, Wilkinson Stekloff, to look into the cheerleaders’ allegations. The N.F.L. took over the investigation, which is continuing.Pope has worked for 33 years with dance teams in the N.B.A., including those of the Knicks and the Los Angeles Lakers. She said the Washington dance team would do more stunts and use more props, “merging the athleticism of cheerleaders with the athleticism of hip-hop, jazz and ballet dancers.”Whether the transition to coed dancers will lead to a thorough break from past traditions is unclear, but the N.F.L. franchise plans to review the dancers’ pay and the possibility of offering them benefits, said Carreen Winters, an outside public relations consultant working with the team.Pope said the new dance team would have new outfits that were “fashion forward.” She said the dancers would be involved in the community but was unable to say whether the dancers would continue to visit suites at the stadium and other venues where they would have close contact with fans. The dance team, though, will not be involved in any calendar photo shoots, she said.“All dancers will be respected,” she said, adding that her goal was “to create a really modern team that reflects where we are in 2021.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    Irv Cross, First Black Network TV Sports Analyst, Dies at 81

    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyIrv Cross, First Black Network TV Sports Analyst, Dies at 81After playing defensive back in the N.F.L., he made history when he joined CBS Sports’ pregame show, “The NFL Today.”Irv Cross in 1985. He had a 15-year run as an analyst on “The NFL Today.”Credit…George Rose/Getty ImagesMarch 1, 2021Updated 7:48 p.m. ETIrv Cross, a Pro Bowl defensive back with two N.F.L. teams who later made history as the first Black full-time television analyst for a network television sports show, died on Sunday in a hospice in North Oaks, Minn. He was 81.The cause was ischemic cardiomyopathy, a heart disease, said his wife, Liz Cross. He also had dementia, which he believed had been caused by concussions he endured in his playing days. He had arranged to donate his brain to the Boston University Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy Center.By 1975, after nine seasons with the Philadelphia Eagles and the Los Angeles Rams and four years as a game analyst for CBS Sports, the network hired Mr. Cross to join the cast of its pregame show, “The NFL Today,” beginning a 15-year run as a high-profile commentator. He, Brent Musburger and Phyllis George — and, starting a year later, the betting maven Jimmy Snyder, who was known as the Greek — previewed and analyzed the day’s coming games and gave half-time scores.The cast was unlike others in N.F.L. television programming, with Mr. Cross in a job that no other Black sports journalist had held before, and Ms. George, a former Miss America, becoming one of the first female sportscasters. With entertaining banter and byplay, the combination of personalities proved extremely popular.“Irv was a very smart, hardworking, hugely kind person who always had a warmth about him,” Ted Shaker, the former executive producer of CBS Sports, said in a phone interview. “He had built up his credibility as a player and game analyst, and he was our anchor at ‘The NFL Today.’” He added, “Like Phyllis, Irv was a true pioneer.” (Ms. George died in May at 70.)In 1988, CBS fired Mr. Snyder over widely publicized comments he had made in an interview about the physical differences between Black and white athletes. His comments, Mr. Cross said at the time, “don’t reflect the Jimmy the Greek I know, and I’ve known him for almost 13 years.” (Mr. Snyder died in 1996.)After CBS fired Mr. Musburger in a contract dispute in 1990, the network overhauled “The NFL Today,” ending Mr. Cross’s long run on the program. He returned to being a game analyst at CBS for two years, but after his contract was not renewed he did not work in network television again.“I didn’t have an agent, and I didn’t search for a TV position as aggressively as I should have,” he told Sports Illustrated in 1996.“I just quietly faded away.”His broadcasting work was honored in 2009 when he received the Pete Rozelle Radio-Television Award from the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.Mr. Cross in 1976 with his “NFL Today” colleagues Brent Musburger and Phyllis George.Credit…CBS ArchivesIrvin Acie Cross was born on July 27, 1939, in Hammond, Ind., the eighth of 15 children. His father, Acie, was a steelworker; his mother, Ellee (Williams) Cross, was a homemaker.Mr. Cross said his father, a heavy drinker, had beaten his mother. “It tears me up,” he told The Chicago Tribune in 2018. “It was frightening. You could tell it was coming. We tried stopping him a few times. We’d jump on his back. It’s absolutely raw for me.”Ellee Cross died in childbirth when Irv was 10, leaving him to wonder whether the beatings had worsened his mother’s health problems.After excelling at football at Hammond High School — which earned him a place in its hall of fame — Mr. Cross was a wide receiver and a defensive back at Northwestern University under Coach Ara Parseghian. As a junior, he caught a 78-yard touchdown pass during a 30-24 Northwestern victory over Notre Dame.“We didn’t have much depth, but Parseghian was great at moving guys around and getting the most of them,” Mr. Cross told a Northwestern online publication in 2018. “His teams beat Notre Dame three straight times from 1958 to 1961.” Mr. Parseghian left Northwestern after the 1963 season to begin a storied run as coach of Notre Dame.As a senior, Mr. Cross was named Northwestern’s male athlete of the year.The Eagles chose him in the seventh round of the 1961 N.F.L. draft. He intercepted a career-high five passes in 1962 and played in the Pro Bowl in 1964 and 1965. The Hall of Fame running back Jim Brown once said, “No one in the league tackles harder than Cross.”After five seasons with the Eagles, Mr. Cross was traded to the Los Angeles Rams in 1965 and played there for three years. He returned to the Eagles in 1969 as a player and a defensive backs coach. After retiring as a player at the end of the season, he continued to coach for one more year.Mr. Cross when he played for the Philadelphia Eagles in the early 1960s. He was a two-time Pro Bowl defensive back before becoming a sportscaster.Credit…Philadelphia EaglesMr. Cross began planning for a television career while he was with the Eagles, working as a radio sports commentator and a weekend TV sports anchor in Philadelphia during the off-season. Though tempted by the Dallas Cowboys’ offer of a front office job in 1971, he chose to work for CBS Sports instead.Joining “The NFL Today” came with a certain amount of pressure. He recalled in the Northwestern interview that in 1975 “the TV landscape was much different, much whiter.”“I never focused on that,” Mr. Cross said, “but I was keenly aware that if I failed it might be a long time before another Black person got a similar opportunity.”When the cast of the show was changed in 1990, Greg Gumbel, who is Black, was hired to work alongside the former Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Terry Bradshaw.After Mr. Cross left CBS he changed course, working as the athletic director at Idaho State University in Pocatello from 1996 to ’98 and at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn., from 1999 to 2005.In addition to his wife, Liz (Tucker) Cross, he is survived by his daughters, Susan, Lisa and Sandra Cross; his son, Matthew; a grandson; his sisters, Joan Motley, Jackie McEntyre Julia Hopson, Pat Grant and Gwen Robinson; and his brothers, Raymond, Teal and Sam. His first marriage ended in divorce. He lived in Roseville, Minn., outside the Twin Cities.When Mr. Cross played, concussions were usually not taken seriously. He sustained several in his rookie season, enough for his teammates to nickname him Paper Head. One of the concussions knocked him unconscious and sent him to the hospital.To protect himself, Mr. Cross had a helmet made with extra padding.“I just tried to keep my head out of the way while making tackles,” he told The Philadelphia Inquirer in 2018. “But that’s just the way it was. Most of the time, they gave you some smelling salts and you went back in. We didn’t know.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    Police Raid F.C. Barcelona and Detain Four People

    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyPolice Raid F.C. Barcelona and Detain Four PeopleThe authorities have been investigating the club’s relationship with a company that produced disparaging content about Lionel Messi, Gerard Piqué and other star players.The police in Catalonia said they seized evidence in their raid of Barcelona and detained four people.Credit…Lluis Gene/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMarch 1, 2021Updated 9:54 a.m. ETThe police in Spain raided the headquarters of F.C. Barcelona on Monday, seizing evidence and detaining four people. The arrests, on the eve of the club’s presidential election, created another crisis for a soccer behemoth brought low by crippling debt, boardroom infighting and poor performances on the field.A spokeswoman for Mossos d’Esquadra, Catalonia’s regional police force, said its economic crimes unit had seized evidence from Barcelona’s offices. She added that the investigation was continuing and that four people have been detained but, citing police policy, declined to name the individuals.Dispositiu en marxa de l’Àrea Central de Delictes Econòmics de la DIC relacionat amb el @FCBarcelona_es S’estan duent a terme diverses entrades i escorcolls pic.twitter.com/N0GZEMHN4W— Mossos (@mossos) March 1, 2021
    Several news media outlets reported that the four people detained were prominent current and former executives of the club: the former president, Josep Maria Bartomeu, who resigned in December, shortly before he was to face a vote of no confidence; Oscar Grau, the club’s chief executive; Roman Gomez Ponti, its head of legal services; and Jaume Masferrer, an adviser to Bartomeu.Barcelona said in a statement that the club had offered “full collaboration to the legal and police authorities to help make clear facts which are subject to investigation.”Investigators have been looking into Barcelona’s affairs for months, after incendiary revelations suggested the club had secretly hired an external marketing company to produce disparaging content about some of its most important and high-profile players, including Lionel Messi and Gerard Piqué.The team denied any wrongdoing and hired a consultant, PWC, to complete an audit of its relationship with the marketing company, I3 Ventures, but the police continued their investigation.The police investigation into Barcelona has been closely followed by Spanish news media, which has called the affair “Barcagate.” Bartomeu said in February that he had no idea the company was involved in spreading negative content targeting Barcelona players, and although the club terminated the contract, the stain remained.The raid on the club’s offices come just days before more than 140,000 Barcelona members will elect Bartomeu’s successor, and it is another hit to the reputation of a club that for years had portrayed itself as a benchmark in world soccer. The team liked to portray itself as a team with values that put it in a class of its own, operated under the slogan, “More than a club.”Bartomeu’s resignation came months after a humiliating 8-2 defeat to Bayern Munich that eliminated the club from last season’s Champions League, Europe’s richest club soccer competition, and a public falling out with Messi, arguably the greatest player in the game’s history.Messi described Bartomeu’s board as “a disaster” and demanded to be allowed to leave the club he joined as a 13-year-old from Argentina. The club refused Messi’s request and the player backed down and announced he would stay rather than drag the issue through the courts.Messi’s contract allows him to leave at the end of this season, but he has said he has not decided what he will do.Bartomeu has been fighting negative headlines for more than a year, and his tenure as president, which began amid an earlier scandal in 2014, has been marked by periods of turbulence. Last spring, six members of the club’s board resigned and went public with their criticism of Bartomeu.At the heart of their falling out was the contract with I3 Ventures, and allegations that it was behind fake social media accounts — purporting to be Barcelona supporters — that attacked those perceived to Bartomeu’s opponents. Those included Victor Font, an outspoken candidate to be the club’s next president, and popular players like Messi and Piqué.The raid on Barcelona’s offices came days before the club’s 140,000 members will elect a new president.Credit…Lluis Gene/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe team’s finances are also more precarious than at any time in its recent history. Earlier this year, it published financial statements showing it owed more than 1 billion euros, about $1.2 billion, to its lenders, tax officials and rival clubs, with more than 600 million euros required to be paid in the short term.The club has entered emergency talks with banks to find a solution to its problems, and club officials are also weighing selling some of the team’s commercial assets to investors to raise as much as $250 million.The club has played without spectators this season because of the coronavirus pandemic, as is the case for most teams in Europe, and the team’s revenue forecasts have cratered. The club’s cavernous Nou Camp stadium and museum are ordinarily two of the most visited tourist sites in Spain, and the loss of those revenues and other income could reach as much as 600 million euros, club executives recently told The Times.On the field, the picture is hardly better.Even though Messi returned, the club’s performance has been a shadow of its dominating past. Barcelona endured yet another Champions League humiliation last month, losing by 4-1 against Paris St.-Germain in the first leg of its two-game, round-of-16 match. The defeat means elimination from this year’s tournament is all but assured.Barcelona has rallied from a poor start to move into second place in the Spanish league table, but it is still five points behind the leader, Atlético Madrid, whose success in part has been attributed to the goals of striker Luis Suarez, whose contract was canceled by Barcelona before the start of season.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    Black Players and Common Goal Join Forces for Anti-Racism Project

    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyNew Anti-Racism Project Hopes to Push Soccer Past GesturesBlack players, joining with the charity Common Goal and backed by teams in North America, say they hope to reinvigorate the campaign against racism in the game.Wilfried Zaha and other Premier League players still kneel briefly before every match, but he and other Black players said the time had come to do more.Credit…Pool photo by Clive RoseFeb. 24, 2021, 7:00 a.m. ETTony Sanneh saw the pattern while he was a player. It is precisely the same one he sees now, more than a decade after his retirement.Soccer confronts its struggle to combat racism only sporadically. The abuse of a player on the field, the denigration of a team from the stands, a sudden reminder of the lack of opportunities for Black coaches or executives — all of it sparks a conversation, a campaign, a vow to do better. “It is always talked about,” Sanneh said. “And then it goes away again.”Several prominent Black voices within the sport have suggested, in recent weeks, that it must not be allowed to happen again. After almost a year of protests inspired by the Black Lives Matter demonstrations that swept the globe after the killing of George Floyd, a number of players, in particular, have suggested that gestures are no longer sufficient.“It has become something we just do,” the Crystal Palace forward Wilfried Zaha said of players’ taking a knee before Premier League matches. “That is not enough for me.”The players say they want actions, not gestures, and Sanneh — a veteran of the Bundesliga, Major League Soccer and the 2002 World Cup — and others are hoping to kick-start that effort. Sanneh has joined with Common Goal, a player-led social movement in global soccer; clubs from the three major leagues in North America; and the American Outlaws, the United States national team’s largest fan group, to launch the Anti-Racist Project, a program designed to tackle all aspects of soccer’s problem with racism.The program’s scale is ambitious: It aims to engage some 5,000 coaches and 60,000 young people in more than 400 communities in its first year, using an educational antiracism tool kit established and honed by the work Sanneh’s personal foundation, based in St. Paul, Minn., has done over the last two decades. Sanneh said he hoped it could be “refreshed and globalized” to be rolled out beyond the United States next year.Flickers of players’ impatience with the pace of change in the game are already starting to show. In England, where the sight of players taking a knee is now part of the pregame ritual, the Brentford striker Ivan Toney has suggested it has become “pretty pointless.” “Take the knee and the people at the top can rest for a while now,” he said.The United States women’s team did not kneel during the national anthem before its game against Brazil on Sunday, a collective decision made by the team after nearly a year of protests. “It is all to say that we are now ready to move past the protesting phase and actually move into putting all of the talk into actual work,” the midfielder Crystal Dunn told reporters afterward.The United States women’s national team on Sunday ended its ritual of kneeling during the national anthem.Credit…Alex Menendez/Getty ImagesSeveral players, including Manchester City’s American goalkeeper Zack Steffen, have backed the project, but its advantage, according to Evan Whitfield, a former Major League Soccer player who now works with Common Goal, is the breadth of its coalition.“There is a rich history of player-led demonstrations,” he said. “That will continue, but what is unique about this is that sense of collective action.”For a long time, Whitfield said, “corporate entities and clubs” have sought to use “their messaging to pacify player voices.” There is a sense that has changed now, not only because clubs are prepared to “back up what they espouse” through action, but also because there are those, like Sanneh and Steffen and others, who have sufficient clout to “put their thumb on the scale.”The Chicago Fire of M.L.S., the Oakland Roots of the lower-tier U.S.L. and Angel City F.C., the National Women’s Soccer League expansion club that will join that league next year, all have lent support to the project.“I cannot tell you how important it is that we step up before we take the field,” said Cobi Jones, the former United States international who is now one of Angel City F.C.’s owners. “It shows everyone that the club has an understanding of where it stands on racism, that we are at the forefront. It is inherent in what we stand for.”The hope is that they will be just the first to take part. The project is, Whitfield said, “a call to action,” not just for other clubs, but “for leagues and fans, too.”“We had to step up and work collectively,” Sanneh said. “To use our success to work for others in this industry. We have to all work together to combat societal challenges.”Steffen was a little more succinct, echoing the views of a growing chorus of players. “We have talked a lot for the last few months,” he said. “Now is the time to take action, to get out there, and to show people that we are serious.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More