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    Timo Werner, Chelsea and Numbers That Lie

    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyRory Smith On SoccerSometimes the Numbers LieStrikers are paid to score goals. The more the better. But can a lack of them distort the full picture of a player?Is this striker having a bad season? It depends on your view.Credit…John Sibley/Action Images, via ReutersFeb. 19, 2021, 12:30 p.m. ETSHEFFIELD, England — This is the story of a struggling striker. He has scored only twice since November: once in a cakewalk of a cup game against an overmatched opponent, and once from the sort of position in which he really could not miss, the ball falling to him a couple of yards out, a goal by accident rather than design.The latter was a welcome fillip — sometimes that is what you need, after all, that jolt of luck — but it did little to gloss over the striker’s troubles. Five goals in 23 league games since joining his new club remains a paltry return. His confidence seems to be shot, as if he has hit “rock bottom,” as one pundit observed.The criticism, over the past few months, has been consistent, from outside and in. His former manager said in public that he was not offering enough, with or without the ball, and wondered in private if he was simply too profligate, even in the protected surroundings of training, just not ruthless enough. It all seems to have taken its toll.And this is the story of a striker finding his feet. Not thriving, perhaps — not yet — but contributing, certainly: creating chances for his teammates, adding considerably to his team’s attacking threat, generating as many opportunities to score as some of the league’s most devastating forwards. His goal total, so far, has been a little disappointing, but all of the evidence suggests that too will come, in time.The two strikers are, of course, one and the same: Timo Werner, the German forward chased by most of Europe’s elite clubs over the last couple of years and, last summer, the centerpiece of Chelsea’s emphatic, lavish refit. Signed for $59 million, he was snatched from under the nose of Liverpool and arrived in England with a reputation as a finisher of rare and surgical precision.By most measures, of course, it has not quite worked out that way. The first version of Werner’s story is the one that has taken hold in the popular imagination. That is no surprise: More than any other stripe of player, strikers are — ultimately and largely legitimately — judged on the number of goals they score.That Timo Werner has only five goals isn’t the full story of his season.Credit…Pool photo by Andy RainDefenders can play well and not keep a clean sheet. Midfield is a broad enough church that players as diverse as Claude Makelele and Xavi Hernández and Andrea Pirlo can all be considered its gods. Some wingers score goals, some create them, and others just pose a sort of general, all-purpose threat, and that can be enough.But strikers are typically defined by one metric, and one metric alone. And on that front, this season, Werner has come up short. He might spend his free time painting masterpieces or planning elaborate heists; he might act as the hinge of every single attacking move Chelsea puts together.But it is goals that Chelsea paid for, and goals have been hard to come by for Werner, and that colors everything else. The proof that he is not playing well, that he is short of confidence, is there in the goals scored column. If he was playing well, he would have scored more goals. More than that, in fact: to play well, a striker has to score more goals than he has mustered. That, after all, is the point of strikers.That version of the story is not wrong. But nor is it complete. Like many of the alumni of the RB Leipzig school from which he emerged, Werner built a reputation not just on how he looked on the field, but on how he looked on the page.There is, now, little left of the culture war that flared briefly and brightly within soccer’s recruitment structures a decade or so ago. Most teams have long since accepted the idea that traditional scouting — going to watch a player — fits hand in glove with a more data-driven approach.It varies a little from club to club, but the data can be used either as a sieve for potential targets — narrowing down the hundreds of possible signings for a few who are of genuine interest — or as a form of due diligence, a way of checking that a better or cheaper or more suitable target is not being overlooked.It is impossible to say for certain, but it seems likely Werner was an example of the former. In the Bundesliga, he was something of a data darling: a player who regularly scored more goals than the chances he had either manufactured or been presented with suggested he should have done. (In the argot, he had outperformed his Expected Goals.)And even amid the travails of Werner’s first season in England, those same metrics tell a slightly different story to the one that has taken hold. For all the criticism, his underlying performance data — an unwieldy phrase that, from here on in, we shall avoid by just saying “the numbers” — has remained, essentially, solid.Teammates like Tammy Abraham have been rewarded by Werner’s efforts.Credit…David Klein/ReutersHis Expected Goals (xG) number — a gauge of the quality of the chances he has created or received — varies a little, depending on which model is used, but according to Stats Perform’s metric, he might have been expected to score seven Premier League goals this season. In those terms, he is performing similarly to Tottenham’s Son Heung-min.There is, of course, one notable — and significant — difference: Son has scored 13 goals this season. No player in England is overperforming his xG more. Werner, by contrast, has scored five times. (It is worth noting that several players are underperforming their xG more than Werner, though none quite as much as Manchester City’s Kevin De Bruyne, who is not having what anyone would call a difficult campaign.)“This can’t simply be attributed to him being a bad finisher,” said Omar Chaudhuri, the chief intelligence officer at 21st Club, an analytics consultancy. “He exceeded his xG by more than 25 percent last season. He has been wasteful to date, but this streak shouldn’t last too long: We know getting into good positions to score is the best long-term predictor of goal-scoring.”That is not the only source of solace. 21st Club notes that Werner accounts for around a fifth of all of Chelsea’s chances, the sort of mark an average central striker might manage, according to Chaudhuri. “But it’s still impressive, given he’s often been played wide,” Chaudhuri said.He is also playing deeper. “He has had 15 to 20 percent fewer touches and actions in the final third and penalty area,” Chaudhuri said. Despite that, 21st Club’s data suggests that of the Premier League’s strikers, only Roberto Firmino, Anthony Martial and Aston Villa’s Ollie Watkins are involved in more sequences that lead to a shot.Werner, in other words, is not playing especially poorly. It is just that he is being judged as a striker despite, for much of the season, not actually playing as a striker. It should not be a shock, then, that he is being granted fewer chances to score.“He is finding opportunities harder to come by than he did in his last few years in the Bundesliga,” said Simon Gleave, the head of sports analysis at Nielsen’s Gracenote, a data provider. “He has had an attempt at goal every 36 minutes at Chelsea. In his three seasons at Leipzig, that was every 27, 25 and 23 minutes, respectively.”Werner is often in the middle of Chelsea attacks, even if he’s not on the end of them.Credit…Pool photo by Julian FinneyNot only are his chances rarer, though, they are also lower quality, according to Gracenote’s analysis. Yet, at the same time, he has seen a slight uptick in the number of chances he is creating: an assist every 331 minutes in England as opposed to one every 340 minutes in the Bundesliga.None of these, of course, amounts to a smoking gun, a single shocking statistic that proves, in one fell swoop, that Timo Werner has been the signing of the season. They do not contradict the idea that he has been sapped of his confidence — though perhaps it is starting to return under Chelsea’s new coach, Thomas Tuchel — or that his first few months in England have been frustrating and arduous.The numbers do not tell the whole story, but they are a reminder that perhaps the immediate judgment of the eye can be flawed, too. A couple of weeks ago, on a bitterly cold night in Sheffield, Werner spent almost the entire game making the same run, again and again.He picked out Chris Basham, the Sheffield United defender, his mark for the evening. He lingered a couple of feet in front of him: close enough to sense, not quite close enough to touch. He waited. He danced in anticipation. And as soon as the ball fell to one of his teammates, he made his move: burning past Basham at an angle, cutting from the left-hand side of the field to the center, bearing down on the penalty area.For a while, it had no tangible impact. There was a cross that did not quite come off, a shot that was cleared from the line. And then, just before halftime, Werner got his reward. Ben Chilwell picked out his run from deep: He knew where he was going to be. Werner skated past Basham, floundering now, to the corner of the penalty area, and crossed, low, for Mason Mount to crash the ball home.It would have been easy to overlook all the work that went into that moment. Much of it may not even have been noted in all but the deepest statistical analysis. But then so much of what constitutes soccer goes unseen: a forward pulling and stretching a back line, softening up a defender, priming them for the coup de grâce. The eye and the spreadsheet sometimes tell different, equally valid, stories. But there are times, too, when neither and both quite capture the whole.No Reason to LeaveThe meeting of Lionel Messi and Kylian Mbappé in the Champions League this week was not quite Tom Brady and Patrick Mahomes at the Super Bowl. Not only was the stage — the first leg of a last 16 tie — not quite so grand, so final, but this time, the younger man won out.In truth, beating Barcelona is not quite what it used to be — this is a club, after all, that loses heavily in the Champions League at least once a year these days; Juventus had already run riot at Camp Nou this season. But it still felt like the end, and the start, of something: the final proof that this iteration of Barcelona is in free fall, and confirmation that Mbappé is the heir apparent to the throne jointly occupied by Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo for the last decade or so.Which player would you rather have at your club today?Credit…Albert Gea/ReutersTraditionally, his hat trick would have served only to accelerate Mbappé’s inevitable move to either Barcelona or Real Madrid — the two clubs considered acceptable homes for the world’s very best — but there is reason to believe that this plotline may play out differently.Barcelona, for a start, does not have the money to pry him from Paris St.-Germain. Real Madrid wants you to believe it can pull it off, but quite how the math behind that works is anyone’s guess.But significantly, Real is not quite as enticing a proposition as it might once have been. It is a team in transition, a club unable to shake its reliance on a cadre of players in their mid-30s as it waits for its crop of bright and mainly Brazilian young things to come good. In the short term, Mbappé is more likely to compete for the Champions League trophy in Paris than he would be in Madrid.And that, to a player of his caliber and his horizons, is what matters. How he is regarded in posterity will not depend on which domestic league he plays in, or even on the fact that he won the World Cup before he turned 20, but on how he performs in European competition. It has long been held against Messi’s claim to being the best ever that he never won a World Cup. It would similarly disadvantage Mbappé if he never won the Champions League.It is there, in the modern game, that reputations are forged and greatness bestowed, not in a national competition, and not even, really, at the World Cup. When Mbappé comes to consider his future, that is what he will keep in mind: Which team can best guarantee him a place in the Champions League, and which team can he expect to give him a shot at winning it? For the moment, P.S.G. can make a compelling case that it outstrips the fading Spanish giants on both counts.A Burst BubbleA revised slogan for a rescheduled Euro 2020 in London: It’s coming home.Credit…Action Images/ReutersIf it was not obvious before this week’s resumption of European competition — and the sight of games being rerouted to neutral territory to circumvent travel restrictions — then it should be now: The chances of successfully holding this summer’s European Championships in 12 different cities in 12 different countries are beyond slim.Indeed, even if all the teams are allowed to attend all their games in their scheduled locations, it seems distinctly unlikely that fans will be allowed into the majority of stadiums. Even as coronavirus vaccine programs pick up pace and case rates start to drop, it is hard to envision mass gatherings being allowed in less than four months. Euro 2020/21 has been designed as a pan-continental festival of soccer. The idea doesn’t work if nobody is there to watch it.It is entirely understandable that UEFA is reticent to admit its original plan is no longer viable, but we are reaching the point where some clear thinking — and a clear decision — is necessary. And there is one immediately apparent solution: Take a little inspiration from the N.B.A. and stage the whole thing over a single month, in a single place. And that place should be London.This is not — let’s be clear — a suggestion made in the indefatigable spirit of those British lawmakers and columnists who, as soon as there is even a scintilla of doubt over the viability of any major tournament, immediately demand it be held in England instead. (Human rights abuses in Qatar? Play it in England! Stadiums in Brazil not ready? Play it in England! Russian troll farms destabilizing American democracy? Play it in England!)It is, instead, a suggestion rooted in simple logistics. There are a plenty of cities in Europe with the hotel infrastructure to host 24 teams in secure bubbles. There are a few that could probably muster the necessary training facilities. But only London has the number of stadiums required to stage a major tournament at short notice.Wembley is scheduled to stage the final week of the Euros anyway. The homes of Arsenal, Tottenham, Chelsea and West Ham would be fitting backdrops for showpiece games; Twickenham, England’s rugby stadium, could be drafted, too. The remainder could be played at Crystal Palace, Fulham, Brentford and Queens Park Rangers, or any of the modern arenas within an hour or so: Reading, Brighton, Southampton.It would not be the tournament that UEFA had hoped to offer, the shimmering beacon of hope for the post-pandemic rebirth of sports. But that idea — admirable though it may be — falls down on one fairly simple fact: We are not, yet, in the post-pandemic phase, and we will not be by the time June rolls around. It is time to accept reality as it is, not as you would wish it to be.CorrespondenceEverton and Liverpool will take the measure of one another again on Saturday at Anfield.Credit…Pool photo by Catherine IvillLet’s start on Merseyside this week — I’m set to be there Saturday to cover Liverpool-Everton — with a couple of emails that I didn’t have space to address last time out. “My friend is an Everton fan,” Peter Duncan wrote. “He claims that the reason Everton are doing well this year is because they have no fans in their stadium: The fans are so negative that if someone is having a bad game, they are on top of him. With no fans, they have no criticism or abuse to deal with.”The same thought had occurred to me, too, Peter — though not specifically about Everton — but I think the effect is more to do with styles of play than particular teams. Managers can now take a more cautious approach, and players can stick to it, without worrying about their fans growing impatient or finding their focus disturbed by the force of a hostile crowd.Across Stanley Park, Justin Sharon believes it should be mentioned in the context of Liverpool’s recent slump that “it is astonishing that Liverpool became champion of England, Europe and the world with a net spend over the last five years that was less than that of Bournemouth. Perhaps now Liverpool’s achievements from 2018 to 2020 will receive the recognition they deserve.”I’m not sure there’s been any lack of recognition, but the overall thrust of the argument is sound: Liverpool has overachieved in the last three years, and a correction was to some extent inevitable, though the scale of it is perhaps greater than might have been expected.On the subjects raised last week, Julio Gomes points out that Mike Dean was not the only referee to receive death threats after a recent game: so did the Portuguese official Luis Godinho, who sent off two players in a cup game between Porto and Braga. “The first was the result of a horrific injury to a player, and even after the second, the final score was 1-1, in the first leg of a semifinal. Perspective, please!”Dan Browning is preaching to the converted on the subject of away goals: “If a two-legged contest goes to extra time in the second game, why do away goals still count more? How is it fair to give one side 90 minutes to score away goals while giving the other side 120 minutes?” There is an easy answer to this, Dan: It isn’t.And a couple of you were in touch to discuss the idea that, perhaps, soccer has been too quick to use data to dismiss the value in low-percentage, long-range shots. “Most N.B.A. teams now try to score from two places: at the rim and on the 3-point line,” wrote Alex von Nordheim.“There are two exceptions to that rule: shots from well beyond the 3-point line and the long 2-pointers, which are the least efficient shots but are often all that is left against a defense determined to prevent easy shots from close up or more valuable shots from beyond the 3-point line.” In this reckoning, Bruno Fernandes is effectively soccer’s Kawhi Leonard.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    N.F.L. Quarterbacks on the Move: Wentz. Watson? Darnold?

    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyN.F.L. Quarterbacks on the Move: a GuideCarson Wentz is a Colt, Jared Goff is a Lion and Deshaun Watson wants to be anything but a Texan. A look at the deals that have been done, and a few more that might be next.Matthew Stafford and Jared Goff will be swapping uniforms.Credit…Paul Sancya/Associated PressFeb. 19, 2021, 10:57 a.m. ETIt is not two weeks since the Super Bowl, and already three quarterbacks — including the first and second picks in the 2016 draft — have been traded. More movement, possibly much more, will follow. Frustrated stars, well-priced veterans, young starters — all could be on the move, as this emerging era of quarterback empowerment collides with a salary-cap crunch that compels teams to assess their resources at the sport’s most critical position.All deals cannot be made official until the new league year begins on March 17, but here’s a partial list of quarterbacks who will be — or might be — wearing new uniforms when the 2021 season opens next fall.Quarterbacks Who Have Already Been TradedJared Goff, Rams to Lions Whether Goff, 26, revitalizes his career with Dan Campbell’s merry band of kneecap biters in Detroit depends, in part, on his aptitude for doing something with the Lions that he did not do with the Rams: hold on to the ball. Considering Campbell’s apparent penchant for cannibalism — beyond vowing to bite off opponents’ kneecaps, he also stated at his introductory news conference that the Lions would “take another hunk out of you” — Goff would be wise not to approach the 17 turnovers he committed last season.Matthew Stafford, Lions to Rams After 12 seasons without a postseason victory in Detroit, where he became the Lions’ franchise leader in passing yards, completions and touchdowns, Stafford will join the Rams, a team that acquired him to win far more than just one playoff game. Backed by a ferocious defense, Stafford, 33, should allow Coach Sean McVay to unbridle a downfield passing game that rarely materialized with Goff.From deep in the archives: Carson Wentz smiling in an Eagles jersey.Credit…Michael Ainsworth/Associated PressCarson Wentz, Eagles to Colts Wentz was done with the Eagles, and the Eagles were done with him, so their ability to turn one of the N.F.L.’s worst quarterbacks last season (and his onerous contract) into a decent return from Indianapolis — a third-round pick in April and a second-rounder in 2022 that could turn into a first — is a small, if pyrrhic, victory. But his departure from Philadelphia still signifies a failure for an organization that 20 months ago rewarded him with the most guaranteed money (more than $107 million) in league history at the time. The Colts are betting that Wentz will be invigorated by reuniting with two former mentors in Philadelphia, Coach Frank Reich and the assistant Press Taylor, and by joining a roster laden with foundational talent on both sides of the ball.Quarterbacks Who Might Be TradedSam Darnold, Jets Though Darnold would seem a not-incompatible fit for the run-heavy scheme of the new offensive coordinator Mike LaFleur, his future with the Jets hinges on two factors: the team’s interest in Deshaun Watson and its evaluation of every draft-eligible quarterback not named Trevor Lawrence. If General Manager Joe Douglas perceives potential successors like Justin Fields of Ohio State or Zach Wilson of Brigham Young as better long-term options, or if he succeeds in prying Watson from Houston, then Darnold — drafted third over all only three years ago — could be gone.Deshaun Watson, Texans Watson has requested a move away from Houston and, armed with a no-trade clause negotiated into the four-year extension he signed last September, can influence his destination. The Texans, when not doing things that alienate their star quarterback, have been adamant in saying they want to keep Watson. Considering he counts a bargain-rate $10.54 million against the salary cap in 2021, they have no incentive to offload him. But with Watson steadfast in his desire to leave, at some point the Texans must determine if they can remain steadfast in their desire to hold on to him — and if not, just how colossal a bounty they can extract for him.Deshaun Watson wants to leave the Texans, who are not ready (yet) to grant that wish.Credit…Eric Christian Smith/Associated PressMarcus Mariota, Raiders His lone appearance last season — when he accounted for 314 yards, including 88 rushing, in the Raiders’ Week 15 loss to the Chargers — showcased the tantalizing skills that prompted Tennessee to draft Mariota No. 2 over all in 2015. With a reasonable $10.6 million cap hit next season, Mariota may be able to parlay that single game, and some untapped promise, into a better opportunity elsewhere.Quarterbacks Who Are Unlikely to Move, but Who Knows?Derek Carr, Raiders To be clear, the Raiders have shown no inclination to trade Carr, who was the only regular-season quarterback to outduel Patrick Mahomes (and nearly did it twice). But in a division ruled by Mahomes, and with the rookie Justin Herbert of the Chargers ascending, the Raiders might be swayed to move Carr provided they were assured of a definite upgrade. Beyond possibly Watson, there aren’t many of those available.Jimmy Garoppolo, 49ers The 49ers nearly won a Super Bowl with Garoppolo and may be quite content to try to reach another again with him. But he has missed 23 games across the last three seasons, and according to overthecap.com, San Francisco could save $23.6 million by releasing or trading him. Could this be the off-season Kyle Shanahan and John Lynch get younger at the position?Drew Lock, Broncos The Broncos’ struggle to develop a successor to Peyton Manning led them most recently to Lock. His uneven second season suggested he continues to tilt on the team’s scale of tall, big-armed quarterbacks more toward Brock Osweiler than John Elway, who picked Lock in the second round in 2019. Lock would figure to be involved in any potential deal for Watson, who might be enticed by Denver’s receiving talent.Dak Prescott, Cowboys When healthy, Prescott ranks among the league’s best quarterbacks. So there is a better chance that Dallas lures Troy Aikman out of retirement than lets Prescott, recovering from a compound fracture and dislocation of his right ankle, leave in free agency. The Cowboys are still hoping to complete a long-term deal with him before March 9, the deadline for applying a franchise tag, and if the sides can’t agree, Prescott would play under the tag for a second consecutive season. Ben Roethlisberger, Steelers Roethlisberger, who turns 39 next month, told The Athletic that he would be glad to restructure a contract that next season carries a $41.25 million cap charge. That could free up money to help the Steelers retain some of their 19 unrestricted free agents, but the gesture is moot if they decide the team’s long-term prospects are better without him.Tua Tagovailoa, Dolphins It’s possible that Miami, instead of using the third overall pick to surround Tagovailoa with more offensive talent, will choose to draft his replacement instead. But the only plausible scenario in which Tagovailoa is traded this off-season involves the Texans, who would almost certainly demand his inclusion as part of any package for Watson.Quarterbacks Who Could Be Availa— NopeAaron Rodgers, Packers: Russell Wilson, Seahawks: Wilson went all Festivus on the Seahawks, airing his grievances during a recent media blitz. He lamented getting hit so frequently and, spurred by watching Tom Brady and pals power Tampa Bay to a title, indicated he would like a larger voice in personnel decisions. Both are legitimate gripes. The Seahawks know how rare Wilson is. They may appease him. But they’re not trading him.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    Vincent Jackson’s Brain Will Be Donated to C.T.E. Study

    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyVincent Jackson’s Brain Will Be Donated to C.T.E. StudyJackson, 38, a retired N.F.L. wide receiver, was found dead in a Florida hotel room on Monday.Vincent Jackson’s family donated his brain to researchers at Boston University to determine if he had C.T.E., the degenerative brain disease linked to repeated head trauma. “It’s something his family wanted to do to get answers to some of their questions,” a spokesperson for the family said.Credit…Cliff Mcbride/Getty ImagesFeb. 18, 2021, 5:06 p.m. ETThe family of Vincent Jackson, the retired three-time Pro Bowl N.F.L. wide receiver who was found dead in a Florida hotel room on Monday, donated his brain to researchers at Boston University to determine if he had chromic traumatic encephalopathy, or C.T.E., the degenerative brain disease linked to repeated head trauma.“Vincent being who he was would have wanted to help as many people as possible,” said Allison Gorrell, a spokeswoman for the Jackson family, in a phone interview Wednesday. “It’s something his family wanted to do to get answers to some of their questions.”Many unanswered questions, including his cause of death, remain about Jackson’s demise. While it could take weeks to finish an autopsy, Hillsborough County Sheriff Chad Chronister said in a radio interview on Wednesday that Jackson, 38, had health problems associated with alcoholism, which Chronister said were cited in the unreleased autopsy report. He also said the Jackson family told him that they believed that concussions may have been a factor in his behavior.Gorrell said the sheriff did not speak for the family. C.T.E. can only be diagnosed posthumously and researchers at Boston University, which houses the world’s largest brain bank devoted to cases involving the disease, said that determination can take months. The severity of a player’s C.T.E. is related to the number of years that he played football and the number of hits he endured, researchers have found.The brain bank has received a growing number of donations harvested from players who were 34 years old or younger at the time of death. More than half of those athletes had C.T.E.A married father of four, Jackson was widely admired in and out of the N.F.L. for his community service and business acumen. A 12-year N.F.L. veteran who played with the San Diego Chargers and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Jackson was voted Tampa Bay’s nominee for the Walter Payton Man of the Year Award, which recognizes community service, four years running during his five seasons there. He was a union representative in the N.F.L. Players Association and one of the named plaintiffs when the union sued the league’s owners during the 2011 lockout.After retiring from the N.F.L. in 2018 at 35, he continued to help military families through the Jackson in Action 83 Foundation. He had not played since the 2016 season. Jackson’s father served in the United States Army and Jackson and his wife, Lindsey, wrote a series of children’s books about growing up in military families. He won the Distinguished Community Advocate Award in 2018 from the Tampa Bay Sports Commission.He had been cited for his smooth transition from the N.F.L. into real estate development.According to the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office, Jackson was found at the Homewood Suites in Brandon, Fla., just a few miles east of Tampa, where hotel staff said he had been staying since Jan. 11. Jackson’s family reported that Jackson was missing on Feb. 10. Two days later, sheriffs found him at the hotel and “after assessing Jackson’s well-being,” canceled the missing persons case.A housekeeper found Jackson dead on Monday morning.Jackson was a straight-A student in high school and majored in business at Northern Colorado University, where he graduated as the school’s career leading receiver. He was also a starter on the Bears’ basketball team for two seasons, leading the team in scoring both years.The Chargers drafted Jackson in the second round in 2005, and after an injury-filled rookie year, he quickly became a mainstay of the team’s pass-first offense. He was named to the Pro Bowl in 2009, 2011, and again in 2012, his first season with the Buccaneers. He still holds the Buccaneers’ record for most receiving yards in a game, 216.During his N.F.L. career, he caught 57 touchdowns and had six seasons with more than 1,000 receiving yards.According to NFL.com, Jackson was arrested twice, in 2006 and again in 2009, for driving under the influence. After the second arrest, he was sentenced to four days in jail and five years of probation and was suspended by the league for three games.James Lofton, the Hall of Fame wide receiver, coached Jackson in San Diego and remembered Jackson as exceptionally bright and motivated. He recalled, too, when Jackson called him at 4:15 a.m. to apologize for his 2006 arrest.“We are part of society, and the same ills that get people in society get us, too,” Lofton said of N.F.L. players. “He just didn’t seem like the person who would have met a tragic death.”Greg Camarillo, a former N.F.L. receiver, was roommates with Jackson at the Chargers’ training camp in 2005 and now has a student support role in the University of San Diego athletics department. Camarillo said he was shaken by Jackson’s death and posted to Twitter several messages Monday about professional football players’ struggles in retirement.Many players, Camarillo said, have difficulty coping after they leave the N.F.L. because lose their identity and find it difficult to forge a new path without it.“It could happen to me or any former player,” Camarillo said in a phone interview Thursday. “Vince is not drastically different than anyone else, including me.”Gillian R. Brassil contributed reporting.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    Inter Milan vs. Inter Miami Is the Trademark Lawyer Derby

    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyInter vs. Inter Is the Soccer Rivalry Trademark Lawyers Can LoveA dispute over a team name could have consequences for the increasingly global soccer industry.Quick quiz: How well do you know your Inters? (Answers below.)Credit…From left, Jessica Hill/Associated Press; Tibor Illyes/EPA, via Shutterstock; Diego Vara/Reuters; Jennifer Lorenzini/ReutersFeb. 18, 2021, 2:46 p.m. ETFor more than four and a half years, David Beckham’s Major League Soccer franchise in Miami was nameless.As plans for it were made and then regularly remade, the team came to be known as Miami Beckham United — a shorthand that seemed to account for the main points of interest: city, owner, soccer. It wasn’t until the fall of 2018 that Beckham’s team was officially baptized: as Club Internacional de Fútbol Miami, or Inter Miami for short.The decision to trade one common soccer club name, United, for another, Inter, was hardly groundbreaking. North American soccer teams often copy the names of Europe’s legacy clubs in an effort to project credibility in the sport’s culture. In M.L.S., for example — a league that literally has the word “soccer” in its name — there are 14 Football Clubs. There is also a Club de Foot (in Montreal), a Sporting (in Kansas City), a Real (in Salt Lake City) and three Uniteds.Beckham’s choice of name, though, immediately caught the attention of one entity with a particularly keen interest: the Italian powerhouse Internazionale Milano, or Inter Milan for short. The Italian team had laid claim to “Inter” in a filing with the United States Patent and Trademark Office in 2014.Almost immediately, the fight for the name was on.Within months, Major League Soccer, which owns and controls Inter Miami as a single entity, filed a notice of opposition to Inter Milan’s trademark registration, which still had not been awarded, with the government’s Trademark Trial and Appeal Board. The sides are now in a legal battle over who gets to use the stand-alone word “Inter” in the United States.Late last year, a panel of three judges rejected — for a third and final time — M.L.S.’s claim that an Inter Milan trademark would be confusing to the consumer.While there is no danger that the dispute will force Inter Miami to change its name, an Inter Milan victory would complicate the Florida club’s branding, marketing and merchandising for years to come. If it ever used the word Inter as a separate moniker, for example, it could be sued for trademark infringement.Conversely, if M.L.S. prevails, Inter Milan’s ambitions to monetize the North American market — an increasingly appealing set of consumers for a number of top European leagues and clubs — could be frustrated as well.In a statement, Inter Miami said that “Inter” was a “commonly used term” and that the club was “not in jeopardy of changing its trademark-approved name or marks.”Inter Milan had hoped to ward off litigation by talking with M.L.S. about finding a solution to the dispute, according to a person familiar with the team’s side of the case. Those talks have continued and may yield a resolution; one option could be a joint commercial venture in the United States, or even a royalty fee. A spokeswoman for Inter Milan declined to comment on the case.Beyond its particular arguments, the fight over the use of the word “Inter” in the United States presents a complication to the common practice of importing team names. If American teams are not secure in the commercial rights to their own names, it could hamper their business and growth. Soccer’s rapid globalization, which now includes annual barnstorming tours, overseas offices and even attempts by European leagues to take domestic competitions outside their borders, has raised not only the stakes, but also the potential risks for confusion.Credit…David Santiago/Miami Herald, via Associated PressCredit…Daniele Mascolo/ReutersFlags are one thing. Inter Miami’s owner, David Beckham, is a brand all his own.Credit…Marcio Jose Sanchez/Associated Press“The big picture is this sense that the Inter trademark application in the U.S. is kind of the next step in the evolution of the global brand for soccer clubs and the effective invasion of the U.S.,” said Steven Bank, a professor of sports law at U.C.L.A. “If Inter can claim the term ‘Inter,’ and that’s all they’ve asked for, then Real Madrid could claim ‘Real’ and Manchester United, in theory, could claim ‘United.’”That means the implications of Inter vs. Inter could be dizzying. Could one of the English Uniteds lay claim to that name on other continents, arguing that it was the first United or, as it were, the most United? Could Sporting Clube de Portugal challenge Sporting Kansas City? Could Real Madrid sue Real Salt Lake?Would the bigger, older clubs even have a case? In American trademark law, laying claim to a name first carries more weight than the strength of your brand.This could all have been avoided by coming up with new names, of course. And that was what M.L.S. did when it first took the field in the 1990s under more traditional American-style city-nickname conventions. But as the league evolved, nearly every team opted for a European-style label: Atlanta United, F.C. Cincinnati, Los Angeles F.C. In January, the Montreal Impact rebranded as C.F. Montréal.“Neither team has a very distinctive mark,” David Placek, president and founder of Lexicon, a company specializing in naming and trademarking new brands, said of Inter Milan and Inter Miami. “They’re using generic terms. It’s just pure imitation. ‘It sounds kind of European, so let’s have that kind of panache.’”Placek argued teams would be better off, legally and otherwise, by choosing an original name. “Create their own distinctive personality,” he said, “rather than try to imitate another team.”Quiz time: Which Inter is which?[embedded content]The outcome of a ruling in Inter vs. Inter, though, could be messy.As soon as next month, Football Club Internazionale Milano, as the Italian team is officially named, plans to rebrand itself as Inter Milano to pursue new global branding and marketing opportunities. An apparent attempt to modernize the club’s name and look, following the example of its Italian league rival Juventus, it is an expensive undertaking, and one unlikely to be embraced by traditional fans. But it helps explain the club’s insistence on strenuously defending its existing trademark claim.The Italian team claimed the term “Inter” with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in 2014, two years before its current Chinese owners bought control of it. The application covered a wide range of services and products, from staging soccer games to branded pajamas, dog leashes and yo-yos.By 2019, however, the mark still had not been awarded because Inter Milan’s application initially had been deemed confusingly close to the word “Enter,” which was trademarked by a different company. That’s when Major League Soccer challenged the claim with the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board.M.L.S. has argued that the term “Inter” is merely descriptive, and that trademarking it creates a likelihood of confusion. After all, there are dozens of soccer clubs worldwide named Inter, many of them in the professional ranks and at least two others in the United States: a minor league team in Nashville and a youth club in Atlanta. It is likely that most of those Inters were named as a homage to Inter Milan, a three-time European champion, but that, M.L.S. argues, doesn’t necessarily give Inter Milan the rights to the name.So far, only the likelihood of confusion has been adjudicated. M.L.S., which does not have a prior claim to “Inter” but argues that other U.S.-based entities used the word before Inter Milan attempted to trademark it, has been denied in its claim three times.A trial, which will hinge solely on whether “Inter” is a descriptive term and therefore beyond trademarking, will not happen until 2022 at the earliest. “I think M.L.S. has a very good basis for asserting that the mark is descriptive, at least in connection with the soccer services,” said Laura Franco, a trademark lawyer.If Inter Milan’s claim survives the opposition and it is awarded the trademark, however, it would only then be able to sue Inter Miami for specific infringements. But such claims would rest on proving a likelihood of confusion, which is murky territory. Can an M.L.S. team with pink and black colors be confused with an Italian one that plays in black and blue? Especially when they play in different competitions, and on different continents?“Just because Inter Milan may own the registration for ‘Inter’ and Inter Miami may use ‘Inter Miami’ doesn’t mean that there is going to be consumer confusion,” Franco said.Tariq Panja contributed reporting.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    Tim Tebow Retires From Baseball

    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyAt the End of a Winding Path, Tim Tebow Retires From BaseballThe Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback turned Mets minor leaguer has ended his unlikely run at being a two-sport athlete.Tim Tebow never found the same success professionally that he did in college football. But he drew attention at every stop.Credit…Vera Nieuwenhuis/Associated PressFeb. 17, 2021, 8:57 p.m. ETEnding one of the more surprising — and unlikely — attempts at a two-sport career, Tim Tebow, the superstar college quarterback turned N.F.L. curiosity turned minor-league baseball player, announced his retirement from professional sports on Wednesday.“I loved every minute of the journey, but at this time I feel called in other directions,” Tebow said in a statement released by the Mets, who signed him to a minor-league deal in 2016. “I never want to be partially in on anything. I always want to be 100 percent in on whatever I choose.”While Tebow never went beyond Class AAA in baseball, he drew a great deal of attention, because of both his exploits on the football field and his charitable endeavors. He is the author of several books and has done missionary work around the world. He was often polarizing, though, with fans of both sports regularly disagreeing about his value and potential, as well as his outspokenness as a Christian. But wherever he went, Tebow drew a crowd.I never want to be partially in on anything. I always want to be 100% in on whatever I choose. Thank you again for everyone’s support of this awesome journey in baseball, I’ll always cherish my time as a Met! #LGM— Tim Tebow (@TimTebow) February 18, 2021
    “It has been a pleasure to have Tim in our organization, as he’s been a consummate professional during his four years with the Mets,” said Sandy Alderson, the president of the Mets. “By reaching the Triple-A level in 2019, he far exceeded expectations when he first entered the system in 2016, and he should be very proud of his accomplishments.”Tebow, 33, showed tremendous athleticism at every stop of his journey, but after a standout career at Florida, during which he won the 2007 Heisman Trophy and two national championships, he never found the right fit professionally.A first-round pick of the Denver Broncos in 2010, he struggled to make his run-heavy approach to playing quarterback work in the N.F.L., but he did manage a surprising close to the 2011 season. After going 7-4 as a starter, he shocked the sport by leading the Broncos to an upset of the Pittsburgh Steelers in the wild-card round of the playoffs.Tebow’s peak as a professional athlete came after the 2011 N.F.L. season when he led the Denver Broncos to an upset of the Pittsburgh Steelers in the wild-card round of the playoffs.Credit…Aaron Ontiveroz/The Denver Post, via Associated PressThat success was short-lived, however, as he was traded to the Jets before the next season. After arriving to much fanfare, he threw just eight passes for the Jets over the course of two games and was released. Attempts to catch on with the New England Patriots and the Philadelphia Eagles went nowhere.A year after his release from the Eagles in 2015, Tebow, who had not played organized baseball since his junior year in high school, was signed by the Mets.“This decision was strictly driven by baseball,” Alderson insisted at the time of the signing. “This was not something that was driven by marketing considerations or anything of the sort.”Tebow homered in his first professional at-bat, but over all he hit .223 in four seasons, with 18 home runs. In 2019, he hit .163 with four homers for Class AAA Syracuse.In announcing his retirement, he acknowledged the Mets fans who had pulled for him in his quest to join the ranks of Bo Jackson and Deion Sanders, athletes who reached the pinnacle in both football and baseball.“Thank you again for everyone’s support of this awesome journey in baseball,” he said. “I’ll always cherish my time as a Met.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    Jaguars' Hiring of Chris Doyle Called 'Unacceptable' by Fritz Pollard Alliance

    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyDiversity Group Calls Jaguars’ Hiring of Assistant Coach ‘Simply Unacceptable’The Fritz Pollard Alliance criticized the addition of Chris Doyle, who was accused of mistreatment of Black players at the University of Iowa, to Urban Meyer’s staff in Jacksonville.Chris Doyle in 2018 at the University of Iowa, where he was the football team’s strength and conditioning coach.Credit…Charlie Neibergall/Associated PressFeb. 12, 2021Updated 9:36 p.m. ETAn organization that promotes diversity in the N.F.L. on Friday criticized the Jacksonville Jaguars’ recent hiring of Chris Doyle, who left the University of Iowa’s football staff last year after a number of current and former Hawkeyes players said he had fostered a culture of bullying and racism.A statement from the Fritz Pollard Alliance, which is named for the first Black head coach in the N.F.L., said the Jaguars’ decision to make Doyle their director of sports performance was “simply unacceptable.”“Doyle’s departure from the University of Iowa reflected a tenure riddled with poor judgment and mistreatment of Black players,” Rod Graves, the executive director of the Fritz Pollard Alliance, said in the statement. “His conduct should be as disqualifying for the N.F.L. as it was for University of Iowa.”Doyle, who was Iowa’s strength and conditioning coach, reached a separation agreement with the university in June, ending two decades of work there.The Jaguars announced on Thursday that Doyle had joined the staff of Urban Meyer, who was named Jacksonville’s head coach last month. Meyer, who won two college national championships as the head coach at Florida and one at Ohio State, has not coached since 2018 and has never worked in the N.F.L. before.The hiring of Doyle, who is white, comes at a time of intense scrutiny of the N.F.L.’s hiring practices and questions about whether minority candidates for coaching jobs have equal opportunities to be hired.“I’ve known Chris for close to 20 years,” Meyer said on Thursday when questioned about hiring someone who had been accused of mistreating Black athletes. Doyle was the strength coach at the University of Utah in the late 1990s, a few years before Meyer was hired as the head coach there.“Urban Meyer’s statement, ‘I’ve known Chris for close to 20 years,’ reflects the good ol’ boy network that is precisely the reason there is such a disparity in employment opportunities for Black coaches,” Graves said in the statement.Neither the N.F.L. nor the Jaguars responded to a request for comment on the Fritz Pollard Alliance’s statement.During a news conference last week, N.F.L. Commissioner Roger Goodell said that he was not satisfied with the rate at which coaches of color have been hired in the N.F.L., which has 32 teams.“It wasn’t what we expected,” he said of the diversity in the round of hirings after the 2020 season, “and it’s not what we expect going forward.”Of the seven head coaches hired since the end of the regular season, just two were nonwhite. Last year one of five head coaching jobs went to a minority candidate, and the year before just one in eight.Over the last three years 80 percent of head coaching jobs have gone to white candidates, though players of color made up 69.4 percent of the N.F.L. this season, according to the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport.After the Jaguars hired Meyer and General Manager Trent Baalke, who are both white, last month, Graves praised the organization for interviewing several minority candidates and for seeking input from the Fritz Pollard Alliance.“I cannot argue that the process didn’t meet the standard of fair, open and competitive,” Graves told The Florida Times-Union.The hiring of Doyle, however, raised issues beyond the N.F.L.’s commitment to diverse hiring.Before Doyle left Iowa, Emmanuel Rugamba, a former Hawkeyes defensive back, gave multiple examples of the coach demeaning players with negative racial stereotypes. Rugamba said in a tweet that one day after a Black player walked away from Doyle, the coach said, “Why you walking wit all that swagger I’ll put you back on the streets.”James Daniels, a Chicago Bears offensive lineman and a former Hawkeye, tweeted over the summer: “There are too many racial disparities in the Iowa football program. Black players have been treated unfairly for far too long.”Doyle also presided over an off-season workout in 2011 that resulted in the hospitalization of 13 players.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    J.J. Watt Released by Texans

    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTexans Release J.J. Watt After He Asks to LeaveThe defensive star said he wants to compete for championships near the end of his career.J.J. Watt left the field after his final game as a Texan.Credit…Carmen Mandato/Getty ImagesFeb. 12, 2021Updated 4:29 p.m. ETThe Houston Texans released the three-time defensive player of the year J.J. Watt on Friday after he asked to leave the team.“I have sat down with the McNair family and I have asked them for my release, and we have mutually agreed to part ways at this time,” he said in a video posted to Twitter. “I’m excited and looking forward to a new opportunity.”Houston, I wanted you to hear this directly from me… pic.twitter.com/YqT3P6Lb6l— JJ Watt (@JJWatt) February 12, 2021
    Watt will become a free agent, and even at 31 should still be in demand by teams seeking a pass rusher.After making the playoffs in four of five seasons, the Texans collapsed to 4-12 in 2020. Watt has expressed a desire to play for a contending team in the twilight of his career.“I don’t think it’s any secret that I don’t have 10 years left in this league,” Watt told ESPN in November. “I’m not looking to rebuild. I’m looking to go after a championship, and that’s what I want to do.”Like most bad teams, the Texans must decide whether to try to fix things quickly or go for a complete rebuild. The team has said it would not trade its star quarterback Deshaun Watson, but reports continue to swirl that they are shopping him. Watt would have been paid $17.5 million had the Texans retained him this coming season.Watt was drafted No. 11 overall in 2011 out of Wisconsin. At 6-foot-5 and nearly 300 pounds, he has been a fearsome presence on the defensive line and an elite pass rusher, including four seasons with 15 or more sacks. He was one of only three defensive players unanimously selected to the N.F.L.’s all-decade team for the 2010s, along with Von Miller of the Broncos and Aaron Donald of the Rams.He has five Pro Bowl selections, but has had injury problems in recent years. He did play 16 games this past season, but had only five sacks with the struggling Texans. He has 101 sacks in 10 seasons, nearly double the next highest total in Texans history.Although the Texans had some good years in his 10-season run with them, the championship he desires eluded him and his team never advanced past the divisional round of the playoffs.It has been a rough couple of months for Houston sports teams. In January, the Rockets traded the former most valuable player James Harden to the Nets, and the Astros lost the former World Series Most Valuable Player George Springer to the Blue Jays in free agency.Besides his three defensive player of the year awards, the last in 2015, Watt won the Walter Payton man of the year award in 2017 for his efforts to raise millions for relief after Hurricane Harvey.“Simply put, there has been no person in the past decade who has made a greater impact on the Texans organization than J.J. Watt,” team owner Janice McNair said in a statement.Watt expressed his sentiments toward Houston fans on Friday. “The way you guys have treated me — except draft night, you guys booed me on draft night — but every day after that you treated me like family.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    Soccer Isn’t Blameless in Its Culture of Abuse

    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyRory Smith On SoccerSoccer Isn’t Blameless in Its Culture of AbuseLeagues and teams have urged Twitter and Facebook to address the unfiltered hatred spewed on their platforms. But the game indulges, and sometimes even directs, that same outrage.Mike Dean, Anthony Martial, Yan Dhanda and Lauren James have all endured abuse from fans this season. Just not for the same reasons.Credit…Jon Super, Peter Powell, AP, AMA/Getty ImagesFeb. 12, 2021, 1:45 p.m. ETThis time, it was Yan Dhanda. A few days ago, it was Axel Tuanzebe and Anthony Martial. Before that, it had been Alex Jankewitz and Romaine Sawyers. It happened to Lauren James, and to her brother, Reece, too. So pernicious, so constant is soccer’s problem with racist abuse that it is, at times, hard to keep up.Almost all of these cases echo what Dhanda experienced on Wednesday night: The names and the details can be changed, but the themes are the same.That evening, the 22-year-old Dhanda played for his team, Swansea City, in an F.A. Cup match against Manchester City. Swansea lost, 3-1. After the game, Dhanda checked his Instagram account. And there, waiting for him, was a racist, abusive private message.The incident was reported to the South Wales police. Both Swansea and Manchester City condemned the abuse, and pledged to aid the investigation. Various voices from within soccer offered their sympathy and support for Dhanda, one of only a handful of players of South Asian descent at the highest level of the game.This is what happens, every single time. Sometimes, the target of the abuse is sufficiently high profile that it catches the public’s attention. Sometimes, the player is not. Sometimes the news media calls for action. Sometimes, it does not. Sometimes, the culprit is charged or punished. Sometimes, they are not.That these incidents keep coming — there will be another this weekend, and the weekend after that, and on and on, the sport sinking ever lower but somehow never finding the bottom — is abundant proof that following the same playbook is no longer enough. All of the club statements and official condemnations and well-meaning hashtags do nothing whatsoever to stanch the flow of abuse.“They always get away with it,” Chelsea’s Antonio Rüdiger said last year after his claim that he was racially abused in a Premier League game yielded no punishments.Credit…Eddie Keogh/ReutersA sense of soccer’s powerlessness is, slowly, dawning on the sport. The game’s authorities in England — and across Europe — have launched and relaunched various campaigns in recent months, an attempt to demonstrate, particularly in the aftermath of last year’s Black Lives Matter protests, that this is an issue they are taking seriously.This week, they went a step further. In a letter signed by representatives of the Premier League, the Football League, the Football Association, the bodies representing players, coaches and referees, as well as the anti-discrimination charity Kick It Out, and sent to Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey, the chief executives of Facebook and Twitter, soccer’s power brokers called on the social media giants to “take responsibility” for the hatred published on their platforms.They were right to do so. Soccer is not the first, or by any means the most important, field of human endeavor that has found social media companies troublingly slow, if not downright unwilling, to take on both the promulgation of hate speech and some liability for the toxic content their forums enable.Twitter and Facebook — the owner of Instagram — are not merely the stages on which this battle is being fought; they are, inadvertently or not, helping to arm one side. What they could do is, perhaps, more complex than it might first appear; abandoning the right to anonymity, for example, could prove disastrous for those who rely on it to express opposition to oppressive regimes around the globe. But the companies have the capacity to block accounts, to filter content, to more readily share the data of offenders with the police. It is not too ambitious to ask them to do something.And yet there is an irony in soccer’s appeal to Silicon Valley. Social media has, for years, abdicated its responsibility for policing even the most discriminatory content by claiming — effectively — that it is the conduit, not the source. Racism, in that line of thinking, is not a social media problem; it is a societal one. It is precisely the same comforting logic that soccer has used for so long to excuse its own inaction.West Brom reported the racial abuse of Romaine Sawyers to the police. Within days, they had made an arrest.Credit…Rui Vieira/Associated PressRacism is, of course, not just a problem in soccer, just as it is not merely a problem on social media. There is not something unique in soccer fans that makes them more prone to racism. Soccer fans are just people — same as people who like gardening or “Star Trek” or cats — and as long as some people are racist, some soccer fans will be.The same is true of social media users, and yet in neither case does that quite tell the whole story. In the case of social media, it is not just that the anonymity of the screen gives free rein to users who wish to spread their sincere and repulsive hatred, but that its timbre incentivizes the breaking of taboos: edgelords seeking clout by saying the unsayable.It is the same for-the-lulz culture that gave the internet message board 4Chan such an outsize influence on our political and cultural lives; it created the sense, as Amanda Mull put it in The Atlantic — in a piece, oddly, about viral videos of disgusting foods — that “everything on the internet is a joke until it’s not anymore.”In the case of soccer, it is not that the sport itself is a magnet for racists. It is that it provides rich soil in which all sorts of weeds can grow.Its inherent tribalism can generate passion, loyalty and love, but it also gives root to hatred, anger and despair. At a time when Britain has a prime minister whose past use of racist language did not prevent his rise to the nation’s highest office, when the country has spent five long years in a culture war stoked by anti-immigrant sentiment, and when the population has spent months locked indoors, growing frustrated and afraid, it is perhaps a sad inevitability that soccer should be the vent for people’s darkest, angriest thoughts.But if that sounds as if it is absolving soccer of blame — a reiteration of the idea that racism is a societal problem, not a sporting one — it is not. Soccer might not be able to solve racism, but it can certainly address the more general culture of abuse it has not just allowed to fester, but also been actively complicit in cultivating, for decades.Mike Dean, one of England’s most experienced — and therefore least popular — referees, will not take charge of a game this weekend. He has asked to be excused from Premier League duty after his family received death threats on their private social media accounts after his decision to send off West Ham’s Tomas Soucek in the dying minutes of a draw with Fulham last week. (Those threats, too, have been reported to the police.)There is a connection here to the racism experienced by Dhanda, Sawyers, James and the countless others, just as there is to the sexist abuse directed at the former England international Karen Carney by Leeds United fans for daring to venture an opinion with which they happened to disagree.The link is that soccer indulges and, at times, even directs abuse. It can be obvious — the official Leeds Twitter account, and then the club’s owner, drew its fans’ attention to Carney’s comments in what was a fairly brazen attempt to gather the pitchforks — or it can be more subtle.Mike Dean’s decision to send off West Ham’s Tomas Soucek in a game against Fulham led to death threats against the referee’s family members.Credit…Pool photo by Clive RoseAll those times managers pin the blame for defeat on a referee’s marginal call. All those times fans single out a player as solely responsible for disappointment. All those times the news media declares a club that has lost a couple of games to be in crisis, all those clickbait headlines and opinions designed specifically to provoke, all those hate-reads: They are not death threats, and they are not racist abuse, but they help to sustain the environment in which such threats thrive.It is here that soccer is responsible, here that soccer — and the industry that surrounds it, of which, yes, we as journalists and consumers are a part — has some agency. It is right for soccer to contact the social media giants. It is right for it to redouble its efforts to convey a lack of tolerance for racism, sexism or death threats against referees.But to give it all the best chance of working, the sport must also seek to lower its own internal temperature a little, to be conscious of the roads it allows itself to be drawn down, to ask if it is necessary to treat defeat as disaster, if it could do a little more to inculcate a healthier environment, if it must continue to accept abuse as the dark consequence of passion.Worth a ShotRobin Olsen probably thought Bruno Fernandes, far right, couldn’t beat him from there. Olsen was wrong.Credit…Pool photo by Michael ReganIt is barely a movement. It is not a feint, not really: just the slightest hint of one. A quick, hardly perceptible twitch of Bruno Fernandes’s body was enough to make Tom Davies shift, an inch or two, no more, to his right. A beat before, Everton’s defense had blocked off all of the paths, all of the channels. And now, all of a sudden, Fernandes had all the space in the world.No player in the Premier League has an attacking output quite so impressive as Fernandes, Manchester United’s slow-burn talisman: Combine goals and assists and chances created and key passes played, and Fernandes is the most effective creative player in England. His team, it should be no surprise, has scored more goals than any other in the top division, too.His wonderful goal in last weekend’s 3-3 draw with Everton offered, perhaps, a clear example of the relationship between those two things. It is not just the fact that Fernandes is sufficiently talented that he could try it — his execution was brilliant, the artful curve and dip of his shot, carrying it up and over and past Robin Olsen, the Everton goalkeeper — but the fact that he did try it.There is a dogma in modern soccer that actively discourages shooting from range. It is, in the current, data-suffused thinking, deeply inefficient. Players are encouraged to work the ball relentlessly into the most promising areas: If no gap for a killer pass appears, it is better to turn around, go backward, choose another angle of attack. Patience is pre-eminent. Trying your luck from distance is seen as the final resort, a last refuge for the damned.None of that is wrong, but it does ignore one simple — but crucial — truth of the game. Against a well-organized defense (which is, these days, most of them), a team cannot always wait to find gaps; it has to create them, too. They appear when a defensive line is drawn from its shape. And, at the risk of oversimplifying, the traditional way of doing that is to coax a player into breaking ranks to close someone down.A refusal to shoot from range, then, creates a checkmate. The defending team has no reason to break its shape, because it knows the attacking team does not want to shoot from distance. The attacking team does not want to shoot from distance, so finds that gaps tend not to appear.Fernandes — and to some extent his teammate, Paul Pogba — proves that it is worth indulging the inefficiency. Not simply because they are talented enough to make those shots count, but because the very prospect of those shots forces opponents into action. Davies had to close down Fernandes to stop him from shooting. And in that moment, the line broke, and all of a sudden, Fernandes had all the space in the world.Traveling From ReasonAtlético Bucharest? Luis Suárez and his teammates will play Chelsea in Romania.Credit…Jose Breton/Associated PressIt is hard to pick the best example to encapsulate the absurdity of it all. It feels, at the moment, as if it is probably the fact that Atlético Madrid will travel farther for its “home” leg of its Champions League round-of-16 match against Chelsea — to be held in Bucharest, Romania — than it will for the “away” leg, currently scheduled for London.But that could be superseded in the next few days, according to The Times of London, by RB Leipzig’s meeting Liverpool in the Hungarian capital, Budapest, for its home leg and then, three weeks later, playing the return leg in … the Hungarian capital, Budapest.It was inevitable, really, that at some point the coronavirus-related travel restrictions that entangle Europe would catch up with soccer’s pan-continental competitions. In a way, it is encouraging that at this point it is only the games involving English teams that are affected. (Arsenal’s trip to Benfica has been rerouted to Rome, Manchester United’s visit to Real Sociedad is now a journey to Turin, and Manchester City will play Borussia Monchengladbach in Budapest, at least once.)This raises several pertinent questions. First, how can you justifiably apply the away goals rule if nobody is really at home? Second, does this not impact the integrity of the competition? And third — a recurring theme, where soccer’s response to the pandemic is concerned — did nobody stop and think about this stuff before it happened?It is too late, not to mention too expensive, to consider an alternative format for both the Champions League and the Europa League, similar to the one-and-done tournaments in Portugal and Germany last summer, but it is hard to avoid the suspicion that would have been the sensible approach to take in the circumstances.Both competitions will endure, rolling with the punches as best they can, testament to soccer’s indefatigable determination just to keep on going. But the more complex they become, the more Byzantine and contorted the measures required to keep them on the road have to be, the more you wonder if it is worth it.CorrespondenceThe issue of identity — and the idea of a soccer club standing for something — seems to have touched a nerve. Benjamin Livingston cited the extremely pertinent example of West Ham, a club with a proud tradition of playing in a certain way but currently enjoying its best season in years thanks, in part, to a style that deviates (a little) from that.“It’s not that I think they’re playing bad football,” he wrote, “but it’s funny how no one seems to talk about the ‘West Ham Way’ when they’re doing well. I think most fans just want to win games.”That is true, of course: Victory masks quite a lot of sins (not that West Ham is guilty of sinning). But not always, and not forever, as Fernando Gama neatly encapsulated. “A single loss can wreak havoc if there’s no playing style,” he wrote, citing an example that in no way exposes anyone to one of the fiercest, most deep-rooted enmities in sports.“Boca Juniors has won the two [Argentine] national tournaments in 2020. River Plate has won none. Yet Boca has been constantly facing upheaval, divisiveness and infighting. The fans are always discontent, and the ex-players in charge of the football section of the club at war with the players. There are many reasons for that, but I believe most of it is down to the lack of a clear philosophy.”At clubs like Boca Juniors, the only style that matters is the one that produces trophies.Credit…Pool photo by Andres Larrovere“Not even winning championships can stabilize a club without one,” he continued. “A single game can completely destroy the club. Having an identity seems to be not only a good thing to cushion defeats, but has become also important enough to be on equal terms (at least) to winning championships.”This is the point I wanted to make last week, but could not quite reach. As a consequence, I believe I now have to hand control of this newsletter over to Fernando. It’s been a good run.Andrew Russell, meanwhile, raises an important question. “Even after watching the Amazon series on Leeds and Manchester City, it is not clear to me how anyone would explain the respective philosophies of Marcelo Bielsa and Pep Guardiola. How is an ordinary fan to know which philosophies are effective, or even profound, and which are hand-waving and hot air?”It is, admittedly, hard to tell. I wonder if, to some extent, the proof of the pudding is in the eating: Does the team have an identifiable, characteristic style? But maybe, in a way, it doesn’t matter too much. The key thing with a philosophy is that the fans can believe in it, in a way that they can’t with, say, José Mourinho’s approach — he has a “distinct” philosophy, too, as Sam Clark mentioned, but one that fans do not appreciate.That is, in part, because of its inherent caution, but also — to refer back to Fernando — because it is innately utilitarian: Mourinho’s style looks to results for validation, and therefore is exposed as soon as results turn.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More