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    Women’s World Cup Contenders

    The Women’s World Cup, which opens this week, is the biggest in its 32-year history, but it may also be the most open field the tournament has seen.While plenty of the 32 teams descending on Australia and New Zealand probably have modest ambitions for the next month, it is not a stretch to say that almost half of the field might regard themselves as serious title contenders. (Some more accurately than others.) These 10 countries are the most likely to stick around all the way until the end.United StatesForward Trinity Rodman is one of 14 U.S. players headed to their first World Cup.Phelan M. Ebenhack/Associated PressTwo things can be true at once. By common consensus, Vlatko Andonovski’s team arrived in New Zealand as the favorite to win the tournament. It has the aura of experience, the dazzling jolt of youth and the deep bedrock of talent to lift a third straight World Cup. It has a psychological edge, too: It has been the game’s superpower for so long that respect can manifest as awe.At the same time, the undisputed primacy the United States has enjoyed for more than a decade has never been more fragile. There is a risk that this squad will fail the Goldilocks test: Some players are too old, some are too young, and so perhaps none are just right. Europe’s major nations have closed the gap. In the space of a month last year, the Americans lost to England, Spain and Germany. The United States has the squad to emerge as champion. But for the first time in some time, it is not alone in that.EnglandRachel Daly started at left back in the Euros last summer. Now she is England’s most potent striker.David Rogers/Getty ImagesExpectation hangs heavy on Sarina Wiegman’s England. The Lionesses won the European Championship on home soil last summer, the team’s first major honor, and followed that with a victory in the Finalissima — a game between the European and South American champions — earlier this year. Winning the World Cup would be the natural conclusion to a trajectory that has been on a steep upward curve for 10 years.Fate, though, has intervened. Wiegman has lost her captain, Leah Williamson; her most creative player, Fran Kirby; and her most potent attacking threat, Beth Mead, to injury. Millie Bright made the squad but is still, strictly speaking, recovering from knee surgery. Wiegman is an astute enough coach — and she has enough talent at her disposal — to disguise those losses. But she will be doing so on the fly.AustraliaSam Kerr will shoulder the hopes of one of the host nations.William West/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIt is difficult not to see the co-host less as “Australia” and more as “Sam Kerr and Guests.” At 30, Kerr, the Chelsea striker, may well be the finest player in the world. She is a totem for her country. She is the face of the tournament, the person expected to deliver what she has referred to as a “Cathy Freeman moment.” She is the star on which Australia’s hopes hang.That assessment is not quite true. Tony Gustavsson’s squad is drawn largely from the major leagues of Europe and the N.W.S.L. In Caitlin Foord, Hayley Raso and Alanna Kennedy, the supporting cast is a strong one. Its momentum, too, is considerable: Australia has won eight of its last nine games, including a milestone victory against England. Kerr will have to deliver, of course, but she is far from alone.The NetherlandsThe Netherlands lost to the United States in the World Cup final in 2019. Its path runs through the Americans again.Rob Engelaar/EPA, via ShutterstockIn 2019, the Dutch emerged as the standard-bearer for Europe’s coming force, an advertisement for the game’s shifting power base. They fell agonizingly short, losing to the United States in the final. Progress since then has been patchy, as they have lost Wiegman, who left to coach England, before falling in the quarterfinals of the European Championship last summer.The core of the team that made the final four years ago — Danielle van de Donk, Jackie Groenen, Jill Roord, Lieke Martens — remains, and the Dutch have the talent to make a deep run once more. Two things stand in their way: the absence of striker Vivianne Miedema through injury and an unfortunate draw for the group stage. The Dutch face the Americans early; defeat in that game will most likely mean a tougher route for the remainder of their stay.CanadaChristine Sinclair has played 323 games for Canada.LM Otero/Associated PressThe Canadians have made precious little impact on the latter rounds of the World Cup in the last two decades, extending their stay beyond the first knockout round only once. Yet even that, on home soil in 2015, lasted only until the quarterfinals.In many ways, it is hard to see that changing this time around. Christine Sinclair is 40; Janine Beckie is out, another victim of women’s soccer’s A.C.L. epidemic; Canada has won only one of its last five games and has been drawn in the same group as Australia. But there is a resilience to this team that should not be underappreciated: It is only two years, after all, since Canada — completely overlooked then as now — won gold at the Tokyo Olympics.BrazilMarta is headed to her sixth World Cup with Brazil.Ueslei Marcelino/ReutersOn some level, Brazil’s stay in this World Cup will be seen as Marta’s valedictory tour: a sixth and (presumably) final tournament turned into a lap of honor for a 37-year-old player regarded by some as the best of all time.It is hard, certainly, to believe that it will end with Marta’s repeating Lionel Messi’s trick and finally winning the honor that would mean more to her than any other. Brazil’s squad is not as strong as previous editions, and none of them were strong enough to overcome the superpowers of North America and Europe, either. Still, in Pia Sundhage, Brazil has a canny, adroit coach, and the likes of Debinha, Kerolin and Geyse mean Marta may not have to bear the load alone.SpainAlexia Putellas of Spain is the reigning world player of the year.Steve Luciano/Associated PressMore than anyone — even England — Spain should be the biggest threat to the United States’ crown this summer. Its national team is, after all, based largely on the Barcelona team that has become the dominant force in European club soccer. Alexia Putellas, while most likely not fully recovered from the knee injury that kept her out of the Euros last year, is the reigning world player of the year. Spain has lost just once in a year.The problem is that Spain has been engulfed by civil war between the players and the country’s soccer federation since last summer. Though an uneasy truce has been called — allowing some of the 15 players who had demanded the dismissal of the coach, Jorge Vilda, to return — the effects are still being felt. A dozen players are still missing, and Vilda must find a way to instill a team spirit in a squad consisting of both rebels and their replacements.FranceWendie Renard, center, and Kadidiatou Diani had threatened not to play for France under its former coach.William West/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe Spanish might have had the least ideal preparation for a major tournament, but kudos to the French for giving them a run for their money. Corinne Diacre, the longstanding coach who had lost the faith of a considerable number of her players, was finally ousted in March. She was replaced by Hervé Renard, a globe-trotting coach of some renown but absolutely no experience in the women’s game.He has, at least, restored some familiar faces to the squad: Wendie Renard and Kadidiatou Diani, both of whom had refused to play under Diacre, are back. Amandine Henry, the vastly experienced midfielder, had been recalled, too, only to suffer a calf injury that will keep her out of the tournament. France’s hopes, now, rest on the new coach’s being able to get the best out of a team he has only just encountered.GermanyLena Oberdorf and Germany will enter the World Cup off a run of puzzling results.Christof Stache/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIf anything at all is certain about this tournament, it is that the Germans will reach the quarterfinals. In eight attempts, they have never failed to do so, and given a kindly group draw — Morocco, Colombia and South Korea — there is little reason to believe they will not make the last eight again.Whether Coach Martina Voss-Tecklenburg can steer her team any further, though, is open to question. Germany has a well-balanced squad — two outstanding goalkeepers, the emerging star power of Lena Oberdorf, the creativity of Lina Magull, the goals of Svenja Huth and Alexandra Popp — and finished as runner-up in last summer’s European Championship. But its form is sputtering: It has lost to Brazil and Zambia in the last couple of months and just squeezed past Vietnam in a warm-up match last month.SwedenKosovare Asllani and Sweden finished third at the 2019 World Cup and second at the Tokyo Olympics.Kimmo Brandt/EPA, via ShutterstockNobody ever thinks about Sweden. Sweden might have one silver and three bronze medals to show for its eight previous World Cups, and it might be a reliable force in the European Championship, but the operating assumption is always that Sweden is not a genuine contender.It is worth pointing out, then, that Sweden not only has the likes of Fridolina Rolfo, Stina Blackstenius and Hanna Bennison to call on, but that it made the semifinals of the Euros last year, and it swatted aside the United States on the way to the Olympic final two years ago. Sweden is a threat. But nobody ever thinks about Sweden. More

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    Why Does Every Women’s World Cup City Have Two Names?

    A concerted effort to say Indigenous names correctly, and tell the stories behind them, will show up in stadiums in New Zealand and Australia.When soccer fans land in New Zealand this month ahead of the Women’s World Cup, they may find themselves welcomed not to Auckland or Wellington, but to “Tāmaki Makaurau” (“Tah-mah-key Ma-kow-row”) or “Te Whanganui-a-Tara” (“Tay Fung-a-noo-ee a Tah-rah”).Those names — what the cities are called in the country’s Indigenous language, te reo Māori — are reflected in the official documents for this year’s Women’s World Cup, which has placed Indigenous languages and imagery unapologetically at the forefront.Every city that will host a match is listed with its English and Indigenous names, and FIFA announced this month that it would fly First Nations and Māori flags in every stadium. The effort came after soccer and government officials in the host nations pushed for a more inclusive approach, and it “will mean so much to so many,” the head of Australia’s soccer federation said.In New Zealand, the decision reflects an ongoing conversation about the nation’s identity. For decades, many New Zealanders routinely mangled and mispronounced the Māori names of the country’s cities and towns. Taupō (“Toe-paw”) was pronounced “Towel-po.” Ōtāhuhu (Oh-tah-hu-hu) was “Oter-hu.” And Paraparaumu (“para-para-oo-moo”) was sometimes simply referred to as “Pram.”More recently lawmakers, broadcasters and much of the general public have cast out those mispronunciations as part of a concerted national effort to say the names correctly. At the same time, many are choosing to use their cities’ original Māori names over their English alternatives. Last year, a formal petition to rename the country altogether and restore all Māori names was signed by more than 70,000 people.“Before, it felt like a choice to say the names right,” said Julia de Bres, a linguist at Massey University in New Zealand. “And now it feels like a choice not to.”Visitors should absolutely use those names, as well as the common greeting “kia ora” (“key ow-rah”), said Hemi Dale, the director of Māori medium education at the University of Auckland.“Once you grasp the vowels, you can get your tongue around most of the words — long sounds, short sounds, the macron,” the horizontal line above a vowel that indicates a stressed syllable, he said.The Māori flag outside Te Papa museum of New Zealand.Marty Melville/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images(A note: New Zealanders overseas — of any descent — will often permit themselves an internal wince at how foreigners say the word “Māori.” The correct pronunciation is closest to “Mao-ree,” and never “May-or-i.” The plural is simply “Māori,” without an “s,” which does not appear in the language.)The championing of Māori place names is visible throughout New Zealand life: Increasingly, New Zealanders call their homeland Aotearoa, the Māori name that is often translated as “land of the long white cloud” and that has been used by Māori to refer to the country for decades, if not centuries. Māori and English names are used by the country’s weather forecasting service, on newly released official maps and on signs on the nation’s roads.The changes are an effect of a decades-long movement to revitalize a language that risked being extinguished by colonialism, said Rawinia Higgins, the country’s Māori language commissioner.As English-speaking settlers became the dominant population, Māori and their language were sidelined and suppressed. As late as the 1980s, Māori children were beaten at school for speaking the language, and many adults chose not to pass it on to their families.Starting in the 1970s, the Māori language revival movement has led to te reo’s being adopted as one of the country’s two official languages, alongside sign language, and the establishment of nearly 500 early childhood schools in which Māori is spoken exclusively.Many non-Māori New Zealanders have embraced the change, and there are long wait lists for Māori language courses. The government aims to have one million New Zealanders — roughly one-fifth of the population — speaking basic Māori by 2040.But for a small but vocal minority, a bicultural society is viewed as divisive rather than inclusive.Last year, after the chocolatier Whittakers temporarily changed the packaging on its milk chocolate bars to read Miraka Kirīmi (Creamy Milk), some in New Zealand called for a boycott of the brand. The question of bilingual road signs has taken on outsize importance ahead of this year’s general election, where questions of racial politics have become a feature of the center-right’s rhetoric.Place names, as some of the more visible examples of the shift, have become caught in the fray. Lost in that debate is the reality that the country’s colonial names often had little to do with the places they related to.Christchurch, for instance, was named to recall a college at the University of Oxford, while the name Auckland was bestowed as a thank you to George Eden, the Earl of Auckland. Eden was the boss of a former governor of New Zealand, William Hobson, who chose the name. Eden never set foot in the city.By contrast, Māori place names reflect location-specific information, including important stories or where food might be found, said Hana Skerett-White, a Māori teacher, advocate and translator who has worked with artists such as the singer Lorde.“The Māori names tell us stories,” she said. “They speak of our history, of important events, and they actually act as pockets of knowledge, which is how we transmit information from generation to generation.“When those names are taken away, so too are our knowledge systems disrupted in the process.”A view of Tāmaki Makaurau, or Auckland in English.Catherine Ivill/Getty ImagesEnglish translations for Tāmaki Makaurau, as Auckland is known in Māori, vary. One version indicates that the city, with its palm-fringed harbors and volcanoes, is a place desired by many. Another tells the story of Tāmaki, a beautiful princess, and her many admirers.From a Māori perspective, each understanding is equally valid, and individual tribes, or iwi, may approach it differently, said Pāora Puru, a Māori language advocate and a co-founder of the Māori social enterprise Te Manu Taupua.“People have their own interpretations, their own meaning,” he said. “I liken it to an invisible umbilical cord that connects you to that place, and to your ancestors’ traditional connection, association, occupation or use of that particular area.” More

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    How Julie Ertz, a New Mother, Hustled Back to the U.S. Women’s Soccer Team

    Even before Julie Ertz gave birth to her son, Madden, last August, she knew it would be a challenge to return to the fitness and form that would be required of her if she wanted to play in a third Women’s World Cup.Pregnancy and childbirth, unlike sports injuries, offer no reliable timeline for return, no proven handbook to guide a player back from what is a life-changing event. More important, Ertz, who was 30 when Madden was born, wanted to gauge her progress discreetly before she made any promises to the national team. To pull that off without attracting attention, Ertz was going to need help.A group of teenage boys answered the call.Ertz was in Phoenix, which is her hometown and where her husband, Zach, plays tight end for the Arizona Cardinals. She reached out to two of the coaches who knew her best: Paul Taylor and Matt Midkiff, who had helped guide her development from preteen prodigy to college all-American. Taylor and Midkiff connected Ertz with Phoenix Rising, a United Soccer League club with a Major League Soccer Academy program. Ertz arranged to begin training with the club’s under-19 team in February.When Taylor informed the boys on the team that Julie Ertz would be coming to practice, many of the players greeted the news with blank stares.But not Luke Burns.Luke Burns, right, was pleasantly surprised when he found out Julie Ertz would be training with his team. He was a fan.Courtesy Luke Burns“At first, I was star-struck,” said Burns, 17. “I don’t think many of my teammates really knew who she was. But I was one of the only ones who was like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is crazy.’”Burns, who has committed to play at the University of Virginia, said his older sister, who also plays college soccer, got him into watching women’s soccer at a young age. He knew the players. He knew their histories and their highlights. Still, he said, it took him 15 minutes to work up the courage to introduce himself to Ertz at her first training session. It took even less time to sense that she was a cut above.“Even on the first day of training that we had with her, she was in the best shape out of all of us,” Burns said. “She would do extra sprints after practice. She would do these little things to become a bit better. And it showed me that if I wanted to go to the professional level, I have to do those extra things as well.”Taylor said Ertz set a high standard for herself in their first conversation. If she was going to come back, she told him, she did not want to simply come back as the player she was before. She wanted to be better than anyone remembered, better than even she could remember.“I know the expectation and standards that this team has,” Ertz said. “And I didn’t want to go into any camp if I wasn’t feeling like I could actually compete.”An Ertz fan at the U.S. team’s send-off game in California.Marlena Sloss for The New York TimesFor Ertz, that motivation came from an intimate knowledge of the national team and the role she would need to play to contribute at this World Cup. At the time she returned to training, the national team’s captain and defensive linchpin, Becky Sauerbrunn, was struggling with a foot injury. (Sauerbrunn was eventually left off the World Cup roster.) Sam Mewis, a midfielder who had played a pivotal role in the team’s 2019 World Cup championship, was enduring repeated setbacks with her injured knee. (Mewis may never play elite soccer again.)Without them, Ertz knew, the U.S. team was in need of experience and leadership at the back. It needed her to be the glue that held the spine of the team together.But by February, the clock was ticking. When U.S. Coach Vlatko Andonovski released a training camp roster for the SheBelieves Cup, Ertz’s absence was not a surprise. Still, Andonovski warned, “time is running out for her.”As the pressure mounted, Ertz remained committed to taking things slow. She knew she needed to reach peak performance quickly, but she also knew she couldn’t rush it.By March, national team staff members had seen Ertz play with Phoenix Rising in scrimmages and had come away impressed. Talk of her returning for the World Cup began to circulate inside the team. Defender Kelley O’Hara, who has played with Ertz for 10 years, said she tried to manage her excitement when it began to sound possible that Ertz would make it back in time.“I started texting her,” O’Hara said, excitedly miming a typing motion with her fingers. “Not trying to put too much pressure, and not trying to, you know, sway her decision. But she’s awesome and she’s an incredible teammate to have, especially in tournaments like this.”Ertz returned to club soccer in April with Angel City of the National Women’s Soccer League.Troy Wayrynen/USA Today Sports, via ReutersIn late March, Andonovski called Ertz into her first training camp since the Tokyo Olympics in 2021. In April, Ertz returned to club soccer by signing with Angel City of the National Women’s Soccer League. Slowly increasing her workload and fitness, Ertz showed Andonovski enough that he named her to his 23-player roster for the World Cup. Days later, in her final game before she left the club to join the national team for training, she played 97 minutes. Her comeback was complete.“It’s been competitive, which is what you need,” Ertz said of her two months with Angel City. “It’s been an environment to be able to thrive.”Now a bigger task awaits. She and her U.S. teammates will open the World Cup on Friday night (Eastern time) in Auckland, New Zealand. Madden Ertz and his father will be in the stands cheering. Julie Ertz will probably be right in the middle of the field. Right where she wanted to be. Right where her team needs her. More

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    ‘Everyone Expects Us to Win’: England Tries to Live in the Now

    Injuries weakened the Lionesses, and recent results have raised eyebrows. But the players and their coach say it takes a lot to shake a champion.Sarina Wiegman likes to look on the bright side of things. In April, England’s 30-match unbeaten run was ended with a 2-0 loss to Australia. But Wiegman, the team’s Dutch coach, deliberately focused on the positives.“It sounds really strange, and you always want to win, but I think this defeat also brought us so many learning lessons,” she explained a few weeks later during an interview at England’s training facility in St. George’s Park. “It has, most of all, showed us the urgency to do some things better.”It is an interesting time for the England women’s team, which arrives at the Women’s World Cup as one of the tournament favorites but also in perhaps its most uncertain state after two years of largely smooth sailing under Wiegman.The Lionesses are the champions of Europe, a triumph claimed on home soil last year that has precipitated a sea change for women’s soccer in England. Never-seen-before viewing figures. Record attendances and a vibrant domestic league. Victories in the past year over the reigning World Cup champion (the United States) as well as World Cup contenders like Germany, Sweden and Spain. And ever-rising expectations that this is just the start.England’s celebrations after their Euros win.Tolga Akmen/EPA, via Shutterstock“With this England team,” Wiegman said, “everyone expects us to win.”But the England that enters this World Cup is, arguably, a weakened champion. In the months since claiming its European title, what began as the loss of one key starter to injury, striker Beth Mead, has become three. Midfielder Fran Kirby will miss the World Cup, too, after having surgery on her knee. Leah Williamson, who captained England as it conquered, has, like Mead, torn a knee ligament. Her replacement captain, defender Millie Bright, has only recently recovered from a knee injury of her own, and was a question mark when the team boarded its flight to Australia.Recent results have proved similarly worrisome: The loss to Australia was followed by a lackluster 0-0 draw against Portugal, a game in which a frustrated England unable to convert any of its 23 attempts on goal. A goalless draw in a behind-closed-doors friendly against Canada, England’s last game before the World Cup, was the team’s third straight scoreless performance.Yet Wiegman remains pragmatic and steadfast. Again and again in her recent interview, she returned to the same questions that have become touchstones for her and her team: “What do we want to do? How do we want to play? What are the roles and the tasks in the team?”She has insisted on a game-by-game approach, and communicated to her players that tactics and, perhaps more important, minutes will be decided on a day-to-day basis. That fluidity, Wiegman said, has its own motivating value, offering “opportunities for other players to play, to take responsibility, and to show who they are.”“That’s why we then come back to: ‘OK, this is our next game’,” she said. “And then we’re in the now.”England Coach Sarina Wiegman led the Netherlands to the 2019 final. Now she hopes to do the same with England.Justin Tallis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesPlayers, of course, have their own ambitions.“We’ve all got dreams, and we all want to win,” forward Lauren Hemp said. “We’ll see how the tournament goes. But it’s something that we’re striving toward obviously, coming off the back of the championships and winning the Euros. It makes you hungry to want to win more.”The 22-year-old Manchester City defender Esme Morgan is among the new faces vying for game time. “That’s really been emphasized, to be honest, that there’s no set places in the squad,” she said after going 90 minutes in the draw against Portugal. “There’s so much competition in every position across the pitch. Really in training you can see that: The standard is so, so high.”Lucy Bronze, one of the team’s most senior players, saw her own history as a guide. “I went into 2015 as a young player not expecting to play much and I ended up playing in every single game, scoring goals, and I forced myself into the spotlight and broke out a little bit,” she said. “Anything can happen in a World Cup.”Wiegman harbors her own hopes for the squad. “We have high expectations, too,” she said. But true to her instructions, she is staying in the now. She is not interested in discussing a potential rematch against Australia in the round of 16, or a possible collision with the United States, or Germany, or anyone else if England can navigate deep into the knockout stages.“Let’s first see, ‘OK, we want to get out of the group stage,’” she said. “Then you come to the next stage and we see who is in front of us. It’s going to be very tough. And if we would get to the final, hopefully we do.“It really doesn’t matter who’s in front of us. You just want to win every game.” More

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    Lionel Messi Signs With Inter Miami and M.L.S.

    Messi is expected to join the team this week on a contract that runs through the 2025 Major League Soccer season.The greatest soccer player of his era, and maybe the greatest of all time, is coming to the United States for the twilight of his career. Lionel Messi, 36, officially joined Inter Miami of Major League Soccer, the club announced in a release on Saturday.His contract commits him to the team through the 2025 M.L.S. season.“I’m very excited to start this next step in my career with Inter Miami and in the United States,” Messi said in a statement. “This is a fantastic opportunity and together we will continue to build this beautiful project.”Messi had revealed his plans to play for Miami last month and was spotted shopping with his family at a Miami-area grocery this week.He is expected to join the team in the next week, which would put him on track to make his debut for Inter Miami in a Concacaf Leagues Cup game against Cruz Azul of Mexico on July 21.A soccer prodigy as a child in Argentina, Messi moved to Spain to sign with Barcelona at age 13 and soon became a talked about young player. He made his debut with the first team at 16 and went on to a spectacular career, winning every major trophy and six Ballons d’Or as the world’s best player. He moved on to Paris-St. Germain in 2021, where he won another Ballon d’Or, and his team dominated the French league, although it failed to win the Champions League.He has been the leader of the Argentine national team almost since his 2005 debut, and added the final trophy missing from his collection when he won the World Cup with them last summer.The consensus of fans and historians has been that his greatness as a player is rivaled perhaps only by Cristiano Ronaldo in his own era and by Pelé and Diego Maradona from any era.Messi’s signing completes what could be described as the quiet Barcelona-fication of Inter Miami that preceded his formal arrival. The team’s chief business officer and its top operations and facilities executive are both former Barcelona employees. Last month, Inter Miami announced that Messi’s former midfield teammate at Barcelona, Sergio Busquets, would be its second marquee signing of the summer.Then, two weeks ago, Gerardo Martino, the Argentine known as Tata who had coached Messi at Barcelona, was hired as Inter Miami’s coach. At his introductory news conference, he spoke openly of working with Messi and Busquets, and left little doubt that he saw his new challenge as more than a reunion.“Sometimes we associate the United States, Miami, are linked with the idea of a vacation,” Martino said. “This isn’t that. We want to compete.“They are not players who are going to come here to not compete.”The signing is reminiscent of 2007, when Los Angeles Galaxy of M.L.S. signed the world’s most famous player, if not the best, David Beckham, at age 32. Beckham played in L.A. for six years, winning two championships, and brought the league unprecedented exposure.M.L.S. has long spoken of eventually matching the quality and visibility of the world’s top leagues. It will hope that Lionel Messi’s golden years help push it in that direction. More

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    When You Can’t Believe What You’re Seeing

    The story, more than the sport, is what matters.Nobody is quite sure where the term “kayfabe” originated. It may be a bastardized form of pig Latin, something to do with the actual word “fake.” It may have its roots in the culture of wandering 19th-century carnivals, the world inhabited by P.T. Barnum and the confidence men and the salesmen who sold actual snake oil.Its modern usage, though, is sufficiently specific that only a relatively small proportion of people would even have a sense of what it means. Kayfabe is, essentially, the illusory cloak that is doggedly draped over professional wrestling: the maintenance of the pretense that what you see in the ring is unscripted, competitive, what we would consider real.For decades, wrestlers were expected to keep kayfabe even when they were off the clock. The on-screen heroes and villains were not supposed to drive to events together, or to socialize together after them, in case they were seen and the illusion was broken. The omertà had to be upheld at all costs. Breaching it was not just a transgression. It was a betrayal.As Abraham Josephine Riesman delineates in “Ringmaster,” her magisterial biography of Vince McMahon — close personal friend of Donald Trump and longstanding, all-purpose tyrant behind World Wrestling Entertainment — there came a point, sometime around the 1990s, when that all felt just a little anachronistic.For anyone other than perhaps the very young, she posits, by that stage most wrestling fans had long understood the nature of what they were watching. More than that, they had delighted in it. Riesman’s theory is that the fun was not so much in seeing who won, but in trying to decode the why. What did this star’s propulsion mean for behind-the-scenes politics? What did this defeat indicate about the next twist in the never-ending tale?McMahon’s genius — again, in Riesman’s telling — was that he accepted the new reality. Rather than try to cling on to the tradition, to insist on the fantasy, he leaned into the wink and the nudge.Nobody ever said, of course, that the whole thing was a soap opera, a piece of brutal theater. But the sense that the real story could be found in what was happening backstage, that there was a political process behind who rose and who fell — all of that moved front and center. McMahon invented what Riesman calls neokayfabe.In the late 1980s and early 1990s, as McMahon was pioneering this new approach, soccer was changing, too. Delegations of executives from Europe’s major teams looked on jealously at the sporting landscape of the United States, where money flowed freely from television, through glamorous, lucrative leagues, and straight into their counterparts’ pockets.It was the N.F.L., with its cheerleaders and its fireworks and its sense of event, that caught their eyes particularly, and they returned home with whatever ideas they could mimic. Dance troupes appeared at midtable Premier League games. Flashy graphics and portentous music splashed across television screens. Stadiums modernized, attracting more families. That allowed ticket prices to increase and corporate sections to flourish.There is absolutely no evidence that anyone within soccer thought to learn anything from professional wrestling. Nobody, most likely, would have even contemplated it. Soccer, after all, belongs to the world of sports. Even McMahon long ago gave up on the idea that wrestling fit neatly under that umbrella. Instead, with typical euphemism, he refers to it as sports entertainment.And yet, behind differences so glaring they are almost existential, it is possible to make the case that modern soccer — the soccer of the Premier League and the Champions League era, the soccer of social media and saturation coverage, of rolling news channels and cultural hegemony — owes more to professional wrestling than it does to any other industry.As in wrestling, it is increasingly difficult to escape the sense that the action itself is secondary to all of the noise that surrounds it — the transfer rumors, the coaching feuds, the undeniable theater that now attends the weekly news conferences, and the declarations of pride and fury and rage that follow every utterance, no matter how banal.Games exist in a pitch of frenzy, but rather than being seen as the purpose of the whole exercise, they serve simply to feed the sport’s insatiable hunger for a story. The overall sweep of each set of 90 minutes is, frequently, lost in a miasma of exaggerated controversy.Tactics and strategy and individual excellence are acknowledged, of course, but drowned out by an unrelenting focus on the failures — both technical and moral — of the referee, or the defeated manager, or whichever of the players is deemed to have let the team down by trying either too hard to win, or not enough.That, in many ways, is the root of the sport’s success, of course. As the cultural commentator Neal Gabler has written, we live in an era of entertainment; in order to survive, in order to thrive, every aspect of life has to turn itself into entertainment. It is just that soccer has done it better than most.Perhaps that is because, more than anything, what soccer has borrowed from wrestling is Riesman’s concept of neokayfabe. Soccer’s global cultural cachet, its status as the most popular pastime that the world has ever known, is both its strength and its weakness.Its stars are subject to the same sort of intense scrutiny that attends Hollywood’s most famous faces. It is squabbled over by the scions of global capitalism, by nation states, by private equity and public investment funds. It has its heroes, and its villains, and both inspire fierce loyalty and deep-seated loathing. It is an analog product trying to adapt to a modern age. It is among the most valuable forms of content that exist, a saffron for the AppleTV+ age.The trick, though, is that the sport has managed to subsume all of that — all of these things that happen to it, these currents beyond its control — into part of the story. Just as in wrestling, soccer has been able to take its inner workings, its politicking and its power struggles and even its scandal, and fold it into the entertainment.That approach applies even when it brings with it the danger that the sport’s integrity — the thing that competitive sports require in the same way as wrestling needs a willing suspension of disbelief, the thing that makes it real — might be compromised.The principle applies no matter the issue. The suspicion that Manchester City has cheated the sport’s financial rules becomes a chance for Pep Guardiola and his team to hit back at their critics; the arrival of the Saudi state at Newcastle is both a new beginning for a proud, beloved team and a test for the strength of the established order. Even the criticism can be leveraged. Newcastle can be the hero or the villain. Either sells, so either is fine.The engulfing of Juventus’s hierarchy in allegations that it has committed actual financial crimes is presented as a challenge for a fallen giant. Barcelona has mortgaged its future because of colossal mismanagement, but what does that mean for Pedri? A small cabal of clubs greedily claiming every trophy and every glimmer of talent for themselves is presented not as a dangerous economic trend but as testament to their innate greatness.The impression — wrong, perhaps, but as previously stated, damaging nonetheless — that the business links between Chelsea’s owners and Saudi Arabia allowed the club to clear the chaff from its squad with surprising ease becomes a controversy, of course, but not one about the sport’s complex relationship with, and its growing vulnerability to, money and power.Instead, the peril of the accusation is lost in claim and counterclaim over the motivation behind the criticism, lost in soccer’s absolute refusal to understand the world as anything less than unremittingly tribal, the belief that serves as the sport’s underlying assumption, its equivalent of wrestling’s illusion.Everything, eventually, becomes part of the story. And the story, more than the sport, is what matters. That is what is sold by the broadcasters and the news outlets and everyone else who does so much to sustain a mutually beneficial ecosystem. It is the magic trick that lies behind modern soccer.It shows you exactly what it is, pulls you behind the curtain, harnesses your outrage and concern and disgust and fear when you see what lurks there, and sells it straight back to you. It is pure, uncut McMahon, a monument of neokayfabe, straight from the sports entertainment playbook, with the emphasis on the entertainment.Living Your ValuesSteven Gerrard, right, on his first day as Al-Ettifaq soccer minister. Er, coach.Ettifaq Media Office/via ReutersJordan Henderson is, of course, quite entitled to do whatever he wants. Should he decide to accept an eye-wateringly lucrative offer from Al-Ettifaq, the Saudi club now managed by his friend and former teammate Steven Gerrard, the Liverpool captain will stand accused of sacrificing his professional ambitions, and his dignity, for little more than naked greed.The reality is more complex than that. Yes, Henderson has spent more than a decade earning several million dollars a year. (At a rough estimate, his pay, after tax, currently stands at around $6 million.) He is a very rich man. It is true that a soccer player’s career is a short one. But a player of Henderson’s profile does not exactly need to worry about how he will cope.Still, the money reportedly on offer in Saudi Arabia — somewhere north of $30 million a year — can still rightly be described as transformational. Henderson’s primary concern will be his family. If this is his opportunity to provide for them for generations, then it is hardly a sin that he, like several others this summer, might consider it.What makes it unpalatable that Henderson, in particular, might be coaxed to the relentlessly expansionist Saudi Pro League is that he is not just a soccer player. He has, in recent years, emerged as an eloquent advocate for not only his club but for professional players as a whole. More important, he has been a staunch and sincere ally for L.G.B.T.Q. rights.“When you see something that is clearly wrong and makes another human being feel excluded you should stand shoulder-to-shoulder with them,” he wrote in 2021. “That’s where my own position on homophobia in football is rooted.“Before I’m a footballer, I’m a parent, a husband, a son, a brother and a friend to the people in my life who matter so much to me. The idea that any of them would feel excluded from playing or attending a football match, simply for being and identifying as who they are, blows my mind.”There is no reason to claim these are not Henderson’s values. He has every right to move to Saudi Arabia, just as Saudi Arabia has every right to want to improve the quality of its domestic league. He has every right to ignore the criticism that he is moving solely for money.There comes a point, though, where if you do not live your values, then it is very difficult to assume they are your values at all. If Henderson decides to effectively endorse the geopolitical power-play of a country where homosexuality remains illegal, then not only will it damage the credibility of soccer players who speak out on social issues, it will make it look a lot as if what he says, and what he does, are very different things.CorrespondenceIt has always been a source of considerable pride that this section of the newsletter can be considered a collaborative learning space. Not in the sense that you, the reader, benefit from my great and beneficent wisdom, but that I get to take all of your ideas and, several months down the line, pass them off as my own.So thanks to all of you who wrote in to explain the origins of the Apertura-Clausura system that prevails in so much of Latin America. “I’d be willing to bet it is an Argentine invention,” Fernando Gama wrote. “The first one in Argentina was 1991-92, whereas Colombia and Mexico were 2002.”His theory on why Argentina adopted the approach is that its teams hoped to “reap a profit if they were available for international friendlies during the European summer.” The benefit, though, may have been different. “It makes sense for each of them to count as a full championship if you take into account how quickly teams get dismantled by the European market. It is very hard to maintain the same base team for an entire year.”Juan Botella, too, believes that Argentina provided the genesis, certainly for Mexico. In the 1990s, “Mexican fútbol’s ruling elite realized they could make more money following Argentina’s approach,” he wrote. “There was much complaint from traditionalists, who prefer a yearlong tournament with no playoffs.”Juan and Gustavo Ortiz are on the same side there. “It delivers short-term satisfaction for team directors who want more national championships in detriment to the climax of one champion at the end of the season,” he wrote. “I prefer the Uruguayan system. They play two championships, Apertura and Clausura. Each has a winner that plays the team with the most points won during both tournaments.”In exchange for educating me, I will endeavor to answer a question from Ken Andrejko. “Do players receive a percentage of the transfer fee when they change clubs?” he asked. No, is the answer, but that’s a bit glib. They do, however, receive a signing-on fee, although that can be both directly and inversely proportional to the size of the transfer fee.And some wonderful — if belatedly published — pedantry from Iain Dunlop. “You referred to the concept of Newcastle pursuing ‘multiclub’ as a noun,” he wrote. “I would argue that Newcastle and others are in fact attempting to multiclub (I multiclub, you multiclub, he/she multiclubs, etc.), and thus it should be classified as a verb.In many ways, Iain, that would be preferable to what is actually happening. The precise quote on Newcastle was that the club is looking into “doing multiclub.” (I do multiclub, you do multiclub, he/she/the Saudi state does multiclub.) Does that make it part of the verb? I’m not enough of a grammarian to know.That’s all for this week. Please keep all of your thoughts coming to askrory@nytimes.com, but do bear in mind that, after next week’s edition, this newsletter will be stepping aside to make room for our World Cup briefing (which you all should sign up for immediately.)Beyond that, unfortunately, there is only shadow and doubt. We’ve had plenty of emails over the last week inquiring about what happens to this newsletter — or the people involved in its production — in light of The Times’s decision to reconsider how it covers sports. Your messages of support and well wishes were much appreciated. I’ll tell you what’s happening to the newsletter as soon as anyone tells me. More

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    A Look Back at Megan Rapinoe’s Best Moments

    The women’s soccer star, who announced on Saturday that she would retire later this year, always seemed to deliver in the biggest games.Megan Rapinoe, who announced on Saturday that she planned to retire from professional soccer later this year, rose to stardom in part because of her outspoken political views and her leadership in her sport beyond the field. But much of that was possible because her career on the field had so many highlight-reel-worthy moments.She is expected to soon reach 200 appearances for the U.S. women’s national team. She has 63 goals in her international career and is one of only seven American women with more than 50 goals and 50 assists in international competition.She was the second pick of the 2009 draft of the defunct Women’s Professional Soccer league, and played the majority of her club career with the Seattle Reign of the National Women’s Soccer League. She won a French title with Lyon, a Ballon d’Or as world player of the year and Olympic medals in two colors.But it has always been the moments and the creativity of her offense, not the volume of goals or assists, that truly set Rapinoe apart. Here’s a look at some of her best touches.Abby Wambach and Rapinoe celebrating after Wambach scored a goal in the 2011 Women’s World Cup quarterfinal match in Dresden, Germany.Martin Rose/Getty Images2011 World CupThe U.S. women’s national team finished third in the 2003 and 2007 World Cups, failing to capitalize on the momentum of its win in 1999. In 2011, it was facing a humbling early exit when it trailed Brazil, 2-1 in overtime, during a quarterfinal match.The game was already in stoppage time when Rapinoe got the ball from Carli Lloyd near midfield. She took one dribble, looked up and sent a long ball toward the far post, where Abby Wambach was waiting.Wambach rose behind Brazil’s goalkeeper and headed the ball into the net, delivering what is considered one of the greatest goals in the history of the women’s game. The Americans went on to win in a penalty-kick shootout, though they later lost an epic final to Japan.2012 OlympicsThe United States faced Canada in the women’s soccer semifinal of the 2012 London Olympics. Down by 1-0 in the second half, Rapinoe made Olympic history by scoring what is known as an “Olimpico” — a goal that finds the net directly off a corner kick. She was the first woman to do it in the Games. Then she repeated the feat during the 2021 Tokyo Olympics.2015 World CupIn the first game of the 2015 World Cup, a matchup with Australia, Rapinoe scored twice to lead her team to a 3-1 victory. In the 12th minute, after battling for a contested ball, Rapinoe made a full 360-degree spin at the top of the box before collecting herself with a couple touches and firing a shot from 20 yards. The ball ricocheted off a Canadian defender and found the back of the net.2019 World CupThe United States entered the 2019 World Cup in France looking to become the first women’s team to repeat as World Cup champion under the same coach. Rapinoe put together a career run — winning both the Golden Boot, for most goals (six) and the Golden Ball as the tournament’s outstanding player. But it was her goal against France in front of 45,000 onlookers that sent her on her way.The U.S. Women’s soccer team celebrating after winning the World Cup final match against the Netherlands in 2019.Alessandra Tarantino/Associated PressA master at set pieces, Rapinoe stepped up to take a free kick in the early minutes of what many expected to be a tense and pivotal match. She sent a streaking ball through the box that wound its way through the legs of multiple teammates and defenders and into the back of the net. Rapinoe celebrated by running to the sideline and spreading her arms wide, a gesture that became her signature celebration, and the lasting memory of a tournament where she was regularly in the right place at the right moment.Tokyo Olympics, 2021Looking to build off two consecutive World Cup victories, the U.S. women’s national team headed to Tokyo in 2021 to play in Olympic Games that had been delayed a year because of the coronavirus pandemic. In the quarterfinals, the United States and the Netherlands squared off in a World Cup finals rematch. The game went to penalties after a 2-2 draw, where it was Rapinoe’s dagger to the upper right corner that sent the United States to the semifinal. More

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    For Rapinoe, a Final Send-Off Before a Final World Cup

    One day after announcing her plan to retire this year, Megan Rapinoe began her farewell tour as an unused substitute in her team’s send-off match.Megan Rapinoe began her long goodbye with the equivalent of a homecoming.In the decade and a half since she became a professional soccer player, Rapinoe’s career has taken her to soccer clubs on two continents, to Olympic Games on three and, soon, to a fourth World Cup. On Sunday, a day after she surprised her team and her fans by publicly announcing plans to retire at the end of this year, Rapinoe found herself settling into a seat on the U.S. women’s national team bench a couple hundred miles from her hometown.Rapinoe, 38, grew up in Redding, Calif., about 250 miles north of the site of Sunday’s game, PayPal Park in San Jose. She estimated that about 40 of her family members and friends had made the trip south to see the United States beat Wales, 2-0, in its final game on American soil ahead of the Women’s World Cup that starts later this month in Australia and New Zealand.“This is the closest that I’ll ever get to play to Redding in my career,” Rapinoe had said on Saturday. “It does feel very special. It feels perfect.”During the news conference in which she announced her retirement plans on Saturday, Rapinoe had said that she was at peace with the decision to step away from soccer. Now, she was just enjoying the chance to give a proper goodbye to the sport that made her an international star, as well as a spokeswoman for equal rights, equal pay and social justice issues close to her heart.Rapinoe has played for the national team since 2006. A three-time Olympian and two-time World Cup champion, she has scored 63 goals for the United States and is one of seven players to have accumulated more than 50 goals and 50 assists in her U.S. national team career.Her role is different these days, having evolved from a lineup fixture to a late-game substitute. She is still valued by her coach, Vlatko Andonovski, though; he included her on his World Cup roster because he values her leadership, experience and ability to shape big moments.Whenever and however she plays going forward, she remains a crowd favorite. One fan, Corina Burns, who wore a No. 15 T-shirt with the name “Rapinoe” on the back, said she drove from Southern California with her three daughters to attend Sunday’s game. It wasn’t the family’s first trip to see the national team play: They were in France four years ago when Rapinoe was one of the Americans’ most valuable players in their victory at the 2019 World Cup.“We saw her play and fell in love with her,” Burns said.That World Cup remains, for now, Rapinoe’s crowning achievement. She won both the Golden Boot as the tournament’s top scorer and the Golden Ball as its outstanding player. It is also when she cemented her status as a pop culture icon: She scored six goals in the competition even as she publicly battled with President Donald J. Trump.She remains an outspoken voice, but she is a different player these days. Rapinoe has been hampered by injuries for months, with an ankle injury keeping her out of the start of the National Women’s Soccer League season and a calf injury keeping her out of two national team matches against Ireland in April.In her absence, newer faces — Sophia Smith, Trinity Rodman, Alyssa Thompson — have begun to lay claim to the forward position where Rapinoe was once a clear choice. That new generation, the one that will occupy the space vacated by Rapinoe, was on display again against Wales.In the 76th minute on Sunday, Rodman, 21, broke through in a scoreless game by scoring easily off a cross from Smith, 22. Rodman struck again in the 88th minute, powering a shot from 20 yards past the hands of Wales goalkeeper Olivia Clark. Rodman became the youngest American player to score two goals in an international match.Rapinoe still has much to offer, too. Andonovski has made no secret of how much he values the wisdom and institutional knowledge she brings to a team that now features players like the 18-year-old Thompson, who is fresh out of high school; Savannah DeMelo, 25, who received her first cap on Sunday; and the dozen other new faces headed to their first World Cup.That they struggled, until Rodman scored twice off the bench, to break down a resolute Wales team that failed to qualify for the World Cup was perhaps a hopeful sign that Rapinoe might still have an important role to play before she walks away from the team for good.Her chance never arrived on Sunday: Rapinoe did not warm up and Andonovski never called for her to come on. It was another sign that although Rapinoe said her time is almost up, the times may have already changed. More