Raphael Stevens

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    At P.S.G., a Coach’s Vision Collides With a Star’s Power

    The system may be the center of the modern soccer universe, but stars like Kylian Mbappé exert a gravity of their own.Ultimately, a single wrong answer cost Rafael Benítez his job, the one he had coveted for most of his working life. The slight downturn in results, the disaffection of the players, the sudden loss of trust from those who had chosen to employ him — all of it, he believed, could be traced back to that single, relatively harmless, misstep.Not long into his ill-fated reign as coach of Real Madrid, in 2015, Benítez had been asked what seemed, on the surface, a simple question: Did he regard the team’s star, Cristiano Ronaldo, as the best player in the world? Perhaps Benítez was trying to be clever. Perhaps he was trying to challenge his star. Perhaps he was, unadvisedly, being honest.Either way, he did not really see the big deal. Ronaldo was certainly one of the best players in the world, he responded. But then so was Lionel Messi. Benítez said he did not want to have to choose between them. “It would be like asking my daughter if she prefers my wife or me,” he said, by way of explanation.Barely four months later, Benítez was out at Real Madrid. The contemporaneous reports suggested he had struggled to build a bond with the players.The reality, as far as Benítez was concerned, was more straightforward. His answer, all those weeks earlier, had displeased Ronaldo, and the coterie of advisers and power brokers and hangers-on who surrounded him. They would not forget the slight. From that day, Benítez was toast.Rafael Benítez, well-traveled and battle-scarred.Ander Gillenea/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIn that context is a lesson. Even the simplest question — the one that sounds and looks and feels so much like a softball, so basic and brief that it could not possibly do any harm — is at best a test. At worst, it is a trap.You are a coach in charge of one of the world’s most prestigious clubs. In your care is one of the game’s brightest stars. What you believe, what you feel, what the objective truth might happen to be is irrelevant.Do you think your player is the best in the world? For the purposes of harmony and unity and your own continued viability as an employee: Yes, you do.That Luis Enrique, the Paris St.-Germain coach, chose a different path when asked precisely that question last month, then, constituted something of a risk. He had just watched Kylian Mbappé, not only his team’s unquestioned star but also its most valuable asset, its cornerstone and its unofficial sporting director, score a hat-trick in a 3-0 victory over Reims.Mbappé had spent most of the previous two summers threatening to leave his hometown. The club had, at various points, mobilized every single one of its resources — up to and including Emmanuel Macron, the French president — to persuade him to stay. The team’s hierarchy was reported to have afforded him powers so extensive and unorthodox that it is safe to say the leaders are operating on the assumption he very much is the best player in the world.Luis Enrique, though, took even more of a risk than Benítez. “I’m not really happy with Kylian today,” he said after the win over Reims. “Why? Because managers are strange. About goals, I don’t have to say anything, but I think he can help the team more in a different way. I told that to him first. We think Kylian is one of the best players in the world. No doubt. But we need more, and we want him doing more things.”It is to Mbappé’s credit that, just as the storm was gathering, he did his best to quell it. Luis Enrique had said precisely the same thing to him privately, he confirmed. He had, even if he said so himself, taken the criticism “well.” “He is a great coach,” Mbappé said. “He has a lot to teach me. From Day 1, I told him he would have no problem with me.”Whether that will hold — and for how long — is impossible to gauge today, but it is another reminder of the inherent, inexorable tension between soccer’s two overriding urges — one that is far from unique to the modern Paris St.-Germain, but is perhaps drawn more clearly there than anywhere else.There is one, the one that plays out on the field, that holds that this is now resolutely a coach’s game, one in which strategy conquers all and players are cogs in a finely tuned wheel, each following intricate and comprehensive instructions about where to be and what to do. In this vision, everything is subordinate to the grand vision being concocted on the sidelines and in the data analyst’s office.And there is another one — the one that is rooted to some extent in the traditional economics of sports but has been exaggerated by the devotional nature of fandom in the digital age — that places individual stars at the front and center of a club. This theory has given these stars a heft and pull greater than the institutions that make and pay them.None of that is new, of course — managers have always been compelled to balance the needs of the team with the wants of the individual — but it has never felt so pronounced as it is now, the twin forces never quite so repellent. The system may be the center of the universe, but the stars exert a gravity of their own.Luis Enrique, still officially in charge.Lee Smith/Action Images, via ReutersP.S.G. has been struggling with that equation for some time. It is not so long, after all, since it named a team that included Neymar, Messi and Mbappé, none of whom was especially keen to submit himself to the sort of defensive duties that are the preserve of lesser mortals.Things have improved — Messi and Neymar have moved on, of course — but Mbappé remains: a wondrous, uplifting, irreplaceable talent, but still an entity that somehow remains distinct from the team itself.Luis Enrique’s ethos is, like those of all modern coaches, based on collectivism, the complex interplay of 11 individual components. At times, particularly in the Champions League — where it has now failed to beat Newcastle United twice, been dismantled by A.C. Milan, and may not reach the round of 16 — P.S.G. has the air of a machine spluttering to find a gear.It is caught, in essence, in a trap. Luis Enrique’s vision cannot take hold if Mbappé is an exception. Mbappé cannot be exceptional if he has to spend all of his time dutifully tracking his opponents. The star cannot shine without the system, but the system cannot hold in the shadow of the star.Luis Enrique will do well to find a solution to that riddle. Sometimes, as those who have been in his shoes can attest, there are no simple answers.Curious LimboDavid de Gea awaits your call.David Klein/ReutersThe reflexive response to the sight of André Onana standing, yet again, with his head bowed and his shoulders slumped after Manchester United’s gloriously puerile draw with Galatasaray on Wednesday is sympathy. Last year, Onana was the standout goalkeeper in the Champions League. A few months at Old Trafford seem to have drained him of all confidence.It is difficult not to wonder, though, what David de Gea must make of it all. For a decade, de Gea was not only United’s first-choice goalkeeper but frequently its saving grace and, at points, its highest-paid player. That the club did not seek to renew his contract when it expired over the summer was no surprise — his form had waned, and his salary was exorbitant — but the fact that he has yet to be picked up by anyone now borders on the bizarre.Is he pricing himself out of the market? Is he turning down offers in the hope of the perfect opportunity? Has he lost the motivation to play? Or is it — and this may be the Occam’s razor solution — that soccer has an inclination toward a potent blend of recency bias, faddishness and groupthink?This … Might Work?A share stronger than yellow? Let’s try it.Peter Nicholls/ReutersAt this point, it would probably be a good idea if the International Football Association Board — the faceless, unaccountable gaggle of bureaucrats who seem to have decided that soccer has to be played according to their wishes — took a little time away. Most of the board’s recent interventions, after all, ranging from V.A.R. to whatever the handball rule is this week, might broadly be said to have been a mixed bag.The decision to investigate an “orange” card — leading to a player’s entering a 10-minute sin bin for a range of specific offenses — does, though, have some merit. There are a plethora of incidents that feel too serious for a yellow card but not quite deserving of a red.That has only become a pressing issue, however, because of the increased officiousness with which games are refereed, the blame for which can squarely be placed with the IFAB, but the fact that the board is solving a problem of its own making should not be a disqualifying factor.Some change can be good. This may be one of those times.CorrespondenceThis week, a friend pointed me in the direction of something called a PANAS personality test, as endorsed (or created; I’m not sure) by the academic Arthur C. Brooks. It struck me as flawed — it separates people into four emotional categories, and yet none of them are “Yorkshireman” — but, with five minutes to spare, it struck me as a harmless diversion.My sunny demeanor, it turns out, makes me a “cheerleader,” one of life’s optimists. Jim Murphy and Scott Rehr, by contrast, would both get “poet,” I suspect, with their tendency to linger on negative outcomes. The N.F.L.’s experience, Jim wrote, would suggest that a Premier League commissioner — the role raised in last week’s newsletter — would be “pretty much a lackey for the owners.”Scott, if anything, was more dubious. “The idea of a Premier League commissioner sounds great until I think about FIFA and Gianni Infantino,” he confessed. “Would a Premier League commissioner more naturally slide into the autocrat role demonstrated by Infantino?”That would, of course, be a risk. A Premier League commissioner would be vulnerable to manipulation by the people who paid the boss’s wages. It might be offset just a little, though, by accepting the wise counsel of S.K. Gupta. “The problem is the unenforceable and arbitrary rules, which can only be enforced retrospectively,” he wrote, a reality that often results in things decided in courtrooms instead of league offices.”He added, “Rather than limiting the loss which a team incur, the better system would be to have a transfer cap which teams can spend, based upon the winnings of the team in all of the competitions they have been in.”I’m not sure you even have to go as far as instituting a salary cap — something that is much more easily applied in sports played in closed leagues drawn from a maximum of two countries — but there’s no doubt that real-time enforcement of the rules would improve the situation. The Premier League should not be left to pursue deferred punishment; it should be in a position to impose immediate prohibitions on teams that transgress its financial requirements.Quite where Keith Kreitman would fall on the Brooks test is not for me to say, but I will admit to a sneaking inspiration for people who are exasperated by trivialities. “I wonder about the constant use of the term ‘unlucky’ whenever a player bangs a ball off the upright or the crossbar,” Keith wrote. “It’s not like a stray bird or a sudden burst of wind affected the flight of the ball. The player merely missed the target. There is simply no component of luck involved.”This is technically correct, which as we all know is the best way to be correct, and it is a point I have made over the years to several players. All I can tell you is that they don’t like being told they should have aimed better. More

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    Soccer Watchalongs Like Stretford Paddock Offer a Broadcast Alternative

    Soccer fans are tuning out broadcasts in favor of watchalongs: streaming parties where you hear what you want to hear and see everything except the game.With the lights adjusted and the cameras rolling, the production team gives Joe Smith his cue. In five seconds, he will be broadcasting live to a couple thousand people. Mr. Smith’s mind, though, is elsewhere. “Slate is definitely the best way to build a roof,” he mutters to his co-host, Jay Mottershead, as the countdown hits three. “All these years on, they haven’t topped it.”And with that, they are on air. They will remain so for the next four hours, essentially uninterrupted: a broadcasting endurance test staged in a subterranean studio, all exposed brick and industrial lighting, in the middle of Manchester’s achingly hip Northern Quarter.Before they have finished, they will have touched on subjects as diverse as: the slightly alarming frequency with which Mr. Mottershead has nightmares; the declining popularity of lemon curd; and the story of a man who attends Mr. Smith’s gym exclusively to read vintage copies of “Cars” magazine.Occasionally, their freewheeling, faintly anarchic conversation to be interrupted by what is supposedly the purpose of the evening’s activity: keeping track of the game between the soccer team they support, Manchester United, and the Danish champion, F.C. Copenhagen.That is, after all, what will attract more than 100,000 people to their livestream over the course of those four hours. It is the diversions and the tangents and the stream of consciousness about roofing, though, that will keep them there.Watchalongs like Stretford Paddock’s have become big business, with full-scale production crews and hundreds of thousands of subscribers.Rory Smith/The New York TimesHard-Core CommunityThe concept of watching two people watch a soccer game might sound like a distinctly postmodern form of entertainment, a close cousin of the gaming streams that proliferate on Twitch and the unboxing videos that for some reason captivate children on YouTube.In soccer, though, the form has deep roots. The idea of making most games available to watch on television, after all, is a relatively recent one. In Britain, home to the Premier League, many games continue to be blacked out, in the interest of protecting in-stadium attendances.Barred from showing those games, broadcasters have for years had little choice but to find creative ways to keep viewers up-to-date on what is taking place in them. Most have settled on the format pioneered by Sky’s “Soccer Saturday” — launched in the 1990s — in which an array of former players sit in a studio, watching feeds of the games only they can see, and update viewers on key moments in real time. (Think of the N.F.L.’s popular Red Zone channel, only without seeing anyone actually playing football.)A group reaction to a last-minute goal on Arsenal Fan TV in 2021 made a compilation of the watchalong’s greatest hits.The form of the show that Mr. Mottershead and Mr. Smith host on Stretford Paddock, the Manchester United fan channel they co-own — or its counterparts on outlets like The Redmen TV (Liverpool) and We Are Tottenham TV (self-explanatory) — is essentially the same. The function, though, is distinct.Most of their viewers, Mr. Mottershead said, are also watching the games, either legally or illegally. “They turn the commentary down and listen to us instead,” he said. They do so because they want a much more narrowly focused product: Stretford Paddock’s audience only wants updates on Manchester United, for example, not news about anyone else who is playing at the same time.And, crucially, they want those updates delivered not by the compromised and biased mouthpieces of the mainstream media — what they see as retirees protecting their friends and business interests, or commentators with the nebulous but definite prejudice against their club — but by dyed-in-the-wool fans like them. “We might disagree on things,” Mr. Mottershead said. “But we all want United to do well.”Still, after more than six years leading watchalongs with Mr. Smith, Mr. Mottershead has come to believe that what draws in fans is not simply a matter of having their obsessions met and their biases confirmed.What his viewers are looking for, he thinks, is simple. They want someone to watch the game with them.Viral EmpireThe part of the soccer industry that is made for fans and by fans is necessarily tribal. Every club essentially exists in its own silo. The biggest names in the Manchester United content universe will be largely alien to those who follow Liverpool, just as celebrated Arsenal podcasters will have little or no resonance to Tottenham supporters.The crowning exception is Mark Goldbridge, soccer’s 44-year-old livestream kingpin and the genre’s only real crossover star. It is not just that his fan channel, The United Stand, currently has 1.77 million YouTube subscribers. It is that almost every time Manchester United loses (or draws, or concedes a goal), he is liable to reach many millions more.Footage from Mr. Goldbridge’s streams reliably goes viral: rants that are by turns splenetic, wildly N.S.F.W., and vaguely surreal. He will howl that Manchester United’s defense has “all the resistance of a papadum catching a bowling ball,” say, or that the club is accidentally employing “a team of slow giraffes.”Quite what it is about Mr. Goldbridge that has made him so prominent is difficult to pinpoint, and he offered no clues: He declined through his representation to be interviewed for this article, on the grounds that he is currently exploring opportunities away from “the watchalong space.”In interviews, Mr. Goldbridge has accepted that there is an element of cringe comedy, in the style of David Brent or Alan Partridge, to his delivery. Peter McPartland, a host on Toffee TV, a channel dedicated to Everton, agreed. “There is an awkwardness to him that makes him funny,” he said.Channels like We Are Tottenham TV and others all emphasize their bona fides as fans, and can offer faraway fans a glimpse of the in-stadium atmosphere they might never experience in person.Whatever it is, it is undeniably effective. “He has built an empire,” said Paul Machin, a founder of The Redmen TV, the Liverpool fan channel. The problem is less his success, other hosts said, and more in the copycats he has inspired.“People see his videos going viral,” Mr. Machin said, “so now there are a lot of Manchester United watchalongs where people you’ve never seen before are kind of performing their anger.”The economics of the internet, in theory, incentivize virality. In an industry in which there is a direct correlation between clicks and revenue, going viral is held to be both the greatest prize and the ultimate purpose of all online content.Those who earn their living from fan channels, though, see that kind of attention less as a goal and more as a danger. “We don’t want that virality,” said Ben Daniel, who founded We Are Tottenham TV with his brother, Simon, in 2017.Clips that break tribal lines tend to do so by attracting a considerable proportion of “hate watches,” he said — views from fans of other clubs relishing another team’s suffering. But those are not people who might hit the like button, or subscribe. Virality, it turns out, brings the wrong sort of fame.ParasocialOn the surface, the rewards for watchalong fame are thin. YouTube’s algorithm is weighted toward shorter videos, not hours of broadcast. The platform’s chats, which allow viewers to append payments to their comments or questions, drive only a couple of hundred dollars of revenue.The benefits are largely second-order ones. They are worth doing, Mr. Smith said, because they can drive subscriptions. Mostly, though, they do them because “it would be weird not to: The game is the culmination of everything we talk about.”He and Mr. Mottershead are old hands by the standards of the genre: Stretford Paddock has been doing watchalongs for almost a decade. Most of the newer versions trace their origins to the pandemic, when social distancing rules kept fans from attending games in person.Before then, fan channels focused on giving supporters who could not or did not attend games a digital version of the experience: a taste from outside the stadium, and inside the crowd, before, during and after games.“People want to feel that connection to their clubs,” one watchalong host said, wherever they happen to be watching.Rory Smith/The New York TimesWith the stands empty, that was not possible. All that was left was to offer running commentary on the games that they, like every other fan, were watching on television.When fans returned to the stands, though, the channels noticed there was still a sizable audience craving that type of in-game coverage. “It was so popular that we couldn’t drop it,” Mr. Machin said of The Redmen TV’s experience.Creators of Premier League watchalongs said they all appeal to roughly the same audience, distinguished only by tribal allegiance: fans generally between 16 and 35, though with a substantial proportion who are just a little older. A slender majority live in Britain, but there are healthy constituencies in Ireland, the United States and Australia, as well as whichever country a given team’s stars call home. Tottenham, for example, has a sizable following in South Korea thanks to the club’s beloved captain, Son Heung-min.They are all watching, too, for much the same reason. “People want to feel that connection to their clubs,” Mr. Machin said, wherever they happen to live.Watchalongs create a different sort of bond: a form of what psychologists call a parasocial relationship. Viewers want their biases to be reinforced. They want to know how other, like-minded fans are reacting to the games. But they also want the digressions, the asides about roofing and nightmares and cultural appropriation as it relates to hairstyles.They are, after all, watching from home, all around the world, each of them locked in their own little silo. What they want, more than searing insight or expert analysis or even a cheap laugh, is a connection to people who are doing exactly the same thing.Mr. Mottershead and Mr. Smith are not trying to offer them detailed commentary. They are trying to recreate the feeling, Mr. Mottershead said, of “watching the game with your mates.” More

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    The Premier League Needs a Commissioner

    Allowing clubs to block rule changes and money to delay punishments feeds the perception that the same rules do not apply to everyone.Pete Rozelle’s immediate reaction could not accurately be described as unbridled enthusiasm. He was 33. He had, for the last three years, been the general manager of the Los Angeles Rams. He was suave, charming and well liked. But he was nevertheless starting to wonder whether running an N.F.L. football team was really the job for him.And then, outside the Kenilworth Hotel in Miami in January 1960, he was cornered by a cadre of the league’s most fearsome power brokers: the Mara brothers, Jack and Wellington, owners of the Giants; Dan Reeves, the Rams’ benefactor; and Paul Brown, the coach and founder and all-purpose potentate of the team in Cleveland that still bears his name.They had an offer to make Rozelle. They did not want him to run a franchise. They wanted to put him in charge of the whole league.It was an offer, in Rozelle’s mind, that he had to refuse. “You’ve got to be kidding,” he told them, according to Michael MacCambridge’s magisterial history of the league, “America’s Game.” “That is the most ludicrous thing I have ever heard.”Rozelle’s logic was simple. The job of N.F.L. commissioner looked an awful lot like a poisoned chalice. The league’s various owners were split on almost every issue imaginable — not only on who should be commissioner, but also whether to add another slate of expansion teams, whether to sign a collective television deal and how to stave off the threat of the rival American Football League.There was even contention over where, exactly, the league’s offices should be. Rozelle was not the only one who might have looked at the job description and decided he would have to be a fool, or a madman, to accept.Still, over the course of the afternoon, Rozelle was won over. He was persuaded by Reeves, Brown and the rest that his candidacy would be successful, that the issues could be resolved, that he would “grow into” the position. His wife, Jane, reassured him that he would be a good fit. Later that day, Rozelle was elected as commissioner.The challenges faced by the N.F.L. of the early 1960s are alien to the Premier League of 2023. The Premier League is, by almost any measure, a picture of health. It is the most popular domestic sports league of all time. Television has made it rich beyond measure. It is a playground for billionaires and private equity funds and nation states. It does not fear the emergence of a rival; if anything, its primacy is such that it is asphyxiating its former peers, a wealth gap that isn’t good for the game.This weekend, the Premier League will return after a brief hiatus for international duties with a top-of-the-table meeting between Manchester City and Liverpool, the game that has become its marquee fixture. City is the world’s dominant team. Liverpool is one of soccer’s grandest names. The two teams are packed with global stars and each is led by one of the most influential coaches of their generation. Millions will tune in to watch. If the Premier League is in crisis, it has taken a strange form.And yet, below the surface, the competition is buffeted by currents that Rozelle would recognize. This week, the clubs of the Premier League met in London for one of their periodic conferences. Among other matters, they voted on whether to introduce a ban on — and this is catchy — “related party loans.”In truth, this is hardly an existential matter for the league. (It is far more pressing, and far more problematic, elsewhere.) More and more teams in England, as is the case across Europe, are now part of so-called multiclub networks, in which owners possess not one but a whole stable of teams.The Premier League had, correctly, recognized that this offered teams a chance to circumvent the competition’s extremely lax rules on spending: Nottingham Forest could, say, take a player on loan from its sister club, Olympiacos, at a cheaper rate than it might have to pay on the open market, boosting its performance without affecting its balance sheet.The fact that this is only an issue now, of course, has nothing to do with Forest’s links to Greece or Brighton’s relationship with a team in Belgium but with Newcastle, which is owned by the same Saudi sovereign wealth fund that has spent the last few months stuffing its four domestic teams with superstars. The Premier League wanted to head off the prospect of those players being conveniently diverted to Newcastle at discounted rates.Bernardo Silva and Manchester City will enter Saturday’s showdown against Liverpool with a one-point lead in the Premier League table.Ian Walton/Associated PressBut the motion did not pass. The Premier League’s rules state that, to be approved, any vote requires the support of 14 of its 20 teams. This time, it fell one short. Seven teams decided, essentially, that the idea of related party loans was a good one. It is no surprise that those seven teams either are, or soon might be, part of multiclub systems.It would be naïve, though, to assume that the motives on the other side of the argument were any more pure. It is possible that some of the 13 who did back the idea of a ban did so because they believed the loophole might in some way undermine the integrity of the league, or because they felt there really ought to be rules governing a sporting competition. More likely — as suggested by the timing — they saw a chance to deny their rivals a possible advantage.There is nothing new in this. Several years ago, a number of teams put to the league the idea that they might pool the performance data produced by their games, so as to allow teams to better understand their opponents. Bundesliga of Germany had already adopted a collective approach. A majority of teams rejected it. Such a move would, they said, favor the clubs that had been early adopters of analytics.This is how the Premier League works: as a sort of tyranny of a self-interested majority. And, on the surface, teams confusing what is in their interests with what is in the interests of the league as a whole has done little harm. The league has grown to become a global behemoth. It is probably now Britain’s greatest cultural export.Increasingly, though, that approach appears to be nearing a breaking point. Manchester City has been charged with — though not found guilty of — 115 breaches of the league’s financial regulations. This month, Chelsea brought to its attention huge discrepancies in its books.Everton has vowed to fight a Premier League punishment, but its pockets are not as deep as those of rivals facing the same threat.Peter Powell/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAnd the day before the league’s executives met in London to present craven self-interest as a form of democracy, Everton was stripped of 10 points in the standings for surpassing the maximum loss permitted by the league. (A lesson here: If you tell people that the aim is to lose no money, but that they can lose $130 million without being punished, they will assume that $130 million is not so much a ceiling as a target.)In a 41-page report exploring the Everton case, Paragraph 107 is the key. Part of the evidence submitted by Everton, it says, came from a representative of the club who explained that his job was not to make sure that it met the league’s financial requirements, but to “protect and interpret” those requirements “to the benefit” of his employer.“The Commission notes that the Premier League already needs to devote considerable resources to monitoring compliance by its member clubs,” the report adds. “If all clubs were to adopt a similar approach, the Premier League’s task would become yet more challenging.”That should not be the case, of course. The teams of the Premier League should understand that for a sporting competition to have any validity, any meaning, it needs to have an agreed-upon set of rules. But what Everton, Chelsea and Manchester City prove — like the vote on related party loans — is that the clubs do not want to engage with those rules in good faith. They see them instead as rules to be manipulated and circumvented and sometimes ignored, and view doing so as all part of the game.Whether that does any actual damage is difficult to say. The allegations against Manchester City have done little to dampen enthusiasm for the league, just as the sight of Newcastle reaching the Champions League with Neymar and Cristiano Ronaldo — on loan — would hardly drive fans away.There comes a point, though, when a fracture happens. Perhaps that is between the clubs, so ensconced in their own universes that they can no longer agree on anything. Or perhaps that is between the teams and the fans, once the asterisks start to pile up in previous seasons and nobody is sure whether what they are watching will actually count.There are two ways of averting that. One, rather utopian, is to persuade the clubs to work more collectively, to understand that growth is a shared endeavor and that their success is codependent. The other is to create an office, one with genuine power, to enforce the rules (ideally in real time), to issue punishments and to protect the interests of the league.On several occasions in the 1990s, the Premier League sent emissaries to the United States to see what English soccer could learn from America’s major leagues. They came back with an awareness of the power of television, an understanding of the significance of corporate revenue, and a surprisingly longstanding conviction that cheerleaders would be a good idea in a Yorkshire winter.Nobody, it seems, recommended instituting a commissioner to shape and guide their business. Given where the Premier League finds itself now, caught in an impasse between irreconcilable camps, it is apparent that is something of an omission. If the clubs cannot willingly work together, cannot operate for their own wider benefit, then it is obvious they have to be made to do so.The only problem, of course, is the obvious one. The clubs themselves would have to vote on not only the identity of the commissioner, but also the existence of one. As ever, they would do so entirely along the lines of their own self-interests. In that case, and in that case alone, though, they might just find an unfamiliar unanimity.A (Disputed) Vision of the FutureCristiano Ronaldo is confirmed for Saudi Arabia in February. Lionel Messi and Inter Miami? Not so much.Ahmed Yosri/ReutersIt is not absolutely clear, at this precise moment, if Inter Miami will be taking part in the tournament that everyone is talking about: the eternally prestigious Riyadh Season Cup.On Tuesday, Turki al-Sheikh, the chairman of the General Entertainment Authority in Saudi Arabia, was under the distinct impression that he had booked the world’s finest Barcelona tribute act to be part of a three-team tournament featuring Miami’s fellow “giants” — his words, not anyone else’s — Al-Nassr and Al-Hilal.A few hours later, sadly, it became clear that nobody had told Inter Miami. “Earlier today, an announcement was issued stating that Inter Miami is scheduled to play in the Riyadh Season Cup,” the club said in a statement that is, by any standards, a classic of the genre. “This is inaccurate.”It seems a fair bet to assume that this all ends with Inter Miami pitching up in Saudi Arabia in a few months anyway, and that the dispute was rather more about who was allowed to announce the news, and when, than it was about the actual content of it. Still, even if the whole thing does not materialize, it is hard to escape the impression that the episode offers a fleeting glimpse of soccer’s future.The appeal of bringing Miami to town, of course, is the prospect of bringing Lionel Messi and Ronaldo into direct competition again. It would be, as the now-disputed news release had it, a “Last Dance” sort of occasion, an assertion undercut only a little by the fact that: one, the actual “Last Dance” — the documentary series — is about a meaningful championship, not a friendly match; and two, there is every chance that either the Saudi authorities or M.L.S. will find a way to have them play each other again at the next available opportunity.Still, such quibbling is probably futile at this point. Inter Miami against Al-Nassr in Riyadh, in February, is not even a remote imitation of the sorts of games that defined the rivalry between Messi and Ronaldo. It is instead an exhibition, a staged production, more than a sporting contest. It is soccer as brought to you by W.W.E.But it is also, needless to say, what people want. Fans will buy tickets to see Messi and Ronaldo face-to-face once more. Broadcasters will pay — perhaps not much, but still — to show the game. People will tune in, idly, reluctantly, with half an eye on something else. And as they do, soccer will take another step on the road to becoming something further from sport and closer to what might best be described as “general entertainment.”CorrespondenceLast week’s newsletter touched, fleetingly, on Sweden, the only major men’s league in Europe that continues virgin and unsullied by the arrival of V.A.R. That means, of course, that Sweden is also blissfully ignorant of the infinite debate about V.A.R. that occurs every time anyone mentions V.A.R.(It seems now that soccer is essentially a year-round conversation about how much of our agency we should surrender to technology broken only by two breaks in which we talk about the acquisition of players. Perhaps, in years to come, we will finally do away with the actual sport entirely so as to concentrate exclusively on the bits we really like.)In honor of the Swedish approach, then, I am going to set aside the many emails about V.A.R. that arrived in the inbox this week and focus instead on three questions that are perhaps less pressing but almost certainly more original.“Why are Wolverhampton Wanderers referred to as Wolves by match commentators?” Rick Smith asked. “I can’t think of any other team regularly referred to by its nickname. The only thing I can think of is, way back in the days of print media, some editor or typesetter said Wolverhampton had too many letters to fit in a headline.”My sense here is that Rick’s assertion is essentially correct, though I can think of a few examples that come pretty close. The best is the Scottish team Heart of Midlothian, which is referred to almost exclusively as Hearts. It is increasingly common to see “Spurs” in a league table rather than “Tottenham Hotspur.” In all of these cases, I suspect the basic cause is the desire to abbreviate, both from the fans and the news media.Question No. 2 comes from Ted Richards. “With the margins in performance at the top level becoming smaller and smaller, and the improvements in data collecting and tracking, has there been any movement, at the club level, to preferring international players closer to home?” he asked. “Might a club prefer a Mudryk over a Martinelli, knowing international duty would not require hours in the air while crossing many time zones?”The short answer to this is yes. Clubs do factor international commitments into signing players — particularly in the context of African stars likely to be called up for the midseason Cup of Nations — but it is ordinarily only one factor to be weighed, rather than an outright red flag.And finally, Bob Bonpietro has hit upon another subject on which I already have thoughts. “After seeing France beat Gibraltar, 14-0,” he wrote, “isn’t it time UEFA reconsider its qualifying format for the European Championship? These types of games usually end in routs. Why not do something akin to Concacaf to winnow out the minnows?”Kylian Mbappé, Olivier Giroud and Ousmane Dembélé combined to score six of France’s 14 goals against Gibraltar.Valery Hache/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe argument has always been that the smaller nations improve only by being exposed to the standard to which they aspire, and it is one with some evidence in its favor. Luxembourg, for example, traditionally one of Europe’s great walkovers, finished third in its qualifying group this time around. Albania, historically only a rung above, has now qualified for two of the last three Euros.All of that notwithstanding, the idea of holding some sort of prequalifying tournament does have some merit. Inviting the 16 “weakest” teams — decided by ranking, perhaps, or performance in the last round of qualification — to play off for a limited number of places in qualifying proper would allow those countries to play more meaningful games; would create a more attractive qualifying tournament; and would not stop the momentum of the upwardly mobile. More

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    North Korea’s Han Kwang-song Returns to International Soccer

    Han Kwang-song’s recent appearances in World Cup qualifiers were his first ones overseas since 2020, when U.N. sanctions led to an involuntary career break.When the North Korean men’s soccer team took the field for two 2026 World Cup qualifying matches this month, close observers noticed an important roster change.Han Kwang-song, a high-profile striker, was back, more than three years after vanishing from public view for reasons beyond his control: United Nations-imposed sanctions on North Korean nationals over Pyongyang’s nuclear program.Mr. Han’s story is a rare case of North Korea sanctions reverberating through professional soccer. It also shows how enforcement of U.N. sanctions against individuals varies by country.The government in Italy did not deport Mr. Han, now 25, while he was playing professional soccer there. But once he moved to Qatar, the Qatari government did.“The basic story makes sense; the surprising part is that Qatar complied with the U.N. resolutions,” said Marcus Noland, an expert on North Korean sanctions and executive vice president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington.A prodigy with ‘superhero’ statusMr. Han’s early success was partly a product of North Korea’s push to cultivate soccer talent. After attending a prestigious soccer school founded by the country’s leader, Kim Jong-un, Mr. Han trained in Spain before turning pro in Italy.He quickly made an impression in Europe as a speedy forward with an eye for goal. Back home, North Korea’s official news agency praised him after a 2019 Asian Cup qualifier as “the player that experts and enthusiasts paid the most attention to.”“In North Korea, he’s a superhero,” said Kim Heung-Tae, a professor of sports science at Daejin University in South Korea who follows the North’s soccer program.But in 2017, as punishment for the North’s sixth nuclear weapons test, the United Nations Security Council ordered all North Korean nationals working abroad to be repatriated by December 2019 — a strategy for preventing financing of the North’s military.Mr. Han, one of several North Koreans playing overseas in professional soccer leagues at the time, was among the targets.Sanctions meet realityBut the Italian authorities did not repatriate Mr. Han by the 2019 deadline, United Nations Security Council reports show. Instead, Juventus, the Italian club where he had been earning more than half a million euros a year, struck a deal in early 2020 to send him to Al-Duhail, a soccer team in Qatar, on a five-year contract worth about 4.3 million euros, about $4.7 million.Though a Security Council panel of experts on North Korea contacted Italy and Qatar immediately after that transfer, it was not canceled, and Juventus accepted a transfer fee from the Qatari club, according to the U.N. The panel said in a report that it later “reiterated to Qatar the relevant resolutions concerning the case.”That summer, Mr. Han stopped appearing for Al-Duhail. In January 2021, Qatar’s mission to the United Nations said in a letter to the U.N. panel that Mr. Han had left Qatar after having his contract “terminated” by the club — and that Qatar’s actions reflected its commitments to Security Council resolutions about North Korean nationals who earn income abroad.At the time, the coronavirus pandemic was raging, and North Korea’s borders were sealed. Qatar said in its letter, a copy of which was included in a U.N. report, that Mr. Han had left the country on Qatar Airways Flight 131 — a nonstop flight to Rome.‘He’s probably been training all along’Details of Mr. Han’s movements since leaving Qatar, including the timing and circumstances of his return to North Korea, remain scarce. According to Transfermarkt, a website that tracks soccer players and their contracts, he has not played for a professional club since July 2021.Also unclear is whether any of Mr. Han’s earnings ever made it back to the North Korean government.Mr. Han signed an agreement in 2020 with a Qatari bank, where he had an account at the time, pledging not to transfer any money to his home country, according to a U.N. report. Still, Professor Kim said, North Korean agents had most likely accompanied him everywhere he went overseas and restricted how he spent his earnings.Neither FIFA, the governing body of soccer; nor the Italian or Qatari Foreign Ministries; nor North Korea’s soccer association or the Asian Football Confederation immediately responded to requests for comment. Nor did Al-Duhail, Juventus or Cagliari, another team that Mr. Han played for in Italy.Mr. Han’s return to competition this month was reported earlier by CNN and the website NK News, among other outlets.Professor Kim said that the pandemic had probably curtailed many athletic events in North Korea, where the long-lasting border closing crippled the nation’s economy. But soccer is the country’s most popular sport, and Professor Kim said that domestic competitions had probably been held regularly in recent months.As for Mr. Han, Professor Kim said, “he’s probably been training all along.”Rather than joining another professional league abroad, Mr. Han is likely to focus on preparing for the 2026 World Cup, Professor Kim said. He added that North Korea was competitive in its region and had a good chance of qualifying, in part because FIFA has nearly doubled the number of slots for Asian countries at that tournament, which will be held in the United States, Canada and Mexico.Max Canzi, who coached Mr. Han in Italy for Cagliari’s under-19 team, told CNN that he was “very happy” that the striker had returned to international competition for the World Cup qualifying match against Syria in Saudi Arabia on Nov. 16.As Mr. Han resumes his career, Mr. Canzi added that he was “very curious about the level of his performance after being out for so much time.”Mr. Han was substituted at halftime in the Saudi Arabia match, which North Korea lost, 1-0. But five days later in Yangon, Myanmar, he contributed to a 6-1 win over the home country with a signature headed goal. More

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    Messi Surcharge: Red Bulls, Other M.L.S. Teams to Charge More for Miami Games

    A Red Bulls promotion has some fine print: If Inter Miami is the opponent, you get a different game.A holiday deal offered by the Red Bulls soccer team includes some merchandise, like a travel mug, as well as tickets to two games, including its first home game.But there is some fine print. The Major League Soccer schedule will not be announced until the end of the year, and if it turns out that the home opener is against Inter Miami, fans who buy the package will get tickets for the second home game instead.The reason is Lionel Messi.Miami is the team of Messi, the global superstar, and a chance to see him is a lot more appealing than a random game against, say, Toronto F.C. Any time he comes to town will be an event, and teams don’t want to just throw such a golden ticket into a package deal.Some Red Bulls fans who noticed the fine print were annoyed and expressed that on social media — words like “gouge” were common. But at least a few others shrugged it off as a smart business move. “It’s purely naïve to expect the league not to try to capitalize on this at all costs,” said Dan Rodriguez, a Red Bulls fan from Westchester County, N.Y.The Red Bulls did not respond to a question about the ticket offer. Even if fans lose the Messi game, the deal still includes a game against the team’s regional rival, N.Y.C.F.C. And because there are 29 M.L.S. teams, the chance that the first game will actually be against Miami and Messi is slim.Around the league, though, teams are seeing a gold mine in Messi. Not every team has set its full pricing yet, especially since the schedule has not been announced. But the Columbus Crew is charging at least $382 for its home game against Miami and $421 and $679 for better seats. In contrast, tickets for ordinary Crew games this year could be had for as little as $40, or less as part of a season ticket package.Dynamic pricing is not unusual in M.L.S. or other sports. A big game against a rival might cost slightly more, but not several hundred dollars more.Miami itself is charging between 46 percent and 82 percent more for standard season tickets than it did this year, when Messi joined midseason. Less expensive packages are now about $800 for 17 games, and other season tickets are $4,000, $7,000 or even $10,000 for seats with club access.That puts Miami as one of the priciest season tickets in the world. The most expensive season ticket to Tottenham, in the English Premier League, costs $2,498, and it is $1,021 for Barcelona, World Soccer Talk reported.Messi signed for Miami in July, when many tickets were already sold. That meant fans already in possession of tickets to his games were able to cash in on a resale, while no extra money flowed to the teams. For next year, teams have time to plan and get some of that markup for themselves.Buying a season ticket to see another team that is scheduled to play Miami is one way to see Messi. Fans who do so will enjoy seeing Messi when he comes to town, or flip their tickets on the secondary market for a big payday.Of course that’s assuming Messi plays. He will turn 37 during the M.L.S. season and missed some games this year with a scar tissue ailment. When he did not play, many fans, some of whom had forked over top dollar, grumbled.After he missed a game in Chicago in October, for which 61,000 tickets had been sold, the Chicago Fire offered $250 credit for season ticket holders and $50 to single-game buyers as recompense.M.L.S. teams around the country will have visions of full houses of fans in expensive seats, and not of refunds, for 2024. More

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    Swedish Soccer Prioritized Fans Over Finances. Now, Business Is Booming.

    While most of Europe’s leagues engage in a Sisyphean quest to source as much money as possible, Sweden has chosen a different model. But its rewards come with risk.The warning sounded over and over, first in Swedish and then in English. A fire had been detected. Please evacuate the stadium. The players left the field. Outside, fire crews were arriving. But in the stands, as a thick cloud of smoke wreathed and coiled in the floodlights, nobody moved. The fans were going to make the game happen by sheer force of will.It was a game they had been anticipating for some time. The top two teams in the Allsvenskan, Sweden’s elite league, had gone into the final day of the season separated by just three points. A quirk of scheduling fate meant that their last game was with each other. Malmo, the host, had to win to claim the championship. Elfsborg, the visitor, needed only to avoid defeat. It had been billed as a guldfinal: a gold-medal match.The idea of a single game that decides the destiny of a league title is vanishingly rare in modern soccer, where championships are won over the course of a season rather than in a winner-take-all final. It has not happened in England since 1989, and Italy has not produced such a denouement in more than half a century.Fans of Malmo, left, and Elfsborg. The teams met to decide the Swedish league title on the final day of the season.Betina Garcia for The New York Times“It might not be the best league in Europe,” the league’s chief executive said, “but the atmosphere in the stands is.”Betina Garcia for The New York TimesIt is also increasingly unusual for a title even to be in play as the season draws to a close. Over the last 30 years, soccer has become so financially stratified that many domestic tournaments are little more than monthslong processions for the wealthiest teams. Sweden, though, is different, a solitary beacon of competitive balance. In four of the last six editions of the Allsvenskan, the championship has gone to the wire.How it has produced that is a story of rejecting orthodoxy, of asking why sports exist and whom they exist for. But it is also a story of how hard it is to stand alone, and how fragile even the most heartening success can be.A Different PathThe walls of Malmo’s Eleda Stadium are full of mementos of the glory days, the era when Swedish teams could compete with Europe’s giants and, occasionally, beat them.In 1979, Malmo, fielding a team of amateurs, made it all the way to the European Cup final. It is still the only Scandinavian team to feature in the game and its successor, the Champions League final. In the 1980s, IFK Gothenburg twice won (lesser) continental trophies. As late as 1994, IFK beat Manchester United and Barcelona in the Champions League.Those victories proved a last stand. The game’s dynamic changed drastically as money rushed into soccer in the 1990s, first from broadcasters, then private investors, and finally oligarchs, corporations and nation states. The riches created a new class of unassailable domestic powerhouses.“Big money fed the biggest clubs,” enabling them to construct squads full of superstars, said Mats Enquist, who served as general secretary of Svenskelitfotboll, or SEF, the body that runs Sweden’s professional leagues, from 2012 until early this year. For Sweden, as for many countries outside Europe’s major television markets, he said, it was “impossible to keep up.”Malmo, in blue, had to win the game to claim its third title in four years. Elfsborg needed only to avoid defeat.Betina Garcia for The New York TimesInstead of grasping at shadows, Sweden’s response was — effectively — to opt out. In 1999, the country enshrined in law a rule that 51 percent of its sports teams had to be owned by their members: the fans. In 2007, when that rule was challenged, the fans fought fiercely to protect it.“That was the moment that the fans first realized the power they had,” said Noa Bachner, the author of a book that examines Sweden’s rejection of soccer’s economic orthodoxy.Yet they wielded it over a bleak landscape.“Crowds were going down, the standard of play was not good, the league had a lot of problems with hooliganism,” Mr. Enquist said. A survey that he commissioned as one of his first acts found that only 11 percent of fans regarded the Allsvenskan as their favorite competition, far behind England’s Premier League and the Champions League. “It was not a good place to be,” he said.Mr. Enquist was an outsider to soccer when he took a leading role in it: a software entrepreneur by trade, and a volleyball and golf fan by inclination. It was his job, though, to sort it out.His solution set Sweden on an almost heretical path in modern soccer. Unable to turn to rich investors, the SEF harnessed the country’s most obvious strength, the fans. In the face of considerable skepticism, the authorities “touched hands” with the supporters, Mr. Enquist said, and set about designing a league they wanted to watch, and watch live.They negotiated limits on behavior, designating invading the field and throwing missiles as red lines but allowing a tacit leeway on pyrotechnics in service to spectacle. They persuaded the police to adopt a more conciliatory approach rather than “treating all fans as potential hooligans,” as Lars-Christer Olsson, the league’s president until this year, said.Flares and clashes with the police marred the season’s final day. Betina Garcia for The New York TimesA decade later, the transformation has been staggering. Almost alone among Europe’s mid-tier league, Swedish soccer is a picture of health. It has had 11 different champions in 20 years. Attendances have doubled in the last decade; this year brought record crowds. The league’s revenues have tripled in the same period. Now, more than 40 percent of Swedish fans identify the Allsvenskan as their priority.The game of the year between Malmo and Elfsborg should have been the perfect distillation of all that work, an illustration of what makes Sweden a standard-bearer for a different version of soccer. Instead, it highlighted how fine the line is between empowering fans and losing control of them.The start of the second half was delayed by 30 minutes as Elfsborg’s fans confronted a line of riot police officers, and then by another half-hour when Malmo’s ultras, the team’s most hard-core supporters, set off so many smuggled-in pyrotechnics that they triggered the fire alarm. When Malmo’s victory was secured, thousands of fans rushed the field. A handful raced toward their Elfsborg counterparts and hurled lit flares into their packed sections.“There is a thin margin,” said Pontus Jansson, a veteran defender who returned to Malmo this year after a decade abroad to draw the curtain on his career. “They stepped over it.”For Fans, By FansThe moment when Malmo’s players and staff claimed their title — two hours later, once all the smoke had cleared — was a homespun sort of occasion. They walked out in small groups to collect their medals, in velveteen presentation boxes, from a collapsible table. There were no glitter cannon or smoke machines at their backs.Instead, the photo that will one day grace the walls alongside all the other mementos of triumphs past captured the two elements that make up the club: the players and, massed on the field behind them, the fans.Defender Pontus Jansson with his title-winning teammates on a platform and the club’s fans behind a barrier on the pitch.Betina Garcia for The New York TimesEverything Swedish soccer has become has been constructed by, and for, the people who go to watch it in stadiums. Mr. Bachner, the author, reels off the start of a long list of examples: the absence of corporations, sovereign wealth funds and “multiclub projects” from the ranks of club owners; sustained investment in women’s teams; an unofficial ban on holding training camps in authoritarian states; a rule stating that the league has to give at least two months’ notice before moving games for television.The clearest illustration, though, is that Sweden — alone among Europe’s major nations — has resisted the introduction of video assistant referees. The clubs, at the behest of their members, have consistently voted against the technology, a source of controversy elsewhere because of its not-infrequent errors and interminable delays.“I think the fans have the feeling it disturbs the ambience in the stadium,” Mr. Olsson said.There are things that Sweden’s democratic tradition cannot vote out of existence. Malmo’s championship, for example, means another potential infusion of Champions League income that might be enough to give the club — already Sweden’s richest — an insurmountable competitive advantage.The issue of the ultras, too, poses a problem. “It feels as though there are two games taking place,” Mr. Bachner said. “One on the field, and one in the stands, where these groups are seeing how they can display their power, and they don’t mind if 20,000 other people have to wait around while they do it.”Malmo fans storming the field after the match.Betina Garcia for The New York TimesSweden is not the only country facing that challenge, but Mr. Bachner acknowledged concern that the chaos on the season’s showcase day would lead to calls for more aggressive policing, which could threaten the delicate alliance between the authorities and the fans.To many, that would be a step back. “It might not be the best league in Europe,” said Johan Lindvall, the league’s chief executive, “but the atmosphere in the stands is.” Matchdays are both the cornerstone on which all the success has been built, and the proof of how far it has come.“After we scored the goal, the noise was crazy,” Mr. Jansson said. His presence alone is a case in point. He had spent the past seven years becoming part of English soccer’s furniture. Just 32, he could perhaps still be playing there, amid the superstars of the Premier League. Instead, in April, he chose to come home to experience what Swedish soccer had become.“That atmosphere,” he said. “That’s what brought me back.”A Malmo player on the pitch as smoke filled the air.Betina Garcia for The New York Times More

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    Xabi Alonso Isn’t Coming to Save Your Team. Not Yet.

    The patience of Alonso, the Bayer Leverkusen manager, says a lot about him, and just as much about a sport perpetually chasing the next big thing.Xabi Alonso has always done things at his own speed. As a player, it was his coolness, his control, his capacity to wait until precisely the right moment that made him one of the finest midfielders of his generation. As he contemplated the idea of becoming a coach, he saw no reason to change. He would continue to treat patience as a virtue.He did not start out on the second phase of his career with a five-year or a 10-year plan in mind. All he knew was that he was not in a rush. “I had an idea that I did not want to go too quickly,” he said. “But I had not really mapped anything out.”There were plenty of people who were more than happy to do it for him. Everything about Alonso seemed to indicate not only that he would go into management when his playing days drew to a close, but almost that he should. He had, after all, had the perfect education. He was as near to a sure thing as it was possible to imagine.He had played for some of the most garlanded clubs in Europe. He was one of the most decorated players of his generation, having won the Champions League with Liverpool and Real Madrid, domestic titles with Madrid and Bayern Munich, the World Cup and a couple of European Championships with Spain.He had learned at the knee of pretty much every member of modern coaching’s pantheon: Rafael Benítez at Liverpool; José Mourinho, Carlo Ancelotti and Zinedine Zidane at Real Madrid; Pep Guardiola and Ancelotti again at Bayern Munich. (Even then, he admitted that there is one notable absence from that list: Alonso would have “loved” to have been coached by Jürgen Klopp.)And, just as important, he had been a keen and gifted student. It was only in the last few years of his career, in Madrid and Munich, that Alonso actively sought to learn what it took to be a manager: He made a point of peppering Ancelotti’s and Guardiola’s staff members with questions, trying to arm himself with as much knowledge as possible. “I tried to be curious about the manager’s work,” he said.He had, though, always been more cerebral than most of his peers, an avid reader off the field and an expert interpreter of the game on it, blessed with such foresight that it sometimes appeared as if he was playing in real time and everyone else was on satellite delay. His coaches, modern soccer’s most revered minds, regarded him as their brains on the field.From the moment he retired, then, Alonso could probably have walked into any job he wanted. He could have fast-tracked his coaching qualifications, started doing a bit of judicious punditry work, called in a few favors, and been in charge of an underperforming Champions League team almost before the year was out. That, though, is not Alonso’s style.And so, instead, he took a sabbatical, and then set about earning his spurs. He spent three years back home in San Sebastián, working in the youth academy at Real Sociedad, his first club, the one he supported, the place where his father had worked. He did not conduct a series of regular interviews to ensure people knew about all of his achievements. As far as it is possible for someone of his renown, Alonso stepped into the shadows.Reasonably frequently, someone would try to coax him into the light: from Spain, from Germany, from England. “I had other possibilities,” he said, diplomatically, in an interview this week. “But I didn’t see them that clearly. I didn’t want to go somewhere I was not convinced.” He wanted to wait for just the right time, just the right place. A year ago, when Bayer Leverkusen approached him, he had a sense that it might have arrived.“I had the feeling that I had taken the right steps,” he said. It felt like a risk, of course, but he was ready. “It was the moment that either I tried, or I stayed at home. Maybe that would have been an easier life. It would have been more relaxed than right now.”Alonso’s quick success as Leverkusen manager already has bigger clubs circling.Ronald Wittek/EPA, via ShutterstockLeverkusen seemed a good match, though, the sort of club where expectations are high, but not unrealistic, and the pressure intense, rather than overbearing. It was a team with a good squad with ample room for improvement, a clear structure, a coherent vision of itself. “I had the feeling that everyone was pushing in the same direction,” he said. “That’s helpful. I had the feeling it was the right time and the right place.” He took the job.It was at that point that Alonso’s plan to take things slowly started to fall apart. Leverkusen had been toiling at the foot of the Bundesliga when he arrived. But by the end of his first season, he had managed to steer the club back into the Europa League.The job would soon get harder. Over the summer, Leverkusen sold Mousa Diaby, an electric French winger who had become the team’s most coveted asset. And yet, after 11 games of the new Bundesliga season, Alonso’s team has not lost a game. Leverkusen is top of the table in Germany, two points ahead of Bayern Munich. It has scored 34 goals. The only game it has not won was a 2-2 draw away at Bayern.All of which means the 41-year-old Alonso has overseen the best start to a Bundesliga season any team has ever made, outstripping even the imperious, Guardiola-era Bayern side in which he was a central figure.He now has to spend rather more time than he might like offering deadpan answers to questions about whether his team can lift the championship. (Predictably, he thinks it is too early to contemplate such a prospect; ask him again in April, he said).Alonso, it turns out, seems to be exactly as good at management as everyone assumed he would be. That does not mean he has changed his approach. He is still not in a rush. The problem is that the same cannot be said of the sport. Alonso always stood out because of his patience, because he possessed what the industry lacked.Barely a year into his senior management career, Alonso is already the favorite to replace Ancelotti at Real Madrid, and a contender to fill any vacancy that might arise at both Bayern Munich and Liverpool. “Maybe I could do all three,” Alonso said. “With Zoom.”He was joking, of course. He has been around long enough to know that he had to clarify that his “mind is 100 percent” at Leverkusen. It is much too soon, as far as he is concerned, to discuss where he might go next. According to his timeline, he is just starting out. “I don’t like to talk about my coaching with a lot of authority,” he said. “I don’t feel I have that authority. I’m so early.”He is young enough that he still joins in games in training — he smiled just a touch awkwardly and briefly blushed when asked if he is the best passer of the ball at the club, a physical reaction that translates roughly as “yes” — and he still cannot quite resist the lure of continually rolling a ball under his feet, caressing it, during training sessions.The withdrawal pangs from his playing days remain. “Playing is better,” he said. “Playing is much better. I shouldn’t say it but I do miss it.” As he is watching games unfold, he said, he catches himself quite often contemplating how much more fun it would be out on the field, putting a plan into action, rather than instructing others to do it.Not far removed from his playing days, Alonso might still be Leverkusen’s best passer.Federico Gambarini/DPA, via Associated PressThat is not to say he does not find management satisfying. Given his influences — in particular that great, all-conquering Spanish team and Guardiola, whom he considers a friend as much as a former manager — it is no surprise he has a clear “idea” of how he wants his team to play: a fusion of Spanish control and German intensity, all percolated through the “intuition” of his players.“They are the most important guys,” he said. When identifying potential recruits this summer, the key characteristic was not familiarity with a particular style but “intelligence,” the ability to shift between them, to make their own decisions, solve their own problems.“It is not about being robots,” Alonso said. “They have the knowledge to know what might happen, and then decide what is good with their qualities.”But management, he has discovered, is built not on grand ideas but of small gestures, too, less a matter of philosophy than personal relationships. He has had to learn “how to be a leader in certain circumstances: when to push, when to be a little softer, when not to let them relax.”Ancelotti, in particular, provided him with a clear example of how to do that, but Alonso knows he is not there yet. He is still forging into uncharted territory, for him. He needs to persuade his players to be more consistent, he said, not to drop the level they have set, not to allow their bright start to flicker and fade.He has never done that before. He is still learning, after all. He knows that will take time. He knows, too, that he has it. Soccer might be hard-wired to ask, almost immediately, what comes next. Alonso’s start has been quicker than even he might have imagined. That has brought opportunity, but it has also brought a challenge, too. He has to figure out how he can continue to take things slow.Simpler TimesAmong the many unique and heartening features of Sweden’s elite league, the Allsvenskan — and I will have much more to say on the competition and its thrilling final title race in the coming days — it is also the only major league in Europe happy to discover what happens if you just decide not to have video assistant referees.At the behest of its empowered fans, Sweden, and Sweden alone, has elected not to introduce V.A.R. Given the system’s performance elsewhere in Europe this year, it looks increasingly like a wise decision.In Sweden, the referee still has the final word.Betina Garcia for The New York TimesFor someone now accustomed to relying on remote confirmation of any and every incident on the field, though, it makes watching a game a slightly disorientating experience. The game on Sunday was settled by a penalty, the sort that might have been pored over for several minutes in the Premier League. Instead, the referee awarded it, the crowd cheered, and Isaac Kiese Thelin stepped up to take it.There was no second-guessing. There was no interminable delay. The decision was made, and it stood. It was the same when Elfsborg made two (from a distance, not impossible) claims for a handball in the dying moments, just before Malmo’s victory secured its latest Swedish championship. The referee waved both away, decisively; nobody had to hold their breath, to wait for V.A.R. to have its say.It was curious to note, too, that the protests from the aggrieved players were significantly less intense than they have become in the Premier League. Some objected, of course, and some pleaded their cases, but there was a recognizable absence of the sort of rage that can only ever be rooted in impotence. It is almost as if, by granting referees absolute agency rather than robbing it from them, Sweden has increased their authority, not diminished their status.CorrespondenceThis newsletter — particularly this section of this newsletter — is never afraid to duck the big issues of the day. I feel like we proved that beyond doubt with our discourse on where you can find the best ice cream, and the subsequent conversation around whether a soccer newsletter should concern itself with where you can find the best ice cream.Liz Honore’s question, then, might look fiendishly complex — a labyrinth of obstacles and booby-traps — but with clear eyes and a strong heart, it can be confronted head on. “Do you think, given Emma Hayes’s no-nonsense coaching style,” Liz asked, “she would have kept Megan Rapinoe on her World Cup squad, given her increased focus on nonsoccer-related issues?”In one sense, the answer to this is quite easy. Hayes does have a no-nonsense coaching style, that is true. But she has also worked with any number of players who have, admirably, taken it on themselves to bring issues close to their hearts into the public domain. So, no, I don’t think she would have disapproved of Rapinoe’s interests away from the game.The controversial bit is this addendum, which I may regret. I do not believe Rapinoe’s form dipped because of her advocacy work. I do, though, believe that Rapinoe’s form dipped, and I believe it is possible she was included in the squad to some extent because she was, in effect, too famous to omit. Whether Hayes would have done the same in that situation, I don’t know.Megan Rapinoe: too big to fail?Orlando Ramirez/Usa Today Sports, via Reuters ConJoel Dvoskin follows that up with a series of questions related to the Jim Harbaugh scandal, which I will admit right now is the sort of cheating that does not really seem like cheating to Europeans. Why wouldn’t he steal other people’s signs? Why would you have a rule about watching your opponents in advance?Joel’s two best queries — “Is cheating only a sin if it works?” and, “If everybody is breaking a rule, why is it still a rule?” — are worth bearing in mind as we discuss the parallel he drew with soccer.“People cheat in soccer all the time, but it seems to happen in a the context of a tacit agreement about the guard rails,” Joel wrote, correctly. “Eventually, the Premier League will find itself in as dicey a situation as faces the Big Ten today. In a sport with such intense competition, it is only a matter of time before someone decides to take ‘rules were made to be broken’ and ‘if you’re not cheating, you’re not trying’ to a previously unimaginable extreme.”It is entirely possible that soccer has already arrived at this moment. This week, Chelsea was accused of historic financial chicanery, and Manchester City, still facing 115 charges of similar offenses from the Premier League, announced eye-watering record revenues.Both would rather suggest that cheating is only a sin if it doesn’t work. More important, if the Premier League is unwilling or unable to punish both Chelsea and City appropriately — and the only logical sporting punishment is retrospective points deductions for the seasons in which the offenses were committed — then the league will have no choice but to ask if there is any point in having rules on spending at all. More

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    Everton Stripped of 10 Points in Premier League, Deepening Team’s Crisis

    A team operating under a mountain of debt and a proposed sale now faces a sporting penalty for violating financial rules. It vowed to appeal.Everton, a founding member of England’s Premier League that has fallen into financial crisis, faced yet more pain on Friday after it was given a 10-point penalty for breaching the league’s economic rules. The punishment sent Everton to the bottom of the league standings and left it facing the threat of relegation from England’s top division at the end of the season.The announcement of a points penalty was not a surprise, since the Premier League had come under pressure to act by rival teams angered by Everton’s rule breaches. But the decision will deepen the crisis that has engulfed Everton, one of English soccer’s oldest teams, at a time when its very future has been placed under a cloud by hundreds of millions of dollars in debt.An independent league commission hearing the case against Everton for breaching the league’s profit and sustainability rules announced the punishment. It said the penalty — the biggest in the Premier League’s history — must be applied immediately, a result that plunged the Blues to 19th place from their relatively safer position in 14th and on the same points total, 4, as last-place Burnley.At the end of each season, the bottom three teams in the Premier League table are relegated out of the division and into the second-tier Championship.Everton said it was “shocked and disappointed” by the scale of the penalty, and immediately announced its intent to appeal.“The club believes that the Commission has imposed a wholly disproportionate and unjust sporting sanction,” Everton said in a statement on its website. “The club has already communicated its intention to appeal the decision to the Premier League.”The team’s perilous financial state has required regular cash infusions from external sources to allow the club to continue operating. The most recent loan came from 777 Partners, an American group that in September agreed to acquire the storied club. That deal has not yet been approved by the Premier League and the Financial Conduct Authority, a regulator, amid questions about 777 Partners’ own finances.The Premier League referred Everton to an independent commission in March after Everton posted financial losses for the fifth straight year. Under the league’s regulations, teams are allowed to lose no more than 105 million pounds, or $130 million, over a three-year period. Everton acknowledged being in breach of those rules for the financial year through 2022.The panel, according to a 41-page written judgment, agreed with the Premier League’s assessment that Everton had breached the allowed amount of losses by £19.5 million (almost $25 million).The scale of Everton’s penalty raises the prospect of a far larger punishment that could await the league’s dominant team, Manchester City. The club has been charged with 115 rule breaches related to its financial declarations. That case, now in its fifth year, has yet to reach a conclusion; it is being heard by a similar panel to the one that decided the Everton case.While the points loss severely increases the chances of Everton’s suffering a costly demotion to the second tier for the first time in its history, the low point totals obtained so far by some of its relegation rivals may yet allow it to escape. Even with its 10-point penalty, Everton is only 2 points behind Luton Town, the team occupying 17th place — the final position offering safety, and a place in the league, for next season.A spokesman for 777 Partners said the company had no comment on the punishment or any effect it would have on its proposed acquisition, because that process remains ongoing. Its proposed deal contains contingencies for points deductions and even a possible relegation.Part of the reason Everton’s punishment was as harsh as it was, the panel said, was related to a claim, upheld by the panel, that the team had failed to engage with the league in good faith, a claim the team continues to reject.“Both the harshness and severity of the sanction imposed by the Commission are neither a fair nor a reasonable reflection of the evidence submitted,” Everton said. More