Raphael Stevens

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    How FIFA Silenced a World Cup Armband Campaign

    European teams had planned to highlight inclusivity on soccer’s biggest stage. They blinked when the sport’s governing body flexed its muscles.DOHA, Qatar — The opening match of the World Cup was only hours away when the leaders of a group of European soccer federations arrived for a meeting at the luxury Fairmont Hotel. The five-star property, converted into the tournament headquarters for FIFA leadership, was an unlikely setting for a fight. But with the matches about to begin, it would have to do.By then the federations and representatives of FIFA had been meeting on and off for months about a plan by the group of nine national teams to wear multicolored armbands with the message “One Love” during their matches at the tournament in Qatar. FIFA had been displeased by the idea, but the teams — which included the tournament contenders France, Germany, England, the Netherlands and Belgium — felt a tacit peace had been agreed to: The teams would wear the armbands, and FIFA would look the other way, then quietly fine them later for breaking its uniform rules.In a conference room at the Fairmont on Nov. 20, though, everything changed. With the room’s large windows and their sweeping views of the Persian Gulf to her back, Fatma Samoura, FIFA’s second-ranking executive, told the federations that their armbands would not only be against the tournament’s uniform regulations but also considered a provocation toward Qatar, the tournament host, and other Islamic nations and African countries. They would not be allowed, Samoura said. The Europeans were stunned.The 24 hours that followed, a flurry of meetings and threats and raised voices and brinkmanship, are just a memory this weekend, as Argentina and France prepare to play in the World Cup final on Sunday. FIFA did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the discussions; this article is based on interviews with multiple participants in the talks, many of whom asked for anonymity because they were not allowed to relate private discussions to the news media.The One Love campaign, begun in the Netherlands three years ago as an effort to promote inclusivity, morphed into one of the biggest controversies of the early days of the World Cup. A month after its sudden end, it remains instructive as an unusually forceful display of the power FIFA wields over its member federations; the leverage it can bring to bear to force their compliance in disagreements; and the way a social justice campaign set to take place on the sport’s biggest stage could be silenced in a single 24-hour period.FIFA’s secretary general, Fatma Samoura, informed the teams that players who wore the One Love armband risked serious penalties.Stuart Franklin/Getty ImagesWhen seven of the European teams arrived in Qatar in late November, their soccer federations insisted that the plan for their captains to wear the One Love armbands remained intact even though FIFA, advised about the plan months earlier, had yet to respond to the idea, despite letters mailed and talks held at the soccer body’s Zurich headquarters.The European nations competing in the World Cup — England, France, Denmark, Germany, Belgium, Wales and Switzerland — and two nations that had not qualified, Norway and Sweden, had found common cause months earlier. Buffeted by mounting criticism of the Qatar World Cup at home, they had planned to highlight their inclusivity message during matches at the tournament. The campaign came after the host country had faced a decade of scrutiny over its human rights record, its treatment of migrant laborers and its criminalization of homosexuality.The group of teams, eager to show solidarity with minority groups and highlight their concerns, but also wary of offending the sensitivities of their hosts, had decided months earlier that they would wear an armband whose design was similar to, but purposefully different from, the more well-known Pride flag.In September, they went public with the plan, with each soccer federation releasing an announcement simultaneously. In statements, captains like Harry Kane of England, Virgil van Dijk of the Netherlands and the goalkeeper Manuel Neuer of Germany — some of the game’s biggest stars — spoke about their eagerness to share the message.Behind the scenes, as the tournament grew closer, the federations sought clarity from FIFA about what it might do once the captains entered the field with an armband that had not been sanctioned by FIFA.At a meeting on Oct. 12 at FIFA’s headquarters in Switzerland, representatives of the teams met with high-ranking FIFA officials, including the governing body’s deputy secretary general, Alasdair Bell, and ​ FIFA’s human rights department, Andreas Graf. The officials talked about labor reforms in Qatar, about the possibility of compensation scheme for migrant workers and about the safety concerns of gay fans attending the World Cup. The final item on the agenda was the One Love armband.“We expressed quite strongly that we would wear the armband, that for us there was no discussion about it,” Gijs de Jong, the secretary general of the Netherlands soccer federation, told The New York Times. The group told the FIFA officials that their federations were willing to accept fines for breaching World Cup uniform regulations, which they understood to be the maximum punishment FIFA could impose for such a violation.The FIFA officials replied that they would discuss the armband plan and return with a response. They did not. News media inquiries went unanswered, too.De Jong said he took FIFA’s silence as a sign that while soccer’s governing body was clearly not pleased about the plan, it might look the other way long enough for the World Cup to play out.“I thought in this case that they would not forbid it but also not give permission, just sort of let it go,” de Jong said. “I thought that would happen, and maybe we would get a fine.”That all changed when the teams arrived in Doha in the days before the tournament.Some of the teams held events with migrant workers at their training bases, and in news conferences their captains were asked about the plan to wear the armbands. A few recommitted to the idea. But the France captain, Hugo Lloris, who had worn the One Love armband during games in Europe, said he would not join the campaign at the World Cup, citing respect for Qatar, a conservative Muslim nation and the first Arab host of the World Cup.Despite Lloris’s sentiments, nothing appeared to have changed for the other teams. They remained steadfast in their convictions at that point, even though they had been alarmed by a speech by FIFA’s president, Gianni Infantino, who bashed European attitudes toward Qatar on the eve of the opening game.The European representatives had decided to let his words slide when they entered a meeting room at the Fairmont. Seated around a table so large that one executive present compared it to ones used by Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, they held further talks on the rights issues and the armband, which by that point had a competitor. Days earlier, FIFA had surprisingly announced an armband campaign of its own: Its versions bear slogans like “No Discrimination,” “Save the Planet” and “Education for All.”The European delegation praised that campaign — which was co-sponsored by the United Nations — but reiterated that their captains would be wearing One Love armbands as planned. Once again, the federation representatives left with a feeling that there was an unspoken compromise in place.“We will wear the armband, we will acknowledge your campaign and you will take it slow with disciplinary procedures,” de Jong said when asked to describe the mood after that meeting broke up. “Fine us after the World Cup.”Ritzau Scanpix/via ReutersMatthias Schrader/Associated PressSeveral European politicians and officials made quietly colorful protests at the World Cup, including the former Danish prime minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt, top left, and Germany’s interior minister, Nancy Faeser, top right. Belgium’s foreign minister, Hadja Lahbib, wore a One Love armband into a V.I.P. box, where she sat near the FIFA president, Gianni Infantino.Natacha Pisarenko/Associated PressWithin 24 hours, though, the mood and tone suddenly shifted. After a summit for FIFA’s 211 member federations led by Infantino, the European teams and representatives of Norway and Sweden, two countries that did not qualify for the World Cup but had been outspoken over the Qatar World Cup, were ushered once more to the conference room. There, Samoura, a former U.N. official from Senegal who had not been present at the earlier meeting, took a more forceful tone.Stunning those present, she warned that the punishments they faced would be immediate and directly target the players involved. Voices were raised. According to a European official who attended the meeting, Samoura, during a coffee break, even suggested to a delegate from Belgium that, should its team continue to promote the One Love armband, it might embolden African teams to wear versions protesting past colonial abuses. FIFA, asked directly about the incident, said it would not comment on the specifics of the meeting.As the meeting passed the two-hour mark, creeping closer to the time all those present needed to head to Al Bayt Stadium for the World Cup’s opening game, a question was eventually put to FIFA: What are you going to do if the teams go ahead? A FIFA official suggested the match commissioner could remove the armband off any captain who wore one. “We said, ‘Good luck with Virgil van Dijk,’” said de Jong, referring to the 6-foot-5 Dutch captain.Still, by the time the meeting broke up, sporting punishments became, for the first time, a distinct possibility.Upset about a plan by European teams to wear One Love armbands, FIFA came up with its own.Jennifer Lorenzini/ReutersThe FIFA versions included uncontroversial slogans about education and discrimination.Friedemann Vogel/EPA, via ShutterstockAt the stadium that evening, while Qatar was losing the opening game to Ecuador, the members of the European group huddled, preparing for the worst. They quickly came to an agreement that if there was to be a punishment for their players — FIFA was by then threatening to hand out a yellow card to any captain in violation of the uniform rules — they would not put their top stars in a position where they had to make a choice.But FIFA had still not provided any clarity, and by then the World Cup had begun. Three of the European teams would be playing the next day, and the rest in the days that followed. On Monday, the morning after the opening match, the first of those teams, England, received a high-profile delegation from FIFA, including the tournament director Colin Smith and FIFA’s head of communications, Bryan Swanson, at its hotel in Al Wakrah.There, FIFA ratcheted up the pressure. According to de Jong, who said he was called immediately by Mark Bullingham, the English federation’s chief executive, FIFA made clear that the yellow card threat was merely a minimum sanction. “They implied it could be a one-game ban for a player,” de Jong said.The federations agreed that the FIFA threat was “unprecedented” and would likely be overturned in a legal challenge. But they were out of time. “What will you do on the pitch?” de Jong said. “Send your lawyer out there?”The campaign collapsed. The teams announced that they had asked their captains not to wear the armbands. The players complied, and the tournament moved on.All of the teams eventually took the field without incident. When they did, many of their captains were wearing armbands emblazoned with FIFA-approved messaging. More

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    There’s No Crying in Baseball. But in Soccer …

    Darko Bandic/Associated PressThen, in the quarterfinals, Croatia did it again, upsetting Brazil, a tournament favorite, in another penalty shootout. That left Neymar, Brazil’s superstar, in tears. “It’s hard to find the words to describe this moment,” he told reporters, pausing to compose himself. More

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    Kylian Mbappé Is Ready to Make Messi’s Moment His Own

    The France and Argentina stars are teammates at Qatar-owned Paris St.-Germain. But when they collide in the World Cup final, both have much to gain, and a lot to lose.DOHA, Qatar — In those early months of the season, before anything was decided, the superstars of Paris St.-Germain mostly talked about what they could win together.The French championship was surely viewed as a formality; P.S.G. these days always seems to win that title. The Champions League was seen as a bigger prize; the team, assembled with the outlay of vast quantities of Qatar’s considerable wealth, had never won it.But in the locker room at Paris St.-Germain’s training facility, the team’s three headliners — the star forwards Neymar of Brazil, Kylian Mbappé of France and Lionel Messi of Argentina — also had another trophy on their minds. As they exchanged gentle ribbing and regular banter inside the aging locker room at Camp des Loges, a former French military camp surrounded by forest on the outskirts of Paris, all of them knew the World Cup was coming, and all of them desperately wanted to win it.“Everybody defends his country,” Mbappé said, laughing as he described the exchanges during an interview at The New York Times’s Manhattan office this summer. “But we laugh a lot. We’re gonna say: ‘Yeah, my country’s gonna win. We’re gonna beat you. No, we are gonna beat you.’”Mbappé in October with his Paris St.-Germain teammates Lionel Messi and Neymar. Geoffroy Van Der Hasselt/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBut now what for months served as background chatter, a way for top athletes to blow off steam, has suddenly become very real.Neymar has already left the conversation, and the World Cup. But Mbappé and Messi are safely through to Sunday’s final at the stadium in Lusail. Messi, who has said he is playing his final World Cup, will be seeking to claim the only prize that has eluded him in a glittering career. Mbappé is after a different honor: He can become a double World Cup winner if France wins on Sunday, repeating a feat last achieved by the Brazil teams of Pelé in 1958 and ’62.Mbappé had already written his name alongside Pelé’s four years ago in Russia, when he joined the Brazilian as the only teenagers to score in a World Cup final. His stunning run of form then, not only the goals but the unshakable confidence he showed in helping to deliver France’s title, elevated his status to genuine superstar overnight.In Qatar, Mbappé could no longer have the comfort of being the coming man, someone who might emerge from the shadows. Excellence, he knew, would be expected.“It’s different because I’m a different player,” he said of his second World Cup. “When I arrived in my first World Cup, I was a young teenager. I was a young guy. Everybody in the world didn’t know me well. I was a big player of P.S.G. but not really famous around the world. Now it is different. Everybody knows me — the pressure is different.”So far, Mbappe appears to have handled that pressure.He and Messi are tied in the race to be the tournament’s top scorer, with five goals each. While he has not always been at his very best, including curiously quiet stretches against both England and Morocco in the knockout round, Mbappé has regularly shown glimpses of the pace and explosiveness that will leave little doubt that he carries on his shoulders France’s chances of conquering Argentina, and Messi.“For me it is the biggest thing in world football,” Mbappé said. “Because when you talk about football, you have the World Cup in your mind. Because this is the only competition that everybody watches. You don’t need to love football to watch the World Cup.”Franck Fife/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMbappé helped usher Argentina out of the 2018 World Cup, at top, and beat Australia at this one.Issei Kato/ReutersFrance saw off Raheem Sterling and England in the quarterfinals, and Morocco in a taut semifinal.Elsa/Getty ImagesThe mass appeal will only be heightened on Sunday. The final’s predominant story line — Messi’s final shot at the one trophy he craves more than any other — has in part cast Mbappé as a foil in the narrative, the key man who could keep Messi from getting his Hollywood ending.The two have been teammates for more than a year now, the young contender and the aging star, and it has sometimes felt like a bumpy accommodation. As if sharing a field, let alone one ball, might not be enough to assuage the collections of talent — and egos — assembled by P.S.G., Mbappe said the noise that sometimes surrounds those relationships is not always an accurate reflection of reality.After all, he said, like any other soccer-loving child, he would have dreamed of lining up alongside Messi and Neymar.“I think the problem comes from outside because everybody asks questions they don’t have answers for, so they put some problem between us,” Mbappé said in the summer, amid whispers he had demanded control as the price for his re-signing with P.S.G. News reports about discord, he said, were untrue. “We have a great relationship.”But it is hard not to see that relationship tested on Sunday. One of them will leave the field a champion, the other with his heart broken.Messi’s ability to alter games all by himself could be France’s biggest hurdle in Sunday’s final. Catherine Ivill/Getty ImagesMbappé said he knew what to expect. Able to study Messi’s game at such close quarters at his club for more than a year, he said that he has been in awe of the Argentine’s ability to pick the right move, to play the right pass, to measure the moments requiring his intervention with perfect timing, no matter the chaos around him.“He is calm, always calm,” Mbappé said of Messi. “Calm with the ball. Calm before he shoots. He always has control of everything he does.“It’s really impressive because sometimes there is big pressure with the game and with the fans, with the people. But he is always calm to make the right decision in the right moments.”Sunday, too, may be decided in one moment, by one moment of genius from Messi or, just maybe, a winning goal from Mbappé.Outside Al Bayt Stadium earlier this week, in the early hours as Wednesday turned into Thursday after France defeated Morocco in a semifinal match, there was a sense of relief as well as pressure in Mbappé’s camp. Fayza Lamari, his mother and a cornerstone of his relentless march to stardom from the earliest days, emerged from the arena near the V.I.P. entrance yelling, “We won! We won!” as she made her way toward the exit.She was not the only one smiling. Qatar, which has spent more than $200 billion on staging the World Cup, now has its dream final. In a few weeks it will welcome both Messi and Mbappé to P.S.G., reuniting its two biggest stars on the Qatari-owned club after they have squared off in a showcase final in Lusail.For Qatar, the question of Messi or Mbappé does not really matter. It has already won.Carl Recine/Reuters More

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    It’s the World Cup Souvenir Everyone Wants. Getting One Is the Hard Part.

    A game-worn Lionel Messi jersey is the most coveted collectible in Qatar. Good luck getting hold of the one (or two) he wears in the World Cup final.DOHA, Qatar — There is something about the idea of obtaining one of Lionel Messi’s jerseys that makes even the most experienced, sober opponents revert to heartfelt, eager fandom. They pursue him at halftime, surround him at the final whistle. Teammates squabble among themselves for the right to claim a precious memento of their brush with greatness.Other than a World Cup winners’ medal, there will be no prize more sought-after when France meets Messi’s Argentina at Lusail Iconic Stadium on Sunday than the 35-year-old Messi’s jersey. It is, after all, likely to be the ultimate limited edition collectible, one of only four — at most — in existence: a jersey worn by the world’s finest player in the world’s biggest game.The bad news is that it is unlikely to be unavailable, to anyone.Quite how many genuine, match-worn Messi jerseys are in existence is difficult to pinpoint. Argentina’s win against Croatia in Tuesday’s semifinal was, officially, the 1,002nd appearance, for club and country, of Messi’s senior career. That does not mean, though, that there are 1,002 Messi jerseys. The true figure, in fact, is more likely to be closer to double that.Many players, after all, choose to use two jerseys during games, switching into a fresh number at halftime. Whether Messi does that in every match is not clear, but he has certainly done so on occasion. In 2012, for example, executives at the German team Bayer Leverkusen had to admonish two players for arguing over who would get Messi’s shirt at halftime.That there may be several thousand Messi jerseys in circulation that contain trace amounts of his sweat, though, does not mean they are any easier to obtain. Messi maintains a strict protocol on swapping jerseys. His first rule is: He never initiates the exchange. He has only ever made one exception. Early in his career, he approached Zinedine Zidane, then with Real Madrid, and asked if they might exchange jerseys. Other than that, he has said, “I don’t ask for shirts.”His second rule: He would rather swap with another Argentine. In 2017, he posted a photo to his Instagram account of the room in his Barcelona home that he had devoted to a display of all the jerseys he has collected over the years, each of them impeccably arranged, immaculately presented.Many of them bear the names of some of his era’s brightest stars: Thierry Henry, Luis Suárez, Philipp Lahm, Iker Casillas. A majority, though, belong to his countrymen: not just his peers and friends, the likes of Ángel Di María, Sergio Agüero and Pablo Aimar — the player that Messi himself has described as his hero — but lesser lights, too: Chori Domínguez, Oscar Ustari and Tomás De Vincenti, all beneficiaries of his Argentina-first policy.“I got quite a few over the years,” said Maxi Rodríguez, a friend and former international teammate of Messi’s. “I played against him quite a lot when I was in Spain, when I was with Espanyol and Atlético Madrid. We never arranged it beforehand or talked about it. It was just whenever we had chance.”Rodríguez said that he had several Messi jerseys in his own display cases, though he slightly sheepishly admitted that he does not maintain his collection as fastidiously as Messi. Still, he is doing rather better than some players who swapped jerseys with the Argentine earlier in his career, before he became Messi.A Brief Guide to the 2022 World CupCard 1 of 9What is the World Cup? More

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    When World Cup Reality Isn’t What It Seems

    LUSAIL, Qatar — Fatih pulls the car over, letting the engine idle, and reaches for his phone. He hurriedly swipes away the various ride-sharing apps he has open and scrolls through his WhatsApp chats with a practiced finger. He is searching for a group called “Brazil Fans Qatar.” This, he says, will explain everything.Last month, as teams started to arrive in Qatar ahead of the World Cup, several found guards of honor waiting for them at their hotels and training bases: groups of a few dozen fans, clad in national-team jerseys, waving national flags, carrying homemade banners and beating drums.In most circumstances, that would not be especially noteworthy. Here, though, it was impossible not to wonder.There had long been doubts about how many fans would attend the first World Cup in the Middle East, thanks to both practical concerns — the cost of spending weeks in Doha, the relative scarcity of alcohol — and ethical ones, centered on Qatar’s treatment of the migrant workers who had built the tournament, and its criminalization of homosexuality.Qatar, it had already emerged, had recruited several hundred “fan leaders” from across the world, paying for their flights and accommodations in exchange for their enthusiastic, public support. The suspicion ran that the groups waiting to welcome the teams, apparently wholly composed of South Asian men, were another arm of the same program.No, no, no, Fatih said, suddenly stopping the car. He is ordinarily “an accountant and a sales executive,” he said, but for the duration of the tournament he has set up — with permission — as a taxi service, too. Like most foreign workers here, he preferred not to use his last name out of fear of drawing unwanted attention from the country’s authorities.Fireworks and a full house before the United States played Iran.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesAfter a minute or so, he finds what he wants: a video from Kerala, his home state in India. It had been shot that day but had already been forwarded many times. It showed two groups of men, some carrying sticks, brawling in the center of a village. Half of them are wearing bright yellow Brazil jerseys. The others are in the distinctive sky blue and white of Argentina.“This happens every FIFA World Cup,” Fatih said. There are other fans whose loyalties lie with Portugal, or England, or Spain, he explained, but mostly it is Brazil and Argentina. The affiliations run deep. Fatih might change his club team, he said, but Brazil was nonnegotiable.It was fans like these, like him, who had greeted the teams in Doha: Keralans who live and work in Qatar and had been sufficiently enthused by the prospect of seeing these usually remote, distant stars in the flesh that many of them paid hundreds of dollars for tickets to games. Fatih himself was going to see Brazil play Cameroon, he said. Any cost was worth it.A Brief Guide to the 2022 World CupCard 1 of 9What is the World Cup? More

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    David Beckham Is the World Cup’s Missing Mouthpiece

    Qatar paid David Beckham tens of millions of dollars to promote the country and its interests. To its frustration, it has not received much return on the investment.DOHA, Qatar — In the early days of the World Cup, with the group stage underway and the world’s eyes locked on Qatar, the host of soccer’s biggest championship was eager to take advantage of the spotlight shining on its tiny desert nation.To sell itself to the world, Qatar had spent millions of dollars on celebrity endorsements, including agreements with a battalion of former soccer players who could speak to fans with street cred and in a common language. Now, the time had come to roll out its biggest signing, the one star in its arsenal in a league of his own: David Beckham.So during a midweek lunchtime, plans were drawn up for Beckham and several other ex-players to show up at a fan zone set up close to Doha’s bayside Corniche. There, they would greet fans and be interviewed by an employee of the organizing committee on a specially built stage. Beckham’s team agreed to the request that he attend but set two conditions: his presence was not be announced ahead of time, and reporters were not to be alerted.The event was a dud. The fan zone at Al Bidda Park was so deserted at the arranged time, in fact, that the event was canceled, even though Beckham and the others were already backstage, according to multiple people familiar with the plans.The curious incident, though, was emblematic of the unusual relationship between Qatar and Beckham. It is a partnership with a pitchman who rarely pitches and an arrangement that has shadowed, rather than showcased, the host country. But it also has produced a strange reality in which one of the world’s most recognizable celebrities is at once everywhere but also nowhere.Beckham has been visible, but not vocal, in Doha.Alex Pantling/Getty ImagesBeckham’s face is plastered on billboards all over Doha. He appears in advertisements on television during halftime breaks and in social media feeds promoting a pass to access cultural events in Qatar. He also has been spotted in the V.V.I.P. stands at World Cup stadiums, and he was filmed visiting the England team before its elimination.A Brief Guide to the 2022 World CupCard 1 of 9What is the World Cup? More

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    The World Cup Has Swapped Suffering for Style

    A common language and a common goal have resulted in a homogenizing of the World Cup’s teams, and a rise in parity.DOHA, Qatar — The key word of this World Cup is not one that FIFA would be especially happy to plaster on its marketing materials. It has become the tournament’s leitmotif, the focus of countless news conferences and interviews. It has been cast as the sport’s ultimate virtue.We have been told, again and again over the past month, that there is one trait more than any other that a player must possess, that a team must display, that determines who gets to win and who has to lose: the ability, as almost everyone involved in the tournament has said, to suffer.It has been used as a warning: Luka Modric, a Croatia midfielder, declared in the round of 16 that his team was “used to suffering, and if we have to suffer, we will.” It has been used as a boast: “We have an excellent technical staff, we know how to suffer,” Croatia’s manager, Zlatko Dalic, said a few days later.Some teams see it as part of their identity — “We are a team that knows how to suffer,” the French defender Jules Koundé said after a semifinal victory — and some see it as an option of last resort. “We know how to suffer when it is necessary,” as Lionel Messi put it after a semifinal victory over Croatia. Very occasionally, a stray voice arises, wondering if it is all such a good idea. “We know how to suffer,” Messi’s Argentina teammate Nicolás Tagliafico said. “But we must try to suffer less.”If the word sounds just a touch discordant in English — this expression, it seems most likely, has entered the sport’s lingua franca from the Spanish verb sufrir and would be better translated as “endure” — it fairly neatly encapsulates the nature of the soccer we have seen over the past month.France ended Morocco’s unlikely run in the semifinals.Kirill Kudryavtsev/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThere has been no shortage of tense, compelling games in Qatar. Whether that quite justified the assertion of Gianni Infantino, the FIFA president, that this tournament produced the “best ever” group stage is a little more complex. Tense, compelling games are, after all, the World Cup’s calling card: Its rarity and its unforgiving format mean that this is essentially what it is designed to produce.A Brief Guide to the 2022 World CupCard 1 of 9What is the World Cup? More

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    Keeping the National in National Team Coach

    There is nothing in the rules that requires a World Cup team to be managed by someone born, raised or otherwise connected to that country. So should it matter?DOHA, Qatar — Brazil’s players already seem to have identified their preferred candidate. They had known, long before their quarterfinal defeat to Croatia sent them out of the World Cup, that Tite — the affable, cerebral coach of the national team for the past six years — would be stepping down. Now, they had decided that the most exacting job in international soccer should go to Fernando Diniz.The 48-year-old Diniz certainly had a strong case. The squad’s elder statesmen, Daniel Alves and Thiago Silva, offered glowing references. So did a couple of the team’s younger members, Antony and Bruno Guimaraes, who had worked with him early in their careers. Most important, he had Neymar on board: As long ago as July, Brazil’s most influential star had tweeted about his admiration for Diniz.Not everyone is quite so convinced. Ronaldo, the World Cup-winning striker who has functioned, essentially, as a ghost at the feast during this tournament, suggested he did not “see many options” for Tite’s successor among Brazilian coaches. Diniz, he said, was the best of them, but he was far more enthused by the idea of something unprecedented: appointing a foreigner to coach the Brazilian national team.The Italian Carlo Ancelotti, the Spaniard Pep Guardiola, the Portuguese Abel Ferreira were all, Ronaldo said, more appealing. “I get a good feeling from these names,” he said.Several Brazilian players have suggested that Fernando Diniz, a Brazilian, should be the national team’s next coach. Others are pressing for the country’s first foreign coach.Sergio Moraes/ReutersBrazil is not the only country to have left Qatar rather earlier than expected that finds itself wrestling with this issue. A quarter of the teams in the tournament had barely picked up their baggage from the carousel before they parted company with their managers. A couple, the Netherlands and Spain, have moved quickly to appoint replacements. Six more are beginning their search for candidates. A handful of others, including England and Portugal, may yet join them.That task, though, is not quite as easy as it sounds. Managing a national team is not — and has not been for some time — the pinnacle of a coach’s career. Most of the game’s most feted managers, obsessives who thrive on fine-tuning their complex, intricate systems on a daily basis, find the disjointed nature of international soccer unattractive.A Brief Guide to the 2022 World CupCard 1 of 9What is the World Cup? More