Raphael Stevens

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    Mexico’s Love-Hate Relationship With Argentina Haunts the Team’s World Cup Matchup

    When Mexico faces Argentina on Saturday, Mexican fans will bear mixed feelings toward the country that should be their ultimate rival on that night.The reason: the lasting mark Argentine coaches have made on Mexican soccer.Many Mexicans credit the Argentine coach Cesar Luis Menotti with revolutionizing Mexican soccer by elevating playing style over strength during his run leading the national team in the 1990s. Even though he stayed less than two years and never coached Mexico in a World Cup, he remains a beloved figure there, even as he now serves as the director of Argentina’s national teams.On his first day in Mexico, Menotti, who had led Argentina to the World Cup title in 1978, told reporters that he planned to probe deep into Mexico’s soul “because the only way you can lead a national team is by understanding how it is inextricably linked to the country’s inner life.”With flowing hair and bushy sideburns, Menotti smoked cigarettes on the sidelines, wore sharp suits, freely quoted literature and brought up politics, an unusual brew for conservative Mexico at the time. During his last interview as Mexico’s coach, he said he now “understood Mexico better than many Mexicans.”Since then, there have been two full time Argentine coaches of the Mexican national team (more than any other non-Mexican nationality). Neither has enjoyed the reverence shown for Menotti.A Brief Guide to the 2022 World CupCard 1 of 9What is the World Cup? More

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    Saudi Commuters Descend on Doha for an In-and-Out World Cup

    A victory over Argentina inspired a kingdom’s soccer fans. And when Qatar is just a short flight, you go.DOHA, Qatar — Planes were landing, from all around the world, every few minutes. They came from London and Tokyo, Hong Kong and São Paulo. There would be about 300 scheduled passenger flights landing at Hamad International Airport on Saturday.But among them were dozens of planes that had not come far, sometimes just a few hundred miles from the west and after barely reaching cruising altitude. They came from Saudi Arabia, Qatar’s next-door neighbor, and they carried excited people in green jerseys and with no bags to check.These World Cup commuters would not stay long. Kickoff was at 4 p.m. They would wake up back home on Sunday, a work day, in their own beds.They were soccer fans, and they carried only what they needed: banners, flags and a passport. And they brought a renewed sense of collective expectation as they arrived to cheer Saudi Arabia, the unlikely darling of the tournament, if not the entire Middle East.Beating Argentina will do that. Every game, now, is bigger than the last. After losing to Poland, 2-0, the next, against Mexico on Wednesday, will decide if Saudi Arabia reaches the round of 16. That hope will generate another day like this one.By midmorning, the airport in Doha was spilling out bursts of green. Among them were the brothers Faris and Salman al-Hassan, fresh off a short flight from Riyadh and wearing green jerseys and scarves.They could have come by car, they said — Doha is about six hours from Riyadh — but Qatar, nervous about car traffic, disincentivized that idea for the World Cup. It created a temporary toll of 5,000 Saudi riyal (about $1,330) for those driving across the border during the tournament.An alternative was to park at the border and hop on a bus at the Abu Samra, Qatar, checkpoint, as thousands of others had done over the past week. The no-frills bus ride is little more than an hour, but the bus is not the hard part: Abu Samra is hours from any major Saudi city.So the choice was made by thousands: Commute by air.Get in. Cheer. Get out.“We will go straight to the stadium and come right back,” Salman al-Hassan said.About 20 flights arrived in Doha from Saudi Arabian cities between dawn and 1 p.m. on Saturday, timed just for the afternoon kickoff.A Brief Guide to the 2022 World CupCard 1 of 9What is the World Cup? More

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    What We Learned About the U.S. In Its Match Against England

    A feisty 0-0 tie against World Cup contender England gave the U.S. a chance — and perhaps the courage — to advance in the tournament.AL KHOR, Qatar — The chant came from deep in one corner of the stadium, ringing out loud and clear for a few moments before fading back into the general cacophony of the night.“It’s called soc-cer!” the United States fans bellowed at their England counterparts. “It’s called soc-cer!”As the United States has seen its soccer culture develop in recent decades, it has always used the great powers of Europe as a handy measuring stick, a mark of how far it has come and how far it still needs to go. Yet it is England, a country that prefers to call the sport football and definitely believes it is better than the Americans at playing it, that has always served as the reference point that matters most.The evidence is visible across the United States soccer landscape: American fans, old and new, now spend weekend mornings watching matches from England’s Premier League on television. In American soccer stadiums, they borrow liberally from English sports culture, making it their own, refracting it through a U.S. lens, but leaving no question of its DNA. And the best American players still dream of one day going overseas, anywhere at first, but eventually to stardom in Britain’s most storied stadiums.On Friday night, the United States got a rare opportunity to measure the shrinking distance between the countries’ teams, and by most assessments performed admirably, scrapping to a scoreless tie that left the Americans holding their World Cup destiny in their hands.The result — and small moments like the fans’ sassy chant — sent the message that the United States was ascendant and ambitious for more.“There’s a lot of people that obviously thought we were going to get blown out,” said the American midfielder Weston McKennie. “We went into this game, to the outside world, as obvious underdogs. But we didn’t feel like an underdog at all, because we know our capability, we know what we can do, we know what talent and fight and spirit we have.”A Brief Guide to the 2022 World CupCard 1 of 9What is the World Cup? More

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    England Gets a Look at Itself, and Isn’t Sure It Likes What It Sees

    Coach Gareth Southgate was unruffled by a scoreless draw against the United States. But it revealed concerns lurking just below the surface.AL KHOR, Qatar — For four fleeting, glorious days, all was right and all was well in England’s world. Gareth Southgate’s team had cut Iran to ribbons in its first game at the World Cup, a glistening generation of talent dancing and weaving and sparkling on the grandest stage of them all.He should have known it would not last. That was Monday. By Friday, England was being loudly and roundly — and just a little unfairly — booed from the field by its own fans, the players and particularly the coach informed in no uncertain terms that the fans had not traveled all this way to watch their team be held to a scoreless draw by the United States. There are some indignities, after all, that a Bud Zero cannot heal.On an entirely practical level, the significance of the result is minimal for England — nothing more than a bad day at the office, the sort of thing that can be swiftly shaken off and may, in a few weeks’ time, be relegated to a mere footnote.Should England beat Wales in its final group game on Tuesday, it will qualify for the tournament’s next stage at the top of its group, earning (in theory) a kinder draw in the first knockout round. Even a tie against Wales would, at the very least, be enough to ensure progress. It will be an irritation that Southgate cannot rest players for that game, that he cannot manage minutes and reduce burden, but he is hardly short on options. It is nothing terminal.Emotionally, though, in terms of all those airy intangibles that coalesce during a tournament into something real and physical, it is different. England came into the World Cup on the back of a dispiriting year. Southgate’s popularity, once sufficiently high to give the waistcoat an unexpected and thankfully brief comeback, had plummeted.A Brief Guide to the 2022 World CupCard 1 of 9What is the World Cup? More

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    Mexico’s World Cup History: An Unlucky Seven

    El Tri has advanced out of the group stage in seven straight World Cups. It is only then that the problems start.DOHA, Qatar — Of all the soccer playing countries in the world — and there are many — only two can boast of advancing out of the group stage at the last seven World Cups. One of the teams is Brazil. The other may be a tad surprising: Mexico.After their initial success, the two teams’ fortunes have diverged. Having made its way into the knockout round of every World Cup since 1994, Brazil has won two World Cup finals and played in a third.Mexico? Each time it reached the round of 16, it promptly lost the next game and went home.That legacy of fourth-game failure by El Tri, as the national team is known, has created immense pressure and criticism in Mexico, and at times a toxic relationship between the team and the national news media. If any three words haunt Mexican players and fans alike, they are el quinto partido: the fifth game.“There is always that pressure of people always talking about ‘that fifth game, that fifth game,’ and it gets stuck in your head,” Carlos Vela, a forward who represented Mexico at the 2010 and 2018 World Cups, said in Spanish in an interview earlier this year.On the field, Vela said, he didn’t think about that hex. But before World Cup matches, especially leading into the knockout round, he said he would hear comments about “the game we can never get past.”“In everyone’s mind and conversations, it’s always there,” he continued. “I don’t know if it affects us or not, but it’s there and talked about. You go to an interview and it’s always asked.”Mexico’s Hirving Lozano, right, competing against Poland on Tuesday, said winning a knockout stage game is always on his mind.Glyn Kirk/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMexico will hear those familiar rumblings again soon enough in Qatar. It tied its first game, against Poland, but its group is wide open after unheralded Saudi Arabia stunned Argentina on Tuesday. Hopes are high that this year, at last, will be different.“We have everything,” said Raúl Jiménez, a forward who is appearing in his third straight World Cup. He mentioned the Mexican national team coach, Gerardo Martino, known as Tata, who, like every leader of the squad during this span, has come under stinging criticism from outside the team during his tenure.“We’ve been with Tata for four years,” said Jiménez, 31, who plays his club soccer with the Wolverhampton Wanderers in England. “We know him well, his style of play and what he wants from us. All we have to do is put it to work on the field and win the fourth game.”A Brief Guide to the 2022 World CupCard 1 of 9What is the World Cup? More

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    Neymar, Brazil’s Star Player, Out With an Injury

    Neymar, the Brazilian soccer star, will not be playing in the team’s next World Cup match after he was injured on Thursday while playing against Serbia.Neymar injured a lateral ligament on his right ankle and has small bone swelling, said Rodrigo Lasmar, the team’s doctor, in a written statement on Neymar’s website. Another player, Danilo, injured his left ankle and also will not play in the next game, which will be on Monday against Switzerland, the statement said.“I can say in advance that we will not have both players for the next match, but they remain in treatment with the objective of trying to recover them in time for this competition,” Lasmar said.Both players received treatment after the match and were re-evaluated on Friday morning, with scheduled daily follow-ups planned. Neymar’s ankle was visibly swollen as he walked off the field on Thursday.Brazil beat Serbia 2-0 in its first match of the 2022 World Cup. After Switzerland, the team will play Cameroon on Friday.“Tough game, but it was important to win,” Neymar said on Twitter on Thursday. “Congratulations team, first step taken.”Thursday’s injury was one of the hardest moments of his career, Neymar said on his Facebook page. In the 2014 World Cup, he broke a vertebra after being kneed in the back and was sidelined for the rest of the tournament.“Yes, I’m injured, it’s frustrating, it’s going to hurt,” he said in the Facebook post. “But I’m sure that I will have a chance to return because I will do whatever possible to help my country, my teammates and myself.” More

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    Frustrations Simmer as Saudis Are Blocked From Watching the World Cup

    A curious dispute between a Qatari broadcaster and Saudi media regulators has left millions of Saudis with no way to watch the matches.DOHA, Qatar — In the stands at the World Cup, the fraternal bond between host Qatar and its neighbor Saudi Arabia has been clear. Fans have arrived to games dressed in the colors of both nations, and the countries’ rulers have made a show of publicly supporting one another.Even so, the nations appear to be locked in a curious dispute about broadcasting that has made a majority of the World Cup’s games unavailable to viewers in Saudi Arabia.Saudi-based customers of Tod TV, a streaming service launched in January by Qatar’s beIN Media Group, which owns rights to the tournament across the Middle East, were suddenly blocked from the platform an hour before the tournament’s opening game last Sunday. That meant they were not watching when their country’s crown prince and de facto ruler, Mohammed bin Salman, wearing a Qatar scarf, was given a seat next to the FIFA president Gianni Infantino, one removed from Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, the emir of Qatar.The sight of Prince Mohammed being afforded such a prominent role at the World Cup would have been unthinkable only two years ago, when he led a regional boycott against Qatar, or when a yearslong effort by a Saudi-backed pirate network effectively stole billions of dollars worth of BeIN’s sports content. Since the thaw, relations had improved to such an extent that Saudi Arabia is considering buying a stake in beIN; it already has signed a $130 million marketing agreement with the Qatari company.With that backdrop, beIN officials have been stunned to find their streaming platform suspended by Saudi Arabia’s media regulators. BeIN has lobbied FIFA, Saudi Arabia’s sports minister and even the United States and British government to find a way to get their services unlocked but have so far struck out and remain unclear why the action has been taken in a country where soccer is fervently followed by millions and that has sent thousands of soccer fans flooding across the border. Qatar’s emir even wore a Saudi Arabia scarf during Saudi Arabia’s shock victory over powerhouse Argentina Monday.A Brief Guide to the 2022 World CupCard 1 of 9What is the World Cup? More

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    A Migrant’s Desperate Day Chasing Work at the World Cup

    Qatar’s preparations for soccer’s biggest championship created years of jobs for foreign migrants. But now that’s it is here, the work has dried up.DOHA, Qatar — Standing at the center of the Msheireb metro station, the man in the pressed burgundy shirt took in his surroundings inside the cavernous terminal, the hub of a multibillion-dollar system built by Qatar ahead of the 2022 World Cup. He had lived in the country for six years but had never before set foot on one of its subway cars.He was also lost. Nazmul, a man in his mid-30s from Bangladesh, had never really had a need to use the metro station. But today was a special day: He had been told to head to a building on the other side of Doha, Qatar’s capital, to collect credentials for the World Cup.Nazmul was excited, not because the credential would allow him to watch some of the world’s greatest soccer players take the field, but because it would mean he could work.Thousands of the migrant workers who took part in the vast nation-building program that prepared Qatar for the World Cup have been sent home in recent months, as the country suspended its major projects until after the end of the monthlong soccer tournament. But thousands more like Nazmul remain, hustling for work that not so long ago was easy to find. He agreed to allow a New York Times reporter to accompany him on his job search but asked that his last name be withheld to safeguard his ability to work in Qatar.Nazmul had already handed his work permit and application papers to a recruitment agent who claimed to have an in with a person responsible for cleaning contracts at the World Cup. The agent had handed out passes to some of the applicants, but told others, like Nazmul, to head to the FIFA worker center at the edge of Doha and present themselves at the cavernous worker accreditation center.Finally getting his bearings, Nazmul headed for the metro’s red line, one of three that have been built to ferry commuters and soccer fans across the capital of Qatar, a thumb-shaped peninsula jutting out into the Persian Gulf.On the short train ride to Al Qassar, Nazmul’s anxiety was palpable, his foot shaking throughout the journey. At each stop, he asked commuters nearby if he has arrived at his destination. The $30 a day he would earn to clean up after fans at the World Cup would be three times more than Qatar’s minimum wage. He had few better options. There were few jobs around. “About 50 percent of the people here aren’t working at the moment,” Nazmul said. “Everything is stopped.”A Brief Guide to the 2022 World CupCard 1 of 9What is the World Cup? More