Raphael Stevens

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    Luis Rubiales, Ex-Chief of Spanish Soccer, to Face Trial Over World Cup Kiss

    The ruling by a National Court judge concludes a pretrial inquiry into an unsolicited kiss that set off a widespread debate about sexism in Spanish women’s soccer.A judge with Spain’s National Court recommended on Thursday that the country’s onetime soccer boss, Luis Rubiales, be tried on a sexual assault charge over his non-consensual kiss of a star player during the Women’s World Cup medal ceremony in Sydney, Australia, last summer.If found guilty of sexual assault in the case, which upended Spanish women’s soccer and set off a debate about the legacy of sexism in the sport in Spain, Mr. Rubiales would face a prison sentence of one to four years.The judge also recommended that Mr. Rubiales and three officials with the Royal Spanish Football Federation, soccer’s governing body in the country — including Jorge Vilda, who was fired as the women’s team coach in the wake of the incident — be tried on charges of coercion for exerting pressure on the player, Jennifer Hermoso, to show support for Mr. Rubiales in the immediate aftermath of the kiss.The judge concluded that the kiss by Mr. Rubiales “was non-consensual and was a unilateral and surprise act.”Public prosecutors and Ms. Hermoso now have 10 days to formalize their accusations, and then a trial will take place.The ruling was the culmination of a pretrial inquiry, presided over by the judge, Francisco de Jorge, in which witnesses including Ms. Hermoso, officials and other players gave evidence regarding sexual assault accusations against Mr. Rubiales in a closed-door hearing that ended on Jan. 2. The judge also examined videos of the kiss from numerous angles and a video recorded on a bus after the medal ceremony, in which Ms. Hermoso initially seemed to make light of the incident.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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    Threatened by Premier League Fan Zones, Burger Vans Hold Their Ground

    As Premier League clubs create fan zones to collect yet more money from stadium visitors, a local economy of food trucks, pubs and small restaurants is holding its ground.Surveying his territory, Tony Aujla is pleased. His business, after all, is all about location, and he has a prime one. Like a general surveying a battlefield, he points to his right: a short walk that way is Aston train station. Over to the left is Villa Park, with its grand, brick-lined facade, home of the city’s Premier League soccer team, Aston Villa.On game days, hundreds of fans disembark trains at the former every few minutes and scurry — or, in some cases, amble — in the general direction of the latter. That is what makes Mr. Aujla’s patch so perfect. All of them have to walk past this precise spot. Should any of them require sustenance to complete their (not especially arduous) trek, he is there, spatula in hand, to sell them a burger. Possibly with cheese.Mr. Aujla has been a fixture outside Villa Park, in one place or another, for more than four decades, but Tony’s Burger Bar has been here, on this enviable and specific real estate, for three years — one of a handful of vans, all of them occupying much the same space, all of them offering roughly the same menu, all of them wreathed in the steam from their fryers.Recently, though, they have had to contend with the arrival of a rival on a slightly larger scale: an official fan area intended to lure customers, and some of the money in their pockets, away from the vans and straight to the club itself.Like most traditional British stadiums, Villa Park resides at the heart of the community it has occupied for more than a century.Mary Turner for The New York TimesIn March 2022, Aston Villa repurposed Lions Square, a trapezoid of land in the shadow of Villa Park, into a “fan zone” — a sort of officially sanctioned tailgate — complete with a stage for live music, interviews with beloved former players, a couple of bars and a smattering of food trucks.It is not the first Premier League team to explore the idea, long a staple of major international soccer tournaments. Crystal Palace, Liverpool, Manchester City and a number of others have experimented with variations on the theme, and more intend to follow suit: Newcastle has announced plans to establish one outside its home stadium, St. James’s Park.Identifying the primary motivation behind them does not take any great detective work. There are, according to Phil Alexander, a former chief executive of Crystal Palace, various ancillary benefits to fan zones. “Operationally, it’s helpful if some fans arrive earlier and leave later,” he said.Clubs are keen to “enhance the experience” of attending a game, too, Mr. Alexander said. “Traditionally, it’s always been a late fill,” he said. “People would arrive five minutes before kickoff and leave straight after the final whistle. Improving the in-stadium offering, which for a long time left a lot to be desired, turns it into a whole-day activity.”Aston Villa’s official fan zone, where supporters can buy beer, food and hear interviews with former players and club favorites.Mary Turner for The New York TimesMostly, though, the purpose is the obvious one: Fan zones are another revenue stream to be tapped.The amount of money to be made from catering — either through clubs’ providing their own or outsourcing to a third party — is relatively small compared with the fortunes provided to the Premier League’s clubs through broadcasting contracts, but it is a margin nonetheless. “You can’t discount it just because it is hard work,” Mr. Alexander said.Clubs, though, do not exist in isolation. Like most traditional British stadiums, Villa Park does not sit on the fringes of a city, surrounded by acres of empty space. Instead, it resides at the heart of the community it has occupied for more than a century, both an organic part of the neighborhood and an engine of the local economy.Mr. Aujla knows the rhythm of game days instinctively. About 90 minutes before kickoff, it is relatively quiet. Fans are still boarding trains, or parking their cars, or thronging the pubs. Trade will pick up as the game approaches. Peak time will come in an hour or so. “Come back then,” he said. “We’ll all have queues.”There is competition among the food trucks, of course, but it does not bleed into rivalry. There has always been more than enough trade to go around, Mr. Aujla said. “You see a lot of the same faces,” he said. “People tend to have a favorite and stick with that one.”Premier League clubs see the fan zones as a way to keep fans close, and spending money.Mary Turner for The New York TimesHis van, and those nearby, are just a couple of the dozens of pubs, bars, restaurants and takeaway shops that dot the terraced streets around Villa Park, a shoal of remoras all reliant on the great whale at their center for their existence. Fan zones, on some level, threaten that tacit arrangement. The whale, in effect, has decided it wants to keep more.Mr. Aujla admitted he was worried when Aston Villa first announced its plans; his fears were allayed slightly when he strolled up to see what the fan zone had to offer. There were burgers and hot dogs, his stalwarts, as well as more gentrified, vaguely hipster offerings. (Clubs are conscious of changes in consumer tastes, according to Mr. Alexander.)The key difference, though, was price.“They’re charging 7 pounds for a burger,” around $10, he said. “We do a triple for that price.”Others were more confident from the start. “I thought it was good news,” said Roshawn Hunter, standing behind the counter at Grandma Aida’s, the Caribbean cafe that he and his mother, Carole Hamilton, set up in 2019. “The more people we have around the stadium, and the longer they stay, the better for everyone.”The club, conscious of the need to be neighborly, invited him and a number of other local traders to a meeting last summer to outline its plans and address any concerns. In the long term, team officials said, there might even be the possibility of Grandma Aida’s taking a stall inside the fan zone.The Caribbean cafe Grandma Aida’s, near Villa Park. The cafe makes the bulk of its income on match days.Mary Turner for The New York TimesThat, Mr. Hunter said, would be ideal, but he is in no desperate rush. His optimism has been vindicated. While Grandma Aida’s works with the usual suite of delivery apps to feed its Birmingham clientele, the bulk of its income comes on match days.Its sliver of a storefront, on the other side of the stadium from Mr. Aujla’s stall, is well located to attract fans of Villa’s rivals. Traveling supporters are widely regarded as a more lucrative market than regulars, largely on the grounds that they are more likely to be hungry after a long journey into opposition territory.An hour before kickoff of a game in December, Grandma Aida’s was as bustling as it gets. “We’ve not noticed any sort of drop-off at all,” Mr. Hunter said. A doting son — or keenly aware that he might be overheard — he attributed that to the wonder of his mother’s cooking. “It’s her passion,” he said.His customers offered corroborating evidence. “We can’t get Caribbean food this good where we live,” said Richard Harris, a regular seated before a tray of curried mutton. His father had gone for the jerk chicken, Grandma Aida’s most popular dish.Roshawn Hunter set up Grandma Aida’s with his mother, Carole Hamilton, left, in 2019. “The more people we have around the stadium, and the longer they stay, the better for everyone,” he said.Mary Turner for The New York Times“We came in one day a few years ago and liked it,” the younger Mr. Harris said. “We’ve got to know the owner, and it’s nice to support a local business. So now we come in every time we come to a game.”That, of course, is just as important as cost and taste to the continued survival of the eateries and pubs that circle most soccer stadiums in Britain.Aston Villa, like most of its Premier League peers, is exploring a broad selection of options as it seeks to expand what it offers its visitors — its customers — in an attempt to monopolize what, and how, they spend. The architects Populous, for example, designed concourses at Tottenham Hotspur’s new stadium in London with the express purpose of “increasing the range and quality of food” available to fans, according to a representative for the firm.The received wisdom, as Mr. Alexander put it, is that there is “more than enough business for everyone.”But what and where fans eat at stadiums is not merely about nourishment. It is not particularly about nutrition. It can, at times, be about impulse. In many cases, though, it is about routine and ritual, ceremony and familiarity: the same walk, the same pub, the same pregame meal.“Coming here is part of going to the match for us now,” Mr. Harris said inside Grandma Aida’s. “It’s kind of become a family tradition.”In the stadium’s shadow, business can be brisk before and after games.Mary Turner for The New York Times More

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    How Women’s Soccer Is Embracing Mental Health

    Elite soccer didn’t always welcome players’ requests for help. Scandals, attitudes and support programs are changing that.The one thing she could not do, Sinead Farrelly knew, was talk. Nobody had ever told her that explicitly, of course. It was just something she understood. Soccer, her first time around, operated under what she can now call a “culture of silence.”The perceived delicacy of the sport meant that principle applied publicly almost as a matter of policy. Only a little more than a decade ago, Farrelly and her peers playing in professional leagues — first the W.P.S. and then, after its dissolution, the incipient N.W.S.L — did so keenly aware of their own mortality.“You want fans to come so the league can survive,” Farrelly said. “You can’t be sharing how bad it is or what the conditions are really like. You have to put on a show for the development of sport. You owe it to yourself, your teammates, future generations.” It felt, to her, like “living a double life.”Something darker held the omertà in place privately, among the players themselves. Years later, Farrelly would feel strong enough to tell the world what she had endured: years of psychological torment and allegations of coercive sex at the hands of the coach to whom she felt she owed her career.Her voice would bring about substantive change. The coach, Paul Riley, would receive a lifetime ban; her account would act as a prompt for the Yates Report, with its damning findings revealing a “league in which abuse and misconduct — verbal and emotional abuse and sexual misconduct — had become systemic.”At the time the abuse was happening, though, Farrelly did not feel that she could tell anyone what she was going through, not even her teammates. Perhaps part of that, she said, can be explained by her nature. Now, looking back, she is frank and open and disarmingly, breezily honest. Back then, she said, she was not “comfortable with being vulnerable.”But part of it, too, was a shared sense that saying something brings it into the world, gives it a shape and a form. “Opening those gates would have been too much,” she said, not just for her, but for her teammates as well. “You kind of operate on autopilot. You do not look at how dark it is. You kind of know that once you see something, you can’t unsee it.”It took a car accident for Farrelly to come to terms with her experiences. Recovering from her injuries required weeks “in a dark room, alone with myself,” she said. In those circumstances, there is only so much you can do to distract yourself. It speaks volumes that, now, she describes herself as “grateful” for the crash, which is probably the best gauge of the severity of what she had endured.It allowed her to identify a solution, a way to rebuild herself, and her life. She left soccer entirely. She did not kick a ball. She did not think about it. For seven years, she put that part of herself away.Elite soccer has an uneven, uneasy relationship with mental health. It is, as the United States defender Naomi Girma put it, extremely good at “calls to action.” The sport knows that there are performance benefits to players’ being able to cope with the pressures under which they are operating. A generous interpretation would have it that soccer understands on some level that the same logic probably applies outside the tightly guarded boundaries of its universe.It is less good at the action itself, the walking of the walk. The problem is not so much structural as essential. Elite sport is unapologetically cutthroat, inherently Darwinian.Players are not only competing with opponents but also with each other: for roster spots, for prominence, for fame and glory. Coaches are conditioned to weigh players for strength and weakness, whether that is technical or physical or mental. In that environment, showing any sort of vulnerability is — to put it mildly — disincentivized.Naomi Girma, No. 15, in a game against China in December.Rebecca Blackwell/Associated PressAnd so, even as clubs have in recent years recognized the obvious benefits of sports psychology, they have found another problem. Installing a psychologist at a training ground is one thing; convincing the players that entering that office is not a way of signaling to your teammates and your coach that you are struggling is quite another.Girma’s career thus far has been a rapid one — the top pick in the N.W.S.L. draft in 2022, she was the N.W.S.L. rookie of the year last season and U.S. Soccer’s women’s player of the year in 2023 — but it is still a relatively young one: Girma has only been a professional for two years.Still, though, she has encountered the idea that a capacity to tolerate pressure can be characterized as “grit,” a quality a player needs as much as pace or vision. “It is starting to shift a little,” she said. “Plenty of players work with sports psychologists. It’s normalized to talk, and to get help.”She attributes that in part to the willingness of clubs to pursue anything that looks even remotely like a marginal gain — her N.W.S.L. team, the San Diego Wave, employs a “wellness coach” — but believes the example set by athletes like Simone Biles is possibly even more influential.“To see someone like her, the best gymnast in the world, talking about her mental health shows that it doesn’t mean you can’t perform,” Girma said.The change, though, has been piecemeal, and delicate. Driven by the loss of one of her closest friends — Katie Meyer, a teammate at Stanford — to suicide in 2022, Girma has long believed a different approach was needed: not just something more systemic, but something more organic. She concluded it had to come from the players.“Teams create families,” she said. “You want people to feel as though they have a support system. Not necessarily from the whole group, but a couple of players within it who you can feel you can turn to when you need it.”Her answer will take shape this weekend, in a quiet hotel overlooking San Diego Bay. Girma, Farrelly and Becky Sauerbrunn, the longtime U.S. women’s team captain, will be among 20 players — including at least one from all 14 N.W.S.L. clubs — and a number of grass-roots organizations to attend Create the Space, a mental health retreat organized by Common Goal.Given that most, if not all, of the guests are less than a week away from reporting for preseason training, it should not be a surprise that a couple of practice sessions have been scheduled.The emphasis, though, will be on a different type of training. There will be classes, designed in conjunction with E-Motion, a community-focused counseling organization, on learning how to cope with loss, injury and retirement. The participants will be taught techniques drawn from movement therapy and somatic yoga.“We did not want to offer just one prescribed way of doing things,” said Lilli Barrett-O’Keefe, the executive director at Common Goal USA. “It was about showing the players various different ways and seeing what works for them.”Girma was named U.S. Soccer’s women’s player of the year this week.Abe Arredondo/Usa Today Sports, via Reuters ConThe selection of players invited was deliberately broad. Some are at the start of their careers, on the eve of their debut seasons as professionals. Others are at the autumn of theirs, beginning to confront the thought of life after soccer. Some have been affected by grief, others by injury. All, like the league itself, are still coming to terms with the widespread allegations of sexual abuse initially prompted by Farrelly’s allegations and then the reckoning of the Yates Report.The ambition is not only to help those in attendance, but to use it as a springboard “to start to shift the culture throughout the league,” Girma said.The best way to do that, Common Goal argues, is through the players. According to the organization’s research, players tend not to turn to family or friends outside soccer for support but to look inward, to their teammates. “It is a way of reclaiming power,” said Barrett-O’Keefe. “It is a way of saying, ‘I can help myself, and I can help my teammates.’”In the summer of 2022, Farrelly decided to go back to the game. She was not entirely sure she felt ready. She was afraid of any number of things: that she might not be good enough, that she might let herself down, that she might let other people down. “I’m comfortable being small,” she said. “There’s a part of my brain that is there to protect me from being hurt.”She knew, though, that at 33 she would not have another chance, and so she took the risk. She started training with Gotham F.C. She impressed enough to be given a contract. Within a year, she would be playing in her first World Cup.It has not been as easy as that timeline makes it sound. Farrelly has never regretted her decision to return to soccer, she said, but there were times when she was “crying every day,” when she was not sure if she could be what she once was, when the highs and the lows threatened to “overwhelm her.”This time, though, the culture had shifted. At Gotham, she could speak. Not just to her psychologist and her somatic therapist, but to other players. She could speak to her teammates about the fact she was using a psychologist. “I had to open up and be vulnerable,” she said. “At times, that meant having a vulnerability hangover, but I’m grateful for it.”Silence had forced her from the game; filling it helped her find her way back. She now believes, ardently, in sharing that with her peers and her successors. “We live in a society that teaches us that we are in competition with each other, that for one to succeed, someone else has to fail,” she said. “But we are starting to see what we can do if we lift each other up, instead.”Who Do You Think You Are? Franz Beckenbauer?Franz Beckenbauer won the World Cup with West Germany in 1974.Associated PressOnly two players — I think; this newsletter is always prepared to be corrected — have been afforded the ultimate honor of having their names attached to what might be described as an act of soccer. Johan Cruyff has his eponymous turn. Antonin Panenka is remembered every time anyone chips a penalty.There are others, of course, but they do not transcend either geographical or generational borders. Some will label a pirouette a Zidane turn; others might attribute it to Diego Maradona. Fans of a certain age will understand what is meant by a Blanco hop, but the meaning will be lost on younger (or older) audiences.It is probably as good a tribute as any to Franz Beckenbauer, then, that while he is not synonymous with a single move, he will forever be associated with a certain style. As the British broadcaster Mark Chapman pointed out this week, long after Beckenbauer had retired, players gracefully carrying the ball out from the defensive line were credited with/accused of behaving like Beckenbauer, something that will likely — hopefully — continue after his death this week at age 78.The Long HangoverIn one light, Napoli can be forgiven its precipitous decline this season. It was, you will remember, the most compelling soccer story of (at least) the first half of 2023: a club, and a city, breathlessly anticipating the end of a three-decade wait for an Italian championship. So ecstatic were the celebrations that it is no real surprise their aftereffects have lingered.In another light, though, this season is a source of some regret. The team that finally delivered Naples its first post-Diego Maradona title was one of those moments of happenstance: a set of players and a coach who dovetailed perfectly.Since then, Napoli has made a series of eminently avoidable errors. The club had an opportunity to build from a position of strength, but instead made poor coaching appointments — twice — and spent not inconsiderable amounts of money, poorly, in the transfer market. It is currently ninth in Serie A, and will struggle to return to the Champions League next season. The party, as it turned out, was all too brief. Still, at least it was a good one.Flares at Napoli, where the fire has gone.Marco Bertorello/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesCorrespondenceThe first weekend in January is, you will know, historically reserved for two of English soccer’s great traditions: the third round of the F.A. Cup; and talking about the waning, or otherwise, of the magic of the F.A. Cup.“It seems all of the big clubs are desperate to avoid cup replays, which used to be one of the highlights for the fans,” Henry Brown obliges. “But with the overload on the players these days, the reticence is understandable. Nonetheless, the financial bonus for the little guy is more essential than ever, and it would mean a huge step down if this glorious tradition were changed.”There are a couple of things here. The first is that, increasingly, the idea that it is only the major teams who disdain the F.A. Cup is outdated; clubs from the second-tier Championship seem — understandably, given that league’s hectic schedule — to regard it with even more contempt.Bristol City’s 1-1 draw at West Ham felt more like a victory, since it earned the Robins a lucrative replay at home on Tuesday.Adrian Dennis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe second is that a lot of the discourse around the F.A. Cup ignores the salient fact that its primacy for previous generations can at least in part be traced to the role of television. Of course the cup occupied a position of unusual prominence for decades: For roughly half a century, it was the only soccer televised live in Britain. (We may return to this subject.)But most of all, we should be absolutely clear that there can be no clearer proof that the financial model of English soccer is fundamentally broken than the fact that there is no greater economic reward available to a whole swath of clubs than obtaining first an arbitrary meeting with and then drawing a game against one of the elite. If the big clubs want to abolish replays, they should perhaps start by contributing more to the monetary well-being of everyone else. More

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    Franz Beckenbauer, ‘Der Kaiser’ of World Soccer, Dies at 78

    In West Germany, he revolutionized his central defense position and was one of only three people to win the World Cup as a player and a coach.Franz Beckenbauer, a towering figure in soccer who led West Germany to World Cup championships as a player in 1974 and as coach in 1990, earning a reputation as one of the greatest players in the sport’s history, died on Sunday. He was 78.He died at his home, his family confirmed in a statement, but did not specify where he lived or state the cause of death. His relatives had been quoted in German media reports for months saying that Beckenbauer, who had heart surgery in 2016, had been in failing health.A cerebral player whose technical skills and tactical awareness revolutionized his position in central defense, Beckenbauer was nicknamed “Der Kaiser” for his ability to control games and score goals from a position largely charged with preventing them. He led West Germany to two World Cup finals as a player: in 1966, when it lost to England in extra time, and in 1974, when he captained the team to victory on home soil.As the team’s coach in the 1990 tournament in Italy, he collected his second world title with a victory over Argentina, led by Diego Maradona.His playing résumé is littered with team and individual honors: world and European championships with West Germany; four German club titles; three European cups; twice a winner of the Ballon d’Or as European player of the year.Beckenbauer spent the bulk of his professional career with Germany’s biggest club, Bayern Munich, before making a lucrative late-career switch to the ambitious North American Soccer League. As a member of the New York Cosmos, he was part of three more championship teams, including one in 1977 that included Pelé of Brazil.Beckenbauer coached West Germany to a World Cup victory in 1990.Bongarts, via Getty ImagesLater, as a soccer executive, Beckenbauer helped his now-unified country secure the hosting rights to the 2006 World Cup, but his actions — and those of others linked to the German bid — brought charges of corruption and a criminal case in Switzerland, the home of soccer’s global governing body. Beckenbauer was not convicted, but only because the court ran out of time to complete a prosecution under Swiss law.Before that case went to trial, his reputation came under scrutiny again when he was part of the tainted vote to award the 2018 and 2022 World Cups to Russia and Qatar.Beckenbauer, with Brazil’s Mário Zagallo and Didier Deschamps of France, was one of only three people to win the World Cup, soccer’s greatest prize, as both a player and coach. Zagallo died on Friday at age 92.A full obituary will appear soon. More

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    Mário Zagallo, Longtime Fixture of Brazilian Soccer, Dies at 92

    The first person to win the World Cup as a player and a coach, he was a link to decades of Brazil’s success and failure on the sport’s biggest stage. Mário Zagallo, who as both a player and coach helped lead Brazil to four World Cup soccer championships, becoming a national hero and one of only three people to lift the tournament’s trophy in both roles, died on Friday in Rio de Janeiro. He was 92.His death was confirmed by his family on his social media channels. Barra D’Or Hospital in Rio de Janeiro, where he had been a patient several times in recent months, said the cause was multiple organ failure.An attack-minded wing as a player and a tactically minded coach known as “the Professor,” Zagallo was part of the Brazil teams that won consecutive World Cup championships in 1958 and 1962 and the head coach of Brazil’s 1970 champions.His 1970 triumph made Zagallo the first person to win the World Cup as both a player and a coach, a feat that has since been matched only by Franz Beckenbauer of Germany and Didier Deschamps of France. But it may have been that team’s style of play as much as its success that cemented a recurring role for Zagallo in Brazilian soccer history.Led by stars like his former teammate Pelé, Jairzinho and Carlos Alberto, Brazil’s 1970 squad is widely considered one of the best soccer teams ever assembled. It was forged in crisis after his popular predecessor fell out with the country’s military government: Zagallo was appointed as head coach less than two months before the tournament’s opening game. Zagallo found himself having to act as the coach of many players who had only recently been his teammates.“It was easy to command, because the players saw and felt that I had the strength of personality to make the changes that I thought were necessary,” Zagallo recalled in a 2011 interview with The Blizzard, a quarterly soccer magazine. “I imposed myself — and this kind of leadership in front of the group is fundamental, even if you’ve participated in this group before as a player.”The team adjusted to Zagallo’s tactical alterations and then danced and shimmied its way into the hearts and minds of fans not only in Brazil but around the globe.Zagallo, second from left, shooting at England’s goal during a World Cup quarterfinals match in Chile in 1962. Brazil won the championship that year.Associated PressUnder Zagallo’s direction, in the first World Cup telecast around the world in color, Brazil’s team, clad in its famed canary-yellow jerseys, refined soccer to high art in its six straight victories in Mexico. Sweeping through the tournament with a highlight reel of memorable goals, the team showcased the fluid, elegant attacking style known as “o jogo bonito” (“the beautiful game”), which became Brazil’s calling card around the world.Returning as head coach, Zagallo led Brazil to a fourth-place finish in 1974. Two decades later, back on the national team’s bench as an assistant to Carlos Alberto Parreira, he helped Brazil collect its fourth championship with a victory over Italy in the 1994 final in Pasadena, Calif.Parreira’s team, a grinding and more results-oriented squad, was less beloved than previous editions of the Seleção, as Brazil’s national team is known. But it was celebrated for delivering the prize the country covets above all others.Four years after that, with Zagallo back in the top job and stars like Ronaldo leading yet another potent attack, Brazil returned to the World Cup final. But its run had come amid criticism from a nation of amateur coaches, who feared that, despite his ties to Brazil’s most mythical teams, Zagallo had surrendered to his pragmatic side.He did little to calm purists when he declared that a victorious end justified any means. “I would rather win playing ugly football than lose playing attractive football,” he said. Brazil, alas, did not: A heavy favorite, it was stunned by host France in the final.In 2002, when the team traveled to South Korea and Japan to pick up the record fifth title that had eluded it in France, Zagallo was serving as a special adviser to the coaching staff of Luiz Felipe Scolari.Zagallo, right, with his former teammate Pelé after his appointment as Brazil’s coach in 1970. They were on Brazil’s World Cup championship teams in 1958 and 1962.Associated PressThat was his last personal connection with a tournament, and a title, that by that point had defined his life for more than a half century.A pivotal moment of his life occurred in 1950, when, as a teenage soldier providing security, Zagallo had watched as Brazil was stunned by Uruguay in the final before a crowd of about 200,000 at the Maracanã stadium in Rio de Janeiro. That defeat, in Brazil’s first trip to the final, was a bitter blow to the nation, and he was among the tens of millions of Brazilians who shed tears of disappointment. “That day has never left my mind,” Zagallo told the BBC in 2013. He went even further speaking to the journalist Andrés Cantor for the book “Goooal: A Celebration Of Soccer” (1996). “From that moment on,” Zagallo recalled about the 1950 World Cup, “I have only soccer memories.”Eight years later, as a player on the national team, he helped rewrite the ending. In the final in Sweden alongside a teenage Pelé, Zagallo scored a goal in a 5-2 victory that delivered Brazil’s first world title. Four years later, he was on the team again when Brazil repeated the feat in Chile.Mário Jorge Lobo Zagallo was born on Aug. 9, 1931, in Atalaia, a city in the eastern Brazilian state of Alagoas. His father, Haroldo Cardoso Zagallo, was a textile executive. His mother, Maria Antonieta Lobo Zagallo, was part of a family that owned a fabric factory. Mário Zagallo said his father had hoped he would become an accountant and work in the family business. Instead, he devoted his life to soccer, spending his professional playing career with two Rio clubs, making his debut with Flamengo in 1951 and retiring from Botafogo in 1965.He married Alcina de Castro, a teacher, in 1955. They had four children: Maria Emilia, Paulo Jorge, Maria Cristina and Mario Cesar. Zagallo’s wife died in 2012. His survivors include his children and several grandchildren.Since the death of Pelé in 2022, Zagallo had been the last surviving member of the first Brazil squad to win the World Cup. He would go on to burnish his legacy in five decades as a coach, assistant and adviser to generations of Brazilian teams.He would eventually lead more than a half-dozen clubs in his native Brazil, as well as the national teams of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. But he was never far from his country, serving four distinct tenures as Brazil’s head coach. And even when he did not hold the post, he remained a fixture, called upon regularly — in success and failure and particularly in times of trouble — as a sage and distinguished link to its greatest teams, and its greatest triumphs.Fans pay tribute to Zagallo in Rio de Janeiro on Sunday.Lucas Figueiredo/Getty ImagesAlex Traub and Tariq Panja contributed reporting. More

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    Out of Sight, Out of Mind No More

    The Africa Cup of Nations and the Asian Cup, once seen as poorly timed intrusions by European soccer, may finally be getting the respect they deserve.At last, we appear to be getting somewhere. Late on New Year’s Day, Mohamed Salah’s beaming face appeared on British television screens. Salah always has the slightly ruffled appearance of a man who has not slept desperately well, but he was in distinctly good cheer.His Liverpool team had just dismantled Newcastle United to move three points clear at the top of the Premier League. He had played wonderfully: scoring two goals, creating one and missing a penalty so as to foster the illusion of drama in what was otherwise a hopelessly one-sided sporting contest.There was, though, a bittersweet tinge to the jubilation. That was the last Liverpool will see of Salah — in the flesh, at least — for several weeks. Immediately after the game, he was scheduled to travel to Egypt’s imaginatively-titled New Administrative Capital, just outside Cairo, to join his national team’s preparations for the Africa Cup of Nations, which begins next weekend. He does not plan to return to Liverpool until the middle of February.It is natural, of course, that the focus in Britain — and for those who follow the Premier League in general and Liverpool in particular — should be on how Salah’s absence might affect an unusually tense title race. (Liverpool will be fine, apparently. “Anyone can play where I play,” Salah said, modestly. “Anyone can do what I am doing,” he added, pushing his luck a bit.)In recent years, though, an awareness has seeped in that this approach might be considered just a little parochial.Achraf Hakimi anchors a Morocco team that reached the 2022 World Cup semifinals.Borja Sanchez-Trillo/EPA, via ShutterstockEurope tends to command soccer’s attention, dominating its discourse and setting the parameters of what is considered worthy of attention or praise. Europe, after all, is home to the world’s biggest clubs and the world’s strongest leagues and the world’s best players. Europe is, by pretty much any metric, the main event.The effect of this, of course, is the diminution of anything and everything that does not matter to Europe. The Cup of Nations is not the only example of that phenomenon, but it is likely the best. Every two years or so, it is presented as little more than a hindrance, as though it has been invented purely to test the squad depth of the major teams of the Premier League.There has long been a consistent undercurrent of conversation suggesting that, for the African stars invited to participate, it is somehow optional, in a way that the European Championship and Copa América are most certainly not.Recent years have brought a welcome corrective to that logic. There has, gradually, been a dawning realization that it is not really fair to frame the Cup of Nations purely in relation to its impact on the Premier League. Europeans seem to have accepted that it is not really for them to decide whether players ought to want to play in it, or when it might be held. At times, it has even been possible to believe we are on the cusp of a more profound discovery: that just because something does not matter to you does not mean it does not matter.Guinea forward Serhou Guirassy is the Bundesliga’s second-leading scorer.Thomas Kienzle/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThat process has, admittedly, been a slow one. It is, certainly, hard to imagine that a German player might be asked to explain the importance of the European Championship, or a Brazilian invited to expound on the significance of the Copa América in the way that Salah was asked to elucidate why he wanted to bother going to the Ivory Coast this month, but still: slow progress is progress nonetheless.And yet soccer still cannot quite shake its innate Eurocentrism. There is, this year, another tournament running concurrently with the Cup of Nations. This week, 24 national teams from across Asia have gathered in Qatar — where they had some stadiums lying idle, not sure why — for the Asian Cup.This is, it goes without saying, a tournament just as significant as the Cup of Nations, and by extension the Copa América and the European Championship. It is, the South American equivalent aside, the oldest continental competition in soccer, predating the European Championship by a few years. It will attract hundreds of millions of viewers and, with an admittedly unlikely combination of results, might even capture the hearts and minds of the two most populous nations on the planet.And yet, even compared to the Cup of Nations, the Asian Cup is largely ignored. It is not even afforded the backhanded compliment of being presented as a nuisance. It is instead overlooked almost entirely.Don’t tell host Qatar that the Asian Cup is an afterthought.Karim Jaafar/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThat might, in part, be down to its relative rarity. Though it is typically played at the same time of year as the Africa Cup of Nations — in January and February, in the middle of the European season — the Asian Cup only happens once every four years. It does not intrude quite so frequently on the European consciousness as the biennial Cup of Nations.The most significant reason, though, is its impact on Europe. Salah is hardly an exception when it comes to players leaving Europe’s major teams and traveling to Africa this month. Of the 24 teams in the Cup of Nations, only five — South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia, Mauritania and Namibia — have not named any players drawn from Europe’s five major leagues. Many of the major contenders will base their campaigns on familiar faces.The contrast with Asia is stark. Only a couple dozen of the players gathering in Qatar have had to step away from teams in Europe’s most illustrious domestic leagues. Jordan has one, Iran two and South Korea six. Japan alone could name a full team drawn from the game’s highest-profile leagues. (There are larger contingents from the Dutch Eredivisie, the Belgian Pro League and, thanks largely to Celtic, the Scottish Premier League.)Son Heung-min of South Korea is the Asian Cup’s biggest star. But he’s not its only one.Tingshu Wang/ReutersEurope, in other words, is still afforded — or still assumes — the privilege of ordaining what is important and what is not. Perhaps it is not because attitudes have shifted that the Cup of Nations is tolerated; perhaps, instead, it is tolerated because it feels more familiar to Europeans. The teams, after all, are stuffed with players that Europeans recognize, we appreciate, we miss. The tastemakers have not changed to accommodate it. It has changed to better suit the tastemakers.There is, needless to say, a sadness here. There is a wonder in the very unfamiliarity of players and teams, one that has largely been lost in soccer’s digital age. There was a point when heterogeneity was one of the sport’s great pleasures, rather than a tendency that belongs to a distant past.The Asian Cup, with its squads drawn from distant and disparate leagues, has that in abundance. Its difference should be its strength. It would, certainly, be worth watching. CBS Sports has picked up the rights in the United States. In Britain, unfortunately, nobody has deigned to do so.Test of PatienceEddie Howe’s Newcastle has hit a bump in the road.Lee Smith/Action Images, via ReutersIn the two years or so since it acquired Newcastle United, Saudi Arabia — sorry, sorry, the Public Investment Fund, which is absolutely not the Saudi state, and you really must not think it is — has been substantially more restrained than might have been expected.Considerable sums of money have gone into transforming the Newcastle squad, but even the harshest critic of the project would struggle to deny it has been spent shrewdly. Newcastle’s backers have resisted the temptation to chase a quick fix. If anything — thanks, in part, to the Premier League’s financial rules — the club’s growth has almost been cautious.That has not been an issue while everything was working, while the club seemed to be ahead of schedule. It becomes more complex when there is a sense that things have stalled. Newcastle has won only three of its last 13 games. Eddie Howe has now overseen three defeats in a row. It is out of the Champions League. And even the club’s injury troubles do not excuse conceding 34 shots to Liverpool on New Year’s Day.Howe’s work this far should, really, insure him against a threat of firing during the first real downturn of his tenure. He has, as the saying goes, credit in the bank. In ordinary circumstances, doubtless that would be the case.But Newcastle’s is not an ordinary circumstance. It is one bound up with whatever image of itself its primary investor wants to project. Until now, its new ownership has been happy to come across as responsible, patient and understanding. That was easy, when times were good. Now they are not, and it is hard to know whether Saudi Arabia really is happy to take the rough with the smooth, whether it is ready to tolerate underachievement, whether it is really prepared to wait.User-Generated ContentThe people’s choice: Jan Oblak.Pau Barrena/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThankfully, the results are unanimous. The votes have been cast, the suggestions made, the forms processed, the information tabulated, the data crunched and the conclusions extracted and now we can say with some certainty that, if FIFA were to permit a team drawn from those nations outside the top 48 of its rankings to enter the expanded 2026 World Cup, Jan Oblak would be in goal.Pretty much everyone (and there were several dozen of you) who submitted an entry to the festive challenge set by Joe Rizzotti and Dolores Diaz-Vides — they are not married, Dolores wrote to inform me; their sending of joint emails is purely platonic — decided Oblak, Atlético Madrid’s redoubtable Slovene, should be in goal.Elsewhere, the picture was a little more muddied. Central defense was not a problem: There were nominations for Milan Skriniar (Slovakia), Stefan Savic (Montenegro), Evan Ndicka (Ivory Coast) and Edmond Tapsoba (Burkina Faso), among many others. Central midfield, thanks to the likes of Mohammed Kudus (Ghana), Henrikh Mkhitaryan (Armenia) and Yves Bissouma (Mali), was well stocked, too.In attack, the options are fewer in quantity but possibly higher in quality: Khvicha Kvaratskhelia (Georgia) and Leon Bailey (Jamaica) on the wings, perhaps, supplying Edin Dzeko (Bosnia and Herzegovina) or Sébastian Haller (Ivory Coast)? Or maybe a more fluid trident of Miguel Almiron (Paraguay), Iñaki Williams (Ghana) and Benjamin Sesko (Slovenia) would be more modern?At fullback, though, there is a hitch. A hitch sufficiently significant that you could feasibly build a whole theory around it: that the mark of an elite soccer nation is, it would seem, its ability to produce left and right backs. Ivory Coast’s Serge Aurier, currently of Nottingham Forest, and Bosnia’s Sead Kolasinac, now with Atalanta, were the best a slim field could offer.But that does not invalidate the purpose of the exercise. International soccer is always about compromise; it is inevitable, with resources limited by borders and birthrates, that teams should have flaws. It is, in many ways, what makes it special. And there is enough strength elsewhere to generate a side that could likely reach the quarterfinals in 2026. Joe and Dolores, consider me converted. Let’s get a world team to North America. More

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    Spanish Soccer Star Testifies About Unwanted Kiss

    Jennifer Hermoso, who was kissed on the mouth by Spain’s former soccer boss, Luis Rubiales, gave evidence at a hearing to determine whether Mr. Rubiales will be charged.Jennifer Hermoso, the Spanish soccer star who received an unsolicited kiss on the mouth after her team won the World Cup, gave evidence in Spain’s National Court Tuesday morning against Luis Rubiales, the former Spanish former soccer boss who is being investigated over allegations of sexual assault and coercion in connection with the episode.Ms. Hermoso’s testimony concludes the high-profile criminal inquiry of Mr. Rubiales, which was opened days after the World Cup, which took place in Sydney, Australia, in August.A judge, Francisco de Jorge, must now decide whether to charge Mr. Rubiales or to close the case. If Judge de Jorge concludes there is evidence of wrongdoing, Mr. Rubiales will face trial on a sexual assault charge — punishable with between one and four years in prison. Mr. Rubiales and three executives at the soccer federation, including the former coach, Jorge Vilda, may also face charges of coercion after they were accused of exerting pressure on Ms. Hermoso to show support for Mr. Rubiales.Mr. Rubiales has denied the charges, saying that it was nothing more than a “peck.”On Tuesday morning, Ms. Hermoso was the last in a string of Spanish sporting celebrities to give evidence. The list of witnesses summoned by Judge de Jorge reads like the “Who’s Who” of Spanish soccer, with stars such as Alexia Putellas, the current Best FIFA Women’s Player; Misa Rodríguez, the goalkeeper for Real Madrid; and Irene Paredes, Barcelona’s star defender. Several football association executives have also given their versions of events, as have Mr. Vilda, Ms. Hermoso’s brother and Mr. Rubiales himself.Ms. Hermoso spoke to the press outside Spain’s National Court after her appearance. “All is in the hands of justice,” she said, seemingly at ease.What exactly she or the other witnesses disclosed to Judge de Jorge has not been made public officially as the hearings have been held behind closed doors. But shortly after Ms. Hermoso left court this morning, the Spanish prosecutor’s office issued a statement confirming that she had testified that “the kiss was unexpected and at no point consented.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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    Manchester United Sells 25 Percent Ownership Stake to Jim Ratcliffe

    The billion-dollar deal leaves the team’s unpopular owners, the Glazer family, in control of the club, but it delegates important responsibilities to their new partner.After a year of rumors, offers, final deadlines and final, final deadlines, the owners of Manchester United on Sunday announced that they had sold a minority stake in the team, English soccer’s most successful club, to the British petrochemical billionaire Jim Ratcliffe.The sale of the 25 percent stake in United, the former English and European champion, was confirmed by representatives of United and INEOS, Mr. Ratcliffe’s company, and announced by the club on social media.In addition to acquiring a significant ownership stake, Mr. Ratcliffe also agreed to provide another $300 million “intended to enable future investment into Old Trafford,” the club’s iconic stadium. As part of the deal, INEOS was given responsibility for managing the team’s soccer operations, granting it effective control over “all aspects” of the United men’s and women’s teams and also the club’s youth academy.The deal concluded a chaotic process that many of the team’s fans had hoped would end with something far more significant: the departure from the club of the team’s current owners, the Florida-based Glazer family, which has controlled United since acquiring it in a leveraged buyout in 2005.Instead, the Glazers will remain the team’s majority owners while netting a sum that values Manchester United around $6.3 billion, or more than five times the amount the Glazers paid to buy it almost two decades ago. And in deputizing the INEOS Sports group — which already has interests in soccer, auto racing, cycling and rugby — to run the soccer operations, the Glazer family may insulate itself from the harshest criticisms of fans.“Through INEOS Sport, Manchester United will have access to seasoned high-performance professionals, experienced in creating and leading elite teams from both inside and outside the game,” the United co-chairmen and brothers Joel and Avram Glazer said.Mr. Ratcliffe, through INEOS, agreed to pay $33 per share for his 25 percent stake, a price that represents a nearly 70 percent premium on the current value of the team’s shares on the New York Stock Exchange.“As a local boy and a lifelong supporter of the club, I am very pleased that we have been able to agree a deal with the Manchester United board that delegates us management responsibility of the football operations of the club,” Mr. Ratcliffe said in United’s statement on the sale. “Whilst the commercial success of the club has ensured there have always been available funds to win trophies at the highest level, this potential has not been fully unlocked in recent times.”Jim Ratcliffe, second from right, outside Manchester United’s stadium, in March. He agreed to pay $33 per share for his 25 percent stake in the club.Phil Noble/ReutersThe sale process began more than a year ago, kicked off by an offhand comment from Elon Musk on social media that he was buying the club. Musk later said his offer had been a joke, but the Glazers were apparently serious about hearing more.United hired the U.S.-based merger and acquisition specialist Raine Group to manage a prospective sale after the firm secured a record price, roughly $3 billion, for another English club, Chelsea. When the Glazers made clear they were open to hearing offers, bidders quickly lined up, including not only Mr. Ratcliffe, but also an American investment fund and a Qatari businessman with links to some of the Gulf country’s most influential figures. Their offers seemed to rise with each new media report.The entire process took place against a backdrop of months of conflicting headlines, fan protests and swings in the club’s stock price — and all as the team, once a fixture at the top of the Premier League standings, struggled for consistency, and wins, on the field.“It’s been a process that’s been all about the best interests of the Glazer family above the interests of the club,” said Duncan Drasdo, a United fan and the chief executive of the Manchester United Supporters’ Trust, a group that has protested the club’s ownership since the Glazers first arrived at Old Trafford.The nature of the original acquisition saw the Glazer family’s late patriarch, Malcolm, burned in effigy, and prompted the Premier League to belatedly draw up regulations so such a transaction could not be repeated. The Glazer family took control after borrowing the majority of the cost of their 805 million pound takeover (roughly $1 billion today) against United’s previously debt-free balance sheet. In the two decades since, the club has paid more than £1 billion in interest and other costs related to the Glazer takeover, while its debt has now surpassed £1 billion, too.The decision to consider even a partial sale was celebrated by the team’s enormous fan base when it was announced in November 2022. By then United had gone almost a decade without a Premier League title, a championship it last celebrated in 2013, and been usurped as English soccer’s dominant club by its cross town rival Manchester City, thanks to the backing of a member of the ruling family of the United Arab Emirates.A similar possibility for United emerged when the businessman son of one of Qatar’s men, the former prime minister Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani, announced his intention to buy the team. That offer was widely promoted on social media by fans, influencers and even former players, including Rio Ferdinand, a former captain, who in June created a frenzy and a spike in United’s share price when he announced a sale to the Qatari group was “imminent.”That proved to be a false dawn. And it was not the only one. Other headlines in British news media, which treated the takeover in ways more typical of high profile player trades in the transfer market, led to similar lifts and dips in both hopes and the price of United shares.The transaction with Mr. Ratcliffe did not produce the outcome many fans had wanted, the Glazer family’s sale of the team.Oli Scarff/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe conclusion of the sale process will not produce the outcome many fans had hoped to see: the Glazers’ sale of the team. Mr. Ratcliffe now will control only 25 percent of the club’s voting rights through a mix of the Glazers’ stake and a portion of those owned by other shareholders. As part of the deal, the Glazers will relinquish day-to-day control of the sporting activities of the club but will retain control of United’s commercial activities and still hold the majority of board positions.Mr. Ratcliffe seemed pleased with the deal he had made — “We are here for the long term,” he said of his new management team — but the reaction of fans might not be as universally positive.“I think the problem with it is that it leaves the fan base feeling divided,” Mr. Drasdo said. “It leaves a sense of resentment and negativity that’s not helpful. A clean break would have been better.”Fans will be hoping the new era will lead to a return of United’s winning ways, and a reversal of the botched succession planning that followed the retirement of the legendary coach Alex Ferguson after he led the team to the last of its 19 league championships in 2013. Since then, new coaches have come and gone, and vast sums have been spent on new recruits. But without a discernible strategy, the club now finds itself with a bloated and underperforming roster, and clinging to eighth place in the 20-team Premier League.“It’s better than the status quo,” said Andy Green, a board member of MUST and the head of investments at Rockpool, a private equity firm. “Because they have proved themselves as being absolutely appalling at being football club owners.” More