Raphael Stevens

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    Science and Data Change Soccer’s Definition of Old

    Top clubs have long looked to shed players once they hit age 30. But those presumptions rely on outdated logic, statistics show.LONDON — The exact location of the threshold has always been contested. At Manchester United, for a time, it lurked close enough to 30 for that to serve as a natural watershed. Once players hit their 30s, Alex Ferguson, the club’s manager at the time, tended to grant them an extra day’s rest after a game, in the hope that the break might soothe their creaking bodies.Arsenal’s Arsène Wenger was a little more nuanced. He had a formula. Once midfielders and forwards reached the grand old age of 32, he was prepared to offer them only one-year contract extensions. “That is the rule here,” he once said. “After 32, you go from year to year.” He made an exception for central defenders; they could sign contracts that carried them to age 34.But while the precise cutoff has always been subjective, the broad and longstanding consensus within soccer is that it lies in there somewhere. At some point early in their 30s, players cross the boundary that distinguishes summer from fall, present from past. And as soon as they do, they can officially be regarded as old.Manchester City spent big, and got younger, in acquiring striker Erling Haaland.Dave Thompson/Associated PressThat delineation has long informed both the player-recruitment and the player-retention strategies of teams across Europe. A vast majority of clubs have, as a rule, adhered for years to a simple principle: buy young and sell old.Tottenham’s acquisition last month of the 33-year-old Croatia midfielder Ivan Perisic, for example, was the first time that the club has signed an outfield player in his 30s since 2017. Liverpool has not done so since 2016. Manchester City has not paid a fee for an outfield player over age 30 for almost a decade. Goalkeepers, widely held to boast greater longevity, are the only players granted an exception.Instead, players approaching the twilight of their careers are generally seen as burdens to be shifted. This summer has been a case in point: Bayern Munich has managed to alienate the almost-34-year-old Robert Lewandowski by (unsuccessfully) trying to anoint Erling Haaland, a decade his junior, as his heir.Liverpool, meanwhile, has started the work of breaking up its vaunted attacking trident by replacing the 30-year-old Sadio Mané with Luis Díaz, 25, and adding the 23-year-old Darwin Nuñez to succeed Roberto Firmino, who turns 31 in October. As it seeks to overhaul its squad, Manchester United released a suite of players — Nemanja Matic, Juan Mata and Edínson Cavani among them — into a market already saturated with veterans, including Gareth Bale and Ángel Di María.The reasoning behind this, of course, is straightforward. “The demands of the game are changing,” said Robin Thorpe, a performance scientist who spent a decade at Manchester United and now works with the Red Bull network of teams. “There is much more emphasis on high-intensity sprinting, acceleration, deceleration.” Younger players are deemed better equipped to handle that load than their elders.Just as important, though, recruiting younger players promises “more return on investment when you’re looking to move them on,” according to Tony Strudwick, a former colleague of Thorpe’s at United who also has worked at Arsenal. Clubs can earn back their outlay — perhaps even make a profit — on a player acquired in his early 20s. Those a decade or so older are, in a strictly economic sense, seen as a rapidly depreciating asset.Those two ideas are, of course, related, and so it is significant that at least one of them may be rooted in outdated logic.Liverpool gave Mo Salah a three-year deal a few weeks after his 30th birthday.Athit Perawongmetha/ReutersAccording to data from the consultancy firm Twenty First Group, players over age 32 are consistently playing more minutes in the Champions League every year. Last season, players over age 34 — practically ancient, by soccer’s traditional thinking — accounted for more minutes in Europe’s big five leagues than in any previous season for which data was available.More significantly, that has not been at any notable cost to their performance.“Age has its pros and cons,” the former Barcelona right back Dani Alves, now 39 and determined to continue his career, told The Guardian this month. “I have an experience today that I didn’t have 20 years ago. When there’s a big game, 20-year-olds get nervous and worried. I don’t.”Twenty First Group’s data bears Alves out. Though players in their 20s do press more than those in their 30s do — 14.5 pressing actions per 90 minutes, as opposed to 12.8 — that reduction is offset in other ways.In both the Champions League and Europe’s major domestic competitions, older players win more aerial duels, complete more dribbles, pass with greater accuracy — if they are central midfielders — and score more goals. More than twice as many players over age 30 now rank in Twenty First Group’s modeling of the best 150 players in the world than appeared in the same list a decade ago.The data suggests, very clearly, that 30 is not as old as it used to be.Luka Modric, who will turn 37 in September, joked recently that he might play until he’s 50.Frank Augstein/Associated PressFrom a sports-science perspective, that is hardly surprising. The idea of 30 as an immutable aging threshold predates soccer’s interest in conditioning: The current generation of players in their 30s, Strudwick pointed out, may be the first to “have been exposed to hard-core sports science from the start of their careers.”There is no reason to assume they would age at the same rate, or the same time, as their forebears. “Look at the condition that players are in when they retire,” Strudwick said. “They haven’t let their bodies go. They might need to be pushed a little less in preseason, and their recovery may take longer, but from a physical and a performance point of view, there is no reason they can’t add value into their late 30s.”That longevity can only be increased, Thorpe said, by improvements in nutrition and recovery techniques.When he was at Manchester United, he said, “the rule of thumb was always that players over the age of 30 got a second day’s rest after games. It felt intuitively like the right thing to do.” The truth, though, was that it wasn’t always the older players who needed the break.“When we researched it, when we looked at the data,” Thorpe said, “we found that it was way more individual. Some of the older players could train, and some of the younger players needed more rest.”As those sorts of insights have become more embedded in the sport, he argued, it follows that “more players should be able to do more later on in their careers.” Luka Modric might have been joking when he told an interviewer, before the Champions League final in May, that he intended to play on “until 50, like that Japanese guy, [Kazuyoshi] Miura,” but it is no longer quite as absurd as it might have once sounded.That the clubs do not appear to have noticed — that players over age 30, with rare exceptions, still seem to be regarded as a burden rather than a blessing — is, as far as Strudwick can see, now almost exclusively an economic issue.“A player’s life cycle is an inverted U shape,” he said. “But salary expectations are linear.”A more scientific approach might have flattened the downward curve of a player’s performance graph, or even delayed its onset, but it cannot eliminate it completely. At some point a player will enter what Strudwick called the “roll-down phase.” The one thing that no club wants — that no club can afford — is to be paying a player a premium salary when that moment arrives. That is what motivates clubs, still, to believe that a threshold arrives at 30: not what players can contribute, but what they cost. More

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    Bad Planning and Errors Led to Champions League Chaos, Report Says

    A French Senate inquiry faulted the authorities for blaming large crowds of supporters instead of owning up to their failures, after violence and confusion marred a final near Paris. PARIS — Faulty coordination, bad planning and multiple errors by French authorities were responsible for the chaos that marred this year’s Champions League soccer final just outside Paris, according to a parliamentary report published on Wednesday that criticized officials for blaming English fans instead of acknowledging their own failings.The scenes of confusion and violence at the May 28 final between Real Madrid and Liverpool were described as a “fiasco,” and with Paris scheduled to host the Summer Olympics in two years, the report urged French officials to dispel doubts over the country’s ability to host large-scale sporting events. The report found that the authorities were unprepared for the tens of thousands of Liverpool supporters who converged on the Stade de France, and in no uncertain terms, it rejected the French government’s initial insistence that the dangerous crush of fans had been caused on that evening by the presence of fans who had fake tickets, or none at all.“To us, it is clear that it isn’t because Liverpool supporters were accompanying their team that things went badly,” Laurent Lafon, a lawmaker who presides over one of the two Senate committees that ran the investigation, said at a news conference on Wednesday.Supporters were also mugged after the game by groups of petty criminals who took advantage of the chaos to try to enter the stadium and to harass fans. Few police officers were stationed to prevent crime, because most were focused on potential hooliganism or terrorist threats, the report noted. The poor planning meant that serious problems were nearly inevitable, the report said. “A series of dysfunctions” occurred “at every stage,” Mr. Lafon said, because soccer officials, the police and the transportation authorities were “in their own lane without any real coordination” — failing to anticipate that a large number of supporters would come and reacting sluggishly when crowds started to build up.Chaotic scenes of fans scaling stadium fencing and of families being sprayed with tear gas at the game — the biggest match in club soccer, watched by hundreds of millions around the world — seriously dented France’s credibility to hold similar high-profile events, like the 2023 Rugby World Cup and the Olympics.Liverpool fans lining up to enter the stadium. The planning for the match has raised questions about France’s ability to host big sporting events.Matthias Hangst/Getty ImagesThe senators urged President Emmanuel Macron’s government to recognize the mistakes, to tweak policing tactics, and to improve France’s strategy for securing large-scale sporting events.“We mustn’t let spread the idea that we can’t organize big sports events,” said François-Noël Buffet, another senator who led the inquiry, on Wednesday. “If the truth had been told right away, we wouldn’t be here two months afterward.”Gérald Darmanin, Mr. Macron’s tough-talking interior minister, had quickly blamed the chaos on 30,000 to 40,000 Liverpool supporters with fake tickets or no tickets at all — in the end, only about 2,500 forged tickets were scanned, the report said.Mr. Darmanin, who belatedly apologized for the organizational failures on that evening, said on Wednesday that the government would follow the report’s recommendations. Those ideas include improving real-time communication between the authorities for large-scale events, systematically planning alternative overflow routes to prevent crowd buildups, and to reduce bottlenecks by finding ways to encourage fans to arrive earlier.“Not only were there dysfunctions, but also errors of preparation,” Mr. Darmanin told lawmakers on Wednesday, adding that authorities would “draw all consequences” in preparing for future events.The report faulted the French authorities for their “dated perception of British fans, reminiscent of the hooligans of the 1980s,” that led them to overstate the threat of violent supporters and to underestimate the threat of petty criminality.“The political will to suggest that the presence of British fans was the sole cause of the chaotic situation at the Stade de France, perhaps in order to hide the poor organizational choices that were made, is in any case unacceptable,” the French senators wrote in a summary of their report.Video surveillance footage from the stadium was automatically deleted seven days after the game, per usual practice, because authorities failed to request copies — a decision that showed poor judgment and prevented them from accurately determining the number of ticketless fans, the senators said. Spirit of Shankly, one of the main Liverpool fan groups, welcomed the report, calling it a “clear message of support” for Liverpool supporters who attended the match. Many had accused the French police of using aggressive tactics, including tear gas, on the night of the game, and were outraged when French officials pinned the blame on them.Riot police took up positions in front of the Liverpool fans during the match. The report faulted French authorities for their “dated perception of British fans, reminiscent of the hooligans of the 1980s.” Matthias Hangst/Getty Images“Spirit of Shankly would like to thank the Senate both for welcoming the testimonies of fans and consequently vindicating them from any responsibility,” the group said in a statement on Wednesday, although it added that it still expected “a full apology from the French government.”The report, which was written after public hearings with government officials, local authorities and fan groups, acknowledged that several factors complicated crowd control that night, including a strike on one of the main commuter trains leading to the stadium, and larger-than-expected crowds of English supporters converging on the stadium.But the senators said the French authorities did not have adequate contingency plans in place and failed to adapt when the situation started to spiral out of control.Stadium employees were insufficiently trained to handle disgruntled or distressed fans, the report said, and the police and transportation authorities reacted far too slowly to redirect the flow of fans and avoid bottlenecks that were created when a pre-filtering system meant to prevent terror attacks was also used by stewards to check tickets.There were not enough signs and staffers in place to guide supporters, the report added, and there was no system in place to update supporters on what was going on — including on the fact that the game had been delayed, “which would have avoided stampedes to get inside.”A report commissioned by the government came to similar conclusions last month, and UEFA, European soccer’s governing body, is carrying out its own review. The French senators blamed UEFA for its ticketing policy, arguing in their report that it should make “unforgeable,” paperless tickets mandatory for major events like the Champions League final.Tariq Panja More

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    Bad Planning and Errors, Not Fans, Led to Champions League Chaos, Report Says

    A French Senate inquiry faulted the authorities for blaming large crowds of supporters instead of owning up to their failures, after violence and confusion marred the match near Paris. PARIS — Faulty coordination, bad planning and multiple errors by French authorities were responsible for the chaos that marred this year’s Champions League soccer final just outside Paris, according to a parliamentary report published on Wednesday that criticized officials for blaming English fans instead of acknowledging their own failings.The scenes of confusion and violence at the May 28 final between Real Madrid and Liverpool were described as a “fiasco,” and with Paris scheduled to host the Summer Olympics in two years, the report urged French officials to dispel doubts over the country’s ability to host large-scale sporting events. The report found that the authorities were unprepared for the tens of thousands of Liverpool supporters who converged on the Stade de France, and in no uncertain terms, it rejected the French government’s initial insistence that the dangerous crush of fans had been caused on that evening by the presence of fans who had fake tickets, or none at all.“To us, it is clear that it isn’t because Liverpool supporters were accompanying their team that things went badly,” Laurent Lafon, a lawmaker who presides over one of the two Senate committees that ran the investigation, said at a news conference on Wednesday.Supporters were also mugged after the game by groups of petty criminals who took advantage of the chaos to try to enter the stadium and to harass fans. Few police officers were stationed to prevent crime, because most were focused on potential hooliganism or terrorist threats, the report noted. The poor planning meant that serious problems were nearly inevitable, the report said. “A series of dysfunctions” occurred “at every stage,” Mr. Lafon said, because soccer officials, the police and the transportation authorities were “in their own lane without any real coordination” — failing to anticipate that a large number of supporters would come and reacting sluggishly when crowds started to build up.Chaotic scenes of fans scaling stadium fencing and of families being sprayed with tear gas at the game — the biggest match in club soccer, watched by hundreds of millions around the world — seriously dented France’s credibility to hold similar high-profile events, like the 2023 Rugby World Cup and the Olympics.Liverpool fans lining up to enter the stadium. The planning for the match has raised questions about France’s ability to host big sporting events.Matthias Hangst/Getty ImagesThe senators urged President Emmanuel Macron’s government to recognize the mistakes, to tweak policing tactics, and to improve France’s strategy for securing large-scale sporting events.“We mustn’t let spread the idea that we can’t organize big sports events,” said François-Noël Buffet, another senator who led the inquiry, on Wednesday. “If the truth had been told right away, we wouldn’t be here two months afterward.”Gérald Darmanin, Mr. Macron’s tough-talking interior minister, had quickly blamed the chaos on 30,000 to 40,000 Liverpool supporters with fake tickets or no tickets at all — in the end, only about 2,500 forged tickets were scanned, the report said.Mr. Darmanin, who belatedly apologized for the organizational failures on that evening, said on Wednesday that the government would follow the report’s recommendations. Those ideas include improving real-time communication between the authorities for large-scale events, systematically planning alternative overflow routes to prevent crowd buildups, and to reduce bottlenecks by finding ways to encourage fans to arrive earlier.“Not only were there dysfunctions, but also errors of preparation,” Mr. Darmanin told lawmakers on Wednesday, adding that authorities would “draw all consequences” in preparing for future events.The report faulted the French authorities for their “dated perception of British fans, reminiscent of the hooligans of the 1980s,” that led them to overstate the threat of violent supporters and to underestimate the threat of petty criminality.“The political will to suggest that the presence of British fans was the sole cause of the chaotic situation at the Stade de France, perhaps in order to hide the poor organizational choices that were made, is in any case unacceptable,” the French senators wrote in a summary of their report.Video surveillance footage from the stadium was automatically deleted seven days after the game, per usual practice, because authorities failed to request copies — a decision that showed poor judgment and prevented them from accurately determining the number of ticketless fans, the senators said. Spirit of Shankly, one of the main Liverpool fan groups, welcomed the report, calling it a “clear message of support” for Liverpool supporters who attended the match. Many had accused the French police of using aggressive tactics, including tear gas, on the night of the game, and were outraged when French officials pinned the blame on them.Riot police took up positions in front of the Liverpool fans during the match. The report faulted French authorities for their “dated perception of British fans, reminiscent of the hooligans of the 1980s.” Matthias Hangst/Getty Images“Spirit of Shankly would like to thank the Senate both for welcoming the testimonies of fans and consequently vindicating them from any responsibility,” the group said in a statement on Wednesday, although it added that it still expected “a full apology from the French government.”The report, which was written after public hearings with government officials, local authorities and fan groups, acknowledged that several factors complicated crowd control that night, including a strike on one of the main commuter trains leading to the stadium, and larger-than-expected crowds of English supporters converging on the stadium.But the senators said the French authorities did not have adequate contingency plans in place and failed to adapt when the situation started to spiral out of control.Stadium employees were insufficiently trained to handle disgruntled or distressed fans, the report said, and the police and transportation authorities reacted far too slowly to redirect the flow of fans and avoid bottlenecks that were created when a pre-filtering system meant to prevent terror attacks was also used by stewards to check tickets.There were not enough signs and staffers in place to guide supporters, the report added, and there was no system in place to update supporters on what was going on — including on the fact that the game had been delayed, “which would have avoided stampedes to get inside.”A report commissioned by the government came to similar conclusions last month, and UEFA, European soccer’s governing body, is carrying out its own review. The French senators blamed UEFA for its ticketing policy, arguing in their report that it should make “unforgeable,” paperless tickets mandatory for major events like the Champions League final.Tariq Panja More

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    Two Chances, Two Goals and Two Wins for Germany

    Spain had more of the ball and did more with it. But Germany, the standard of excellence at the Euros, did enough to reach the quarterfinals.LONDON — It was the ruthlessness that caught the eye in those few vital moments, the cold and clinical efficiency of it all.Spain looked, in many regards, to be a better team than Germany at the European women’s soccer championships on Tuesday night. It had more of the ball and did more with it, and it offered more style and more industry and, at times, even a bit more bite. And in a showdown that was widely seen as a meeting of a continent’s soccer past — Germany has won this tournament a record eight times — and its soccer present, it was Spain that, for frequent stretches, offered a glimpse at European soccer’s future.The problem for Spain, though, was that it gave up two golden chances, Germany pounced on both of them, and that was that. The Germans won, 2-0, to claim a place in next week’s quarterfinals, and the Spanish were left to wonder if this tournament would really be their coming-out party after all.“There were two big mistakes that we paid for,” Spain Coach Jorge Vilda said, “but we know that’s how it is against Germany.”These are already looking like the Euros of What Could Have Been for Spain: if the veteran Jenni Hermoso hadn’t sprained a knee ligament a month before the tournament; if the world player of the year, Alexia Putellas, hadn’t torn a knee ligament only days before the opener; if this cross had delivered a little more bend and that shot had arrived with a bit more curl.Center backs Marina Hegering, left, and Kathrin Hendrich helped Germany post its second shutout at the Euros.John Sibley/ReutersGermany has had nothing of those concerns. Its deep and talented team merely went about its work again on Tuesday: clearing the shots that needed clearing, saving the ones that sneaked through, winning the battles that needed winning. Style points hardly mattered when the final whistle blew. Germany, which has scored six goals and surrendered none since arriving in England, had what it had come to take.In some ways, oddly, Spain’s second game at the Euros was an improvement over its first. In its opener, it had conceded a goal in less than a minute. On Tuesday, it took nearly three to do the same.The goal had come seemingly out of nothing: Spain was calmly working the ball around the back, maneuvering out of some pressure, when goalkeeper Sandra Paños collected it in her goalmouth and fired a clearing ball directly into Germany forward Klara Bühl’s midsection. Bühl settled the ball, sidestepped a defender and coolly slotted it under Paños and into the side netting.Goalkeeper Sandra Paños and Spain surrendered an early goal for the second game in a row.Dylan Martinez/ReutersStunned by an early goal for the second game in a row, Spain dusted itself off and went back to work. In its opening game against Finland, it atoned for its early mistake by scoring four goals. On Tuesday, it went searching for them again, controlling possession by more than two to one, completing several hundred more passes than the Germans, stroking the ball around the grass in a soothing geometry of neat zigzags and diamonds and triangles.But the goals never came. And then, about a half-hour after the first goal, Germany won a corner, fired it toward the forehead of striker Alexandra Popp and watched her nod it past Paños. Spain led nearly all the statistics by then, including oohs and ahs, but trailed in the only one that truly mattered.Germany’s victory was more than symbolic: By winning and taking control of Group B, Germany most likely will avoid a quarterfinal meeting against England, which thrashed Norway on Monday night, 8-0, in Group A — even if that collision arrives eventually.“In Europe, we have the best teams in the world,” defender Marina Hegering said. “If you want to reach the final, you have to beat everyone.”On the other side, the defeat came on what was already a grim day for Spanish women’s soccer. Hours earlier, F.C. Barcelona, Putellas’s club team, had confirmed that her knee had been repaired by a surgeon, but that she would most likely miss as much as a year while she recovered. Her injury already has affected Spain’s prospects at these Euros. Now it might bleed into its hopes at next summer’s World Cup.But that is a tomorrow problem for Spain, which will look to bounce back against Denmark on Saturday, and hopefully again after that in what is now a looming quarterfinal against England.Germany, meanwhile, marched methodically ahead with its second straight shutout, looking like soccer’s past still has quite a bit more time to go. More

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    Its Rivals Filled the Nets. England Showed It Can, Too.

    A meeting of equally regarded teams ended with an 8-0 England victory and arguably the most surprising result of the women’s Euros.BRIGHTON, England — As the goals rained in, first two in the first 15 minutes, then two more in quick succession, then two more on top of those, all before halftime, it was hard not to think England was sending a message.Its opening victory at this summer’s European women’s soccer championship had been satisfying enough, a solid if unspectacular first step toward a major prize it has never won. But while the Lionesses had mustered only a single goal, England’s top rivals for the title were filling nets, and raising the stakes.Norway scored four goals in its first match. Spain and Germany quickly did the same. After France fired five past Italy on Sunday, maybe, just maybe, the tournament’s host country felt it needed to show it was capable of the same.So England scored eight.In a tournament boasting contenders but little clarity less than a week in, England’s 8-0 thrashing of Norway on Monday night — delivered on a warm night in front of a delighted crowd in a resort town on the country’s southern coast — might have been the most surprising result yet.Ellen White, right, had two of England’s six first-half goals.Adrian Dennis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWomen’s soccer is changing quickly in Europe, but the meetings of its best teams remain so infrequent that it can sometimes be hard to judge just which teams are pulling ahead of the pack. A great player does not make a great team. A great team does not necessarily need a great player. And with collisions of the top powers few and far between — the last Euros was in 2017, an eternity in the ongoing evolution of women’s soccer on the continent — data is still hard to come by. One can learn only so much from a lopsided win, after all. A 20-0 victory reveals even less.Spain arrived at this tournament as one of the favorites, but quickly saw its hopes shaken by the loss of Alexia Putellas, the world player of the year, to a knee injury. France left two of its best players at home. Germany brought depth but not brand-name stars.England vs. Norway was supposed to be something else altogether: a true test of powerful teams, a rare meeting of equals. And then it wasn’t.“Of course everyone feels devastated about the way we looked tonight,” Norway Coach Martin Sjogren told reporters after the game. “I really, really feel terrible for the players’ sake, to be out there and to be beaten by England, 8-0, in a game we had been looking forward to for quite some time.“We had a good feeling before the game. We thought we had a good plan, and we opened up the game according to plan. I think we played well the first 10 minutes. But then after that, the last 80, 85 minutes, was more or less horrible to be honest.”Georgia Stanway opened the scoring in the 12th minute, converting a penalty after Ellen White was pulled down in the 18-yard box. Three minutes later, Lauren Hemp made it two, turning in a cross from Beth Mead. The goals were a blur after that. White, after stripping a defender, strolled in alone for her first. Mead got her first, in the 34th minute, on a header, and her second, in the 38th, with some neat footwork in close quarters.White had the crowd, and her teammates, holding their heads in their hands when she delivered her second, and England’s sixth, with a sliding finish at the back post in the 41st minute. But England wasn’t done: Alessia Russo replaced White in the 57th minute and nine minutes later she was on the score sheet, too.Norway went to a back five after that, but it hardly mattered. By the time England got No. 8, with Mead completing her hat trick off a rebound, the Norwegians had called it a night: Ada Hegerberg, a dominant striker who never got a sniff of the goal, and the playmaker Caroline Graham Hansen had already been withdrawn, pulled to live to fight another day. Guro Reiten, a crafty wing, left soon afterward.“We made it a little bit too easy for them,” Sjogren said, “losing the ball in dangerous places. We made some very, very bad mistakes.”It was hardly the result either team had expected. Both had opened the tournament just as they wanted: England kicking off with a win over Austria in front of nearly 69,000 fans, the largest crowd ever to see a women’s Euros match, and Norway debuting a day later with a 4-1 romp over Northern Ireland. Like England’s one-goal win, Norway’s wider margin somehow failed to convey just how dominant the victors had been.The matchup offered a rarity in this tournament: a meeting of equally regarded sides, teams that had traded wins in recent meetings, that seemed a good match.England has eliminated Norway from the past two World Cups, including a 3-0 victory in the 2019 quarterfinals in France. But that was a very different Norway: talented, yes, but missing the predatory Hegerberg, who left her national team for several years to protest what she considered second-class treatment by the country’s soccer federation.A long layoff from a knee injury produced a change of heart earlier this year, and her return has brought a change in expectations both for her and her country.Those remain, battered as they are. But Monday was England’s night, from start to finish after finish after finish. More

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    USWNT Qualifies for 2023 Women’s World Cup

    A lopsided victory over Jamaica in a regional championship ensured that the Americans would get to defend their World Cup title next summer.A United States women’s national team that arrived in Mexico this week with two objectives has already achieved the first: After a lopsided victory over Jamaica on Thursday night, the United States clinched a place in the 2023 Women’s World Cup.The 5-0 victory came in the Americans’ second game at the Concacaf women’s championship, which is serving as both a regional championship and also as the qualifying tournament for the Women’s World Cup and the 2024 Paris Olympics. The United States beat Haiti, 3-0, in its opening game on Monday.Step One: ☑️WE’VE QUALIFIED FOR THE 2023 @FIFAWWC!!!! pic.twitter.com/jUSgovQcrx— USWNT – Concacaf Champs 🏆 (@USWNT) July 8, 2022
    Under the format of the revamped eight-team regional tournament, officially branded the Concacaf W Championship, the top two finishers in each four-team group qualify automatically for the Women’s World Cup, where the United States is the two-time defending champion.The United States ensured it would be one of the top finishers with a dominant performance against Jamaica: Sophia Smith scored twice in the first eight minutes, and Rose Lavelle, Kristie Mewis and Trinity Rodman added goals in the second half as the outclassed Jamaicans faded under an onslaught of U.S. depth and scoring chances.The Americans’ place in the World Cup was only ensured a few hours later, though, when Haiti beat host Mexico in the night’s second game. That result guaranteed the United States a top-two finish in its first-round group, and a place in the expanded 32-team World Cup in Australia and New Zealand next summer.The United States became the 12th nation to qualify, joining the co-hosts, along with South Korea, Japan, China, the Philippines and Vietnam from Asia; and Sweden, France, Denmark and Spain from Europe.Canada, the defending Olympic women’s champion and the Americans’ biggest regional rival, joined that group on Friday, when it defeated Panama, 1-0, in its second match in the tournament. Costa Rica did the same with its second victory, by 4-0 over Trinidad and Tobago.But the biggest story of the tournament could be Haiti: Its 3-0 victory over Mexico means it needs only a draw against Jamaica in its final group game to earn its first trip to the World Cup.The next goal for the United States, meanwhile, will be securing a place in the Paris Olympics. Only the winner of the Concacaf tournament will earn a direct place in that tournament, though there will be a lifeline for the runner-up and third-place nations through a Concacaf Olympic playoff in September 2023.U.S. Coach Vlatko Andonovski is managing a team in transition as he navigates the path to both tournaments. The squad he brought to Mexico is a blend of World Cup veterans like Lavelle, Lindsey Horan and Becky Sauerbrunn and new faces like Smith, whose two goals gave her seven this year, the most for a U.S. player; defender Naomi Girma, who assisted on Smith’s first goal in only her third game for the U.S.; and Rodman, the daughter of the former N.B.A. star Dennis Rodman.That diversity of options has made the team a glimpse of the future of a championship squad that, for the moment, still includes veterans like Megan Rapinoe and Alex Morgan. For Andonovski, the hardest decisions about who goes to the World Cup next year will come later. At the moment, he has every reason to like what he sees in the pipeline: Thirteen members of his squad are competing in their first World Cup or Olympic qualifying tournament for the team, and eight entered the tournament with fewer than 10 international appearances.Smith showed a hint of the promise at her team’s disposal in the opening minutes. On her first goal, she took a long pass on the right, lifted the ball over a defender’s head on the run to cut back and then flicked it with her right foot past the Jamaican goalkeeper.Her second came a few minutes later, and after a similar leading ball down the right, and was finished just as deftly: with a first-touch flip over the goalkeeper that was confirmed after a brief video review.“To be a start on the best team in the world — it’s not easy, it comes with a lot of weight,” Andonovski said of the 21-year-old Smith, adding, “She does have the potential to be one of the best players in the world.”Two more goals in the first half — by Ashley Hatch in the 11th minute and Mallory Pugh in the 27th — were erased by video review, which is being used in the women’s championship for the first time this year.The result, though, was never in doubt. An unmarked Lavelle scored at the back post in the 59th minute to make it 3-0; Kristie Mewis converted a penalty after Midge Purce was bowled over in the area in the 82nd minute; and Rodman turned in a cross from Pugh four minutes later for her second international goal. More

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    Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini Acquitted of Fraud in Swiss Trial

    Blatter, the former president of FIFA, world soccer’s governing body, and Platini, his onetime ally, were charged over a $2 million payment that prosecutors had labeled a bribe.Sepp Blatter, the former president of FIFA, and his onetime ally Michel Platini were acquitted of fraud on Friday in the latest attempt by Swiss prosecutors to win a conviction in a sprawling, seven-year investigation into corruption at the highest levels of world soccer.The trial, held in the southern Swiss city of Bellinzona, was related to a $2 million payment arranged in 2011 by Blatter, who led world soccer’s governing body for 17 years, to Platini, a former France player who was at the time the president of European soccer’s governing body and a potential heir to Blatter as the most powerful executive in the sport.Prosecutors had labeled the payment a bribe, saying that it was made around the time Blatter was standing for re-election. Blatter and Platini denied wrongdoing; they have long maintained that the money was owed to Platini for work done over several years.NEW | Ex FIFA supremo Sepp Blatter hails “victory” after being acquitted of fraud here in Switzerland pic.twitter.com/DjtYtARANY— Dan Roan (@danroan) July 8, 2022
    In a statement after the verdict, the court said that while there were “many well-founded suspicions” before the case was brought to trial, the versions presented by Blatter and Platini of what had occurred created “serious doubts” around the case made by prosecutors.And in another embarrassing blow for the Swiss authorities, the court ruled that Blatter and Platini were entitled to payment of about $20,000 for what it described as a moral injury. The court said Platini waived the payment, but that both men also would receive payments for their legal costs.A smiling Blatter was engulfed by news media as he left the courthouse. He raised both arms in the air, reminiscent of a gesture he used frequently during his days as FIFA president, to declare victory.“I am a happy man,” Blatter said, before thanking the judges. “They have analyzed the situation and they have explained why both of us haven’t done anything.”The criminal charges of fraud, criminal mismanagement and forgery against Blatter and Platini came after a multiyear investigation into the $2 million payment, which came to light in 2015 after prosecutors at the U.S. Department of Justice revealed corrupt practices at FIFA dating back at least two decades.The American investigation resulted in the arrest and conviction of dozens of powerful soccer officials and marketing executives on charges that included racketeering, wire fraud and money laundering conspiracy. Blatter was not among those charged at the time, and while he has for years been the subject of various investigations, the fraud allegations over the payment to Platini marked the first time that he had actually been indicted on criminal charges.The failure to prove the charges against Blatter and Platini, though, shined yet more light on failures by the Swiss justice system to win convictions in cases related to the FIFA scandal. Swiss authorities had with great fanfare raided FIFA’s offices in 2015, shortly after the Justice Department unsealed its sweeping indictment outlining decades of corruption at soccer’s governing body, and Swiss prosecutors claim to have opened dozens of separate investigations into the organization’s activities.So far, however, they have successfully prosecuted only one former FIFA official, a banker and a Greek television executive. None of those defendants have faced prison sentences.The $2 million payment to Platini came as Blatter faced a strong challenge for the FIFA presidency from a Qatari billionaire, Mohamed bin Hammam, who at the time was head of soccer in Asia. Blatter and Platini both said that the money was a belated payment related to work that Platini, the captain of France’s 1984 European Championship-winning team, had done for Blatter after he was elected FIFA president for the first time, in 1998.Michel Platini outside court before the verdict. He said the ruling came “after seven years of lies and manipulation.”Arnd Wiegmann/ReutersDuring the trial, Blatter told the court that the money was part of a “gentlemen’s agreement” that he had made with Platini, who had agreed to advise him in return for about $1 million a year. The payment of the money would come “later,” Blatter said of their agreement.“When Mr. Blatter asked me to be his adviser, he asked me what salary I wanted,” Platini later testified. “I was surprised that he asked me this question and I said to him, ‘I want a million.’”Blatter, 86, and Platini, 67, had faced as much as five years in prison if convicted.Both men were eventually barred from the game by FIFA’s disciplinary system, though their original bans were later reduced on appeal. Those were to have expired in October, but a new suspension, imposed on Blatter on different grounds, took effect when it ended, meaning that he will be barred from the game until 2028, when he will be 92.After the verdict, Platini said that justice had been done “after seven years of lies and manipulation.”He has previously taken aim at the current FIFA management led by his former deputy, Gianni Infantino. Infantino vaulted from a place-holder candidate for FIFA’s presidency to its leader when Platini first faced accusations in 2015 and after Blatter resigned in the wake of the Justice Department investigation and arrests.Platini suggested that he would continue fighting to clear his name; he filed a criminal complaint against Infantino in April. “In this case, there are culprits who did not appear during this trial,” he said. “Let them count on me, we will meet again. Because I will not give up and I will go all the way in my quest for truth.”Blatter may be headed back to court, too. He faces the potential of another trial after the Swiss authorities informed him in June 2020 that he had been labeled an “accused person” in case involving the suspected misuse of funds after loaning $1 million to a soccer official in the Caribbean.That official, Jack Warner, has been fighting extradition to the United States after being named in the Justice Department’s indictment. More

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    Is Euro 2022 the Payoff for England’s Women’s Soccer Play?

    At least a half-dozen nations will arrive at this summer’s European Championship thinking they can lift the trophy. But the pressure to win might be the highest on the host nation.BURTON-ON-TRENT, England — It was only 13 years ago, England defender Lucy Bronze figures as she scrolls through her memories, when she needed to pack bags in a supermarket to earn the money she needed for her bus fare to Derby, where she and her Sunderland teammates were to play in the Women’s F.A. Cup Final. It was only a couple of years after that when she was still juggling her nascent career at Everton with a job at Domino’s Pizza.Fast forward to 2022. The rapid rise of women’s soccer in England, and in much of western Europe, is such that Bronze and nearly every other top professional waved goodbye to those kinds of side jobs long ago. Today, Bronze is widely recognized as one of the best women’s players in the world: a three-time Champions League winner, Barcelona’s star summer signing and a key member of an England team that harbors ambitions of winning this month’s European Women’s Championship.“Here we are, in 2022, and players get like helicopters to do appearances,” Bronze, 30, said after an England training session in June. “Do you know what I mean? It’s gone so far, so quickly, and I don’t think anyone could have forecast how huge it was going to be.”England’s Beth Mead and Lauren Hemp during a recent rout of the Netherlands in a friendly.Molly Darlington/Action Images Via ReutersThe do-you-know-what-I-mean moments come quickly in women’s soccer these days. Record-setting attendances. Landmark television agreements. Equal-pay milestones. In 2022, a supermarket chain is far more likely to sponsor an England player than to employ one.That makes the start of this summer’s Women’s Euros, a three-and-a-half-week tournament that opens with the host England’s match against Austria on Wednesday night, another pivotal moment for the game experiencing a surge in both interest and investment.At least a half-dozen nations will arrive in England’s stadiums thinking they can lift the trophy after the final on July 31. But the pressure to do so might be the highest on the host nation, which continues to pump millions of dollars into the sport but has yet to win a major women’s trophy.Old Trafford, the home of Manchester United, will host England’s opening match against Austria on Wednesday. The game is sold out.Carl Recine/Action Images Via ReutersThe stakes for England are high: It will roll into the tournament fresh off lopsided victories over three other tournament participants — Belgium (3-0), the Netherlands (5-1) and Switzerland (4-0) — and eager to build on a semifinal run at the last World Cup, with the next one now just a year away. The Lionesses, as England’s team is known, have not lost a match since Sarina Wiegman took over as their coach in September.That means there is no hiding from the expectations. The faces of England players now adorn billboards in shopping centers and packaging on store shelves. The BBC will air every one of the tournament’s games on its channels or (for a few simultaneous kickoffs) its streaming platform. And England’s three group-stage matches are already sold out.More than 500,000 tickets to the tournament have been sold, guaranteeing the tournament’s attendance will more than double that of its last iteration, in 2017 in the Netherlands. The bulk of those who turn out to cheer England will be expecting the host nation to set a new standard.That could be why Wiegman has made an effort to moderate expectations — “I think there are many favorites for this tournament,” she said recently. “We are one of them.” — even as England’s soccer federation as leaned in on “the pride, the responsibility and the privilege” of the team’s cause.Still, her players know the game’s sudden growth, as well as the chance to play a major tournament on home soil, has placed them in a pivotal moment.“I didn’t really have a female role model growing up in terms of football, so I think it’s massive for that,” England midfielder Keira Walsh, 25, who plays for Manchester City, said of having the Euros on home soil. “But not just for young girls — I think for young boys, they can see the women playing in the big stadiums with sellout crowds at a home tournament. I think it’s only going to grow respect for the game in that way as well.”The tournament comes during an exciting time for women’s soccer in Europe. Its 16-team lineup features some of the world’s most talented squads, including Sweden, currently ranked second in the world; the Netherlands, a World Cup finalist three years ago; Germany, an eight-time European champion; and Spain, which boasts a talented team but, now, not Alexia Putellas, the reigning world player of the year, who tore a knee ligament in training on Tuesday). Norway is bolstered by the return of Ada Hegerberg, and France by the core of that country’s dominant club teams, Olympique Lyonnais and Paris St.-Germain.It is England, though, that may face the highest expectations to deliver.Historic investments by the country’s biggest clubs in the Women’s Super League, England’s top domestic competition, have attracted some of the world’s best players, produced new revenue streams and lifted the standard of play for a new generation of England stars. All but one member of England’s 23-player Euro squad played in the W.S.L. last season, including the veterans Bronze and Ellen White and rising talents such as Walsh and Lauren Hemp.”I don’t think anyone could have forecast how huge it was going to be,” England defender Lucy Bronze said of the growth of the women’s game in Europe.Molly Darlington/Action Images Via Reuters“We’ve seen, over the years, how much the women’s game has grown,” said Hemp, 21, who this year was honored as England’s best young women’s player for a record fourth time. “I think having this home tournament is only going to help it grow even more.”For all the gains, though, players, even the best ones, know there is still a long way to go. The investments in the W.S.L. remain a fraction of the money poured into the men’s game in Europe, and the salaries, television deals and prize money — while significantly improved — still qualify as a rounding error when compared with the men’s paydays.UEFA, the governing body for European soccer, has faced criticism over its choices of stadiums in the group stages, with Iceland’s Sara Björk Gunnarsdottir branding the use of Manchester City’s Academy Stadium, with a tournament capacity of 4,700, as “disrespectful.” And a survey of 2,000 male soccer fans in Britain published earlier this year found that two-thirds had “openly misogynistic attitudes” toward women’s sports, irrespective of age.Still, for veterans like Bronze, the tournament shows how far the women’s game has come and presents an opportunity to raise its profile even more. The new crop of young players she sees at training every day, she said, exhibit a fearlessness that she didn’t have at their age and symbolize a future — for themselves and for England — that could be even brighter.“I look at some of the players now, who maybe haven’t been to a tournament, and I think, ‘Oh, God, when I was you, I was panicking a bit more,’” Bronze said. “But they all seem a little bit more calm.” More