Raphael Stevens

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    A Day of World Cup Drama Goes Down to the Last Kick

    In Algeria, a berth in Qatar changed hands in an instant. In Senegal, a shootout settled another long night. And in Portugal, Cristiano Ronaldo set up one final hurrah.Algeria’s players were strewn on the turf, their faces covered, their chests heaving. Their coach, Djamel Belmadi, seemed frozen by shock. Tears streamed from his eyes. The moment they had been waiting for, the goal that would send them to the World Cup, took 118 minutes to arrive. They had their last-minute winner. And then, in an instant, so did Cameroon.Across three continents, it was that kind of evening: one of frayed nerves and quickened pulses, of fine margins and small details, of exquisite suffering and perfect joy. Nowhere was that encapsulated better than in Blida, a city a little south of Algiers, where Algeria and Cameroon took turns breaking each other’s hearts.The Qatar World Cup has been 12 years, dozens of arrests and one F.B.I. investigation in the making. Its qualification process has been one of interruptions and complications and delays, the result first of the coronavirus pandemic and then of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Even now, scarcely eight months out from the tournament’s opening match, the field is not yet complete, not fully.Tuesday, though, was the day when much of what was left took shape. In the space of six hours, there were seven slots to be filled in Europe and Africa, each of them decided in the straight shootout of a head-to-head playoff. For 14 countries — and a few more in South America battling for the last hope of an intercontinental playoff spot — this was the culmination of the past two years and more. This was the moment of no return.A couple nations, in the end, made it through relatively comfortably. Morocco swept past the Democratic Republic of Congo. Poland — handed a bye to the final playoff round after refusing to play Russia — stirred itself to see off Sweden.Portugal toiled for a while against North Macedonia, but seized on the first opportunity it was granted: a single loose pass, punished ruthlessly by Bruno Fernandes, seemed to sap the strength of the team that had conquered Italy only a few days ago. Fernandes scored again, in the second half, as Portuguese flags fluttered serenely around him, Cristiano Ronaldo safely delivered to his fifth World Cup.Bruno Fernandes scored the goals that sent Cristiano Ronaldo, left, and Portugal to the World Cup.Jose Coelho/EPA, via ShutterstockFor the rest, though, there was nothing but tension and anxiety and dread. Ghana edged Nigeria thanks to a goalkeeping slip and the fact that Africa, for now, remains wedded to the away-goals rule. Tunisia held on for a goal-less draw against Mali, its slender victory in the first leg last week enough to end Mali’s dream of qualifying for its first World Cup.In Senegal, the pressure seemed to be at its most suffocating. Africa’s qualification process is uniquely cruel: a long, winding series of group stages followed by a set of winner-take-all playoffs, drawn at random, without anything as manipulative as a seeding system.A Guide to the 2022 World CupThe 32-team tournament kicks off in Qatar on Nov. 21.F.A.Q.: When will the games take place? Who are the favorites? Will Lionel Messi be there? Our primer answers your questions.The Matchups: The group assignments are set. Here’s a breakdown of the draw and a look at how each country qualified.U.S. Returns: Five years after a calamitous night cost the U.S. a World Cup bid, a new generation claimed a berth in the 2022 tournament.The Host: After a decade of scrutiny and criticism, there is a sense that Qatar will at last get the payoff it always expected for hosting the World Cup.That allowed Senegal and Egypt, then, to face each other: the two teams who are, arguably, the continent’s strongest — they contested the final of the Africa Cup of Nations in February, after all — and which, most likely, are home to its two finest players: Sadio Mané and his club teammate turned international opponent, Mohamed Salah.Egypt had won the first leg, narrowly, but saw its lead wiped out within a few minutes of the start of the second. From that point on, the Egyptians almost seemed to be playing for penalties, as if driven by a desire to exact the most fitting revenge for the way they lost that Cup of Nations final.The luck of the draw, or lack of it, meant that at least one Liverpool star, Mohamed Salah or Sadio Mané, would miss the World Cup.Stefan Kleinowitz/Associated PressWhat few opportunities there were fell to Senegal; all of them were wasted. The home fans did what they could to tilt the balance, directing a fusillade of laser pointers onto each and every Egyptian player, but it made no difference. The clock ticked inexorably on, the game locked in a stalemate.When penalty kicks arrived, they underlined how exacting the stress had become. Kalidou Koulibaly, the Senegal captain, hit the crossbar with his attempt. For the first time all evening, Senegal’s new national stadium fell silent. Salah — denied the chance to take one in February — stepped up for Egypt, a sure thing, only to blaze his shot over the bar. He turned away, tearing at his jersey.Senegal had a reprieve, and immediately blew it: Mohamed El Shenawy, the Egypt goalkeeper, saving a shot from Saliou Ciss. No matter: Zizo, Egypt’s second selection, confidently sent his effort wide.Senegal did not prove so forgiving a second time around. Ismaila Sarr and Bamba Dieng scored, meaning that everything hung, once more, on Mané. He had scored the decisive penalty in the Cup of Nations final; he knew, now, that if he did so again, Senegal would go to the World Cup.A moment later, he was tearing off to the side of the field, smoke billowing around him, fans trying to push past security onto the field. Once again, Mané had delivered the coup de grâce.But while that was the heavyweight clash, it was in Algeria that the denouement was most frenzied. Cameroon had canceled out Algeria’s lead from the first leg, forcing the game to extra time, withstanding anything and everything its host could muster.Thanks largely to the determination of its goalkeeper, Andre Onana, it seemed to have done enough to force penalties, only for Ahmed Touba to break its resistance in the 119th minute. Algeria had its late winner. Now, at the last, it stood on the brink. It needed only to hold out for a couple of minutes to make it to Qatar.It could not. Cameroon launched one final free kick into the penalty area, and Karl Toko Ekambi, the Lyon striker, forced the ball home. There were 124 minutes on the clock. It was, effectively, the last kick of the game, the last kick of the last two years.Algeria’s players sank to the grass, disbelieving, disconsolate. Everything they had worked for, everything they thought they had achieved, had disappeared in a flash. They had arrived at the end, and there had still been more. It had, across three continents, been that type of evening.Algeria’s coach, Djamel Belmadi, was inconsolable after his team’s loss to Cameroon.Ryad Kramdi/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images More

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    Messi, Ronaldo and Soccer’s Golden Sunset

    This year’s World Cup will be the last for some household names, meaning soccer will go into the tournament with one elite and emerge with quite another.In the heady, innocent days of 2016 — before all of the largely dreadful things that have happened since had happened — Nick Serpell was given what was, by the standards of the time, a faintly morbid task.As naïve as it seems in hindsight, a theory had taken hold on social media — the place where all theories take hold — that the year was cursed. It had started, it seemed, with the death of David Bowie, and it did not stop. Alan Rickman died. Zaha Hadid died. Harper Lee died, and Leonard Cohen, and Johan Cruyff, and Muhammad Ali, and Prince.Serpell’s job was to find out whether this really was unusual, or whether it was simply the effect of the public nature of grief in the social media age. As the BBC’s obituaries editor, he searched through the number of prepared obituaries that the broadcaster had published in the first three months of that year — the kind that all news organizations, including The Times, keep on file for a host of well-known figures — and then compared the total to the previous few winters.There had, he found, been a considerable leap: From January to March 2012, for example, only five people deemed worthy of a prewritten obituary had died. It had been eight in 2013, 11 in 2014 and 12 the following year. By 2016, though, that number had skyrocketed: In the first three months alone, Serpell found, the BBC had run 24 ready-made tributes.Serpell, though, remained unconvinced there was a curse; the explanation seemed to him to be far more prosaic. The apparent rise, he divined, was down to the fact that the world was now more than half a century on from the first great flowering of a shared popular culture — with the dawn of television, the growth of pop music and the global reach of Hollywood.Though some of those who had died in early 2016 were distressingly young, many more had been in their 70s and 80s, the products of that blossoming of mass popularity. It was not that a greater proportion of prominent people were dying; it was that there was, 50 years or so after technology made some form of worldwide celebrity more attainable, a much deeper pool of prominent people who might die.That phenomenon has an echo this year in a very different — and thankfully much less mournful — context. The 2022 World Cup will act as a profound watershed for soccer; it will, in a distinct, almost tangible way, mark the ending of one era and the start of another, a generational shift played out live on television.Dani Alves will be 39 when the World Cup opens in November. Brazil is going, but is he?Carl De Souza/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThat it will, almost certainly, provide the conclusion to the international careers of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo — assuming Portugal makes it past North Macedonia in its playoff final on Tuesday — has long been assumed. Their starlight is so bright, though, that it has served to obscure all of the other farewells that will come on the kafala-built fields of Qatar.This World Cup will extinguish the light of a whole galaxy. It will, most likely, be the final time Luka Modric, Thiago Silva, Daniel Alves, Manuel Neuer, Thomas Müller, Jordi Alba, Ángel Di María, Luis Suárez, Edinson Cavani, Eden Hazard and Antoine Griezmann will grace the grandest stage sports has to offer. Robert Lewandowski, Gareth Bale, Arturo Vidal, Alexis Sánchez and James Rodríguez may yet join them, another clutch of superstars on a valedictory tour.World Cups, of course, have always had that purpose. Just as they are the forge of greatness, they act, too, as the place it takes its bow. It is not especially unusual that players — as Silva and Alves, in particular, have — should continue their careers to ensure one more shot at the greatest prize of all. The 2006 World Cup final was Zinedine Zidane’s last ride, after all.In that light, this World Cup is no different from any other. And yet the sheer numbers suggest something different; they give the impression that soccer will go into the tournament with one elite and emerge from it with quite another. That is not because there is a greater proportion of famous players at the end of their career than normal. It is because there are more famous players, full stop.It is likely that the last 15 years will come to be seen almost exclusively through the lens of Messi and Ronaldo. They have, after all, dominated this era of soccer, and so it is fitting, in many ways, that they should come to define it.Such an interpretation, though, would be reductive. It is better thought of, instead, as soccer’s first truly global age: an era in which fans across the world could watch almost every second of a player’s career, in which the great and the good encountered one another with unprecedented frequency in the Champions League and came into our homes through video games, a time when rare talent clustered together at a handful of superclubs.The generation that will exit the stage in Qatar is the last bastion of the first generation of players who started and ended their journeys in that ecosystem; they are the equivalent of that bloom of mass, shared popular culture that germinated in the 1960s. Lewandowski is far more familiar, far more famous than Gerd Müller, his predecessor at Bayern Munich, ever was. More people will notice when Suárez retires from Uruguay than concerned themselves with Enzo Francescoli’s departure.Luis Suárez collected souvenirs after Uruguay sealed its World Cup place.Pool photo by Matilde CampodonicoEdinson Cavani, like Suárez, will be heading to his fourth World Cup.Pool photo by Raul Martinez That they have been so prominent for so long has as much to do with the scientific and medical advances available as it is their ability. There was a reason, a couple of weeks ago, that the two standout midfield displays in the Champions League, all indefatigable energy and irrepressible dynamism, came from Modric, 36, and Vidal, 34. That level of performance, in that rarefied company, would not have been possible even 20 years ago; it has served to prolong their careers and, in doing so, expand their legacies.Qatar, for many of them, will be their last stand. It will lend the tournament a faint air of sorrow. A whole generation, one that we have watched from the start, one that we have come to know like none before, one that has become part of the fabric of the game, will depart, all at once, and we will, at last, have to say goodbye.That Horse Bolted. Quick, Lock the Door.UEFA’s president, Aleksander Ceferin, relented on his efforts to impose a U.S.-style salary cap on European clubs.Vasily Fedosenko/ReutersFinancial Fair Play — no, no, stay with me — was, like deep-dish pizza or the “Sex and the City” reboot, absolutely fine in theory. In the middle of the first decade of this century, it was abundantly clear that European soccer needed to find a way to make its teams less vulnerable to the caprice of reckless owners, to prevent them taking on colossal, unmanageable debts.The problem was with the application. The idea was twisted and contorted by the game’s elite clubs — aided and abetted by pliant governing bodies — until a set of rules that had been intended to promote sustainability became a method to entrench the status quo. Not that it mattered, really, because the punishments for failing to abide by them were pretty quickly proven to be toothless anyway.It is hard to see the system’s successor — the snappily titled financial sustainability regulations — being any more effective. The new guidelines, the product of a decade of squabbling and a year of negotiation, will have little or no impact on the way any of the major teams operate. The regulations’ impact, as before, will be to shut the stable door long after the horse is roaming free in the paddock, eating all of the best grass.By now, it is abundantly clear that the way to manage the central problem in European soccer — the lack of competition engendered by financial imbalance — does not lie in a set of fiscal rules. They are too easily circumvented, too lightly enforced and invariably introduced several years too late.Instead, the solution has to be sporting. The biggest teams will always make the most money — or at least say they make the most money — and will therefore have an advantage when spending is limited to a percentage of income. The more effective way to improve competition, both between clubs and between leagues, is to limit how they can spend it.A hard salary cap, the sort often seen in North American sports, is clearly not something the clubs are prepared to accept. But there is nothing at all to stop UEFA from instituting policies that demand all teams have a significant proportion of homegrown players, or a certain number of squad members under age 23. There is no reason it cannot cap the number of players any team can send out on loan, or even introduce rules that grant effective free agency to players who have not made a specific number of appearances.Any and all of those measures would discourage the hoarding of stars by a handful of teams. In turn, they would allow that talent to be spread more evenly around Europe’s various leagues. They would encourage teams to be more judicious in the market, to think more long-term. They would help to level the playing field not by suppressing some, but by lifting others.Passing on the PainArsenal’s Bukayo Saka complained about rough treatment at the hands of Aston Villa. Nick Potts/Press Association, via Associated PressThe strange thing is that Steven Gerrard knows, better than most, quite how devastating injury can be. By his own estimation, during his career he endured somewhere in the region of 16 operations. He has screws in his hips. He struggles these days to go to the gym.He is aware, too, that the impact is more than physical. A decade or so ago, after missing six months of Liverpool’s season with a groin problem, he admitted that he had been “as low as I have ever been.” He called it the “hardest period of his career.” He felt, at times, as if his “body had given in.”Injury, of course, is unavoidable. Many of the issues Gerrard faced can be attributed to wear and tear, the body buckling under the strain placed on it by any elite athlete. That is, after all, the most common source of injury: not a reckless tackle or a dangerous challenge, but the almost humdrum popping of tightly wound hamstrings or the tearing of overworked ligaments. Gerrard, now the Aston Villa manager, was right to say last weekend that pain is “part of the game.”That does not justify his conclusion, though. The Arsenal winger Bukayo Saka had complained after his team’s 1-0 win against Gerrard’s Villa that his opponents had been “purposefully” targeting him for rough treatment. Gerrard’s response was blunt. Saka, he said, had to “learn, and learn quick” that “it’s not a no-contact sport; tackling is allowed, physicality is allowed.”In part, that can be attributed to ordinary managerial hypocrisy — this was the same Gerrard, after all, who has previously complained that his teams do not “get enough protection” from referees — but it is also, in some way, the passing on of a generational trauma.Just because Gerrard and his peers were exposed to (and occasionally contributed to) a level of brutality that was entirely unnecessary does not mean their successors should have to do the same. Just because injury is part of sports does not mean we should not do all we can to minimize its effects. Players endure enough pain as it is. The game should be seeking to ensure they do not have to go through more than is necessary.CorrespondenceTwo fairly hefty questions dominated this week’s inbox. First, Ian Greig wondered what might happen to the “luxury end” of soccer when “the oligarchs, princes, petty dictators and willing killers of the world come to realize that sports-washing does not work? Who in Newcastle had ever thought about the rate of execution in Saudi Arabia before last weekend?”“When was the last time everyone in Paris had bad thoughts about a Gulf government?” he asked. “I’m willing to bet that there is more than one Qatari prince who understands that the attention brought to their country by the World Cup has not been flattering.”There are, I think, two sides to this. In one sense, I suspect Ian is quite right: I don’t think at least some of these regimes — particularly in Qatar — fully realized the scrutiny that would come with their co-opting of the world’s most popular game. My instinct is that Qatari officials didn’t really expect a decade-long discussion of the kafala system when they set their sights on the World Cup.Qatar: Ready for its close-up?Noushad Thekkayil/EPA, via ShutterstockThe other, sadly, is less positive. Sports-washing most definitely does work, because national branding and reputation laundering are only the most superficial aim of the project. It is as much about enmeshing yourself — or your nation — into both the Western consciousness and the Western financial system as slapping “Dubai 2020 Expo” on some advertising boards.Manchester City is a prime example: Abu Dhabi has won plaudits for regenerating part of the city, yes, but much more important is that the club has become a way for the state to establish links with a whole variety of businesses, from tire companies to hedge funds. If you want a relationship with Abu Dhabi, then Manchester City serves as a convenient front door. And in that, it has been hugely successful.The second, even more challenging query comes from Dan Ross. “The real question isn’t, ‘Who is too evil to own a soccer team?’” he wrote, “but ‘Who gets to decide?’” After all, as he noted, “scoundrels can fly any flag.”“The only acceptable answer is that the world decides as a whole,” he concluded. “When a country becomes a pariah by global consensus (notwithstanding a few holdouts), its ruling class should not be allowed to participate in the global economy and culture — or sport.”This does, indeed, appear to be where we have landed, and I’m inclined to agree that there is no truly elegant solution at hand. That is not to say that more could not be done, though: It seems fairly straightforward to me that no nation state — or investment arm of a sovereign wealth fund — should be allowed to own a club, for one. That would apply just as much to Norway as it does to Saudi Arabia.Of course, plenty of people would be willing to find a way around that, and some would doubtless find a way through. But all that means is that it is incumbent on leagues, clubs and federations to make sure they are at least asking the right questions of prospective purchasers. That should not be too much to ask. More

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    U.S. Ties Mexico, Extending World Cup Wait

    Fine margins are the hallmark of World Cup qualifying. For the Americans, their rivals and a handful of other teams around the world, Thursday was no different.MEXICO CITY — As the final whistle blared late on Thursday night, Jordan Pefok fell to the grass and covered his face with his hands.Pefok, a striker for the United States men’s soccer team, was tired, to be sure. He and his teammates had just battled Mexico to a 0-0 draw at Estádio Azteca, a commendable result at an altitude that can leave even elite athletes gasping for air.But, more than that, Pefok seemed crestfallen. About 20 minutes earlier he had missed a sterling chance from point-blank range, shanking a shot so wide of an open goal that everyone in the stadium, fans of both sides, gasped in surprise.What made the blunder even harder to believe was that Christian Pulisic, in the first half, had missed a surefire opportunity of his own from an eerily similar spot, whipping his close range shot straight at Mexico’s goalkeeper, even as the whole of the net gaped before him.Either chance could have provided the winning difference in the American’s crucial, third-to-last World Cup qualifying match. How much will the miscues be rued? It will take a few more days to know for sure.But in this way, the night — at the stadium in the Mexican capitol and inside others around the world where simultaneous contests were being played on Thursday — provided more reminders of the fine margins, hidden pitfalls and cosmic plot twists that regularly conspire to make World Cup qualifying cycles so entertaining and so maddening.North Macedonia won at Italy on Thursday to keep its World Cup dream alive. The Italians? They’re out for the second straight World Cup.Carmelo Imbesi/EPA, via ShutterstockItaly produced dozens of chances in its playoff against North Macedonia, but the reigning European champions will miss the World Cup after they failed to score and their guests found a way. Sweden, likewise, is still alive after finding an extra-time winner against the Czech Republic, and Ecuador clinched its place in Qatar despite losing, 3-1 at Paraguay.Uruguay is going to the World Cup after winning at home, but Canada lost and will have to wait at least a few days. The same is now true of Mexico and the United States, too; like Canada’s team, they are close enough to touch a World Cup berth, but also aware it can still slip away.“I’m disappointed I missed a chance, and I would have loved to have won the game,” Pulisic said after his team’s draw at Mexico. “But this is the situation we’re in now, and we’re happy with it.”Luck of course has a way of evening out, and in other ways, the United States was fortunate on Thursday.All week long the players had been asked how they would manage their nerves in the hair-raising atmosphere of the Azteca, where rowdy, capacity crowds can induce claustrophobia in visiting teams. But the stadium they entered Thursday was oddly tame.Capacity in the building was drastically reduced — to 50,000 from 87,000 — as part of an ongoing effort from the Mexican federation to curb persistent offensive chanting from the home team’s fans. The traveling American fans, cloistered as a group in a corner of the upper deck, at times made more noise than their far more numerous counterparts.It was the Americans’ third consecutive draw in World Cup qualifying at the Azteca, a quietly surprising statistic that perhaps paints a picture of a team finding itself increasingly comfortable in its chief rival’s home.Just like the U.S., Hirving Lozano and Mexico were left lamenting missed chances to score.Eduardo Verdugo/Associated PressAlso working in the United States’ favor was an unexpected result in one of the other games: Panama, which began the day in fourth place, managed only a tie at home against Honduras, a team languishing in last place with little left to play for.The Americans will meet Panama in their next match, on Sunday in Orlando, Fla., and Thursday’s scores now mean a win there would put the Americans in a strong position to earn one of the three automatic qualification spots in the region. They close their World Cup qualifying campaign on Wednesday on the road against Costa Rica, which also notched a surprising result, a 1-0 win over first-place Canada, to leapfrog Panama into fourth.“I’m looking forward to getting home and having a good performance,” United States Coach Gregg Berhalter said.Berhalter’s biggest challenge for that game could be managing personnel in his somewhat depleted traveling party. The team was already short-handed by injuries, entering the three-game window missing four important players: right back Sergiño Dest, midfielders Weston McKennie and Brenden Aaronson, and goalkeeper Matt Turner.Then, before the game, the team ruled out defender Reggie Cannon, who tested positive for the coronavirus, and during it another two starters, Timothy Weah and DeAndre Yedlin, picked up yellow cards that ruled them out of the contest on Sunday night. To fill the sudden gaps, Shaq Moore, a defender who plays in Spain’s second division, was quickly called in. He will meet the team in Orlando ahead of Sunday’s game, and more than likely be in the starting lineup when it kicks off.For the available players, the Panama game could represent a punishing turnaround. Many of them, particularly those in the starting lineup against Mexico, were visibly laboring by the end of the match.Afterward, Berhalter praised his players for expending every ounce of energy and in the same breath played down the potential physical consequences for doing so.“We’ll recover,” he said. “There’s plenty of time to recover.”One factor helping the team’s cause will be the re-emergence of attacking midfielder Gio Reyna, who came on as a second-half substitute. The game marked Reyna’s first appearance for the team since September, when he sustained a leg injury that would keep him sidelined for months.Reyna was the player who had supplied the potential assist to Pefok, cushioning the ball cleverly out of midair onto his teammate’s foot, before it was squandered. Reyna became visibly agitated after the miss, holding out his hands in disbelief, staring at Pefok for several seconds after the ball had trickled out of bounds.The gesture may have come across as unseemly, but Reyna moments later delighted the crowd with a dizzying dribbling run, a meandering high-speed journey from back near the American penalty area almost all the way to the Mexican goal during which he beat a half dozen opposing players, some of them multiple times.Berhalter compared the run to the famous solo goal Argentina’s Diego Maradona had scored at the Azteca at the 1986 World Cup.“I had visions of that while Gio was dribbling,” Berhalter said. “Unfortunately he didn’t have an opportunity to finish it off.”In World Cup qualifying, after all, there is often a razor thin line between glory and disappointment. The Americans will hope, in the coming days, they land on the right side of it. More

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    U.S. Faces Mexico With Simple Goal: ‘We Just Have to Qualify’

    The bitter sting of a missed World Cup shadows a young team nearing the end of its qualifying road. Three games will decide its fate.MEXICO CITY — There is a tendency among professional athletes and coaches, when faced with the hype of high-stakes competition, to undersell the sense of occasion.A big game, they might say, is in fact just another game. Looking ahead at a stretch of daunting contests is futile; better to go one day at a time.But when the United States men’s soccer team gathered this week in preparation for its final three qualification games for the 2022 World Cup, Coach Gregg Berhalter was uncharacteristically blunt with his staff.“This is probably the biggest week of our lives as professional coaches,” Berhalter said he told them. “That’s just honest.”On Thursday in Mexico City, Berhalter and his team embarked on a set of matches — three of them, in three countries — that will determine if they will return to the World Cup for the first time since 2014. It is unlikely the fate of either the United States or Mexico will be decided on Thursday night; results in other games could change the math, injuries and absences have complicated both teams’ plans, and two more matches remain after Thursday, offering either confirmation or a last-ditch lifeline.A place in the world’s biggest sporting event is typically motivation enough. But Berhalter and his players have been burdened with the task of redeeming the failures of their predecessors, of smudging away the memories of 2017, when the team squandered a ticket to the 2018 World Cup in stunning fashion.The current group, the great majority of whom played no role in the failure of five years ago, began the day in second place in their regional qualifying group — a strong position, given that the top three teams earn an automatic spot in the tournament and the fourth-place team gets a chance to make it through a play-in game. But the disaster of Couva, Trinidad, in 2017 means the United States long ago surrendered the privilege of tranquil optimism.After their game against Mexico on Thursday, the Americans will play Panama in Orlando, Fla., on Sunday before traveling to Costa Rica for their final qualifier on Wednesday night.“We just have to qualify — there’s just no other option,” midfielder Tyler Adams said. “I think that when you’re in big games, important games, you always have to remember what motivates you and what you’re doing it for. And for us, we’re doing it for all the U.S. fans. We don’t want to let down our nation.”Christian Pulisic, right, is one of the few holdovers from the U.S. team that missed the last World Cup. “We definitely don’t want to go through that again.”Alfredo Estrella/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAll week the American players have repeated the word “responsibility,” the understanding that their fortunes in these games will ripple far outside their group, and well into the future.That remains one of the curious aspects of national soccer teams: their reputations, their standards, their expectations, how people perceive them to play, how people evaluate their characters — these things get passed through generations, even as players and coaches and other personnel change.The same could be said for their traumas. In 2017, the Americans went to Trinidad knowing that a win or a draw would guarantee them a ticket to the World Cup. Instead they lost, and a series of unlikely results in simultaneous matches on the final day left them on the outside looking in for the first time in a generation. The American players finished the night slumped on the field, some of them with tears in their eyes. A few, like the star Christian Pulisic, did not speak publicly about their disappointment for months.Time moves slowly in international soccer. The images and sensations of that night — the heartbreak and disgust and nausea — continue to stalk the program. Adams talked this week about watching that match on his couch at home. He said he spent the ensuing years wondering if he might have sneaked onto the World Cup roster if the team had qualified for Russia.“Hopefully we have all learned from the past that we need to be better,” said midfielder Paul Arriola, one of the few current players who was part of the last qualifying campaign.As the last stage of that effort began Thursday at the Estadio Azteca in Mexico City, the United States and Mexico found themselves in the unusual, uncomfortable position of looking above in the standings and seeing someone else — Canada — in the top spot they have long claimed as their own.Goalkeeper Sean Johnson during a training session at Mexico City’s Azteca Stadium on Wednesday.Eduardo Verdugo/Associated PressMexico is ranked 12th in the world by FIFA. The United States is 13th. Canada is 33rd. But Canada — which was unbeaten against the U.S. and Mexico in qualifying (2-0-2) — has looked to be the most assured, the most dangerous team in the region over these past months, while the two traditional powers have struggled more openly with the highs and lows of the grueling, monthslong competition.The Americans started the process last September with youthful bravado. Never mind that the majority of them had never experienced the stress and strain of World Cup qualifying matches in this region. Midfielder Weston McKennie declared the team would look to “dominate” the tournament. Adams trumpeted their lofty target: “Nine-point week, bottom line,” he said heading in to the team’s first three-game window.Those things did not happen. The team’s first two games were duds, and they finished the first window with five points instead of nine — no reason to panic, but a cold reminder of the challenge that lay ahead. Since then, it has been a learn-on-the-fly process of melding the team’s many raw talents into a coherent group.Berhalter, who has openly marveled at the difficulty of managing such a young team in such a tough circumstance, has gone through a learning process of his own.“When you’re at a club, it’s a building type of thing,” said Berhalter, who coached for almost a decade at the club level before being hired by U.S. Soccer in 2018. “When you’re at a national team, I think it’s a winning type of thing. My mind-set had to change to be much more about winning every game. That’s what we want. That’s obviously what the public wants. Winning also means qualifying.”The urgency of that task was felt most acutely by the people who were on the field four years ago. Pulisic, for instance, was one of the players with tears on his face after the loss in Trinidad.“I’ve been looking forward to it for years now,” he said about washing away the bad taste of that experience. “Of course we use it as motivation. We were extremely upset. And now we want to qualify. We have the opportunity now. We definitely don’t want to go through that again.” More

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    Crunch Time for the U.S. Men’s National Team

    Crunch Time for the U.S. Men’s National TeamAndrew KehReporting from Mexico City ⚽️The team remembers what happened four and a half years ago. The idea that the United States could miss the 2018 World Cup seemed absurd — until a wild turn of events on the final day of qualifying in its region.Honduras upset Mexico. Panama upset Costa Rica. And the Americans, shockingly, were upset by Trinidad and Tobago, meaning they would sit out their first World Cup since 1986. More

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    World Cup Hangs in Balance for U.S., Mexico and Cristiano Ronaldo

    A week of high-stakes games will fill out the field for the winter’s World Cup. Not everyone gets to go.This is the week of final chances. The World Cup in Qatar is not quite eight months away, and more than half of the 32 places at the tournament have been taken. That number will increase over the course of the next seven days, as teams from Tunisia to Tahiti compete to join the 15 countries who have already qualified.By the time the draw for the group stage of the finals takes place in Doha on April 1, the picture will still not be complete. Delays to qualifying caused by the pandemic, as well as the compassionate break given to Ukraine after the Russian invasion, mean that the field will only be filled once the last phase of European qualifying, and the two intercontinental playoffs, are completed in June.But for the vast majority of teams, this is the week that will make or break their hopes, that will determine whether the stresses and strains of the last two years have been worthwhile.Canada stands on the verge of ending a 36-year wait to return to the tournament. The Democratic Republic of Congo is 180 minutes away from qualifying for the first time since 1974. And at least one major power, Portugal or Italy, faces the ignominy of missing out. Here’s what is at stake around the world.EuropeCristiano Ronaldo and Portugal will face Turkey on Thursday.Patricia De Melo Moreira/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAll but three of Europe’s places in Qatar have already been filled, and the vast majority of the continent’s teams likely to be in consideration to win the World Cup — the reigning champion, France, as well as Spain, Germany, Belgium and England — have long since known that they would be in the field.The exceptions are Portugal and Italy, both of whom failed to win their groups and must, therefore, endure two anxiety-inducing playoffs to join the party. Italy takes on North Macedonia and Portugal meets Turkey this week. Should both get through those games, they will play each other for a spot in Qatar, in a game that could be Cristiano Ronaldo’s final international engagement.The other two European playoff groups have been unaffected by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Russia’s (belated) ban from global sport means Poland will face either Sweden or the Czech Republic in its playoff on Tuesday; all three had refused to play Russia if FIFA and UEFA did not act.Ukraine’s game with Scotland, meanwhile, has been pushed back until June, meaning Europe’s final qualifier will not be known until the summer. The winner of that game will meet either Wales or Austria.North AmericaCanada can qualify for its first World Cup since 1986 by beating Costa Rica on Thursday.Kamil Krzaczynski/Associated PressThe specter of 2017 is starting to loom large once more for the United States, with the Estadio Nacional in San José standing in for the Ato Boldon Stadium in Couva, Trinidad, and Costa Rica playing the role of Trinidad and Tobago. Gregg Berhalter’s team will have to confront the ghosts of a previous generation if it is to vanquish them.If that seems a little exaggerated — given that the U.S. sits in second place, needing to win only two of its three games to qualify for the World Cup — it is because it is easy to see Berhalter and his young squad having to wait until the very last minute next week to be sure of qualification.The same is not true of Canada, which needs only one win to be sure of a first return to World Cup since 1986, and has the relative comfort blanket of the knowledge that a single point might just about do it. Nor is it the case for Mexico, which also needs two wins, but has a far kinder schedule over the next week than the Americans.The Americans’ problem is that they face three teams — Mexico and Costa Rica on the road, with a home meeting with Panama sandwiched in between — who all harbor their own ambitions of being in Qatar next winter. The U.S. failed, five years ago, when the situation was no less finely poised. A young, promising team must find a way to ensure things turn out different this time.South AmericaEcuador needs a single victory to book its place in Qatar.Martin Mejia/Associated PressOther than the sight of officials from the Brazilian health ministry striding onto the field to extract a handful of quarantine-busting Argentine players last summer, there has been precious little drama for either of South America’s great rivals. Neither Brazil nor Argentina has lost a game; both qualified for Qatar with months to spare.Beneath them, though, the tension is bubbling. Ecuador needs a single win from its remaining two games — either away at Paraguay or home to Argentina — to qualify for its fourth World Cup this century. The continent’s fourth definite slot at the finals, however, is very much still up for grabs.Uruguay is the team currently in possession of the final spot, but it has to face two direct rivals over the next week: fifth-place Peru in Montevideo, followed by a trip to sixth-place Chile. Either of those teams could usurp Diego Alonso’s Uruguay at the last hurdle. Automatic qualification may be just out of reach, but do not rule out Colombia — currently in a disappointing seventh place — staging a late surge for fifth place, and a chance at a side door to Qatar through an intercontinental playoff in June.AfricaSenegal beat Egypt to win the Africa Cup of Nations in February. Now the teams will meet again for a World Cup place.Sunday Alamba/Associated PressJürgen Klopp’s team selection offered a clear illustration of where Mohamed Salah and Sadio Mané’s priorities lie. The Liverpool manager left both players out of his team’s F.A. Cup win against Nottingham Forest last weekend; it was the only way, he said, of making sure he did not inadvertently find himself embroiled in an international scandal.Africa’s final round of qualifying is always unforgiving — five home-and-away knockout ties, with the winner going to the World Cup and the loser left with no recourse and no safety net. But fate, this time, has been almost cruel: Salah’s Egypt has been drawn to face Mané’s Senegal, a replay of February’s Cup of Nations final. One of Liverpool’s forward line is having the winter off.That is not the only appetizing tie. Two of the continent’s traditional heavyweights, Ghana and Nigeria, will face one another, as will Cameroon and Algeria, regarded as the strongest of the African sides before its disappointing display in the Cup of Nations. Morocco will be expected to make it past the Democratic Republic of Congo, while Mali must beat Tunisia to qualify for its first World Cup.AsiaJapan and Saudi Arabia have eyes on two of the final places from Asia.Eugene Hoshiko/Associated PressWith two games to play, both Iran and South Korea have already booked their spots in next week’s World Cup draw, alongside Qatar, which qualified automatically as the host nation. Saudi Arabia and Japan are best-placed to join them, with each realistically needing only one more win to seal its place at the finals.Australia still has a slender hope of overhauling one or the other, but it will need to beat Japan in Sydney on Thursday and the Saudis in Jeddah next week to avoid a playoff, most likely against the United Arab Emirates, for the right to take part in another playoff, against the fifth-place team from South America, this summer.OceaniaQatar’s big moment is still months away, but it is hosting a series of qualifiers for teams from regions like Oceania this week.Noushad Thekkayil/EPA, via ShutterstockEighteen months after it was supposed to start, Oceania’s qualifying process finally got underway in Qatar last week. New Zealand, as expected, promptly secured a place in the semifinals. Papua New Guinea and Fiji will face off on Thursday to decide who joins the All Whites in the final four.Quite who they will play in the knockout rounds remains a mystery. Both Vanuatu and the Cook Islands returned a number of positive Covid tests after arriving in Qatar and have subsequently withdrawn from the tournament. That has left the Solomon Islands and Tahiti as semifinalists by default, left to play a single match to decide their seeding for the next stage.The eventual winner of the most drawn-out qualification process on the planet will still, though, not be sure of a place in the World Cup; it will have to navigate an intercontinental playoff against whoever finishes fourth in North America to get into the field for the finals. More

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    Soccer’s Richest Clubs Sidestep UEFA Salary Cap in New Cost Controls

    UEFA’s new financial regulations will tie spending to club revenues, entrenching the advantages wealthy clubs already enjoy in the market for talent.The biggest reforms of European soccer’s financial controls in a generation will stop short of creating U.S.-style salary caps to restrain teams’ spending, and instead will enact rules that are unlikely to stop the continent’s richest clubs from buying up the best talent and winning the most coveted trophies.UEFA, European soccer’s governing body, has spent more than a year in talks with a representative group for elite clubs about a new model to replace its so-called financial fair play rules, the cost-control mechanism that has for a decade sought to limit team expenditures as part of an effort to promote competition.UEFA has finally alighted on a replacement. Teams’ soccer-related spending, according to people briefed on the regulations, will not be able to surpass 70 percent of their income, a regulation that appears watered down from the strict salary cap that had long been championed by UEFA’s president, Aleksander Ceferin.Ceferin had for at least five years discussed imposing salary caps as a way to address European soccer’s growing wealth gap. But faced with the complexities of European employment law and deep-pocketed opposition, UEFA has abandoned the concept of a hard cap and, according to three people familiar with the proposals, settled on a proposal that — after a three-year implementation period — will require teams to keep their spending within a strict ratio.The rules will be added to UEFA’s rule book after a vote of its executive board on April 7. They will also be renamed, with UEFA looking to move away from F.F.P., or financial fair play, a term coined under Ceferin’s predecessor, and instead adopt a more prosaic title: financial sustainability regulations.In more than a decade of use, the current financial fair play system has proved more adept at producing critics than fairness. Smaller teams complained that they were punished for rule breaches while bigger, wealthier teams were often able to avoid the most severe penalties. The biggest and richest clubs, meanwhile, objected to the financial controls as an unfair curb on their ambitions.Talks about changing the regulations accelerated during the coronavirus pandemic, when shuttered stadiums and rebates to television broadcasters caused financial unease for teams big and small. UEFA reported in February that an estimated 7 billion euros (about $7.7 billion) had been collectively wiped off clubs’ balance sheets during the pandemic.Despite their lofty nod to sustainability, the rules changes may in fact entrench the growing hegemony of wealthy English teams, which benefit not only from the highest domestic television revenues in global soccer but also access to the wealth of some of the richest owners in sports. In last season’s Champions League, two English teams met in the final for the second time in three years.The move to bring soccer-related costs like wages and transfer fees into a tight ratio will be a challenge for many major teams outside England, the vast majority of which have struggled to maintain fiscal discipline as they tried to keep up with rivals who play in the Premier League.In Italy, for example, wage costs alone often exceed the ratios being proposed by UEFA. In Spain, which has some of the strictest financial rules in soccer, the powerhouse team Barcelona was unable to retain the star player Lionel Messi last year because doing so would have breached a cap imposed on the team by the league.Discussions about the ratio UEFA should impose on clubs were complicated by conflicting interests. Some teams, particularly those backed by wealthy owners used to pumping their own cash into buying success for their teams, had wanted the limit to be as high as 85 percent. Others, including several German clubs, whose balance sheets are typically kept under control by a system in which members retain a majority stake in ownership, argued for an even lower limit.To allow the teams to adjust to the new regulations, the new rules will be imposed over time: Clubs will be able to spend up to 90 percent of their revenues before that figure will be brought to its permanent 70 percent level within three seasons. According to the proposed rules, teams may under certain circumstances be allowed the flexibility to spend up to about $10 million above the ratio, provided they have healthy balance sheets and have not breached regulations before.UEFA’s critics have long complained that while they have had cost-control rules in place, they have often failed to punish the biggest teams. In recent years, Manchester City and Paris St.-Germain — teams bankrolled by wealthy Gulf States — have been able to avoid severe penalties on technical grounds.There has also been little clarity around the current punishment mechanism, and concerns about UEFA’s appetite to take on the hardest cases. Several longstanding members of the panels overseeing the financial rules have either been replaced or walked out in recent years. Sunil Gulati, the former U.S. Soccer president, last year was named chairman of UEFA’s revamped financial control panel.Under the new system, UEFA will have the right to impose both sporting and financial penalties for rule breakers, including fines, threat of expulsion and, for the first time, an option for demoting teams between the three competitions it currently operates. A team in the Champions League, for example, could be relegated to the second-tier Europa League for a financial rules breach.Another measure may also include point deductions under the revised format of the Champions League and the Europa League: Starting in 2024 all participants will be placed in a single league table during the first phase of the competition. And the regulations also will require greater scrutiny of sponsorship deals amid claims that some teams have benefited from inflated agreements with companies linked to their ownership groups.UEFA is talking about the proposals with several clubs that are already on performance plans because of their poor financial records. Those teams, as many as 40, made so-called settlement agreements with the governing body in order to keep participating in their tournaments. More

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    Ada Hegerberg Wants to See How Good She Can Be

    Ada Hegerberg apologizes in advance for the forthcoming cliché. She knows it sounds trite, exactly what she would be expected to say, given all that she has been through. It is what everyone says, after all.It is, though, the only way to describe how it has felt, these last five months or so, finding herself not in a treatment room or confined to the gym as part of her recovery from a serious knee injury, but out on a soccer field once more. There is just no other way of putting it: She feels, she says, like a kid again.In part, it is the little electric thrill, the pulse of pure, unalloyed delight that comes from feeling the grass beneath her feet, being surrounded by teammates, being able to do what she has always done again. She was deprived of it for almost two years; she is determined to “take joy” from its restoration.But it is not just that. The thrill is related to the rediscovery of possibility, too. At 26, Hegerberg again feels like she is at the start of something, blissfully unaware of limitations or horizons or destinations.“I don’t know what the end looks like,” she said. “I might be a completely different player to who I used to be. And I see that in a positive way.” That is the joy of youth: not knowing what you might yet become.Hegerberg returned to Lyon, and the Champions League, in October.Denis Balibouse/ReutersIn an ideal world, of course, Hegerberg would not have had that chance. It goes without saying that she would not have chosen to lose the better part of two seasons of her career to injury, and certainly not to lose the two seasons that she did.In January 2020, Hegerberg was more than just the finest female soccer player on the planet; she was the breakout star of the women’s game, set to become the sport’s dominant, animating force — at least in Europe — for the next decade or so. The previous year, she had been all but untouchable.In December 2018, Hegerberg had been named as the inaugural winner of the women’s Ballon d’Or. Six months later, she had scored a lightning, devastating hat-trick in the Champions League final, delivering her club, Olympique Lyon, a fourth consecutive European crown. By October 2019, she had secured another piece of history, breaking the record for the most goals scored in the competition.And then, when a scan confirmed she had ruptured the anterior cruciate ligament in her right knee during a training session in January 2020, she faded from view. She was absent as the season went on hiatus in the aftermath of the pandemic. She was absent as Lyon won a fifth straight Champions League title.“I want to create more records,” Hegerberg said. “I want to be back scoring 40 or 50 goals a season.”Pedro Nunes/ReutersThat proved to be just the start. In September 2020, she sustained a stress fracture in her left tibia, putting an end to whatever hopes she harbored of a relatively quick return. Soon after, Lyon confirmed that she would not play at all until the fall of 2021, at the very earliest. In the end, 20 months would elapse before Hegerberg played again.For most athletes, that would have felt like a lifetime. In women’s soccer, it seems like an eternity. The game is evolving at such speed and at such scale in Europe that, by the time Hegerberg returned to the field in a Champions League game against the Swedish team Hacken in October, it had changed almost beyond recognition.Lyon was no longer Europe’s pre-eminent superpower; that tag now belonged to Barcelona, the team that had broken its stranglehold on the Champions League a few months earlier. Lyon had been deposed as French champion for the first time since 2006, by Paris St.-Germain, and it had even lost its reputation as the sport’s most glamorous destination: Sam Kerr, Tobin Heath and Pernille Harder had all been drawn to England, rather than France, by the television-generated wealth flooding into the game.After a while, Hegerberg even lost her standing as the continent’s standout player, too. Suddenly, that title belonged to Alexia Putellas, the Barcelona captain and reigning Ballon d’Or winner, with a raft of her teammates in her wake. Vivianne Miedema, Arsenal’s relentless forward, even seemed to have dislodged Hegerberg as the game’s most clinical finisher.There were elements of that growth she found welcome: the expansion of the Champions League group phase, a broadcast deal with the streaming service Dazn that has, to Hegerberg, “given the players the platform we deserve.” Others she did not, like being forced to watch from the outside as the totems and truisms of the game shifted, seeming to leave her behind.Still, though, she betrays no sense of bitterness. That is the nature of soccer: It is, as she puts it, “fresh,” in a state of almost constant renewal. “Life goes on,” she said. “I am fully aware I was away for a long time. People forget about you.”Patience, Hegerberg would admit, is not something that comes naturally to her. She is, by her own admission, a “very organized” person, the kind who might take a dim view of some minor inconvenience like a last-minute change of plans. Her recovery, though, has taught her its virtues; she has tried, as much as she can, not to sweat the small stuff. “Ask my agent,” she said. “He’s almost proud of me.”It is as much a practical choice as a philosophical one. Injury, and the arduous, frustrating recovery that followed, changed Hegerberg’s perspective on her career — hence the greater determination to “take joy” from it — but it is telling that she describes fretting over trivialities as a “waste of calories.” A worry is just energy that could be put to better use elsewhere. She has become more patient because she does not want to waste any time.“I could have said that five Champions Leagues and a Ballon d’Or was enough,” she said. “But I want to create more records. I want to be back scoring 40 or 50 goals a season. They’re mad numbers, and it will take time, but I know I can.” She is driven, she said, not by proving a point to a game that moved on without her, but “proving things to myself.”“It is about self-respect,” she added. “I want to get ahead of my limits. That is what I want to do as an athlete: explode all limits that exist.”“I don’t know what the end looks like,” Hegerberg said. “I might be a completely different player to who I used to be. And I see that in a positive way.”Denis Balibouse/ReutersHer first target, of course, is restoring Lyon to the pinnacle: reclaiming both its French and European championships. The club faces Juventus, the Italian champion, in the Champions League quarterfinals this week. “We won it five times in a row,” Hegerberg said, giving away a brief, solitary flash of exasperation. “It was something historical, something that maybe nobody will ever do again. Maybe people forgot that.”After that, her targets may include returning to the international fold; she has not played for Norway since 2017, in protest over the disregard the country’s authorities had for the women’s game. Martin Sjogren, the national team coach, said in February that a “closer dialogue” with Hegerberg meant that playing for her country again “feels possible.” She may yet return in time to feature in this summer’s European Championship.Whether she will ever be the Ada Hegerberg she was, she does not yet know, of course. She is still waiting, patient and impatient, to find out. The prospect that she will be different, though, does not fill her with dread. Perhaps her second edition will be even better. That, after all, is why she feels like a kid again: because her world, once more, is full of possibility. More