Raphael Stevens

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    At P.S.G., Kylian Mbappé Has to Go

    Mbappé is a generational talent who deserves a bigger stage on a weekly basis than the one Paris St.-Germain can offer.Only one player escaped the ire of the Parc des Princes. Paris St.-Germain’s fans whistled and jeered every time Lionel Messi touched the ball. They howled and crowed at the sight of a wayward shot from Neymar. There was no allowance in their anger for reputation, no discrimination by status. It encompassed mortal and immortal alike.The lone exception, during last weekend’s routine win against Bordeaux, was Kylian Mbappé. There was no romance behind his pardon. He was not excused because he is a boy from the French capital’s banlieues, an identifiably Parisian superstar, a local kid made good. All of those terms — except perhaps superstar — apply to the defender Presnel Kimpembe, too, but the fans deemed him as guilty as everyone else.Nor was it related to performance. Mbappé, almost alone, had emerged with credit from P.S.G.’s elimination from the Champions League at the hands of Real Madrid. He had scored once, and seen two goals ruled out for offside. He had gleamed under the bright lights of the Santiago Bernabéu. He had almost single-handedly carried Mauricio Pochettino’s team to the quarterfinals. His brilliance, though, has not stopped P.S.G.’s ultras targeting him before.It was, instead, a rather more cynical calculation that ensured Mbappé’s reprieve. The 23-year-old forward’s contract at P.S.G. expires at the end of the season. Though it has long been assumed he would move to Madrid this summer, P.S.G. has not yet given up hope of changing his mind. Reports have suggested that it might be willing to pay him as much as $28 million a year to stay.P.S.G.’s ultras, as a statement on their protests explained, might despair of the way their club is run. They might believe its executives are more concerned with releasing special-edition jerseys and gathering superstars to sell them than building a coherent team. They might abhor the way the team seems to regard Ligue 1 as little more than a training exercise.But they are no fools. They might, in fact, have a rather better idea of how to construct a squad than the people charged with running their club. They understand that Mbappé is the sort of generational talent that should be at the very center of P.S.G.’s planning, rather than an afterthought to the apparently arbitrary acquisition of icons. They had no intention whatsoever of accelerating his departure.Sergio Perez/EPA, via ShutterstockIt is likely, of course, to prove futile. If Mbappé could not be convinced to sign a new contract before the last couple of weeks, nothing that has happened since then to make the idea of extending his stay more appealing.The defeat to Real Madrid — the one which, once again, effectively ensured that the last meaningful game of his season took place in March — was bad enough, but the sight and the sound of the Parc des Princes in open mutiny against P.S.G.’s Qatari backers may well have been worse.The protest itself, of course, was nothing especially remarkable. There is an inherent tension scored into P.S.G.’s very being: the schism between what the club is to its hierarchy and to its fans existed long before the arrival, a little more than a decade ago, of Qatar Sports Investments.Almost from the moment of its founding, P.S.G. has played a dual role. To its owners and executives, it was always an expression of the city’s identity as they saw it. The haute couture designer Daniel Hechter was one of its early presidents; he introduced the famous blue, red and white jersey that the club seems absolutely determined to wear as little as possible. To them, P.S.G. was a fashion brand, an extension of the theater and the cinema and the discothèque.For its fans, it was an expression of the city’s identity, too, but as they knew it. Drawn not so much from the exclusive arrondissements inside the périphérique but the sprawling suburbs beyond, they saw in P.S.G. something far grittier, far weightier, far more reflective of their lives.That tension is now no longer unique — if it ever was — to P.S.G. Countless clubs across Europe are reckoning with the same rift, the sense of alienation that has settled on fans as their clubs have been bought out and taken over and turned into something they do not quite recognize.Christophe Petit Tesson/EPA, via ShutterstockIt is, in many ways, the defining theme of modern soccer. The most egregious examples, of course, are the clubs that have been co-opted by forces that have only a tangential interest in sport: not just P.S.G., but Manchester City and Newcastle United and, most chaotically of all, Chelsea. Venerable and beloved teams that have been appropriated by states and oligarchs and princelings for their own ends.But it holds true elsewhere. It is the root of the sickness that has come to afflict Manchester United, another team playing the role of final landing spot for an idol resisting the dying of the light. The priorities of the Glazer family, the club’s owners, are effectively unrelated to the demands of the fans: performance on the field matters only so much as it affects performance off it. As long as the money keeps rolling, first and fourth in the Premier League look much the same.It is the problem that has beset Barcelona, where successive presidential regimes have focused not on maintaining the philosophy that made the club the defining team of an era, but on exploiting its brand, and Real Madrid, where the defining rationale behind any decision is the perpetuation of Florentino Pérez’s power. It is the issue that allows a host of teams to be happy to survive in the Premier League, greedily consuming the lucrative installments from the division’s television deals rather than, you know, trying to win something.That, alone, would not be enough to convince Mbappé to leave. No matter where he plays, he is likely to spend his career at a club where the interests of the owners and the fans markedly diverge. That, sadly, is the reality of modern soccer.Far more significant, in all likelihood, was the precise content of the ultras’ complaints. Had Mbappé read the statement issued to explain the protests, he would doubtless have agreed with the gist of it. P.S.G. is a fundamentally unserious sporting project. Its team is unbalanced, ill-conceived, undisciplined. Its season does tend to rest on a handful of games, two at the fewest, seven at the most, in the Champions League.And that leaves him, ultimately, with no choice. To fulfill his talent, Mbappé has to leave. He has already won a World Cup, and a suite of French championships. The sheer mass of money available to P.S.G. means the club will, at some point, inevitably win the Champions League.But while he might be able to win all of the trophies he desires in Paris, a career spent trying to impose some logic on a squad that possesses none of it would leave Mbappé ignorant to what he might have been, to what he might have become at a club with a clear vision, and playing for a coach, as the ultras put it, who is the final decision maker.That is not the only consideration. There is a more commercial factor, too. Ligue 1 does not warrant its reputation as a “farmer’s league” — other than in the sense that it is home to the sport’s most fertile crop of talent — but Mbappé needs only to look at Messi for proof of the effect it has on a player’s profile.Messi has not entirely disappeared from view since moving to Paris last summer. His performances are still picked over; the few highlights he has offered in Ligue 1 continue to flood social media. But most weekends, far fewer people watch him play than they did while he was at Barcelona. There are no clásicos that can be considered appointment viewing; there are only his excursions in the Champions League.Gabriel Bouys/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAt 34, that is tolerable for Messi. He is already more famous than almost anyone else on the planet. His legacy — for all the pointless squabbling about whether the anticlimax of his time in Paris is greater than that of Cristiano Ronaldo at Old Trafford — is secure.Mbappé does not, yet, have that privilege. He cannot afford to float into soccer’s consciousness half a dozen times a year. He deserves more than to be an occasional visitor to the sport’s top table. That is all he can be at P.S.G., at a club where the season — to the casual viewer — only begins in February.In Spain, in England, he would not be front and center a few times a year. He would be the main event almost every week. That is not something P.S.G. can offer, no matter how much it can pay him.Last weekend, as the bile rained down on the Parc des Princes, Mbappé alone was excused. Even in their rage, the club’s fans recognized that he did not warrant that treatment. Mbappé, they know, deserves better. That silence will not make him stay. If anything, it proves that he has to leave.Awkward QuestionsEddie Howe would rather not talk about Saudi Arabia, thank you very much.Justin Tallis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThree times in the course of a single week, searching questions over the human rights record of Saudi Arabia have been directed at the rather unlikely figure of Eddie Howe, a 44-year-old London Times reader from Amersham, Buckinghamshire.On the face of it, of course, this is slightly absurd. Eddie Howe is not a respected authority on Saudi domestic policy. He has no particular insight into the kingdom’s judicial system. There is no more reason to ask him about the execution of 81 people in a single day than there is to seek out the thoughts of Jon Bon Jovi, or Clifford The Big Red Dog.He has made that point, several times, meeting the questions with a straight bat. His job, he has said, is to know about soccer. “It’s what I know,” he said. “As soon as I deviate from that into an area where I don’t feel qualified to have a huge opinion, I go into dangerous ground.” It is a sensible approach: There is no little merit in the maxim that it is better to maintain silence and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.It is not, though, enough, not for someone in Howe’s position. He is employed as manager of Newcastle United, a soccer team that is owned by an entity that is in no way linked, despite all of the links, to the Saudi state. He took that position willingly, knowing full well who his employers would be, and having had ample time to read up on them.That he chose to take the post is up to him, of course — his own morality is his own business — but he can hardly be outraged that his decision is being scrutinized.The noise you have heard in Britain, again and again, since the Russian invasion of Ukraine is the sound of scales falling precipitously from eyes. Lawmakers have made it clear that the suite of P.R. companies, law firms and so-called “reputation managers” in London who have grown rich and fat from fees from Russian oligarchs over the last 20 years are going to have to think long and hard about where their money comes from. Some, it has been suggested, could yet be the subject of sanctions.There is absolutely no reason soccer should be any different. Whatever pretense there was about the “projects” at Chelsea, Newcastle and Manchester City now seems not just naïve but actively damaging. It is absolutely fine if people decide they want to be part of them anyway. But they should expect to be asked to show their work.Champions League DrawFriday’s Champions League quarterfinal draw matched last year’s finalists, Chelsea and Manchester City, against Spanish opponents.Fabrice Coffrini/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesCorrespondenceMore than one person has been in touch over the last week to raise what is, I think, an important question. “Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have committed unimaginable horrors in Yemen,” Ramzi Kawar wrote. “When will Newcastle and Manchester City get the same treatment as Chelsea?”Robert Campbell took a slightly different approach. In light of the sanctioning of Roman Abramovich and its subsequent impact at Chelsea, he asked, “Why are the no knock-on discussions of Manchester City, whose (state) owners have not uttered a critical peep about the Russian invasion and who are now happily and lucratively harboring Russian oligarchs and their super yachts?”The easiest response to this is to point out that there has, over the last year, been a whole welter of negative coverage of Saudi Arabia’s investment in Newcastle, including multiple editions of this newsletter. It is true that the motivation behind Abu Dhabi’s transformation of Manchester City was, for a while, overlooked. But if you feel it is not mentioned enough these days, I can introduce you to a small but startlingly bellicose contingent of Manchester City fans who feel differently.Both emails, though, hit upon an important point, and something that soccer will have to reckon with eventually. Where, precisely, do we draw the line? Abramovich has now been disqualified as a director of a club because of his apparent links to the Russian regime. Why does that not apply to Saudi Arabia, or to the U.A.E.?That brings us to a question from Jon Phillips. “Of the 20 Premier League teams, whose owners are most pure of heart? Who isn’t backed somehow, somewhere, by an oligarch, a nation state, a less than savory character? Who would a neutral with a social, political and ethical conscience, support?”This has been raised frequently in the last few weeks, largely in bad faith. It is wielded as a weapon by those who believe Chelsea, Everton, Manchester City and Newcastle are being picked on by an old and self-important elite that has infiltrated the news media. Everyone, the thinking goes, is — deep down — as bad as each other.Believing that requires an impressive amount of equivocation. It relies on the assumption that donating to a political party is the same as being a government, or that a sponsor and the ownership of a team are the same thing, or that — as suggested in one British newspaper this week — making some crass, sexist comments in the 1990s or not investing enough in the playing squad is the moral equivalent of complicity in a brutal, murderous autocracy.If you recognize that not all of those things are the same, that malignance can be measured in degrees, there are plenty of teams. Norwich City, owned by a beloved television chef, is the obvious answer, but there are many more whose benefactors are basically ethically neutral: Brentford and Brighton (if you don’t mind people being good at gambling), Leeds United, Aston Villa, Watford, Crystal Palace, possibly even Tottenham. Their owners may not be perfect, of course, but that is a very different bar.That’s all for this week. Details of why all of those clubs are inherently evil are welcome at askrory@nytimes.com. The aforementioned Manchester City fans will already be swarming to Twitter to decry this very obvious example of media bias. If you missed this week’s episode of European Nights, with me and Roger Bennett of Men In Blazers, you may enjoy it, even though you know all the scores.Have a great weekend,Rory More

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    Poland Refused to Play Russia Once. It May Have to Do So Again.

    Poland’s stars cornered FIFA by threatening to boycott a World Cup qualifier. Now, as Russia appeals the decision, Robert Lewandowski, Wojciech Szczesny and their teammates may have to double down.One by one, late on a Friday evening, Robert Lewandowski called his Poland teammates. They were scattered across Europe, and most of them were busily preparing for club games that weekend, but his question could not wait.They had all seen the footage emerging from Ukraine: Russian tanks rolling across the border, Russian artillery bombarding cities and towns, Ukrainian refugees flooding out of the country, hundreds of thousands of them seeking shelter in Poland.In a matter of weeks, Poland was scheduled to face Russia in a crucial World Cup qualifier. Lewandowski had known immediately, once the invasion of Ukraine had begun, that he did not want the game in late March to go ahead. He had already called the president of the Polish soccer federation and made that clear. Now he wanted to know how his teammates felt.Without exception, the answer was emphatic. Lewandowski did not, he said in an interview, “have to convince anyone.” The conversation he had with Wojciech Szczesny, the Juventus goalkeeper who has been one of Lewandowski’s Poland teammates for more than a decade, was typical. “I just said, ‘I’m not playing the game,’” Szczesny said. “That was how he felt, too. We all said the same thing.”After finishing his calls late on that February night, Lewandowski — the Poland captain and, by some distance, his country’s most high-profile athlete — relayed his conversations to executives at the federation. The players, he said, were unanimous: They would not take the field against Russia. It did not matter if the game was held on neutral territory or if Russia played it under a neutral flag.It did not even matter to them if Poland was thrown out of the World Cup as a result. “We didn’t think about the consequences or whether we might be punished,” Szczesny said. “We only cared about the outcome. We were prepared to forfeit the game. We were not going to play.”The federation readily acceded to the players’ decision. They told Lewandowski they would relay a message to FIFA, world soccer’s governing body, the next morning to inform the organization of the Polish position. “We said that on Saturday we would announce there would be no games at all with Russia,” Jakub Kwiatkowski, the general manager of the Polish men’s national team, told the BBC.Lewandowski said Poland’s players were united in their refusal to play Russia.Albert Gea/ReutersThe move seemed to force FIFA’s hand. The organization had, for much of the first week of the invasion, been studiously quiet on the subject of whether Russia — or any of its club teams — would be allowed to continue to play either in World Cup qualifying or in competitions under the auspices of UEFA, European soccer’s governing body.The Polish authorities had been trying for several days to force FIFA to commit to a position. They had already sent the governing body two letters: one in which it confirmed that Poland would refuse to play games in Russia, and one in which Sweden and the Czech Republic — the two other teams that stand in Poland’s way of a place at the World Cup this winter — joined its boycott. “There was no reaction,” Kwiatkowski said.It took several more days for FIFA to respond at all, and when it did so it “did not go far enough,” Szczesny said. FIFA’s initial punishment prevented Russia only from playing on home soil, and under its own flag. Other than that, it would be free to compete. “It didn’t go down very well with the players,” Szczesny said. “It was not enough.”FIFA’s position changed quickly once the vehemence of the Polish players’ opposition became clear. “We sent them a statement that was very clear,” Kwiatkowski said. “We will not play Russia at all, regardless of the name they play under or where the venue might be.” By the next Monday, Feb. 28, FIFA had reversed course completely. Russia and Russian clubs, it declared, would no longer be able to play in its competitions, or in UEFA events. A subsequent ruling would decree that foreign players on Russian teams would be allowed to break their contracts and complete the season elsewhere.Russia-Ukraine War: Key Things to KnowCard 1 of 4In the city of Mariupol. More

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    How Roman Abramovich, a Russian Oligarch, Found Himself Under Sanctions

    As Russian troops massed near the border with Ukraine last month, the American ambassador to Israel received an appeal on behalf of Roman Abramovich, the most visible of the billionaires linked to President Vladimir V. Putin.Leaders of cultural, educational and medical institutions, along with a chief rabbi, had sent a letter urging the United States not to impose sanctions on the Russian, a major donor, saying it would hurt Israel and the Jewish world. Days later, Mr. Abramovich and Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial, announced a partnership that a spokesman for the organization said included a pledge of at least $10 million.The request to the diplomat reflects the extraordinary effort Mr. Abramovich, 55, has made over the last two decades to parlay his Russian fortune into elite standing in the West — buying London’s Chelsea soccer team, acquiring luxury homes in New York, London, Tel Aviv, St. Barts and Aspen, collecting modern masterworks and contributing to arts institutions around the world. With two superyachts, multiple Ferrari, Porsche and Aston Martin sports cars, and a private 787 Boeing Dreamliner jet, Mr. Abramovich wanted everyone to know that he had arrived.But now the backlash against the Russian invasion of Ukraine is tarnishing the status that Mr. Abramovich and other oligarchs have spent so much to reach. On Thursday, British authorities added him to an ever-expanding list of Russians under sanctions for their close ties to Mr. Putin.Mr. Abramovich, whose fortune is estimated at more than $13 billion, was barred from entering Britain or doing any business there — disrupting his plans to sell his soccer team and prohibiting it from selling tickets to matches, even blocking him from paying to keep the electricity on in his West London mansion.Oligarchs like Mr. Abramovich “have used their ill-gotten gains to try to launder their reputations in the West,” said Thomas Graham, a Russia scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations. “But the message of these sanctions is, that is not going to protect you.”On Friday, Canada announced sanctions of its own against Mr. Abramovich. The United States has not imposed sanctions on the billionaire — so far, at least. In a statement explaining its actions, the British government said that the businessman had profited from transactions with the Russian government and special tax breaks. The statement also suggested that a steel company Mr. Abramovich controlled could contribute to the war against Ukraine, “potentially” supplying steel for Russian tanks. The business, Evraz, said in a statement that it had not done so. A representative for Mr. Abramovich did not respond to a request for comment.“The blood of the Ukrainian people is on their hands,” Liz Truss, the British foreign minister, said of the oligarchs under sanctions. “They should hang their heads in shame.”Mr. Abramovich on a trip in 1999 to Chukotka, a desolate province in northeastern Russia where he was elected governor.Victor Vasenin/Kommersant/Sipa USA, via Associated PressMichael McFaul, an American ambassador to Moscow during the Obama administration, recalled that while Mr. Putin’s government claimed to despise the United States and its allies, his foreign ministry was constantly trying to help the oligarchs around him, including Mr. Abramovich, obtain visas so that they could ingratiate themselves with the Western elite.“On our side, we have been playing right along,” he said, overlooking the oligarchs’ ties to Mr. Putin and welcoming them and their money.Orphaned as a child in a town on the Volga River in northern Russia, Mr. Abramovich dropped out of college and emerged from the Red Army in the late 1980s just as the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was opening new opportunities for private enterprise. Mr. Abramovich plunged into trading anything he could, including dolls, chocolates, cigarettes, rubber ducks and car tires.His big break came in the mid-1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when he and a partner persuaded the Russian government to sell them the state-run oil company Sibneft for about $200 million. In 2005, he sold his stake back to the government for $11.9 billion. Other deals followed, including the formation of a mammoth aluminum company. Many involved the Russian state, and some ended in bitter litigation.After Mr. Putin was inaugurated president in 2000, he quickly moved to dominate the billionaire businessmen who had profited from privatization, sending a message by jailing the richest and most powerful oligarch. Mr. Abramovich is one of the few early elite who remain in his circle.As Mr. Putin was consolidating power, Mr. Abramovich served as governor of a desolate northeastern province from 2001 until 2008.President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia with Mr. Abramovich in 2005.Reuters“I started business early, so maybe that’s why I’m bored with it,” he told The Wall Street Journal in 2001 about his interest in the region, saying he wanted to lead a “revolution toward civilized life.”But like other oligarchs wary of the new president’s power to make or break them, Mr. Abramovich also began looking for footholds outside Russia.Mr. Putin’s display of force “increased the incentive for the oligarchs to have acceptance in the West,” said Stephen Sestanovich, a professor of international relations at Columbia University and former ambassador at large to the former Soviet Union. “Who knows when you might fall out with Putin and need an alternative place to land?”In spring 2003, Mr. Abramovich was in Manchester, England, to watch the legendary Brazilian forward Ronaldo score a game-winning hat trick for Real Madrid. The Russian had never shown much interest in soccer before, but that night he was smitten.He soon began shopping for a team — looking in Spain and Italy before settling on England and finally on Chelsea. His $180 million takeover — completed in quick, stealthy talks with the British financier Keith Harris over a single weekend — transformed the club. In his first summer, he went on the largest single spending spree for players that English soccer had ever seen.Within two years of his arrival, Chelsea was the English champion for the first time in a half-century, and the team has since won four more championships. A Russian flag has hung outside the stadium for years, emblazoned with the words “The Roman Empire,” alongside a stylized image of its owner’s face. (Britain on Friday said it would consider proposals to buy the soccer team under special conditions.)Mr. Abramovich during a parade in London in 2005 after Chelsea became the English champion for the first time in a half-century.Odd Andersen/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAt a news conference when Russia won the right to host the 2018 soccer World Cup, Mr. Putin commended Mr. Abramovich for the development of Russian soccer, too, and suggested he might play a role in “a public-private partnership” to prepare for the tournament. “He has a lot of money in stocks,” Mr. Putin noted, smiling.While looking after his London soccer team, Mr. Abramovich met and married his third wife, Dasha Zhukova, the daughter of a Russian oil magnate, who had grown up partly in Los Angeles; studied Russian literature at the University of California, Santa Barbara; and tried fashion design in London.In 2011, he bought an elegant 15-bedroom mansion near Kensington Palace for a reported price over $140 million, which was expanded a few years later to include a huge underground swimming pool.Then he turned heads in Manhattan in 2014, paying $78 million for three adjacent townhouses on East 75th Street, in a landmark district of the Upper East Side. He proposed combining the three homes of different styles into a single mega-mansion, with an elevator, a new glass-and-bronze rear facade and a pool in the lower level. The Historic Districts Council, an advocacy group, called the plan “a whole new level of egregious consumption.” But he ultimately managed to win city approval, in part by purchasing a fourth adjacent townhouse for nearly $29 million and revising his alteration plans.Mr. Abramovich bought four adjacent townhouses on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and set about converting three of them into one mansion.Brendan Mcdermid/ReutersMs. Zhukova had developed a growing interest in art, and in 2008 she and Mr. Abramovich founded Garage, a seminal contemporary art center in Moscow. (Amy Winehouse performed at the opening, and early shows included works by Cindy Sherman and Jeff Koons.) He joined the board of the Bolshoi Theater. And Mr. Abramovich started to earn a reputation as one of the biggest spenders in the art world, known for buying pieces by blue-chip artists. He spent nearly $120 million at auctions in the same week, acquiring a Francis Bacon triptych and Lucian Freud’s “Benefits Supervisor Sleeping.”Russia-Ukraine War: Key Things to KnowCard 1 of 4On the ground. More

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    Roman Abramovich and the End of Soccer’s Oligarch Era

    Stripped of its Russian benefactor, Chelsea now faces a reckoning. Soccer’s will come next.There were, over the years, three stories that explained how Roman Abramovich washed ashore at Chelsea. Each one, now, serves as a kind of time capsule, a carbon-dated relic from a specific period, capturing in amber each stage of our understanding of what, precisely, soccer has become.The first took root in the immediate aftermath of Abramovich’s takeover of Chelsea. It was light, fuzzy, faintly romantic. Abramovich, the tale went, had been at Old Trafford on the night in 2003 when Manchester United’s fans stood as one to applaud the great Brazilian striker Ronaldo as he swept their team from the Champions League.Abramovich had been so smitten, it was said, that he had decided there and then that he wanted a piece of English soccer. He considered Arsenal and Tottenham and settled on Chelsea, drifting bohemian and glamorous just below the Premier League elite. He had fallen, so hard and so fast, that he bought the club in little more than a weekend.And that, at the time, was almost enough. It was absurd, alien, the idea of this unimaginably wealthy enigma suddenly descending on Chelsea, lavishing hundreds of millions of dollars in transfer fees as if they were nothing. But it was flattering, too, in those early days of Londongrad, of Moscow-on-Thames, as the stuccoed houses of the capital’s finest streets were filling with Russian oligarchs, the country’s finest schools thronging with their children.All of it appealed not just to the laissez-faire approach of Tony Blair’s Britain — come one, come all, as long as you can pay for the price of a ticket — but to the ego of both the country as a whole and the Premier League in particular.Russia’s young plutocrats had more money than Croesus, more money than God, money that could buy anything they wanted. And what they wanted, more than anything, it seemed, was to be British. Abramovich wanted to be British so much that he had bought a soccer team, a plaything in the self-styled greatest league in the world. His money added just a little extra spice, a further dash of glamour, to the Premier League’s endlessly spinning drama; his money served to make the great English soft power project just a little more enticing.Eaton Square in London, known as Red Square for the wealthy Russians who call it home.Andy Rain/EPA, via ShutterstockIt was only a few years later that the second story emerged, in the aftermath of the jailing of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko. Perhaps, the idea was floated, Abramovich had not fallen in love with soccer; or, rather, he had not only fallen in love with soccer. Perhaps he did have an ulterior motive. Chelsea, after all, did not just provide him with access to the very highest echelons of British society; it gave him a profile, a fame, too.He did not seem to relish it, particularly — “one day they will forget me,” he had said, in one of the rare interviews he has granted since arriving in England — but he seemed prepared to believe it a price worth paying. Being an oligarch was a dangerous business. Chelsea, perhaps, was Abramovich’s security against the shifting tides in the Kremlin.That was the story we told ourselves as Chelsea went from usurper to establishment, the club that initially inspired the idea of cracking down on arriviste wealth suddenly recast as one of its foremost advocates. It was the story that took root as Chelsea racked up Premier League titles, as it conquered Europe not once, but twice: that soccer was the sanctuary, the ultimate mark of acceptance.It was only, really, when others started to adapt Abramovich’s playbook that the narrative was challenged. First one and then two Premier League teams fell under the aegis of nation states, or of entities so closely aligned to nation states that it can be difficult to tell the difference unless you really, really want to squint. The idea of sportswashing bled into the conversation. The sense that soccer was being used took root. Abramovich’s possible motives were reconsidered.And then, on Thursday, we saw for the first time — plain as day — what the purpose of it all had been, the story in its true, unvarnished form. For two weeks, the British government had dallied over applying sanctions to Abramovich, not necessarily the richest or even the most powerful but still by some distance the most high-profile of all of the caste of oligarchs, the face of oligarchy in the west.Abramovich’s wealth remade Chelsea, and the Premier League.Ben Stansall/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesA surprising portion of those two weeks, it turned out, had been spent trying to find a way to make sure that Chelsea could continue to function, roughly as normal, once Abramovich’s other assets were frozen. The players, the staff and the fans — especially the fans — must not suffer, the government said. A few hours earlier, Russian artillery had shelled a maternity hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine. But the government was clear: The sanctity of the Premier League could not be sullied.That was the purpose all along, it seemed. Abramovich probably did cherish the profile that owning Chelsea brought him. He certainly seemed to relish the sport. But mainly, he had come to soccer because it entangled him in British society in a way that owning any other business simply would not. None of the other oligarchs who have been sanctioned have been given a bespoke “license” to continue operating one of their businesses. That is not, after all, how sanctions are supposed to work. It had taken us 19 years, and the death of thousands of Ukrainians, to realize that, to see the world as it was.Now, at last, we know why Abramovich was here. Now, at last, we can begin to understand the price we have all paid. It is not only Chelsea that must now face up to an uncertain future: not only the next few months, as the club picks through the thicket of restrictions on its existence — its club store closed, its hotel no longer permitted to sell food and rent rooms, its crowds restricted to season-ticket holders — but beyond, too.The club could yet slide into bankruptcy, sold off to the highest bidder by the government. Or perhaps it will wither, slowly and irrevocably, its players leaving whenever they are permitted, the club unable to sign replacements. Maybe there will be peace, and an easing of the sanctions, and maybe Abramovich can recoup his investment and his loans. No matter how it plays out, there is no going back. The fans do not, and cannot, know what comes next. It is up to them to decide if the memories and the trophies were worth it.Mason Mount and Chelsea beat Norwich City on Thursday in their first game since the sanctions against their owner were announced. Darker days may lie ahead.Chris Radburn/ReutersThe echoes of Abramovich’s swift, abrupt exit, however, will carry out further into the game. His arrival marked the start of what will come, in time, to be thought of as soccer’s oligarch age. It was Abramovich, as noted last week, whose arrival kick-started the inflationary spiral that has fractured European soccer beyond repair, with only a handful of clubs hoarding all of the wealth of the game, ruthlessly stripping its natural resources for their benefit.His departure will prove to be no less epoch-defining. Modern elite soccer is built on growth, the conceit that there is always more money out there. That is why Real Madrid and Juventus and Barcelona want, so fervently, to launch a European Super League, because they are convinced that if only they did not have to deal with UEFA, they would be able to harvest the bottomless riches of all of the broadcasters and sponsors desperate to fill their accounts.It is why UEFA has been so determined to expand the Champions League, so convinced that it can find the money to satiate the boundless greed of the great and the good. All of it is based not only on the idea that the golden goose will keep laying, but the faith that there are a hundred, a thousand more golden geese out there, a whole flock of them.If that was ever true, it is not now. UEFA will find another sponsor for the Champions League to replace Gazprom, but it will not find one that is quite so generous. There is, after all, a premium to be paid for exercising soft power. Exponential growth is rather more challenging when one of the prime drivers of it has closed down.So, too, the clubs face a reckoning. Not only the teams owned by princelings and nation states and politicians, but those that are not. It is not just the promise of soaring television rights deals that have drawn the “acceptable” investors into soccer, the private equity groups and the hedge funds and the Wall Street speculators. They have no more fallen in love with the game than Abramovich.All of them have bought in to get out, at some point in the future, when they have made their clubs as profitable as possible, when the prospect of a lucrative return is at hand. And yet, all of a sudden, they find their list of potential buyers limited. Qatar, Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia: They all have their clubs now. The great gushing of cash from China ended years ago, as Inter Milan might attest. Now Russian money is out of the question, too.Chelsea, owned by Russian money, faces Newcastle, owned by Saudi money, on Sunday.Justin Tallis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThere is no shortage of the rich and the powerful and the speculative, of course, even with those markets closed up and sealed off. But those that remain are a different type of buyer: They are other private equity firms, other hedge funds, other Wall Street and Silicon Valley types. They are, for the most part, the ones who want to make a profit. They do not want to be the ones who buy at the peak of the market. They did not make their money by being the sucker.That might seem, perhaps, a little indistinct, a touch theoretical, but it has real consequences. It means reassessing how much profit might be made, and how large the payout might be. That, in turn, means altering the equation of how much it is worth putting in. The change will not be immediate, overnight, dramatic. But it will be a change nonetheless.That will be Abramovich’s ultimate legacy, the lasting impact of the era he began on what seemed to be a whim and he ended, in the space of a couple of weeks, in the middle of a war. Soccer’s age of the oligarch is over. This time, there can be no excuse for failing to understand what the game has become. On that, we have clarity. Where it goes from here remains shrouded in doubt.CorrespondenceRyan Christopher Jones for The New York TimesWe would be here for a long time if I listed every single Brooklynite who wrote in, last week, to inform me that there are, as it happens, several cricket grounds in Brooklyn. There are so many, in fact, that my impression now is that there is little but cricket grounds in Brooklyn, and so if anything it perhaps needs to diversify its sporting offerings a little.The exact number of cricket grounds in Brooklyn remains the subject of fevered debate. Fritz Favorule pitched five, with the mention of a Brooklyn Cricket League, too, while Laurence Bachmann made mention of “at least half a dozen that I know of,” rather suggesting the real number could be in the thousands.Credit to Laurence, too, for being the only correspondent willing to take on the thornier side of that equation. “There are thousands of bakeries,” he added. That may be, Laurence, but do any of them do a steak slice? (Admittedly, he vouches for their sausage rolls, which is a good start.)Sorry, regardless, for causing such offense in what is, without question, one of the top five New York boroughs. If I’m honest, I don’t think Brooklyn particularly needs to worry about competition from Headingley.On a less fractious note, thank you to Felipe Gaete for offering a Chilean perspective on Bielsa. It was Chile, you will remember, that Bielsa transformed for a few, wondrous years into the foremost power in South American soccer. “I’ve thought a lot about why he is so loved in a field in which silverware is all that matters,” Felipe wrote.“I think he holds a good deal of the values that many of us know are right, but can’t afford to apply: He gives back a goal in the name of fair play. He is also an incarnation of what the majority of fans enjoy the most: hope. The joy of winning is usually very short compared with the sense of what it might become.”That is a wonderful, and accurate, sentiment, Felipe, so it seems fitting to leave you with the last word. More

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    Roman Abramovich, Owner of Chelsea FC, Has Assets Frozen By Britain

    The Premier League club will be allowed to continue operating, but it cannot sell tickets or merchandise and is blocked from buying or selling players.LONDON — For Chelsea F.C.’s players and coaches, the first snippets of information arrived in the text messages and news alerts that pinged their cellphones as they made their way to a private terminal at London’s Gatwick Airport on Thursday morning.The British government had frozen the assets of their team’s Russian owner, Roman Abramovich, as part of a wider set of sanctions announced against a group of Russian oligarchs. The action, part of the government’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, was designed to punish a handful of individuals whose businesses, wealth and connections are closely associated with the Kremlin. Abramovich, the British government said, has enjoyed a “close relationship” with Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, for decades.The order applied to all of Abramovich’s businesses, properties and holdings, but its most consequential — and most high-profile — effect hit Chelsea, the reigning European soccer champion, which was at that very moment beginning its journey to a Thursday night Premier League match at Norwich City.News reports and government statements slowly filled in some of the gaps: Abramovich’s plans to sell the team were now untenable, and on hold; the club was forbidden from selling tickets or merchandise, lest any of the money feed back to its owner; and the team was prohibited — for the moment — from acquiring or selling players in soccer’s multibillion-dollar trading market.And hour by nervous hour, one more thing became clear: Chelsea, one of Europe’s leading teams and a contender for another Champions League title this season, was suddenly facing a worrisome future marked by austerity, uncertainty and decay.Even as it announced its actions against Abramovich and six other Russian oligarchs, the government said it had taken steps to ensure Chelsea would be able to continue its operations and complete its season. To protect the club’s interests, the government said, it had issued Chelsea a license allowing it to continue its soccer-related activities.The license, which the government said would be under “constant review,” will ensure that the team’s players and staff will continue to be paid; that fans holding season tickets can continue to attend games; and that the integrity of the Premier League, which is considered an important cultural asset and one of Britain’s most high-profile exports, will not be affected.But the sanctions will put a stranglehold on Chelsea’s spending and seriously undermine its ability to operate at the levels it has for the past two decades.By Thursday, the effort to ensure that no money flows to Abramovich was playing out in ways large and small. The telecommunications company Three suspended its jersey sponsorship — a lucrative revenue stream — and asked that its logo be removed from Chelsea’s uniforms and its stadium.At a club-owned hotel near the team’s Stamford Bridge stadium, the front desk stopped booking rooms and the restaurant shut down food and beverage service. Around the corner, at the official Chelsea team store, business continued as usual until security officials abruptly closed the shop. Shoppers, who had been filling baskets with club merchandise, were told to put everything back and leave.Moments later, signs were taped to the locked entrances. “Due to the latest government announcement this store will be closed today until further notice,” they read.Security guards closed Chelsea’s team store and blocked entrances to its stadium on Thursday.Hannah Mckay/ReutersAn uncertain future awaits, with the sanctions affecting everything from the money Chelsea spends on travel to how it dispenses the tens of millions of dollars it receives from television broadcasters.Chelsea acknowledged its new reality in a statement, but suggested it intended to immediately enter into discussions with the government about the scope of the license the team had been granted. “This will include,” the team said, “seeking permission for the license to be amended in order to allow the club to operate as normal as possible.”At the club on Thursday morning, staff members were struggling to come to terms with what the government’s actions would mean for them, their jobs and the team. Many club officials, including Chelsea’s coach, Thomas Tuchel, a German, and Abramovich’s chief lieutenant, the club director Marina Granovskaia, were still trying to understand what they could and could not do.One major deal is off the table: The freezing of Abramovich’s assets makes it impossible — at least in the short term — for him to follow through on his announced plans to sell Chelsea. Under the new arrangement, the British government will have oversight of that process. And while it said it would not necessarily block a sale, the effect would be to heavily diminish any proposed sale price, and the proceeds “could not go to the sanctioned individual while he is subject to sanctions” — leaving Abramovich little incentive to move forward.Whatever happens next, nothing will be the same at Chelsea. Since Abramovich arrived as a little-known Russian businessman in 2003, he has lavished more money on buying talent than almost any other club owner in soccer history, with Chelsea’s constant flow of players and coaches in and out of the club being a hallmark of his years in charge. In the minutes after the sanctions were announced, though, it quickly became apparent that Chelsea would cease to be a player in the multibillion-dollar player trading market, unable to acquire new talent, to sell any of its current players and, without Abramovich’s regular infusions of his personal fortune, to continue to pay the huge salaries of the players it currently employs.The American Christian Pulisic and other Chelsea players now face an uncertain future.Toby Melville/ReutersFor Chelsea fans, too, there was confusion about how and when they could attend games. While season tickets will remain valid, any new sales are prohibited, including to away matches and, crucially, any future Champions League games should the team advance to the later rounds of the competition. Chelsea’s next Champions League game, at the French champion Lille, is set for Wednesday; a berth in the quarterfinals is at stake.That trip and any future travel outside London will now be carefully scrutinized after the government announced a per-game limit of 20,000 pounds (about $26,000) in travel expenses. Those penalties might have been among the discussion points as Chelsea’s players and staff members traveled to the private terminal at Gatwick Airport, south of London, to board a chartered jet for the short flight to Norwich.By then, Tuchel’s phone was buzzing. Tuchel, the coach who last week responded angrily to a stream of questions about Abramovich and Ukraine at a news conference, probably knew little more than those who were peppering him with questions.On Thursday, he would have been trying to focus on the trip to Norwich City, where his team won, 3-1, and on the one that will follow on Sunday, Chelsea’s first home game since its world turned upside down.At that game, perhaps for the final time in months, Chelsea will play in front of a full house. A sign attached to the entrance of Stamford Bridge said as much on Thursday: The home game against Newcastle United is sold out. More

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    Real Madrid Rally Leaves P.S.G. Chasing Goals and Ghosts

    Karim Benzema’s second-half hat trick delivered a familiar disappointment to a star-studded French champion.MADRID — Karim Benzema could not have known, not consciously, what he was doing. It all happened too quickly, too chaotically, to be anything other than instinctual. He was standing on the edge of the Paris St.-Germain box. The ball slipped through a thicket of players. It was at his feet. He jabbed out a foot, a flash of movement, a tic, a twitch. And then everything melted around him.Benzema raced off to the corner of the Santiago Bernabéu, its remodeling still a work in progress, where the new is slowly emerging from the old. His Real Madrid teammates sprinted from all directions to join him, to swarm him, to swallow him. David Alaba grabbed a plastic folding chair and brandished it above his head. The stands above writhed and shook, the crowd rendered delirious by witnessing the impossible.Not quite 20 minutes earlier, Real Madrid had been out of the Champions League. As good as gone, anyway. The team that prides itself as the Kings of Europe — as a banner unfurled by the club’s ultras before the game put it — looked old and tired, caught in the megawatt glare of P.S.G.’s star power.It was not just that Kylian Mbappé had scored, extending the French side’s lead to two goals on aggregate; it was that he had seen two more disallowed for offside, one of them the sort of moment only the true greats can conjure, somehow leaving Thibaut Courtois, Real Madrid’s goalkeeper, sprawling on the grass despite not even touching the ball.Mbappé’s every move flickered with menace, fizzed with energy. Éder Militao, the defender tasked with shadowing him, is no slouch, but he had spent much of the evening heaving for air, staring at the Frenchman’s heels. Neymar, too, was starting to drift and to dance, picking holes and pulling strings. For an hour, one team looked like the future, and the other like the past.The Bernabéu sensed it, too. Half the stadium remains scarred by engineering work, but the club had found a way to cram in 61,000 fans, its largest crowd in two years. They had gathered hours beforehand, lighting flares and throwing firecrackers on the streets running from the Paseo de la Castellana, bravado erasing the doubts and the fears.Has Kylian Mbappé played his last Champions League match for P.S.G.?Javier Soriano/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThey had found it within themselves to applaud Mbappé when his name was announced — they might be seeing more of him, after all — but this was not what they had come to see. Real Madrid is not supposed to be the foil for someone else’s exhibition. The grumbles and the groans, muted at first, grew louder with every P.S.G. pass.And then, from nowhere, everything changed. Gianluigi Donnarumma dawdled on the ball; Benzema shoved him aside. The ball fell to Vinicius Junior, who returned it to Benzema, a few yards from goal. Suddenly, Real Madrid had a glimmer. In this competition, a glimmer is all anyone needs.The knockout stages of the Champions League have, in recent years, made a habit of producing the unthinkable; it happens so frequently now that the only conclusion is that the spectacular is hard-wired into the competition’s underlying code. Through some combination of factors — the high stakes, pressure and critical mass of talent — it has become the most fertile breeding ground imaginable for the spectacular.Nobody is immune. It has happened to Ajax, Manchester City, Bayern Munich and Real Madrid itself over the years. But whether it is through correlation or causation, it does seem to happen to both Paris St.-Germain, and to Lionel Messi, rather more than might be expected.For P.S.G., that first goal from Benzema carried with it an echo of the failures that have marred its desperate, expensive attempts to win this competition: the ransacking of the Parc des Princes by Manchester United and, most of all, the 6-1 defeat to Barcelona in 2017, the game the club has spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to forget.P.S.G., a Champions League finalist in 2020 and a semifinalist last season, will miss out on the trophy it covets most again.Javier Soriano/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMessi, too, seemed as if he had seen a ghost. He was present, after all, for Barcelona’s collapses in Rome in 2018 and at Anfield in 2019; he was on the field the day the greatest club team in history succumbed, 8-2, to Bayern Munich in 2020. He had been powerless, then, and he seemed powerless now.He had, in truth, been a peripheral figure for much of the game, flickering to life only occasionally, overshadowed even when P.S.G. ran rampant by the vibrancy and the youthfulness of Mbappé. As soon as Real Madrid scored and the Bernabéu roared, though, he seemed to sink from view completely, a callow and diminished figure, the greatest force of agency soccer has ever seen apparently resigned to his fate.When it came, it hit him, and his teammates, like a wave, shifting the ground from beneath their feet in the space of no more than 120 seconds. Luka Modric, a veteran raging more effectively against the dying of the light, fed Benzema, who smuggled the ball past Donnarumma, drawing Madrid level on aggregate.The noise from the celebrations was still rattling around the Bernabéu when the ball broke for Benzema and he jabbed out a foot and he raced away, arms outstretched, into a squirming mass of white. Benzema’s third goal came two minutes after his second.Susana Vera/ReutersThere was, even then, still time for P.S.G., for the most expensive squad in the history of soccer to find a goal against a team that it had pinned against the ropes only a few minutes earlier, but it almost seemed too distressed, too dazed, to believe it.Mbappé, Neymar and Messi, that strike force of the best there was, the best there is and the best there might yet be, prowled the field forlorn. They knew how this ended: with lingering shots of them, heads bowed, eyes haunted, staring at the ground or gazing into the middle distance. By the time the final whistle blew, as Real Madrid’s players collapsed onto their backs and P.S.G.’s crumpled to their knees, Messi was nowhere to be seen. He had slipped from the field without a glance, without a word. It was possible, in the bedlam, to forget he had ever been there at all. More

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    FIFA Will Allow Foreign Players in Russia to Break Contracts

    The move is expected to be temporary, and less than player advocates had demanded, in hopes of not setting a precedent.Having decided that Russian teams cannot play international soccer for an indefinite period because of the country’s invasion of Ukraine, soccer’s governing body is now planning to announce that foreign players contracted by Russian teams can suspend their contracts and move elsewhere — at least temporarily.The decision will affect about 100 players, who will be able to set aside their Russian contracts and sign with new clubs through to June 30. The measure stops short of what groups representing players and worldwide leagues had requested. In a joint letter, reviewed by The New York Times, FIFPro, the largest players union, and the World Leagues Forum, an umbrella organization for more than 40 competitions, had asked FIFA, soccer’s global governing body, that athletes be allowed to leave Russia permanently.The request has created an awkward situation for FIFA. The organization had broken precedent when it moved to punish Russia for its actions in Ukraine — including barring Russia’s national team from qualifying matches for this year’s World Cup — but allowing players to break their contracts, especially outside of soccer’s traditional winter and summer windows, was potentially far more problematic.Talks over the weekend between the player groups and FIFA, which also included lawyers for European soccer’s governing body, UEFA, and club representatives, failed to reach a consensus, with officials said to be concerned about setting a precedent. Instead, FIFA has decided that players who want to leave Russian teams can do so but must return after June 30.An official statement is likely to come as soon as Monday. In their letter, FIFPro and the leagues group suggested that some players were no longer comfortable playing for Russian teams after the invasion of Ukraine.“These foreign players may rightfully consider that they are not willing to represent any longer a Russian team and should be able to immediately terminate their contract with their employer without facing any sanction whatsoever from international bodies and to be registered in a new club without being restricted by transfer period regulations,” the letter said.Under local rules, Russian clubs can have as many as eight foreign players, known as legionnaires, on their rosters. The current Russian champion, Zenit St. Petersburg, has five Brazilians, a Colombian, a Croatian and a player from Kazakhstan on its squad.At least one club, Krasnodar, announced last week that it would allow its foreign players and coaching staff to suspend their contracts. Its German coach, Daniel Farke, the former manager of the English Premier League club Norwich, quit less than two months into his contract without overseeing a single game. But foreign players continued to suit up for Russian teams in the most recent round of domestic league games over the weekend.Russia’s declaration of war has exposed gaps in the statutes under which sporting organizations like FIFA are organized. After the invasion began, and drew worldwide condemnation, FIFA lawyers and officials scrambled to find a way to take action that could be justified under its regulations. At first, officials proposed measures that stopped short of an outright ban: Russia was to be prohibited from playing on home soil and barred from using its flag and even its name. But that punishment unraveled within 24 hours when Russia’s opponents — and about a dozen other countries — announced that they would refuse to share a field with Russia wherever, and whenever, games were to be played.A day later, FIFA threw Russia’s teams and its clubs out of world soccer. But its lawyers are already bracing for a fight over the decision. Russia’s soccer federation has called for an expedited hearing at the Court of Arbitration for Sport in order for a decision to be made before March 24, the date when it was supposed to host Poland in a World Cup qualification playoff.Russia-Ukraine War: Key Things to KnowCard 1 of 3Evacuation efforts under attack. More

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    City Thumps United in Manchester Derby Stripped of Its Tension

    The Manchester derby has changed, mostly because United can no longer keep pace and City no longer has anything to prove.MANCHESTER, England — There was no tension in the last few minutes. It had gone long before the fourth goal arrived, marking the point at which victory turned into a rout. So had what little anxiety, what scant fretfulness might still have lingered. Instead, in the final few minutes of a derby, Manchester City’s fans could let go and enjoy themselves.Theirs was not a vicarious joy. There was pleasure, of course, to be had in the sight of Manchester United, once again, reduced to chasing shadows, grasping hopelessly at air, its players’ heads hanging and its fans silently trooping away. But as the minutes ticked by, the Etihad Stadium grew a little tired of crowing.Instead, City’s fans seemed light, playful. They sang the praises of Yaya Touré and his brother, Kolo, neither of whom has played for the club for some time. They turned their backs on the field, stringing their arms along each other’s shoulders and bouncing, a move known as the Poznan. City had imported it a decade ago, after a Europa League trip to Poland, but its popularity had waned. It has a vintage air, now, the feel of an inside joke.This is not how derbies are supposed to be. They are supposed to be fraught and febrile, full of visceral anger and naked hostility. The Manchester derby still has some of that: Midway through the first half, after Jadon Sancho had drawn Manchester United even, he had celebrated in the eye-line of one fan, in particular, who greeted him with puce-faced rage. It was undercut only slightly by the fact that the fan was wearing a large novelty sombrero.It is difficult, though, to escape the sense that over the years much of that fury has dissipated, at least for one half of the city. Manchester City still relishes beating its old foe, its overweening neighbor, of course. But it does not do so with the urgency, the desperation of old. This is no longer a club with a point to prove. It is no longer a day to be dreaded. Increasingly, for Manchester City, derby day is fun.Riyad Mahrez scored City’s final two goals.Laurence Griffiths/Getty ImagesFor all the attention rivalries command, for all the baroque music and the pulse-quickening montages they inspire, the shape of most of them is hard-baked and unchanging. The players and the managers and the precise circumstances in which teams meet might change from month to month and year to year, but the basic story, the outline, remains the same.In some cases, that is David seeking to give Goliath a bloody nose. Can Torino beat Juventus, just this once? Can Borussia Dortmund slow Bayern Munich’s relentless march to another championship, even for just a week or so, or can Atlético Madrid shake off its inferiority complex for long enough to pick off Real Madrid?In other derbies, it is a meeting of equal powers, vying for immediate supremacy. Barcelona’s meetings with Real Madrid are, often, ciphers for the outcome of the Spanish title race. Arsenal’s encounters with Tottenham in the North London Derby are, generally, a tussle to see which might be in contention for a place in the Champions League.Rarely does that broader narrative change. A.C. Milan might be a little weaker than Inter Milan — or vice versa — at any given time, but the teams remain peers at heart. The pendulum always swings back, whether it takes a month or a season or a couple of years, and so the nature of the rivalry remains the same.The Manchester derby has changed, though, and changed beyond recognition. There was a time, back before Abu Dhabi arrived at City and the money started flowing, when this game defined the club’s season. It was a date anticipated and dreaded in equal measure. Victory, pricking United’s conceit, could make the other nine months of bleak mediocrity worthwhile. Defeat simply lengthened the shadows.Once City’s horizons lifted, the derby became the stage on which the club sought to shake off its deep-rooted inferiority complex, to prove that it was ready to compete. At first, it brought nothing but heartache. One year, Michael Owen scored in injury time at Old Trafford, the pain more intense because parity had been so close. Another year, Wayne Rooney leapt into the sky, his comic-book overhead kick breaking City’s hearts again.And then the spell broke. City beat United twice on the way to the Premier League title in 2012: a breathtaking, era-changing 6-1 win at Old Trafford followed by a nail-biting 1-0 victory at the Etihad, the game that ultimately swung the race in City’s favor. Everything was inverted: Now it was City with the sense of superiority, and United trying to burst its bubble, taking just a little glee in scuppering a superpower.Bruno Fernandes, left, and United found few positives on Sunday.Andrew Yates/EPA, via ShutterstockNow, though, it has taken another form still. There is no fear in this game for City now, not one that is rooted in any rationality. This is no longer the game that decides the season. Instead, that will be Liverpool’s visit to City next month, or the Champions League final, or some other seismic, global event. This game, to City, now feels like a distinctly local skirmish.Part of that, of course, is because of the change in Manchester City, its transformation under Pep Guardiola — fueled by the financial power of the club’s benefactors in the Gulf — into a truly modern superpower, which has rendered the derby an inevitable conclusion, a fait accompli.But it is also because of Manchester United’s journey in the opposite direction, the perfect counterweight to the idea that money guarantees success, its dismal and seemingly irreversible decline. The gap between these teams has yawned ever wider in the last few years. It is now a chasm, vast and deep, and it is hard to see how United can start to close it.As City’s fans reveled in their looming victory, as they wheeled out the songs they used to sing when triumph was rare and the fury ran deep, United’s players seemed to wander, dazed, around the pitch, their morale sapped and their hope shattered. That, more than anything, may have drained the toxins from the crowd. There could be no tension. There could be no hatred. When the gap is so wide, when superiority is so evident, where could the fun be in that? More