Raphael Stevens

More stories

  • 125 Shares99 Views

    in Soccer

    UEFA will strip St. Petersburg of the Champions League final.

    European soccer’s governing body is convening an emergency meeting of its top board members on Friday after deciding to strip St. Petersburg, Russia, from hosting the Champions League final, the biggest club game of the year, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.The governing body, UEFA, had resisted taking the measure earlier this week, even after the country moved into two rebel-held parts of Ukraine and after its president, Vladimir V. Putin, announced Russia had formally recognized them as independent republics. UEFA took the measure after Russia’s invasion began early Thursday.The game, on May 28, was to be played in a stadium built ahead of the 2018 World Cup and financed by the Russian energy giant Gazprom, a major UEFA sponsor since 2012. In 2021, UEFA added Gazprom’s chairman, Alexander Dyukov, to its board, known as the Executive Committee. It is unclear if Dyukov will attend the meeting, which will be a video call.UEFA said in a statement that its president, Aleksander Ceferin, a Slovene lawyer, decided to call for the meeting “following the evolution of the situation between Russia and Ukraine in the last 24 hours.”“UEFA shares the international community’s significant concern for the security situation developing in Europe and strongly condemns the ongoing Russian military invasion in Ukraine,” it said.Speculation began this week about potential sites for a relocated game, with the British news media calling for it to be played in London. Last year’s final was played between two English teams, Manchester City and Chelsea, which is bankrolled by the Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich.The Champions League final has faced disruption since the outbreak of the coronavirus, with the tournament’s denouement played out in Portugal for two straight years. Other sites outside the United Kingdom remain a possibility, including Istanbul, which had to make do with hosting rights for 2023 after giving up the final game in 2020 and 2021.The British government had been the most vocal in calling for the game to be taken away from Russia, with officials actively lobbying the soccer authorities.“I have serious concerns about the sporting events due to be held in Russia, such as the Champions League final, and will discuss with the relevant governing bodies,” Nadine Dorries, the British government minister responsible for sports, wrote on Twitter.Fan groups, too, had called for the game’s relocation.A banner advertising the Champions League final at the Krestovsky stadium.Anatoly Maltsev/EPA, via Shutterstock“On this tragic day, our thoughts are with everyone in Ukraine, our friends, colleagues, members, & their loved ones,” the Fans Supporters Europe group tweeted hours after Russia’s invasion had started. “Given the events unfolding, we expect an imminent announcement from UEFA on the relocation of the Champions League final.”Soccer federations from Poland, Czech Republic and Sweden have written to FIFA calling for Russia to be banned from hosting playoff games for the Qatar World Cup. Poland is due to meet Russia in Moscow next month, and if Russia wins, it will face a final eliminator against the winner of the game between the Czechs and Sweden also in Russia.Gazprom’s influence extends beyond UEFA. Officials from the company — which controls Russia’s top club, F.C. Zenit — sit in other influential positions, like the board of the European Club Association, a representative group for top clubs. Gazprom has since 2007 also sponsored one of Germany’s leading teams, Schalke, an association that now appears to be at an end.“Following recent developments, FC Schalke 04 have decided to remove the logo of main sponsor GAZPROM from the club’s shirts. It will be replaced by lettering reading ‘Schalke 04’ instead,” the club said on Twitter on Thursday.UEFA will also decide on the fate of teams from Russia still involved in its competitions. Zenit was on Thursday to play the second game of its two-leg playoff against Real Betis in Spain in the Europa League, Europe’s second-tier club tournament.The crisis has also led to mounting speculation about the future of Abramovich’s decade-long ownership of Chelsea. He was not named in a first tranche of Russian billionaires subject to British government sanctions this week. But some lawmakers said he, and Alisher Usmanov, a billionaire whose holding company USM is the biggest partner of another Premier League team, Everton, should be added to the sanctions list.Chris Bryant, a lawmaker in the opposition Labour Party, told Parliament on Thursday that Abramovich should be “no longer able to own a football club in this country.”Bryant criticized the government for allowing Abramovich to continue doing business in the United Kingdom after saying he had seen official government documents from 2019 that described the Russian as having “links to the Russian state and his public association with corrupt activity and practices.”“That is nearly three years ago and yet remarkably little has been done in relation,” Bryant said. Abramovich previously faced difficulties entering Britain after new visa restrictions were imposed on Russian businessmen in 2018. A spokesman for Chelsea declined to comment. More

  • 100 Shares99 Views

    in Soccer

    Soccer’s Fastest-Growing Market Is the One for Ideas

    Wealthy teams accustomed to pursuing players are simultaneously competing for the signatures of a new era’s most sought-after talents: data analysts.Markus Krösche’s first summer in his new job was a frenetic one. Within a couple of months of taking up his post as Eintracht Frankfurt’s sporting director, he found himself with not only a manager to replace but a couple of star players, too.Krösche, 41, hired from RB Leipzig, got to work. He hired Oliver Glasner as coach. He completed a complicated deal to sign Rafael Santos Borré, a Colombian forward, from the Argentine club River Plate, and acquired two young wingers to complement him. In total, he brought in 11 players that summer, and sold or loaned out a dozen more.The acquisition that may prove his most significant, though, passed by almost unnoticed. Quietly, Krösche returned to his former club to hire Bastian Quentmeier, a bookish former hockey player with unruly hair and a fisherman’s beard, as his new club’s head of data analysis.Even in the relatively small world of German soccer, few had heard of Quentmeier. Even fewer knew exactly what his role in Leipzig — data scout — actually involved. Those who did, though, regarded him highly. “He has something unique,” said Ralf Rangnick, the all-purpose visionary and current Manchester United manager who had approved Quentmeier’s hiring at Leipzig. “Really good, and unique.”The appointment did not generate headlines. Quentmeier’s arrival was so low-key, in fact, that Eintracht did not even see the need to confirm it on the club’s website. There was no announcement beyond a subtle update to Quentmeier’s personal LinkedIn profile.That modesty belied its importance. Krösche had pulled off a coup — strengthening his club’s hand while weakening a rival’s — in an arms race so new that it is still just taking shape. He had hired Quentmeier not merely for his skills but for something of increasing value to clubs across Europe: his knowledge.Sea ChangePerhaps the best way to gauge the speed with which soccer has embraced data is to compare Quentmeier’s circumstances in his new job with those in his previous post. At Eintracht, he is in charge of a team of three analysts: another, full-time staff member, plus two students in support roles. There is nothing unusual about that.When he arrived at Leipzig, in 2016, it was a little different. He had joined the club, initially on a part-time basis, after bumping into Johannes Spors, its chief scout, at a conference in Munich. At the time, Quentmeier was working for a subsidiary of Scout7, a company that provides data and video footage to clubs.“We had games from all these leagues around the world,” he said. “We had to pay for all of them, but we found that there were some leagues that the clubs, our clients, were not interested in.” His job was to track which leagues were being watched by teams that had signed up for the service, and which were not.Quentmeier thought nothing of the meeting until, a few months later, Spors got back in touch. Despite its corporate backing, Leipzig had always cultivated a deliberate start-up energy, and Spors was interested in finding out how best to use data to help with signing players. He asked Quentmeier if he would take on the “mini-job” of advising the club which data providers might be most useful.The pay was hardly lavish — a few hundred euros a month, Quentmeier said — but the trial was successful. A few months later, Spors and Rangnick asked if he would like to join the club permanently.Officially, he would be a data scout — one of only a couple employed in Germany at the time — but that did not capture the full extent of his role. Quentmeier was not joining an established staff to be trained. He was in charge of a department of one. “There was nothing, really,” he said. His job was, in effect, to find out what the job of a data scout would be.He spent the first few months trawling through the various data providers, working out which ones gave him the best quality of information. He spoke to Opta, Wyscout and InStat, three well-known providers, and then branched out, outside soccer, picking the brains of anyone he could think of who worked in data analysis.Mostly, though, he tried to work out the sorts of questions a soccer team’s data system needed to answer. “Every coach and every sporting director and scout has their own idea,” he said. He knew his model needed to be flexible enough to adapt to individual tastes. It was not enough just to compare defenders, for example. “It had to distinguish between someone who could play the ball and someone who was more a warrior,” he said.Designing and building the system occupied most of his first year. “It was easier to do it on my own, from the start,” he said, rather than simply buying an external system and trying to tweak it to suit Leipzig’s needs.The model Quentmeier built did not just allow him to assess players or performances. It let him, and his superiors, analyze how a coach played. It predicted young players’ development, based on historical parallels. It helped him discern whether a player was shining because he was a part of a good team, or because he had some special talent.Most of all, it gave RB Leipzig another edge. “Leipzig spent a lot of time and money to be at the head of the curve,” Rangnick said in a telephone interview last year. Those sorts of things do not stay secret for long in soccer. Quentmeier believes that when he started, only a couple of other teams in Germany were investing in data.Now, he said, it is “normal” for clubs to have a team of data analysts. That means it is normal, too, for teams to do all they can to make sure they have the best data analysts. That can mean looking outside the sport for expertise. Or, increasingly, it can mean taking the approach that brought Quentmeier to Eintracht, and plucking someone from a direct rival.Shopping ListsLike Quentmeier, a vast majority of data scientists — even at the game’s most decorated clubs — remain essentially anonymous. Only occasionally, when a team makes a particularly significant or an especially unusual appointment, do their names drift to the surface.Manchester United’s hiring of Dominic Jordan, in October, as its first director of data science was greeted as a major step forward for a team hidebound by conservatism. Last year, Manchester City’s appointment of Laurie Shaw, an academic with a Ph.D. in computational astrophysics who had previously advised the British government, seemed sufficiently exotic to attract attention.The picture inside the sport, though, is different. “There is much more knowledge of smart people, people doing good work, people making waves at other clubs,” said Omar Chaudhuri, the chief intelligence officer at the data-led consultancy Twenty First Group. “Executives will know them by name. They are much more likely to have them on their shopping lists.”These are not, in most cases, easy appointments to make. Krösche knew Quentmeier from their time at Leipzig; he could vouch for his work firsthand. Not everyone has that benefit. Clubs are reticent to share knowledge and information that they consider proprietary. Few, if any, are prepared to make public the work performed by their data departments. That makes establishing the credentials of any individual member of a staff extremely difficult.“Sometimes, proof of their success is enough to convince people,” said Chaudhuri, noting that clubs perceived to be doing well will find their staff in demand from others, eager to acquire a little of the magic. Even then, it can be hard to know exactly where credit should go.“Executives who aren’t experts in data do not necessarily know what good work looks like,” he said. “Sophistication of analysis and sophistication of presentation aren’t always the same thing.”In some cases, that has led clubs to the likes of Twenty First Group and Nolan Partners, a headhunting firm based in London that specializes in sports, to establish who is doing what and who is doing it well.“We have provided a picture of what exists in that space for a few teams,” said Stewart King, Nolan Partners’ lead for Europe. Twenty First Group has been commissioned to run recruitment processes, too, sitting in on panels and devising practical tests for potential candidates, Chaudhuri said.Often, there is an emphasis on communication: Quentmeier has found that analysts and the models they use have to be able to predict, and answer, the sorts of questions coaches and scouts are likely to ask. That, Chaudhuri said, is the thing clubs are looking for above anything else.Both expect these sorts of acquisitions to become more common over the next couple of years, as clubs scramble to keep pace with rivals or forge ahead. Ability is no longer the only currency in the transfer market. Information, and the skill to interpret it, is just as important now, too. More

  • 113 Shares159 Views

    in Soccer

    The USWNT vs. U.S. Soccer: an Equal Pay Timeline

    A six-year legal fight that saw victories on the field and losses in federal court ended with a multimillion-dollar settlement. Here’s how the sides got here.A settlement announced on Tuesday abruptly ended a six-year legal fight between dozens of members of the United States women’s national team and U.S. Soccer, an often bitter and contentious dispute that had placed some of the world’s most popular and high-profile athletes at the forefront of the fight for equal pay for women.What was the fight about? That was complicated from the start. A simple slogan — equal pay — faded into shades of gray upon deeper review of different contracts, different schedules and different values placed on women’s soccer by the sport’s global leadership and its U.S. federation.The timeline of the fight, which started with a wage discrimination complaint filed by five top players in March 2016, is much more easily explained. That single filing set off years of twists and turns, court arguments and public statements, hard feelings, hard-won victories and at least one humbling defeat for the athletes.Here’s a review of how we got from the initial complaint to this settlement, told through reporting by The New York Times.March 2016: The shot across the bow.Hope Solo at the Rio Olympics in 2016. An original complainant but long retired from the team, she continues to wage her own separate equal pay fight against U.S. Soccer.Eugenio Savio/Associated PressThe equal pay fight began with five star players and a claim of wage discrimination filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the U.S. agency that enforces civil rights laws against workplace discrimination.“The numbers speak for themselves,” said goalkeeper Hope Solo, one of the players who signed the complaint. Solo said the men’s players “get paid more to just show up than we get paid to win major championships.”Solo was joined in the complaint by the co-captains Carli Lloyd and Becky Sauerbrunn, forward Alex Morgan and midfielder Megan Rapinoe. As The Times noted that day:In their complaint, the five players cited recent U.S. Soccer financial reports as proof that they have become the federation’s main economic engine even as, they said, they often earned only half as much — or less — than their male counterparts.At the same time, the players said, they exceeded revenue projections by as much as $16 million in 2015, when their World Cup triumph set television viewership records and a nine-game victory tour in packed stadiums produced record gate receipts and attendance figures.Wounded by the accusation they were treating the women’s players unfairly, U.S. Soccer — which had for years been a global leader in advancing women’s soccer — pushed back forcefully by citing figures that it said showed the men’s national team produced revenue and attendance about double that of the women’s team, and television ratings that were “a multiple” of what the women attracted. The federation accused the players and their lawyers of cherry-picking figures from an extraordinarily successful year for the women — they had won the World Cup in 2015 — and a U.S. Soccer spokesman called their math “inaccurate, misleading or both.”Offended by the suggestion that their games, and their successes, were worth less to the federation than those of the men’s team, the women and their teammates dug in for a fight.Few knew then how long it would last.Early 2017: An education and a new contract.Becky Sauerbrunn in a match against France in 2017.Robin Alam/Icon Sportswire, via Getty ImagesWithin a year, the players had taken control of their collective fate, firing their union chief and reorganizing their players’ association in ways that gave them a more active role in the issues affecting them.“It was always the plan,” Sauerbrunn, the team captain, said at the time, “to have a players’ association that listens to all the voices of its members and then can take that, and elevate that, and try to make that a reality.”Receiving a high-speed education in topics like labor law and public relations, the players voted one another onto negotiating teams and subcommittees and — between camps and full-time jobs as professional athletes — threw themselves into the task of negotiating a new collective bargaining agreement with U.S. Soccer.Uniting disparate teammates through text messages, overnight emails and anonymous player surveys, they determined priorities for a new contract and then made their cases personally in negotiating sessions with the federation and its lawyers.Within a few months, they had a deal.The agreement includes a sizable increase in base pay for the players — more than 30 percent, initially — and improved match bonuses that could double some of their incomes, to $200,000 to $300,000 in any given year, and even more in a year that includes a World Cup or Olympic campaign.The agreement largely sidestepped the broader equal pay fight that the women had made the cornerstone of their cause. The players were able to not only take pride in gains on salaries and bonuses, but also in having won control over some licensing and marketing rights that the union saw as an opening to test the team’s value on the open market.March 2019: Same fight, new forum.Labor peace did little to move the sides closer to an equal pay agreement, so in March 2019 the players withdrew their E.E.O.C. complaint and significantly raised the stakes by suing U.S. Soccer for gender discrimination.In their filing and a statement released by the team, the 28 players described “institutionalized gender discrimination” that they say has existed for years.The discrimination, the athletes said, affects not only their paychecks but also where they play and how often, how they train, the medical treatment and coaching they receive, and even how they travel to matches.The suit brought the fight to a new forum but also presented new hurdles. The players now not only had to prove that their team and the men’s national team did the same work, they also had to overcome questions about the differences in their pay structures and their negotiated collective bargaining agreements. And the C.B.A. they fought so hard to win suddenly left them without one bit of leverage: The players were forbidden by its terms to strike at least until it expired at the end of 2021.July 2019: Stadium chants and parade taunts.Fans cheered at a parade for the U.S. women’s team as they celebrated their World Cup victory in 2019.Damon Winter/The New York TimesIn the summer of 2019, a fight that had played out in public statements, social media hashtags and white T-shirts for more than three years moved to its biggest stage to date: the Women’s World Cup in France.By then, the U.S. national team’s stars were fighting not only their federation and others opposed to their equal pay claims, but also a sitting U.S. president, critics of their victory margins and those who didn’t appreciate their goal celebrations. When it lifted the trophy, though, all the team had was friends.The chant was faint at first, bubbling up from the northern stands inside the Stade de Lyon. Gradually it grew louder. Soon it was deafening.“Equal pay!” it went, over and over, until thousands were joining in, filling the stadium with noise. “Equal pay! Equal pay!”A few days later, fans repeated the chant as the U.S. Soccer president Carlos Cordeiro feted the team after its victory parade in New York.February 2020: The price of peace? $67 million.Among the voluminous filings before the women’s case was heard in federal court last year were two notable ones seeking to end it outright.In separate requests for summary judgment — the process in which each side claims its case is so strong that the judge should rule in its favor — U.S. Soccer and the players showed just how far apart the players and the federation remained not only in what they considered a fair outcome, but also in their basic concepts of what constituted equal pay, despite years of litigation, depositions and public relations campaigns.U.S. Soccer asked for a simple declaration that the players’ claims were without merit; simultaneously, the players finally put a price tag on what they considered a fair outcome:The federation sought to avoid a looming gender discrimination trial by asking the judge to dismiss the players’ claim. The women’s players also asked for a pretrial decision, but on far different terms: They are seeking almost $67 million — and potentially millions more — in back pay and damages.March 2020: The fight gets ugly.While Rapinoe had offered an olive branch at the victory parade, hinting at the idea of a settlement on points on which the two sides agreed, that hope was gone months later.The spark was a court filing in which U.S. Soccer, through its lawyers, argued that “indisputable science” proved that the players on its World Cup-winning women’s national team were inferior to men.Carlos Cordeiro resigned after U.S. Soccer argued through its lawyers that women’s players were inferior to their men’s counterparts.Charles Rex Arbogast/Associated Press“I know that we’re in a contentious fight,” Rapinoe said, “but that crossed a line completely.”U.S. Soccer fired its lawyers, but the damage was done. After unsuccessfully trying to manage the fallout, Cordeiro resigned. Talks of a settlement that might have headed off the march to federal court fell apart.April 2020: A crushing defeat for the players.The ruling in the lawsuit, when it came, was devastating for the players. The judge, R. Gary Klausner of the United States District Court for the Central District of California, granted the federation’s motion for summary judgment. But he went further: He declared that the women’s core argument — that they had been paid less than players on the men’s national team — was factually wrong.In his ruling, the judge dismissed the players’ arguments that they were systematically underpaid by U.S. Soccer in comparison with the men’s national team. In fact, Klausner wrote, U.S. Soccer had substantiated its argument that the women’s team had actually earned more “on both a cumulative and an average per-game basis” than the men’s team during the years at issue in the lawsuit.The brutal irony, of course, was that in going to court against U.S. Soccer while they were at the peak of their powers, the women’s team had also picked the absolute worst time to line up a few years of their salaries against a few years of the men’s pay.Since February 2015, the agreed-upon start of the class-action period in the case, the women’s team had won two World Cup titles (and millions in bonus payments for those triumphs) and other major salary gains by negotiating a new collective bargaining agreement. During the same period, the men’s team had plumbed new lows, with its failures serving to cripple the women’s case.By failing to qualify for the only men’s World Cup played during the class window, the men became ineligible for millions of dollars in performance bonuses of their own. Those payments would have swelled their paydays from U.S. Soccer far beyond what the women could ever have earned.A chance to salvage something from defeat?It was, a day later, hard to overstate the weight of the court decision. Judge Klausner had not only ruled against the players’ arguments; in effect, he had said they could never win. Yet even though U.S. Soccer’s victory in court was complete, and the players immediately announced their intention to appeal, the federation signaled just as quickly that it was still happy to discuss a way out.“We look forward to working with the women’s national team to chart a positive path forward to grow the game both here at home and around the world,” it said in the briefest of statements after the ruling.Cindy Parlow Cone, who replaced Cordeiro as president of U.S. Soccer, signaled a willingness to continue negotiations with the players.Charles Rex Arbogast/Associated PressThe federation’s words seemed carefully chosen. The seemingly endless battles with its most popular players have unquestionably damaged — and continue to damage — U.S. Soccer’s reputation. The dispute has even brought it into conflict with its own sponsors.But much has changed since the equal pay war began: U.S. Soccer has a new president, the former women’s player Cindy Cone, and a new chief executive, and neither of them could reasonably be tied to past missteps and injustices.For them, and for U.S. Soccer, rebuilding a functional relationship with the women’s team — the federation’s most valuable asset and a critical moneymaker in troubled economic times — should be a top priority. If that means eating some crow and cutting a check to signal an eagerness to move forward, it might even work.November 2021: A small victory, and a new start.In November of last year, U.S. Soccer and the players reached an agreement that resolved claims about unequal working conditions. The deal, a rare moment of détente in the yearslong fight, formalized an effort the federation had already begun to remove differences in areas like staffing, travel, hotel accommodations and venue choices related to men’s and women’s national team matches. But it was a necessary step for the players before they could appeal their larger defeat in federal court.For the players and their lawyers, the agreement brings opportunity: In settling their issues related to working conditions, the women’s stars cleared the way to appealing a judge’s decision in May that had rejected most of their equal pay claims. For the federation, removing one of the last unresolved items in the team’s wage-discrimination lawsuit allowed its new leadership team to rid itself of one more point of contention in a dispute they would prefer to see end, and to signal that U.S. Soccer is open to more accommodations.U.S. Soccer’s president, Cindy Parlow Cone, hailed the agreement, saying it signaled the federation’s efforts “to find a new way forward” with the women’s team and, hopefully, a way out of the rest of the litigation.“This settlement is good news for everyone,” Cone said, “and I believe will serve as a springboard for continued progress.”Tuesday: The fight ends at last.Tuesday’s settlement between the women’s players and U.S. Soccer includes $24 million in compensation for the athletes — largely back pay for dozens of players who were included once the plaintiffs were granted class-action status, and several million dollars in seed money for a fund that will be available to players for post-career plans and initiatives to grow the women’s game.It also includes a pledge from U.S. Soccer to equalize pay, appearance fees and match bonuses for the women’s and men’s national teams for all games, including the World Cup, in the teams’ next collective bargaining agreements.That last bit is the stage for the next fight: Both the men’s and women’s teams are playing under expired — and separate — agreements. Negotiations on new ones are ongoing. It’s not clear when a deal will be struck. More

  • 63 Shares109 Views

    in Soccer

    Remembering What Draws You In

    Fandom can be an exercise in frustration. But for a supporter who grew up on American sports, soccer’s community offered a welcome sense of power that had been missing.Astead Herndon, who follows politics for The Times and Tottenham Hotspur because he just can’t help himself, is filling in for Rory Smith this week.Let’s start with the bad: Tottenham Hotspur has not won a trophy in the 13 years I have watched nearly every one of its matches.It did not win one while I was in high school in Illinois, where I settled on my Tottenham fandom after selecting the club at random in the FIFA video game. It did not win one while I was in college, when I was a regular at early-morning gatherings of the first Tottenham Hotspur Supporter’s Club in Wisconsin.The early years of Mauricio Pochettino happened when I lived in Boston. Back then, I would sneak away from my desk at city hall to watch matches at a downtown pub. No trophy.In Washington D.C., the next place I lived, I watched two Champions League runs. In New York I once swore off a bar that serves particularly excellent nachos for a full year simply because it was the place where I watched the 2019 Champions League final. No trophy.Let’s not talk about the José Mourinho era at all.Thirteen years of supporting Tottenham, by American millennial standards, makes me something of Spurs sage. (The day Tottenham sold Gareth Bale, I drank away my feelings at a bar in Wisconsin. A well-meaning friend texted, “Sorry about Gary.”) In the beginning, I had an elaborate system of absolutely illegal streams. Then the NBC Premier League deal brought my team to me every weekend. Now I can stream its games right on my phone.Sell us your cups, your shirts, your scarves. Just please don’t sell Harry Kane.David Klein/ReutersMy 13 years don’t make me special, of course, more deserving of sporting triumph that fans who have waited far longer than I have. I could have just as easily have picked West Ham or Newcastle or Manchester United or (shudder) Arsenal off that FIFA console. Every fan’s pain (and joy) is their own.But those 13 years have seen the sport change itself, influenced by a global landscape that has undergone rapid political and cultural upheaval. There is no denying: the influx of money has changed soccer, probably forever. And while millions of soccer fans, including myself, decried the idea of the world’s wealthiest teams joining in a Super League, the sport’s most powerful bodies seem hellbent on imminent, structural change.The specter of that kind of systemic disruption sometimes feels like a reversal of what first drew me — and probably you — to the game. I grew up watching American sports, where the fan is assumed to be powerless. Your team could move across the country in search of a better stadium, or better tax laws. Rivalries in college sports — but also in baseball, football and hockey — were routinely upended by conference realignments driven by the pursuit of rich television contracts.In soccer, though, structures felt sacred. Tottenham, for example, is still mad at Arsenal for a move the latter made more than a century ago. But most of all, there was a language of fan ownership in soccer that I enjoyed. We are Spurs. There was a supporter’s trust. It rejected the way American sports — and specifically the N.F.L. — seemed to bother me the most. There, I thought, fans didn’t matter.The Super League announcement reminded me of that feeling. It was not only what the team’s were proposing, but the flagrant nature of it all. A group of rich clubs secretly plotting to disrupt a global game, willing to sever century-old traditions and alter generational rivalries, and do it all without a bit of fan input. Soccer clubs, after all — big ones or small ones and especially bad ones — don’t get to pack up their gear and run away from their fans when things go bad.Fans are happy to offer their support. Most times, they just ask their team to deserve it.David Klein/ReutersStill, with the benefit of maturity, I now realize that I always saw soccer through rose-colored glasses. The wealth inequality that has grown in recent years was already present 13 years ago. There was, I’m sure, also some desire to be a hipster in a land of Midwestern, “American football” fans. Spurs are also firmly among the world’s richest teams, even if they are well behind some of their rivals. But isn’t soccer fandom different? That’s what the Super League owners underestimated: The sense among fans that the club is equally their own, and that their support still must be earned. For a decade, fans of my other team, the Chicago Bulls, complained about post-Michael Jordan management decisions (thankfully it’s better now). Tottenham supporters tried to stage a protest over the January transfer window. Every club has its crises, its test of its fans commitment — some more existential than others.As a fan, I think I’ve accepted that 13 years from now, soccer will look different. I will not be surprised if we see a zombie Super League, or a biennial World Cup that no one outside FIFA seems to want. There will be more reminders of our collective smallness as fans. More protests, too.But margins matter. And while the Super League announcement felt familiar to my experience in American sports, the reaction to it was not.So let’s end with the good.At Tottenham, fandom passes through generations, from father to Heung-min Son.Peter Cziborra/Action Images, Via ReutersFor 13 years, across new schools and new cities, new jobs and the campaign trail, the cadence of Tottenham has been a comforting structure. Even the disappointments feel good, sometimes, a reminder that while I don’t support the world’s best team, I do support the world’s funniest.I like to think there’s an open pessimism to soccer fandom. Only a few teams have a shot at the title every year, and there are no coming draft picks to save you. At Spurs, the pessimism is a feature, not a bug. It is a bonding point among the supporters.In a way, that culture helps distill fandom down to its irrational essence. There is no guarantee Spurs will ever win a trophy I can cheer, no assurance that my team — your team, any team — will always be closer to the top than the bottom. The gap is growing between the club and its rivals; even Newcastle United has money now.But for the next 13 years, and the 13 after that, I’m willing watch nearly every Tottenham match, just on the off chance that the facts as I’ve come to know them are wrong.Back to Regular Programming SoonThat’s all for this week, and Rory will be back soon. For now, get in touch at askrory@nytimes.com with any hints, tips, complaints or ideas. Twitter works for finding him sometimes, too.Have a great weekend. More

  • 113 Shares179 Views

    in Soccer

    West Ham Fines Kurt Zouma Over Cat Abuse Video

    Zouma, a defender who also plays for the French national soccer team, lost a sponsorship deal with Adidas on Wednesday after a video circulated online of him kicking his cat.West Ham United, the English soccer club, said it had fined Kurt Zouma, a defender who also plays for France’s international team, “the maximum amount possible” on Wednesday, after video footage circulated online of him kicking and slapping his cat.The footage, which was obtained by The Sun, a British newspaper, was originally shared by Zouma’s brother Yoan on Snapchat.One clip shows Zouma, 27, lifting his cat with two hands and drop-kicking it to the ground as the person recording the video laughs. In a second clip, Mr. Zouma throws an object at the cat, which scrambles to hide under a table. A third clip shows a child raising the cat toward Zouma, who whacks the cat across its face.West Ham said in a statement that Zouma was “extremely remorseful and, like everyone at the club, fully understands the depth of feeling surrounding the incident and the need for action to be taken.”The Sun reported the fine to be 250,000 pounds, or about $338,000. West Ham said the money would be donated to animal welfare charities.Zouma apologized in a statement, saying that there were “no excuses for my behavior, which I sincerely regret.”He added that his two cats “are perfectly fine and healthy” and that his behavior was “an isolated incident that will never happen again.”Zouma delivered his cats to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, which said in a statement on Wednesday that it would lead an investigation.“We were dealing with this issue before the video went viral online,” the charity said in an emailed statement.The videos have already had ramifications for West Ham and for Zouma, who lost a major sponsorship deal with Adidas. Stefan Pursche, an Adidas spokesman, said in a statement on Wednesday that Zouma “is no longer an Adidas-contracted athlete.”Vitality, an insurance company, said in a statement on Wednesday that it was “very distressed” by the videos and, as a result, was immediately suspending its sponsorship of West Ham.“At Vitality, we condemn animal cruelty and violence of any kind,” the company said.Another West Ham sponsor, Experience Kissimmee, which promotes tourism in Osceola County, Fla., said on Twitter on Tuesday that it would evaluate its relationship with the club. It added that it was also disappointed to see Zouma in the starting lineup for West Ham’s game against Watford on Tuesday night.Zouma, who joined West Ham in 2021 from Chelsea, was booed and jeered throughout the match by Watford’s fans, who screamed a rhyming chant that addressed the video.West Ham won the game 1-0. Before the match, West Ham’s manager, David Moyes, defended his decision to play Zouma. Moyes told reporters that although he was “a big animal lover” and disappointed in Zouma, his job was to “try and win for West Ham and put the best team I could to give me that chance.” More

  • 150 Shares189 Views

    in Soccer

    Marc Overmars, Dutch Soccer Star, Quits Post After Admitting to Inappropriate Texts

    Marc Overmars, a former player who became a director at Ajax, one of Europe’s top clubs, apologized for his actions. The club said he had “gone over the line.”Marc Overmars, a former Dutch soccer star who became a top executive at one of Europe’s most prominent teams, has abruptly left his job after admitting to sending inappropriate text messages to female colleagues.Overmars, 48, had been director of football affairs at AFC Ajax, the Amsterdam soccer team, since 2012. He had recently renewed his contract until June 2026, according to Ajax, which announced the resignation late Sunday. Many details remained unclear, including whether charges had been filed against Overmars.Overmars apologized for his behavior in a statement issued by Ajax, in which he said he was “ashamed.”“Last week I was confronted with reports about my behavior. And how this has come across to others,” Overmars said. “Unfortunately, I didn’t realize that I was crossing the line with this, but that was made clear to me in recent days.”“For someone in my position, this behavior is unacceptable. I now see that too. But it is too late. I see no other option but to leave Ajax,” he added.Overmars played as a winger for some of Europe’s top soccer teams, including Ajax, Arsenal and Barcelona, as well as the Dutch national team.Ajax is currently leading the Eredivisie, the highest level of professional soccer in the Netherlands, and is the defending national champion. The resignation comes as a sexual misconduct scandal dominates the news and has captured national attention in the Netherlands after allegations emerged of widespread sexual misconduct at a popular TV talent show. Experts have said that issues surrounding consent and sexual misconduct have long been ignored in the Netherlands.Leen Meijaard, the chairman of Ajax’s supervisory board, called Overmars “probably the best football director that Ajax has had.” But, he added, after consulting an expert and the team’s chief executive they concluded that it was not an option for him to continue in his role.“It is devastating for the women who have had to deal with this behavior. When we heard the news, we immediately acted,” Meijaard said. “Unfortunately, he has really gone over the line.”The soccer world has seen multiple harassment scandals recently. The head of a program run by FIFA, the world soccer governing body, to bring together luminaries of the game, FIFA Legends, was found to have sexually harassed a subordinate in 2019. In 2020, female soccer players, including some who played in Haiti’s national soccer program, accused senior soccer officials of coercing players into having sex.Edwin van der Sar, a former star goalkeeper who is currently Ajax’s chief executive and who played with Overmars at Ajax in the 1990s, called the situation “appalling” and said that the club would pay more attention to matters of misconduct in the near future.“A safe sport and working climate is very important,” van der Sar said. “We are working on something very wonderful here at Ajax, so this news will also be a blow to everyone who cares about Ajax.” More

  • 138 Shares139 Views

    in Soccer

    Why the World’s Best Skiers Don’t Always Win at the Olympics.

    Nothing solidifies a skier’s status like an Olympic medal. But winning one depends not only on training, but also luck and the right conditions.YANQING, China — At this point, Mikaela Shiffrin has gotten used to a certain rhythm to her life. Every four years, the world appears on her doorstep and asks how many medals she is going to win at the Olympics.After all, she is, by many accounts, the best skier in the world.Yet for several years now, Shiffrin has been trying to explain that Alpine skiing, with its microscopic margins for error and its laundry list of uncertainties, is not that predictable. A shift as subtle as a gust of wind, or the movement of a cloud that allows sunlight to soften the snow in the middle of a race, can make the difference between a gold medal and 11th place.Even the world’s best skiers, then, know that years of preparation and training can mean little at the Olympics if conditions and circumstances do not cooperate. It is a reality that this year has driven Shiffrin to try not to overthink what she is about to confront on a mountain she and almost everyone else will be racing on for the first time.“When the wind is like this, we’re just going to have to know that you could do everything right and get a gust of wind, and that’s that,” Shiffrin said of the competition that will unfold on the blustery, unfamiliar terrain of the Yanqing National Alpine Skiing Center.Depending on her results, her energy level and the schedule, she might compete in all five individual races at these Games, starting with the giant slalom on Monday. The idea that she might not win any of them, through no fault of her own but because of bad luck, she admits, is “a little bit of a bummer.”Shiffrin and other top skiers know changing conditions can make predictions perilous.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesIt is one of the great frustrations of Alpine skiing. Nothing solidifies an athlete’s status as one of the greats like an Olympic medal. But those medals can be won, or lost, in as little as two minutes.Explore the GamesRivalries to Watch: Many events in Beijing will be decided by a showdown between two top contenders.Injury Risks: For Alpine skiers, crashes, surgeries, rehab and a return to the slopes are an almost foregone conclusion.Artificial Snow: China went to great lengths to make enough of the environmentally unfriendly, key ingredient for winter sports.Olympic Fashion: Our critic reviews the best and worst outfits at the opening ceremony — fedoras and capes included.​​Inside Beijing’s Bubble: Here is our reporter’s journey into a walled-off maze of Covid tests, service robots and anxious humans.“The globe winner is the best skier of the whole season,” Vincent Kriechmayr of Austria said on Friday, referring to the glass trophy awarded to the World Cup champion each year. “But being an Olympic champion is one of the most important goals you can reach in your career.”As the wind blew snow across the finish area in Yanqing last week, Kriechmayr spoke in a downcast tone, which made sense. He has a crystal globe and four world championship medals — two of them gold — but he has yet to win an Olympic medal.“It’s critical to a legacy,” said Lindsey Vonn, the retired champion. She won the downhill at the 2010 Vancouver Games, a triumph she described as the transformational event in her life in her autobiography, “Rise.”“It was on my mind going into Vancouver,” Vonn said. “To truly be great, I had to win at the Olympics.”As Shiffrin heads to the starting hut on Monday to defend her gold medal in the giant slalom, the argument for the sheer randomness of the Olympic Alpine competition has most likely never been stronger. There are the usual array of uncontrollable factors that nature can deliver at any ski race, including bright sunshine and warming temperatures that can soften the snow and make the course slower with each passing minute.In Yanqing, an exposed, blustery and rocky peak, skiers have been saying for days that the wind could be the leading differentiator between the podium and also-rans, which means a life-changing medal could be determined by the luck of the bib draw that assigns starting places. “A difference of half a second,” Travis Ganong of the United States said after his training run on Friday.There is also the cruel truth of the sport, in which there is rarely time to recover from a slight slip or a momentary catching of a ski edge. Shiffrin won her fifth crystal globe in slalom in 2018, but she finished fourth in the Olympic slalom competition at the Pyeongchang Games that year because of a rough night of sleep before the race.And then there is the newness of the slopes at Yanqing. Olympic competitions often take place on mountains that are not part of the World Cup circuit, but every skier at Yanqing is racing the courses for the first time because the coronavirus pandemic prevented the traditional test events from taking place in the year before the Games.Skiers are still unfamiliar with the course at Yanqing National Alpine Skiing Center.Doug Mills/The New York Times“We know the hill is steep and all the snow is man-made and maybe going to be cold,” Paula Moltzan, a teammate of Shiffrin’s, said as she prepared to travel to China from Europe. “But every microclimate has its own type of snow.”So far, the dry cold of Yanqing has kept the snow crisp, light and hard, but the forecast is for warming temperatures throughout the week and an unpredictable wind.Shiffrin has been thinking for a while now that her ability to quickly learn a new slope may be to her advantage: She is at her core a specialist in slalom and giant slalom, disciplines that typically do not have pre-race training with gates set on the course. That often requires racers to arrive in the morning, examine the piste and the gates and have at it. In contrast, speed specialists usually excel by getting to know the same slopes year after year, and learning the best paths through the twists and rolls of the different tracks.That does not lessen the pressure of the Olympics races, though. Before Shiffrin’s first Games in 2014, she said, she did not understand the gravity of what winning an Olympic medal could mean. Then she won and got a big taste of it, and it was on her mind — perhaps a bit too much — going into Pyeongchang in 2018.“Control what you can control,” Shiffrin said. “Just try not to get too disappointed about the rest.” More

  • 163 Shares129 Views

    in Soccer

    Africa Cup of Nations: Soccer Tournament Offers Joy Amid Coups and Covid

    Many countries competing in the Africa Cup of Nations are enduring security, economic and political crises, but the tournament offers visions of unity, solidarity and joy.YAOUNDÉ, Cameroon — She had watched some of the matches secretly, volume turned down low so that nobody would report her. She had seen the threats, and knew that she could be kidnapped or killed for watching the African soccer tournament that her country, Cameroon, was hosting.But she was fed up with containing her excitement each time Cameroon scored, so on Wednesday, Ruth, who lives in a region at war where secessionist rebels have forbidden watching the games, secretly traveled to the capital, Yaoundé, to support her team in person.“I’d love to scream, if it’s possible,” she said on Thursday, after safely reaching Yaoundé, while getting ready for the big game. “I decided to take the risk.”African soccer is nearing the end of what everyone agrees has been a magnificent month. The 52 games in this year’s much-delayed Africa Cup of Nations tournament have brought some respite for countries going through major political upheaval or war, and those weathering the disruption and hardship wrought by Covid.For a while, it was the year of the underdogs. Small nations like Comoros and Gambia defeated normally mighty teams like Ghana and Tunisia, and a goalkeeper named Jesus became an instant hero in Equatorial Guinea when he saved twice in a penalty shootout against the far bigger Mali.Fans have gathered in places, like this bar in Yaoundé, to watch the tournament.Then it became a fight between bigger dogs — the last four countries were Egypt, Cameroon, Senegal and Burkina Faso. But even as nations have dropped out, fans have switched allegiances to other countries, citing a culture of brotherhood that transcends borders.Across the continent, in packed bars, airports and village clearings and on city sidewalks, each time there is a match, clusters of spectators open beers and make glasses of strong, sweet tea, pull up plastic chairs and rough wooden benches, and settle in for 90 minutes of nail-biting delight.When their team won the day after the coup last week in Burkina Faso, Burkinabe soldiers back home danced with joy. When Senegal then beat Burkina Faso in the semifinal on Wednesday night, Dakar’s streets were filled with cars honking and flags waving. Online, after every match, thousands of people flock to Twitter Spaces to jointly dissect what happened.Bitterly split countries have come together, however briefly, and the solidarity — person to person, group to group, region to region — is palpable. Even in Cameroon, where a deadly conflict has been raging since late 2016, soccer has brought people together.A packed stadium for Wednesday’s Senegal vs. Burkina Faso match. The crisis there started when teachers and lawyers in an English-speaking region in the west went on strike to protest the use of French in courts and classrooms. The repressive, mostly francophone government responded with a harsh crackdown. Human rights abuses by the military helped fuel a fully-fledged armed struggle by English-speaking fighters known as Amba boys, after Ambazonia, the name they have given their would-be state.The separatists have warned people there not to watch Afcon, as the soccer tournament is known, and certainly not to support Cameroon. But many anglophones like Ruth — a government worker who asked to be identified by only her first name to protect her from retribution — have defied the risk and have traveled to majority francophone cities to attend matches.“We may not be a very united nation, but I think this one thing brings us together,” Ruth said, adding that it was common knowledge that even as they threatened, kidnapped and tortured other spectators, the Amba fighters were watching the tournament in their camps.Afcon is special. Players who are relatively unknown outside their countries’ borders play alongside multimillionaire stars from the world’s most elite teams who take time off to represent their countries, right in the middle of the European season.Fans from Burkina Faso, which recently underwent a coup, rehearsed their dances and drumming before Wednesday’s semifinal.It is all worth it, Mohamed Salah, Egypt’s star player, said last week in a news conference before his team met, and tied, with Ivory Coast.“This trophy, for me, would be completely different to others I’ve won,” said Mr. Salah, a player who has won both the Premier League and the Champions League with his other team, Liverpool Football Club. “It would be the closest one to my heart.”One country that has managed to focus on soccer despite a major crisis back home is Burkina Faso. While the Burkinabe players and fans were about to set off for the quarterfinal, the military overthrew their government.“It wasn’t easy,” said Sambo Diallo, a fan standing with his arms out in a Yaoundé hotel bursting with fans from Burkina Faso, as a friend painted his entire head, face and torso with his country’s flag. “We weren’t happy, but we had to be brave.”Despite the anxiety about their families at home, Burkina Faso’s players won that quarterfinal. Still on a high, a green bus full of cheering Burkina Faso fans who had followed their squad around the country rolled into Yaoundé on Wednesday afternoon. Their team was about to meet Senegal in the semis.Soccer had obviously brought the Senegalese team together, the jewel in its crown one of the biggest stars on the continent, Sadio Mané, who also plays for Liverpool.Sadio Mané, Senegal’s star player,  scored a goal in Wednesday’s semifinal.But it also knit together another team of seven young men, one that traveled with the players wherever they went. Every match, each member paints his chest with a letter that, when they all stand next to each other, spells out S-E-N-E-G-A-L.These are men of very different fortunes from the players’: In their lives back home, they are builders, clerks and street hawkers who earn little but drop everything whenever their country needs them to take up their mantle of body paint.Understand the Coup in Burkina FasoCard 1 of 4Seizure of power. More