Aston Villa (Soccer Team)

Subterms

    Latest story

    138 Shares189 Views

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

    by

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

    More stories

    • 138 Shares149 Views

      in Soccer

      A Night at the Best Pickup Soccer Game in the World

      by

      As the players idled by the chain-link fence at the side of the field, taking great gulps of air and water and conducting an immediate autopsy of the game that had just finished, they focused their attention on three outstanding bones of contention. Instinctively, they separated into dedicated working groups to tackle each one.The first considered whether a penalty that had not been awarded absolutely should have been, as an aggrieved plaintiff was claiming. The second investigated if a particularly egregious foul was premeditated (yes) and/or warranted (also yes). The third explored the knotty issue of how many deflections preceded the last of the game’s 12 goals — estimates ranged from two to “about a million” — and whether allowing the goal could, therefore, reasonably be considered the goalkeeper’s fault.Before that matter could be settled, the debrief was cut short. Each player had to dig into wallets or pockets to find five pounds — just over $6 — to pay their share for the use of the field. As they strolled stiffly to the parking lot, the squabbling gave way to discussion of plans for the rest of the evening, and for next week.This is all part of the ritual of the scrimmage, the scratch game, the kickabout. It is a conversation that happens thousands of times a week, across the world, after thousands of games like this one. The only difference here is the qualifications of those involved.A typical chat before any pickup game, anywhere in the world. It’s just that Alex Bruce, center, played more than 300 professional games.The 20 players who have just paid about $120 to play for an hour on an unremarkable synthetic field in south Manchester are used to rather different surroundings. Between them, they have made more than 1,000 appearances — and scored more than 100 goals — in England’s Premier League. They have played professionally in a dozen or so countries. Among their number are players who have won trophies, tasted the Champions League, represented their nations.They wear their fame relatively lightly. There are no replica jerseys bearing their names. Only a couple go as far as to use shorts emblazoned with club crests. Watch them play for a few minutes, though, and it is clear this game is hardly ordinary.The quality on display, as one player has put it, is “frightening.” As it should be: The victim of the contested penalty is Ravel Morrison, once of Manchester United and West Ham. The judge of the debate on the foul is Joleon Lescott, a Premier League and F.A. Cup champion with Manchester City.It is universally agreed that the game’s most gifted regular participant — and most unapologetically competitive spirit — is Stephen Ireland, who played for a decade with Manchester City and Aston Villa. The two players stretching out their calves, tuning out the bickering, are Papiss Cissé and Oumar Niasse, once of Newcastle United and Everton.They are part of a rotating cast of professionals — most of them retired recently enough that rust has not yet set in — who come here every week to take part in what may be the best game of pickup soccer in the world.Papiss Cissé, formerly of Newcastle United, rising above Bruce for a header.It was not designed to be anything of the sort. The weekly game started a couple of years ago, as coronavirus lockdowns began to ease, when a group of friends — most of whom had played semiprofessionally, on the lower rungs of England’s soccer pyramid — set up an amateur team, the Farmers, to play together on Sundays.This part of Manchester, though, is a relatively small world. The city’s leafy southern suburbs, and the gilded villages of north Cheshire, are home to dozens of professional players, both current and former. It did not take long before a couple of them, friends of friends, had accepted invitations to join in.From there, it spiraled quickly, said Kial Callacher, one of the team’s founders. Soon, the Farmers were winning some games by “30 goals or so,” he said. “After a while, it wasn’t really fun.” The team’s opponents, presumably, were of broadly the same view. Everyone involved decided it might be better if the ex-pros just played among themselves.So their hourlong games, held on Tuesday or Wednesday nights, were born. The guest list only grew more stellar. Some weeks might feature Antonio Valencia, John O’Shea, Danny Simpson and Danny Drinkwater, all of them Premier League champions, or Nedum Onuoha, formerly of Manchester City and now an ESPN analyst. Dale Stephens, a Premier League player as recently as last year, is a mainstay.The consensus is that Stephen Ireland, once of Manchester City, is the most talented regular participant.Cissé and Oumar Niasse, who both also had Premier League careers, might disagree.There are many more who spent years in England’s Football League. Few, if any, of the 66 members of the team’s WhatsApp group do not have at least semiprofessional experience. Games are, to put it mildly, competitive.“I’ll get an early night the day before,” said Joe Thompson, a regular participant who spent 13 years as a pro, mostly for Rochdale. “I’ll stretch in the afternoon, eat right, hydrate: all of the things I did as a professional. You don’t want to do yourself a disservice, or take liberties with the standard. You feel like you are constantly on trial. You have to be on the mettle or the group will let you know.”There is no shortage of candidates eager to see if they can handle it; so many are waiting to join that there is now a one-in, one-out policy on the WhatsApp group. Priority is given to prospective new entrants who have made the most appearances in the Champions League and the Premier League.For some, the appeal is at least partly practical. “It keeps people ticking over,” Thompson said. “If you’re out of contract, looking for a club, you can keep as fit as you like in the gym, but nothing replaces match sharpness.” Simpson has said it helped him remain “football fit” as he waited for a new club. Many in the group expect Morrison, most recently with D.C. United in Major League Soccer, to be picked up soon as a free agent.For a vast majority, though, the game meets a spiritual need. Thompson is not a typical case. Twice, during his career, he was found to have a form of Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. He returned to play on both occasions but retired on medical advice in 2019, at age 30. As a result, he said, he found it relatively easy to “make peace” with leaving the game.A single game last week produced 12 goals and at least three postgame inquests.Many find the transition much harder. Alex Bruce, a defender who represented 14 clubs in a career that spanned almost two decades, compared retirement to “dropping off a cliff.” “There’s no buildup, and then one day you’re at home, wondering what to do with yourself,” he said. As much as pining for the sport itself, players said they tended to feel bereft outside the confines of a locker room. “You’re institutionalized,” Bruce said. “You miss the environment.”The WhatsApp group — an ongoing stream of affectionate teasing, lighthearted criticism and off-the-cuff soccer punditry, according to members — offers a digital imitation of the daily rhythm of life inside a club. And the games themselves provide an outlet for the competitive urge. “It’s better than going to the gym and running on a treadmill on your own,” Bruce said.It is that, more than anything, that brings them all to an unremarkable field deep in south Manchester, whatever the weather.Being a soccer player is, of course, glorious, glamorous fun. But, Thompson said, “over the course of 20 years or so, it chips away at you.” The pressure is intense. The politics are toxic. There is little agency: A player’s fate can swing on an unfortunate injury, an unhelpful manager, a single bad decision.At the end, there is no sentiment whatsoever. “Most people don’t retire from the game,” Thompson said. “It retires them.” Soccer moves on, unforgiving. “You’re on a pitch, in the fresh air, with a ball,” one participant said as he watched his colleagues and friends slip into their cars. “It’s what it was like when we started playing.”Once a week, though, these players can engage with the game on their terms. There is no crowd. There is no money, other than the fee to use the field. There is no pressure, other than that which they put on themselves. They all carry the scars of a life spent playing a professional sport. Those days are over, now, but they do not want to say goodbye. What they want to do, instead, is to play.“You’re on a pitch, in the fresh air, with a ball,” Thompson said as he watched his colleagues and friends slip into their cars. “It’s what it was like when we started playing. I think for most of them, it’s an hour a week when they can feel free.”That is, they know, a precious thing. This summer, the group played a couple of exhibition games against local teams, operating under the moniker Inter Retirement. They have since been approached by a production company with the idea of launching a YouTube channel, of turning their private game into public content.They can see the merit in the suggestion, of course, but one drawback, above all others, gives them pause. The act of observation would change the nature of the event. It would turn soccer, once more, into work. They come to this field, once a week, because there are no cameras. There is no spotlight, no pressure.Here, at last, that they can play. More

    • 38 Shares149 Views

      in Soccer

      Everton’s Identity Crisis

      by

      Europe is filled with big clubs that lost their way. But soccer’s fallen giants will never rise again until they face what they’ve become.Frank Lampard can, at least, be sure that there will be no lasting damage. The disappointment of his firing as Everton manager will sting for a while, of course, but there is little reason to believe it will be held against him. A failure to meet expectations at Everton has long since become the sort of thing that might happen to anyone.It did not, after all, stop Carlo Ancelotti — who steered Everton to the dizzying heights of 10th in the Premier League in his sole full season at Goodison Park — from getting the Real Madrid job. Less than a year after leaving Merseyside, Ancelotti picked up his fourth Champions League trophy (a record), and became the first manager in history to win domestic titles in all of Europe’s five most illustrious leagues.Ancelotti’s predecessor at Goodison, Marco Silva, has not done quite so well, but his Fulham team currently sits seventh in the Premier League. Ronald Koeman left England with his reputation shredded, but he has since managed the Dutch national team, Barcelona, and the Dutch national team again. Roberto Martínez spent eight years in charge of Belgium; his next task is to take Portugal to the European Championship next summer.Indeed, of the six most recent (permanent) managers to have clasped English soccer’s great poisoned chalice before Lampard, so far only one — Sam Allardyce — failed to recover, and that might be attributed at least in part to his pre-existing, not especially flattering and largely self-inflicted caricature. (Rafa Benítez, whom Lampard replaced a year ago, has yet to return to work.)That is instructive. Only one of those managers, Ancelotti, left the club on his terms and with the broad beneficence of the fans. The rest left Goodison Park bilious, rancorous and, more than once, on the verge of outright mutiny.Frank Lampard in better days. (Spoiler: There weren’t a lot of those.)Geoff Caddick/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThat so few of those managers have been sullied by the manner of their departures indicates that soccer, as a whole, does not feel Everton, these days, is the sort of place where a manager’s talent can be accurately gauged. Lampard — now four years into his managerial career and with little proof, either way, of whether he is particularly cut out for the job or not — will benefit from that just as Koeman, Silva and all of the others did.Why that should be, of course, has been outlined frequently in the days since Lampard was fired.As noted by this newsletter last week, Everton’s majority owner, Farhad Moshiri, lacks a clear vision for what he wants the club to be, other than — as a statement put it — not in the Premier League’s relegation zone. He has, in the six years since he bought Everton, spent something north of $500 million on players, but the recruitment has been so scattershot that it has incontrovertibly made the team worse.He appointed a director of football and then, by most accounts, did not empower him to sign anyone. He has hired and fired managers with such speed that Lampard’s team for his final game, a defeat at West Ham, contained players brought in by four of his predecessors. Everton is a patchwork of different influences and ideas and policies, a consequence of years of failure.Both among the club’s fan base and soccer’s professional commentariat, conventional wisdom has it that it is from there that the tendrils of Everton’s chronic disappointment, its permanent crisis, climb: not with the manager but with the system in which they are expected, forlornly, to work. It is, of course, correct. It may not, though, quite get to the root of the issue.For the youngest Everton fans, glory is just a story passed down the generations.Molly Darlington/ReutersIt is impossible to escape Everton’s history. It is there, emblazoned on the stadium, in a series of snapshots commemorating the club’s finest teams, its greatest achievements. It is there, in the words to “Grand Old Team,” the song that long served as one of the club’s prematch standards. It even warranted a mention in the statement Lampard released after his departure, in which he paid homage to the club’s “incredible” history.That is understandable: Everton’s history is unusually illustrious. It is, depending on your preferred metric, either the fourth most successful team in English history — in terms of league titles won, ahead of Manchester City, Chelsea and Tottenham — or the eighth, if total trophy haul is deemed a better measure. That history is, as it should be, a source of immense pride.It is also, though, a prison. The metastasis of soccer over the last two decades has, effectively, rendered history largely irrelevant as a marker of power. Everton’s nine league titles do not mean it earns more from the Premier League’s television deals than Brentford, just as A.C. Milan’s seven European Cups do not give it more financial firepower than Bournemouth (Champions League titles: zero).The past that brings charm can also hold a club back.Phil Noble/ReutersThe old hierarchies no longer hold, as the rise of Manchester City and Paris St.-Germain make clear, toppled and leveled by the flood of money rushing into the game from broadcasters and sponsors, from oligarchs and hedge funds. History is no longer a draw. Or, rather, it is not nearly so significant a draw as wealth, or prospects, or status, or facilities, or plans.That adjusted reality has affected the game’s self-appointed superpowers, of course, just as surely as it has affected the vast majority of clubs, the minnows and the traditionally mediocre, all of whom have been forced to adapt to narrowed horizons and limited ambitions.The impact has been most profound, though, on the class of club to which Everton belongs, those on the second rung of the game’s long established and now defunct power structure, those who are best regarded as soccer’s cruiserweights.Those teams can be placed, broadly, into two categories. There are those who have accommodated themselves to the way things are now, who have managed to carve out a new definition of success that enables them to find some contentment in a hostile environment.For Benfica and Ajax, say, that has taken the form of trading continental prominence for domestic supremacy, secured thanks to a steady stream of young talent. For Borussia Dortmund, it has involved accepting a place as the game’s most reliable springboard, a role as a midwife to greatness.Unlike some other faded powers, Benfica has found its place in the modern soccer economy, and in this season’s Champions League.Pedro Nunes/ReutersAnd then there are those who seem to be weighed down by the burden of their history: Valencia, Inter Milan, Marseille, Schalke, Hamburg, West Ham, Aston Villa and, of course, Everton, all unable or unwilling to adopt the methods of their former peers to stake out a new place for themselves.It is no surprise that these teams have become, for the most part, the most unstable, the least contented clubs in Europe. Happiness is a fleeting thing in soccer; elite sport does not lend itself to lasting satisfaction. But these clubs often seem the most unhappy, caught in a grinding, unending identity crisis, trapped between what they were and what they are.That is what lies at the heart of the modern Everton. Like Lampard, even Moshiri, to some extent, can be viewed as a consequence as much as a cause of the problem. The club was so desperate to be restored to what it once was that it sold itself to someone who — on the balance of the last six years — has very little clue what he is doing, beyond hiring famous managers and signing expensive players and hoping for the best.And it is what will continue to undermine Everton until it is resolved, as the teams above them streak away and the teams traditionally beneath them — the smart, progressive ones, at least — roar past. Everton has never been willing to surrender the idea that it is more than a way-station, that it is a destination sort of a club, even if doing so is the first step to returning itself to relevance. To do so would be to think small, and thinking small is unimaginable when you believe, when history dictates, that you are big.CorrespondenceThanks, first of all, to the half-dozen eagle-eyed readers who got in touch to inform me that I had my magical kingdoms mixed up: Disney World is in Florida, by all accounts, whereas Disneyland is in California. I have, alas, been to neither, owing to a lifelong — and to be honest perfectly logical — fear of giant anthropomorphized mice.The issue of celebrations, meanwhile, seems to animate even more of you than the misattribution of theme parks. “I wonder if goal celebrations can (or used to) be culture-specific,” wrote Thomas Bodenberg. “In 1994, Brazil played Sweden at the late, unlamented Pontiac Silverdome. When Kennet Andersson scored for Sweden, putting them 1-0 up, he just jogged stoically back to his end, awaiting kickoff. I wonder if that was more a product of Swedish culture than the individual.”Quick: Which player scored the goal here?Ina Fassbender/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWhat irks Allan Culham, on the other hand, is how often goal-scorers “do not recognize whoever set them up to get it. Often the assist is the most impressive part, but players celebrate as if it was a result of their effort alone.”It feels to me as if many players do, these days, opt for the “emphatic pointing” method of celebration, singling out the teammate who made the chance, but this hits upon an issue close to my heart, and one I have discussed with a host of current and former players: the cliché runs that scoring a goal is the hardest job in soccer, but I would contend that making one is infinitely more difficult. (They largely disagree with me.)Dan Lachman is not short on ambition. It is time, he wrote, to “retire” the tradition/habit/pretension of referring to players by the role seemingly predicated by their numbers. “Does the casual fan have any clue what a ‘No. 6’ is? How about calling it a holding, or defensive, midfielder? It’s time for this to go.”Oddly, this is a relatively new phenomenon: At a rough guess, the phrase “No. 6” would never have appeared in English commentary of a game even 10 years ago. It is a recent (and entirely harmless) import, and I would agree that it does not actually offer the clarity people assume. What a No. 6 does in Spain, say, is different from what one does in Germany, which is different again from how the Dutch perceive the position.Forward Lynn Williams wore the No. 6 in two recent victories for the U.S. women’s team. Lynn Williams is not a No. 6.Andrew Cornaga/PHOTOSPORT, via Associated PressAnd a forlorn request from Tony De Palma. “I long to know what is being sung by fans at Premier League stadia,” he wrote. “I love the feel of the spectacle, the ambient sound, but I am unable to make out all but the most well-known chants. How can I, an American onlooker, figure out what these English fans are singing?”Alas, Tony, the first assumption should always be that whatever it is, the lyrics would almost certainly make the Grey Lady blush. I remember going to a baseball game in San Francisco a few years ago with my wife, who is no fan of either sport. So powerful is social conditioning, though, that after a few minutes even she turned to me, with the air of a disappointed line manager conducting a performance review, and asked why it was that the fans were not swearing at the opposition team. More

    • 100 Shares149 Views

      in Soccer

      Will British-Born Players Help Jamaica Achieve Soccer Greatness?

      by

      Jamaica recruited a crop of British-based players to bolster its World Cup qualifying campaign. The question now: Can it quickly mold them into a team?LONDON — Sometimes, the best explanation is the simplest one. Last month, in the aftermath of Jamaica’s heavy home defeat to Panama — a result that left the Caribbean country winless and, at that stage, pointless in World Cup qualifying — the finger of blame shifted quickly from the team’s coach, Theodore Whitmore, to his boss, Michael Ricketts.As president of the Jamaican Football Federation, Ricketts had spent much of the previous year trying to overhaul Whitmore’s squad in a bid to supercharge Jamaica’s attempts to reach its first World Cup in a quarter century.In March, he revealed a long list of British-born players of Jamaican heritage who, he said, were in the process of switching their international allegiance to the country of their parents’ or grandparents’ birth, immediately — in theory — boosting Jamaica’s chances of making it through the arduous slog of qualification.His targets were ambitious. The most eye-catching name was Michail Antonio, the West Ham forward who had, relatively late in his career, emerged as one of the most effective strikers in the Premier League. But beyond him lay a slew of equally familiar faces.Southampton’s Nathan Redmond, the Everton teammates Mason Holgate and Demarai Gray and Newcastle’s Isaac Hayden were all applying for Jamaican passports, Ricketts said. So too were Ethan Pinnock and Ivan Toney, of Brentford, and Max Aarons of Norwich City, some of the brightest talents in the second-tier Championship, and Kemar Roofe, a forward for the Scottish champion, Rangers.By the time the Panama game arrived, a host of the recruits who had accepted Ricketts’s overtures were in the team. Pinnock and Liam Moore started in central defense. Roofe and Daniel Johnson, of Preston, played in midfield. Antonio made his debut up front, alongside Bobby Decordova-Reid of Fulham.It did not end well. A few days earlier, without the vast majority of his reinforcements, Whitmore’s team had come within a few minutes of claiming a commendable point on the road in Mexico. Against Panama, though, Jamaica collapsed to a 3-0 defeat.From the outside, the suspicion was that Ricketts was at fault. It was suggested on television that he had destabilized the team by instructing Whitmore to make room for the new arrivals. “I must dispel that totally,” Ricketts said at the time. He called it “absolute rubbish,” and insisted that Whitmore would back him up. “All the J.F.F. did was make contact with the players, and provide the opportunity for the players to represent the country,” he said.Roofe, for one, has spent some time ruminating on that defeat. “It left a sour taste in the mouth,” he said. His conclusion, though, was not quite as intriguing as a dark conspiracy about outside interference. The problem, in his mind, was time. Or, rather, the lack of it.Along with the vast majority of the new additions to Jamaica’s squad, Roofe had been prevented from joining his teammates in Mexico. The country was at the time on the British government’s coronavirus so-called red list, meaning anyone who traveled there would have to spend 10 days in quarantine on their return to Britain.To circumvent that, it was decided that most of the British-based players would skip the game and head instead to Jamaica. As Whitmore and his squad were preparing to face Mexico, Roofe and a half dozen others were being greeted by representatives of the J.F.F. in Kingston and undergoing their mandatory Covid tests.Kemar Roofe, left, said he and his new Jamaica teammates had troubling meshing in their first game together, a World Cup qualifier against Panama in September.Collin Reid/Associated Press“It was a strange experience,” Roofe said. “The actual squad was in Mexico, so the rest of us flew to Jamaica, met the staff, got a couple of training sessions under our belts. It was good to meet the other players, but it meant when the rest of the team came back, it was a bit rushed.”Roofe and the others introduced themselves, had a single training session — focusing, he said, on “a bit of shape and set pieces” — and then, the next day, went out to play Jamaica’s first home game on a road that, the country hopes, will end in Qatar late next year.“That is the hardest thing in football, having to adapt quickly,” Roofe said. “You’re playing in a team you don’t know, in a style you don’t know, with a manager and players you haven’t met before, and you have to hit the ground running. You can get lucky, and everything just click, but normally it takes a few games.”Ideally, the first of those would have come almost immediately after the Panama defeat, but Roofe and the rest of the squad’s British-based contingent did not have chance: Costa Rica, Jamaica’s next opponent, was also on the red list. Only one player contracted to an English team, in fact — Anthony Grant, of third-tier Swindon Town — started in San José, where Jamaica earned a 1-1 draw.Grant’s case is a little different from many of his new teammates. “I’ve been waiting for the call for years,” he said. “I’d always wanted to play for Jamaica. My grandmother came from there, and went back when she retired. I go every year. I just didn’t really know how you went about it.”Now 34, after more than a decade establishing himself as a steady but unspectacular presence in England’s lower tiers, he had become a little fatalistic about his international hopes. “I’ve had a good career,” he said. “If this came along, I just saw it as a bonus.”He was not mentioned as a potential recruit by Ricketts, but earlier this year he received a message from the J.F.F. through Twitter. His first call-up was the Mexico game. He missed the humiliation against Panama, but impressed against Costa Rica.The divergence in those results has made Jamaica — which entered Thursday’s game against the United States at the bottom of the region’s eight-team table — difficult to assess. There have, so far, been two Jamaicas: the team bolstered by high-profile players from Europe, which as of Thursday had lost its only game to date, and the one without reinforcements, which emerged from its two engagements with a single point but an abundance of credit.How Jamaica’s qualifying campaign unfurls from here — and how much of a challenge it poses to its forthcoming opponents, the United States and Canada — will depend on how easy it is to forge a coherent whole from those twin strands.Aston Villa’s Leon Bailey is among the British-based players who will miss Jamaica’s current round of qualifiers.Chandan Khanna/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThat challenge has been made more complex by the absence of several of Jamaica’s recently-minted internationals from this week’s fixtures: Pinnock, Moore and Daniel Johnson are all missing through injury, as is Leon Bailey, the Aston Villa forward. Grant will sit out the game against the U.S. because of an issue with his visa. And, most notably, Antonio decided against traveling for this round of games after consulting with his club, West Ham.“It’s tricky if you are not getting a clean run at it,” Roofe said. “You might only need one training session to feel like you belong, but it takes longer to jell fully as a team, to know the intricacies of the players you are playing with.”There is only one way to solve that particular issue, of course, the same problem that Roofe identified at the root of the defeat to Panama: time. Both Grant and Roofe said they were confident that the Jamaica team that undertakes these three games will be more cogent than the one that played the previous three. And both feel that the longer World Cup qualifying runs, the more dangerous Jamaica will be. The question, of course, is whether there is enough time to make that count. More

    • 63 Shares169 Views

      in Soccer

      Jack Grealish: England’s Golden Boy

      by

      Fans chant his name at Wembley and pressure his coach to play him. But what does England really know about Grealish? And what does it want from him?The Wembley Stadium crowd was calling for him, yearning for him, long before it had seen him. The second half of England’s game with Germany had reached a deadlock. The English had not troubled Manuel Neuer’s goal for some time; the Germans had mustered a single shot, and then retreated into their shell. Stalemate had set in. More