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    Manchester City Fights Off Atlético Madrid in Champions League

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    City, a team shaped by style, showed it was also skilled in the dark arts as it eliminated Atlético Madrid and moved a step closer to its first Champions League title.MADRID — Many things happened at the Wanda Metropolitano in the final 10 or 20 minutes, the ones that seemed to stretch on and on, long past the final whistle, until they almost constituted another self-contained bonus game, a separate third installment of a scheduled two-part drama.There was some hair-pulling. There was quite a lot of time-wasting. There was a full-scale brawl, dozens and dozens of players and team staff members all streaming down to a corner of the field to make their opinions known. There was a flurry of yellow cards, and a bright, angry red. There was Diego Simeone, conducting his orchestra, urging the stadium to bay and to howl and to snarl until the last breath.What there was not, the only thing missing, was much actual soccer. There were flashes, of course, Atlético Madrid charging forward, desperately hunting the goal that would break Manchester City’s resistance and take the game into extra time, extend their stay in the Champions League for another 30 minutes or, just maybe, another few weeks. For the most part, though, those endless last few minutes were a study in the art of not playing soccer.Shaun Botterill/Getty ImagesA foul by Felipe on Phil Foden sparked a sideline brawl.Manu Fernandez/Associated PressFelipe got a red card. Foden, and City, got a place in the semifinals.Oscar Del Pozo/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThat is, of course, very much part of Atlético Madrid’s identity. Simeone has spent a decade crafting a team in his own image, one that plays, just as he did, with a “knife between its teeth.”Atlético should, by rights, be a heroic underdog among Europe’s elite, a countercultural alternative to the hegemony of pressing and possession. It does not, after all, have the resources of its overweening neighbor, Real Madrid, let alone the state-backed clout of Manchester City or Paris St.-Germain, and yet it refuses to wilt, to succumb to financial inevitability.It is a potent testament to Simeone’s work, then, and to the great effectiveness of his inculcation, that his team can so easily and so frequently play the role of the Champions League’s obvious villain: a side of cynics, provocateurs and cutthroats, designed and built to draw the beauty and the soul from the game, happy to subvert any norm available in pursuit of victory, and in defiance of convention, its opponents and the game’s sense of moral rectitude.And yet, in all the fire and fury, it was not only Atlético that realized that a place in the semifinals hung not on talent and technique but on grit and grizzle, on a willingness to do whatever it takes.There is no team more associated with beauty than Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City. He has come, over the years, to stand as an embodiment of soccer’s higher values, its ultimate arbiter of taste, its aesthete in chief. Guardiola means sophistication and style, and he has imbued all of that into the team he has built.Those were not the virtues, though, that allowed his team to escape Madrid unscathed, its place in a Champions League semifinal with Real Madrid secured, its chase for a domestic and European treble intact. City did not beat Atlético by overcoming its dark arts. It beat Atlético by borrowing them.Even City’s Pep Guardiola didn’t shy from the fight on Wednesday.Shaun Botterill/Getty ImagesSome of them, at least. Just like its host, Guardiola’s team, for once, did not seem especially interested in playing soccer, either. It played, instead, for time. Every throw-in seemed to take an age, and every free kick and every goal kick, too. No injury was shaken off; even the most minor bump and bruise warranted an extended period of treatment. Balls that had run out of play were knocked just a little farther down the line, out of the reach of Atlético’s players. No slight was too minor not to be met with indignation.That should not be read as a criticism of Manchester City; far from it. Often, it is so easy to be dazzled by the brilliance of Guardiola’s side that its character, its courage, is overlooked. His record in the Premier League, in particular, in recent years has been built as much on defensive parsimony as attacking threat. City does not wilt and it does not doubt; it keeps going, remorselessly, absolute in its conviction that it will be proved right in the end.As the Metropolitano — this sleek, modern stadium built by the success of Simeone — somehow morphed into the Vicente Calderón, Atlético’s crumbling, intimidating, nakedly hostile former home, what carried City through was not its magic but its mettle. That is as much part of Guardiola’s recipe as anything else.And nor, for that matter, should it be read as a criticism of Atlético. “What matters more than anything in soccer is winning,” Simeone said after the game, not long after the players had confronted each other in the tunnel once more. “It does not matter how you do it.”Even Guardiola conceded that Atlético had come close to winning, that it might have scored, might have won, if it had only possessed just a little more luck. “They had the actions to score,” he said. “We had to live this situation. We had to suffer. We were in big, big trouble.” On another night, in another world, he seemed to say, everything could have been very different.That Simeone’s team had been able to run City so close was not despite its brinkmanship, but because of it. As Atlético did what it does, in those final few minutes, as the sense of outrage outside the steep concrete banks of the Metropolitano started to build, so too did the noise inside it. The crowd responded to its team’s snapping and growling, ratcheting up the pressure just a little more, shifting things imperceptibly in the host’s favor. Atlético is not the way it is for fun. It is the way it is because it works.“They know how to do this better than any other team in the world,” Guardiola said. Nobody, anywhere, does not play soccer better than Atlético Madrid.Guardiola sounded impressed, in a way. He knows there are times when that is what matters, that is what counts. He knows that his team will, at times, need to be a little like Atlético Madrid if it is to return here and celebrate again in a few weeks’ time, if it is to climb the only peak it is yet to scale, to claim the Champions League. More

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      Manchester City Finds Breakthrough Against Atlético Madrid

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      Atlético Madrid hunkered down and defended in its Champions League quarterfinal at Manchester City. But a single goal might be enough to send it packing.MANCHESTER, England — After a while, feeling bored, cold and wet, Éderson decided to go for a walk. The Manchester City goalkeeper had spent 20 minutes dutifully guarding his penalty area. He had checked all four corners for danger. He found nothing. He had stared, squinting, into the distance, scanning for some threat on the horizon. Nothing there, either.And so, idly, he wandered forward. He was entirely alone. There was nobody else in his half of the field. Manchester City’s central defenders, the players employed as his doughty sentries, were now stationed deep in Atlético Madrid territory, in the sorts of positions more habitually occupied by elfin attacking midfielders.As he approached the halfway line, Éderson slowed his pace just a little. He had the air of a man who had been walking with no particular destination in mind: He did not really know what he planned to do when he got there. He bounced on his heels. He stretched down and touched his toes. He loitered for a few seconds, reveling in the sensation of what it must be like to be involved in a soccer match, and then, slowly made his way back, ruefully retaking his lonely post.The Brazilian’s ennui could not — as it often can, during the course of both the domestic and the European seasons — be traced to Manchester City’s overwhelming superiority over its opposition, to its vast financial power, to its supercharged strength. Or, rather, it cannot solely be traced to that. To some extent, Éderson was bored because Atlético Madrid was content for him to be bored.Diego Simeone has made his career with teams that give away nothing. Now, facing a 1-0 deficit after the first leg, his squad needs to find something extra.Phil Noble/ReutersPerhaps the best indication of how Diego Simeone, Atlético’s coach, intended to approach Tuesday’s UEFA Champions League quarterfinal came in its first second. Manchester City had the kickoff, and at that instant, every single Atlético player seemed to take a step back, each man moving a little farther into his own half.Or maybe it was that brief, fleeting and possibly accidental moment when the redoubtable Geoffrey Kondogbia burst into City’s half, looked up, and saw nothing in front of him except a couple of light blue jerseys and a broad swath of green. His teammates had not so much as flickered. They were all locked in their holding pattern, under orders to stand their ground.That is exactly how Simeone wants it, of course. The Argentine is in many ways the polar opposite to Pep Guardiola, his City counterpart. That is a cliché, now, the sort of glib judgment that feels too easy, but it holds true.Guardiola’s vision of soccer is based on making space appear out of nowhere. Simeone’s is focused, laser sharp, on finding ways to make it evaporate. Guardiola has built his legend on making things happen. Simeone has constructed his on making sure they do not.Guardiola has said, previously, that his ideal goal would involve every single player touching the ball, possibly more than once, before someone — it does not matter who — strokes it into an unguarded goal.On Tuesday, Simeone seemed to be trying something different: chasing some mad dream in which an entire game went by without any of his players doing something as effete as actually touching the ball, so consumed were they by the important business of shutting down passing lanes and closing off angles of attack.Bernardo Silva, seeking out the spaces that didn’t exist.Phil Noble/ReutersThe style is, when it works, difficult to love but easy to admire. And it has worked, and worked spectacularly, for some time. That doggedness, that resolve, that defiance has become the cornerstone of Atlético’s modern European identity, the core value that has turned a perpetual underdog into a true European power: a winner of two Spanish titles and two Europa Leagues, twice a Champions League finalist, now safely ensconced in its own spectacular and vaguely soulless suburban superdome.And it almost worked here, too, against Guardiola’s latest masterpiece, a team that remains all but untouchable in the Premier League, a team that most likely ranks as the best in the world. Atlético stifled Manchester City almost entirely for the first half, and for vast tracts of the second, too, in the sort of vintage Simeone display that has earned Atlético its status as the standard-bearers of soccer’s counterculture, its final resistance to the prevailing wind of pressing and possession.The almost is significant, though. Not simply because City did, eventually, pick its way through, Phil Foden carving a path past Atlético’s massed ranks, creating just enough space for Kevin de Bruyne to win the game. That will not detain Simeone unnecessarily. He would, privately, be pleased simply to have escaped from the Etihad with his side still in the tie.Kevin De Bruyne delivered the only goal Manchester City needed on Tuesday night.Phil Noble/ReutersNo, far more important is what happened at the other end. There is one form of defense that Atlético, this Atlético, has not mastered, one aspect of its chosen art that continues to prove elusive: the attack.The best defensive performances necessarily include moments of menace, after all. It is in those moments, those rare forays upfield, when an overworked defense has time to recover, to reorganize, to regroup. And it is in those moments, too, that doubt is sowed in the mind of the opposition, when even a team as fine as Manchester City starts to second-guess itself, when it begins to wonder if it should be committing quite so many players forward.Simeone’s best Atlético teams had that: the pace of Antoine Griezmann, the guile of an autumnal David Villa, the taurine bellicosity of Diego Costa. This Atlético team does not. It did not muster a shot on goal in the first half. It had one, possibly, in the second, though there is a very good chance that it was meant as a cross.That, ultimately, is the flaw in the plan, the problem with finding contentment in nothingness. The defense did not hold, not quite, and now Atlético must win in Madrid next week, and to do that it must open spaces, not close them. It must create, rather than destroy. Simeone was quite happy, it seemed, for Éderson to be bored. He was not nearly as happy, though, as Guardiola. More

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      Belgium Beats Portugal at Euro 2020, Sending Cristiano Ronaldo Home Early

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      A failed strategy sent defending champion Portugal out early at Euro 2020 and kept alive the title hopes of Belgium’s golden generation.The list of people who had let Cristiano Ronaldo down was, by the end, a long and illustrious one.Their transgressions had varied, in both nature and severity, and so had their punishments: Diogo Jota, failure to pass, hard stare; Renato Sanches, not getting out of the way of a free kick, baleful finger-point; Bruno Fernandes, speculative and wildly inaccurate shooting not entirely unfamiliar to Ronaldo himself, primal scream into Seville’s stifling night sky. More

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      Revisiting Ilkay Gundogan

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      The Manchester City midfielder is a rare player in the Champions League final: one with experience in the game. He wants to know what it feels like to win.Ilkay Gundogan is a little sheepish as he admits it. It is not what he is supposed to do, he knows. He is supposed to take each game as it comes. That is the professional’s mantra. Don’t get ahead of yourself. Think about today, rather than tomorrow. That is what a sports psychologist would advise. It is what his manager, certainly, would recommend.It is not, though, what he has done. From the moment Manchester City eliminated Paris St.-Germain earlier this month to qualify for its first Champions League final, Gundogan has found himself thinking about almost nothing else. “There’s not been a day when I haven’t thought about this game,” he said. “Maybe too much, to be honest.”Even after Manchester City won the Premier League title — in absentia, effectively; the club’s crown was confirmed when Manchester United, its closest challenger, lost to Leicester City on May 12 — he did not feel in celebratory mood. The euphoria of that achievement almost passed him by. Instead, in his mind, it meant he could focus more absolutely on Chelsea, on Porto, on Saturday.“I tried to convince myself that everything was preparation for the final,” he said. “I didn’t want to hold back for one second. In training, in my private life, I tried to keep myself as up as possible.”City’s top scorer in the Premier League this season was not Gabriel Jesus, Raheem Sterling or Kevin De Bruyne. It was Gundogan, with 13 goals.Pool photo by Scott HeppellAffectionately, his friends and his family suggested that he was at risk of causing himself additional stress. Gundogan is smart, and thoughtful, and logical. He had considered the issue. They worried about him far more than he worried about himself. “This is just how I am,” he said.He has wondered, over the last few weeks, whether the final has occupied so much of his mental energy because he knows the pain of losing one. Alone on City’s squad, Gundogan has tasted the Champions League final. He was on the Borussia Dortmund team that lost, late, to Bayern Munich in London in 2013. It is not something he has put out of his mind. “When you get the taste of playing in that game, and you lose, it does feel like unfinished business,” he said.Every major final, of course, is laced with these sorts of stories: the club seeking revenge for a bitter defeat or the coach trying to cement his legacy or the president trying to live up to the legacy of his father or the team trying to quiet the ghosts of its predecessors.This weekend’s is no different. There are private stories, not unlike Gundogan’s. Chelsea’s Thiago Silva was part of the P.S.G. team that lost to Bayern Munich in Lisbon last year. He, too, will see this as a chance to address a regret. His teammate Mateo Kovacic, meanwhile, has been to the biggest game in club soccer twice, and has never played in it: He remained on the substitutes’ bench as Real Madrid lifted the trophy in 2017 and 2018.Gundogan in 2013, when he scored in the Champions League final but did not win it.Adrian Dennis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAnd there are broader themes. This is Pep Guardiola’s first encounter in a decade with the game in which he confirmed his brilliance, his opportunity to win a third European Cup, the high-water mark for any manager. It is the culmination of Manchester City’s relentless march toward the pinnacle of the European game, the coronation as the game’s supreme power that represents the ultimate purpose and vindication of Abu Dhabi’s billion-dollar intervention in soccer.But some stories cut through more than others. A few years ago, Gundogan granted The Times rare access to his rehabilitation from a torn cruciate ligament. Over the course of eight months or so, he allowed us to track every stage of his recuperation — from his surgery in Barcelona to his first steps in the gym and on to his return first to training and then to the field.He invited us into his home, introduced us to his family, allowed us to photograph him in his private box at the Etihad Stadium as — a little distracted, a little mournful — he watched his team play yet another game without him. He made us Turkish coffee. He showed us his collection of sneakers. He did not mind when we asked whether he needed quite so many in gold.One afternoon, after checking that nobody was around, he took us into the club’s sanctum sanctorum: the first-team changing room at City’s training facility. Strictly speaking, it is for players only; the club has a firewall around first-team areas, one that applies even to senior employees, let alone journalists.Stealthily, as though he was quite enjoying the transgression, Gundogan opened a door at the back of the room to reveal what looked, at first glance, like a spa room at a country house hotel: a sauna, a cold bath, a couple of pristine swimming pools, complete with retractable floors and basketball hoops.After injuring his knee, Gundogan offered The Times an unusually candid look inside his recovery.Kieran Dodds for The New York TimesMore important, he spoke openly and frankly about the loneliness of injury, the fear, the frustration, the self-doubt, the boredom, the existential angst of being unable to do a job that is also an all-consuming identity. He talked a lot about the close group of half a dozen friends that has surrounded him since he was young; about how the prospect of a monthlong vacation with all of them, in Los Angeles, had gotten him through the long, bleak spring that year.That injury was not the first setback Gundogan had experienced. He had previously missed out on playing for Germany in the 2014 World Cup and in Euro 2016, too. He had endured a back problem that, at one juncture, he feared might dog him throughout his career, perhaps even end it.He is cool and considered and rational — he is proud of his Turkish heritage, but in many ways, he is very obviously German — but those disappointments nagged at him. He worried, deep down, that he was cursed not to have the career he might have had.And then, slowly but surely, he made his way back. As he did so over the past few years, it would have been impossible not to take some pleasure in seeing him thrive after seeing, close up, all that he had been through, not to feel a little vicarious happiness when he started, all of a sudden, scoring goals as City swept the rest of the Premier League aside this season. There had been points when he worried that the injury would rob him of something, that he would return somehow diminished, and yet here he was, better than ever.Gundogan has won 10 trophies at City. Saturday offers the opportunity for one more, and a bit of validation.Pool photo by Clive BrunskillTo report on a game is to suspend emotion. It sounds deeply unconvincing, but it is true: From experience, what matters in the 89th minute of watching your team in a major final is not whether it holds on to a lead or staves off a defeat, but that you have a decent connection to the Wi-Fi, more than 40 percent of your battery’s life, and a lead section for the story your office expects that is not a complete disaster. The disappointment or delight comes only after the words are written.Personal connections, though, are more complex, harder to suspend; those are the stories that cut through. Whatever happens on Saturday, what will matter most is what always matters on these occasions: reliable Wi-Fi, a conveniently located power socket, a vague idea of something to write.Should Manchester City win, though, the first thought will not be what it means for the power dynamics of the game or where this places Guardiola in the pantheon of history’s greatest coaches. It will be much smaller, much more personal: that this is the moment Gundogan has waited for, that this is the moment he worried he might never get to have, that everything he has been through was, ultimately, worth it.Maybe This New Idea Is a Good Idea?Chelsea’s team rolled into Porto on Thursday afternoon.Violeta Santos Moura/ReutersThis is becoming something of a theme. This week, as you may have noticed, my unstoppable — no, really: We try to get him to take vacations, and he just … doesn’t — colleague Tariq Panja reported that UEFA was exploring the idea of tweaking the format of the Champions League, swapping out the current two-legged semifinals for a weeklong “final four” tournament.To those of you who follow college basketball in the United States, this concept will require no explanation. To those of you who don’t: In lieu of the traditional home-and-away semifinals, followed by a final in a neutral venue, all three matchups would be one and done, held in the same city, over the course of a few days.The reaction to this news, broadly, was predictable: much wailing and gnashing of teeth and rending of garments over UEFA’s riding roughshod over the long-suffering, match-going fan. It seemed, to be frank, a little overblown, as if this is just how soccer as a whole is conditioned to greet any change whatsoever nowadays, as the manifestation of some lingering evil.That is not to say the idea is perfect. It is not. The home leg of a semifinal is the biggest game a club can host at its stadium. Abolishing them would deprive tens of thousands of fans every year of an opportunity to attend a genuine, red-letter event. Travel to and accommodation in the predetermined host city every year would be chaotic, and expensive. And mixing fans of four clubs over the course of a week would be a strain on police resources.A change like this could not be imposed from above; it would have to be done in consultation with and with concessions to fans. UEFA would need to demand that cities provide reasonably priced accommodations as a condition of hosting. Flights, too, would have to be made affordable.But none of that is impossible. The idea could work. At the very least, it is surely worthy of discussion. It might be worse than what we have now. It might be tried and deemed to have failed. But there is also a possibility that it might prove better, more dramatic, more compelling.We have spent the last two months railing against the elite teams’ demanding that they play one another more often, claiming that the familiarity will breed contempt, that jeopardy is what makes the Champions League special. Reacting no less furiously to something that would introduce added jeopardy, and make games between the elite ever so slightly rarer, seems incoherent, as if what you are objecting to is not the nature of change, but change itself.Mañana, MañanaA sneak peek at Luis Suárez’s Christmas card to Barcelona’s board.Gabriel Bouys/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesLuis Suárez, deep down, will not be impressed. The Uruguayan striker was unceremoniously dumped by Barcelona last summer, the club deciding that he was so old and so expensive that it would — despite the protestations of Lionel Messi — be a relief to offload him onto Atlético Madrid.A year later, of course, it has worked out quite nicely for Suárez: He scored the goal, last Saturday, that gave Atlético its first title in La Liga since 2014. That his exit still rankles, though, is clear: The sweat from that game had barely dried before he was suggesting that Barcelona had “undervalued” him.That will only be exacerbated by the fact that, a year later, Barcelona has at last identified a replacement. To take over from the then-33-year-old and thus over-the-hill Suárez, the club has plumped for the, er, 32-year-old Sergio Agüero. In public, Suárez has given the move his “complete support.” In private, he cannot fail to not to see the irony.That is not to say there is no sense in Barcelona’s apparent transfer policy this summer. In addition to Agüero, the club is hoping to add Georginio Wijnaldum (30) and the 27-year-old Dutch forward Memphis Depay. Eric García, a 20-year-old defender, is the only notable introduction of youth into a squad in desperate need of rejuvenation.It appears that Sergio Agüero will pursue his next trophy at Barcelona.Pool photo by Peter PowellWhat unites all four, of course, is the fact that they will not cost Barcelona a cent in transfer fees. All of them are out of contract. Their salaries may be burdensome, but they represent a chance to bulk out the team on a shoestring. Given Barcelona’s precipitous financial situation, adding four players for nothing would seem to be smart business.And yet the suspicion lingers that none of this solves the problem. Both Agüero and Wijnaldum are too old to have any resale value at all when the time comes for them to leave. Depay, too, will depreciate quickly. Barcelona, once again, is taking the short-term path when salvation lies in the long: selling off whatever aging stars they can this year, adding youth where possible, and starting the long, slow process of rebuilding.He might have had his revenge, but Barcelona was not wrong, last summer, to release Suárez. He is in the twilight of his career. He was earning a lot of money. That was not the mistake (though selling him to Atlético was, clearly, foolhardy). The mistake is replacing him with a player of exactly the same profile, solving today’s problem without thinking about tomorrow.Penalties Are Easy NowVillarreal players who made their penalties charging the goalkeeper who finally stopped one, Gerónimo Rulli.Pool photo by Aleksandra SzmigielAt the point when Gerónimo Rulli, an actual goalkeeper, stepped up to dispatch what was presumably the first penalty of his career with all the practiced élan of a seasoned striker, it felt as if the Europa League final might go on forever.Manchester United and Villarreal had played out a grinding 1-1 draw over the course of 120 minutes and were now seemingly inseparable even by penalties. All 11 Villareal players had scored — those who seemed nervous and those who seemed calm, the youngsters and the veterans, the forwards and the defenders. Even Raúl Albiol, who has apparently transmogrified into a weary fisherman.And all 10 of United’s outfield players had matched them. Of those, Luke Shaw alone had any real reason to feel fortunate, his shot squirming away from Rulli’s left arm and nestling, with a sigh of relief, in the corner of the goal. The rest had all been picture perfect: precise and powerful, penalties as executed by machines.It was David De Gea who broke the streak, a cruel inversion of the usual law that goalkeepers are supposed to be heroes in penalty shootouts, not villains. As the inquests into United’s defeat began, the line between success and failure felt grotesquely thin: How dare Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, the United manager, not have factored in that his goalkeeper might not be great at taking penalties?De Gea’s failure, though, highlighted just how good all of the other penalties had been. This seems to happen more and more now — penalty shootouts in which more than the traditional five are required, in which all of the players seem to have the technique and the poise to convert, even under intense pressure.It is worth asking why that might be. Players, generally, are technically better than they were a couple of decades ago. Clubs practice shootouts more often (though not Villarreal, as it happens). Managers focus intently on the psychology of their squads, readying them for these high-pressure moments. And does that mean that we might need to find an alternative to penalties? Asking goalkeepers to take penalties is, after all, not too far removed from the way of settling ties soccer used to have: the toss of a coin. There must, somewhere, be a better option.CorrespondenceWe start on an existential note from Tse Wei Lim: “There is something very capitalist, or perhaps Shakespearean, about the idea that Atlético, having learned to excel in La Liga, should now attempt to excel in Europe. Is there anything wrong with a club being content with domestic excellence and a profound sense of identity?”There is not, not at all, and this is something that soccer as a whole might do well to consider (and I include myself in that). Not achieving the ultimate success — if that is what the Champions League represents — does not consequentially make you a failure.Named for Madrid and dressing like Spain: lots of letters about Real Salt Lake this week.Andy Clayton-King/Associated PressA lively exchange of views followed the discussion of team names in Major League Soccer. Ryan Humphries believes those that work “build on European names without pilfering them: Columbus Crew and my hometown Philadelphia Union shine because they embody the idea of a united front, just as in Manchester and Newcastle, but in a distinctly American way. This is opposed to Real Salt Lake or Sporting Kansas City, which really sound like Gucci knockoff identities.”(This is a great phrase and I will, sadly, be stealing it without attribution.)Joey Klonowski, meanwhile, suggests “the best team names capture the history or iconography of their city. In America, that’s possible with American-style names (Portland Thorns, Chicago Fire) or with Euro-style names (Minnesota United).” I agree, though the Fire thing is weird: Why celebrate an event that destroyed a city? You wouldn’t turn Napoli into the Naples Volcanoes, would you?And more disdain for Real Salt Lake from Don Waugaman. The most egregious example, Don wrote, of “an attempt to impose a borrowed form of authenticity on a product is Real Salt Lake, a direct rip-off of one of the world’s biggest soccer teams in a country that was founded on anti-monarchism. Couldn’t we at least have gone with ‘Republica Salt Lake’?” Or, to follow the Fire example, maybe the Salt Lake Winter Olympics Bid Scandal.That’s all for this week. I’ll flick through your questions and comments and ideas while I’m enjoying the — checks weather app — rain in Porto. More

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      The European Super League Explained

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      Whether you’re a lifelong fan or an outsider who doesn’t know your Manchesters from your Madrids, we’ve got answers to your pressing questions.A little more than a year after European soccer found a renewed sense of unity in the face of the coronavirus pandemic, the sport now faces its greatest crisis in a generation.Late on Sunday night, 12 of the world’s biggest soccer clubs unveiled a plan to launch what they called the Super League, a closed competition in which they (and their invited guests) would compete against one another while claiming even more of soccer’s billions of dollars in revenue for themselves.The announcement cast doubt not only on the ongoing viability of the Champions League — the sport’s showpiece club competition — but also called into question the very future of the domestic leagues that have been soccer’s cornerstone for more than a century.All of a sudden, it is not clear where soccer is heading, or what it will look like when it gets there. Here, then, is what we know so far.First things first: What is a Super League?The concept has been around for decades: a Continental competition that incorporates all of the most famous names from the Europe’s domestic leagues every year into an event all their own. For a long time, it has effectively been something between an aspiration and a threat. Sunday night, though, was the first time anyone had given it a physical form.Who gets to play in it?So far, there are 12 founding members. The teams that have been the driving force behind the project — Real Madrid, Manchester United, Liverpool and Juventus — have kindly invited eight other clubs to join them: Barcelona and Atlético Madrid from Spain, Inter Milan and A.C. Milan from Italy, and the rest of the Premier League’s self-appointed Big Six: Manchester City, Chelsea, Tottenham and Arsenal.They expect to be joined soon by three more permanent members, though it is not clear yet why those teams have yet to disclose their involvement. Paris St.-Germain in France and the Portuguese giant F.C. Porto were seen as likely candidates, but both have distanced themselves from the project. The organizers are eager to have a team like Bayern Munich, the reigning European champion and one of the world’s biggest clubs, but on Monday, Borussia Dortmund’s chairman said that not only was his team out but also that Bayern agreed with his position.Whatever the final roster, those 15 founding teams will form the league’s bedrock. The full allotment of 20 clubs each season will be fleshed out by a rotating cast of five more teams, chosen through some sort of formula that the organizers haven’t gotten around to deciding just yet.That sounds a lot like the Champions League.It does, to be fair. But the roster for the Champions League is set each year based on clubs’ performance in their domestic leagues. The Super League will have permanent members who face no risk of missing out on either the matches or the profits.The ‘Super League’ AnnouncementTwelve leading European soccer clubs issued a statement on Sunday confirming their plans to form a breakaway league. Here’s what they said at the time.Read DocumentHow will it work?The 20 teams will be split into two divisions — 10 teams in each — and then play one another home-and-away. At the end of the regular season, the top four clubs in each division will progress to a knockout round that will be familiar to viewers of the Champions League. The difference is that those playoffs will be held over the course of four weeks at the end of the season.Will the Super League teams still play in their current domestic leagues?That is absolutely their plan. It may not be the leagues’ plan.Is this about money?Yes. According to their own estimates, each founding member stands to gain around $400 million merely to establish “a secure financial foundation,” four times more than Bayern Munich earned for winning the Champions League last season.But that is just the start, really: The clubs believe that selling the broadcast rights for the Super League, as well as the commercial income, will be worth billions. And it will all go to them, rather than being redistributed to smaller clubs and lesser leagues through European soccer’s governing body, UEFA. At the same time, the value of domestic leagues and their clubs will diminish drastically as they are effectively rendered also-rans every year.Two architects of the Super League: Liverpool’s John Henry and Real Madrid’s Florentino Pérez.Armando Babani/EPA, via ShutterstockWon’t the Super League teams fight over all that money?The founding members have decreed that spending on transfer fees and wages will be capped at a certain percentage of revenue, which — theoretically at least — gives owners far more chance to restrict their spending at the same time as they are maximizing their income.Sounds good for those clubs. Their fans must be happy?Not so much, no. The reaction has been one of spittle-flecked rage at the betrayal of tradition. It does not help that, though several of the clubs have released statements insisting they will consult with fan groups as the project develops, nobody thought to do that ahead of time.It is hard, though, to be sure how universal the sense of outrage and betrayal is. There is a little evidence — though it is hardly overwhelming — of a demographic split in the reaction to the idea, and it may be that this is what the clubs are banking on: that older fans may be more wedded to tradition, and younger ones may be won over more easily. More

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      Champions League Schedule Blurs Home and Away

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyChampions League Adapts to a Fluid Concept: Home and AwayCoronavirus restrictions have sent multiple games to neutral sites. Will this summer’s European Championship be the next big event to reschedule?RB Leipzig’s Hungarian goalkeeper Peter Gulacsi might have been the only player truly at home last week in a Champions League match against Liverpool in Budapest.Credit…Attila Kisbenedek/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesFeb. 23, 2021, 2:00 a.m. ETTwo European soccer giants, Atlético Madrid and Chelsea, will meet in the Champions League on Tuesday. The site of this much anticipated game? Bucharest, Romania.On Wednesday, Manchester City will play the German team Borussia Mönchengladbach. That game will be in Budapest, the Hungarian capital, where the English champion Liverpool beat Germany’s RB Leipzig last week.In the Europa League, the continent’s second-tier club championship, neutral sites are now almost as common as home games. Last week, Spanish and English teams played in Italy, and teams from Norway and Germany met in Spain. On Thursday, a week after the London club Arsenal played to a draw against Portugal’s Benfica in Rome, the teams will meet again in the second leg of their not-home-and-home tie near Athens.The pandemic has wreaked havoc with international sports schedules for a year, and that chaos continues to have an impact on soccer’s biggest club tournaments. The reasons — government edicts, travel restrictions and quarantine rules — vary around Europe. In some countries, teams are still allowed to travel to and from their opponents’ stadiums without issue. In others, countries have blocked entry to visitors from entire nations, or drawn up onerous rules that make such travel impractical in a soccer season when teams often play two or three games a week.UEFA, the European soccer governing body that runs the competitions, has decided that if restrictions adversely affect any game, it will be played at a neutral site where travel is permitted. But the decision to play knockout games in places seemingly chosen at random has led to confusion, and not a little grumbling.Real Sociedad, for example, played its “home” leg against Manchester United last week in Turin, Italy, but will play the return match at United’s home, Old Trafford, on Thursday.“It does not seem coherent to me that as the home team, we play on a neutral field, and as a visitor, we do it there,” Roberto Olabe, Real Sociedad’s director of football, told Diario Vasco. “I would like the return to also be on neutral ground, or for UEFA to appoint a single venue for a one-game tie as it did last year.”The displeasure has not been universal. Both Hungary and Romania, whose teams almost never go deep in major European competitions, have been eager to bring the games to their countries — even if, in many cases, they must still be played behind closed doors.“A match played in the framework of the most prestigious European interclub competition is a major sporting event, and we offered our support to the organizers as soon as this possibility was raised,” the Romanian soccer federation president, Razvan Burleanu, told Agence France-Presse.The playing of some games at neutral sites has turned the first tiebreaker for the tournament, the away goals rule, into something of a paradox. Normally, if a home-and-away tie ends with neither team ahead in total goals, the team with the most goals away from home advances. The logic is that scoring away from home is a little harder in a hostile environment, and should get a small bonus.But home isn’t the same for everyone. Chelsea, for example, will play its away game not at Atletico’s Wanda Metropolitano stadium but on neutral ground in Bucharest. But any goals scored there still will count as away goals only for the English team.Atlético will then have to defend, or make up, any difference in the score line on Chelsea’s home field in London next month.Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, left, and Arsenal played to a draw against Benfica last week in Rome.Credit…Alberto Lingria/ReutersFor the Benfica-Arsenal matchup, the away-goals rule seemed even more puzzlingly arbitrary. The first leg in Rome ended in a 1-1 tie, when Arsenal was considered the away team. Benfica will be the away team in Greece, but if that leg ends in a higher-scoring draw — say, 2-2 — Benfica will advance by having scored more away goals.(Some European soccer traditions appear immune to the coronavirus: The Serbian club Red Star Belgrade was forced to apologize last week after some of its fans broke into a closed stadium for a Europa League tie against Milan and racially abused Milan striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic, who is of Bosnian descent.)Soccer’s scheduling problems may not be over, however. The continuing reach of the pandemic has called into question the plans to stage this summer’s European Championship in 12 cities around Europe. Traditionally, the event has been a less-sprawling affair hosted by one country, or a pair of neighboring ones.Given the travel complications laid bare by the club competitions, the idea of national teams flying around Europe seems foolhardy, or downright dangerous. Already there are calls for relocating the entire tournament to a single county, probably England, which is already scheduled to host the two semifinals and the final.Over the weekend, The Sunday Times of London reported that the British government had told UEFA it was ready and willing to stand in as host of the full schedule of games, although the country’s health minister promptly denied that report.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Luis Suárez Rediscovers His Bite

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyOn SoccerLuis Suárez Rediscovers His BiteAfter a summer of indignity and humiliation, the striker has been reborn with Atlético Madrid.Luis Suárez has scored 16 goals this season after swapping his colors in the Liga title race.Credit…Pablo Morano/ReutersFeb. 23, 2021, 12:01 a.m. ETLuis Suárez had already been made a scapegoat, blamed for all that had gone wrong at Barcelona. He had already been rejected, told bluntly by the club’s new coach, Ronald Koeman, that his services were no longer required.He had been forced to sit alongside the president who had precipitated it all and say thank you for having me, even as the thought of being forced to go brought him to tears. Worse, though, was still to come, a final indignity in his summer of humiliation.On Sept. 17, Suárez touched down in the Italian city of Perugia to considerable fanfare. The airport where he landed put out a statement celebrating his arrival. His progress to the city’s University for Foreigners was accompanied by a crowd of fans and photographers. Even the university thanked him for gracing its halls.His stay was to be brief. Suárez was there to sit for an Italian exam. His wife, Sofía Balbi, is of Italian descent, making her husband eligible for citizenship, providing he could demonstrate competency in the language.Suárez brief visit to Italy in September attracted the attention of fans and, later, the authorities.Credit…Crocchioni/EPA via ShutterstockIt was something he had been planning for at least a year, he would say later, but at the time his motivation seemed much more immediate: Juventus was offering Suárez a swift exit from Barcelona, but could not employ any more players from outside the European Union. Suárez’s getting an Italian passport was the key to the transfer. A few minutes after arriving, he left. He had passed the test.That, though, was only the beginning. A few days later, the Perugia prosecutor’s office and the Guardia di Finanza, part of Italy’s mosaic of law enforcement agencies, announced that they were investigating “irregularities” in the exam. Suárez, they suggested, had been informed of the questions beforehand, and been asked only to do the oral portion of the test.The university was accused of agreeing to give him an intermediate grade — enough to pass — before he had taken the test. Juventus, the prosecutors would later claim, had sought to exert pressure “at the highest institutional levels” to accelerate the process. A phone call from his Italian tutor to one of the examiners had been intercepted, revealing that she admitted Suárez could not “utter a word” of Italian.Though both the university and Juventus deny any misconduct, and Suárez himself was never accused of wrongdoing, the reputational damage was nevertheless substantial.He has, of course, long been used to being cast — often rightly — as a villain. As his summer descended through tragedy and all the way on into farce, though, his image shifted again: unwanted by Barcelona; accused of cheating in an exam; and at 34, while still one of the most talented strikers of his generation, condemned to play out the coda to his career as a figure of ridicule.A timeline of Luis Suárez’s actual and suspected crimes, clockwise from top left: a handball against Ghana at the 2010 World Cup; accusations of racial abuse leveled by Patrice Evra in 2011; an accusation of biting (the third of his career) in 2014; and diving, every time he steps on the field.Credit…From top left, clockwise: Ivan Sekretarev/Associated Press; Lindsey Parnaby, via European Pressphoto Agency; Ricardo Mazalan, via Associated Press; Manu Fernandez, via Associated PressThat is not quite how things have worked out. Suárez did not end up signing with Juventus. Instead, freed from his Barcelona contract, he joined Atlético Madrid. Barcelona’s hierarchy would have preferred to see him leave for Italy or France — Paris St.-Germain was interested, too — rather than for a direct rival. There was some trepidation that the executives might come to regret the move. Even they, though, could not have predicted quite how much.As he prepares to lead Atlético’s line against Chelsea in the Champions League on Tuesday night, Suárez is in “one of the best moments of his career,” as the Atlético president, Enrique Cerezo, put it.He has scored 16 goals in 20 La Liga games for Diego Simeone’s team. Atlético sits atop the Spanish table, with a three-point lead and a game in hand on the second-place Real Madrid. Thanks in no small part to Suárez, Atlético is dreaming of its first league title since 2014, and only its second this century. He has, in the first six months of his Atlético career, proved one thing beyond doubt. “Luis Suárez is not old,” Cerezo said.Simeone, certainly, never believed that he was. He had admired the Uruguayan for some time — he had hoped to sign Suárez while he was still with Liverpool, calling his performances in England “extraordinary” — and, when it became clear Barcelona was prepared to jettison him, Simeone urged Atlético to make its move. Cerezo and the club’s executives did not take much persuading. “When a player of his quality is available, you have to try,” Cerezo said.In his final days with Barcelona, Suárez, like Lionel Messi, became an easy target for those looking to assign blame for the club’s failings.Credit…Pau Barrena/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWhen coach and player first spoke by phone, Simeone detected “the energy, the hunger, the defiance” that have not only characterized Suárez, but that also were Simeone’s finest attributes as a player. Most of all, though, Simeone felt that Suárez had something to prove. “He had a desire to show that he is still relevant,” the coach said.It is tempting to ascribe Suárez’s form in Madrid to the re-ignition of that inner fire. He has always, after all, given the impression that he is at his best when he has something or someone to rage against, whether it is an opponent, an authority or, in this case, simply the dying of the light. “Some did not believe I was still capable of playing at the top level,” Suárez said this week.And yet it is possible, too, to believe that the opposite is true: that Suárez has found himself again not in war, but in peace.His former international teammate Sebastián Abreu told the Spanish newspaper El País this week that he believed Barcelona had, in Suárez’s final year with the club, “mounted a campaign where they identified Luis as the problem with everything, together with Lionel Messi.” Suárez, judging by his public comments, seems to agree with that assessment.With Atlético, by contrast, he has not only encountered a coach who — as Abreu put it — “knows perfectly how to treat a player,” he has also found a club that is not “blaming Suárez for every situation, and so that has liberated him to enjoy playing soccer completely.” Without battles to fight off the field, he has been able to dedicate himself once again to winning them on it.Just as crucially, he has found himself on a team prepared to offer him the support he needs to do so. Just as Atlético has revived Suárez, so he has revived Atlético. Simeone had always regarded Suárez as the finest pure striker in the world, but he was aware that he was, in his mid-30s, no longer able to play on the counterattack quite so devastatingly as he had, say, with Liverpool in his mid-20s.Atlético Madrid adjusted its style of play to get the most out of Suárez. It’s working: The club leads La Liga by three points.Credit…Jose Breton/Associated PressIn order to restore Suárez to his former grandeur, then, Simeone dispensed with the counterpunching approach that had long characterized his tenure at the club. In its stead came a more possession-oriented, high-pressing style, one designed to get more players closer to Suárez, and the ball to him in the areas where he could do the most damage. “The team is accompanying him, so that he can become the best version of himself,” Simeone said. “And that is scoring goals.”Even for someone, like Simeone, who never doubted Suárez’s ability — who never mistook the ticking of a clock for the tolling of a bell — there is still the occasional surprise.Late in January, the Atlético coach found the striker lingering on the training field, practicing free kicks with a couple of teammates, Thomas Lemar and João Félix. Simeone, sensing an opportunity to set Suárez a challenge, remarked that he had not seen him score from set pieces all that often during his career.A few days later, Suárez lined one up in a game against Cádiz. He was about 30 yards from goal. He whipped the ball into the top corner. Suárez had passed that test, too.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Timo Werner, Chelsea and Numbers That Lie

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyRory Smith On SoccerSometimes the Numbers LieStrikers are paid to score goals. The more the better. But can a lack of them distort the full picture of a player?Is this striker having a bad season? It depends on your view.Credit…John Sibley/Action Images, via ReutersFeb. 19, 2021, 12:30 p.m. ETSHEFFIELD, England — This is the story of a struggling striker. He has scored only twice since November: once in a cakewalk of a cup game against an overmatched opponent, and once from the sort of position in which he really could not miss, the ball falling to him a couple of yards out, a goal by accident rather than design.The latter was a welcome fillip — sometimes that is what you need, after all, that jolt of luck — but it did little to gloss over the striker’s troubles. Five goals in 23 league games since joining his new club remains a paltry return. His confidence seems to be shot, as if he has hit “rock bottom,” as one pundit observed.The criticism, over the past few months, has been consistent, from outside and in. His former manager said in public that he was not offering enough, with or without the ball, and wondered in private if he was simply too profligate, even in the protected surroundings of training, just not ruthless enough. It all seems to have taken its toll.And this is the story of a striker finding his feet. Not thriving, perhaps — not yet — but contributing, certainly: creating chances for his teammates, adding considerably to his team’s attacking threat, generating as many opportunities to score as some of the league’s most devastating forwards. His goal total, so far, has been a little disappointing, but all of the evidence suggests that too will come, in time.The two strikers are, of course, one and the same: Timo Werner, the German forward chased by most of Europe’s elite clubs over the last couple of years and, last summer, the centerpiece of Chelsea’s emphatic, lavish refit. Signed for $59 million, he was snatched from under the nose of Liverpool and arrived in England with a reputation as a finisher of rare and surgical precision.By most measures, of course, it has not quite worked out that way. The first version of Werner’s story is the one that has taken hold in the popular imagination. That is no surprise: More than any other stripe of player, strikers are — ultimately and largely legitimately — judged on the number of goals they score.That Timo Werner has only five goals isn’t the full story of his season.Credit…Pool photo by Andy RainDefenders can play well and not keep a clean sheet. Midfield is a broad enough church that players as diverse as Claude Makelele and Xavi Hernández and Andrea Pirlo can all be considered its gods. Some wingers score goals, some create them, and others just pose a sort of general, all-purpose threat, and that can be enough.But strikers are typically defined by one metric, and one metric alone. And on that front, this season, Werner has come up short. He might spend his free time painting masterpieces or planning elaborate heists; he might act as the hinge of every single attacking move Chelsea puts together.But it is goals that Chelsea paid for, and goals have been hard to come by for Werner, and that colors everything else. The proof that he is not playing well, that he is short of confidence, is there in the goals scored column. If he was playing well, he would have scored more goals. More than that, in fact: to play well, a striker has to score more goals than he has mustered. That, after all, is the point of strikers.That version of the story is not wrong. But nor is it complete. Like many of the alumni of the RB Leipzig school from which he emerged, Werner built a reputation not just on how he looked on the field, but on how he looked on the page.There is, now, little left of the culture war that flared briefly and brightly within soccer’s recruitment structures a decade or so ago. Most teams have long since accepted the idea that traditional scouting — going to watch a player — fits hand in glove with a more data-driven approach.It varies a little from club to club, but the data can be used either as a sieve for potential targets — narrowing down the hundreds of possible signings for a few who are of genuine interest — or as a form of due diligence, a way of checking that a better or cheaper or more suitable target is not being overlooked.It is impossible to say for certain, but it seems likely Werner was an example of the former. In the Bundesliga, he was something of a data darling: a player who regularly scored more goals than the chances he had either manufactured or been presented with suggested he should have done. (In the argot, he had outperformed his Expected Goals.)And even amid the travails of Werner’s first season in England, those same metrics tell a slightly different story to the one that has taken hold. For all the criticism, his underlying performance data — an unwieldy phrase that, from here on in, we shall avoid by just saying “the numbers” — has remained, essentially, solid.Teammates like Tammy Abraham have been rewarded by Werner’s efforts.Credit…David Klein/ReutersHis Expected Goals (xG) number — a gauge of the quality of the chances he has created or received — varies a little, depending on which model is used, but according to Stats Perform’s metric, he might have been expected to score seven Premier League goals this season. In those terms, he is performing similarly to Tottenham’s Son Heung-min.There is, of course, one notable — and significant — difference: Son has scored 13 goals this season. No player in England is overperforming his xG more. Werner, by contrast, has scored five times. (It is worth noting that several players are underperforming their xG more than Werner, though none quite as much as Manchester City’s Kevin De Bruyne, who is not having what anyone would call a difficult campaign.)“This can’t simply be attributed to him being a bad finisher,” said Omar Chaudhuri, the chief intelligence officer at 21st Club, an analytics consultancy. “He exceeded his xG by more than 25 percent last season. He has been wasteful to date, but this streak shouldn’t last too long: We know getting into good positions to score is the best long-term predictor of goal-scoring.”That is not the only source of solace. 21st Club notes that Werner accounts for around a fifth of all of Chelsea’s chances, the sort of mark an average central striker might manage, according to Chaudhuri. “But it’s still impressive, given he’s often been played wide,” Chaudhuri said.He is also playing deeper. “He has had 15 to 20 percent fewer touches and actions in the final third and penalty area,” Chaudhuri said. Despite that, 21st Club’s data suggests that of the Premier League’s strikers, only Roberto Firmino, Anthony Martial and Aston Villa’s Ollie Watkins are involved in more sequences that lead to a shot.Werner, in other words, is not playing especially poorly. It is just that he is being judged as a striker despite, for much of the season, not actually playing as a striker. It should not be a shock, then, that he is being granted fewer chances to score.“He is finding opportunities harder to come by than he did in his last few years in the Bundesliga,” said Simon Gleave, the head of sports analysis at Nielsen’s Gracenote, a data provider. “He has had an attempt at goal every 36 minutes at Chelsea. In his three seasons at Leipzig, that was every 27, 25 and 23 minutes, respectively.”Werner is often in the middle of Chelsea attacks, even if he’s not on the end of them.Credit…Pool photo by Julian FinneyNot only are his chances rarer, though, they are also lower quality, according to Gracenote’s analysis. Yet, at the same time, he has seen a slight uptick in the number of chances he is creating: an assist every 331 minutes in England as opposed to one every 340 minutes in the Bundesliga.None of these, of course, amounts to a smoking gun, a single shocking statistic that proves, in one fell swoop, that Timo Werner has been the signing of the season. They do not contradict the idea that he has been sapped of his confidence — though perhaps it is starting to return under Chelsea’s new coach, Thomas Tuchel — or that his first few months in England have been frustrating and arduous.The numbers do not tell the whole story, but they are a reminder that perhaps the immediate judgment of the eye can be flawed, too. A couple of weeks ago, on a bitterly cold night in Sheffield, Werner spent almost the entire game making the same run, again and again.He picked out Chris Basham, the Sheffield United defender, his mark for the evening. He lingered a couple of feet in front of him: close enough to sense, not quite close enough to touch. He waited. He danced in anticipation. And as soon as the ball fell to one of his teammates, he made his move: burning past Basham at an angle, cutting from the left-hand side of the field to the center, bearing down on the penalty area.For a while, it had no tangible impact. There was a cross that did not quite come off, a shot that was cleared from the line. And then, just before halftime, Werner got his reward. Ben Chilwell picked out his run from deep: He knew where he was going to be. Werner skated past Basham, floundering now, to the corner of the penalty area, and crossed, low, for Mason Mount to crash the ball home.It would have been easy to overlook all the work that went into that moment. Much of it may not even have been noted in all but the deepest statistical analysis. But then so much of what constitutes soccer goes unseen: a forward pulling and stretching a back line, softening up a defender, priming them for the coup de grâce. The eye and the spreadsheet sometimes tell different, equally valid, stories. But there are times, too, when neither and both quite capture the whole.No Reason to LeaveThe meeting of Lionel Messi and Kylian Mbappé in the Champions League this week was not quite Tom Brady and Patrick Mahomes at the Super Bowl. Not only was the stage — the first leg of a last 16 tie — not quite so grand, so final, but this time, the younger man won out.In truth, beating Barcelona is not quite what it used to be — this is a club, after all, that loses heavily in the Champions League at least once a year these days; Juventus had already run riot at Camp Nou this season. But it still felt like the end, and the start, of something: the final proof that this iteration of Barcelona is in free fall, and confirmation that Mbappé is the heir apparent to the throne jointly occupied by Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo for the last decade or so.Which player would you rather have at your club today?Credit…Albert Gea/ReutersTraditionally, his hat trick would have served only to accelerate Mbappé’s inevitable move to either Barcelona or Real Madrid — the two clubs considered acceptable homes for the world’s very best — but there is reason to believe that this plotline may play out differently.Barcelona, for a start, does not have the money to pry him from Paris St.-Germain. Real Madrid wants you to believe it can pull it off, but quite how the math behind that works is anyone’s guess.But significantly, Real is not quite as enticing a proposition as it might once have been. It is a team in transition, a club unable to shake its reliance on a cadre of players in their mid-30s as it waits for its crop of bright and mainly Brazilian young things to come good. In the short term, Mbappé is more likely to compete for the Champions League trophy in Paris than he would be in Madrid.And that, to a player of his caliber and his horizons, is what matters. How he is regarded in posterity will not depend on which domestic league he plays in, or even on the fact that he won the World Cup before he turned 20, but on how he performs in European competition. It has long been held against Messi’s claim to being the best ever that he never won a World Cup. It would similarly disadvantage Mbappé if he never won the Champions League.It is there, in the modern game, that reputations are forged and greatness bestowed, not in a national competition, and not even, really, at the World Cup. When Mbappé comes to consider his future, that is what he will keep in mind: Which team can best guarantee him a place in the Champions League, and which team can he expect to give him a shot at winning it? For the moment, P.S.G. can make a compelling case that it outstrips the fading Spanish giants on both counts.A Burst BubbleA revised slogan for a rescheduled Euro 2020 in London: It’s coming home.Credit…Action Images/ReutersIf it was not obvious before this week’s resumption of European competition — and the sight of games being rerouted to neutral territory to circumvent travel restrictions — then it should be now: The chances of successfully holding this summer’s European Championships in 12 different cities in 12 different countries are beyond slim.Indeed, even if all the teams are allowed to attend all their games in their scheduled locations, it seems distinctly unlikely that fans will be allowed into the majority of stadiums. Even as coronavirus vaccine programs pick up pace and case rates start to drop, it is hard to envision mass gatherings being allowed in less than four months. Euro 2020/21 has been designed as a pan-continental festival of soccer. The idea doesn’t work if nobody is there to watch it.It is entirely understandable that UEFA is reticent to admit its original plan is no longer viable, but we are reaching the point where some clear thinking — and a clear decision — is necessary. And there is one immediately apparent solution: Take a little inspiration from the N.B.A. and stage the whole thing over a single month, in a single place. And that place should be London.This is not — let’s be clear — a suggestion made in the indefatigable spirit of those British lawmakers and columnists who, as soon as there is even a scintilla of doubt over the viability of any major tournament, immediately demand it be held in England instead. (Human rights abuses in Qatar? Play it in England! Stadiums in Brazil not ready? Play it in England! Russian troll farms destabilizing American democracy? Play it in England!)It is, instead, a suggestion rooted in simple logistics. There are a plenty of cities in Europe with the hotel infrastructure to host 24 teams in secure bubbles. There are a few that could probably muster the necessary training facilities. But only London has the number of stadiums required to stage a major tournament at short notice.Wembley is scheduled to stage the final week of the Euros anyway. The homes of Arsenal, Tottenham, Chelsea and West Ham would be fitting backdrops for showpiece games; Twickenham, England’s rugby stadium, could be drafted, too. The remainder could be played at Crystal Palace, Fulham, Brentford and Queens Park Rangers, or any of the modern arenas within an hour or so: Reading, Brighton, Southampton.It would not be the tournament that UEFA had hoped to offer, the shimmering beacon of hope for the post-pandemic rebirth of sports. But that idea — admirable though it may be — falls down on one fairly simple fact: We are not, yet, in the post-pandemic phase, and we will not be by the time June rolls around. It is time to accept reality as it is, not as you would wish it to be.CorrespondenceEverton and Liverpool will take the measure of one another again on Saturday at Anfield.Credit…Pool photo by Catherine IvillLet’s start on Merseyside this week — I’m set to be there Saturday to cover Liverpool-Everton — with a couple of emails that I didn’t have space to address last time out. “My friend is an Everton fan,” Peter Duncan wrote. “He claims that the reason Everton are doing well this year is because they have no fans in their stadium: The fans are so negative that if someone is having a bad game, they are on top of him. With no fans, they have no criticism or abuse to deal with.”The same thought had occurred to me, too, Peter — though not specifically about Everton — but I think the effect is more to do with styles of play than particular teams. Managers can now take a more cautious approach, and players can stick to it, without worrying about their fans growing impatient or finding their focus disturbed by the force of a hostile crowd.Across Stanley Park, Justin Sharon believes it should be mentioned in the context of Liverpool’s recent slump that “it is astonishing that Liverpool became champion of England, Europe and the world with a net spend over the last five years that was less than that of Bournemouth. Perhaps now Liverpool’s achievements from 2018 to 2020 will receive the recognition they deserve.”I’m not sure there’s been any lack of recognition, but the overall thrust of the argument is sound: Liverpool has overachieved in the last three years, and a correction was to some extent inevitable, though the scale of it is perhaps greater than might have been expected.On the subjects raised last week, Julio Gomes points out that Mike Dean was not the only referee to receive death threats after a recent game: so did the Portuguese official Luis Godinho, who sent off two players in a cup game between Porto and Braga. “The first was the result of a horrific injury to a player, and even after the second, the final score was 1-1, in the first leg of a semifinal. Perspective, please!”Dan Browning is preaching to the converted on the subject of away goals: “If a two-legged contest goes to extra time in the second game, why do away goals still count more? How is it fair to give one side 90 minutes to score away goals while giving the other side 120 minutes?” There is an easy answer to this, Dan: It isn’t.And a couple of you were in touch to discuss the idea that, perhaps, soccer has been too quick to use data to dismiss the value in low-percentage, long-range shots. “Most N.B.A. teams now try to score from two places: at the rim and on the 3-point line,” wrote Alex von Nordheim.“There are two exceptions to that rule: shots from well beyond the 3-point line and the long 2-pointers, which are the least efficient shots but are often all that is left against a defense determined to prevent easy shots from close up or more valuable shots from beyond the 3-point line.” In this reckoning, Bruno Fernandes is effectively soccer’s Kawhi Leonard.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More