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      Barcelona Wants to Keep Lionel Messi. La Liga May Not Allow It.

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      Barcelona’s financial woes and the expiration of its star’s contract have left the club in a bind. And the only solution — about $200 million in salary cuts — won’t be easy.When Lionel Messi stepped off the field late Saturday night after the final of the Copa América, the Argentina captain — one of the most celebrated athletes in history — was, at long last, a champion in his national colors.He was also, only weeks after his 34th birthday, unemployed.Messi’s talent has never been in question. A six-time world player of the year, he is among the best players of his or any generation. His professional future, though, and even his ability to suit up for F.C. Barcelona next season, is suddenly very much in doubt.Messi wants to stay at Barcelona, the only professional home he has ever known, and Barcelona desperately wants to keep him. But the club’s dire financial straits and a series of fateful decisions by team management — including the potentially disastrous one to let Messi’s contract expire at the end of June — have imperiled what is arguably the most successful association between a club and a single player in soccer history.And the vise, in the form of Spanish soccer’s strict financial rules, is tightening by the day.Lionel Messi and his teammates received a hero’s welcome on their return to Argentina after winning the Copa América.Juan Ignacio Roncoroni/EPA, via ShutterstockMessi said nothing about his contract situation over the last month while leading Argentina to victory in the Copa América in Brazil. And Barcelona’s new president, Joan Laporta, has tried to present a confident front. “Everything’s on track,” he told news crews camped outside his offices last week, when he and other Barcelona executives had huddled in search of a solution.But the problem is that Messi’s future may no longer be in the player’s hands, or his club’s. Spanish league rules limit each club’s spending to only a percentage of club revenue, and league officials have said repeatedly that they not will weaken their rules to accommodate Barcelona, which is far over that limit.In short, if Barcelona cannot cut 200 million euros, or about $240 million, from its wage bill this summer — an almost impossibly large sum in a soccer economy cratered by the pandemic — it will not be allowed to register any new players, including Messi, for next season. (Barcelona’s decision to allow Messi’s contract to expire last month means he now must be registered as a new signing, instead of a renewal, which might have been easier.)A rupture between Messi and Barcelona would be seismic for both sides. Messi has been the focal point of Barcelona for nearly two decades, the architect of much of its success on the field and the engine of its financial might away from it.But while Barcelona has collected money at breathtaking speed in recent years — in 2019 it became the first club to surpass $1 billion in annual revenue — it also spent with even more alacrity, living life on the financial edge through impulsive management, rash decisions and imprudent contracts. Messi’s most recent four-year deal alone, if he met every clause and condition, was worth almost $675 million, a sum so large that it had an inflationary affect on the salaries of all of his teammates, fueling a payroll that now eats up about three-fourths of Barcelona’s annual revenue.Now, facing debts of more than 1 billion euros and losses in the hundreds of millions of dollars, Barcelona is struggling to balance its books in a way that adheres to league rules.It is partly because of Messi, of course, that Barcelona finds itself on the brink. Its losses in the past two years have surpassed more than $500 million, much of that because of rich contracts like the one Barcelona’s former administration gave Messi in the fall of 2017.Details of the 30-page deal, which was leaked to a Spanish newspaper, are a testament to Barcelona’s taste for living on the edge: A salary of about $1.4 million a week. A signing bonus of $139 million. A “loyalty” bonus — to a player it has employed since he was 13 — of $93 million.A new contract, yet to be completed, almost certainly will require Messi, one of the world’s most valuable athletes, to accept a substantial pay cut.Victor Font, one of the losing candidates in this year’s presidential election, said he was surprised the team had yet to make the financial arrangements required to keep Messi. But like Laporta, he said he was convinced Messi would remain with the club.“The alternative would be so much of a disappointment that I cannot think there’s an alternative,” Font said in a telephone interview.Messi’s contract with Barcelona expired last month. Signing him to a new one that doesn’t require a significant pay cut will be difficult.Albert Gea/ReutersThe team is not getting any sympathy, or preferential treatment, from the Spanish league. Javier Tebas, the league’s chief executive, told reporters this week that Barcelona only has itself to blame for its financial crisis. Yes, he told reporters, the coronavirus pandemic had battered the team’s finances, but other teams — notably Barcelona’s archrival Real Madrid — have found ways to operate within the league’s rules.The issue, Tebas said, was that Barcelona has no room to maneuver. The league calculates different limits for each team based on each club’s income statements, but caps spending at 70 percent of revenues.“It’s not normal for clubs to spend right up to the last euro of the salary limit,” Tebas said.It is not just Messi’s fate that hangs in the balance, either. Barcelona has already announced the signings of his friend and Argentina teammate Sergio Agüero for next season, as well as those of the Netherlands forward Memphis Depay and the Spanish national team defender Eric García.All three arrived as free agents, meaning Barcelona did not have to pay multimillion-dollar transfer fees to their former clubs, but the league will not register any of them, or Messi, until the club first makes deep cuts to its costs.Barcelona’s new president, Joan Laporta, introduced Sergio Agüero as a Barcelona player in May. But the club is currently not able to register him with the Spanish league.Joan Monfort/Associated PressIn an effort to create some financial wiggle room, the club has been furiously working to offload players, tearing up contracts with fringe talents and negotiating the exits of some of its other stars. But all of its biggest earners remain, and with the transfer market deflated by the lingering effects of the pandemic, it is unlikely to receive significant offers from rivals for players those teams know it needs to sell.Instead, Barcelona may be pushed to sell off key players — the German goalkeeper Marc Andre ter Stegen, the Dutch playmaker Frenkie de Jong and even Pedri, the latest locally reared Barcelona starlet, would most likely bring the highest returns — in order to make ends meet.Font said he expected that Barcelona would prioritize re-signing Messi, even if that meant some of the team’s newest signings, or other key players currently under contract, would have to go.“It’s a matter of trade offs,” Font said. “You may not register other players, but you will not prioritize others over Messi.”But if, as is likely, Barcelona will not be able to make the necessary cuts, it will find itself in another bind. Under the Spanish league regulations, a team can spend only a quarter of the money it receives from player sales on new contracts. That means even if it can clear tens of millions of dollars off the books, it will have only a fraction of that total available to sign Messi — or anyone else.Could the unthinkable — Barcelona’s losing Messi for free — be imminent? Perhaps. But La Liga said as recently as last week that there would be no exceptions, no special rules to keep him in Spain.“Of course we want Messi to stay,” said Tebas, La Liga’s chief executive. “But when you are running a league you cannot base decisions on individual players or clubs.” More

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      Copa América Final: Lionel Messi Tries to Slay His Ghosts

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      Saturday’s Copa América final against Brazil feels like Messi’s chance to deliver the title he and Argentina have chased for a generation.As soon as he was back in the changing room, away from the glare of the cameras and the eyes of the world, Lionel Messi got rid of it. He had been presented with the Golden Ball, the prize for the outstanding player in the 2014 World Cup, on the field at the Maracana, and he had accepted it, because it was the decent thing to do.Unsmiling, he had held the trophy carefully, delicately, as if it was an explosive that might go off at any second, for as long as he could bear. As soon as he could hand it over, though, he did so, giving it to Alfredo Pernas, one of his most trusted consiglieri on Argentina’s staff, to do whatever he needed to do with it. Messi did not care.All he knew was that he did not want it. Why would he? He had been given the trophy only a few minutes after Argentina had lost the World Cup final, after the one prize he craved more than any other in soccer had eluded him at the last. He did not need a memento for that night to be etched into his brain. He would, he would later say, regret the defeat for the rest of his life.Seven years later, Messi returns to Maracana this weekend. This time, it may be the Copa América on the line, rather than the World Cup, and it is Brazil that stands in his way, rather than Germany, but still: Saturday’s final feels like Messi’s chance — perhaps his last, best chance — to “slay the ghosts” of 2014, as Cristian Grosso put it in La Nácion this week.That is not, sadly, quite how it works. There is no balm for the lingering ache of that defeat to Mario Götze and Germany. Once Pernas had whisked his unwanted trophy out of sight, out of mind, Messi sat in the changing room and cried, his friend and teammate Pablo Zabaleta said, “like a baby.” He was, in that, not alone.Messi was named the outstanding player of the 2014 World Cup, a tournament he would rather forget.Sergio Moraes/ReutersMessi has said he has never been able to watch the game back (though why anyone would expect him to do so is not entirely clear). He does not need to, not really: The things he could have done differently, the chances wasted by Gonzalo Higuaín and Rodrigo Palacio are scoured into his soul. They will haunt him for the rest of his days, whether he wins the Copa América this weekend or the World Cup next year. He will never win that World Cup. He will never have that chance again.That is not to say that Messi has been short of animating force over the last three weeks or so. He opened his tournament with a brilliant free kick against Chile — there is no point describing it: You know what it looks like, because it was Messi, and it was a free kick, and you can picture what that looks like immediately — and he has barely paused for breath since.He scored twice more in a rout of Bolivia, added another goal late in the quarterfinal win against Ecuador, and then created Lautaro Martínez’s goal in the semifinal against Colombia. Nothing, though, encapsulated Messi’s mood in the tournament quite like what happened during the penalty shootout that settled that game.Messi has always been a quiet, undemonstrative sort of genius. Even his teammates acknowledge that he is not exactly a rabble-rousing demagogue of a leader. He does not stir hearts and gird loins with his soaring rhetoric; he inspires not only with his actions but also his mere presence.As usual, Messi has created many of the Argentina goals he has not scored himself.Nelson Almeida/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesHe can, at times, be so unruffled on the field that he almost seems distant, detached from what is unfolding on it. Messi has always given the impression of seeing soccer in a different way from almost any other human: an elevated, bird’s-eye perspective that allows him to see angles and passes and patterns of play that elude others. There are occasions when it is possible to believe that he sees the game so clearly that he can also discern its essential meaninglessness.Against Colombia, though, that changed. Messi was on the halfway line, arms draped around the shoulders of his teammates, when Yerry Mina — a former teammate at Barcelona, though only briefly — stepped forward to take Colombia’s third attempt.He missed, and as he looked away, as he turned his back on the celebrating Argentine goalkeeper Emiliano Martínez, he saw Messi marching toward him, bellowing in his direction. “Baila ahora, baila ahora,” he seemed to be saying: dance now, dance now, an apparent reference to Mina’s celebrations after Colombia’s shootout victory in the previous round.It was, to put it mildly, a little out of character for Messi: more aggressive, more confrontational, more vindictive than is typical. But it was in keeping not only with his approach to the tournament, but also with that of Argentina as a whole. Emiliano Martínez, for one, drew opprobrium in Colombia for taunting his opponents during the shootout; he had, according to more than one observer, gone a little too far with the gamesmanship.Messi’s emotions, so often in check, bubbled over in a shootout against Colombia on Wednesday. He and Argentina will take their latest shot at the Copa América title against Brazil on Saturday night.Ueslei Marcelino/ReutersHis retort, and Argentina’s, would doubtless be that this is no time for half measures. There is not a single player on Argentina’s squad who has seen it win a World Cup. A majority have never experienced their country’s lifting of the Copa América trophy, which Argentina has not won since 1993.It has made finals, of course, and plenty of them: losing to Brazil in the Copa in 2004 and 2007, and to Chile in 2015 and 2016. Given how often the tournament is played — once every six months or so, it seems — and given Argentina’s resources, a generation without victory, and Argentina’s gradual decline from world power to habitual runner-up, is a source of stinging embarrassment.For Messi, though, it is more personal. Twice in recent years he has considered stepping away from the national team, effectively declaring it to be more trouble than it is worth: once after losing the 2016 Copa América final and again, more definitively, in the aftermath of Argentina’s early elimination from the 2018 World Cup.Outside Argentina, he would have been forgiven for doing so. For years, the country’s soccer federation seemed to have little or no idea of how to build a suitable stage for the finest player, certainly of his generation and possibly of any. Messi was expected to carry a whole nation on his back; when he stumbled under the weight, it was because he was too weak, not the load too heavy.Besides, on a personal level, he did not need international success. Soccer has moved on from the era when greatness was forged in the white heat of World Cups and continental championships. Increasingly, it is the Champions League that defines not just a player’s status, but also his legacy. It was there that Messi, winner of four titles with Barcelona, had made himself immortal.And still he could not walk away. Messi came back after 2016 and he came back after 2018 and he is there, now, at 34, officially a free agent after his contract at Barcelona expired. Even as the remaining years of his career are suddenly mired in uncertainty — the club’s precarious financial position makes it appear as if it may not, in actual fact, be able to re-sign him — Messi is doing what he has had to do for a decade and a half: pulling Argentina along in his wake.Argentina’s relationship with Messi has evolved. This week, a mural was unveiled at the school he attended as a boy.Marcelo Manera/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThere were times in the early years of his career when it was occasionally asserted that Messi did not feel the same kinship with Argentina — and Argentina did not feel the same kinship with Messi — as would have been the case had he not been living in Europe, in Spain, since he was a child. There was a distance between him and his homeland, the theory went, one that meant he could not replicate his club form in his national jersey.That Messi is still here, still trying, is the ultimate proof of the disingenuousness of that belief. He is not here in Brazil because he wants to make up for his personal disappointment in 2014. That, he will know, is impossible. Some scars never heal. He is here, as he has always been, because he is slaying someone else’s ghosts: all of Argentina’s near misses, all of its disappointments, all of its years of want.He is, he knows, running out of time. He has one more chance, realistically, to win a World Cup, in Qatar at the end of next year. It is not impossible that he will return to the Copa América once more, too: he will be 37 when the tournament is next played, in 2024. He will by then have been playing for his national team for two decades. He has one regret, at least, that will stay with him for the rest of his life. He does not want a second.A Tournament Too FarCan it really be coming home if England has rarely left?Pool photo by Andy RainWithin UEFA, the overriding emotion will be relief. Relief, to some extent, that the European Championship has been a success. It has not been diminished by a raft of coronavirus outbreaks. It has not been complicated by further lockdowns or tightened travel restrictions. It has not been played out to a backdrop of empty stadiums.Mainly, though, there will be relief that it is over. Even without the pandemic, this tournament was a logistical nightmare: 11 stadiums in 11 cities spread across four time zones, all subject to different local conditions. There will be no appetite within European soccer to stage a pan-continental tournament again.And that, frankly, is a good thing. Not simply because something is lost, however slight and insignificant, when a tournament is not hosted by a single nation — drawing in fans from across the world, changing the fabric of the place it calls home, even if it is only for a month — but because the diffusion of the games has compromised the integrity of the competition.Italy played it first three games in Rome, and will play its three of its last four in London.Pool photo by Carl RecineThe ludicrous Spanish talk show “El Chiringuito” might have descended into tinfoil hat territory when it suggested on Wednesday night that Euro 2020 had been “shaped” in favor of England, but that the way the tournament was structured offered certain nations an advantage is beyond dispute.It was not by chance that all four semifinalists played all three of their group games at home, reducing the amount of time and energy they might have lost to travel. It was, most likely, a relevant factor in how much Denmark tired in its semifinal that it had been forced to travel to Baku, Azerbaijan, in the previous round, while England had made the comparatively shorter trip — its only venture outside it borders in a month — to Rome.There is always a host nation, of course, and the host nation always has an advantage. But in ordinary circumstances, every team in the tournament takes a base in that country to reduce travel time. On a practical if not a spiritual level, the playing field is level.That does not mean either Italy or England will be an undeserving champion. They have been the two best teams in the tournament (rather than the two with the most talented individuals). Both warrant their places in the final. But both have enjoyed far from universal conditions. It would be helpful if that did not happen again.An All-Euros Team You Can TrustPedri, Spain’s 18-year-old midfield dynamo, was one of Euro 2020’s highlights.Pool photo by Stuart FranklinA strange convention has taken hold in soccer. It has manifested in the Premier League and the Champions League, and now it has infected the European Championship, too. It should be condemned by any right-thinking person, anyone who has the slightest understanding of sport, and it is this: the idea that the best player on the field has to be on the winning side.Ordinarily, and even more absurdly, man-of-the-match honors go to someone who has scored a goal. It happened, again, at both semifinals this week. Harry Kane might have sent England to the final at Denmark’s expense on Wednesday, but he was not the best player on his team (Raheem Sterling), let alone the best player on the field (Kasper Schmeichel, by some distance).Federico Chiesa picked up the award on Tuesday, despite only playing half of the game, and despite Pedri, the 18-year-old Spain midfielder, producing a performance of quite staggering poise and control and maturity.So, with that in mind, and conscious that the official version will simply be a list of the 11 players who have most recently scored a goal, here is a team of the tournament that actually, you know, reflects how the players have performed. It is possible, after all, to play well despite defeat.At times, it seemed Kasper Schmeichel would will Denmark to the final by himself.Pool photo by Catherine IvillSchmeichel is an easy choice as goalkeeper; Leonardo Spinazzola (Italy) edges Denmark’s Joakim Maehle at left back, and Kyle Walker has been the standout right back. Central defense is more difficult, but Giorgio Chiellini (Italy) and Simon Kjaer (Denmark) probably just shade England’s Harry Maguire.In midfield: Pedri (Spain) and Denmark’s Mikkel Damsgaard join Granit Xhaka, Switzerland’s captain, with spots for Kalvin Phillips (England) and Paul Pogba (France) on the bench. England’s Sterling and Italy’s Chiesa are simple choices up front, with Kane beating out Alexander Isak (Sweden), Romelu Lukaku (Belgium) and Patrik Schick (Czech Republic) for the central striker role.Most of them, of course, have played for winning teams, but it is the inverse of the relationship that UEFA — among others — seems to have envisaged: Their teams have won because the players have played well, and not vice versa.CorrespondenceMy apologies for offending André Naef, whose location will become abundantly clear when you find out how I upset him. “May I remind you that our ‘uninspiring’ team not only beat France, the world champion, and nearly beat Spain, despite being reduced to 10 players,” he wrote.The Spanish, he added, “showed a certain elegance” in victory, “unlike your rather disparaging comments.” Disparagement for what Switzerland achieved was not my intention; far from it. Few countries have made quite so much of their resources over the last decade as the Swiss. They warrant nothing but praise.Xherdan Shaqiri and Switzerland punched above their weight in a major tournament again.Pool photo by Anatoly MaltsevDavid Gladstone, meanwhile, pitches July 8, 1982, as one of the finest days of tournament soccer in history. “Italy against Poland may not have been the greatest game, but it was more than made up for by West Germany against France, including the noncall of the foul on Patrick Battiston. And they took place at different times.”Yes, that can be added to the list. Whether it tops France/Switzerland/Spain/Croatia day, though, is a matter of debate: West Germany’s win is doing a lot of the heavy lifting, after all.That’s all for this week and, I suppose, this season, too. This is the end of a long and hopefully quite enjoyable 2020-21, and it is a fitting finish: Brazil against Argentina and then Italy against England. Here’s hoping that the next 48 hours are even better than last Monday, or July 8, 1982, or any of the other contenders. Enjoy the next two days, wherever you are. I hope your team wins. More

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      Spain Waits, Impatiently, for the Goals to Arrive

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      Spain is still wonderful at passing the ball. It is far less effective, at least lately, and especially at Euro 2020, at putting it in the net.Elías Bendodo has the long and unwieldy job title of a man with too much on his plate. For the last three years, he has served as minister of the presidency, public administration and interior for the Spanish region of Andalusia. On the side, he acts as the local government’s spokesman, all while serving as president of the Málaga branch of the Spanish political organization Partido Popular.He is, in other words, busy. In the last few weeks alone, Bendodo has had to organize regional elections, handle the expansion of the area’s coronavirus vaccination program and intervene in a dispute between rivals for the post of mayor in the city of Granada.He has also spent a surprising amount of time talking about the best way to mow grass.It started after Spain’s opening game of Euro 2020 last week against Sweden, a scoreless draw at La Cartuja, a vast, soulless and unloved stadium on the outskirts of Seville. The turf, Spain’s players and staff members said, was too short, too dry, too rough. “The field of play hurt us,” said Luis Enrique, the team’s coach.Things had not improved by the time Spain returned to the stadium for its second game, against Poland on Saturday. “The field does not help,” said Rodri, the Manchester City midfielder. “It’s in very bad condition. It does not suit the fluidity of our game.” That match ended in a draw, too, leaving Spain needing to win its final game, against Slovakia on Wednesday, to be sure of qualification for the tournament’s knockout rounds.By that stage, a controversy was brewing. El País reported that Spain’s coaching staff had asked the stadium’s grounds crew to cut the grass short, perhaps too short, for the Sweden game. Luis Enrique demanded the situation be remedied. In the searing heat of an Andalusian summer, the grounds crew worked overnight to make the grass grow.It was at this point that Bendodo could not help but be drawn in. Suddenly, the most pressing issue in his bulging agenda was not the vaccination program or the lifting of the rules on wearing masks, but whether some stadium grass was a little on the short side.“Any situation relating to the lawn that can be improved will be improved,” he vowed with the kind of purpose and sincerity traditionally reserved for a condemnation of a failing school or a crackdown on crime.And yet even Bendodo recognized the inherent absurdity of the situation, that this subject should have gone all the way to the top, that one of the most senior politicians in one of Spain’s most populous regions should have to weigh in on the subject of a lawn.“We would not be talking about this,” he said, “if we had scored a goal.”That, far more than the grass at La Cartuja, is Spain’s problem, and it has been Spain’s problem for some time. It was an issue before the tournament — Luis Enrique was pressed on it after his team lost in Ukraine last year, despite registering 21 shots on goal — and it was an issue in its tuneup games before Euro 2020. The search for “the goal” has become an overpowering theme. “The goal,” Rodri said, “is everything.”Though there have been exceptions, most notably a 6-0 win against Germany at La Cartuja in November, the pattern has been clear for some time. Spain dominates almost every game it plays. It all but monopolizes the ball. But it cannot score goals, not in any great numbers. It has, as the journalist Ladislao Molina put it, become “the king of inconsequential possession,” capable of playing 917 passes against Sweden but fashioning barely a handful of chances. Spain has created a monument to what the manager Arsène Wenger used to call “sterile domination.”If the players have chosen to point the finger of blame downward, at the turf at La Cartuja, at least a portion of fans have identified another culprit: Álvaro Morata, Spain’s top forward. Morata was jeered by the crowd during a friendly against Portugal before the tournament, and Luis Enrique has come under intense pressure to drop him from the team.In public, Morata has been adamant that the criticism does not affect him. Even his most illustrious predecessors, he has said, were targeted for abuse while playing for the national side. “If Fernando Torres has been criticized in Spain, imagine the intellectual level of many people,” he said in an interview with the sports daily AS.In private, he may be more vulnerable. It was notable that after Morata struggled against Sweden, the team’s psychologist, Joaquín Valdés, sat next to him on the bench, talking intently with a player who has acknowledged in the past that he dwells on the goals that do not go in and who was once advised by his former club teammate Gianluigi Buffon not to let anyone see him cry.He can, though, at least count on the unstinting support of his manager. A few days after the draw with Sweden, Luis Enrique declared that his team against Poland would be “Morata and 10 others.” He was rewarded by Morata’s scoring Spain’s only goal of the tournament so far; the forward celebrated by rushing to his coach, embracing him.Álvaro Morata celebrating his goal on Saturday — Spain’s only one at the Euros — with Luis Enrique.Pool photo by David RamosThat is the message that has emanated consistently not only from Luis Enrique and his staff, but the players, too: The goals will come. After that defeat to Ukraine last October, the manager insisted that if 21 shots were not enough to score a goal, then the solution was to take more shots. Pedri, his teenage midfielder, espoused the same logic after the first game at the Euros. “We have to do the same,” he said. “If we create many opportunities, the goal will go in.”It is that orthodoxy, though, that may well lie at the root of Spain’s problem, beyond the shortcomings of both the turf and Morata. The overwhelming majority of Luis Enrique’s squad came through the ranks at one of Spain’s elite academies, largely those of Real or Atlético Madrid and Barcelona, at a time when the country was home to arguably the greatest international team of all time.They were all raised not only in the shadow of the Spain team that won back-to-back European Championships — as well as the country’s first World Cup — but in the style of that team, too, forged and polished into bright, inventive, technically accomplished players designed to perpetuate the same school of thought that had brought the generation before such glory.And yet that approach is destined to fall short, to get close to the goal but never quite reach it. It was another great truism of Wenger’s that soccer was heading for a dearth of central defenders and center forwards, the positions where players needed a particular edge, one that was dulled by institutionalization.He could have predicted no better example than Spain. The team that swept all before it might have been constructed around Xavi and Andrés Iniesta, but they had the grizzled determination of Carles Puyol at their back and the incision of David Villa and Torres in front. This team, by contrast, lacks both qualities.Morata has shouldered much of the public’s blame for Spain’s scoring struggles.Pool photo by Marcel Del PozoIn defense, that is self-inflicted — Luis Enrique elected not to call up a half-fit Sergio Ramos for the tournament — but in attack, it is endemic. If Morata seems to embody the type of forward raised by an elite academy, elegant and sophisticated but lacking ruthlessness, then his putative rivals for a place support the theory.Gerard Moreno, the only other specialist striker in Spain’s squad, was playing third-division soccer at age 16, and did not make his debut in La Liga until he was 22. He bloomed late, winning his first cap for Spain at 27.It is a career trajectory that is startlingly similar to quite a few of the most productive Spanish forwards of recent years: Iago Aspas, now 33, who has only ever shone at Celta Vigo; José Luis Morales, the same age, who rose from obscurity to captain of Levante in La Liga; Kike García, a little younger at 31, coming off the back of a fine personal season for relegated Eibar.That it is these players — the ones who cut their teeth and sharpened their instincts away from the elite — who are the only viable candidates to replace Morata encapsulates the problem. Spain’s academies churn out midfielders and fullbacks with startling regularity, but they have struggled to produce the caliber of striker the national team needs if it is to scale the heights it touched a decade ago.Spain will plow on, of course. A win against Slovakia will see it through to the knockout rounds. Another draw may yet be enough to sneak through, too. From there, Luis Enrique has sufficient talent at his disposal to run deep into the tournament. Spain will, in other words, do the same thing it has always done, the only thing it now knows how to do: pass and pass and pass again, kicking the real cause of its ills into the long grass. More

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      A Barcelona Star on Style, Substance and Another Champions League Final

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      Lieke Martens and Barcelona will face Chelsea on Sunday. Both have their sights set on raising the standard for success in the women’s game.In many ways, the trajectory of Lieke Martens’s career has mirrored the growth of professional women’s soccer in Europe.In the past four years alone, she has scored as the Netherlands won a European title, played in a Champions League final, been crowned the world’s best player and come within a victory of a World Cup championship.Along the way, Martens, the Barcelona and Netherlands star, has ridden the wave in popularity for a sport that not so long ago struggled to gain attention and sponsors, fill stadiums or even provide a viable career path for many of the most talented players in the game.The Barcelona team became professional in 2015, and in six years has grown to become the most dominant one in Spain. This season, it scored 128 goals and allowed five as it cantered to the league title, winning all 26 games it has played so far. Its dominance, and that of longtime women’s soccer powers like Olympique Lyon and Sunday’s opponent, Chelsea — not to mention more recent investments from deep-pocketed newcomers like Manchester City and Real Madrid — is reshaping the women’s club game on the continent.Martens and Barcelona eliminated Paris St.-Germain to reach the final.Lluis Gene/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAt Barcelona, women’s soccer is here to stay. While the program’s budget of 4 million euros, almost $5 million, is dwarfed by its investment in the men’s roster, the team’s managers are determined to inculcate the players with the same philosophy of technical excellence and the possession-based system that is the hallmark of Barcelona soccer from the junior ranks to the pro leagues.“To play and to compete in the way we want, in the standard we want to compete in, for that, the best players are the ones that grow with us and are perfectly adapted to that style,” said Markel Zubizarreta, the executive responsible for women’s soccer at Barcelona.Barcelona now has 13 players on its roster who have come through its academy, but in a manner reminiscent of how a Dutch great, Johan Cruyff, led the men’s team to glory five decades ago, it is Martens who carries the star power. Days before she will lead Barcelona against Chelsea in Sunday’s Champions League final, Martens, 28, discussed the growth of women’s soccer, the changes she has seen during her decade in the sport and the power of belated (but significant) investments in the women’s game.This interview was condensed and edited for clarity.What are the emotions like three days before the biggest game in women’s club soccer?It’s a bit different. The full focus is on this one big moment for the club. In the end, we shouldn’t change anything because we have done so well this season. We have to continue what we have been doing.Not so long ago, there were very few fully professional clubs in Europe, very few opportunities to forge a successful career, and now we are seeing unprecedented investment and interest. Can you describe this period?I think people are really interested in watching women’s soccer now, whereas five years ago people were not really that interested. Now people are really excited to see those big games, like the final. How have you noticed this increase in interest?If you see the media attention, for example. This week, it’s amazing the number of requests we got. Yesterday I was busy. I’m busy today. The focus has never been as big. If I see, for example, the national team, how many people came to the stadium before the pandemic — it was always sold out. Those things are amazing. When I play here in the Johan Cruyff stadium, it is always full. People want to come and see us and support us. It is really different to a few years ago.Amandine Henry, right, and Lyon humbled Martens, left, and Barcelona, 4-1, in the 2019 Champions League final.Tobias Schwarz/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesSweden was once the vanguard of growing the women’s professional game, and you played there before joining Barcelona. But teams like Rosengard and Kopparbergs, which shut down in December, can no longer compete with the world’s wealthiest clubs. Is the changing dynamic a bittersweet one?Kopparbergs, Rosengard, those clubs were needed. They really put the effort in, really supported the women’s game. But of course at the end we have been really waiting for the big clubs to believe in women’s football. And it’s progress. We’ve had to wait for it, but it also helps us to reach a better level, to make women’s football more interesting.What is the difference in environment you encountered at Barcelona?Rosengard had a really good staff, and things around us were really good, but it was only a women’s club. But I think it’s impossible to compare with the big clubs. It’s a really good thing that we finally have all those big clubs in it. I’m really happy that Real Madrid is also joining now. That’s what we need in the women’s game.Can you see a qualitative impact of all this investment on performance?I’m so happy to play against really good players. That’s what we need. Before, those players were amazing, but now we have so many more really good players, and that’s so cool. I think in the future it’s going to be even better because all those girls that are at the highest level now didn’t have the best training when they were a little girl. Little girls now are getting the same practice boys do at the same age.How important is the Barcelona style, the values the club instills in its players, to the performance we see on the field? Some people say not sacrificing the style in the 2019 final led to Barcelona being overrun by Lyon that day.I think that’s why they are really specific with who they bring in. They want people who will fit into the Barça style, and, like you said, in the final in 2019 it was already 3-0 after 50 minutes, but it had been a really good experience for us. We take that into this Sunday as well. I think it will be a totally different situation. How have you coped personally with the sudden fame your success with the Netherlands and Barcelona has brought you?After winning the Euros in 2017, I got recognized everywhere in the Netherlands and even overseas. Off the field my life has changed, but I have to deal with it. It’s part of it, and that’s what men’s football has, and that’s what we wanted. I always said it would be nice to get the recognition. And now we have it.Martens and the Netherlands lost to the United States in the 2019 World Cup final. The teams are both in this summer’s Olympic tournament.Piroschka Van De Wouw/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesDo you think you will use that higher profile to lead on issues beyond the field, in the manner of, say, Megan Rapinoe?Actually, I haven’t used it that much. I should use my voice a bit more. I will do that in the future. Barcelona went unbeaten in the league this season. Do you, perhaps, wish the other teams were better, and the league more competitive?By doing well in the Champions League, we are showing Spain really invests in women’s football. I think it will also help the Spanish league to get better, but we have to be patient. It just needs a bit more time. We are moving in the right direction, if you see what we have done, in a couple of years in Barcelona. And I’m really happy with what Real Madrid is doing. The level is getting higher, but you can’t go from zero to 100.This season’s final — Chelsea-Barcelona — is a marked change from when Lyon was the only show in town. (Lyon had won the Champions League five years in succession before losing in the quarterfinals this year.)Lyon has a really good team, but it’s really good that other teams are in the final. It’s really exciting to see other teams have also improved a lot. They have invested in women’s football, and it’s paying off. More

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      JPMorgan Apologizes for Its Role in Super League

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      The bank that was to provide billions of dollars in financing for a breakaway European soccer league said it “misjudged” how fans would react.JPMorgan Chase apologized on Friday for its role in arranging billions of dollars in financing for a breakaway European soccer league, admitting in a statement that it had “misjudged” how the project would be viewed by fans.JPMorgan Chase had pledged about $4 billion to underwrite the new league, but the American investment bank did not end up issuing it or losing any money: The league collapsed only 48 hours after it was announced, after more than half of its 12 founding clubs changed their minds and announced they would not take part.Like the 12 clubs involved in the breakaway group — which included European giants like Real Madrid and Barcelona, Manchester United and Liverpool, Juventus and A.C. Milan — JPMorgan had come under intense criticism from fans and others merely for participating in the plan.Designed as a 20-team league with 15 permanent members, the Super League would have severely cut in to the revenues of dozens of national leagues, imperiled the finances and values of the hundreds of European clubs who were left out, and upended the structures that have underpinned European soccer for a century — all while funneling billions to a few elite teams.In a corporate statement rare for its contrition and self-criticism, JPMorgan admitted it had been a mistake to finance the proposal without considering its effects on others.“We clearly misjudged how this deal would be viewed by the wider football community and how it might impact them in the future,” a company spokesman said. “We will learn from this.”But in an interview with Bloomberg TV, the bank’s co-president, Daniel E. Pinto, also sought to distance JPMorgan from the blowback that is still buffeting the clubs.“We arranged a loan for a client,” Pinto said. “It’s not our place to decide what is the optimal way for football to operate in Europe and the U.K.”“We were expecting this to be emotional, we were expecting people to have different opinions,” Pinto added, “and that is what is happening.”Top debt financing executives at the bank had been involved with the group for months, trying to put in place the equivalent of a mortgage that would underwrite the start of the new competition, which organizers hoped to pay down with one of the richest television deals in sports history.Instead, the majority of the Super League’s members pulled out within 48 hours of its creation.JPMorgan was not the only powerful institution to offer an apology for its involvement. The majority of the English teams, some of the most popular in world soccer, issued humbling explanations for their decisions to join the failed project. But it was sight of billionaire Liverpool owner John W. Henry, an infrequent public speaker, taking personal responsibility for the fiasco that brought home how catastrophic the endeavor had been.“I’m sorry, and I alone am responsible for the unnecessary negativity brought forward over the past couple of days; it’s something I won’t forget,” Henry said in a video posted on Liverpool’s website. In it, he apologized not only to the club’s fans, but also to the team’s players, to the club’s manager, Jürgen Klopp, and to other top team executives who were not consulted on the club’s decision.Joel Glazer, the billionaire co-chairman of Manchester United, also issued rare public comments. “Although the wounds are raw and I understand that it will take time for the scars to heal, I am personally committed to rebuilding trust with our fans and learning from the message you delivered with such conviction,” Glazer wrote in a letter to fans that acknowledged the club had made a mess of things.“We got it wrong,” Glazer wrote, “and we want to show that we can put things right.”No one connected with the project was able to escape being contaminated by the criticism, including the bank that financed it. JPMorgan’s chief executive, Jamie Dimon, found himself under attack on social media and from within banking circles.“How on Earth did such an experienced C.E.O. that is so good at connecting with the real world, how on Earth did they let themselves let this proposal get to where it got?” a former Goldman Sachs economist, Jim O’Neill, told Bloomberg.The criticism was particularly sharp for Dimon, who in recent years has been eager to position the bank as a good social and corporate citizen.But even as it sustained an immense reputational hit, JPMorgan has been able to walk away from the deal without suffering financial losses.That might not be true for the teams that walked away after signing contracts that bound the 12 founding members to the breakaway concept.The Super League is not, in fact, officially dead. Real Madrid, Barcelona and Juventus are still signed up, and continue to strategize.One reason they may not have walked away could be financial. The contracts signed by the 12 founding members included penalty clauses worth millions of dollars. Real Madrid, Barcelona and Juventus, whose mounting debts and fears of rising costs led them into the project in the first place, could be positioned — by staying in — to extract tens of millions of dollars in punishments out of their former partners for walking away from it. More

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      Rage About Europe's Super League Is Muffled by Our Cheers

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      A breakaway league would remake European soccer to benefit a few rich teams, but we will watch it anyway.Real Madrid’s players pumped fists and exchanged hugs. A scoreless tie at Liverpool on Wednesday night had assured that the Spanish club had taken what it saw as its rightful place in the semifinals of the Champions League. All of a sudden, a 14th European Cup title hung tantalizingly close.No club has quite so much of its identity bound up with the Champions League as Real Madrid. It regards the tournament as its personal fief. Its sees its pursuit of continental primacy as its central, animating force. At much the same time as Zinedine Zidane’s team was celebrating victory, though, the club’s president, Florentino Pérez, was putting the finishing touches to a plan designed, in effect, to destroy the competition forever.Pérez spent the tail end of last week making calls and lobbying support and quieting nerves among some of European soccer’s most powerful executives for a plan years in the making.On Sunday, the fruits of that labor were revealed: A dozen leading clubs — Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal, Manchester City, Chelsea and Tottenham from the Premier League; Juventus, Inter Milan and A.C. Milan of Italy; and Real Madrid, Barcelona and Atlético from Spain — had agreed to become founding members of a breakaway superleague.Pérez and his allies must have known what the reaction would be: a great torrent of caustic condemnations, each one flecked with scarcely concealed rage. UEFA released a statement, also signed by the Premier League, Spain’s La Liga and Italy’s Serie A, threatening the conspirators with expulsion if they continued down this dark and murky path. The Bundesliga of Germany lent its support, even though its teams had refused to sign up to the proposals. The French league did the same.Executives from those teams that would be cut adrift spoke gravely of the need to protect soccer’s pyramid. Fan groups rejected any rupture en masse and outright. So, too, did various national associations. Gary Neville, the former Manchester United player who has become a staple of British television broadcasts, had his say.Almost as important, Britain’s prime minister, Boris Johnson, gravely intoned that the clubs involved would have to answer to their fans. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, released a statement decrying the idea. None of his country’s teams had agreed to take part. Only Paris St.-Germain had been asked. It said no. For now.That none of these parties can be considered truly dispassionate goes without saying. Of course UEFA does not want the Champions League to be usurped. Of course the major domestic leagues cannot countenance the idea of seeing their competitions diminished. Of course executives at those clubs who would be excluded do not want to see the gravy train they are currently riding overtaken by an express.They are all compromised in one way or another, but that does not render their outrage unjustified. They might be no less avaricious or cynical in their thinking than the rebel clubs. Their calls to arms over the sanctity of soccer’s pyramid might ring deafeningly hollow. But the problem with the plan is not that it accentuates money; it is that it eliminates risk.Juventus won’t have to worry about an early exit, or any exit, from the Super League.Alessandro Di Marco/EPA, via ShutterstockFor the dozen founding members, the appeal of a Super League is that it is predictable. There would no longer be any need to worry about qualifying for the Champions League — it is possible that at least four of the signatories will miss out on next season’s edition simply through not being good enough in their domestic leagues — in order to have access to soccer’s most lucrative prize pot. The income would, instead, be guaranteed.The problem with that, of course, is that unpredictability — what is rather grandly known in the sport’s argot as competitive balance — is at least part of the secret of soccer’s appeal. In March, F.C. Porto knocked Juventus out of the Champions League in the round of 16. Its elimination came in the same week that the Juventus president, Andrea Agnelli, had ill advisedly gone public with his latest harebrained schemes for improving the sport he purports to love.From a business perspective, his club’s exit was bad. Juventus is the champion of Italy. It is one of the most popular teams in the world. It has far more box office appeal than Porto; the longer it stays in the Champions League, the better not only for Juventus itself, but to some extent for the competition as a whole. From a sporting perspective, though, its demise was compelling, spellbinding drama, and at the center of the plot was jeopardy: Something was riding on this. Remove the stakes, and it is highly likely that the product will suffer. 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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      El anuncio de la ‘Superliga’

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      THE SUPER LEAGUE

      PRESS RELEASE IMMEDIATE SUNDAY 18TH APRIL

      LEADING EUROPEAN FOOTBALL CLUBS ANNOUNCE

      NEW SUPER LEAGUE COMPETITION

      Twelve of Europe’s leading football clubs have today come together to announce they have agreed to establish a new mid-week competition, the Super League, governed by its Founding Clubs.

      AC Milan, Arsenal FC, Atlético de Madrid, Chelsea FC, FC Barcelona, FC Internazionale Milano, Juventus FC, Liverpool FC, Manchester City, Manchester United, Real Madrid CF and Tottenham Hotspur have all joined as Founding Clubs. It is anticipated that a further three clubs will join ahead of the inaugural season, which is intended to commence as soon as practicable.

      Going forward, the Founding Clubs look forward to holding discussions with UEFA and FIFA to work together in partnership to deliver the best outcomes for the new League and for football as a whole.

      The formation of the Super League comes at a time when the global pandemic has accelerated the instability in the existing European football economic model. Further, for a number of years, the Founding Clubs have had the objective of improving the quality and intensity of existing European competitions throughout each season, and of creating a format for top clubs and players to compete on a regular basis.

      The pandemic has shown that a strategic vision and a sustainable commercial approach are required to enhance value and support for the benefit of the entire European football pyramid. In recent months extensive dialogue has taken place with football stakeholders regarding the future format of European competitions. The Founding Clubs believe the solutions proposed following these talks do not solve fundamental issues, including the need to provide higherquality matches and additional financial resources for the overall football pyramid. More