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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

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      Newcastle, Leeds and the Importance of Being … Something

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyRory Smith On SoccerNewcastle, Leeds and the Importance of Being … SomethingWandering about without a plan inspires neither affection nor success. So why do so many clubs still do it?Newcastle has won only one of its last 11 Premier League games.Credit…Pool photo by Stu ForsterFeb. 6, 2021, 7:00 a.m. ETNEWCASTLE, England — The sound system at St James’s Park crackled into life just as the whistle blew and the players took the knee, as they have done for every Premier League game since the spring. The announcement was brief and sweet, an unexpected relic of days past: “Enjoy the game.”In the silence, it was not quite clear who the announcer was addressing. There are only 300 people inside the stadium: the players on the field, the two coaching staffs, a handful of executives, a smattering of stewards and security and journalists. Everyone was there for work, rather than pleasure.And besides, even if the announcer’s words were meant for those in exile at home, the people who would ordinarily pack the empty stands, this is Newcastle United. Few, if any, of the fans would suggest they have enjoyed anything to do with this club for some time.Newcastle is — and has been for a long time — a club in the grip of endemic drift. Its owner, Mike Ashley, wants to sell, so much so that he has sought legal recourse against the Premier League for blocking a potential sale to a Saudi-led consortium last year.The fans, tired of Ashley’s absentee management and his lack of investment, either emotional or financial, want him gone so desperately that they appear ready to embrace any would-be savior, no matter how many concerns there might be about charges of content piracy or human rights abuses.If the loathing for Ashley is universal, the contempt for Steve Bruce — the manager installed by the owner last season — is getting there. It is not just that Bruce used to manage Sunderland, Newcastle’s fierce rival. It is not just that Bruce replaced Rafael Benítez, an object of adoration among the fans. It is not just that Bruce was appointed by Ashley and so — in a way that never applied to Benítez — is perceived as an emissary of a hated regime.Newcastle’s fans are confident they have identified the club’s problem.Credit…Eddie Keogh/ReutersIt is that Bruce, like Ashley, seems to have so little ambition for the club. He has articulated no grand vision of what Newcastle could be. His aspiration seems to stretch no further than stasis, the bare minimum required to maintain the club’s Premier League status. He has no vision beyond the literal wording of his job description: manager.In the middle of another difficult winter at Newcastle, Bruce spoke of addressing a slump in form by doing things “his way.” It was not entirely clear, then, whose way he had been following up to that point: He has been in charge for a season and a half. Quite what his way might be, too, remained a mystery.Those who have worked with him say that Bruce is a good coach, thorough and diligent and likable, if perhaps a little staid, a little cautious. But he espouses no distinct philosophy. He does not have a tightly-defined idea of how the game should be played, or what a squad should look like, or what a team should do. He does not seem to believe in anything in particular. He does not represent anything. He does not stand for anything.Steve Bruce’s Newcastle may be saved from relegation only because three teams are playing worse.Credit…Pool photo by Lee SmithHis counterpart last week, crouching on the touchline a few yards away, is the opposite. Before the game kicked off, Newcastle and Marcelo Bielsa’s Leeds United were not having vastly different seasons. Both were skirting the edges of the relegation battle: Leeds had 23 points and Newcastle 19, despite having played one extra game.The coverage of the teams — and the mood around them — could not, though, have been more different. Newcastle, as always, was a morass of discontent and bubbling crisis. Leeds, on the other hand, had taken the Premier League by storm, hailed by fans and neutral observers for their courage, their style, their adventure.Bielsa’s team had spent the season as a source of fascination and praise and, lately, a little resentment: No other team could lose by 6-2 to Manchester United, for example, and come out of it not just without criticism but with credit. Some of that, of course, can be attributed to the fact that Leeds, unlike Newcastle, was newly promoted, playing the Premier League for the first time in 16 years. Oscillations in form were to be expected, tolerated.But much of it is down to Bielsa. The Leeds that he has created is, innately, fun: fun to watch, and, though demanding and energy-sapping, apparently fun to be. His players give the impression they are enjoying themselves. Luke Ayling, the right back, charges out of defense like a toddler doped up on sugar. Jack Harrison scurries around like an eager Labrador. Stuart Dallas, in his first season in England’s top flight, has developed a taste for pinging cross-field passes. They put together wonderful, exuberant moves. They score intricate, breathtaking goals.More important, Bielsa’s dogmatism, his fundamentalism, his refusal to compromise his beliefs — all the things that, previously in his career, have been held against him — are now strengths. Leeds stands for something: a way of playing, a series of assumptions about how the game should be, a theory, a creed, an ideal.Leeds Manager Marcelo Bielsa has defenders, and critics. But his players know exactly what he expects.Credit…Andy Rain/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIn recent years, soccer has slowly, grudgingly accepted the idea that managers who adhere to a philosophy, a certain set of ideas, are not selling snake oil. It is understood, on some level, that possessing a clear sense of what you want your team to be offers a competitive edge: It helps recruit the right players, it makes coaching them more effective, it offers a barometer of success and purpose that is not reliant on individual results. At an executive level, it can even, at times, ease the transition between one manager and the next.But the benefits of a cogent philosophy are not purely sporting. It has been striking, in Leeds’s low moments under Bielsa, how little discord there has been about his methods. Most fans, if not all, are happy to absorb the lows as an unfortunate, but necessary, recompense for the highs.Subscribing to Bielsa’s philosophy gives them something to take pride and solace in, even when the score line offers no succor. It affords the club, and by extension the fans, an identity. They stand for something that does not depend on results. Newcastle is the opposite. A few days after losing to Leeds, Bruce’s team won at Everton. His side produced a smart, disciplined performance, and the victory alleviated mounting concerns over relegation. It did absolutely nothing to dispel the enduring unhappiness.That contrast, between Leeds and Newcastle, holds outside England’s two great one-club cities. Fans, increasingly, no longer see a manager talking about a philosophy and a vision as marketing jargon or corporate bunk. It is, instead, something to cling to and believe in, a reason to be proud.For much of this season, criticism has swirled around Graham Potter and Brighton. The team has lingered in the lower reaches of the table, its neat, attractive, flexible style of play winning plaudits but few games. He did not flinch when he was told he had to deviate from his methods to get results. More impressively, few of the club’s fans did, either. They understood, and appreciated, his plan. In the space of four days this week, Brighton beat Tottenham and Liverpool.The opposite is true at Chelsea. The dismissal of Frank Lampard and his replacement by Thomas Tuchel, vastly more qualified for the role, was made in order to win trophies; that, after all, is Chelsea’s modern, corporate identity. But it left fans feeling rootless: What mattered to them is not just the outcome, but feeling that the route taken has some deeper meaning.Newcastle has big-club resources. What it does not appear to have is a plan.Credit…Laurence Griffiths/Getty ImagesThis is not a uniquely English phenomenon. In Europe, fans “no longer recognize themselves in their clubs,” as Le Monde wrote of Bordeaux, Nantes and Marseille this week, three teams with no apparent broader purpose or identity. [A hat-tip to reader Manuel Buchwald for pointing me in the direction of that piece.]For years, fans have endured a growing sense of dislocation from their clubs, feeling unmoored as teams have morphed into superstores and retail brands and content farms and their players into millionaire entrepreneurs. That feeling will, of course, have only been exacerbated by the physical distance enforced by the pandemic.In that environment, clubs now effectively have to stand for something, anything: a reliance on youth, a certain style of play — expansive or exciting or muscular or intense, whatever it may be — or a distinct, bespoke approach. Those who do, like Leeds, earn not only patience from but also the admiration of their fans.Those who do not, like Newcastle, find that when there is no reason to enjoy the game — not the result, not the journey — the fire of fury and regret can quickly curdle into something much more dangerous for a business reliant on the unyielding affection of its public: apathy. That is the lesson Ashley, and Bruce, can teach the rest of soccer, that those who stand for nothing risk dwindling away into it.Maybe We Were Just Early in the Season?Why are these men smiling again? Take a look at the Premier League table.Credit…Pool photo by Nick PottsThis has been, you will have heard, the most unpredictable Premier League season in history. Well, since Leicester City won it, anyway. It has definitely been the most unpredictable season since that one, five years ago.The reality is slightly different. Yes, pretty much the whole top half of the Premier League might still nurse an ambition to qualify for European soccer next season. But the three teams at the foot of the table seem cut adrift, and by the close of play on Sunday, the title race might have swung fairly dramatically toward Manchester City.If City can beat an exhausted, uninspired and injury-ravaged Liverpool at Anfield, Pep Guardiola’s team most likely will have killed off the reigning champion’s dwindling hopes, and gone at least three points clear of its nearest rival — a vastly improved, but still unfinished Manchester United — with a game in hand. City has won 13 games in a row. It has not conceded a goal since the Franco-Prussian War. In a season of twists and turns, it has found a straight road.There is a strong possibility that, the race for the top four aside, a season that was meant to be marked by the unpredictable will end up with the most predictable outcome imaginable. And, though the circumstances of this year have been unusual, it feels as if this is a sensation we have had before.The table is always tight, chaotic, fluid for the first half of any season. The gaps between teams are smaller, because they have played fewer games, and so it takes a while to settle. In the opening few months, every season has an air of uncertainty.It is only now, as we turn the corner into the home straight, that order emerges. That has happened later, chronologically, this season — because the start was delayed by two months — but at the same time as it always does, in terms of games played. The effect has been more pronounced, thanks to the compacted schedule, the empty stadiums and the greater impact of injury and fatigue, but it is not unique. This is what always happens. It is just that we always forget.CorrespondenceThis Danny Ings goal was ruled offside. Yeah, we don’t know why either.Credit…Pool photo by Michael SteeleSadly, Laurence Dandurant has far too much clarity in his thinking to be consulted on how soccer can extricate itself from the nonsense — as any Southampton fan would describe it — it has made of its own offside rule. “Why don’t they change the offside rule to just a player’s boots? This would end the maddening shoulders and armpits debate.”Personally, I’m an advocate of the daylight rule — if any part of the player’s body is onside, the player is onside — but this works just as well.As I was expecting, last week’s column on the Old Firm inspired quite a bit of feedback, though (amazingly) none of it was especially angry. That must be a first. You raised quite a few points I’d like to address, so bear with me.“I completely agree with the sentiment of the Old Firm buying older players hampering their development on a European stage but think the greatest impact has been on the Scotland national team,” Benjamin Livingston wrote. “The Old Firm and the league as a whole are signing journeymen players from down south, rather than giving their own youth a chance.” This is a really important point: the future for Scotland, like (say) Belgium, is in having a much younger league.Catherine Pereira, meanwhile, pointed out that while Scotland’s men’s team has not been to a major tournament for two decades, its women’s team was at the World Cup in 2019, and performed credibly. “The team is ranked 21 in the world by FIFA,” she wrote. “It’s not great, considering Scotland’s history, but it’s not quite as disappointing as the men’s.” Quite right, too, though much of the praise for that should go to a Glasgow team that is not in the Old Firm.Glasgow City played a Champions League knockout-round match last year. Neither Rangers nor Celtic can say that.Credit…Alvaro Barrientos/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWilliam Bradley noted, quite correctly, that last week’s piece ignored the sectarian roots of the Old Firm animosity. “Your story did not touch on or even mention [that], which I must say from your story’s journalistic quality.” That was deliberate. Everyone involved believes sectarianism to be a stain on Scottish soccer that should be left in the past. In a column addressing the future, I decided to take the same approach.And thanks to Ian Stewart, who has touched on something that is, I think, really important. “There seems to be a strain of thinking that prizes turning clubs into machines of player development, churning out young stars to be sold off to fund the next round of stars-in-development,” he wrote. “This is a front-office mind-set, not a fan’s. As a fan, I simply want to see the best team possible being fielded as often as possible.”This is a tension that a host of teams — right up to the likes of Borussia Dortmund — have to navigate: Soccer would lose a lot of its richness if everyone apart from the established financial elite decided their role was simply to feed the insatiable appetite of the powerful. There is a logical counterargument, though: The process of development-and-sale, if done well, can not only help you win today, but enable you to win more in future, as those funds are reinvested in better-quality players. Perhaps, in this case, a front-office mind-set is healthy.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Chelsea Fires Frank Lampard as Manager

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyHoping to Salvage a Troubled Season, Chelsea Fires Frank LampardLampard, a title-winning player, failed to draw out the same type of success from his team as a manager. The German Thomas Tuchel is expected to replace him.Frank Lampard’s job security vanished as Chelsea slipped down the Premier League standings.Credit…Pool photo by Andy RainRory Smith and Jan. 25, 2021Updated 8:50 a.m. ETLONDON — Lying ninth in a congested Premier League table and with only two wins in its last eight league games, Chelsea confirmed on Monday morning that it had fired Frank Lampard, one of the club’s greatest players, from his post as head coach after 18 months in the role.Chelsea’s recent slide, despite a handful of expensive summer signings, had not only dashed any remaining hopes of contenting for the Premier League title but also imperiled the club’s chances of qualifying for next season’s Champions League, Europe’s richest club competition. Chelsea’s board said in a statement that an immediate change was the only option “to give the club time to improve performances and results this season.”Such is Lampard’s standing at Stamford Bridge — where he spent 13 years as a player, winning three Premier League titles, four F.A. Cups and the Champions League and establishing himself as Chelsea’s career goals leader — that Roman Abramovich, the club’s reclusive Russian owner, took the rare step of explaining his departure to the team’s fans.“This was a very difficult decision for the club, not least because I have an excellent personal relationship with Frank,” Abramovich, a largely silent presence in his 17 years at the club, said in a statement on Chelsea’s website. “I have the utmost respect for him. He is a man of great integrity and has the highest of work ethics. However, under current circumstances we believe it is best to change managers.”Lampard took the job in the summer of 2019, on the back of a single season’s experience as a manager at the Championship team Derby County. In his first year at Chelsea, he guided the club to a creditable fourth-place finish in the Premier League, despite the club’s losing his star, Eden Hazard, to Real Madrid and working under the restrictions of a FIFA-imposed transfer ban.The stakes this season were always likely to be higher: Chelsea spent $300 million on new players last summer, despite the economic uncertainty caused by the coronavirus pandemic, with a view to challenging Liverpool and Manchester City for the Premier League title.Under those increased demands, Lampard has struggled. Two of the most expensive summer signings, Timo Werner and Kai Havertz, have made little impression, and the club has dropped out of the title race at the season’s halfway point.Fearful that qualification for next season’s Champions League was at risk, the club felt it had no choice but to act. Chelsea is expected to appoint Thomas Tuchel, the former Paris St.-Germain and Borussia Dortmund coach, as Lampard’s replacement.“We are grateful to Frank for what he has achieved in his time as head coach of the club,” the club said in a statement confirming his firing. “However, recent results and performances have not met the club’s expectations, leaving the club mid-table without any clear path to sustained improvement.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      With Man City Positives, Premier League's Coronavirus Outbreak Widens

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesThe Stimulus PlanVaccine InformationF.A.Q.TimelineAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyRory Smith On SoccerThe Premier League Has a Schedule. It Really Needs a Plan.As the coronavirus invades locker rooms and postpones matches, soccer needs to face up to a potential worst-case scenario.Manchester City played without fans for months. On Monday, it couldn’t play at all.Credit…Laurence Griffiths/ReutersJan. 1, 2021, 10:00 a.m. ETOn the face of it, the Premier League’s decision was an easy and an obvious one. Manchester City and Manchester United had finished last season late, thanks to their commitments in the summer’s European competitions.To ensure that both teams would have a similar break between campaigns as all of their rivals, the Premier League decreed that they would start the new season a week later than everyone else. The league’s omnipotent fixture computer had drawn City against Aston Villa and United against Burnley for that first weekend of the season; those two games would have to be postponed.All of this, so far, makes sense. What happens next does not.Knowing that its teams were facing a compacted schedule anyway, the Premier League could have decided that Burnley and Villa might as well play one another on opening weekend. That may have raised some logistical challenges — policing, scheduling — but hardly insurmountable ones, particularly with fans still locked out of stadiums. The benefit, of having only one game, rather than two, to slot in later in a busy year, far outweighed the cost.That is not how soccer works, though, not even in a pandemic. Burnley did not play Aston Villa. The two games from the first weekend of the season have not been made up. It took until Thursday for the Premier League to find a window: They now will be played in the middle of January, five months late.That may seem a trivial issue, little more than a minor misstep, one that can doubtless be explained by the myriad complexities of scheduling a sporting season and will be easily resolved once the field in the domestic cup competitions is thinned a little. And, in some senses, that is all it is.Soccer has made the best of bad situations for months.Credit…Pool photo by Martin MeissnerBut it is also an instructive example of how the Premier League — and elite soccer as a whole — thinks, how pervasive is its belief in its own relentlessness, how delicate and vulnerable this season remains. The simple fact that Burnley did not play Aston Villa on opening day encapsulates soccer’s myopia, and its hubris.The Premier League lost two more games this week. First, Manchester City requested the postponement of its trip to Everton after five of its players tested positive for coronavirus. Fearing a more widespread outbreak — and much to Everton’s surprisingly public chagrin — the Premier League acquiesced. (Pep Guardiola revealed Friday that City will be missing five players who had tested positive when it plays Chelsea on Sunday.)About 48 hours later, Fulham had to make the same request, canceling its match with Tottenham on only a few hours notice; it, too, had recorded a spate of positive test results, and in the interest of public health, it was determined the game should be delayed, despite the unhappiness of noted Instagram influencer José Mourinho.City and Fulham were not the first clubs to be hit by the virus. In November, Newcastle had to close its training facility and skip a game against Aston Villa after an outbreak that has left at least two players with the kind of persistent and debilitating symptoms doctors refer to as Long Covid. Those clubs will, it is safe to assume, not be the last. Sheffield United played its game against Burnley this week despite reporting a number of positive tests at the club.The situation in the Football League, which governs the second, third and fourth tiers of soccer in England, is even worse. In League One, seven of the 12 games scheduled to be played on Tuesday had to be postponed because of coronavirus outbreaks. Five had been missed on Boxing Day, too. There have been calls from some medical departments for a two-week “circuit-breaker” pause to the season to avoid players’ being overloaded by a backlog of matches in the spring.It does not feel as if any of this was especially difficult to foresee. Soccer cannot be blamed, of course, for failing to anticipate the scale of the second wave of the pandemic in Britain (or anyplace else), or for the appearance of a particularly virulent mutation of the virus in the southeast part of England.Fans have adapted to new realities. Leagues should, too.Credit…Pool photo by Paul ChildsBut it should not have required the clarity of hindsight to project that cases might rise in the winter, that the long-anticipated second wave might have some impact on soccer, that the bubbles the sport was relying on to play through might not prove entirely impermeable, that some sort of contingency plan might be needed.And yet soccer seems woefully underprepared for something that should have been wholly predictable. It is not just that there is little room in the calendar set aside to play postponed matches: just three weekends in the English season set aside for teams to make up games they have missed, but only if they are eliminated from the domestic cups first.It is that — as the Premier League confirmed in a statement this week — the subject of what happens if the season is paused, or worse, canceled entirely, has not even been discussed.(It is striking, though perhaps not vastly surprising, that two of the most ardent voices calling for cancellation on moral grounds in the spring, Aston Villa and West Ham, have been quiet this time. It’s almost as if they are keener to play now that they are fifth and 10th in the table, respectively.)To be clear, at this point, there is no reason to believe the season should be curtailed: Soccer has proved, over the last nine months, that it is able to play on. It has not increased the burden on the country’s medical services, or deprived the general population of tests, or been responsible for a more widespread outbreak of the virus. Its protocols, for the most part, have worked.But it is hardly outlandish to suggest that the Premier League — and most of its peers around Europe — might have looked at what happened in the spring and wondered if perhaps they needed to have a plan in place should the worst-case scenario unfold.Fans at Brighton. European stadiums that opened recently may soon close again.Credit…Glyn Kirk/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThat need not have meant an immediate end to any season; other, more creative solutions were available. Something along the lines of the bubble tournament staged by the N.B.A., for example, or a shortened season — along the lines of what is already standard in Scotland and Belgium — might have served as an adequate break-glass course of action. Only if those workarounds were not possible would a nonsporting conclusion come into force.The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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      Petr Cech Is Still Saving Chelsea, This Time in New Role

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyOn SoccerPetr Cech Is in His Comfort Zone: In the Middle of EverythingFor the recently retired goalkeeper, a role as Chelsea’s technical director is appealing because of how different it is from playing.Petr Cech’s role as technical director at Chelsea calls on every bit of what he learned in the game.Credit…John Sibley/Action Images, via ReutersDec. 24, 2020, 3:00 a.m. ETLONDON — Petr Cech does not watch a lot of television. Switching his brain off, by his own admission, does not come easily to him. He has always preferred, he said, to fill every minute of his day, not just with work and family but with a moderately intimidating litany of pastimes and projects. Settling down on the sofa counts, to his mind, as time wasted.This year, though, Cech and his wife, Martina, have started getting into “The Crown.” Even then, though, he is not the sort to allow himself to be washed away by the lavish Netflix melodrama. Each episode — he is somewhere in the middle of the second season — prompts him to go away and fill in the gaps in both his knowledge and the series’ contested historical authenticity.“Obviously it’s not completely accurate,” he said. “But there are lots of interesting things. You start Googling those parts of British history, and you realize there are lots of things you didn’t know.” That, just about, encapsulates Cech: He is inclined to see an hour or two of fairly mindless television in his rare downtime not as a chance to relax, but as a learning opportunity.That Cech has time to disappear down a rabbit hole about the Suez crisis — or anything else — is faintly remarkable. Spooling through all of the things he does, it is hard not to assume he is handcuffed by having a mere 24 hours in his day. He is studying for an M.B.A. He plays the drums well enough that last year he released a charity single with Roger Taylor of Queen.He is fluent in five languages — his native Czech, English, German, Spanish and French — but speaks seven. He admits, as if confessing to some great flaw, that he cannot write quite as well as he might like in Italian and Portuguese. He has started running, too; every so often he will knock out a quick 10K on a weekend morning.All of this, he said, means that his “time management has to be right.” These are extracurricular activities, after all. He also has a job to think about. Strictly speaking, in fact, he has two.Cech spent the bulk of his career at Chelsea, but finished it at its London rival Arsenal.Credit…Kerim Okten/European Pressphoto AgencyCech retired as a player in 2019 — after a decorated career spent at Rennes, Chelsea and, in his twilight, Arsenal. He made the decision before it was made for him; within a few months, he found that his “mind started to clear, that I had a new motivation, a new happiness.”He went back to the gym, reveling in the fact that his body — without “a big ball being fired at me at 60 miles an hour” hundreds of times every day — was recovering from the wear and tear it had endured. As far as he was concerned, his life as a player was over. He had plenty of job offers. The one that appealed the most was a post as technical director at Chelsea.He had been doing that for almost a year when the pandemic struck. Suddenly, he found himself dragged back to a life he thought he had left behind. “We were lucky to be able to finish the season,” he said. “But nobody knew how many players would get the virus, and we had really strict numbers and restrictions. Normally, if a player gets injured, you would take someone from the academy, but because we had to be in bubbles, that was not possible.“At one point, we were short a goalkeeper, so the solution was either I stepped in, or a goalkeeping coach did. I was fit, so I said OK.” It was intended as a precaution, a form of emergency cover, but Cech was still more than good enough to be a viable option. He was briefly registered on Chelsea’s squad list for the Champions League this season.His primary focus, though, what all of his other interests must swirl around, is his new role. Cech is — by English soccer’s standards — something of a rarity. In certain parts of continental Europe, and especially Germany, it is not unusual for high-profile players to eschew coaching and move into front-office roles immediately after retirement: Marc Overmars and Edwin van der Sar at Ajax; Leonardo at Paris St.-Germain; almost the entire off-field hierarchy at Bayern Munich.England is only now catching up. For the most part, where Premier League clubs employ a technical director, it is seen as a position for a recruitment specialist, someone who can navigate the choppy, unpredictable waters of soccer’s transfer market. Edu Gaspar, at Arsenal, and Cech, at Chelsea — both appointed last year, both with vast experience as top players — are exceptions.For Cech, the appeal of the job lies in how different it is from playing. He had thought in great depth about what he would do after he retired. He had, he said, realized after fracturing his skull in 2006 that “it took only a split second for everything to be finished.” He knew he had to be prepared.He studied for his coaching licenses while still playing — on international duty with the Czech Republic, he said, “there was always time” — but it occurred to him that coaches, essentially, live the same life as a player: “You spend time training, traveling, at games, in hotels. The routine is the same.”A front office role, by contrast, “allows me to be close to the game, but to organize things in a different way.” The challenge was that soccer the game and soccer the industry are distinct entities; a life in one does not wholly prepare you for a life in the other. Cech was, effectively, “starting from zero.”To some extent, what he has seen since has been eye-opening. Cech chose his agents at the age of 17; they still represent him now. He always made a point of knowing not only exactly what they were doing, but how they were doing it. He can see now, of course, that not every player is quite so thorough, and not every agent quite so transparent. “Lots of players leave things with the agent and carry on,” he said. “There are parts of football on this side that are very surprising, in a negative way.”For all that surprise, the early results suggest Cech is well suited to his new role. His playing career, as it turned out, was not entirely irrelevant. As a player, he was always involved with the various liaison committees that express the squad’s feelings to the club’s representatives. He feels, still, that he knows instinctively how players would react to certain suggestions.The luster his playing career carries can be an advantage, too. At one point this summer, he flew to Germany to meet with Kai Havertz, the playmaker Chelsea would eventually sign for $81 million.Cech’s contributions helped deliver the German forwards Timo Werner and Kai Havertz to the team coached by Frank Lampard, Cech’s former Chelsea teammate.Credit…Donall Farmer/Press Association, via Associated PressCech impressed Havertz’s family not only with the depth of his analysis but his human touch: He spent as much time discussing raising children in London and his own memories of moving to England as a young player as he did the 21-year-old Havertz’s role on the team. His mere presence, though, helped persuade Havertz: He was impressed that the player he had seen winning the Champions League in 2012 would come to see him in person.His other skills have proved useful, too. Earlier this year, Chelsea was trying to figure out how to make headway with the signing of the German forward Timo Werner. Liverpool was circling, and Frank Lampard, the Chelsea manager, and the club’s recruitment department, led by Scott McLachlan, were eager to find an edge in the chase.Over lunch at the club’s training facility one day, Cech pointed out that he spoke German. What if he called Werner directly? Those involved with the deal point to it as the decisive moment.But there is something broader, too, that has smoothed Cech’s transition. The position of technical director varies from club to club and country to country. In Chelsea’s case, Cech is there to tie together the various strands of the club’s sporting vision, the linchpin between the first team, the academy and the recruitment department. The business side is handled by Marina Granovskaia, Chelsea’s director and its de facto chief executive.It is, in other words, the sort of job that requires someone used to balancing a whole host of different demands and needs and priorities. Someone given to thinking in four dimensions to make sure their many and varied commitments can all be met. Someone, like Cech, who does not, as he put it, “like to waste time.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Black Goalkeepers and Europe's Uneven Playing Field

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyOn SoccerBlack Goalkeepers, Big Clubs and Europe’s Uneven Playing FieldChelsea’s match against Rennes in the Champions League is a rare meeting of Black goalkeepers on club soccer’s biggest stage. But why are there so few of them?Édouard Mendy, 28, is the first-choice goalkeeper for Chelsea and Senegal.Credit…Pool photo by Ben StansallBy More