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    Ukraine’s Soldiers Cheer National Soccer Team in Euro 2024

    Soldiers huddled in a bunker with soft drinks and chips to watch Ukraine face Romania, only to suffer heartbreak.They had won one battle, and then sat to watch a battle of a different kind. Eight Ukrainian National Guard soldiers who had helped stall a Russian offensive in the northern Kharkiv region of Ukraine took the afternoon off on Monday to watch the men’s national soccer team play its first game of the European Championship.“Football unites — it gives adrenaline and motivates,” said Evhen, 34, a soldier in the 13th National Guard Brigade who asked to be identified by only his first name, in accordance with military protocol.The soldiers huddled in a bunker with soft drinks and chips to watch Ukraine play Romania in Munich, only to suffer heartbreak when their team lost by 3-0. But like most Ukrainians, they nonetheless take special pride in their sports team during the war.“We have one team on the field and a million on the front,” said Andriy Shevchenko, a former soccer star who is Ukraine’s most famous player and now heads the national soccer federation. Like all Ukrainians, he said, “soccer players start their day by opening their phones and checking the situation on the battlefield.”For the National Guard soldiers, who have been fighting together for more than a year, soccer became a chance to bond in the safety of a basement and cheer their national team. Huddled underground, they watched Ukraine quickly fall behind against Romania.“At war, we look at things differently,” said a commander who uses the nickname Jackson. “Even now, while watching the game, we understand that at any moment we might have to leave and go into the trenches to fight. We are always ready.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Borussia Dortmund Deal with Weapons Maker Rheinmetall Stirs Debate in Germany

    For some fans of Borussia Dortmund, an advertising deal with Rheinmetall, a major arms manufacturer, has overshadowed the run-up to the Champions League final on Saturday.Borussia Dortmund, one of Germany’s most successful soccer clubs, is rooted in the industrial Ruhr region and prides itself on retaining its working-class roots, community engagement and anti-establishment mentality.That’s why, in the week before one of the biggest games in the club’s history, some Dortmund fans are angry about a sponsorship deal with Rheinmetall, a major German weapons producer. Everyone from club officials to lawmakers have weighed in on the move, which has provoked a debate about the normalization of the military in German society. Still, many fans would rather just focus on Dortmund’s appearance in the showcase game of the European season, the Champions League final on Saturday against Real Madrid. Dortmund’s three-year partnership with Rheinmetall, announced on Wednesday, includes advertising and marketing rights in Dortmund’s stadium and club grounds but not — crucially for some — a place on the team’s famed black and yellow jerseys. Neither side would confirm the amount of the deal.Generations of Germans, raised on the postwar idea that “never again” should their nation foment an armed conflict, remain uneasy associating with the defense industry. Unlike in the United States, where professional and college-level sports games often feature soldiers in uniform unfurling American flags and flyovers from fighter jets, at sporting events in Germany outward displays of patriotism and associations with the military are rare.Some fans would like to keep it that way.“Borussia Dortmund is a soccer club that has been a standard-bearer for tolerance and social projects,” said Inge Fahle, a retired teacher from Dortmund and a fan of the club since childhood. “A sponsorship with a weapons manufacturer just doesn’t work,” she said.Hans-Joachim Watzke, Dortmund’s chief executive, said in a statement that the club was “consciously opening ourselves up to a dialogue” by becoming partners with a weapons manufacturer. He said the partnership reflected the role that a company like Rheinmetall has come to play in German society, since the country stepped in to support Ukraine after it was invaded by Russia.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Luis Díaz’s Kidnapped Father Is Freed in Colombia

    Luis Manuel Díaz was abducted 12 days ago by a guerrilla group called the National Liberation Army.The father of Luis Díaz, a Colombian soccer star for the English club Liverpool, was freed on Thursday after he was kidnapped by a guerrilla group, Colombian officials said.“We report with joy the release of Don Luis Manuel Díaz,” the Colombian government’s commission for peace talks said in a statement on Thursday morning. “We hope that he will soon regain his tranquillity, disturbed by an act that should never have happened.”It was not immediately clear what was exchanged, if anything, for the elder Mr. Díaz’s freedom.Both of Mr. Díaz’s parents were kidnapped on Oct. 28 by armed men from a gas station in their hometown, Barrancas, Colombia. His mother, Cilenis Marulanda, was rescued hours later, but her husband, Luis Manuel Díaz, remained captive.The Colombian national police and the military mobilized to find Mr. Díaz amid fears that the kidnappers might have taken him from Barrancas, which is in La Guajira, a region of northern Colombian, across the border to Venezuela.Five days later, the National Liberation Army, a guerrilla group, took responsibility for the kidnapping. The outfit, known as the E.L.N., is the largest remaining rebel group in Colombia’s 60-year internal conflict and operates in the countryside.In an announcement published by local news outlets, José Manuel Martínez Quiroz, who was identified as the commander of the northern front of the E.L.N., said the group had commands with “economic missions and one of them” took the elder Mr. Díaz, who is known as Mane. But it said he would be freed because he was the family member of “a great athlete whom all Colombians love.”Although kidnappings for ransom and extortion in Colombia have resurged in recent years after a lull, E.L.N.’s initial statement did not make any demands in exchange for the release of Mr. Díaz.Three days later, the E.L.N. blamed the Colombian military for the delay. In a statement, the group said on Sunday that it was trying to avoid incidents with the Colombian authorities but that the area remained militarized with flyovers and arriving troops. The situation, it said, “does not allow the execution of the liberation plan quickly and safely.” The following day, the military announced that it was withdrawing from the region where Mr. Díaz, who local news reports say is 56, was believed to be held. But when he had still not been freed by Tuesday, Otty Patiño, Colombia’s chief negotiator in peace talks with the E.L.N., told reporters that there was “no excuse” for the delay. He said the guerrilla group had been in contact with the United Nations and Roman Catholic Church.The kidnapping captured the attention of a country of nearly 52 million not just because soccer is the most popular sport there, but also because it stoked concerns about increasing insecurity and whether the government was doing enough to stop it. In public pleas and in marches in Mr. Díaz’s hometown, Colombians called for his father’s release.The Colombian government, under President Gustavo Petro, had been negotiating a peace treaty with the E.L.N., and a six-month cease-fire was to begin in August. But after the elder Mr. Díaz was kidnapped, Mr. Petro said that the E.L.N. had committed an act that “goes against the very peace process.”The E.L.N.’s top commander, Eliécer Herlinto Chamorro, known by his nom de guerre, Antonio García, said in a statement, according to local reports, that the elder Mr. Díaz’s kidnapping had been “an error” and called his son, 26, a symbol for Colombia.The younger Mr. Díaz, who is known as Lucho, has shone for his country’s national team. He rose from playing for his local Indigenous team to larger clubs in Colombia, eventually landing at Liverpool with a contract worth more than a reported $60 million. Mr. Díaz’s father was a gifted amateur player in Barrancas and trained his son. The Liverpool player sat out the first game after his father’s kidnapping but returned to action on Sunday. After scoring a late game-tying goal in a 1-1 draw against Luton, he pulled up his jersey to reveal an undershirt that read, “Freedom for Papa” in Spanish.After the game, he pleaded for his father’s release.“Every second, every minute, our distress grows,” he wrote in a statement. “My mother, my brothers and I are desperate, anguished and without words to describe what we’re feeling. This suffering will only end when we have him back home.” More