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      in Tennis

      Wimbledon: For Marketa Vondrousova, Winning the Title Was a Family Affair

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      Last year, she became the first unseeded player in the Open era to win the event’s women’s singles title. A celebration ensued.It was past dusk when Marketa Vondrousova and her coach, Jan Hernych, made it back to their rented house near the Southfields Underground Station, almost a mile from the All England Lawn Tennis Club. Hours earlier, Vondrousova had beaten Ons Jabeur, 6-4, 6-4, to become the first unseeded player in the Open era to win the Wimbledon women’s singles title.Waiting for Vondrousova at the house were family members, coaches and close friends. Many of them were inebriated from a combination of champagne and beer, including Hernych.“I just went for the press and after two hours I came back and they were all drunk,” said Vondrousova during a phone interview in late May. It is her fondest memory of that Wimbledon win and what she thinks about most often as she begins the defense of her title on Centre Court this Tuesday.“I always think about my family and the celebration with my box,” said Vondrousova, who marked the occasion by adding a tattoo of the numbers 150723, the date of the final, to a body already dotted with tattoo artistry. “That was the main thing that I wanted to do since I was playing in the final.”Vondrousova’s career has been a series of spirals. The Czech, who turned 25 last week was the top-ranked junior in the world and won her first career title, in Biel, Switzerland, when she was 17. She also reached the final of the 2019 French Open, losing to Ashleigh Barty, 6-1, 6-3, and captured a silver medal at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.Vondrousova has also been injured. She has had two wrist surgeries that sidelined her for more than six months shortly after her 2019 run at the French Open.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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      in Soccer

      The Premier League’s Asterisk Season

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      As it concludes an epic title race, soccer’s richest competition is a picture of health on the field. Away from it, the league faces lawsuits, infighting and the threat of government regulation.With five minutes left in his team’s penultimate game of the Premier League season, Manchester City Manager Pep Guardiola found the tension just a little too much. As a rival striker bore down on his team’s goal, Guardiola — crouching on his haunches on the sideline — lost his balance and toppled over onto his back.Lying on the grass and expecting the worst, he missed what may yet prove to be the pivotal moment in the Premier League’s most enthralling title race in a decade.But the striker did not score. His effort was parried by goalkeeper Stefan Ortega, sending Manchester City above its title rival Arsenal in the standings and positioning it, if it can win again on Sunday, to become the first English team to win four consecutive championships.“Ortega saved us,” Guardiola said afterward. “Otherwise, Arsenal is champion.”That the destiny of the championship should have been determined only so late in the season seems fitting for what has, on the surface, been a vintage Premier League campaign.All of that drama, though, comes with a figurative asterisk. This season’s Premier League has been defined as much by turbulence off the field — points deductions, internecine bickering, legal disputes, fraud accusations and the looming threat of government intervention — as it has been by City’s (eventual) smooth sailing through it.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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      in Soccer

      Luton Learns the Power of Premier League Status

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      Having a team in the world’s richest sports competition might alter how people think of Luton, a place long dogged by a ramshackle image and links to extremism.As the announcement trilled out over Kenilworth Road, the jumble of rusted metal and peeling paint that Luton Town F.C. calls home, the tone started to shift. At the start of the sentence, it was little more than the traditional polite welcome to the stadium for that evening’s visiting team, Manchester City.By the end, though, the voice of the announcer seemed overcome by what sounded a little like awe. Luton, the fans in the stands and the players on the field were reminded, was about to face “the champions of the F.A. Cup, the champions of England and the champions of Europe.” Luton seems to be having a hard time believing the company it now keeps.There is a reason for that. Fifteen years ago, Luton Town had been relegated to the fifth tier of English soccer, a world away from the power and the prestige of the Premier League. There was, for a time, a genuine risk that the club, founded in 1885, several years before the invention of the zipper, might fold altogether. For years afterward, money remained tight, ambitions modest.Now, Luton Town’s horizons are much grander. Last summer, it won an unexpected promotion to the world’s richest, most popular sports league. Three decades after it last played in England’s top division, it could again call Manchester City, Manchester United and the rest its peers.Outside Luton Town’s Kenilworth Road stadium, which offers none of the polished sheen of the homes of many of its Premier League rivals.Andrew Testa for The New York TimesThat meant an immediate transformation in the club’s financial outlook: Playing in the Premier League for a single season is worth around $150 million. More important, the status that came with it gave the town — a place that has long suffered a chronic reputation problem — a global platform on which to change not just how it is perceived by others, but how it thinks of itself.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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      Want to Lose a Lot of Money, Fast? Buy a Small Soccer Team in England.

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      The country’s lower leagues offer a tempting entry to ownership. But the sport’s economics mean even multimillionaires can struggle to compete.Geoff Thompson knows there are plenty of people who want to buy what he has to sell. The phone calls and emails over the last few weeks have left no doubt. And really, that is no surprise. Few industries are quite as appealing or as prestigious as English soccer, and Mr. Thompson has a piece of it.It is, admittedly, a comparatively small piece: South Shields F.C., the team he has owned for almost a decade, operates in English soccer’s sixth tier, several levels below, and a number of worlds away, from the dazzling light and international allure of the Premier League. But while his team might be small, Mr. Thompson is of the view that it is, at least, as perfectly formed as any minor-league English soccer club could hope to be.South Shields has earned four promotions to higher leagues in his nine years as chairman. The team owns its stadium. Mr. Thompson has spent considerable sums of money modernizing the bathrooms, the club shop and the private boxes. There is a thriving youth academy and an active charitable foundation. “We have done most of the hard yards,” Mr. Thompson said.After a cancer scare last year led him to reassess his priorities, Mr. Thompson has, reluctantly, decided that he has to “hand the baton” to someone else.That is where things becomes complicated. There are plenty of very wealthy people who want to buy their way into English soccer. It is, as Mr. Thompson said, “fun.” Owning a team offers the chance to “be a hero” to a place. It is a pitch sufficiently compelling that, in a matter of weeks, at least four suitors — two British, two American — have inquired about taking South Shields off his hands.That is the upside. The downside is that — as the Premier League has become a playground for private equity firms and sovereign wealth funds, and as the “Welcome to Wrexham” success has focused Hollywood’s searchlight on the romance of the game’s backwaters — England’s minor leagues have become a place where even the very rich can feel poor.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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      in Soccer

      Bobby Charlton, an England Soccer World Cup and Manchester United Icon, Dies at 86

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      A mainstay of Manchester United and one of the game’s best-loved figures, he won the World Cup in 1966 and the European Cup in 1968. Bobby Charlton, one of soccer’s greatest players, who won the World Cup with England in 1966 in a dazzling career that was tinged by the tragedy of losing eight of his Manchester United teammates in a plane crash at the start of his playing days, died on Saturday. He was 86.His death was confirmed in a statement from Manchester United, which called him one of the club’s “greatest and most beloved players.” The statement did not say where he died or cite a cause. It was revealed in November 2020 that Charlton had dementia.Charlton was famed for his bullet shot and his relentless goal scoring, even though he did not play as a traditional striker. He was England’s top scorer, with 49 goals, for 45 years until Wayne Rooney beat the mark in September 2015. Charlton was also Manchester United’s top scorer for decades, with 249 goals in 758 appearances over 17 years, until Rooney surpassed that figure, too, in January 2017. In addition to his scoring feats, Charlton’s career was indelibly marked by a plane crash in 1958, shortly after he had become a professional player. Following a European Cup match against Red Star Belgrade, the plane on which the Manchester United team was traveling crashed in heavy snow during a refueling stop in Munich. Of the 23 who died, eight were players. Charlton, who was dragged from the wreckage by a teammate, was 21 years old at the time.Barely three weeks later, with the United manager, Matt Busby, still in a hospital in Germany, Charlton was back on the field. Because of his dignity in leading the Manchester United team through that dark period, his sportsmanship, and his central role in United’s revival and in his country’s sole success on the international stage, several commentators referred to him as the first gentleman of soccer.Charlton became a director and ambassador of Manchester United in 1984. A statue of Charlton, alongside his fabled teammates George Best and Denis Law — known as the United Trinity — was erected outside Manchester United’s stadium, Old Trafford, in 2008, and in 2016 the club renamed the south stand of the stadium in his honor. Charlton is also credited with giving Old Trafford its nickname, the Theater of Dreams.Robert Charlton was born on Oct. 11, 1937, in Ashington, Northumberland, in the north of England, to Robert and Elizabeth (Milburn) Charlton. His father was a miner, but the family had soccer in its genes. Four of his uncles were professional players, and his mother’s cousin Jackie Milburn was a legendary striker for Newcastle United; Bobby’s brother Jack became a professional player with Leeds and also represented England.“There was nothing else in life, it didn’t appear to me, except football,” Bobby Charlton said in a 2010 Sky Sports documentary.Charlton turned professional in 1954 and made his first appearance for Manchester United on Oct. 6, 1956, at age 18. When called up to the first team by Busby, he had to hide the fact that he had an injury.“I actually had a sprained ankle, but I wasn’t going to admit to it,” Charlton said in a 2011 BBC documentary. He scored twice in his debut.Manchester United won the league title in the 1956-57 season, with Charlton becoming a central player. The team was known as the Busby Babes after the manager, who had combed the playing fields of England to find the best young talent to fit his vision of soccer played with panache, pace and quick passing.Its league success earned Manchester United a place in the European Cup, the forerunner of the Champions League, the next season. After a 3-3 draw with Red Star secured a spot in the semifinals, the plane carrying the team home stopped to refuel in Munich. Amid terrible weather conditions, two attempts to take off were aborted. On the third, the plane crashed.Crawling to safety through a hole in the fuselage, the team’s goalkeeper, Harry Gregg, dragged Charlton and another teammate, Dennis Viollet, clear. “I left them there dead,” Gregg told the BBC in 2011. “The biggest shock I had was when I turned and there was Bobby Charlton and Dennis Viollet staring at the rest of the plane exploding in the petrol dump. Just staring.”Charlton was 21 years old in 1958 when the plane carrying the Manchester United team crashed in a heavy snowfall. The crash killed 23, people including eight of his teammates.Allsport/Hulton ArchiveCharlton returned home to recover from his injuries, which were relatively minor. He also faced the psychological trauma of trying to return to the field of play without his lost teammates.But after watching a scratch United team featuring several youth-team players and loanees overcome Sheffield Wednesday in an F.A. Cup fixture soon after the accident, Charlton told the acting manager, Jimmy Murphy, that he would return. Many saw Charlton’s stoicism and refusal to give up as a ray of hope amid the tragedy.United rebuilt around Charlton. Busby recovered from his injuries, and through the course of the 1960s he set about creating a new team. By the middle of the decade, Charlton was a Manchester United mainstay and a linchpin of the England side as the country prepared to host the 1966 World Cup.England started the tournament slowly, but in the second game, against Mexico, Charlton provided the inspiration with a trademark goal. Advancing across the halfway line, he bore down on the opposition penalty area as the defender retreated, and he thumped a shot into the top corner of the net with such languid violence that the ball almost tore the goal posts out of the ground.“I hit it, and it was sweet as a nut,” Charlton said in 2011. “I thought, people will remember that, because I’ll remember it for a long time.”In the semifinal against Portugal, Charlton scored two more goals to put his team into the final against West Germany, thus setting up one of the most memorable games in World Cup history.Charlton was told by the England coach, Alf Ramsey, to shadow Germany’s best player, Franz Beckenbauer. Unknown to the English, Beckenbauer had been given the same instructions in reverse by his own coach.“He was so fit,” Beckenbauer later recalled. “He was running like a horse. It was very, very difficult to stop him. It was almost impossible.”Beckenbauer and Charlton largely canceled each other out, but the pulsating game went to extra time, when England took the lead, 3-2, with a disputed goal by Geoff Hurst. The shot hit the crossbar and bounced down, and the Russian linesman, Tofiq Bahramov, flagged for a goal. Whether the ball crossed the line is still a subject of dispute. Buoyed by the lead, England scored a fourth, with Hurst hitting his third of the match in the dying seconds. As Hurst lined up his shot and fired into the net, the BBC commentator Kenneth Wolstenholme uttered perhaps the most famous lines in English football: “Some people are on the pitch, they think it’s all over. It is now! It’s four!”Charlton and his wife, Norma, were applauded after a stand was named in his honor in 2016 at the Old Trafford stadium in Manchester.Nigel Roddis/European Pressphoto AgencyWith the trophy won, Charlton and his teammates were feted as heroes. But the Charlton fairy tale had not yet turned the final page.Busby had added Law, a predatory Scottish striker, and Best, a willowy, mercurial genius from Northern Ireland, to his retooled Manchester United team, which still had Charlton as its fulcrum. In the 1967-68 season, a decade after the Munich disaster, Manchester United again qualified for the European Cup.The team overcame Real Madrid, then a six-time champion, in the semifinal, and went on to meet Benfica of Portugal in the final at Wembley Stadium in London. Flushed with the memories of the players lost a decade before, the occasion dripped with poignancy.“The most important thing leading right up to it was that we were going to win the match,” Charlton said. “There was no alternative. We had to win that match.”Charlton opened the scoring with a headed goal, but the match went to extra time. Drooping with exhaustion but fired with the determination to finally win the trophy that had cost the club so much, United’s players dug deep. Best put the team ahead, Brian Kidd scored a third, and Charlton added the coup de grâce with a fourth.“We’d done it,” Charlton recalled in 2011. “When the final whistle went, everybody dashed to Sir Matt. They were his players that got lost in Munich. They were his lads, his team, and everybody in the whole crowd, maybe even in the whole country, thought a little bit about Matt Busby’s feelings that night.”Charlton is survived by his wife, Norma, whom he married in 1961; two daughters, Suzanne and Andrea; and grandchildren.Charlton finished his career in 1973 with a playing record that bears comparison with the world’s greatest. In his later role as a Manchester United director, he provided an important link between the era of the Busby Babes and a new period of dominance forged by another Scottish manager, Alex Ferguson.“Unquestionably the best player of all time,” Ferguson said of Charlton in 2011. “He could float across the ground just like a piece of silver paper.”Beloved by Manchester United fans, Charlton was also lionized by supporters of all teams, not only at home but also throughout the world. He became the embodiment of the fabled, perhaps mythical, nobility of English soccer.Hurst, his England teammate, said that when talking to people who didn’t speak English, Charlton’s reach became clear. “There’s only one piece of English they can say,” Hurst explained. “And that’s ‘Bobby Charlton.’” More

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      in Soccer

      Nike Says It Will Offer Mary Earps’s Goalkeeper Jersey

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      After being criticized for not offering replicas of the jerseys worn by the English goalkeeper Mary Earps and others in the Women’s World Cup, Nike said limited quantities would be available.With each breathtaking save made by Mary Earps, the goalkeeper who helped England’s national team take second place in the Women’s World Cup, the complaints from fans got louder: Why couldn’t they buy a replica of her Nike jersey?Nike, which outfitted the team, has attempted to present itself as being ahead of the curve in terms of offering support to female athletes and emerging sports talent. Though the company, the world’s largest sportswear maker by sales, acknowledged fans’ interest in replica goalkeeper jerseys, it initially did not commit to making them.That changed on Wednesday, after thousands of people had signed a petition requesting that replicas of the jerseys worn by Ms. Earps and other women goalkeepers be released, and after a motion addressing the issue was submitted in the British Parliament.“Nike has secured limited quantities of goalkeeper jerseys for England, U.S., France and the Netherlands to be sold through the federation websites over the coming days, and we are also in conversations with our other federation partners,” a spokeswoman for Nike said in a statement emailed to The New York Times on Wednesday evening, referring to members of FIFA, soccer’s global governing body.Nike is “committed to retailing women’s goalkeeping jerseys for major tournaments in the future,” the spokeswoman said in the statement, which did not specify how many jerseys would be available or when they could be purchased.In the days before, Nike, which outfitted 13 of the 32 teams in the Women’s World Cup, had faced an escalating backlash from soccer fans on the issue. (Replica goalkeeper jerseys were available for four of the men’s teams Nike sponsored in last year’s World Cup.)Many of the complaints centered around Ms. Earps, 30, who received the Golden Glove, an award recognizing the top goalkeeper in the tournament. “She’s the best in the world right now, and she doesn’t have a jersey,” Beth Mead, who has played for England’s women’s national team, told the BBC. “She doesn’t have a shirt that young boys and girls can buy.”Why wouldn’t Nike want to offer replica jerseys for popular goalkeepers?In the past, goalkeeper jerseys have not been best sellers for athletic-wear companies, for a few reasons.With a few exceptions, goalkeepers typically do not cultivate the kind of passionate fan base that other players like forwards can, meaning potentially fewer jersey sales.A goalkeeper’s jersey is also different from that of other teammates to ensure they stand out on the field. (Ms. Earps’s World Cup jerseys were emerald green and pink; her teammates’ were blue and white.) While a team’s main shirt can be produced en masse — with versions for various players requiring a simple name change on the back — a goalkeeper’s jersey requires a much smaller and more customized manufacturing run.Though interest in women’s soccer has risen, the sport still drives fewer apparel sales globally compared to men’s soccer.Did other brands make jerseys for goalkeepers playing in the Women’s World Cup?Adidas, which outfitted 10 teams for the tournament, did not offer replica goalkeeper jerseys. Neither did Puma, which made kits for Morocco and Switzerland.But Hummel, which made jerseys for Denmark’s national women’s team, and Castore, which made them for Ireland, each have released replica goalkeeper jerseys for those teams.How did the controversy start?At a news conference at the start of the Women’s World Cup, Ms. Earps expressed frustration about Nike’s decision not to offer replicas of the jerseys worn by participating teams’ goalkeepers. “It is hugely disappointing and very hurtful,” she said, adding that she had sought talks with both Nike and the Football Association, the governing body for English soccer, after England won the European Women’s Championship tournament last year.Ms. Earps, who is a goalkeeper for Manchester United in the Women’s Super League, also pushed back on the idea that her jersey would not sell. “My shirt on the Manchester United website was sold out last season,” she said.By the time England faced off against Spain in the Women’s World Cup final, Ms. Earps had made several vital saves that helped keep her team in the tournament. Her star performance only intensified questions about Nike’s decision.David Seaman, a former goalkeeper for Arsenal and England’s men’s national team, posted a message of support for Ms. Earps while she was playing in the final. “Bet Nike are regretting not selling the #maryearps shirt now,” he wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.Another post on X shared that day read in part: “My 10 year old daughter is the goalie in her school team. She’s just gone online to buy a jersey for next year and wanted one like Mary Earps’s only to find Nike don’t do one. ‘That’s a bit stupid’ she said.”In the absence of an official replica jersey by Nike, some of Ms. Earps’s fans made their own jerseys using tape. Several small retailers also started manufacturing jerseys similar to her Nike shirt.How did Nike respond at first?In a statement released after the Women’s World Cup final on Sunday, which England lost 1-0 to Spain, Nike tried to put the focus on the future.“We are working toward solutions for future tournaments in partnership with FIFA and the federations,” the company said. “The fact that there’s a conversation on this topic is a testament to the continued passion and energy around the women’s game, and we believe that’s encouraging.”That did not satisfy Ms. Earps. On Tuesday, she reposted Nike’s statement to her Instagram account, adding the text: “Is this your version of an apology/taking accountability/a powerful statement of intent?”In another Instagram post, she shared a link to a Change.org petition that had been created in her support. It has received more than 150,000 signatures.Ms. Earps, through a representative, declined to comment for this article.How did Parliament get involved?This week, Tracey Crouch, a member of Parliament and former sports minister, submitted a motion calling on Nike to release a jersey for Ms. Earps.Nike “could have changed this,” Ms. Crouch wrote in an essay published in The Independent on Wednesday. “They still can if they take their fingers out of their tin ears and listen to the hundreds of thousands of women who have signed the petition, gone on social media, listened to the outcry on the media.”The change of course by Nike, and the loud online chorus that apparently prompted it, underscore the growing influence of the global women’s game and its major names. More

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      Spanish Fans Rejoice at World Cup Win

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      The final against England brought out fans of all stripes and rallied girls in both countries to hit the field and play.In the game’s last seconds, Ona Sánchez couldn’t sit still. Then, when the referee finally blew the whistle to confirm that Spain had won the Women’s World Cup, she and the crowd around her — girls, boys, parents and other fans who had gathered to watch the match in Sant Pere de Ribes, near Barcelona — erupted in cheers.“Campeonas! Campeonas! Olé, olé, olé!” Ona and her friend Laura Solorzano, both 11, and draped together in a Spanish flag, sang in the small town’s central cobblestone square as other supporters splashed water from a nearby fountain. The two friends, both players in a local soccer club, said they couldn’t have hoped for a better ending.“It was the first time I watched a World Cup,” Ona said, emerging from a group of dancing children. “And we won! I’m so happy! It fills me with hope.”Laura Solorzano, left, and Ona Sánchez, both 11, seconds after Spain won the Women’s World Cup.Constant Méheut/The New York TimesSpain’s first victory in the Women’s World Cup and England’s run to the final were not only formidable achievements for teams that have transformed into perennial title contenders in the space of just a few years. They were also a fortifying message to the many girls in both countries who have increasingly been taking up the sport: Women, too, can elevate a nation to the summit of world soccer.The final has reflected the increasing interest and investment in women’s soccer in Spain and England, with more and more girls joining clubs and leagues that are growing in size and professionalism — a profound change in countries where soccer was long the preserve of all-powerful men’s teams, and one that is likely to accelerate after this year’s World Cup.“The perception of women’s soccer has changed,” said Dolors Ribalta Alcalde, a specialist in women’s sports at Ramon Llull University in Barcelona. “It is now seen as a real and exciting opportunity for girls. This World Cup, with its high profile, will have an impact on how people view women’s soccer. It will help make a big step forward.”In England, the mood was more somber as the national team’s hopes to follow up its European Championship victory were dashed. Even so, professional and recreational leagues have seen a surge of interest in recent years from women and girls, in a nation that has considered itself the spiritual home of the game. The advancement of the Lionesses to the final has only fueled that optimism.England fans watching in London. Interest in women’s soccer has surged in Britain.Henry Nicholls/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“It’s a catalyst for change,” said Shani Glover, an equal game ambassador for the London Football Association, which has pledged to encourage women and girls to play at both professional and recreational levels. An advocate for that shift, Ms. Glover said she had seen growing interest in girls signing up to the sport, particularly after England’s European Championship win. “Having the women center stage — it shifts the public’s mind-set,” she said.“If it was like before, I wouldn’t feel motivated; it was quite isolated,” Cerys Davies, 15, said while watching the final from an East London community center. Cerys trains several times a week at a football academy focused on giving underprivileged players a pathway to elite careers. “It’s good that women are getting the recognition and support they need,” she said, adding that she was heartened to see the crowds in the stadium for the final. “It allows me to know that I’ll be supported,” she said.Cerys Davies, 15, trains several times a week at a football academy focused on giving underprivileged players a pathway to elite careers.Isabella Kwai/The New York TimesIn Sant Pere de Ribes, residents did not have to wait for this year’s World Cup to benefit from the new spotlight on women’s soccer.Aitana Bonmatí, the Spanish star midfielder who was named the tournament’s best player, grew up in the town and played for the local youth soccer club for several years. As Ms. Bonmatí rose to success, many girls took up soccer, hoping to follow in her footsteps.“Our club has grown a lot,” said Tino Herrero Cervera, the club’s manager, noting that the number of girls’ teams has jumped from one to 10 since 2014. Girls now make up a third of the club’s players.“To see Aitana become such a great player motivates me,” said Laura, who wants to become a soccer pro herself. Her team won a youth league championship this year with a 14-point lead over the runner-up.“They’re the next Aitana,” Mr. Herrero said of Laura and Ona, grinning. He added that the high caliber of the girls’ play had helped the club rise in the league rankings. “It’s simple,” he said, “we want more girls to play.”Tino Herrero Cervera, the manager of the local youth soccer club, in Sant Pere de Ribes, south of Barcelona.Constant Méheut/The New York TimesThat has not always been the case. Dr. Ribalta, the sports academic, also oversees women’s soccer at Espanyol, a professional club in Barcelona, where she previously played for over a decade. “A girl playing soccer used to be a trauma for the family,” she said.Until recently, she said, female players were sometimes insulted on the pitch and denied access to proper training equipment and professional coaches, and they had to reconcile their sporting ambitions with the impossibility of earning a living from soccer.Women’s soccer teams were long disregarded — if not simply banned, as was the case in England in 1921. The country’s Football Association was alarmed by the popularity of women’s games, which had gained a following while the men’s league was suspended during World War I. The ban was in place for 50 years.In Spain, the women’s national team long lacked elite training facilities and even jerseys designed to be worn by women. It reached its first Women’s World Cup only in 2015, under a long-serving coach infamous for dismissing the players as “chavalitas,” or immature girls.Change came only in recent years. England created a professional domestic league for women in 2018, and Spain followed suit three years later. Corporate sponsors flocked in and elite women’s clubs such as Arsenal and Barcelona Femení started to attract more attention. The Barcelona team won two of the past three editions of the Women’s Champions League.Barcelona players celebrating after winning the Women’s Champions League final against Germany’s Wolfsburg in June.John Thys/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThat trend is filtering down to smaller and more amateur leagues, as well as younger players. In England, the number of teams playing in one girls’ league at Hackney Marshes, a famed playing ground for recreational soccer in East London, expanded to 44 teams from 26 in one season. In Spain, the number of registered female players has more than doubled since 2015, reaching nearly 90,000 today.That is still a far cry from the hundreds of thousands of men playing in both countries. But many are convinced that this year’s World Cup will inspire more girls to take up soccer and join talented youth teams, a pipeline for national women’s teams.“Many girls have watched these players on big screens for several weeks and followed them on social media,” said Soraya Chaoui López, the founder of the Women’s Soccer School in Barcelona, an academy begun in 2017 to help girls play soccer and to promote the role of women in the sport. “They are references they will listen to and imitate. They can look forward to becoming professional players themselves now.”Destiny Richardson, 14, left, and Dejaunel Bass, 15, watched the World Cup final on Sunday in London.Isabella Kwai/The New York TimesLooking up at the faces of the Lionesses loom on the screen in London, Destiny Richardson, 14, said, “Even if we come second, it’s still good.”She added that she was inspired as a player, saying, “You want to be there one day.”In London, a rare young player elated by the win was Mariam Vasquez, 9, who cheered when Spain triumphed, in honor of her family’s Spanish side.“I’m so happy to be with her to watch it,” her mother, Hind Aisha, said, adding that the whole family was supporting Mariam’s own soccer dreams. “I’m very proud — it’s a women’s game.” More

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      Women’s World Cup Final Reminds England of Men’s Team’s Painful History

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      The women play Spain on Sunday, hoping to end a nearly six-decade national wait for a World Cup win — a reminder of the travails of the Three Lions, the country’s long-suffering men’s team.In London, theatergoers have flocked to “Dear England,” a hit play that chronicles the drama and anguish of the men’s national soccer team in its long quest for another World Cup title, now at 57 years and counting. In Sydney on Sunday, the England women’s team might finally get the job done.England will face off against Spain in the Women’s World Cup final, the first for either team. While they are closely matched, England’s impressive march through the tournament has spurred hopes that “football’s coming home,” in the ever-optimistic words of “The Three Lions,” the unofficial anthem of the men’s team.That the Lionesses, not the Lions, might bring it home is a twist that has beguiled and bemused people in a country where the painful history of the men’s team — a litany of blown chances, unfulfilled promise and knockout losses (particularly to Germany and particularly after penalties) — is deeply engraved in the national psyche.“It’s hard to deny that this is really a big moment for the women’s game here,” said John Williams, a sports sociologist at the University of Leicester in England. “But it doesn’t take the monkey off the men’s backs. If anything, it makes them look even less formidable and more culpable, if women do the job.”In a country that claims to be the spiritual home of the game, winning is winning — and men and women, young and old, are rooting for the Lionesses. “As long as it’s England, I don’t care who’s bringing football home,” said Brad Jones, 25, a consultant from Bristol who was riding the underground in London on Friday.Watching the semifinal against Australia in London on Wednesday. “It’s hard to deny that this is really a big moment for the women’s game here,” a sports sociologist in England said.Frank Augstein/Associated PressYet the vexed history of the men’s team, in a country that also views soccer as a vital expression of male camaraderie, has prompted criticism that the women are not receiving the same treatment that their brethren would.The government has ruled out declaring a bank holiday — British parlance for a national day off — if England wins. Critics said that officials would do that without thinking if the men’s team ever claimed another World Cup. Neither Prime Minister Rishi Sunak nor Prince William, who is the president of the Football Association, plans to travel to Australia to watch the game.Queen Elizabeth II attended the World Cup final in 1966, the last and only time England won (prevailing against West Germany, 4-2, after extra time, on home turf). She presented the trophy to the England captain, Bobby Moore. Spain plans to send Queen Letizia and her 16-year-old daughter, the Infanta Sofía, to the final in Sydney.“When the Spanish team look up at the stands on Sunday morning, they will see their queen,” the columnist A.N. Wilson wrote scoldingly in The Daily Mail, a British tabloid. “When our brave Lionesses strain their eyes to see a British grandee,” he noted, “they will be forgiven for not recognizing anyone at all.”Even pubs may not be able to serve pints before kickoff, which is at 11 a.m. in Britain, because of restrictions on serving alcohol on Sunday mornings. The government rejected a theatrical call by the opposition Liberal Democrats to recall Parliament to pass legislation relaxing the rules. But a senior minister, Michael Gove, wrote to local councils to urge them to allow pubs to open an hour earlier than normal.Outside 10 Downing Street on Friday. The government has ruled out declaring a national holiday even if England wins the final.Susannah Ireland/ReutersFans, Mr. Gove said, should be able to “come together and enjoy a drink before kickoff for this special occasion,” adding, “the whole nation is ready to get behind the Lionesses this Sunday in what is England’s biggest game since 1966.”Strictly speaking, Mr. Gove has a point regarding the game’s significance. But the reality is more nuanced. The women already won the European title last year, which brought the first major soccer cup back to England since 1966.For the men, it is the losses, not the victories, that have defined the team’s narrative. In December, England was dismissed by France in a World Cup quarterfinal in Qatar. In July 2021, at the European final, it lost to Italy in a penalty shootout that left the crowd of 67,000 at Wembley Stadium in shock and despair.That heartbreak is captured in “Dear England,” as is another infamous missed penalty kick, by Gareth Southgate, an England player who is now the team’s coach, at a semifinal against Germany in 1996. The lingering shadow of those defeats is part of the lore of English football, which is balanced against the exuberant, diverse, and politically aware squad that Mr. Southgate has since assembled.England’s male players have forced Britain to confront fraught issues, kneeling before games to protest racial injustice, for example. After three young Black players missed penalty kicks in the 2021 defeat, they were subjected to racist slurs.The women’s team is less racially diverse than the men’s team, with only two Black players on the current roster. Professor Williams, the sports sociologist, said that representation reflected the development of women’s soccer in England as a suburban, middle-class sport, much as it is in the United States. But unlike the American women’s team — or, for that matter, the England men — the Lionesses have generally stayed out of the political fray.“None of the team are known for being politically outspoken,” Professor Williams said. “They don’t have the dimension that Megan Rapinoe brought to the U.S.A. team,” he added, referring to the star American winger who campaigns for gay and lesbian rights and has been vilified by some on the political right, much as some male England players have been criticized by right-wing figures in Britain for their political statements.England’s women are known mostly for their tight cohesion and relentless drive on the field. Their no-nonsense Dutch coach, Sarina Wiegman, is a former player who has already taken her home country’s team to a World Cup final, where it lost to the United States. She has no reluctance in running up the score against weaker opponents.England’s coach, Sarina Wiegman, center, before the start of the semifinal. A former player, she has already taken her home country’s team to the World Cup final, losing to the United States in 2019.Carl Recine/ReutersStill, merely by being women in a sport dominated globally by men, England’s players are part of a longer social story. The country’s Football Association barred women from professional soccer in 1921, in part out of a fear that the women’s game had become too popular during the suspension of men’s games because of World War I.The 1966 World Cup victory rekindled interest in women’s soccer, but the Football Association took over responsibility for the women’s game again only in the 1990s. Its profile has grown quickly in recent years as Premier League teams, particularly Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester City, have fielded elite women’s teams.Another storied club, Manchester United, reportedly wants to consult its female players — four of whom are members of the national team — in deciding whether to reinstate a star forward, Mason Greenwood, after charges of attempted rape and assault against him were dropped in February.To some sports commentators, that attempt to show gender sensitivity ended up as an ill-timed distraction for players prepping for a World Cup final.For all the advances in women’s soccer — whether increased television coverage or the improved quality of play — one difference is glaring: Men are paid more than women. Even England’s best players — the likes of the captain, Millie Bright; the striker Alessia Russo; or Lauren James, one of this tournament’s breakout stars — earn a small fraction in comparison with their male counterparts.Women’s games also tend to draw more families with children than men’s matches do, Professor Williams said, and the atmosphere can seem less tribal, aggressive and alcohol-fueled.“You’ve got some male fans who are saying, ‘It’s about time. The quality of women’s football is much better,’” he said. “But it’s clear there’s a rump of male supporters who say this is all a big waste of time. They say, ‘Watching football is a how we get away from women.’”Passing through Victoria Station in London on Friday, Lyndsey Jefford, 45, an elementary-school principal, said, “It’s made me really proud to see how well the women have done, though it still upsets me when people dismiss women’s football by saying the men play a different game.”Declan Bird, 24, who works in digital marketing, agreed that it did not much matter whether England’s men or women won the World Cup. And he pointed to a useful potential benefit of a women’s victory.“Hopefully,” he said, “it inspires the men’s team.”The midfielder Ella Toone scoring England’s opening goal in the 3-1 win over Australia on Wednesday.Jaimi Joy/ReutersNatasha Frost More