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    A Continental Competition, All in One Neighborhood

    At the eight-minute mark of the final of the CAN 18 soccer tournament, the players on the Mauritania team score three times in rapid succession.The balls hitting the goalkeeper’s small net sound like the blasts of a cannon. Boom. Boom. Boom. The last two happen so quickly that many in the crowd miss them.“Did they score?” the Ivory Coast fan squished next to me asks, looking stunned. “Yes, twice,” a Mauritanian fan on my other side responds gleefully.It doesn’t take long to understand that the annual soccer tournament of Paris’s 18th arrondissement is different: The stadium is a small, caged turf court in the middle of the Goutte d’Or — the dense, working-class landing spot for each new wave of immigrants to the city, a place where African wax stores and tailors for boubous compete with boulangeries and bistros among the crowded streets.The tournament was one of many around Paris inspired by the 2019 edition of the Africa Cup of Nations, or Coupe d’Afrique des nations in French, the continental competition typically held every two years. The events have become so popular that the finals of one in Créteil, a southeastern suburb of Paris, were broadcast on Amazon Prime last summer.Mamoudou Camara floated the idea for the tournament on Snapchat in the summer of 2019. This year’s edition had 16 teams.In the Goutte d’Or, Mamoudou Camara’s principal aim wasn’t to shine a positive light on immigration and community spirit in his neighborhood, which is tucked behind the Gare du Nord — Europe’s busiest train station — and is among the city’s most impoverished, gritty and diverse areas. He was just thinking a tournament might help his friends survive the hot nights during Ramadan. He raised the idea on Snapchat, and by the end of that evening in summer 2019, six teams had registered. A day later, there were six more.Instead of holding the event in a far-off stadium, Camara and his friends decided to host it in their childhood nest, the mini court in the center of the urban park where they spent their summer nights and weekends, battling over a ball and rounds of Coca-Cola or Fanta. (The loser paid.)It offers a very different atmosphere than the marble statues and the manicured flower beds of the Tuileries and Luxembourg gardens. On game nights, the park, Square Léon, is buzzing with older men crowded around checker tables, little kids clambering up playground equipment and older women in West African dresses selling bags of homemade doughnuts and slushy ginger drinks that both tickle and soothe the throat.Just before the final match starts, a tambour player beats out rhythms.“In our neighborhood, we have all nationalities,” said Camara, 26. “We are proud to say we are multicultural.”Around 30 percent of the 21,000 residents in this neighborhood were immigrants or foreigners in 2019, according to France’s national statistics institute.Sixteen teams registered this year, the event’s fourth edition, to play 31 games over three weeks. On this June night, we are down to the finals. The Ivory Coast, a veteran team that won the inaugural tournament in 2019, is back in its orange and green jerseys, trying to reclaim the title. Challenging them is Mauritania — a team packed with young players, many of them semiprofessionals, wearing yellow and brown. The jerseys were created by a celebrated local designer who collaborates with Nike, and who has been invited to the presidential palace.The teams for Cameroon and Tunisia before their match. A local designer who has collaborated with Nike created the uniforms for the 2023 tournament.“For me, CAN is one of those moments when the neighborhood can revel in being a bit exceptional,” said Éric Lejoindre, the mayor of the 18th arrondissement.It is just one sign of how the tournament has matured. This year, the neighborhood city hall provides a small grandstand on one side of the court. Everywhere else, spectators stand, claiming their spots a good hour before the game begins.By the time the referee blows his whistle, we are standing eight rows thick.The court measures just 25 meters by 16.5 meters — about 82 feet by 54 feet — roughly one-seventeenth of FIFA’s recommended field size. It is framed by a low concrete wall, topped by a tall chain link fence.The confined area makes for an intense game of precision, tight tricks, bursts of speed and a blasting ball that echoes against the walls and crashes into the fence every few minutes.This is soccer by inches, with a team losing and gaining the ball within seconds.Camara and other organizers devised the rules: five players per team on the court; no offside; corner kicks are thrown in; any foul after the fifth within a half results in a penalty kick; and games last 30 minutes to an hour, depending on their importance.Two people livestream matches, and another camera is rolling for the referee to review plays.The first year, all players had to be locals, but the rules have since loosened, allowing players from elsewhere to participate. But those who grew up competing on the court quickly reveal themselves by using the side walls to their advantage, bouncing passes around defenders to their teammates and back to themselves.Martin Riedler, who three years ago formed the tournament’s French team, compared it to a boxing ring.The playing surface is much smaller than that of a full-size soccer field. “You have to be on your toes the whole time, which makes the experience so intense,” one player said.“You have to be on your toes the whole time, which makes the experience so intense,” said Riedler, who attended Santa Clara University in California on a soccer scholarship. He has packed his team with elite players who can hit the cross bar from the halfway line of a full field, but who also find the arena overwhelming. “You know you won’t sleep at night after a game.”Players slam each other to the turf, then pick one another up. They continually battle against the wall, so close that a spectator might graze them through the fence. They offer up-close renditions of spectacular maneuvers, flicking the ball over their opponents’ heads and spinning it around their feet. That is one of the beauties of a small court, the referee Bengaly Souré tells me. It’s a compression chamber of technical plays.“There’s no space, but they create space,” he said.When a player jumps and kicks the ball into the net midair, Souré turns to the fence and expresses his admiration.The crowd is part of the fun. Spectators shout their observations over the sounds of African beats, booming from loudspeakers. It is agreed that the player wearing No. 7 for Mauritania — who plays for a team in Italy — is a dangerous force. And though the Ivory Coast falls increasingly behind, the game could turn at any moment.The Guinea-Bissau team before a match.Some people claim their spots an hour before the match.“I’ve seen a team that’s losing 4-1 make a comeback,” said Makenzy Kapaya, a 37-year-old artist who grew up in the Goutte d’Or but later relocated to a less cramped apartment elsewhere. Like many in the crowd, he has returned to watch the games and to reunite with childhood friends.“If you have problems, people will help you here, no matter what your origins,” Kapaya said. The Goutte d’Or, a dense, working-class area, often makes news for unflattering reasons — drugs, prostitution, violence. The library closed for months three years ago because employees said they had been repeatedly threatened by dealers selling near its doors. Following the fatal police shooting of 17-year-old Nahel Merzouk this summer and the subsequent protests across the country, the local police station was attacked.Éric Lejoindre, the mayor of the 18th arrondissement, pointed out that local volunteers had been quietly helping with homework, cooking and housing for years. A group of therapists in the Goutte d’Or hold regular listening sessions, setting out chairs in an abandoned lot for passers-by to unload their burdens.For all its problems, the neighborhood has huge heart, Lejoindre said.“Locals know it, but sometimes we need it to emerge in a spectacular fashion,” he said. “For me, CAN is one of those moments when the neighborhood can revel in being a bit exceptional.”Mauritania went on a scoring outburst as night fell.After halftime, the Ivory Coast players rally, bringing the score to 9-7. But then Mauritania yanks the plug from their energy and dreams. As the sky dims into an inky night, and spectators hold up their phones as lanterns, Mauritania scores again. And again. And again. Boom, boom, boom. The players start to do little dances after each goal.When Souré blows his whistle for full time, a crowd surges onto the tiny court to embrace the young Mauritanian team in a squealing cyclone of joy.Camara, who will take a few weeks off before beginning preparations for next year’s event, said he was continually surprised by how much joy the little tournament had brought to the neighborhood. At a time when anti-immigration sentiments are growing and identity politics are flaring in France, he said he considered it a unifying event. “We thought we were just starting something for fun,” he said, “but we created something bigger.”Red and white fireworks burst above the little park in the heart of the Goutte d’Or. The celebration will continue for hours.Spectators applauded Mauritania’s victory against Ivory Coast.Juliette Guéron-Gabrielle More

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    Gary Lineker to Return to BBC Soccer Show ‘Match of the Day’

    The move calms a crisis at the publicly funded broadcaster after Gary Lineker, a former soccer star, was removed from a flagship show because of a tweet about immigration policy.The BBC announced on Monday that it had reached an agreement with Gary Lineker, a star sports personality, that will allow him to return to hosting its flagship soccer program, “Match of the Day.”The move defuses a crisis that began with a politically charged post that Mr. Lineker posted on Twitter last week about the British government’s immigration policy and escalated into a staff mutiny that threatened the BBC’s reputation and stability.“Gary is a valued part of the BBC and I know how much the BBC means to Gary, and I look forward to him presenting our coverage this coming weekend,” Tim Davie, the broadcaster’s director general, said in a statement.Mr. Davie said the BBC would launch an independent review into its social media guidelines.In a Twitter post, Mr. Lineker said, “After a surreal few days, I’m delighted that we have navigated a way through this.” He also thanked his colleagues at the network who had supported him.Mr. Lineker’s standoff with the BBC had set off a noisy national debate about free expression, government influence and the role of a revered, if beleaguered, public broadcaster in an era of polarized politics and freewheeling social media.It came after a walkout by Mr. Lineker’s soccer colleagues forced the BBC to radically curtail its coverage of a national obsession, reducing the chatty flagship show he usually anchors, “Match of the Day,” to 20 commentary-free minutes on Saturday.The BBC struggled over the weekend to work out a compromise with Mr. Lineker that would put him back on the air, after days of controversy about his criticism of a government plan to crack down on asylum seekers.But the fallout from the dispute is likely to be wide and long-lasting, casting doubt over the corporation’s management, which has made political impartiality a priority but has faced persistent questions about its own close ties to the Conservative government.“All this has put the BBC’s independence at risk, and its reputation at risk,” said Claire Enders, a London-based media researcher and the founder of Enders Analysis. “That’s unfortunate because this is, at heart, a dispute over whether the BBC can impose its social media guidelines on a contractor.”Mr. Lineker, 62, is no ordinary contractor, of course. He is perhaps the BBC’s biggest name, a beloved sports figure who made a smooth transition from the playing field to the broadcasting booth, where he has been a weekly fixture since 1999, analyzing games and shooting the breeze with other retired sports stars. He is the BBC’s highest-paid on-air personality, earning 1.35 million pounds, about $1.6 million, in 2022.But Mr. Lineker, who grew up in a working-class family in Leicester, has never kept his views on social issues a secret. When the government announced strict new immigration plans to cut down on asylum seekers, he posted on Twitter, “This is just an immeasurably cruel policy directed at the most vulnerable people in language that is not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s, and I’m out of order?”The British home secretary, Suella Braverman, who is spearheading the policy to stop migrants from crossing the English Channel in small boats, said that Mr. Lineker’s comments diminished the atrocities of the Holocaust. Other Conservative lawmakers said that he had misused his BBC platform — not for the first time — to voice a political opinion.“We need to make sure we maintain that trust in the independence and impartiality of the BBC,” the chancellor of the Exchequer, Jeremy Hunt, said on Sunday to a BBC journalist, Laura Kuenssberg.The BBC is not the only media organization to hit turbulence over questions about political expression and social media. Tensions have flared at British newspapers, as well as at The Washington Post and The New York Times, over the Twitter posts of journalists, sometimes critical of their own employers.“This is a period of social change, where public attitudes toward the media and social media are rapidly evolving,” said Mark Thompson, a former director general of the BBC who was later the chief executive of The New York Times Company. “Editorial teams around the world are racing to catch up.”What makes Mr. Lineker’s case especially complicated is both his job status — he is a contractor, not a full-time employee, who works for BBC Sports as opposed to BBC News — and the broadcaster’s enforcement of its social media guidelines, which critics say is haphazard at best and hypocritical at worst.Alan Sugar, a British businessman who hosts the BBC’s version of the American reality TV show “The Apprentice,” has tweeted vociferously against a union leader who has pursued a confrontation with the government, as well as against a former leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, whom Mr. Lineker has also criticized.Mr. Lineker got into no apparent trouble with his bosses about that, or for speaking out on the air about human rights abuses in Qatar during his coverage of the World Cup soccer tournament there last year.Mr. Davie, a former marketing executive who also had links to the Conservative Party, has come under fire for his handling of the dispute with Mr. Lineker. In an interview with the BBC over the weekend, he apologized for the spiraling crisis, which forced the broadcaster to all but scrap two days of sports programming.“This has been a tough time for the BBC,” Mr. Davie said. “Success for me is getting Gary back on air and together we are giving to the audiences that world-class sports coverage which, as I say, I’m sorry we haven’t been able to deliver today.”Mr. Davie, who was appointed during the Johnson government, has made upholding the BBC’s political impartiality one of his major goals as director general. But he denied that the broadcaster was bowing to pressure from the government or Conservative politicians, and said he had no plans to resign. More

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    Boris Becker Returns to Germany After Release From British Prison

    The tennis champion left for his home country after serving time in Britain for hiding his assets in a bankruptcy case.Boris Becker, the three-time Wimbledon champion, returned to his home country of Germany on Thursday after he was freed from prison in Britain, his lawyer said.The Southwark Crown Court in London sentenced Mr. Becker to 30 months in prison in April for hiding his assets after he was declared bankrupt.Mr. Becker’s lawyer, Christian-Oliver Moser, said in a statement that the former tennis player left for Germany after he was released from prison. “Thus he has served his sentence and is not subject to any restrictions in Germany,” Mr. Moser said.Mr. Becker, 55, was sentenced to prison after he was found guilty of four charges under the Insolvency Act in Britain, where he had lived since 2012.Neither Mr. Becker’s lawyer nor the British authorities said whether he had been ordered to leave the country.“Any foreign national who is convicted of a crime and given a prison sentence is considered for deportation at the earliest opportunity,” the Home Office, which oversees immigration in Britain, said in a statement.Under Britain’s Early Removal Scheme, foreign nationals who are imprisoned in Britain and are subject to deportation can be removed from the country up to 12 months before they would have otherwise been eligible for release. From 2020 to 2021, the Home Office removed more than 1,100 people under this program.After Mr. Becker was declared bankrupt in June 2017, he was legally obligated to disclose all of his assets so they could be used to pay his creditors. The London court found in April that he had concealed, failed to disclose and removed assets, including a loan of 825,000 euros (around $875,000) and property valued at €426,930.90 (around $453,000), according to Britain’s Insolvency Service.As he tried to fend off creditors, Mr. Becker made an unsuccessful bid for diplomatic immunity from the British courts in 2018, after the Central African Republic had in April of that year named him as its attaché to the European Union for sports, culture and humanitarian affairs.Nearly two decades earlier, in 2002, Mr. Becker was sentenced to two years’ probation and fined nearly $300,000 after being found guilty of income tax evasion in Munich.The court battles followed a stellar career in tennis.In 1985, Mr. Becker, then 17 years old, became the youngest champion in the history of men’s singles at Wimbledon. He won six Grand Slam titles, including three at Wimbledon, before he retired from tennis in 1999. He was a frequent commentator for the BBC at Wimbledon and coached Novak Djokovic, a 21-time Grand Slam singles champion, for three seasons. More

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    In a Georgia Mill Town, Soccer Presents a New Opportunity

    DALTON, Ga. — The old folks are mostly white and carry in boxes of pizza and portable stadium seats to prop up their backs. The young mothers are predominantly Hispanic, and some press sleeping babies against their chests. Students and fathers are here, too. Most of Whitfield County has packed into Bill Chappell Stadium for the event of the spring: El Clásico, the annual boys’ soccer showdown between the county rivals Dalton High School and Southeast Whitfield High School.The match is a celebration of high-level soccer: Each team reigns as a state champion in its class and is ranked in the top 10 nationally. But the game has a deeper significance: It shows how immigration and a white-and-black soccer ball have transformed this city in the Appalachian foothills of Georgia.To understand what this place has become, look to the soccer field, where for 80 minutes the two teams performed a frenetic ballet, with the ball rocketing from one seemingly Velcroed foot to another. The only person on either team who was not Latino was Dalton Coach Matt Cheaves, who came here 28 years ago to evangelize soccer and found disciples in first-generation immigrants who were raised on the game.An estimated 2,800 people came to see the Dalton Catamounts take on the Southeast Whitfield Raiders in March. Matt Cheaves, the coach of the Catamounts, has helped popularize soccer in a state where football is king. Tune in to “Monday Night Fútbol,” a high school recap program on WDNN, or study the mural on the side of the Oakwood Cafe, with its illustrated history of Dalton, which has long been known as “the carpet capital of the world.” (More than 80 percent of the tufted carpet manufactured in the United States is produced in and around Dalton.) Catherine Evans Whitener, commonly referred to as Dalton’s first lady of carpet, is depicted on the mural, but so is a soccer goalie.Or visit James Brown Park, where “the cages,” as the retrofitted tennis courts are known, are packed with 6-, 8- and 10-year-olds playing rapid-fire soccer matches to five. Winners stay on.Only then will you understand how this town of nearly 35,000 — now 53 percent Hispanic — became an unlikely center for America’s slow tilt toward soccer and why it now calls itself Soccer Town U.S.A.It may not be as chest-puffing as the title of “home to more millionaires per capita than any other city in the United States,” which Dalton held in the 1970s. It is not as sexy as “the hometown of the killer blondes,” as a headline in The Washington Post proclaimed in 1990 when a favorite daughter, Marla Maples, was involved with a married New York developer named Donald J. Trump.Still, this new identity was hard-earned, not only on the soccer fields but also on the factory floors, town halls and neighborhoods whose demographics were upended.“We came here to work in the mills,” said Juan Azua, a field services consultant whose family was among the first half-dozen Hispanic families to come here in the 1970s. “My parents called their brothers and cousins and told them there was work here. It was like, boom, another wave slammed into town and kept coming.”A section of a mural painted by Mayelli Meza in Dalton.Audra Melton for The New York TimesImmigrant workers who were wanted in the mills in good times were not so welcome when jobs became scarcer. After the Great Recession, Georgia passed a law creating the Immigration Enforcement Review Board to investigate citizen complaints about municipalities not enforcing immigration laws. Sheriffs used roadblocks to snare people without papers and handed them over to the federal government for deportation.America Gruner, president of the Coalition of Latino Leaders in Dalton, said hundreds of undocumented families left town from 2009 to 2012. Thirty percent of the Hispanic population remains unauthorized, she said.“It was a sort of ghost town because people were afraid of being stopped, detained and deported,” Gruner said. “It was hardest on the children who were frightened that their parents would be sent away and they’d have to stay here.”Georgia has since abandoned the Immigration Enforcement Review Board, but Gruner said anti-immigrant sentiments persist in Whitfield County, where Trump won 70 percent of the vote in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections.Still, there are victories: Dalton recently broke ground on a soccer complex featuring two FIFA-regulation-size turf fields.“I couldn’t imagine a soccer field being built a couple of years ago,” Gruner said. “We felt the anti-immigrant feeling in sports and our culture. It’s changing little by little. It’s not perfect. We have a long way to go. But there is more understanding.”Talent, Speed and a Work EthicNearly 2,800 people are here on a warm Thursday night to see the Dalton High School Catamounts take on the Southeast Whitfield High School Raiders. The most famous Clásico, of course, is any match between F.C. Barcelona and Real Madrid, but the rivalry here is also intense and pits cousins against cousins and club team players against one another.On the sideline before the game, Cheaves is a soothing presence to his players. His ball cap is pulled down low, his encouragements uttered softly with a Southern lilt. He fell in love with soccer as a 5-year-old and played in high school and at the college club level.“I thought it was a blast the first time I kicked the ball,” Cheaves said. “I was good at it and thought I had something to contribute.”He arrived here in the summer of 1994 with a degree in health and physical education from the University of West Georgia. He had hopes of making a difference as a soccer coach, making him an outlier in a state where football is king.The Catamounts in the locker room before the match.“I grew up with old coaches who’d tell you that you were playing a Communist sport,” Cheaves said.Within days of his arrival, he discovered Dalton Soccer League, known informally as the Mexican league. On a field near the high school, Cheaves watched two teams of middle school students exchange nifty passes as if the ball were on a rope.“There was talent, plenty of speed and a work ethic,” he said. “I didn’t have to develop fundamental skill, but just keep them sharp.”The challenge was getting them to come out for the high school team.Cheaves’s first team had six Hispanic players. One was Roy Alvarran, 43, the son of migrant workers who picked oranges and peaches for 50 cents a bag before they found steady, salaried work in Dalton. Alvarran loved soccer but felt pressure to follow what he called “the Mexican route.” High school athletics and college ambitions were not on that route, he said.“You finish school, get married, have a kid at 18 or 19 and go to work in the carpet mill,” Alvarran said. “The Mexican route — so that’s what I did.”Alvarran, Azua and another friend, Todd Hudgins, are the unofficial historians of soccer in Whitfield County. They competed against each other in high school — Azua played for the Raiders, Hudgins for Northwest Whitfield High School. Together, they host “Monday Night Fútbol.”From left, Todd Hudgins, Juan Azua and Roy Alvarran, who played soccer in high school, now host a soccer show on a local station. Leaning over the chain link fence on the sideline, the friends were still competing as they reminisced.“The last three times we played Dalton it ended in ties,” said Azua, whose cousin is the head coach of Southeast Whitfield’s team.“A tie is like a loss to us,” said Alvarran, the current president of Dalton Soccer League.Dalton High School’s history is rich. The Catamounts made the playoffs in Cheaves and Alvarran’s first season. The next year, a few more Hispanic players showed up for tryouts, and a few more each year after that. In 2003, Dalton won the school’s first state soccer championship with an all-Hispanic team.The victories kept piling up: In the Cheaves era, Dalton is 436-59-19.So did state titles: The Catamounts were 64-0 over three undefeated seasons that ended with titles, in 2013, 2014 and 2015. In 2019, they were undefeated in 23 games, earning their fifth title and ending the season ranked No. 1 nationally. Covid-19 ended the 2020 season, but Dalton came back last year to add a sixth championship.Along the way, Cheaves passed up opportunities to go on to bigger jobs. “I didn’t want to bounce around,” he said. “I wanted to make a difference in life. I like seeing guys around town and what they have done.”The success of Dalton’s soccer program has transformed expectations beyond the field.The rivalry between the two teams pits cousins against cousins and club team teammates against club team teammates.In the last four years, Dalton has sent more than a dozen players to college on scholarships, including one who went to Wake Forest.Alvarran’s son, Jacob, a senior on the Catamounts, hopes to play at Dalton State. Roy Alvarran never went to college, but he left the mills and now sells insurance.“I want him to keep on going to school, not to jump into the carpet mill,” Alvarran said. “You can’t hate on it because they’re making $15-plus an hour. It saved my family, but there’s other ways to make money.”The stability offered by a regular paycheck at companies like Shaw and Mohawk Industries retains a powerful hold on the newer Daltonians. But now many are focused on a different path.“Every kid on this field could play in college at some level,” Azua said. “They all have the opportunity. The question is will they take that offer? And will their parents let them?”Uniting the Community“Our Community,” the mural on the side of the Oakwood Cafe in downtown Dalton, is the work of Mayelli Meza, whose family emigrated from Mexico. It was unveiled in early March after the artist spent four months on a ladder with brush in hand. Meza’s commission was to depict Dalton’s past, present and future.The muralist Mayelli Meza, her husband, Manny, and son Andree after the game.Audra Melton for The New York TimesMeza’s mural on the Oakwood Cafe depicts the town’s past, present and future.Audra Melton for The New York TimesIncluded are the first lady of carpet; carpet rolls; a kayaker, for the town’s love of the outdoors; and a train, for the impact the railroads had on extending Georgia’s multibillion-dollar textile industry.Two prominent elements are more personal to Meza. To evoke the diversity and female empowerment taking hold in her town, she included teenage girls — white, Black, Hispanic, Indian and Asian.Then there is the teenage goalkeeper.“That’s my son, Isaac,” Meza said, watching nervously from the fence as the final minutes of this Clásico ticked away.With his diving saves and last-minute deflections, Isaac Meza stayed a step ahead of the Raiders for 78 minutes, and Dalton High School was ahead, 3-1. But Southeast Whitfield conceded nothing, and with 1 minute 14 seconds left, the Raiders’ Nathan Villanueva got behind Dalton’s defense. Meza lunged forward, but the ball sailed past him.His mother grimaced and the Southeast Whitfield grandstand erupted — it was 3-2, and the Raiders were still alive.With 18 seconds left, the Raiders’ Angel Garcia stepped up for a free kick. He arced a shot over the wall of Catamounts standing sentinel in front of the goal. The ball hooked left. Meza leaped. His fingers brushed the ball, but it landed softly in the corner of the net.In soccer parlance, Garcia had delivered a perfect upper 90.Mexican American high school students in Dalton are increasingly seeking opportunities beyond the flooring mills.Mayelli Meza headed off to hug her muse. For the fourth consecutive time, El Clásico had ended in a tie.The next morning, Alvarran managed to remain in good spirits. It was not the triumphant ending he had hoped for. Instead, it was a perfect finish for the denizens of Soccer Town U.S.A.“I’ll have to hear that we tied for an entire year,” he said. “This game is what we look forward to every season, and the kids from both teams never fail us. Both teams are very good, but when they play each other, they bring out the best in each other. I hope you got to see how this rivalry is so passionately played, but also how it unites our community.” More

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    Australia Releases Judges’ Reasoning on Djokovic Expulsion

    In ruling in favor of the Australian government’s decision to revoke the visa of Novak Djokovic, the panel of three judges who oversaw the case reasserted the broad authority of the country’s immigration minister and found that he had acted in a way that was both reasonable and rational, according to the ruling released on Thursday.The court’s decision, which extinguished Mr. Djokovic’s chance of winning a record 21st men’s Grand Slam title in Melbourne this year, concluded a volatile saga that prompted debate over immigration law, celebrity entitlement and vaccinations.The ruling, released by the Federal Court of Australia, was the first public statement of the court’s reasoning.“An iconic world tennis star may influence people of all ages, young or old, but perhaps especially the young and the impressionable, to emulate him,” the panel of three judges found. “This is not fanciful; it does not need evidence.”The court noted the broad authority of the immigration minister, Alex Hawke, to control entry into the country and found he was well within his rights to cancel Mr. Djokovic’s visa on the grounds of “health and good order.”The legal question, the judges said, was not whether Mr. Djokovic actually posed a risk to health, safety and good order to the country, but whether Mr. Hawke was “satisfied” that his presence in the country might amount to one.Once held up as an example of how nations could keep Covid cases low, Australia is now tackling its most severe surge since the pandemic began.Ultimately, Mr. Hawke’s reasons for revoking the visa — in part, that Mr. Djokovic’s position as a sporting role model who chose to remain unvaccinated against Covid-19 could “foster anti-vaccination sentiment” — were not “irrational or illogical or not based on relevant material,” the three judges said.Though Mr. Hawke did not have to provide his reasons for canceling Mr. Djokovic’s visa, the judgment said they were “carefully drafted,” and showed that he had exercised the discretionary power lawfully.“Another person in the position of the minister may have not canceled Mr. Djokovic’s visa,” the judges wrote. “The minister did.” More

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    How the ‘Djokovic Affair’ Finally Came to an End

    Novak Djokovic lost to a government with powerful laws, determined to make an example out of him.SYDNEY, Australia — The day before the Australian Open was set to begin, Novak Djokovic, possibly the greatest tennis player of all time, ran up against a group of determined opponents that no amount of talent, training, money or willpower could overcome.He lost his final bid to stay in Australia on Sunday when a three-judge panel upheld the government’s decision to cancel his visa.More broadly, he lost to a government determined to make him a symbol of unvaccinated celebrity entitlement; to an immigration law that gives godlike authority to border enforcement; and to a public outcry, in a nation of rule-followers, over what was widely seen as Mr. Djokovic’s reckless disregard for others, after he said he had tested positive for Covid last month and met with two journalists anyway.“At this point, it’s about social norms and enforcing those norms to continue to get people to move in the same direction to overcome this pandemic,” said Brock Bastian, a social psychology professor at the University of Melbourne. “In this culture, in this country, a sense of suddenly upending those norms has a great cost politically and socially.”Only in the third exasperating year of a pandemic could the vaccination status of one individual be invested with so much meaning. For more than a week, the world gawked at a conflict centered on a controversial racket-swinger, filled with legal minutiae and dramatic ups and downs.Supporters of Novak Djokovic listened to court proceedings on Sunday outside the Australian Federal Court in Melbourne.Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesOn Sunday morning in Australia, more than 84,000 people watched the livestream of the hearing in a federal court, many of them presumably tuning in from other countries.What they witnessed was the saga’s bizarre final court scene: a six-panel video conference with lengthy arguments, in distant rooms of blond wood, about whether the immigration minister had acted rationally in exercising his power to detain and deport.The chief justice, James Allsop, announced the decision just before 6 p.m., after explaining that the court was not ruling on the merits of Mr. Djokovic’s stance, or on whether the government was correct in arguing that he might influence others to resist vaccination or defy public health orders. Rather, the court simply found that the immigration minister was within his rights to cancel the tennis star’s visa for a second time based on that possibility.Just a few days earlier, Mr. Djokovic’s lawyers had won a reprieve from his first visa cancellation, hours after his arrival on Jan. 5 at Melbourne’s airport. As of Friday morning, he seemed to be on his way to competing for a 10th Australian Open title and a record-breaking 21st Grand Slam. But that initial case had never reached beyond procedure, focusing on how Mr. Djokovic was treated at the airport as border officials had held him overnight.In the second round, his lawyers argued that the government had used faulty logic to insist their client’s presence would energize anti-vaccination groups, making him a threat to public health. In fact, they argued, anti-vaccine sentiment would be aggravated by his removal, citing protests that followed his first visa cancellation.“The minister is grasping for straws,” said Nicholas Wood, one of Mr. Djokovic’s lawyers. The alternative scenario — that deportation would empower anti-vaxxers — “was not considered,” he maintained.Journalists outside the offices of Mr. Djokovic’s legal team on Saturday. For more than a week, the world gawked at a conflict filled with legal minutiae and dramatic ups and downs.Loren Elliott/ReutersMr. Wood also disputed the government’s claim that Mr. Djokovic, 34, was a well-known promoter of vaccine opposition. The only comments cited in the government’s court filing, he said, came from April 2020, when vaccines had not yet been developed.Ever since then, his lawyers added, Mr. Djokovic had been careful to say very little about his vaccination status, which he confirmed only in his paperwork for Australia’s medical exemption.“There was no evidence before the minister that Mr. Djokovic has ever urged any others not to be vaccinated,” they wrote in a court filing before Sunday’s hearing. “Indeed, if anything, Mr. Djokovic’s conduct over time reveals a zealous protection of his own privacy rather than any advocacy.”The case, though, ultimately turned on the immigration minister, Alex Hawke, and his personal views. Justice Allsop pointed out in court that Australian immigration law provided a broad mandate: evidence can simply include the “perception and common sense” of the decision maker.Stephen Lloyd, arguing for the government, told the court it was perfectly reasonable for the immigration minister to be concerned about the influence of a “high-profile unvaccinated individual” who could have been vaccinated by now, but had not done so.He added that the concern about Mr. Djokovic’s impact went beyond vaccination, noting that Mr. Djokovic had not isolated after he said he tested positive for Covid in mid-December, meeting instead with two journalists in Belgrade. The government, Mr. Lloyd said, was worried that Australians would emulate his disregard for the standard rules of Covid safety if he were allowed to stay.Mr. Djokovic training at Melbourne Park on Friday. Many Australians believe he never should have been allowed to come without being vaccinated.Daniel Pockett/Getty Images“His connection to a cause whether he wants it or not is still present,” Mr. Lloyd said. “And his presence in Australia was seen to pose an overwhelming risk, and that’s what motivated the minister.”The court sided with the government, announcing its decision without immediately detailing its reasoning.The Novak Djokovic Standoff With AustraliaCard 1 of 5A vaccine exemption question. More

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    Novak Djokovic’s Fight to Stay in Australia Lives Another Day

    A federal court judge scheduled a Sunday hearing to address the unvaccinated tennis star’s Australian visa revocation. The Australian Open begins on Monday.Novak Djokovic, the top men’s tennis player in the world, was detained by border authorities in Australia, on Saturday, the latest turn in a legal dispute over his travel visa that has drawn interest around the world and inflamed tensions during a rapidly spreading coronavirus outbreak.The Australian minister for immigration revoked Djokovic’s travel visa for the second time on Friday because of concerns that Djokovic had violated the country’s rules intended to limit the spread of the virus, arguing that his high-profile status could harm the nation’s battle against the coronavirus.The matter could be resolved in a courtroom showdown Sunday at 9:30 a.m. local time. If the decision to cancel the visa is upheld, Djokovic, 34, could be forced out of the Australian Open tennis tournament and deported, a stunning development should it unfold that way. Then again, if the court rules in favor of Djokovic and allows him to remain, that would be equally shocking to many people who feel the player has already received preferential treatment.Both sides are expected to submit legal papers laying out their arguments to the court on Saturday after Djokovic was ordered to attend the hearing remotely by video from his attorney’s offices.Djokovic’s legal team asked that a full panel of judges hear the case rather than a single judge, which would mean the court’s decision on the matter could not be appealed. Justice David O’Callaghan said he would inform the parties later on Saturday of his decision on that question.Djokovic was appealing the most recent ruling in a case that has highlighted the global challenge of balancing the fight against the coronavirus and a return to so-called normal life, amid a swirl of political ramifications.The matter has produced outrage in Australia and beyond. Djokovic, who refuses to be vaccinated, has long held unorthodox and unscientific views of health. Many see the visa controversy as his devious attempt to leverage his status as an elite sports star to flout rules followed by ordinary Australians and others who travel there. The law states that anyone entering the country is required to be vaccinated against the coronavirus unless they have a medical exemption.In Serbia, Djokovic’s home country, and elsewhere, the ongoing incident is seen by some as an unfair attempt to prevent him from winning a record 21st Grand Slam by defending his title at the Australian Open, which begins Monday. Earlier in the week, his supporters clashed with police in Melbourne.In a statement explaining why he revoked Djokovic’s visa a second time, Alex Hawke, Australia’s minister for immigration, argued that if Djokovic were allowed to remain in Australia and play, the influential tennis star could harm efforts to combat the virus. The government has conceded that Djokovic poses no imminent threat to spread the disease. It is more about the example it would set by allowing him to stay.“Given Mr. Djokovic’s high-profile status and position as a role model in the sporting and broader community,” Hawke said in a statement, “his ongoing presence in Australia may foster similar disregard for the precautionary requirements following receipt of a positive Covid-19 test in Australia.”Djokovic’s lawyers argue that the government unfairly based their decision to revoke his visa again on the premise that Djokovic would engender anti-vaccine sentiments and not on the rule of law.All of it comes during a surge in coronavirus cases globally, and particularly in Australia, which has endured long lockdowns and restrictions. Initially, sentiment in Australia seemed to support Djokovic because he came to Melbourne under the impression that he had a legal exemption. But as more information emerged, including false statements and Djokovic’s cavalier approach after he tested positive in December, the mood has largely turned against him.Djokovic was initially given the an exemption to the federal requirement that everyone entering Australia be vaccinated against the coronavirus so that he could play in the Australian Open. It was granted based on a positive test he took in Serbia on Dec. 16. But soon after he arrived at the Melbourne airport on Jan. 5, he was detained by the federal authorities and sent to a hotel for refugees and asylum seekers.A judge quickly rescinded the detention order on procedural grounds, saying that Djokovic had not been given a fair opportunity to consult with representatives and allies, like the organizers of the tournament. He was allowed to leave detention and hit the practice courts and prepare to compete for what would be his fourth consecutive Australian Open title and record 10th over all.But an investigation revealed irregularities and inaccurate statements on Djokovic’s visa application — which Djokovic later acknowledged and apologized for on Wednesday. The documents failed to state that Djokovic, who lives in Monte Carlo, had traveled between Serbia and Spain during the 14 days ahead of his arrival in Australia. Djokovic attributed the error to human oversight by one of his handlers.The Australian government also expressed concern that on Dec. 18, a day after Djokovic learned that he had tested positive, he hosted journalists at his tennis center in Belgrade for an interview and photo shoot, without informing them. Those revelations led to the second visa revocation on Friday.Some skeptics wondered if Djokovic’s positive test might have been faked to help him earn the exemption. On Friday, Zoran Gojkovic, a member of Serbia’s coronavirus crisis team, said the player’s positive test result was valid. He added that Djokovic had not violated any Serbian laws, especially since the state of emergency was lifted last month.The Novak Djokovic Standoff With AustraliaCard 1 of 4A vaccine exemption question. More

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    Novak Djokovic’s Fight to Play Tennis Unvaccinated Could Be Just Starting

    The days-long battle to enter Australia to defend his Open title presages headwinds he may face if he attempts to travel the world without being vaccinated for Covid-19.Novak Djokovic has fought through adversity of his own and others’ making for as long as he has been playing tennis.He beat extraordinary odds to become a champion, emerging from the former Yugoslavia despite economic hardship and a conflict that turned Serbia, his homeland, into an international pariah and made it difficult for him to travel and train. Once on tour, he had to contend with Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, well on their way to becoming two of the game’s greatest players. Djokovic caught up to them and now holds a career edge in both rivalries. He has also been ranked No. 1 for 356 weeks, a record.Djokovic, stubborn and resilient, has had tougher fights in his career than the one he has faced this month with the Australian government over his visa. But this battle, which continues, is unlike any other he has encountered. It could do him lasting damage despite his surprise victory in Australia on Monday, when a federal court overturned the revocation of his visa on procedural grounds. The ruling still does not guarantee he will not be deported by Australian immigration authorities ahead of the Australian Open, which begins next Monday.Djokovic’s five-day detention, ended by the court ruling, was a blink of the eye compared with the detentions of some longstanding asylum seekers with whom he shared his Melbourne hotel. Djokovic, unlike some of his fellow lodgers, was also free to leave the country at any time. But the experience had to be draining, and it came after a phenomenal but emotionally taxing season in which he came within one match of achieving a Grand Slam before losing the U.S. Open final to Daniil Medvedev. He was also beaten at the Olympics and the ATP Finals by Alexander Zverev.Serbian tennis fans and antivaccination protesters rallied outside the Park Hotel in Melbourne, Australia, in support of Djokovic. Diego Fedele/Getty ImagesBased on transcripts provided to the federal court, he landed in Melbourne near midnight on Wednesday with the seeming belief that all his papers were in order, including his medical exemption from vaccination. He soon learned otherwise.While it is highly unlikely that Djokovic, an outspoken skeptic of vaccines, will find himself sequestered again in any other country over visa issues, the trouble in Melbourne presages some of the headwinds he could face in the months ahead if he continues to attempt to travel the world without being vaccinated for Covid-19.Governments are running out of forbearance in instituting or debating vaccine mandates, and some tennis officials are running out of patience, too. And the pace and direction of the coronavirus pandemic and its variants are unknown.The next major events on tour after the Australian Open are the Masters 1000 events in Indian Wells, Calif., and Miami, which both start in March. But the United States now requires that visitors be fully vaccinated to travel to the country by plane unless they are U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents or traveling on a U.S. immigrant visa. Only limited exceptions apply, and it is unclear whether Djokovic would qualify for one or would even want to try to qualify for one after the Australian imbroglio.The French Open, which is the next Grand Slam tournament of the season after the Australian Open, begins in May and appears less problematic. The French sports minister, Roxana Maracineanu, told French national radio last week that she expected Djokovic would be allowed to enter the country and compete if unvaccinated because of the health protocols that are planned for major international sporting events in France.Djokovic’s family held a news conference on Monday in Belgrade, Serbia, after Djokovic was to be released from an immigration detention center in Melbourne after a court order.Srdjan Stevanovic/Getty ImagesBut in the same interview, Maracineanu emphasized that any athlete, French or foreign, who was a resident in France would be required to show proof of vaccination to have access to sports training facilities. That is a sign of which way the mistral is blowing. Some professional leagues have left loopholes in place, but gaps are also closing for the unvaccinated.Djokovic, who has long held nontraditional views on science and taken unorthodox approaches to his health, finds himself in the distinct minority with more than 90 percent of the top 100 players on the ATP Tour now vaccinated. If the ATP has made no official statements of public support for Djokovic during his detention, that might not be because Djokovic is now leading a new player group that has been critical of the ATP but because the ATP has pushed increasingly hard for its members to be vaccinated.In 2022, the tour will not require vaccinated players to take more than an initial test once they arrive at a tournament unless they develop symptoms. Unvaccinated players and team members will have to be tested regularly, and the tour will no longer cover the cost of follow-up testing for the unvaccinated.That will pose no hardship to Djokovic, who has earned about $154 million in career prize money and hundreds of millions more off court. But the tour rules do emphasize that Djokovic and the few remaining unvaccinated players are outliers.The Australian authorities have hardly wrapped themselves in glory during L’Affaire Djokovic. There were mixed signals, conflicting memos and other miscommunication between state and federal officials and Tennis Australia, which runs the Australian Open.If there had been a united, coherent effort that sent a clear message about the grounds for medical exemptions from vaccination, Djokovic’s overnight interrogation and visa cancellation could have been avoided.Djokovic after winning the Australian Open last year.Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesHe most likely would not have risked going to Australia if he had understood that the federal government did not consider a recent case of Covid-19 to be grounds for an exemption. But while Djokovic won in court on Monday, he has undoubtedly lost support in some chambers of the court of public opinion, though he has become a martyr for the anti-vaccine movement and among his countrymen.The Novak Djokovic Standoff with AustraliaCard 1 of 4A vaccine exemption question. More