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      Russia, Soccer and a Line Drawn Too Late

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      Soccer did not have to allow itself to be the field in which geopolitical rivalries played out, or the stage on which oligarchs sought power and prestige.Listen to This ArticleTo hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.The troops were already over the border, the fighter jets screaming low through the skies, smoke billowing from the airfields when Schalke decided to act. The sound of the air raid sirens wailing, the sight of families huddled in subway stations, the images of thousands desperately fleeing Kyiv, a full-scale invasion: That was where it drew the line.Everything else, Schalke had been prepared to swallow. It did not bat an eyelid during the brief, brutal war with Georgia in 2008, or at Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, or at the downing of a passenger jet the same year, or at the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in 2018, or at Vladimir V. Putin’s longstanding support for and arming of Bashar al-Assad’s murderous regime in Syria.Throughout all of that, Schalke’s royal blue jerseys were proudly adorned with the logo of Gazprom, the energy giant that is majority-owned by the Russian state and has, variously, been described as a “geopolitical tool” and a “politicized weapon” wielded by Putin and a handpicked cadre of his cronies.That has been the case for 15 years — making it one of the longest-running sponsorship arrangements in European soccer — ever since Gerhard Schröder, the former German premier who now works with Gazprom, suggested the firm might like to invest in Schalke.That many of the club’s fans have long been uneasy with the relationship — warning more than once about the team being seen as the “lap dogs of an autocrat” — made no difference. The $17 million or so the company paid the club every year for its prime advertising space, even as it slipped from Champions League contention to relegation from the Bundesliga, was enough to override any such qualms. The old line, trotted out yet again this week by Sergey Semak, the coach of another Gazprom-backed team, Zenit St. Petersburg, that sport and politics should not be allowed to mix was the only justification anyone needed.Schalke was fine with Gazprom’s name on its shirts and Gazprom’s money in its accounts, until suddenly it wasn’t.Martin Meissner/Associated PressUntil, Thursday afternoon, that is, when Schalke suddenly discovered its moral compass. Gazprom’s logo was being removed from its jerseys, a statement on the club’s website read, because of the euphemistically-titled “recent developments” in Ukraine. Instead, when its players take to the field against Karlsruhe this weekend — and for the foreseeable future — their jerseys will simply read: Schalke 04.It is, though, somewhat churlish to focus exclusively on Schalke. Better late than never, after all: The club has done what it can, in some small way, to highlight its objection to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. There are plenty of others who have yet to meet even that bar.Everton and Chelsea, for example, have significant financial ties to Russian oligarchs who were named by a British lawmaker this week as suitable targets for sanctions; or Manchester United, studiously quiet on its sponsorship deal with Aeroflot, the state-backed Russian airline, until suddenly dropping it Friday.Still, what do you expect, when the very bodies who are supposed to represent the game have been so acquiescent? UEFA has, at least, stripped St. Petersburg of this year’s Champions League final, something it has found easier than annulling its own, lucrative sponsorship agreement with Gazprom.And then, of course, there is FIFA. Oh, FIFA, whose president once accepted a friendship medal from Putin and claimed that the 2018 World Cup had highlighted how wrong the Western perception of the ruthless kleptocracy he presided over had been. On Thursday, that president, Gianni Infantino, did condemn Russia’s “use of force in Ukraine,” though there were times when outright criticism did not seem to come easily.Even placing those teams, those bodies under scrutiny, though, may still be a touch unfair. The idea that any of these institutions should be expected to have a cogent, considered reaction to a major, unfolding global crisis is, at heart, faintly absurd.The issues that have driven the world to this point, their underlying causes, their long-term ramifications, are way beyond not only the scope of their expertise — let’s go live, now, to Frank Lampard, for his take on the Minsk accords of 2014 — but the limits of their world.The Krestovsky Stadium, known as Gazprom Arena but no longer the host of this year’s Champions League final.Anton Vaganov/ReutersIf the British or American governments cannot muster a convincing, unified policy in response to Putin’s aggression, why should we expect Everton, a middling Premier League team whose main concern is not being relegated, to do so? Why should UEFA, an organization which seems to find it hard to stop people being actively racist at public events, be expected to take decisive action before the European Union and the United Nations? What core competencies does FIFA, stocked as it is by the self-interested and the chronically mediocre, have to understand the tectonic shifts in geopolitics?At what point did we decide that any of this was within soccer’s wheelhouse? At what point did soccer become a lightning rod for international diplomacy? Why would an issue this serious be refracted through the lens of something as inherently trivial as sport?The answer, of course, is because soccer wanted it this way. Or, rather, because this is a price that soccer long ago decided was worth paying, when it elected to pursue money and glamour and influence at all costs, when it chose to open its doors to anyone who wanted a part of it, regardless of their morals or their motives, as long as they were good for the money, when it allowed itself to be hijacked by those who saw it not as an end but a means, not as a sport but as a vehicle.Soccer has not just welcomed them all in — the politicians and the oligarchs and the tycoons and the nation states — but actively courted and feted and celebrated their contributions. It has transformed them from parasites, hoping to attach themselves to the world’s great, unyielding passion to serve their own interests, into saviors and heroes and idols, conferring upon them not just legitimacy but adoration.And it has done so because they have helped to turn the game into what the historian David Goldblatt has referred to as the greatest cultural phenomenon in history, a world of untold riches and unlimited promise, one that knows no borders and recognizes neither its horizons nor its hubris.That is not the worst of it, though. The worst of it is that it has sold not only its morals and its right to innocence, to simplicity, but a part of its soul to anyone who could afford it not for any grand vision of what it might be, of what it might do, but simply to bankroll the endlessly spiraling inflation of transfer fees and wages, to support an economy that is bloated beyond all recognition, one so engorged and distorted that it calls into question the very integrity of the sport itself.Soccer did not have to do any of that. It did not have to allow itself to be the field in which geopolitical rivalries played out, or the stage on which oligarchs sought power and prestige. It did not have to choose a path in which one of Germany’s grandest clubs, owned by its fans, was a pawn in the politicking around the construction of the Nord Stream II gas pipeline.It could, instead, have looked at its popularity around the globe and wondered how that might be protected from — rather than sold to — the speculators and the opportunists, how the clubs that comprise its fabric might be safeguarded rather than hawked by organizations eager to monetize it, the ones that might have designed rules to prevent a gold rush but chose simply to grab its pickax and start mining.But it did not, and so this is where it finds itself: stripping sponsors from its jerseys as the air raid sirens wail and the fighter jets scream low over the skies, way out of its depth and way beyond its limits, trying desperately to do what it can to make a stand, knowing full well that it is all far too little, far too late.A Fight Worth WinningJohannes Eisele/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIt is extraordinary, really, that it has taken six years of negotiation and ill-feeling and controversy for U.S. Soccer to formally pledge to fulfill the simplest principle: that its men’s and women’s players should be paid the same amount of money — and given the same access to the same resources — to do the same job.That does not feel like an especially complicated issue to resolve. It certainly does not seem like the sort of issue on which anyone would willingly take the contrary position.It is not necessarily something that warrants the most lavish praise, then, that U.S. Soccer has agreed to a settlement that will see several dozen women, both current and former players, share $24 million, largely in back pay, in a belated attempt to right a historical wrong. But as noted elsewhere in this newsletter: better late than never.Russia-Ukraine War: Key DevelopmentsCard 1 of 3A new diplomatic push. More

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      FIFA Considers Moving Its Commercial Business to U.S.

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      Soccer’s global governing body is giving serious thought to relocating its multibillion-dollar commercial business to the United States.Looking to expand its global footprint beyond its cloistered headquarters next to a zoo on the outskirts of Zurich, soccer’s governing body, FIFA, is studying the feasibility of moving its financial engine, the commercial operation that produces billions of dollars in revenues for the organization, to the United States.The possible move will be determined by technical factors including the suitability of locations on both coasts, the ease of acquiring work visas for overseas staff members and tax rules, according to an official with direct knowledge of the discussions who declined to speak publicly because a final determination had yet to be made. The operations involved represent a vital part of FIFA’s business: They oversee FIFA’s sale of sponsorships and broadcasting rights, which represent some of the most lucrative properties in global sports.Since the election of Gianni Infantino as its president in 2016, FIFA been looking at extending its footprint beyond its glass-and-steel headquarters on the east side of Zurich. It has already opened an office in Paris, where most of its staff involved in development and relations with its 211 member associations will eventually based.Officials are hopeful that relocating its commercial business to a major American city would help FIFA attract and retain key staff members, amid concerns that its current home is proving a hurdle in attracting talent. Local regulations require FIFA to employ a fixed number of Swiss staff members.FIFA officials toured the United States in September, visiting possible host cities for the 2026 World Cup.Mark Humphrey/Associated PressFIFA’s interest in decoupling itself from Zurich is also — in part — an effort to improve its reputation and loosen its ties with its troubled recent past in Switzerland, the country that has been its home since 1932.Several members of FIFA’s executive board were arrested in Zurich in 2015 as part of a sprawling United States Department of Justice investigation that revealed corrupt practices dating back at least two decades. That scandal led to the downfall of FIFA’s longtime president, Sepp Blatter, and most of the organization’s top leadership.A move to the United States would have been unthinkable for FIFA in the immediate aftermath of the arrests, since it might have put the organization’s officials, operations and financial accounts within the reach of the U.S. authorities. (Some former FIFA executives, possibly fearing arrest, have not set foot in North America since the scandal.) But now staying in Switzerland comes with its own issues.Infantino, who replaced Blatter as FIFA president a year after the raids, has faced a yearslong investigation into his relationship with Michael Lauber, Switzerland’s former attorney general. Lauber, who was forced out after revelations that he held private meetings with Infantino, was responsible for Swiss investigations stemming from the 2015 American indictment. Those inquiries have yielded few charges.The failure of the Swiss authorities to act in the corruption case has frustrated elements of FIFA’s current leadership, who have privately expressed incredulity at the inaction given the amount of evidence obtained in searches of FIFA’s headquarters. At the same time, the investigation into Infantino led to a furious response, with FIFA’s assistant secretary general branding it “a little grotesque and unfair.”FIFA’s effort to move parts of its operations away from Zurich are seen by insiders as necessary measures for an organization looking to move beyond working methods dating back several decades. The decision to relocate to Paris, for example, has offered officials in its development and member association departments easier access to Africa, a region over which FIFA has largely assumed complete control after a separate corruption scandal involving the president of the regional governing body on the continent.“Our aim of making football truly global also means that FIFA itself needs to have a more balanced and global organizational set up,” Infantino said when the Paris office opened in June.FIFA was established in Paris in 1904 but moved to Zurich in 1932 because of Switzerland’s location in the center of Europe, its political neutrality and because “it was accessible by train,” according to a timeline on FIFA’s website. In 2007, FIFA moved into its current headquarters building on a hill overlooking Zurich. The building, known as FIFA House, cost more than $200 million and has several subterranean levels, including the marble-floored, soundproof room where its governing council holds its meetings.Officials at FIFA remain undecided about how much of a presence the organization would keep in Switzerland, which — thanks to light-touch government oversight and friendly tax arrangements — has grown into the location of choice for international sporting federations. Lausanne, the home of the International Olympic Committee, actively recruits such organizations and has labeled itself “the Silicon Valley of sports.”Pushing for such significant changes is emblematic of FIFA under Infantino. A Swiss national, he has tried to institute major changes to the way both FIFA and soccer operate, with mixed results. He has enlarged the World Cup, an event responsible for more than 90 percent of FIFA’s revenues, to 48 teams from the current 32-nation format. But his efforts to force through other innovations and increase FIFA’s influence in club soccer have often fallen flat, and his current push to shift the World Cup from a quadrennial event to one staged every two years threatens a major fight with European soccer officials and even the International Olympic Committee.Moving to the United States would offer FIFA the chance to build out its commercial operation in a country that its officials feel has yet to embrace soccer at a level matching the sport’s place in other parts of the world. The timing would also allow FIFA to exert greater control over preparations for the 2026 World Cup, the first edition of the expanded tournament; that tournament will be co-hosted by the United States, Mexico and Canada.But being closer to Wall Street and major American companies, some top FIFA officials contend, would also offer the chance to significantly increase revenues as well as find partners to finance new events and invest in the growing popularity of women’s soccer.As well as tapping into the potential commercial opportunities available in the world’s largest economy, being based in the United States also would offer FIFA another chance to show that it has moved on from its scandal-ridden past.FIFA has in recent years tried to mend its relationship with the U.S. government, and officials have been in regular contact with the Department of Justice, which has continued its probe into corruption in world soccer. Some of the fruits of those improved ties were made clear last month when FIFA and its two regional confederations most implicated in the 2015 scandal were cleared to receive more than $200 million recovered from companies and individuals. The Justice Department said the money would have to be administered through FIFA. More

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      A World Cup Every Two Years? Why?

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      Soccer is in love with the Big Idea. But a focus on fundamentally changing the game’s calendar leaves no room for a necessary debate about fixing it.This is soccer’s age of the Big Idea. There is an incessant, unrelenting flow of Big Ideas, ones of such scale and scope that they have to be capitalized, from all corners of the game: from individuals and groups, from clubs and from leagues, from the back of cigarette packets and from all manner of crumpled napkins.The Video Assistant Referee system was a Big Idea. Expanding the World Cup to 48 teams was a Big Idea. Project Big Picture, the plan to redraw how the Premier League worked, was a Big Idea. The Super League was the Biggest Idea of them all — perhaps, in hindsight, it was, in fact, too Big an Idea — an Idea so Big that it could generate, in the brief idealism of its backlash, more Big Ideas still, as the death of a star sends matter hurtling all across the galaxy.And now, thanks to Arsène Wenger and a curiously obedient coterie of former players, we have another. This latest Big Idea is, at heart, a very simple thought, rooted in the noted Alan Partridge dictum about detective TV shows: People like them, so let’s make more of them. If the World Cup can grow in size, why not have it grow in time, too? Instead of playing it every four years, why not just play it biennially?Arsène Wenger, the man sent out to sell soccer’s latest Big Idea.Valeriano Di Domenico/Pool Via ReutersThe reaction, well, everyone could have guessed the reaction. As fans, our relationship with soccer is an intensely personal one. It is bound up in affection and mythology and nostalgia, and though it is one of the great collective experiences, every member of the crowd perceives it entirely independently.One might believe it to be a tactical endeavor; another might feel it is rooted in industry, heart and desire. It might bond me to a place, but it might tie you to your family. Above all, soccer links us all back to the most personal memory of all, our childhood, to a pure and unadulterated love, an unquestioning and unquestioned pleasure. Our devotion is to once again capturing the feeling we knew then.It is no wonder, then, that fans are coded to resist change. No matter what form it takes — V.A.R. or penalties being taken in the wrong order or the expansion of the World Cup — change is necessarily external. It is proof of someone else, someone other, tampering with the way our game works, taking it further away from its truest and highest form, the one that it just so happened to take when we were young.Wenger’s plan, then, was not met with rapturous applause. It has been condemned, pretty widely, not only by fans but by all but two of the groups that we now routinely describe as soccer’s stakeholders. Clubs, leagues, players: They are all against it. They all fear it congests the calendar yet further, that it strips the World Cup of some, or much, of its prestige. Its value, they say, lies in its rarity.FIFA’s Gianni Infantino, who has yet to hear a billion-dollar idea he wouldn’t at least entertain.Karim Jaafar/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe two exceptions, of course, are the phalanx of so-called legends — John Terry and Michael Owen and Peter Schmeichel and the rest — consulted by Wenger, in his capacity as FIFA’s chief of global football development, ahead of, say, fan groups or the Bundesliga or UEFA; and the vast majority of FIFA’s 211 member nations, many of whom stand to benefit in some way from the expansion and are, not coincidentally, in favor of it.This is just the first of quite a long list of problems with Wenger’s idea: Why should a decision that impacts the game at the club level as much as internationally, one that has ramifications for anyone who plays or watches professional soccer, be decided by such a narrow interest group?What right — and apologies, here, if this comes across as Eurocentric — does the national federation of Oman or Uzbekistan or Canada, for that matter, have to vote on a proposal that would radically alter the way that European and South American club soccer, the great engines of the game, work? Particularly when they are not mere observers, judiciously selecting the best option for the game they love, but active beneficiaries of the plan?That is just the start of it, though. The other issues are many and varied. Wenger’s system would see a World Cup staged every two years; in the intervening summers, the six major confederations would hold their continental championships.Where, precisely, does this leave the women’s game? Would the Women’s World Cup have to compete with the men’s European Championship in odd years? What happens to the expanded Club World Cup that Gianni Infantino, the FIFA president, has spent years conceiving and crafting and flogging?If the World Cup can retain its prestige despite doubling in frequency, can the same be said of the continental tournaments? Is the best way to grow African or Asian soccer to make those continents compete for eyeballs and interest with the European Championship? The answer, to both, is no. There have been four iterations of the Copa América in the last seven years, and each one has meant just a little less than the last; this summer, running concurrently with the Euros, the Copa was largely an afterthought outside South America.Aleksander Ceferin and UEFA want no part of a biennial World Cup.Catherine Ivill/Pool Via ReutersThat Wenger and FIFA have not yet been able to provide a convincing riposte to those issues — beyond pointing out that more countries would be able to qualify for the World Cup, which is the sort of thing that may well prove to be untrue in practice, no matter how much sense it makes in theory — is a shame, because his proposal is not without value. The Big Idea may be riddled with flaws, but the small ideas that support it are worth considering.Wenger wants to reduce player fatigue and soccer’s carbon imprint, as well as impose order on soccer’s archaic calendar, by streamlining the qualification process: Rather than a series of brief international windows, he would prefer either one, or two, longer ones per season. (When they would fall is not decided, but safe to say that taking a month off in October, just after Europe’s season has started, should really be an opening gambit at best). That is a Good Idea, one that merits capitalizing.So, too, the thought of a secondary global competition — a sort of Europa League World Cup — to run alongside the main tournament, offering smaller nations a viable target, is not without merit. Soccer fans are naturally conservative, but it would be self-defeating to spurn any notion of change whatsoever.Sadly, though, the potential benefits most likely will be lost, either because the whole plan is vetoed — UEFA, its nose tweaked by the sense that FIFA is simply bulldozing its vision through, has already vowed to fight it — or because they represent small victories in a resounding, overall defeat.There is a sadness in that, because there are plenty of ways that soccer’s format might be changed for the better, and this is the chance to do it. There is a reason that all of these Big Ideas keep emerging: In 2024, the game’s calendar effectively resets and, until it does, every option is effectively in play. This is an opportunity for change, the progressive and positive sort, if only all of the interested parties could resist the temptation to claim territory and investigate nurturing fertile ground instead.It should not be beyond the wit of soccer, for example, to keep Wenger’s ideas for a condensed qualification process and (more or less) contemporaneous continental tournaments, but abandon a biennial World Cup, with all its drawbacks.Christian Pulisic, among many others, surely supports fewer qualifying games, not more, after he was injured in one in Honduras on Wednesday.Moises Castillo/Associated PressInstead, everything would remain on a four-year cycle; one of the intervening summers would be given over to an expanded Club World Cup (again: a Big Idea that makes sense) and another would be left strictly fallow, to allow all men’s players a chance to rest and offer the Women’s World Cup an uninterrupted window on the global stage. (Women’s continental tournaments could run in the same years as the men’s, though not simultaneously).Why stop there? Qualification is long and arduous and, in South America, where almost everyone will qualify, will largely be pointless after 2022. Instead, guarantee the teams that make the last 16 of the Qatar World Cup a place in the group stage in 2026, setting a pattern that will reduce the number of teams for whom qualification is more of a chore than a chance. (This newsletter has previously advocated for this idea to be introduced for the Euros, too.) That increases the number of meaningful games, and allows elite players more rest.While we are at it: The Nations League concept has been successful, but should be abandoned; the Champions League should revert to its current 32-team format, rather than the new model brought in under the now rather passé threats of Europe’s old elite; strict rules should be introduced on how many players over age 23 any club can have on loan, as well as a system allowing players not regularly representing their clubs the right to cancel their contracts and enter a draft; the viability of cross-border leagues should be explored to reduce economic imbalance; solidarity payments from the Champions League should be drastically increased; a Club World Cup for women’s soccer should be instituted immediately.Soccer has an inbuilt, reflexive aversion to change, but that the sport is thinking about what shape it might take in the future should not be discouraged. Perhaps, in fact, that would be the biggest shame of all: not just if the sport’s age of the Big Idea resulted in the sort of change that leads to regret, in super leagues and saturation, but if it led to no change at all.Talk? No Thanks. Let’s Argue Instead.Brazil played several World Cup qualifiers shorthanded. Now the missing stars may have to sit out the weekend, too.Nelson Almeida/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIt would be nice, of course, if soccer’s various competing interests — its leagues and its clubs, its national federations and its tournament organizers and its players’ unions — could all get around a table and thrash out a future that worked for everyone, rather than hurriedly scrabbling to grab whatever little piece of land they can.To know that such a prospect is a distant one, sadly, all you have to do is look at the simmering dispute between the Brazilian national federation and several Premier League clubs that may well strip a handful of England’s biggest teams of some of their most important players this weekend.Just before the international break, the teams of the Premier League decreed that they would not release players for South America’s World Cup qualifiers — though a couple, Aston Villa and Tottenham, later backtracked, to absolutely no consequence whatsoever — because Britain’s quarantine rules would mean any players who traveled would not be able to play for two weeks after their return. They did so with the backing of the game’s various authorities.At the end of the international break, Brazil demanded that FIFA invoke a rule preventing players who were denied the chance to play for their country from playing for their clubs for five days, meaning dozens must sit out this weekend’s Premier League schedule (and, in one case, a Champions League game on Tuesday). They did so with the support of a whole different set of authorities.It is not worth lingering on who is in the right here (it’s the clubs, in case you are wondering, at least partly because Brazil has not asked that the ban be applied to Richarlison, the Everton striker, seemingly for no better reason than that Brazil quite likes Everton), or even if the ban will hold up (at the time of writing, talks were ongoing, as they say).Far more significant is just how broken the lines of communication between the club game and its international counterpart appear to be. Would it have been too much to ask for the clubs to open a dialogue with Brazil before announcing their intentions? Did Brazil need to take such a drastic step? Is it really sensible to be throwing oil-soaked rags at the group of people weighing up the benefits of lighting a match?That is the environment soccer has fostered. That is the culture and the climate in which anyone and everyone is trying to make change. It is broken, at some fundamental level, because all sides not only prioritize their own interests, but seem somehow unaware that theirs are not the only interests in play. Until that ends, no change that comes will be positive. It is not immediately clear how it can be.The Rise of SpainReal Madrid eliminated Manchester City from the Champions League on Wednesday.Lee Smith/Action Images Via ReutersThere were, in Manchester City’s defense, mitigating circumstances. Half of its team was missing through injury; its preparation for the season has been disrupted, more than many, if not quite most, by the loss of players to the Olympics; it was, put simply, a draw sufficiently tough to be regarded as unfortunate.Still, City’s elimination from the Champions League at the hands of Real Madrid on Wednesday should not be dismissed as a one-off event. The context of Manchester City’s defeat is important, but so, too, is the context of Real Madrid’s victory: It is yet another piece in the mounting body of evidence that the emerging power in the women’s game is Spain.The United States may be the world champion. Canada may be the Olympic champion. England’s Women’s Super League may be the strongest domestic competition on the planet. France’s Lyon and Paris St.-Germain may remain prized scalps, era-defining supersquads.But it is a Spanish club, Barcelona, that finally dethroned Lyon as European champion last season. It is a Spanish player, Alexia Putellas, who was anointed player of the year by UEFA last month. And it is in Spain where Real Madrid — latecomers to the women’s game, having only officially fielded a team last year — has now joined its neighbor Atlético Madrid as a genuine counterweight to Barcelona.How Real fares in its debut season in the Champions League remains to be seen, though knocking out City, a team assembled at no little cost and with considerable pedigree on this stage, augurs well. But the presence of those three teams at the summit of the women’s game in Spain suggests that its rise is only just beginning, that the sport’s axis may be shifting not only east, to Europe, but south, to Madrid and Barcelona, too.Barcelona’s Alexia Putellas lifted the Champions League trophy in May. David Lidstrom/Getty ImagesCorrespondenceNo shortage of responses to last week’s column on whether clubs loaning out players on an industrial scale was morally troublesome. “How much do all these loan moves benefit and improve the player?” asked Ben Myers, rhetorically. “Answer: not at all. This is unfortunate because a player’s career becomes subservient to the financial needs of a club, and players watch their careers dry up.”Mendel Litzmann, though, begs to differ. “There are successful players from this academy loan system, pioneered by [Chelsea’s] Marina Granovskaia: Romelu Lukaku, Mohammed Salah, Kevin De Bruyne, Jamal Musiala. There is an irony that Lukaku was brought back to Chelsea, after being part of the loan system.”I’d probably fall somewhere in the middle on this. I don’t think there is an issue with clubs loaning players out for experience, as Chelsea did with Lukaku (before selling him, just as all the others were sent out and then sold on, for profit, raising the question as to whether Chelsea needed them in the first place, or whether they might have been better left elsewhere). Sometimes, a loan spell is exactly what a player needs. The problem arises when the players are loaned out, again and again, when it is abundantly clear the club has no intention of ever recalling them.Is it possible for a club to employ too many players?Glyn Kirk/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesJay Radecki, meanwhile, looked at it from the players’ perspective. “The market for athletes in soccer is full, on the margin, of players who could make it. Accordingly, players seek their maximum compensation at any free moment but also, maybe more important, the security of a longer-term contract. This desire for certainty in both wages and employment are the counterpoints that allow clubs to control the loan market.” This, perhaps, is the main benefit for the players locked in the loan cycle: They are protected a little, for a while, from the vicissitudes of the game.And Connor Murphy volunteered the point of view of the clubs. “Gambling on prospects, like Marlos Moreno, is a risky business. Nobody wants to be left holding the bag after an expensive player flops. You want variance to work in your favor, not against you, so you sign a lot of players. You send them out and bide your time. Some players are stars, some are flops, and some are just OK. You keep the stars, eat the losses on the flops, and farm out or sell the ‘just OK.’” This logic is absolutely right, of course. Whether that logic is right in a whole other sense is the big question. More

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      Fight Over World Cup Schedule Pits FIFA Against Leagues

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      A dispute about World Cup qualifying games has highlighted the power soccer’s governing body holds over clubs, and how little recourse they have.A meeting was called, discussions were held, and groups representing some of the world’s biggest soccer clubs and leagues were given a chance to have their say.Their concerns were immediate: Extra dates being proposed for qualifying matches for the 2022 World Cup would badly affect their operations, they said, with dozens of their players from South America, including Lionel Messi and Neymar, set to miss crucial league games because of their national team commitments.FIFA, world soccer’s governing body, reassured the officials from the clubs and the leagues. Do not worry, the clubs were told, FIFA would consider the needs of all the affected groups before deciding how to squeeze in the extra dates, which were needed to accommodate matches postponed by the pandemic.But in the end, FIFA chose what worked best for FIFA. Ignoring entreaties from clubs and leagues around the world, FIFA and its regional confederation for South America, CONMEBOL, went ahead and added two extra days for qualifying matches in September and October. The clubs, not World Cup organizers, would just have to adjust.The outcome was perhaps the clearest example of the immense power FIFA wields when it comes to directing a sport for which it is the chief governing body and also the organizer of the World Cup, one of the biggest sporting events on the planet. While everyone involved agreed something needed to be done to find a spot for the games, which had been postponed earlier this year because of the coronavirus pandemic, only FIFA had the final say on when they would take place.The rosters of top European clubs like Real Madrid are dotted with South American players.Pablo Morano/ReutersWhile the leagues, clubs and players’ unions are often given a hearing, they had little say in the matter beyond expressing impotent frustration at the outcome. That was what a lobbying group, the World Leagues Forum, did this month when it noted FIFA’s ruling would most likely leave clubs in Europe and elsewhere without hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of talent for key early-season games because the new dates — and player travel — would overlap with domestic schedules.“As a governing body, FIFA should be trying to find the best solution for the entire football community,” read the statement by the World Leagues Forum, an umbrella organization for about 40 top leagues. “Instead, FIFA has decided to impose the worst possible option with practically no notice. This poses an obvious governance issue which will have to be addressed.”The growing tension comes amid a wider discussion about the future of soccer, with FIFA pushing for new competitions and new revenue streams and even evaluating the possibility of staging the World Cup every two years. That discussion, which officially is related to soccer’s calendar for the next decade starting in 2024, is expected to conclude by the end of this year.The talks follow perhaps the most fractious period in modern soccer history, encapsulated by a failed attempt by a group of leading European clubs to form a closed superleague and break away from the century-old structures that bind the game together.While their efforts did not ignite the revolution they had designed — their so-called Super League collapsed in a matter of days — their revolt did highlight the unequal distribution of power in global soccer: While teams and leagues invest billions of dollars in the game, they have little say over how it is run.At present, FIFA has signed so-called memorandums of understanding that provide a framework that allows players, who in the main are trained and compensated by their clubs, to play for their countries. Under the terms of that relationship, clubs are required to release players for national team duty for up to 10 days for each international window.For years, that agreement largely held firm, until the coronavirus changed everything and cut the time available to fit in matches before the World Cup at the end of 2022. Instead of two games and their accompanying travel in each window, national teams now would be scheduled for three.At a meeting on July 27, FIFA, represented by Victor Montagliani, its vice president and the head of the regional body for North and Central America, met with officials representing the leagues and clubs. All agreed that a solution needed to be found in order for South America’s qualifiers — backed up by pandemic-related cancellations — to be completed in time for the World Cup.An official from CONMEBOL, according to notes taken at the meeting reviewed by The New York Times, explained that traveling to and within South America was extremely challenging, and that the confederation required three extra days in September and October to ensure the games could be played safely.Like Brazil and Argentina, Uruguay and Colombia also count on European-based pros to fill out their rosters in qualifying.Andressa Anholete/Getty ImagesA representative for the leagues said that would not be acceptable, since it would mean scores of players would be unavailable for at least one weekend of league play, and perhaps more, because of quarantine requirements upon their return to their clubs. He said the leagues could accommodate one extra day, and suggested that the games be played in a secure bubble to minimize travel. At the same meeting, a representative of the players’ union, FIFPro, reminded FIFA of the health effects on athletes of traveling long distances and playing so many games in quick succession.A few weeks later, on Aug. 7, FIFA announced its decision. In a meeting of its most senior body, the Bureau of the FIFA Council — a group made up of the FIFA president, Gianni Infantino, and the leaders of the six regional confederations — it was decided that the South American qualifiers in September and October would be triple match days — three matches in one international break — and clubs would be required to release players for two additional days. Only UEFA, Europe’s governing body, voted against the plan. Previously, it and CONMEBOL had worked together to oppose some of Infantino’s suggestions.“The addition of two days will ensure sufficient rest and preparation time between matches, reflecting the longer travel distances required both to and within South America, thus safeguarding player welfare by mitigating the negative consequences of this more intense schedule, while ensuring fair competition as well as a prompter return to their clubs of the players involved,” FIFA said in a statement.That hardly mollified the clubs. To make matters worse, FIFA said it had scrapped a regulation that allowed teams whose players faced quarantines upon return to withhold releasing them for national team games.“From a regulatory standpoint, this means that FIFA compels players to play for their national team even if they are restricted afterward from playing for their club for several games,” the leagues said in a letter addressed to the FIFA president. The effect, the leagues said, would be quarantine measures that would result “in the disruption or discontinuation of domestic leagues.”With the first games of the September window just over a week away, leagues and clubs are weighing their options. Under FIFA’s current regulations, they may not have many: They will be sanctioned if they refuse to release their players for the looming international window. The complaint would be brought by national soccer associations that comprise FIFA. The body that would rule on the complaints? FIFA. More

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      Saudi Arabia Mulls Bid to Host 2030 World Cup

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      Saudi Arabia is pursuing an ambitious plan to secure the hosting rights to soccer’s marquee event, but the effort faces political and technical obstacles.Nothing is off the table. Not a bid to buy one of England’s biggest soccer clubs. Not rich offers for multimillion-dollar broadcast packages. Not even an improbable bid to secure the hosting rights to the 2030 World Cup.As Saudi Arabia sets course to spend its way to the top table of global soccer, the heart of those efforts is a bid to land the sport’s biggest prize. To accomplish its goal, Saudi Arabia has hired Boston Consulting Group to analyze how it could land the quadrennial tournament — one of the most watched events in sports — only eight years after Qatar will become the first country in the Middle East to stage the event.Several other Western consultants have been asked to help with the project, according to one of the advisers exploring the feasibility of a Saudi bid, and acknowledge that it will require “out of the box thinking” — including, potentially, an agreement to share the hosting rights with a European partner. And despite Saudi Arabia’s growing influence in soccer, the bid, particularly in its current form, is considered a long shot.A spokesman for Boston Consulting Group, citing company policy, declined to comment.Sports has fast become a central pillar of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 program — a strategic effort to pivot the nation away from oil dependency — but more recently, the country is making a concerted effort behind the scenes to join its regional rival Qatar as a major power broker in soccer.The strategy has had mixed success. Saudi Arabia has enticed leagues in Italy and Spain to sign lucrative contracts to bring domestic cup finals to the country. But efforts backed by its sovereign wealth fund to acquire an English Premier League club and the broadcast rights to the Champions League have so far failed.Regardless of the results, its ambition remains untrammeled. Saudi Arabia is determined to be in the ring for all of soccer’s major properties, and at the heart of those efforts most recently is the World Cup.Human rights groups have long been vocal opponents about staging major sporting events in Saudi Arabia, particularly since the country was accused of complicity in the murder of the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.But perhaps the most pressing difficulty to bring a World Cup to Saudi Arabia is a technical one. Since Qatar will stage the first Mideast World Cup next winter, any Saudi Arabian bid would require soccer’s global governing body, FIFA, which runs the tournament, to change its policy of continental rotation in order to bring the event back to the region.One option under consideration is to join with a major European nation also hoping to host the World Cup. So far, only Britain and a partnership of Portugal and Spain, a country whose soccer federation has forged close ties to Saudi Arabia, have publicly announced their intentions to enter the bidding process. Italy, another of Saudi Arabia’s soccer allies, is also considering an effort to host the event for the first time since 1990.Such a cross-continental offer would also require a change of policy from FIFA, which has never staged a tournament on two continents. The 2002 World Cup was shared by the Asian neighbors Japan and South Korea. And the joint United States, Mexico and Canada competition in 2026 will be the first time the World Cup, which by then will have expanded from 32 to 48 teams, is staged in three countries.For a Saudi bid to be successful, organizers could once again have to be persuaded to shift the dates of the tournament from their traditional June-July window to November-December to account for hot weather in the Gulf. The global soccer schedule had to be upended to ensure Qatar could stage the tournament safely, and European leagues whose schedules would be upended might be reluctant to repeat the interruption.Saudi Arabian hopes, though, are boosted by its close links to FIFA and its president, Gianni Infantino, who recently drew criticism from human rights groups after playing a starring role in a promotional video for the Saudi ministry of sport.In January, Infantino held talks with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the architect of Vision 2030. And FIFA’s membership agreed last month to a motion offered by Saudi Arabia’s soccer federation to study the possibility of holding the World Cup every two years instead of its current quadrennial format.That change could allow even more countries to enter the bidding.“It is time to review how the global game is structured and to consider what is best for the future of our sport,” the president of Saudi Arabia’s soccer federation, Yasser al-Misehal, said at the time. “This should include whether the current four-year cycle remains the optimum basis for how football is managed both from a competition and commercial perspective.”A spokesman for the Saudi Arabian soccer federation declined to comment on a possible World Cup bid, but did point out that the country was fast becoming a destination for high-profile sporting events. In recent years, it has staged major boxing matches, motor races and golf events.“We’re keen to take the stage in the global game as well, turning our passion into on-pitch success, as well as greater collaboration with the international football family,” the Saudi soccer federation said in a statement.Saudi Arabia, despite its largess, also needs to rebuild bridges with a soccer economy still smarting from the effects of a sophisticated pirate television network based in the country that for years stole billions of dollars worth of sports content, repackaged it and sold it to Saudi subscribers. FIFA, as well as major competitions like England’s Premier League and Spain’s Liga, were blocked from filing legal claims in Saudi Arabia to protest the piracy.The network that broadcast the stolen matches, BeoutQ, formed during a regional dispute with Qatar, is now off the air. And while the conflict with Qatar has largely been healed, beIN, the Qatari-owned sports broadcaster, remains banned in Saudi Arabia. That means the only way soccer-mad Saudis will be able to watch this summer’s European soccer championship, and a parallel event in South America, will be through illegal broadcasts.European soccer’s governing body on Wednesday rejected a Saudi offer of around $600 million to broadcast the Champions League regionally, preferring to stick with its current partner, beIN. More

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      The Super League Thought It Had a Silent Partner: FIFA

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      Publicly, soccer’s global governing body criticized a breakaway European Super League. Privately, it had held talks for months with the founders about endorsing the competition.Tucked away in the pages and pages of financial and legal jargon that constitute the founding contract of the Super League, the failed project that last month briefly threatened the century-old structures and economics of European soccer, were references to one “essential” requirement.The condition was deemed so important that organizers agreed that the breakaway plan could not succeed without satisfying it and yet was so secret that it was given a code name even in contracts shared among the founders.Those documents, copies of which were reviewed by The New York Times, refer to the need for the Super League founders to strike an agreement with an entity obliquely labeled W01 but easily identifiable as FIFA, soccer’s global governing body. That agreement, the documents said, was “an essential condition for the implementation of the SL project.”Publicly, FIFA and its president, Gianni Infantino, have joined other soccer leaders, fans and politicians in slamming the short-lived Super League project, which would have allowed a small group of elite European teams — a group that included Spain’s Real Madrid, Italy’s Juventus and the English powerhouses Manchester United and Liverpool, among others — to accumulate an ever larger share of the sport’s wealth.But privately, according to interviews with more than a half-dozen soccer executives, including one Super League club owner, Infantino was aware of the plan and knew some of his closest lieutenants had for months — until at least late January — been engaged in talks about lending FIFA’s backing to the breakaway league.The Super League was perhaps the most humbling failure in modern soccer history. Announced by 12 of the world’s richest clubs late on a Sunday night in April, it was abandoned less than 48 hours later amid a hailstorm of protest from fans, leagues, teams and politicians. Its founding teams have since apologized — some of them multiple times — for taking part in it, and a few could still face significant financial and sporting consequences.But the behind-the-scenes discussions that led to a week of public drama have laid bare simmering tensions between FIFA and European soccer’s governing body, UEFA, over control of billions of dollars in annual revenue; exposed a series of frayed relationships among some of the sport’s top leaders that may be beyond repair; and raised new questions about the role played by FIFA and Infantino in the project that shook soccer’s foundations.FIFA declined to respond to specific questions related to the involvement of Infantino or his aides in the planning of the Super League. Instead it pointed to its previous statements and its commitment to processes in which “all key football stakeholders were consulted.”The Super League’s discussions with FIFA began in 2019. They were led by a group known as A22, a consortium of advisers headed by the Spain-based financiers Anas Laghari and John Hahn and charged with putting together the Super League project. A22 officials held meetings with some of Infantino’s closest aides, including FIFA’s deputy secretary general, Mattias Grafstrom.In at least one of those meetings, the breakaway group proposed that, in exchange for FIFA’s endorsement of its project, the Super League would agree to the participation of as many as a dozen of its marquee teams in an annual FIFA-backed World Cup for clubs. The teams also agreed to waive payments they would have earned by taking part, a potential windfall for FIFA of as much as $1 billion each year. After their initial meetings, the advisers reported back that they had found a receptive audience.The Super League’s driving force: Florentino Pérez, Real Madrid’s president.Gabriel Bouys/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesObtaining FIFA’s support was not merely a hedge; the organization’s consent was required to prevent the project from being mired in costly and lengthy litigation and to preclude any punishments for the players who took part.But it was also an insurance policy for the players. In a previous superleague discussion in 2018, FIFA had issued dark warnings that players could be banned from their national teams — and thus the World Cup — for appearing in an unsanctioned league.By the middle of last year, the advisers from A22 were telling clubs that “FIFA was on board,” according to a Super League club owner. Others interviewed, including several with direct knowledge of the meetings who spoke anonymously because they would face legal action for publicly disclosing information subject to secrecy rules, said FIFA was at least open to the idea of the new league. But they said the organization and its leaders remained noncommittal — at least officially — until more details about the structure of the project were in place.Confident they could obtain the support they needed, the organizers discussed various concepts for their new league before landing on the one they presented to the world when they broke cover on April 18. The Super League, as it would be known, would have 15 permanent members but would allow access to five additional teams from Europe each season.A22 had been working on iterations of a superleague for as long as three years. Laghari, an executive at the advisory firm Key Capital Partners who has known the Real Madrid president, Florentino Pérez, since he was a child, was to be the league’s first secretary general. Pérez had long been the driving force behind a superleague, but now, as he had come to grow confident he had FIFA on board, the stars started to align for him and his friend.In Infantino, Pérez and Laghari had found an energetic president eager to remake the soccer business. Infantino often spoke about being open to new ventures and proposals — he has championed the expansion of both the World Cup and FIFA’s Club World Cup in recent years — as he sought to assert FIFA’s dominance over the club game in a manner unlike any of his predecessors. Pérez and Laghari also found kindred spirits in the men who controlled most of Europe’s top clubs. Most were drawn to a project that promised to open a spigot of new revenue while ensuring that costs would be controlled, leading to enormous profits and access to elite competition in perpetuity.Aleksander Ceferin, left, and Infantino in 2018. They have clashed repeatedly over control of club soccer, particularly in Europe.Alexander Hassenstein/Getty ImagesYet even as they received assurances from the A22 advisers about FIFA’s involvement, some skeptical club owners did their own due diligence by reaching out directly to senior FIFA officials. And the word they got back, according to a team executive with direct knowledge of at least one of those conversations, was the same they were hearing from Madrid: If the plan was put together in a certain way, FIFA would not oppose it.Those talks gave the clubs and JPMorgan, the American investment bank that had agreed to finance the project, a level of comfort about its viability. Their confidence wavered, though, when leaks about a potential superleague emerged in news reports in January, accompanied by whispers of FIFA’s involvement in the talks.Alarmed by the reports, European soccer’s top official, Aleksander Ceferin, the UEFA president, held an urgent meeting with Infantino at UEFA’s headquarters in Nyon, Switzerland in which he asked Infantino directly if he was involved in the plan. Infantino said he was not, but he initially demurred when asked to commit to a statement condemning the proposals. Amid intense pressure and growing requests for comment, though, he backed down.On Jan. 21, a statement was issued in the name of FIFA and soccer’s six regional confederations. It said a “closed” European league would not be recognized by FIFA or the confederations and reiterated the threat of a World Cup ban for any participant.The statement shocked the organizers of the Super League, as their talks with FIFA until that stage had been positive. But according to people involved in the planning, they also sensed a signal in its wording: FIFA said it would not recognize a closed competition, but the Super League was now planning to supplement its roster of 15 permanent members with five qualifiers every season.The A22 advisers, according to the club owner, insisted that loophole meant all was not lost. “They reported that FIFA was still open to something,” he said.The founders’ plan was to tie the Super League to FIFA’s Club World Cup, the owner said. That way the clubs would commit as many as 12 of the biggest teams in Europe to Infantino’s ambitious global competition in exchange for FIFA’s blessing of their new league. To sweeten the deal, they considered waiving $1 billion in potential payouts to allow FIFA to keep the money as a so-called solidarity payment that could be spent on soccer development projects around the world.It is unknown if any more talks took place between FIFA and the Super League clubs in the weeks before the clubs broke cover and announced their project. But FIFA was the last of the major soccer governing bodies to issue an official statement on the proposed league after the clubs went public, and it only did so after UEFA, top leagues and politicians had made clear their opposition.Arriving as Ceferin was calling the leaders of the breakaway league “snakes and liars,” FIFA’s statement was far more measured. Any talk of excluding players from the World Cup was quietly dropped, and FIFA instead offered nuanced, conciliatory language. FIFA said it stood “firm in favour of solidarity in football and an equitable redistribution model which can help develop football as a sport, particularly at global level.”It also reiterated that it could only “express its disapproval to a ‘closed European breakaway league’ outside of the international football structures.”For those engaged in the breakaway, the words — as they had in January — were vague enough to suggest that there was still hope for their project, that FIFA might still be open to providing its backing.Within 48 hours, though, their hopes were dashed. Opposition to the plan had by then reached a fever pitch. Fans in Britain — where six of the 12 founding members were based — were protesting in the streets, and politicians had threatened to enact laws to block the league.Fans of Chelsea and the five other Premier League clubs that had signed up for the Super League forced their teams to reconsider and withdraw.Matt Dunham/Associated PressInfantino, just as he had in January, once again came under pressure from Ceferin to distance himself from the plans. He did so in a speech to UEFA’s congress on April 20 in which he effectively walked away from the Super League project.“We can only strongly disapprove the creation of the Super League,” Infantino said. “A Super League which is a closed shop. A breakaway from the current institutions, from the leagues, from the associations, from UEFA and from FIFA. There is a lot to throw away for the short-term financial gain of some. They need to reflect, and they need to assume responsibility.”Hours later, realizing that the “essential” requirement their contract had called for would not be forthcoming, the first clubs started to walk away. By nightfall, all six English clubs had announced they were out. By midnight, three other founders had followed.Today only three teams — Pérez’s Real Madrid, Juventus and Barcelona — remain as holdouts, refusing to sign a letter of apology demanded by UEFA as a condition of their reintegration into European soccer. If they do not sign, all three face significant penalties, including a potential ban from the Champions League.Infantino, meanwhile, faces pressures of his own, not to mention accusations of betrayal. The head of the Spanish league, Javier Tebas, openly called him one of the masterminds behind the breakaway league and said he had told Infantino as much when the men met briefly at the UEFA Congress.“It’s he who is behind the Super League, and I already told him in person,” Tebas said this month. “I’ve said it before and I will say it again: Behind all of this is FIFA President Gianni Infantino.” More

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      FIFA's Infantino Issues Super League Warning; P.S.G. Won't Join It

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      As opposition mounts to a breakaway European league, Paris St.-Germain opted out and an Italian team president called a rival backing the plan “a Judas.”Either you are in, or you are out.The president of world soccer’s governing body, FIFA, delivered a short but powerful message on Tuesday to the dozen rich and powerful European clubs whose planned breakaway Super League has threatened to upend the decades-old structures that underpin the world’s most powerful sport.“If some elect to go their own way then they must live with the consequences of their choice, they are responsible for their choice,” the FIFA president, Gianni Infantino, said in an address to European soccer leaders at their congress in Montreux, Switzerland. “Concretely this means, either you are in, or you are out. You cannot be half in and half out. This has to be absolutely clear.”Infantino’s intervention came amid mounting fury against a proposed European Super League that has turned the sports project into a national emergency in the three countries — England, Spain and Italy — that are home to its 12 founding members. More

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      Battle Over Super League Begins With Letters, Threats and Banners

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      The founding members of a league that would reshape soccer have warned the sport’s leaders that they will fight any effort to block their plans.LONDON — The superclubs have called in the lawyers. The president of European soccer has responded, calling the teams’ leaders “snakes and liars.” And the fans want no part of any of it.The pitched battle to pursue, or prevent, a breakaway European soccer superleague started to take shape on Monday, hours after the stunning announcement late Sunday night by 12 of the sport’s richest and most popular teams that they were forming one.The plan threatens to redraw the European soccer economy, from rich clubs in the Premier League to tiny ones in every corner of the continent, and funnel billions of dollars toward a handful of wealthy elite teams. It would represent one of the biggest wealth transfers in sports history, imperil the future of marquee events like the Champions League and threaten the existence of the domestic leagues and the smaller clubs that were left behind.By first light on Monday, the fight was on. In a letter written by the breakaway teams, they warned soccer’s authorities that they had taken legal action to prevent any efforts to block their project.A few hours later, Aleksander Ceferin, the president of European soccer’s governing body, UEFA, used his first public appearance to denounce the group behind the plan and vowed to take stern action if it did not reverse course. He raised the possibility of barring players on the participating teams from events like the World Cup and other tournaments, and threatened to banish the rebel clubs from their domestic leagues. Sunday’s announcement, he said, amounted to “spitting in football fans’ faces.”By then the outrage was spreading. In Germany, Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund — clubs seen as potential joiners of the breakaway league — distanced themselves from the plan. In France, Paris St.-Germain midfielder Ander Herrera lamented “the rich stealing what the people created.” In Spain, La Liga has convened a meeting of its clubs but will hold it without the three teams — Real Madrid, Barcelona and Atlético Madrid — who have agreed to join the Super League.And in England, coaches and players revealed they had not been consulted on the move, fan groups united in their opposition to the proposal, and, in Liverpool, supporters demanded the club remove their banners from the team’s stadium before its next home game on Saturday.“We feel we can no longer give our support to a club which puts financial greed above integrity of the game,” one of the groups said on Twitter.Aleksander Ceferin, the president of European soccer’s governing body, threatened to punish the clubs leading a breakaway league, then offered them an olive branch.Richard Juilliart/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAs they went public on Sunday with their plans for the European Super League, though, the proposal’s backers simultaneously wrote to the president of FIFA, world soccer’s governing body, and to UEFA’s Ceferin saying that they would like to work with the organizations but that they had also taken measures to protect their interests.The group includes a dozen top teams from England, Spain and Italy, such as Manchester United, Liverpool, Real Madrid and Juventus, and its six-page missive made clear its intent to proceed, and to overcome any opposition.Rumors of the creation of the breakaway competition, which hopes to add three more permanent founding members to what will be an annual 20-team league, prompted FIFA in January to bow to pressure from UEFA and issue a statement that threatened severe repercussions against players and clubs involved in any unsanctioned tournament. FIFA issued a statement of “disapproval” of the breakaway plan on Sunday, but notably did not repeat the threat of expelling those who took part.Faced with that threat, though, the company created to control the new Super League said in its letter sent on Sunday that motions had been filed in multiple courts to prevent any moves to jeopardize the project, which, its organizers said, has $4 billion of financing in place.The company has “taken appropriate action to challenge the legality of the restrictions to the formation of the competition before such relevant courts and European authorities as may be necessary to safeguard its future,” said the letter, a copy of which was reviewed by The New York Times.At Arsenal, some fans vented their anger at the owner Stan Kroenke.Tolga Akmen/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe superleague the clubs have agreed to form — an alliance of top teams closer in concept to closed leagues like the N.F.L. and the N.B.A. than to soccer’s current model — would bring about the most significant restructuring of elite European soccer since the creation of the European Cup (now the Champions League) in the 1950s.Yet even as it detailed its pre-emptive legal actions, the six-page letter invited soccer’s leaders to hold “urgent” talks to find a common path forward for a project that the group says will benefit soccer even beyond the narrow group that will enjoy unparalleled riches. Under the plan announced Sunday, the 15 founding members of the Super League would share an initial pool of 3.5 billion euros, about $4.2 billion.That equates to some $400 million each, more than four times what the winner of the Champions League took home in 2020. In the letter, the founders of the Super League said they did not wish to replace the Champions League, but instead wanted to create a tournament that would run alongside it.The damage to the prestige and value of the Champions League, though, would be immediate and run into the billions of dollars, turning what has for decades been club soccer’s elite competition into a secondary event, one that is unlikely to retain anything close to its current commercial appeal.In a concurrent effort to make the event more valuable, UEFA on Monday ratified the biggest changes to the Champions League since 1992. And then Ceferin held a news conference in which he took direct aim at the rival league.Having digested the letter’s content, Ceferin said, he was in no mood to acquiesce to demands for an urgent meeting. Instead, he issued pointed rebukes to several of the men leading the effort, and singled out Andrea Agnelli, the chairman of the Italian champion Juventus.Agnelli, who resigned from his role on UEFA’s executive committee after the announcement of the breakaway, had spoken to Ceferin as recently as Saturday. At the time, Ceferin said, Agnelli had told the UEFA president he fully supported changes to the Champions League and dismissed talk of a breakaway as “just rumors.”“Agnelli is the biggest disappointment of all,” said Ceferin, who worked as a criminal lawyer before moving into soccer. “I’ve never seen a person who would lie so many times and so persistently as he did.”Ed Woodward, the vice chairman of Manchester United, gave his support for UEFA’s Champions League restructuring as recently as Thursday, Ceferin added. He said UEFA was considering seeking damages from the 12 clubs that formed the breakaway group, and even from some of their top officials.Still, he enters the next stage of the fight for control of European soccer with the support of some top club executives. Nasser al-Khelaifi, the chairman of the French champion Paris St.-Germain, was among the officials who voted to approve the changes to the Champions League, and he has resisted efforts to lure P.S.G., a club stocked with some of the world’s best players, to the new league.Teams in Germany, including last season’s Champions League winner, Bayern Munich, and its biggest domestic rival, Borussia Dortmund, also have declined to join the new venture. In another boost for UEFA, Bayern’s chairman, Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, was chosen to replace Agnelli on UEFA’s board.The substantial changes to the Champions League may now be consigned to irrelevance, though, if the breakaway clubs manage to get their way and take to the field in a competition that they said they hoped to begin as soon as this summer. Their urgency stems from their financing; the investment bank JPMorgan Chase has provided four billion euros in debt financing to start the league, but it is contingent on the group’s securing a broadcast contract.Manchester City and Liverpool are among the six Premier League clubs that have signed on to the new Super League.Pool photo by Jon SuperIn the letter, the group said that its urgency stemmed from the huge losses piling up as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. The sight of games played in cavernous but empty stadiums has become the norm, and restrictions on public gatherings mean that hundreds of millions of dollars are being lost in gate receipts in every league in Europe, while broadcasters have also clawed back vast sums from leagues and competition organizers.The biggest European clubs have long been frustrated with sharing the wealth created by tournaments in which they are the biggest draw, and talks about a new league began well before the pandemic. Documents that leaked in 2019 showed that the president of Real Madrid, Florentino Pérez, an architect of the current plan, had sought to create an earlier iteration of a competition involving the biggest teams.The role FIFA will play in the fight over the Super League is intriguing, too. Its president, Gianni Infantino, has talked in recent years of creating new competitions to increase interest in soccer around the globe. As part of that push, he has given his backing to a 20-team superleague in Africa.FIFA issued a statement late Sunday in which it reiterated that it would not support a closed breakaway competition. The Super League’s founders, though, insisted that their event is not completely closed, since they plan to provide access every season to five teams outside the 15 founding members.Ceferin said he expected Infantino to dispel any doubts about his position on Tuesday when he addresses UEFA’s annual meeting.For now, UEFA and other groups opposed to the new competition are huddling to discuss their legal options, and engaging in talks with governments across Europe as well as with the European Union. Ceferin praised some of the politicians who have publicly condemned the Super League plan, including Britain’s prime minister, Boris Johnson, and France’s president, Emmanuel Macron.Yet he also offered an olive branch to the rebel clubs.He told them it was not too late to come back from the brink. While relationships have been damaged, he said, he vowed to act professionally for the benefit of European soccer. While he felt betrayed by the “greediness, selfishness and narcissism” of some of those involved, he would not — with the possible exception of Agnelli — make things personal. Ceferin is the godfather to Agnelli’s youngest child. More