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      Italy and Portugal Drawn in Same Group for World Cup Playoff

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      The draw for Europe’s final three qualifying places ensured that either Italy, the European champion, or Portugal, with Cristiano Ronaldo, would miss the finals in Qatar.Italy and Portugal were drawn into the same World Cup qualifying bracket on Friday, ensuring that either the reigning European champion (Italy) or one of soccer’s biggest stars (Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo) will be absent from next year’s tournament in Qatar.Italy will face North Macedonia at home in a semifinal in March, and the winner will travel to play the winner of the bracket’s other semifinal — either Portugal or Turkey — for one of the last three European places in the World Cup. The Portugal-Turkey winner would host that game five days later.🥁 The semi-finals are set for the European play-offs!🎫 One team from each of the 3 paths will reach the #WorldCup 🏆 pic.twitter.com/cvkFwdzQoX— FIFA World Cup (@FIFAWorldCup) November 26, 2021
      The potential for such a high-stakes showdown also raised the possibility that Italy would miss the World Cup for the second cycle in a row. Italy lost a playoff for a place in the last World Cup, in Russia in 2018 — a defeat that one newspaper declared a “national shame.”“It could have been a little better, for sure,” Italy Coach Roberto Mancini told the Italian broadcaster RAI2 after Friday’s playoff draw. “As we would have gladly avoided them,” he added, “probably they too would have avoided us.”The possible showdown was the most intriguing of several high-stakes matchups for Europe’s last three spots in Qatar, and the first test of a new qualifying format. In the past, the European playoffs have taken the form of two-legged, head-to-head matchups.Instead, this year, the 12 teams — 10 of which finished as runners-up in their qualifying groups — were split into three four-team paths, each with its own semifinals and final. Only the winning team from each path qualifies for the World Cup.In the other brackets, Scotland will face Ukraine, with the winner meeting Wales or Austria, and Russia will host Poland for the right to face Sweden or the Czech Republic.Wales, which made its only World Cup appearance in 1958, was drawn into the same bracket as Scotland, which has not qualified since 1998.Ten European teams — led by Germany, France, Belgium and England — have already qualified, as have the two South American favorites, Brazil and Argentina.Friday’s draw also set up second-chance routes to the World Cup for countries from four other regional confederations. In those games, the fourth-place team from Concacaf, the region comprising North and Central America and the Caribbean, would play the Oceania champion, and the fifth-place team from South America would play the fifth-place team from Asia.Those games will be played as single-leg matches in Qatar next June 13 and 14 — more than two months after the World Cup draw sorts the 32-team field on April 1. More

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      For Qatar, the World Cup’s Glamour Is the Payoff

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      As the 2022 field starts to take shape, there is a sense that the host nation, after a decade of scrutiny and criticism, will at last get the return it expected.There have been times, over the last 11 years, over a decade of acrimony and accusation and controversy and scandal, when it has felt entirely reasonable to ask whether, deep down, in private moments and surreptitious whispers, some of those involved in winning the 2022 World Cup for Qatar might have wondered whether it has all been worth it.The cost of the project, the stadiums summoned from dust, the cities imagined out of nothing, the thousands of acres of grass and trees grown in desert sand, was all anticipated, built into the proposal. But those hundreds of billions are not the only price that has been paid.That one decision changed soccer on some fundamental, irrevocable level. This week, when the Premier League revealed its calendar for next season, it proudly claimed that it had hit upon a way to “limit” the impact of World Cup 2022 to a single campaign. In one sense, that is true. In another, the impact of the tournament is such that it has shot through the very fabric of the sport.Awarding the tournament to Qatar brought down an entire court of grasping, grifting princelings at FIFA. It led to sweeping anticorruption investigations and dawn raids on luxury hotels. It landed more than a few people on wanted lists and in jail. It ended the career of Michel Platini. Ultimately, it toppled Sepp Blatter.More than that, it undermined trust — perhaps fatally — in the body that is supposed to represent the best interests of the game. It violently ruptured the relationships between FIFA and all of the organizations that feed into it: the confederations, leagues, clubs, unions and fans.The Al Thumama stadium, which was christened last month, is one of eight constructed or refurbished for use at next year’s World Cup.Karim Jaafar/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe vote for Qatar in 2010 is not quite soccer’s original sin: The antipathy and mistrust that characterizes the sport predates the moment Blatter, to an audible gasp, revealed that Qatar would stage the biggest — second-biggest, for readers in the United States — sporting event in the world. But it is difficult not to believe that, from that day on, those divisions became more pronounced, more concrete, more bilious, and that the game has never recovered.Those involved in the vote, those targeted by the investigations, those hounded out of office or raised from their beds by the Swiss police would, most likely, be of the view that perhaps it might have been better if Australia had won.So, too, of course, would those migrant workers who have died during Qatar’s unprecedented building spree in the years since it won hosting rights. Estimates of how many have lost their lives for a nation’s quixotic ambition vary: 38, apparently, according to the event’s organizing committee; 6,500 from five South Asian nations alone, according to a less invested investigation. Tragically, the latter report is likely to be the more accurate. Either number is too high.But if next year’s tournament has not been worth it for soccer, and has not been worth it for those whose lives were lost — or the many tens of thousands more whose safety has been put at risk — it has also been hard to make a case that Qatar has emerged well from the project.In one light, after all, these last 11 years have brought nothing but scrutiny: on the system of indentured labor that compelled all those migrant workers to go to work in searing heat on projects of triumphal scale and Midean hubris, and prevented them from leaving the country, from going home, without their employer’s permission; on Qatar’s abysmal human rights record; on its intolerance of the L.G.B.T.Q. community.This was not, it is likely, the reaction that Qatar expected when it won the vote, when the streets of Doha filled with a delirious populace, when it seemed to take top billing on the world stage. Its aims may have been more subtle, more complex than just one blast of good P.R., but it is safe to assume the feedback has not quite been as the bid’s masterminds would have hoped.And yet, it is now that they might start to feel that — for all the trouble, for all the fury, for all the glaring spotlight — they will, somehow, still, get the return they wanted. There is a glamour to a World Cup: a dazzling, bewitching quality, so strong that even now, a year out, it is possible to sense its first glimmers.This is the week, after all, that the tournament’s field will finally start to take shape. Only four teams have qualified so far — the host, Germany, Denmark and, after a win on Thursday, Brazil — but by next Wednesday, more than half of the European contingent will have been decided. Spain and England, surely; most likely France, the defending champion, and Belgium; possibly Italy, Portugal and the Netherlands.Brazil, which hasn’t lost a game in qualifying, booked its place in the World Cup with a 1-0 victory over Colombia on Thursday.Sebastiao Moreira/EPA, via ShutterstockNow that Brazil is in, Argentina should be following in its rival’s wake. Mexico should be in a strong position. Iran and South Korea are almost there. Saudi Arabia may well have joined them.The draw remains months away, of course, but that is not the World Cup’s only appeal. This will be the last time either Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi graces soccer’s biggest stage; it will be the final chance for both to cement their legacies. It may be the moment England’s golden generation blossoms. It might prove the stage for South America, for the first time since 2002, to wrest the crown from Europe.It is impossible not to be intrigued by all of those possibilities, to feel the slightest judder of anticipation at what is to come. There is an atavistic thrill to the World Cup: its appeal lies in what it makes you remember, where it takes you back, to your first encounter with its great carnival spirit, the first moment you clapped eyes on this great, global festival.But there is a danger there, too, because that is why Qatar went to such trouble to claim the tournament, why it endured all of the criticism, why it placed all of those workers’ lives in jeopardy: because the World Cup’s power is to make you remember, and in doing so, to make you forget.That is what Qatar has spent $138 billion to acquire: that feeling, that giddy excitement, that irresistible smile. For that, it determined there was no price too high. And that means it is more important now than ever, as the soccer itself begins to work its amnesiac magic, that we do not lose sight of what this tournament has cost.No Next Step on the Ladder (Reprise)Is Steven Gerrard’s latest move just a way station in his career?Francisco Seco/Associated PressThere was something telling about the way Steven Gerrard’s appointment as Aston Villa’s manager was framed. A promising young manager’s taking a considerable step up — in terms of quality of opponent, at least, if not necessarily scale of club — accounted for a portion of the coverage.So, too, did a historic, ambitious — and expensively assembled — team appointing a relative neophyte at a delicate stage of its season, at least partly because of his illustrious playing career (this is a plan that never, absolutely never goes wrong, of course). But more than anything, Aston Villa’s union with Gerrard was presented as a story about another club entirely.It is no secret that Gerrard wishes, one day, to manage Liverpool, the team he supported as a child, and the team he gave the best years of his career. It does not require any great detective work to establish that, in his mind, leaving Rangers — the club to which he delivered the Scottish championship last summer — for Aston Villa is a step on that journey.But it is not a sign of an especially healthy culture that a major decision at a team of Villa’s scale and scope should be seen through the lens of what it might mean for Liverpool. That is a sign that England’s current elite, perhaps, occupy rather too much conceptual space in soccer’s never-ending discourse.That Gerrard sees Villa as a springboard, the logic goes, is good for the club: If he succeeds Jürgen Klopp at Anfield when Klopp’s contract expires in 2024 — the point when Klopp has made plain he intends to leave England — it will be because he had lifted Villa from its current station into a better one.That is not quite the whole story. There is, of course, a risk for Villa in the appointment: It is possible Gerrard will not be able to succeed in England as he did in Scotland. But the greatest risk is for Gerrard, for two reasons. First, it is not entirely clear what Villa regards as success: Is it finishing in the top 10? Is it qualifying for Europe? Is it winning a cup?And second, even more opaque is what form of success he would need to enjoy at Villa to convince Liverpool that he is ready not only to do the job on which he has his heart set, but that he can do it well. Would taking Villa to seventh make him a more compelling candidate than — say — a coach who has won a Bundesliga title, or thrived in the Champions League, or managed a phalanx of superstars? Probably not.It is tempting to believe that, for Gerrard, it may not matter. His bond with Liverpool may be strong enough that anything other than abject failure is the only proof his alma mater requires. But Fenway Sports Group, the club’s owner, is not the sort to be distracted by sentiment, or dazzled by stardust. It will want Gerrard to show he is up to the task. The problem is working out whether it is possible.Just Getting StartedMarta Torrejón and Barcelona thumped Hoffenheim, 4-0, in the Champions League on Wednesday.Eric Alonso/Getty ImagesMarta Torrejón does not betray even the slightest hint of envy. She is only 31, but she knows that is old enough, in women’s soccer, effectively to belong to a previous generation. When her career started, she was not fully professional; nor was the game she played, not in Spain. She did not have access to state-of-the-art training facilities until her mid-20s.She has still built an impressive career: she has represented her country — 90 times, no less, before retiring after the 2019 World Cup — and she has been, for eight years, a cornerstone of the Barcelona team that has risen inexorably to become the pre-eminent power in the women’s game.She knows, though, that those who follow in her footsteps may well cast her into shade. What was most striking, talking to those involved with Barcelona Femení last month for an article The Times published this week, was their conviction that they have barely scratched the surface of their potential.“There are girls here who have been in a professional environment since the age of 12,” Markel Zubizarreta, the club’s sporting director, said. “The talent is the same, but when they turn professional, they will be much better prepared.”Torrejón has seen that firsthand, as the first products of Barcelona’s investment in youth start to drip feed into the club’s first team. “The players who are 15, 18, 20 have had a physical training that will help them compete at the professional level,” she said.The same process, of course, is playing out at dozens of clubs across Europe, where the first generation to have been given access to the sort of resources their male equivalents have enjoyed for decades are only just emerging. And that raises a compelling question: What if the boom in women’s soccer — in Europe, at least — is not actually the boom at all? What if this is just the prelude?CorrespondenceIt might seem an exaggeration, but this newsletter may have finally reached its zenith, thanks to a single sentence from Shane Thomas. I have an overwhelming sensation of despair, because I am self-aware enough to recognize that I will never write a sentence more compelling than this: “The biggest criticism of Batman is that he uses all his wealth to fight crime, but comparatively little of it to tackle crime’s underlying causes.”It would spoil it, just a little, if I told you how that sentence came up — it was in a thoughtful, cogent email related to last week’s column on the problems caused, and solved, by the presence of outsize individuals in the context of a team — so I will not. Better, I think, to use the time wondering what more Batman could be doing.Leon Joffe, on the other hand, leapt to the defense of a different superhero, though one who, if we are all being honest, also did very little to combat the underlying causes of crime.“I have a different recollection of Roy of the Rovers than the one you describe,” he wrote. “Goals were not only scored by Roy, but always a team effort, with one of the teammates usually passing expertly to the goal scorer. Blaming a young soccer captain’s playing style, years later, on the comic book, is quite weird.”Lana Harrigan, meanwhile, pointed out that Ronaldo can hardly be blamed for Manchester United’s defense. “I’m no tactician,” Lana wrote, “but the defense looks pitiful at times.” Gary Brown went one step further, arguing that “the argument that Ronaldo and the pressing game don’t mix would be stronger if United had routinely played a pressing came before his return. Which we didn’t. Perhaps CR7 makes it difficult to improve that part of the game, but I don’t think he’s single-handedly turned off something that in truth was scarcely ever turned on.”Do Manchester United’s issues run deeper than Cristiano Ronaldo? Hmmm ….Peter Powell/EPA, via ShutterstockAnd we’ll finish, in finest newsletter style, with one of the blue-sky ideas that — until we got into the business of critiquing Batman’s methods — has long been this missive’s strong suit.“I am bothered by the intentional use of fouls to benefit a team,” wrote Paul Sumpter. “It is a real detriment to the excitement of the game, but issuing red cards risks ruining the contest, as it did during the Liverpool-Atlético Madrid game. The hope would be that the threat of a red card would largely stop players committing professional fouls. I am not so sure. So, I would like to see an experiment whereby the offending player is sent off but the team can replace them with a substitute, if they have not already used all their allowed substitutes.”This is an idea worth exploring — as is an orange card, where a player guilty of a tactical foul is taken out of the game for 10 minutes, say — but my immediate worry would be that this basically guarantees three significant tactical fouls per team, per game. More

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      Former FIFA Officials Face Fraud Charges Over Secret Payment

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      Sepp Blatter is accused of breaking Swiss law in approving a $2 million payment from soccer’s governing body to a onetime ally, Michel Platini.More than six years after their ouster amid a mushrooming soccer corruption scandal, the former FIFA president Sepp Blatter and a one-time ally were indicted on fraud charges on Tuesday by the authorities in Switzerland, who accused the men of arranging a secret $2 million payment.The office of Switzerland’s attorney general accused Blatter of unlawfully arranging the $2 million payment in 2011 to Michel Platini, who was then the head of European soccer’s governing body, UEFA. The criminal charges follow a yearslong investigation into the payment, which came to light in the aftermath of a sprawling United States Department of Justice indictment that revealed corrupt practices at FIFA dating back at least two decades.The investigation resulted in the arrest and conviction of dozens of powerful officials and marketing executives on charges that included racketeering, wire fraud and money laundering conspiracy. Blatter was not charged at the time, even as the scandal brought down most of FIFA’s top leadership.The $2 million payment to Platini came as Blatter faced a challenge for the FIFA presidency from a Gulf billionaire. Blatter and Platini both maintain the money was related to work that Platini, the captain of France’s 1984 European championship-winning team, did for Blatter after he was elected FIFA president for the first time in 1998.Both Blatter and Platini already have been sanctioned for the payment by FIFA’s own disciplinary system, though their original bans were later reduced on appeal.Blatter and Platini were accused by the Swiss authorities on Tuesday of criminal of fraud, criminal mismanagement and forgery. Prosecutors said their investigation found the payment to Platini was made “without a legal basis.”“This payment damaged FIFA’s assets and unlawfully enriched Platini,” the statement said.The Swiss indictment against Blatter, 85, comes as the former soccer leader battles ill health. He has been hospitalized several times since being forced out of his leadership post.The Swiss attorney general’s statement announcing the charges did not say when a trial would be held. Blatter said he was optimistic about clearing his name, using a statement to repeat his claim that the payment was based on a verbal contract with Platini and that it had been delayed because of financial constraints at FIFA at the time it was agreed.“The operation was correct as a late-wage payment,” Blatter said. A spokesman for Platini did not immediately reply to a request for comment. More

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      FIFA Without FIFA? EA Sports Weighs Reboot of Showcase Game

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      The end of a long and profitable relationship with soccer’s governing body would mean renaming one of the most popular video games of all time.It is one of the longest and most profitable relationships in sports. Nearly three decades after soccer’s global governing body licensed its name to a California video game maker looking to expand its offerings, the FIFA series that was born out of that partnership has become not so much a game as a cultural phenomenon.To millions of people around the world, the letters FIFA now represent not actual soccer but instead a one-word shorthand for the hugely popular video game series that has become a fixture in the lives of players as diverse as Premier League pros, casual fans and even gamers with no other relationship to the sport.Sales of the game, which releases an updated edition every year, have surpassed $20 billion over the past two decades for its California-based maker, Electronic Arts. But FIFA has cashed in as well: Its licensing agreement has grown to become the organization’s single-most valuable commercial agreement, now worth about $150 million per year.And now all of that money is at risk.At least two years of talks about renewing the contract that allows Electronic Arts, through its EA Sports division, to use the organization’s name have hit the wall, according to multiple people close to the negotiations. The possibility of a permanent break after next year’s World Cup in Qatar — when the current 10-year agreement ends — was made explicit in a letter released last week by Cam Weber, the executive president and general manager of EA Sports.In it, Weber raised the unthinkable: FIFA without FIFA.“As we look ahead,” Weber wrote in discussing the future of the series, “we’re also exploring the idea of renaming our global EA Sports football games.”The core of the dispute is financial. FIFA is seeking more than double what it currently receives from EA Sports, according to people with knowledge of the talks, a figure that would increase its payout from the series to more than $1 billion for each four-year World Cup cycle.The dispute is not just about money, though. The talks have also stalled because FIFA and EA cannot agree what the gamer’s exclusive rights should include.FIFA would prefer to limit EA’s exclusivity to the narrow parameters around use in a soccer game, most likely in an effort to seek new revenue streams for the rights it would retain. EA Sports, meanwhile, contends the company should be allowed to explore other ventures within its FIFA video game ecosystem, including highlights of actual games, arena video game tournaments and digital products like NFTs.A decision is likely by the end of the year, but EA officials are already planning for a post-FIFA future. Earlier this month, the company registered two trademarks, one in the European Union and the other in Britain, for the phrase EA Sports F.C.Both FIFA and EA Sports declined to comment publicly on the talks. But the dispute has surprised industry watchers, including Peter Moore, who held senior roles at Electronic Arts for a decade before leaving in 2017 to become the chief executive of the Premier League team Liverpool. Moore is now a senior executive at Unity Technologies, a video game software company.“I don’t recall them ever putting out a statement saying we’re in negotiations on a renewal of the license,” Moore said in a telephone interview. “That’s clearly sending a little bit of a signal.”Part of EA’s calculation is that — even if it is forced to rebrand one of the most popular video franchises of all time — it is unlikely any competitor can challenge its market dominance. EA’s position has grown to almost complete control over the soccer gaming industry thanks to more than 300 other similar licensing agreements with organizations like UEFA, which runs the Champions League, and domestic leagues and competitions around the world. Those deals allow EA to use the names and likeness of players, world-famous club teams and prominent leagues in its game. (On Tuesday, EA renewed one such deal with FIFPro, the global players union.)A break with FIFA would not affect EA Sports or the experience of its game significantly, since the company also owns licenses for clubs like Liverpool and Chelsea through separate agreements.EA SportsBecause its license with FIFA grants EA Sports only the use of the organization’s name and logo and the rights to the World Cup, a monthlong championship that takes place every four years, the game maker appears to have concluded that losing the relationship would not be the kind of existential threat that it might face if it were to lose the licenses to another hugely popular sports franchise, Madden N.F.L.Unlike the FIFA series, the N.F.L. video game is predicated on only two key licenses, one with the National Football League and another with the league’s players’ union.The vast number of other licenses that EA Sports holds in soccer means that even if it were forced to rename its FIFA series, gamers brought up on a diet of digital soccer would notice little change when it came to the playing experience.Still, any rupture would have consequences. The FIFA franchise is immensely profitable, said Gareth Sutcliffe, a senior analyst specializing in the video games sector at Enders Analysis, because EA Sports is able to make little more than cosmetic changes to its game most years and still enjoy millions of sales with the release of each new edition.The game’s profitability has grown through innovations like player packs, similar to trading cards, that require users to spend money within the game as they seek to build the best rosters. Piers Harding-Rolls, a gaming industry analyst at Ampere Analysis, estimated the in-game feature known as Ultimate Team was worth as much as $1.2 billion to EA last year.It is this new economy that EA is looking toward as part of its growth strategy. It is also the kind of feature that FIFA would prefer to wall off, and perhaps sell in lucrative — and separate — deals.For FIFA, a break with EA Sports, and the loss of its nine-figure licensing payments, could threaten some of the innovations proposed by FIFA’s president, Gianni Infantino. He is seeking to raise as much as $2 billion, for example, to finance a new expanded World Cup for clubs. At the same time, he is trying to persuade members to back his plan to increase the frequency of the World Cup to every two years.To find those new revenues, FIFA officials have studied the possibility of selling licenses to video games and digital products that are not soccer-related. A partnership with another company like Epic Games, the maker of the hit Fortnite franchise, for example, would broaden FIFA’s reach but dilute the exclusivity for which EA pays a premium. That, according to former gaming industry insiders like Moore, could be why his former company is considering walking away.“I’m going say, ‘Wait a second: We have literally spent hundreds of millions of dollars building this and you’re telling me that Epic Games can come in and get a license to the name that we have built and that we have put front and center and that has become synonymous with games?’” Moore said. “Then, yeah, I’m negotiating and I’m fighting that.” More

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      In China's Super League, Everyone Seems to Be Losing

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      Chinese teams once embraced ambition and overspending in a bold attempt to reshape their sport. Now they don’t even play games.The emails and letters complaining about unpaid salaries have been stacking up for months.Some claim losses in the thousands of dollars. Others seek to recover quite a bit more. But a few of the pleas arriving at the Zurich offices of FIFA, soccer’s global governing body, like those involving a handful of well-known South American players, are in the millions.What the FIFA officials collecting the claims have noticed, though, is that a surprising number are coming from one place: players and coaches at clubs in China. And they fear the flow is about to get worse.China’s top soccer league — not so long ago heralded as the sport’s new frontier thanks to a half-decade of powerful support, ambitious owners and an era of untrammeled spending that lured top players with outsized salaries — is having an existential crisis. Companies that once spent tens of millions to acquire players now cannot pay their bills. China’s president, who once championed the sport, now faces far more serious priorities. And the country’s top division, the Super League, hasn’t played a game in months.“For sure, some issues like this have happened before,” said David Wu, a sports lawyer in Shanghai. “But not this size.”The shuttered training center at Jiangsu F.C., where acres of pristine fields now sit empty. Jia Shiqing/VCG via Getty ImagesMissing MoneyThe bad news trickled out in waves. In February, China’s defending champion, Jiangsu Suning F.C., was abruptly shuttered by the electronics retailer that owned it, less than four months after the team won the Super League championship.In the time it took to issue a news release, one of the country’s biggest clubs vaporized, leaving its players unpaid and bringing unwelcome attention to a project that had been one of the cornerstones of President Xi Jinping’s effort to transform China from a soccer backwater into one of its superpowers.The collapse at Jiangsu now appears to have been a harbinger of further trouble. The league season has been repeatedly interrupted to accommodate the World Cup qualifying schedule of China’s national team, and now will not resume until December. Until then, clubs will have little or no access to their best players.More recently, doubts have been raised about the continued viability of China’s most successful team, Guangzhou F.C. A cash crunch at its parent company, the real estate conglomerate Evergrande, is so severe that it poses a serious threat to the broader economy.Last week, the team agreed to part company with its coach, the Italian Fabio Cannavaro, one of the highest-paid managers in world soccer. Officials and players on other teams have also agreed to terminate long-term contracts with the understanding that they will be paid for salaries due.Fernando Martins and Renato Augusto, two Brazilian stars on the growing list of players who have filed complaints with FIFA, agreed to such a deal, with millions of dollars at stake. Each was released from his contract by their former club, Beijing Guoan, and they expected their first payments in August.The players say the money never arrived.Officials at FIFA’s dispute resolution chamber say they are analyzing the facts. They have the power to suspend clubs in any country from registering new signings until they have resolved unpaid salary debts. Some Chinese teams appear to be subject to such bans already: A recent report in China said Wuhan F.C., which is owned by another property group, Wuhan Zall Development Holding Co., has been suspended from acquiring new players.Guangzhou F.C. started construction on a 100,000-seat stadium last year. Now, with the club’s owner in financial meltdown, it’s unclear if the team has the money to finish it.Thomas Suen/ReutersThe Brazilian defender Miranda returned to São Paulo when his Chinese club, Jiangsu Suning, suddenly shut down in February.Alexandre Loureiro/ReutersThe Italian coach Fabio Cannavaro led Guangzhou to the Super League title in 2019. Last month, he and the club quietly parted ways.Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesYet penalties and transfer bans may not be enough to help others claw back what they are owed. The Brazilian defender Miranda was owed more than $10 million when Jiangsu Suning was closed down. His lawyers face the daunting task of navigating China’s complex legal system in their effort to recover the lost income.At least Miranda, 37, has been able to continue his career: He quickly landed a spot — and a rich new contract — at São Paulo, a team that plays in Brazil’s top division. Such an outcome is unlikely for the dozens of Chinese nationals who have gone unpaid or been cast off by their clubs in recent months.Understand China’s New EconomyCard 1 of 6An economic reshaping. 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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      Brazil-Argentina Match Stopped When Health Officials Storm Field

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      After a disagreement about quarantine rules, a high-profile match was interrupted by government officials seeking to deport four Argentine players.A World Cup qualification game between Brazil and Argentina, South America’s most successful soccer teams, was halted after only a few minutes on Sunday after Brazilian health authorities walked onto the field during play as part of an effort to deport four Argentine players accused of violating coronavirus quarantine regulations.In chaotic scenes in São Paulo, a group of Brazilian public health officials entered the field minutes into the highly anticipated showdown and ordered Argentina’s players off the field as officials from both sides, a small crowd allowed inside the stadium and a global television audience struggled to comprehend just what was taking place.Brazilian Health Authority officials potentially trying to deport @Argentina players Players going back into the tunnel #BRAvsARG #WCQ #CONMEBOL pic.twitter.com/gIENNTjfZz— fuboTV (@fuboTV) September 5, 2021
      At issue was the status of four members of Argentina’s roster, including three starters who play club soccer in England’s Premier League. According to local regulations, foreign travelers who had spent time in Britain in the previous 14 days are required to quarantine upon arrival in Brazil.Officials from a Brazilian health regulator, Anvisa, said in a statement that they had concluded the Argentine players had lied about being in England on forms when they entered Brazil. Two days of meetings had failed to resolve the issue, the agency said, so it sent staff members to the stadium where Brazil and Argentina had taken the field on Sunday afternoon, to seek the players’ “immediate segregation and transportation to the airport.”Argentina arrived in Brazil on Friday morning with four England-based players. All of the players had first traveled to Venezuela, where Argentina played an earlier qualification game last week, before arriving in Brazil three days ago.In images beamed live around the world, health officials and some of the Argentina players were involved in a brief altercation before the team returned to its locker room. The on-field discussions eventually involved officials from both teams and stars like Lionel Messi and Neymar.Brazil’s Neymar and Argentina’s Lionel Messi sought explanations before leaving the field.Amanda Perobelli/ReutersThe match’s referee eventually suspended the game. Once Argentina retreated to its locker room, Brazil’s players waited on the field before beginning an improvised training session using half of the field to entertain the stunned crowd. Meanwhile, a police motorcade prepared to take Argentina’s players away from the stadium.The decision to abandon the game came on a day of drama in World Cup qualifying around the world. In Africa, Morocco’s team had to flee the capital of Guinea, Conakry, after reports of a military coup in the West African nation a day before those squads were to meet in a qualifying match. And in Tennessee, the United States announced that one of its players had tested positive for the coronavirus and a second, the star midfielder Weston McKennie, had been suspended for violating team policy, which McKennie said on Instagram was Covid protocol.The events in Brazil threaten to further damage relations between FIFA, soccer’s governing body and the organization responsible for the World Cup, and Europe’s top clubs and leagues, who have been embroiled in a dispute over the release of players for the qualification games.Several European leagues and teams had already taken unilateral decisions to prevent their players from traveling to South America for World Cup qualifying games this month, complaining that they had no choice because the players would be forced to miss key league games had they done so. Brazil was missing nine players for the Argentina game, and other nations were also hobbled by clubs’ failures to release players.Tottenham and Aston Villa of the Premier League did allow their Argentines to travel, however. Tottenham Hotspur’s Cristian Romero and Giovani Lo Celso were in the starting team in São Paulo, as was Aston Villa goalkeeper Emiliano Martínez. His teammate Emiliano Buendía was a substitute.Goalkeeper Emiliano Martínez of Aston Villa, left, and Tottenham midfielder Giovani Lo Celso, center, were two of the three England-based players in Argentina’s starting lineup against Brazil.Andre Penner/Associated PressThe incident occurred only hours after the Brazilian health regulator Anvisa said four Argentine players must isolate and could not play in the match. The local news media had reported that the players involved failed to report that they had been in Britain, a charge Argentina’s soccer federation denied.It was unclear why Anvisa did not take action before the game, given Argentina’s team had been in the country for three days and because the agency had earlier said that the four England-based Argentina players must isolate and not participate in the games at the stadium.Some of Argentina’s players, including its captain, Messi, lingered in the tunnel area for several minutes after the match was stopped as officials and players alike tried to make sense of the dispute. Eventually, about an hour after play had first been suspended, South America’s regional soccer body, CONMEBOL, announced the game had been abandoned.CONMEBOL noted that the decision to abandon the game was the referee’s, but noted that FIFA had final authority over the matches.“The World Cup qualifiers are a FIFA competition,” CONMEBOL said in a statement posted on Twitter. “All decisions concerning its organization and development are the exclusive power of that institution.”Lionel Scaloni, Argentina’s coach, said in comments posted on the national team’s Twitter page that the team had not at any point been notified that it could not field the British-based players, and he questioned the timing of the health officials’ raid. “We wanted to play the match, the Brazilian players did, too,” he said.Claudio Tapia, the president of Argentina’s soccer federation, disputed the accusation that any of the team’s players had lied about their travel. He said Brazil’s health authorities had approved the rules under which Argentina’s team had traveled to Brazil.“You cannot talk about any lie here because there is health legislation under which all South American tournaments are played,” Tapia said. “The health authorities of each country approved a protocol that we have been fully complying with.”A Brazilian television commentator reached the head of Anvisa during the live broadcast of what should have been the first half of the game. The Anvisa official, Antonio Barra Torres, said the Argentine players had ignored instructions to remain in isolation while awaiting deportation from the country for failing to declare they had been in Britain.“They moved to the stadium, entered the field and there was a sequence of noncompliances,” he said in comments published by Globo.The interim president of Brazil’s soccer federation, Ednaldo Rodrigues, criticized the timing of the decision by health officials, saying the players could have been sent home after it concluded.“I feel sorry for all the sports fans who wanted to watch the game on television,” Rodrigues told Brazil’s SporTV. “With all due respect to Anvisa, they could have resolved this earlier and not waited for the game to start.” More