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      FIFA Has a Plan for Africa. But Who Does It Serve?

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      Our experts separate fact from fiction in the talk about an African super league. Plus, a Champions League update, World Cup qualifying upsets and Erling Haaland’s next move.A couple of weeks ago, a tweet caught my eye. It seemed, unexpectedly, to reveal that a continentwide African Super League was under construction. Cross-border leagues, as regular readers will know, are something that this newsletter generally supports: They are the most readily available way of addressing soccer’s chronic financial imbalance.On the surface, notwithstanding the complex logistics, Africa is a prime candidate for such a venture. Many of the continent’s domestic leagues struggle to find investment, to retain talent, to compete for interest with the European tournaments beamed onto their television sets. Africa’s major clubs would, I think, be stronger together.There is, though, always a below the surface. As a rule, whenever I want to know what it is, I ask my colleague Tariq Panja, who spends so much time in the depths that he could be a submarine. For the last week or so, we’ve been exchanging emails on the subject. This conversation is the result.Rory Smith: Something strange has happened, Tariq. A few weeks ago, someone drew my attention to a tweet from Barbara Gonzalez, the chief executive at Simba, one of the biggest clubs in Tanzania, that seemed to reveal a plan that would change the face of African soccer: a pan-continental super league.But that’s not the strange part. The strange part is that it turns out it’s the brainchild of Gianni Infantino, the FIFA president. As a general rule, making sure you’re on the opposite side of any argument from Infantino is a solid strategy. But in this case my instinct is to say that, at least as an idea, this kind of makes sense.Please explain to me why I am wrong, so that the world can be restored to its axis.Tariq Panja: As with everything when it comes to FIFA — and typically FIFA under Gianni Infantino — the devil is in the detail. Or, in this case, the lack of detail.Infantino first announced his big idea for Africa in 2019, but it had been dormant until this random tweet (more on that in a minute). But when Infantino first went public, people inside FIFA say there was no business plan: just Gianni firing from the hip, claiming it could generate $200 million in revenue. That’s a big number as far as African club football is concerned, but there is no evidence of where it came from.To be clear: African already has a continental competition, the Champions League. Egypt’s Al Ahly won its record ninth title last year.Amr Abdallah Dalsh/ReutersIt reminds me of the time Gianni walked into a FIFA Council meeting and told the board to sign a document that would allow him to sell the Club World Cup to private investors (who turned out to be SoftBank). The members, led by European officials, wanted details. An internal audit found the event was worth considerably less than Gianni had suggested.Now, back to the tweet: It turns out FIFA officials were surprised, too. Barbara González walked up to Gianni at the Confederation of African Football Congress and asked to have her photo taken with him. Five minutes later, she sent out the tweet. Now I’m not saying a league in Africa is a bad idea, but surely there must be a robust plan before such a major project is undertaken?RS: If nothing else, you have to admire the chutzpah of that, not least because Infantino strikes me as precisely the sort of person who would fall for the old “as you were saying” ruse.There does, as you say, have to be a robust plan: economically, of course, but in a sporting sense, too. The basic idea strikes me as sound. Certainly south of the Sahara, African club soccer struggles horribly for investment. That means that the vast majority of nations that produce a constant stream of players for European clubs rarely see any of that talent on show in domestic leagues. That, in turn, hardly entices fans to go and watch games live. And that completes a neat but vicious circle, because it means that, yes, clubs struggle horribly for investment.A Super League would address some of those issues. A better television deal, if nothing else, would enable clubs to invest in infrastructure. That might help nurture young talent and keep it for a little longer. It doesn’t seem impossible to me that a Pan-African league might be able to rival one of the talent-generating leagues in Europe — the Netherlands or Portugal, say — for quality in a relatively short space of time.Of course, there is one thorny issue that I haven’t yet had the nerve to bring up. I reckon I could come up with a fairly cogent list of 20 or so African teams that would have a good case for inclusion, thanks to history or support or location. But I am guessing that Infantino and CAF, which is now run by a staunch ally of his, might have a different system in mind?Infantino recently helped an ally, Patrice Motsepe, win the top job in African soccer.Themba Hadebe/Associated PressTP: The little we know so far is that there is an expectation that participating teams would have to invest at least $20 million per season, for five seasons. For clubs in Africa, that is a significant outlay, and it suggests it would not be the most popular teams, so much as the ones that have the backing of wealthy benefactors. But again: Beyond the odd tweet and Gianni’s off-the-cuff remarks, we have nothing concrete.There are other ways of trying to come up with likely participants. You could use the CAF club coefficient, which is essentially a points system for clubs in the region based on their historic success. But that would mean a league dominated by clubs from wealthier North African countries, with only a dozen or so of the continent’s 54 countries likely to be represented.RS: That lack of representation would, I think, ultimately be unavoidable. For a tournament like this to be valid, there are certain clubs that would have to be included. Al Ahly and Zamalek from Cairo, would be names one and two. Both Raja and Wydad from Casablanca, and Esperance and Étoile du Sahel, the twin totems of Tunisian soccer.You would certainly need South Africa’s Orlando Pirates and Kaizer Chiefs. And you could throw Mamelodi Sundowns in there, too: It is owned by Patrice Motsepe, Infantino’s ally and the new CAF president. Simba, of Tanzania, clearly expect to be involved. TP Mazembe, from the Democratic Republic of Congo, would have to be.Congo’s TP Mazembe, in black, and Morocco’s Raja Casablanca would both merit places in any pan-African super league.Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBeyond that, the continent’s powerhouse nations — Cameroon, Senegal, Algeria, Ghana, Ivory Coast and, particularly, Nigeria — would command at least one place each. Suddenly, the whole thing looks pretty full, even before thinking about Angola, Sudan and Ethiopia.TP: If there was a method to wrap this league into the existing pyramid, there would probably be far more buy-in. The idea that teams from across the region would have — at least in theory — a shot at one day making it into the competition would make the proposition far more palatable to those, even among the larger clubs, who are not enthused about it.Even then, there are the logistics of it: not only to create a level playing field, but a sensible calendar and schedule, given the enormous differences in weather and transport infrastructure across the region. Given the uncertainty and sense of unease among the African football community, there needs to be an urgent and transparent discussion about what this is, and what this is not. A series of clandestine meetings followed by a high-profile announcement that does not stand up to scrutiny is not enough.RS: There is, definitely, a back-of-a-cigarette-packet air to the idea. And worse still, it has the feel of something that is being imposed on Africa, rather than generated from within it. The problem of representation bears that out: this sort of thing is much easier to conceive if, deep down, you regard Africa as a single, homogeneous entity, grateful for your interest.And that — given Infantino’s apparent passion for the idea — makes you wonder what the purpose of it all is. Has it been suggested in an attempt to make African domestic soccer stronger, a challenging but essentially admirable aim? Or is there something else at play here?TP: There’s a suspicion that Gianni’s motivations may be less to do with securing the future of African soccer and more his hopes of creating a club competition that can rival and, eventually, overtake the Champions League. For that to happen, the expanded Club World Cup needs teams from all over the world who can compete with the powerhouses of Europe.Bayern Munich won the most recent Club World Cup. FIFA has plans to expand the event.Mohammed Dabbous/ReutersIn that light, Africa might just be the start, the canary in the coal mine. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but those involved should be clear about their intentions. And a defining project for the future of African soccer should be guided by those with skin in the game, no question, rather than a Swiss bureaucrat intent on a legacy project.RS: Ah, that’s a relief. I feel as though I am on much more solid ground now: the idea might have some merit, but the rationale behind it may not. That may not be good news for African soccer, which finds itself being used as a pawn in a broader power game, but it’s good news for my personal moral compass, because it means I don’t have to worry about being on the same side of an argument as Gianni Infantino.Pushing Back Another Bad IdeaNo one has proposed melting down the Champions League trophy to sell the silver. Yet.via ReutersThere was, just as there was always going to be, one last hurdle to clear. Most European soccer executives were expecting a blueprint for a new vision of the Champions League to be approved — both by UEFA, the competition’s organizer, and the European Clubs Association, Andrea Agnelli’s bad-idea factory — and announced this week.That had to be pushed back, though, when several of the continent’s major teams blew up the deal at the 11th hour: It turns out that actually they want to have final say on the competition’s commercial rights, too. Suddenly, it seems as if the new-look Champions League may end up being the lesser of two evils.Quite how that revamped competition will work is laid out clearly and concisely — and, crucially, in the form of a graphic — here. So clearly and concisely, in fact, that for the first time it is possible to say without fear of having missed something that this iteration of the Champions League will make the tournament immeasurably worse.Not, though, for the reasons so often given. Yes, there will be more meetings between the game’s superpowers, and for lower stakes. Yes, the whole thing is bloated. Yes, it will starve domestic competitions of oxygen. And yes, it still might serve to entrench the financial inequality that is the real enemy of the game’s ongoing health.But the main problem is much simpler: The redesign reduces the Champions League’s competitive integrity. It is, essentially, invalid to draw up a league table in which all of the teams play different opponents. It renders it meaningless. And it is quite likely that fans, who are not as stupid as they are taken to be, will notice.The Week the Tables TurnedNorth Macedonia’s Eljif Elmas, right, with Stefan Spirovski, after scoring the winning goal in a World Cup qualifier at Germany.Sascha Steinbach/EPA, via ShutterstockA few days ago, as England threatened to run up the score in a World Cup qualifier against San Marino, the poacher-turned-pundit Gary Lineker suggested it was time to admit that these mismatches — which characterize a substantial amount of international soccer — were of benefit and interest to precisely nobody.Instead, he said, perhaps it would be in everyone’s interests for some of Europe’s smaller nations to engage in a prequalifying tournament, playing one another for the right to face the continent’s elite, and England. The reaction — Do I really need to say this? You know what the reaction is, because it’s always the same reaction — was furious.To Lineker’s critics, those who accused him of trying to ghettoize soccer’s underdogs, what followed was karmic retribution. Luxembourg won at Ireland. Spain needed a late goal to avoid a draw with Georgia. Latvia tied Turkey. And, best of all, North Macedonia beat Germany, the country’s first loss in a World Cup qualifier for 20 years.It goes without saying that all of these results were welcome, impressive, and hilarious. But it does not mean that the idea Lineker espoused — one that has been around for years — should be dismissed.First of all: That is how qualifying works in Africa, Asia and North and Central America. It helps to thin the calendar a little, something that matters at a time when players are being run into the ground by all of the teams they represent. Second: The success of the Nations League has shown that games between smaller nations are more competitive, and therefore both more entertaining and more educational, than watching the same teams be steamrollered by the giants.And third: At the same time as all those shocks were rumbling through Europe, England was scoring five against San Marino, the Czechs ran in six in Estonia, and both Belgium and Denmark scored eight, against Belarus and Moldova. Worse still, a team managed by Frank de Boer scored seven against Gibraltar. Some of soccer’s lesser lights are competitive. Some are not. If only there was a way of selecting which teams fell into which categories.The Haaland ShakeDortmund, like everyone else, may have trouble holding on to Erling Haaland.Pool photo by Marius BeckerWe have been here before. On Thursday, it emerged that Mino Raiola and Alfie Haaland — respectively the agent and the father of Erling Haaland, the goal cyborg — were in Catalonia for a meeting with Joan Laporta, the freshly-minted president of Barcelona. The race for the hottest property in European soccer is, it seems, on.It is a move straight from the playbook that eventually led the younger Haaland to Borussia Dortmund, his current home, about 15 months ago. Expect Raiola and Haaland’s father to turn up in relatively short order in Madrid, too. They will almost certainly stop off in London after that: Chelsea harbors hopes of signing the 20-year-old Haaland. They may need two days in Manchester; they would not want to rush United or City.The fact that they are doing their due diligence on their client/son’s next home is, then, no surprise. More eye-catching is the fact that they feel Barcelona’s hopes of signing Haaland are valid, given that Dortmund has made it plain that it will not sell him for less than $150 million, and because Barcelona is, well, currently about $1 billion in debt.Laporta, clearly, feels he can make a deal work. Perhaps he can. Perhaps there is some way of shifting the money around enough for Barcelona to remain a viable candidate. The appeal is obvious: Signing Haaland would, almost at a stroke, turn Barcelona into major players again. But then so, too, is the problem: After all the club has been through, would it really be a good idea?The Final SprintAside from the virgin hope of opening day — and possibly the breathless frenzy of Christmas — this is the best part of the soccer season. The end of the March international break heralds not only the arrival of spring, but the start of European club soccer’s race to the summit. Over the next two months, closure will arrive.Better yet, this time around, we hit the ground running. The top two in both France and Germany will meet on Saturday: first, Lille visits Paris St.-Germain, the two of them level on points, and only a nose ahead of Lyon and Monaco. (I’ll have a story on Lille posting in a few hours.) No sooner has that finished, though, than RB Leipzig hosts a Bayern Munich deprived of Robert Lewandowski, and knowing that a win would close the gap at the top of the Bundesliga to a single point.RB Leipzig and Bayern Munich: back at it on Saturday.Pool photo by Alexander HassensteinIn England, meanwhile, the ultimate prize is off the table: It is a matter of when, not if, Manchester City claims a third title in four years. But the battle to finish second, third and fourth — and therefore obtain a place in next season’s not-yet-ruined Champions League — promises to be enthralling. My money would be on Manchester United, Chelsea and Leicester, in that order, but it’s so close that it wouldn’t be much of my money.CorrespondenceOnly space for one, this week, from Charles Knights. “I’m trying to figure out how much disappointment is warranted right now as a supporter of the United States,” he wrote. “How do you rate the U.S.A. men’s team’s failed attempts to qualify for Tokyo? There’s a lot of talk about the Olympics as a training ground for the next generation, but when I look at the U.S. squad, the next generation is playing senior friendlies in Europe.”This is only a personal perspective, Charles, and it is a distinctly European one: My view would, I think, be different if I was South American or African. But in the narrow context of soccer, I’m not convinced the Olympics matter particularly.The United States will miss its third straight Olympic men’s soccer tournament. Honduras is going to its fourth in a row.Refugio Ruiz/Getty ImagesIt is special for the players to win a gold medal, of course, particularly when it at least rivals the high-point of that country’s soccer achievements thus far (Nigeria in 1996, Cameroon in 2000, Mexico in 2012) or when it is Argentina (2004 and 2008), and the World Cup brings nothing but misery.But in terms of being used a signpost for greater things to come? In men’s soccer, no, not really. Put it this way: I had to check who won the gold at Rio in 2016. Turns out it was Brazil! They must have enjoyed that. It probably didn’t make up for what happened in a different tournament on home soil a couple of years earlier.Women’s soccer, of course, has historically placed much more importance on it — the cover of Abby Wambach’s autobiography describes her as a gold medalist, rather than a World Cup winner — but I wonder if that, too, will change with the increased focus on the Women’s World Cup. More

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      Cuban Soccer Is Stocking Up on Overseas Players. Why?

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      Cuba’s soccer team has called up a handful of players who developed outside the country’s sports system for its World Cup qualifying matches, a subtle but potentially significant shift in policy.When its campaign to qualify for the 2022 World Cup begins this week, Cuba will try an approach it has not tried in years: fielding many of its best eligible players.For years, only Cuban players who had contracts with INDER, the country’s governing body for sports, were selected to represent the national team. This month, that will change. Cuba has called in several players who are based abroad — and outside the official Cuban sports system — to play in a set of World Cup qualification matches.That means potential national team debuts for Norwich City wing Onel Hernández, the Spain-based defender Carlos Vázquez Fernández and the San Marino-based forward Joel Apezteguía. It also means a return to the national team after six years away for defender Jorge Luis Corrales.“I didn’t know if I should shout or laugh because there are a lot of conflicting feelings,” said Corrales, who currently plays in a second-tier league in the United States. “The images of many years playing with the national team and all the great moments went through my mind. I think once again participating in those moments will be one of the best experiences I’ve had since arriving here to the United States.”To outside observers, the overseas-based players fall into a category that is difficult to distinguish from Cubans who walked away from national teams during tournaments abroad or defected elsewhere. But there is an important distinction that makes all the difference to Cuban officials: All of them either left the island with their parents as children, or were given permission by the government to go abroad.Corrales, for example, was allowed to visit his father in Miami after the 2015 Gold Cup, a major regional championship, and decided to stay after he was granted a five-year visa. He has since played for several teams in Major League Soccer and the U.S.L. Championship, the second division in the United States, including for his current employer, F.C. Tulsa.Jorge Luis Corrales, left, during his days in Major League Soccer. He is hoping to make his first national team appearance in six years.John Raoux/Associated PressApezteguía is hoping to make his national team debut at age 37. He played in Cuba until he was 24 before leaving to help his father run a bar and restaurant in Spain. After years of laboring in Europe’s smaller leagues (Moldova, Albania and his current home in San Marino are highlights) and hoping to be noticed by Cuban soccer officials, the call finally came.Hernández, 28, left Cuba when he was a child to move to Germany. He started his professional career in the German second division before moving to Norwich City, which he helped earn promotion to the Premier League in 2019. That summer, he became the first Cuban to play in the Premier League. A few months later, in a match against Manchester United, he became the first Cuban to score a goal in it.Hernández had expressed interest in representing his country of birth in the past, even accepting an invitation to train with the national team, but suiting up in an official game still seemed impossible until this month.Vázquez Fernández, a 21-year-old known as CaVaFe, left for Spain with his parents when he was 3. He developed his soccer game there, rising through Atlético Madrid’s academy and training with the first team at times. He has expressed his desire to wear the Cuba jersey for years, but had no timeline in mind.“I knew this first call-up was going to come,” he said. “What I didn’t know if it was going to be sooner or later, in 2028, 2025, 2021, but I knew it was going to happen. I’ve always been positive.”What none of the players is sure about, though, is why the calls are coming now.Cuba has rarely been competitive against regional powers like the United States. It is currently ranked 180th by FIFA, just behind Chad and Puerto Rico, and just above Liechtenstein and Macau.Scott Taetsch/Getty ImagesHernández has had regular contact with Cuba’s manager, Pablo Elier Sánchez, including video chats to get up to speed on the team’s tactics. He and the other players said they felt Sánchez and a handful of other officials had facilitated their call-ups by working for several years to convince soccer and government officials to bring them into the fold.Sánchez addressed the new faces in a brief airport interview upon arrival in Guatemala on Sunday, saying they would “undoubtedly” strengthen his team.“They’re players who are playing in important leagues, first-class leagues in the world,” he said. “They’re going to bring a lot when it comes to the results the team can get.”Cuba has offered no official explanation for its sudden openness to players from outside the national sports system, or if the success of these initial steps might usher in an openness to a prospect that has to date been unthinkable: reinforcing Cuban sports teams with the defectors who represent the elite of the Cuban sporting diaspora, not just soccer players like Osvaldo Alonso and Maikel Chang but potentially baseball stars like José Abreu and Yuli Gurriel.Messages left with Sánchez, federation officials and INDER were not returned.The players are hoping they can make a difference. Apezteguía said it had been difficult to watch Cuba’s national team, ranked 180 of 210 FIFA members, and know he could raise its level of play.“It bothers you a bit because you feel a bit powerless,” he said. “You’re watching it on TV without being able to help or represent your country, fight and give everything on the field. Now that this opportunity is here, we have to think about the present and about this chance we’ve been given.”Cuba’s dream is to see its name called at a World Cup draw again. It has played in only one, in 1938.Kurt Schorrer/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesCuba plays both of its first qualification matches in Guatemala, playing the hosts on Wednesday and Curaçao, the favorite to advance to the next round, four days later. But these games could lay the groundwork for a larger Cuban goal: a run at qualifying for an expanded 48-team World Cup in North America in 2026.Even without a concrete answer about the timing of the decision, Cuba’s reinforcements are optimistic this will be a first step toward the nation’s realizing its potential, especially if Cuba-based players are increasingly allowed to go abroad to try their luck in the world’s best leagues.“We have so many kids in Cuba that love football, and they want to live the dream that I lived,” Hernández said. More

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      Players in a New Super League Would Be Barred From the World Cup

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyPlayers in a New Super League Would Be Barred From the World CupFIFA sends a stern warning to clubs that are considering forming their own lucrative competition.Barcelona and Bayern Munich are two of the teams that could be candidates for a European Super League.Credit…Pool photo by Manu Fernandez/EPA, via ShutterstockJan. 21, 2021Updated 9:39 a.m. ETTop players will be barred from playing for their national teams in events like the World Cup if their clubs join a breakaway league, the major governing bodies warned on Thursday.The announcement by FIFA and soccer’s six regional confederations follows weeks of talks and months of disquiet after the revelation of plans hatched by some of the world’s richest and most popular clubs — led by Real Madrid and Manchester United — to create a so-called Super League. That competition, which would be controlled by the teams, could at a stroke render irrelevant the Champions League, European soccer’s immensely popular club competition.Talks about a new league come as discussions with European soccer’s governing body UEFA over a new format for the Champions League beginning with the 2024 season are close to completion. Some senior leaders at UEFA are hoping to announce the changes, the biggest to the event in a generation, as soon as the organization’s annual meeting next month.FIFA said in a statement that a Super League “would not be recognized by either FIFA or the respective confederation. Any club or player involved in such a competition would as a consequence not be allowed to participate in any competition organized by FIFA or their respective confederation.”According to documents reviewed by The New York Times, plans for the breakaway European Super League, a project that has been mooted for decades, gathered pace since the summer. Top clubs sought to take advantage of uncertainty in the soccer industry caused by the coronavirus pandemic to forge a new path that would insure a degree of financial stability for them but almost certainly lead to a loss in the value and revenue for teams excluded from the project.Under the proposals, the Super League, which would be played in the middle of the week, would have 16 top soccer franchises as permanent members and add four qualifiers from domestic competitions. The clubs would be split into two groups of 10 with the top four teams in each group qualifying for the knockout stages, culminating in a final that would take place on a weekend. The event would, according to the documents, generate hundreds of millions of dollars in additional revenue for the participating teams, already the richest clubs in the sport. (An alternative version of the plan has 15 permanent members and 5 qualification spots.)The group has already entered into discussions with JPMorgan Chase&Co. to raise financing for the project, according to people with knowledge of the matter. A spokesman for the bank declined to comment.The clearest public indication of how advanced the talks among the clubs are came when Josep Maria Bartomeu, the former president of Barcelona, announced in October that his team had agreed with the leaders of what he described as Europe’s other “big clubs” to participate in a European Super League. Bayern Munich, Germany’s biggest team, spoke out this week against a breakaway, but should other top teams find an agreement it would be unrealistic for that club not to be involved as well.The project has long been the brainchild of Florentino Perez, the president of Barcelona’s rival Real Madrid. Leaked documents from 2018 revealed he had drawn up plans with a Spanish consultancy for a new competition and then held a meeting with FIFA’s president Gianni Infantino in 2019 to discuss the plans further, telling him that teams from the Super League competition would be willing to participate in FIFA’s expanded World Cup for clubs, a quadrennial event that Infantino believes could grow to become one of the most important properties in all of sports.Since the summer, Perez found a new ally in Joel Glazer, the chairman of Manchester United, who has also joined forces with the American owners of Liverpool in an effort to force through changes to the Premier League that would benefit his team. Glazer has been promoting the idea of the Super League, according to people with knowledge of the discussions. A spokesman for United said the team would not comment.The joint announcement by FIFA and the six confederations follows talks on Monday between Infantino and his counterpart at UEFA, Aleksander Ceferin. The two men have had a bumpy relationship since 2018 when Infantino announced his ambitions for FIFA’s own club competitions and growing suggestions of his involvement in the breakaway talks. Infantino has always publicly denied any interest in supporting a European breakaway.Ceferin has frequently launched broadsides against the Super League discussions. “It would be hard to think of a more selfish and egotistical scheme,” he said after one iteration of a breakaway was discussed. “It would clearly ruin football around the world; for the players, for the fans and for everyone connected with the game — all for the benefit of a tiny number of people.”UEFA’s proposals for the new version of the Champions League go a long way to meeting the demands of the biggest clubs for an expanded tournament. If agreed, the tournament will feature 36 teams instead of the 32 it currently does, with two of those places reserved for teams that have been historically successful in European competition but failed to meet the qualification criteria. That would mean the possibility of a return to top tier action for the likes of A.C. Milan, a soccer heavyweight that has fallen on hard times. UEFA’s reforms would also scrap the current opening stage in which teams are separated into eight groups of four, and instead place them into one table, with qualifiers for the knockouts determined by results after each team has played as many as 10 games.Access to the competition, unlike the Super League, would largely be from the domestic leagues, ensuring they remain relevant.The European Leagues, an umbrella group for many of the continent’s leagues, issued a statement endorsing the declaration against the Super League by the governing bodies.“The European Leagues’ board of directors has discussed the initiative of some European football clubs to create a closed European Super League for a limited number of clubs similar to those franchise models operating in North America,” the group said.“UEFA and the other football Confederations from all over the world have, together with FIFA, published a strong statement against this initiative and our member leagues are unanimously supporting that statement.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Moisés Caicedo and the Perils of Too Much Interest

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyOn SoccerA Promising Star. A Gaggle of Suitors. A Wake of Vultures.It did not take long for the performances of a 19-year-old in Ecuador to catch the eyes of Europe’s biggest clubs. In soccer’s cutthroat transfer market, they were not the only ones watching.It did not take long for Moisés Caicedo to establish himself as a star for Independiente del Valle in Ecuador.Credit…Jose Jacome/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesJan. 21, 2021, 8:30 a.m. ETNothing stays secret for long in soccer. So thorough is the game’s hunt for talent and so desperate its thirst for players that no territory goes uncharted, no stone unturned, no prospect unobserved. Distance is no barrier. Remoteness is not a factor. The searchlight is so bright that there is no such thing, any more, as obscurity.And so, over the course of the last year, the powerhouse clubs of Europe’s major leagues have been turning their attention to Sangolqui, a suburb to the south of the Ecuador’s capital, Quito. They have focused on a club that hardly uses its own tight, compact stadium, and on a teenage midfielder not yet two seasons into his senior career.Moisés Caicedo would not have known it — not until recently — but his name has been playing on the lips of scouts and technical directors across Europe for months.Few, if any, clubs from the old world have a dedicated scout for leagues like Ecuador’s. Instead, emerging players are spotted in South America’s continental competitions — the Copa Libertadores and the Copa Sudamericana — or tracked through international youth tournaments.When a player of interest is identified, members of the recruitment staff trawl through footage of his domestic displays, and the corresponding performance data, on platforms like Wyscout, InStat and Scout7. Only then, if the numbers add up, will scouts — either club employees or trusted freelancers in specific markets — be sent to watch the player in person.An energetic and composed midfielder, Caicedo, now 19, passed every test. Manchester United’s South American scout alerted his employers to Caicedo’s ability. A.C. Milan found that the data and the assessment of their talent spotters tallied up. Club Bruges, the Belgian champion, noticed him, too. So did a phalanx of teams from England — Brighton and Chelsea among them. Nothing, after all, stays secret for long.All, independently, determined that Caicedo was an interesting proposition. Many of them started making discreet enquiries, performing the due diligence on both the player and his club — Independiente del Valle — to work out how a deal might be done. And they all heard precisely the same warning: Finding Caicedo was the easy bit. Working out how, exactly, to sign him would be much more difficult.A Rapid RiseCaicedo’s development came faster than his team expected, but the club felt it was a vindication of the model it built for finding stars.Credit…Pool photo by Rodrigo BuendiaEven at Independiente del Valle, there was some surprise at just how quickly the teenager the club had found playing in Santo Domingo — a small city a few hours west of Quito — had developed.When he moved to Sangolqui, Caicedo was not one of the standouts on the under-16 team that he joined, but he was quiet, determined, a fast learner. That squad contained several players who would represent Ecuador at the youth level, but by late 2019, Caicedo had outstripped them all.He made his league debut for Independiente in October that year, as a substitute against Liga de Quito; by the end of the month, he had his first start. In February 2020, he captained the club’s youth side to victory in the under-20 Copa Libertadores. When he returned, he went straight to the first team: He appeared in his first senior Libertadores game in April.If the speed of his success was a touch unexpected, it was treated within Independiente as vindication of the club’s model. Though the team had been founded in 1958, its modern incarnation came into being only in 2007, when it was taken over — and turned into a private enterprise — by a group of entrepreneurs, led by Michel Deller.“There was a clear vision,” said Luis Roggiero, the club’s sports manager. “There is a pool of talent in Ecuador that had not been given an opportunity to develop: The players that had come through had done so on their own merit, not because they found a club or federation that helped them. The idea was to construct a club to compete at national and international level by finding our own talents, finding them early, and developing them our way.”To do that, the club commissioned a study of the districts in Ecuador that produced the most players, Roggiero said, and then constructed training bases in each of them: dragnets to capture whatever talent came through. The best prospects would then be recruited to the club’s main training facility in Sangolqui — which contains accommodations for 120 young players and an on-site school — to be inculcated in the team’s style of play.“We built an idea of how we wanted to play, and then designed training — technical and physical and mental — to help them produce that,” Roggiero said. It was a long-term plan that has born fruit: In 2016, less than a decade after Deller and his associates found the club in Ecuador’s third division, Independiente reached the final of the Copa Libertadores, where it lost to Colombia’s Atlético Nacional. The club is now a regular sight in the latter rounds of South America’s biggest club competition.Roggiero attributes that success to the fact that — unlike many teams in Ecuador, and across South America — Independiente is privately owned. “We are not subject to elections, so we can have long-term horizons,” he said. “We can be responsible financially, we can maintain the same administration. The club can be sustainable. The idea has been reinforced by the results we have had in our short history. It shows the road we have chosen is valid.”Success on the field, though, is not the only gauge of the club’s success. So, too, are the players it has produced. Graduates from Independiente’s finishing school are now a regular sight on Ecuador’s various national teams: Seven members of the current men’s squad came through the club’s system, as did six players on the women’s national side. Scouts, agents and technical directors now flock to Sangolqui to scour its youth teams for signs of promise; an annual international under-18 tournament it hosts has become compulsory viewing for those in the recruitment business.In recent years, Independiente has been able to sell players not only to the leagues that have some tradition of importing from Ecuador — those in Argentina, Mexico, Brazil — but also, increasingly, to clubs in Europe: Players have left for Granada and Real Valladolid in Spain, for Italy’s Atalanta, for Brighton in England, for Genk in Belgium and for Sporting Lisbon in Portugal.As Caicedo’s star rose, it became clear that he would be the next to make that journey.But while more European teams might be aware of Independiente — and Ecuador as a whole, after a run of success for its international youth teams — as a source of talent, the country remains an unfamiliar market for most.Its clubs, generally, prefer to sell to other South American leagues, where the initial fee can often be higher; the most powerful agencies in the country tend to have well-established links with Brazil, Mexico and the United States. Few European teams have a presence, or a way in. For them, it can be uncertain, unfamiliar ground.And there are always plenty of people, in soccer’s transfer market, ready to capitalize on any uncertainty at all. Unfamiliarity, for some operators, means opportunity.The SquabbleMultiple teams in Europe have expressed interest in Caicedo. It is not entirely clear whom they must work with to acquire him.Credit…Rodrigo Buendia/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMost of Europe’s clubs received the same feedback when they started to delve a little deeper into Caicedo’s situation: It was not immediately clear, they were told, precisely who was representing the player, who had the power to agree to terms on his behalf. “Too many agents involved,” as the note sent to one recruitment department read.A transfer deal should, on the surface, be a straightforward thing. The buying club should — strictly speaking — contact the selling team, establish a price, and then contact the player’s agent in order to work out the personal terms.If that is a little naïve, then the pragmatic alternative — contact the agents first, find out if the player is interested, ask what a deal would cost, and then present the selling club with a fait accompli before haggling over price — might be more cynical, but it is not substantially more complicated.The reality, though, is much messier. Teams frequently give an agent a mandate to sell their own player, in order to retain a degree of negotiating power. Often, different agents will be given mandates to sell players to different countries: One will do the deal if an Italian team is interested, someone else if it is a Spanish club. Those mandates can then be traded and sold between agents.As soon as a talented player emerges, a suite of agents will typically descend on him, offering exclusive access to a particular team or league, or simply an ability to negotiate a better deal. Sometimes players sign multiple agreements with multiple agents, based on nothing more than promises.Most of those involved in recruitment accept this as the way things are, and the way they have always been across the world, though many find it especially difficult to untangle deals to take players out of South America. The sporting director at one major European club, though, believes the problem has become much worse since FIFA moved to deregulate agents in 2015. “Now, you can basically do anything you like,” said the director, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to address the issue publicly.It is precisely that sort of free-for-all that engulfed Caicedo. For much of his nascent professional career, he has been represented by Kancha, an Ecuadorean agency with a roster of young players and a cohort at Independiente. As clubs’ interest in him grew, though, so too did interest from agencies, eager to profit not only from his promise but also from teams’ comparative inexperience in buying players in Ecuador.Members of the Caicedo’s family — he is the youngest of 10 siblings, and has 25 nephews — were inundated with offers from agents seeking a mandate to sell him. Those close to the dealings, though not authorized to speak on the record about private business arrangements, said they believed that relatives had reached agreements with two of them: a German-based firm, PSM Proformance, and a company in Argentina. PSM Proformance did not respond to a request for comment.All of a sudden, there were three agencies — including Kancha — claiming to speak for Caicedo, to have the power to do a deal. Independiente, the club that had nurtured him, was effectively rendered irrelevant in the sale: It will receive roughly the same fee regardless of which agent strikes a deal, and is expected to ask for a clause that will bring the club a 30 percent cut on any future transfer, too.But if his club is unaffected, the same cannot necessarily be said of Caicedo. With multiple agents not only touting him across Europe but also peppering the news media, in Ecuador and farther afield, with tips about his potential destination, many clubs that had been enticed by Caicedo’s enormous promise chose to walk away. Manchester United and Milan both decided not to become embroiled in a situation they deemed too knotty to unravel.Others stayed the course. Brighton — currently considered his most likely destination — had the advantage of a pre-existing relationship with Independiente and Kancha, having signed a player from both in 2018. Caicedo will get his move: His talent, ultimately, guarantees that.What concerns those who have watched him flourish over the last couple of years is whether it will be the right move, for the right reasons. Caicedo’s rise, so far, has been unexpectedly, almost impossibly smooth. Being exposed to the perils of the transfer market, though, means the road ahead is littered with obstacles. He has been found. The risk now is that he might yet be lost.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Soccer Is Cash Poor. Its Leaders Are Not.

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesC.D.C. Shortens Quarantine PeriodsVaccine TrackerFAQAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyOn SoccerSoccer Has a Financial Crisis. Its Leaders Aren’t Feeling It.As their sport reels from the pandemic, FIFA’s top officials will gather for a video call on Friday. Each will earn at least $80,000 just for listening.Friday’s FIFA Council meeting, like others this year, will not require its members’ attendance.Credit…Ben Moreau/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBy More