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      The Pundit Whisperer of Qatar’s beIN Sports World Cup Coverage

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      Qatar’s beIN Sports hired a host of retired soccer stars to bring authority to its World Cup coverage and a group of interpreters to render their words into Arabic. The toughest assignments go to one man.DOHA, Qatar — There is perhaps no one in the world who has paid closer attention to the diction and pronunciation of the former England soccer captain John Terry over the past month than Lassaad Tounakti, a 52-year-old Tunisian with a gift for languages, a passion for cologne and an accidental television career.For Tounakti, understanding the minute details of the way Terry speaks is no casual affair. His ability to understand Terry’s every utterance has been a vital part of one of the World Cup’s toughest, and least forgiving, man-to-man assignments: As the main interpreter for beIN Sports, Tounakti has since the start of the tournament served as the voice of Terry and other retired stars hired by BeIN as it has transmitted the tournament night after night to Arabic-speaking viewers across the Middle East and North Africa.It can seem, at times, like a Sisyphean task. BeIN Sports, the broadcaster based in Qatar, has devoted six channels to the World Cup, including two that are Arabic only. Each one is broadcasting tournament content for up to 18 hours a day. There are pregame shows, halftime chats and postgame panel discussions, but also sideline interviews, on-the-street cutaways and fan-zone appearances. Much of that programming is beamed out live to the world, and much of it involves a delicate live dance involving Arab hosts and guests and former soccer stars who do not speak a common language.Interpreting their words — quickly, precisely and live on the air — requires an extraordinary fluency in not only languages but soccer. For Tounakti, it means translating every word of Arabic into English in the ears of the former soccer stars before flicking a switch — literally and in his mind — and immediately rendering their thoughts, delivered in English, back into Arabic.Tounakti uses two buttons during broadcasts: E for English and A for Arabic.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesEvery voice is different. The English diction of Kaká, a World Cup-winning Brazilian, is different from that of the Dutch soccer great Ruud Gullit, and the nuances of their pronunciations are different from those of the former Germany captain Lothar Matthäus.Because of the sheer volume of coverage it is providing, beIN is employing four staff interpreters and supplementing them with freelancers for the World Cup. Most interpreters work in a rotation, but there are some accents, some ways of speaking, that require just a little bit more expert handling. Terry’s thick East London accent is one of those.“For the time being,” Tounakti said, “John Terry is mine.”Speaking to the WorldTounakti’s career as the Arabic voice of beIN’s imported experts was in many ways accidental. As a delegation from Qatar prepared to fly to Zurich in December 2010 to make its final pitch to host the 2022 World Cup, beIN realized it did not have an interpreter who spoke both French and English.Tounakti, a university professor with a doctorate in linguistics and experience interpreting for the country’s emir, was enlisted for the trip, which ended with his voice relaying the shocking news that Qatar had won the rights to bring the World Cup to the Middle East for the first time. “They say I am the guy that made 350 million people cry,” he said.In the decade since the vote, beIN, which is owned by the Qatari state, grew into one of the world’s biggest broadcasters, spending billions of dollars on sports rights every year and expanding into dozens of countries. Most of that expansion has been preparation for this moment: a month of televising the World Cup from Qatar.BeIN Sports has devoted six channels to the World Cup, including two that are Arabic only. Erin Schaff/The New York TimesWhile the 64 games have been a centerpiece of the coverage, a significant part of the network’s content has revolved around the high-profile guest commentators the company has hired at great expense to bring credibility, celebrity and commentary to its coverage.Last week, in the street separating two buildings in beIN’s complex in Doha, Peter Schmeichel, a former Denmark and Manchester United goalkeeper who is one of the company’s longtime analysts, arrived for an evening shift in the studio accompanied by Jermaine Jones, a German-born former U.S. midfielder.A Brief Guide to the 2022 World CupCard 1 of 9What is the World Cup? More

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      Pouring Through a Crisis: How Budweiser Salvaged Its World Cup

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      Taken by surprise by Qatar’s decision to ban beer at stadiums, the company remade its marketing strategy in real time.DOHA, Qatar — The theme at the luxury W hotel in central Doha is beer. Budweiser beer. The walls are festooned with Budweiser labels. “Budweiser” is painted in enormous script along the check-in desk. There’s a “Budweiser Player of the Match” corner, where armchair soccer stars can take selfies while hoisting a fake trophy against a Budweiser background. Bathed in red and white, the place has the feel of a giant beer can.Budweiser, which has been the official beer sponsor of the World Cup for the last 36 years, remade the hotel into what it called “a home away from home experience” in anticipation of the 2022 tournament. That was before the moment, two days before the opening match, when Qatar’s government threw Budweiser’s carefully crafted (and quite expensive) beer-selling plans into disarray by suddenly forbidding the sale of alcohol in or around the tournament stadiums during the event.The dismaying nature of the situation — the abrupt contravention of a plan years in the making, the 11th-hour dismantling of the elaborate Budweiser tents at the matches, the financial and related consequences for a longtime tournament sponsor, the public nature of it all — was aptly articulated at the time by Budweiser itself.“Well, this is awkward,” the company wrote in a tweet — which it then promptly deleted, both illustrating and compounding its point.But, like the ghostly tweet, preserved forever in screenshots marked with “lol”s, Budweiser remains a presence at the World Cup, albeit in a watered-down way.Certain fan zones were among the limited places where fans could buy alcoholic beers.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesWhile the stadiums have been scrubbed of regular beer, they are awash in stacks of alcohol-free Budweiser Zero. Ads for the drink play on a loop on stadium screens, and refrigerators full of it sit within arm’s reach at concession stands, right next to the Coca-Cola.But given the average fan’s attitude toward the usefulness of nonalcoholic beer as a sports-experience enhancer (“Why?” asked a fan at Lusail Stadium on a recent night, when asked if he had tried one yet), the available quantities would seem to reflect wishful thinking as much as responsible drinking.At Lusail, the signs next to the Budweiser Zero duly noted that “Budweiser is proud to serve its products in compliance with the local rules and regulations.”“Proud” is one way of putting it.“I’m just glad it wasn’t us,” said a representative for another FIFA sponsor, who spoke on condition that neither she nor her company be identified, saying that she did not want to publicly criticize the Qatari government. “Qatari regulations are very strict and top-down, and it’s hard when you feel that the regulations can change so abruptly.”A Brief Guide to the 2022 World CupCard 1 of 9What is the World Cup? More

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      What Happened to the Qatar Women’s National Team?

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      A squad that featured in the host nation’s bid to host the World Cup in 2010 hasn’t played a game in eight years.DOHA, Qatar — The last official soccer match that the Qatar women’s national team played was on April 19, 2014. Hagar Nader Nessim Aziz Saleh, who was only 15 years old at the time, can hardly remember it now. It was a little cold that day, she recalled, and Qatar was playing in Amman, Jordan, at the West Asian Football Federation Women’s Championship.She remembered screaming and celebrating when Dana al-Jassim scored in extra time, in the 92nd minute, one of Qatar’s only goals of the tournament. Her team lost that day, 8-2. It has not played an official match since.There have been some friendly matches and several cultural exchanges, including a visit from players on an American women’s team in 2020, and a trip to New York and San Francisco earlier this year to learn about women’s soccer in the United States. There are photos of the team, in maroon tracksuits and white jerseys with the official patch for the Q.F.A., the Qatar Football Association. But the jerseys are dated by the sponsor, Burrda, whose partnership with the soccer federation ended years ago.Other than that, there is hardly any trace of a national women’s soccer team in Qatar, even as the country hosts the men’s World Cup. There is no mention of a women’s team on the Qatar Football Association website, and there is no team listed on the FIFA women’s rankings. There’s a Wikipedia page and a curious Instagram account called Women’s Football Qatar with 106 followers.The World Cup in Qatar seemed a good chance to ask: Where did the team go?Members of the Qatar women’s national team at a cafe in Doha, Qatar.Allison McCann/The New York TimesOrigins of a TeamIn 2001, Sheikha Moza bint Nasser al-Missned — the wife of the emir at the time, and the mother of the current emir — established the Qatar Women’s Sport Committee to oversee all sports for women and girls. In 2009, the national women’s soccer team was created, just as Qatar was preparing its bid to host the 2022 World Cup.A year later, and only weeks before FIFA was to choose the host of the 2022 World Cup, the women’s national team played its first-ever official match. It did not go well. Beaten by 17-0 by Bahrain at the Arabia Women’s Cup, the team went on to lose to Syria and Palestine in the same tournament, by double-digit scores each time. But there was a team and a record of its games.A Brief Guide to the 2022 World CupCard 1 of 9What is the World Cup? More

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      Waving the Palestinian Flag, Celebrating the World Cup’s Unofficial Team

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      Arab fans and Arab teams have been using the tournament’s global stage to elevate the Palestinian cause in the stands and on the field.AL RAYYAN, Qatar — In the tumult, in those minutes of unrestrained joy after Morocco became the first Arab team to reach the quarterfinals of soccer’s World Cup, the players took a moment to come together after their famous victory and huddle for a photograph to capture the moment. Together on the turf where they had labored for more than two hours to outlast Spain, cheering and smiling and with the throng of red-clad Moroccan fans roaring behind them, the players and their coaches pressed together and waited as a flag was unfurled.It wasn’t Morocco’s flag.There in the middle of the team photo, stretched out so it could be displayed in all its glory, was the Palestinian banner. Morocco, the best Arab team at the first Arab World Cup, had set off celebrations across North Africa and beyond with its win. Now, in its moment of triumph, as the World Cup’s 32 teams were whittled to a final eight, it stopped to draw attention to a place, and a cause, that unites many Arab fans and citizens in sympathy.Morocco’s players and coaches posed with a Palestinian flag after beating Spain.Glyn Kirk/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“Palestine is the 33rd country in the World Cup,” said Abdullah Mansouri, a Moroccan fan trying to make himself heard above the horns and drums that accompanied his country’s win. “Palestine is our cause, our struggle in the Arab world, in all the Arab world.”One of the features of the first World Cup to be played in the Muslim world has been the ubiquitous presence of the red, white, green and black colors of a team that is a member of FIFA but not a full member of the United Nations. The tournament has offered a rare moment of Arab solidarity, with fans from different countries cheering on one another’s teams — and expressing support for the Palestinian cause — even as some Arab governments, including Morocco’s, have recently normalized relations with Israel.That kind of normalization is not mirrored on the Arab street, as it is known, revealing a disconnect with the Arab leadership, and a sense that the Palestinian cause still resonates widely with people across the Arab world and the Arab diaspora.On the ground and in the stadiums in Qatar, for example, Palestinian flags, Palestinian armbands and even black-and-white headdresses, or kaffiyehs, featuring the Palestinian flag have all been on display throughout the monthlong tournament. And as the other Arab and Muslim nations that had qualified have left the tournament, Morocco, the last one still playing, has become the standard-bearer for the Palestinian cause.A Brief Guide to the 2022 World CupCard 1 of 9What is the World Cup? More

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      As the World Focuses on Soccer, a Women’s Team in Exile Aches to Play

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      When the Afghanistan women’s national soccer team watches the men’s World Cup, every image on the TV screen feels bittersweet.Each country’s flag flying high and each roaring, roiling cheering section. Each national anthem echoing across a pristine pitch. The Afghan women’s team, still in the developmental stages after years of playing in a war-torn country, hopes to be good enough someday to take part in soccer’s most prestigious tournament.But this year’s men’s tournament, with all its pageantry and thrill, is just a stinging reminder of how distant that ambition remains after the players fled their country last year when the Taliban took over.The Taliban have barred girls and women from playing sports. And the women’s national soccer team is still feeling the effect of it even though its members have settled in Australia, 7,000 miles away and safe from the Taliban. Because the Afghanistan Football Federation doesn’t recognize the team as an official national team, neither does FIFA, the global governing body of soccer.Now the players who risked their lives to play soccer inside of Afghanistan, and then risked them again to flee for a shot at freedom, are no longer eligible for international competitions. They are calling on FIFA to reinstate the Afghan squad so the women can officially represent their country.Afghan players warmed up at an event where they received new team jerseys at their Australian club.Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York TimesThe jerseys were labeled “AWT” for Afghan Women’s Team and bore Afghanistan’s flag.Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York Times“We had to leave our home and stop our dreams, but it always was our goal to play as a national team again,” said Fati, the team’s goalkeeper who lives in a suburb of Melbourne. (The New York Times is not using the players’ last names at their request because they fear retribution from the Taliban.)“Now it looks like us playing for the national team is not going to work anymore. My heart can’t stand this,” Fati said.She added, “FIFA has the money and the power to help us, but it’s not doing anything.”Khalida Popal, one of the founding players of the Afghan women’s national team and the person who orchestrated the team’s escape from Afghanistan, said, “FIFA will say they don’t want to get involved in politics, but this is a human rights issue and they know it. They’ve just chosen to discard us.”FIFA officials, including President Gianni Infantino and Sarai Bareman, the federation’s chief officer for women’s football, did not respond to repeated requests for comment about how the Afghan women’s team could return to the international game, as the players in Australia have been ready to play and travel for months.Firooz Mashoof, spokesman for the Afghanistan Football Federation, said there was nothing the Afghan federation could do to help because, as he explained, the women’s national team dissolved when the players and women’s soccer committee fled the country. Inside the country, the 50 or so women’s soccer teams — from youth to the club level — also have vanished, he said.The federation has yet to discuss the future of women’s soccer with the Taliban, Mashoof said, because “the situation of women’s human and social rights in Afghanistan is not good.” He said FIFA would have to step in to make something happen.Khalida Popal, founder of the Afghan women’s national team, said FIFA officials “have just chosen to discard us.”Charlotte de la Fuente for The New York TimesIn August, Popal worked with young players at a training session for the Afghan women’s development team in Doncaster, England. Mary Turner for The New York TimesThe Afghan players and some human rights activists, including Minky Worden, director of global initiatives at Human Rights Watch, said that couldn’t happen soon enough. Worden noted that the men’s senior national team, which did not qualify for the World Cup, and other Afghan men’s nationals teams, including ones for boys under 14, continued to play internationally while the women’s side of the sport had been completely shut down. That glaring inequality of opportunity, she said, is a violation of the Olympic Charter and FIFA’s own rules regarding human rights and nondiscrimination.“Right now, the Afghan federation is absolutely in full, flagrant violation of FIFA’s human rights policy and should be thrown out of the football world until women and girls can resume playing football in their country — and for their country,” Worden said. “The Taliban is totally getting away with banning women and girls. Global governing bodies like FIFA have an obligation to thwart what is happening.”Worden said it was time for the International Olympic Committee to suspend the Afghanistan Olympic Committee. The I.O.C. did so in 1999 after the Taliban barred girls and women from sports the first time it came to power, as it is doing now.Friba Rezayee, who competed in the 2004 Athens Games as one of Afghanistan’s first two female Olympians, said in a telephone interview that the I.O.C. and FIFA are actively ignoring the humanitarian crisis that is unfolding in Afghanistan.“Just last week, the Taliban beat people, including women, inside a stadium where athletes should be playing their sport,” said Rezayee, a judo competitor who fled to Canada in 2011. She added that dozens of female athletes in Afghanistan have told her that the Taliban is hunting for women who play sports so they can punish them. She heard from one judoka who recounted being beaten by the Taliban with a rifle when they found her practicing at her dojo. The soldiers let that woman go so she could be an example to other women who dare to play a sport, Rezayee said.Fati, the team’s goalkeeper, shown playing in Australia in April, said “it was always our goal to play as a national team again.”Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York TimesThe national team at a match in Australia in April.Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York Times“What more does the I.O.C. and FIFA have to see to stand up for female athletes?” she said. “These organizations have the capacity and the budget to ensure the safety of athletes and also ensure that women are free to play their sport.”I.O.C. action against the Afghanistan Olympic Committee could happen next week. Mark Adams, spokesman for the organization, said the I.O.C. was “very concerned about developments regarding the participation of women and girls in sport in Afghanistan” and that the executive board would review the issue at its meeting on Dec. 6.If the I.O.C. goes forward with that suspension, it will put needed pressure on each sport’s international federation to decide whether its Afghan athletes can participate in non-Olympic international competitions. But FIFA doesn’t have to wait. It already has the power — and the duty, Worden said — to suspend the Afghan Football Federation for its exclusion of girls and women, bypassing the Taliban so girls and women can compete.One international sports federation, the International Cycling Union, has taken the initiative to help the Afghan women without any prodding from the I.O.C. The organization has been going out of its way to support Afghan cyclists and find ways for those women to compete, showing other federations — such as FIFA — that it is possible to do so without making it a political statement.David Lappartient, the president of the cycling union and a French politician, used his political and sports connections to help evacuate 125 people, including cyclists and other athletes, from Afghanistan. The federation has since sponsored a group of cyclists who now live and train in federation housing in Aigle, Switzerland, the cycling union’s home base. Last month, the federation also hosted the Afghanistan women’s cycling national championships, and more than four dozen Afghan women competed.Many of the members of the national team living in Australia share housing, shop and work together.Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York TimesGabriela Bhaskar/The New York Times“We must address a message of hope that sports is possible for women when it is quite difficult or impossible now in Afghanistan,” Lappartient said. “I just want to give this idea that the light is still on.”Without similar support from FIFA, the Afghan women’s soccer team is now looking for somewhere to play as an official national team. It’s considering joining the Confederation of Independent Football Associations, or Conifa, said Popal, the longtime Afghan women’s football program director. According to Conifa’s website, the organization “supports representatives of international football teams from nations, de facto nations, regions, minority people and sports isolated territories.”But the level and depth of competition at Conifa is not what the Afghans have been used to at the FIFA level, where 187 women’s teams compete. In comparison, Conifa’s website listed only three women’s programs in its rankings from July: FA Sapmi (from the Indigenous Sami people who inhabit part of Norway, Finland, Sweden and Russia), Northern Cyprus and Tibet.For the Afghan women, the goal is to return to play under FIFA’s umbrella. To get there, Popal, who lives in Denmark, has sent multiple emails to FIFA officials asking them for help reinstating the Afghan team. For months and months now, she has yet to receive an answer.Last month, she also filed an official grievance with FIFA, writing, “All the coaches and players need to have their right to play respected and FIFA has the responsibility to guarantee our right to represent Afghanistan, even in exile.” At least a half dozen current and former players have also filed grievances, she said.Again, no response.“Men took away the players’ right to play football in Afghanistan, and now FIFA is taking away the right for the players to play football anywhere else,” Popal said. “I’m so frustrated that women have no voice. Why do the women of Afghanistan always have to pay the price?”Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York TimesThe players’ bond goes beyond being teammates as they share meals and have sleepovers at each other’s houses. Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York TimesIn addition, the Afghan players have been hurt by the re-emergence of Keramuddin Keram, the former president of the Afghanistan Football Federation, Popal said. Keram, who was charged with sexually abusing players on the national team after Popal made the case public, had been hiding from authorities after his indictment. Now, with the Taliban in charge, he has returned to public life.“Our players have suffered so much in so many different ways, and it’s disgusting how they’ve been treated,” Popal said.Popal and the national team players said they didn’t want the I.O.C. or FIFA to bar the Afghan men’s team because the women’s team does not exist anymore. There should be a way for both the men’s and women’s teams to play, even while the Taliban is in control of the country, they said.If FIFA isn’t willing to help, Popal said she would like to establish a football association that includes all the players living in the Afghan diaspora and run that association from outside of Afghanistan. Other countries affected by war or countries that curtail the rights of women could follow her lead, she said.Already, Popal has ideas of running a training camp for the senior national team players in Australia, the under-17 players who ended up in England, the under-15 players who are now in Portugal — or any female Afghan soccer player. During that camp, there could be a tryout for the senior team that would theoretically play FIFA tournaments, she said.Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York TimesThe team won its second game as part of the Melbourne Victory club 10-0.Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York TimesFati, for one, would love that idea. Her dream as a young goalkeeper was to play in the World Cup. But right now, with the current restrictions on the national team and the practice the Afghan team needs to reach the sport’s highest level, the closest Fati will get is when the Women’s World Cup is held in Australia and New Zealand next year. Melbourne, Fati’s new home, will be a host city.While waiting to hear about its fate with FIFA, the Afghan team has been playing together at the professional club Melbourne Victory, with that club supporting the team’s travel, training and gear. The team competed in a state league and finished third in its division.But the players want so much more.“I am so mad at FIFA right now,” Fati said. “They are always saying that football is a family and that they take care of their football family. But that’s not the truth. They don’t care about us. They have forgotten us.”Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York TimesNajim Rahim More

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      Twists and Turns: A World Cup Fitness Coach Explains Pregame Warm-Ups

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      In the final hour before a game, teams’ activities can look as random as recess at the local elementary school. But there is order in the chaos.DOHA, Qatar — Watching players perform their pregame warm-ups on the field is one of the more delightful World Cup rituals. They’re skipping, they’re lunging, they’re sashaying. They’re stretching and sprinting. Some are running drills or rocketing balls at goals (or goalkeepers). Others are playing what looks like backyard keep-away, firing one-touch passes around a small circle as two players in the middle dodge and dart to try to win the ball.It can look as random as recess at the local elementary school (albeit if the kids were professional athletes), but there is organization in the chaos.To help us understand what is going on, we turned to Andrew Clark, the high-performance coordinator for Australia’s team, known as the Socceroos. (Currently No. 38 in the FIFA rankings, the team exceeded expectations by placing second in Group D; it will play Argentina on Saturday in the first knockout round.)Clark talked us through the importance of finding the sweet spot between too little and too much pregame preparation, and how to keep the players’ nerves from shredding before the match.This interview has been edited and condensed.What is the goal of the warm-up?The purpose of a warm-up is to prepare the players to perform in the most efficient way, to get them 100 percent ready physically and mentally for the match. There’s a whole lot of detail underneath that of raising body temperature, turning on decision-making and performing the sort of actions that are going to be required in a game. But we have to make sure that we don’t overdo it. We don’t want to overload the players and take away energy that’s needed for the match.Neil Hall/EPA, via ShutterstockDan Mullan/Getty ImagesMatthias Hangst/Getty ImagesWhy can’t you just do the exercises out of sight, inside the stadium?You want to give the players a sense of what they’re about to walk into. Little things like the wind, the temperature, how wet the grass is, what it feels like, the speed of the pitch. Where are the shadows on the field? Also, just being there and feeling the atmosphere in the stadium gives them energy and takes away a bit of their anxiety.All the players — the starting lineup as well as the substitutes — are out there, but they’re doing different things.We’ve got 26 players, but only 11 players can play, plus five players off the bench. For the players on the bench, we’re trying to make sure they’re ready in case they’re called at short notice during the match. But they’re warming up 50 minutes before kickoff, and it might be nearly two hours before they enter the field. What we need is basically just to make sure their systems are starting to turn on, their core temperature is up, their spine is activated.And then those players will go off and do something more relaxed, like the little circle groups that you see. If you push them too hard, they can go over the top, and you can actually kill their performance. So it’s very important that we keep them calm and relaxed.In a tournament situation, it’s a constant struggle to try to expose the players who aren’t playing in the matches to enough training. All of them have put in all the work to get to this point. And emotionally it’s difficult. They’re not getting the same gratification as the guy who scores the winner. We work really hard to make sure that we don’t neglect them, that we give them the best opportunity when the time comes.Fabrizio Bensch/ReutersWhat about the starting players?They’re going through a process of turning their body on and slowly working through the dynamic ranges of motion that they’ll be required to perform in the match. Then they’ll do some maximum-velocity type activities.And then we go into a game-based situation where it becomes spatial and decision making. Usually it’s some sort of position game — 5 versus 5, plus one spare player, or 4 versus 4, plus 3. We want to make sure they’re starting to make decisions similar to what they’re doing in the game.What about when they seem to be all doing different things?After that, you start to see things that are specific to certain players. Some players are finishing on goal, some players are crossing. We have our own ideas, but we take guidance from what a player needs in those last few minutes. We know what a central defender needs; we know what a midfielder needs, and we design activities that allow them to do that.The last thing we do is come together and do something as explosive as possible just to finish off. It’s called post-activation potentiation, or PAP, and it involves an excitation of the neuromuscular system. They walk into the changing room fully activated, fully charged and ready to start the game.What do they do back in the locker room, after the warm-up but before the game begins?There’s still 15 minutes to the match, so the challenge for a player is filling that 15-minute gap. It’s a chance to refuel, it’s a chance to go through some final checks, put their pads on, say a few words.Matthias Hangst/Getty ImagesWhat if they’re super-nervous — or not nervous enough?Once we’re spread out on the field, the stadium swallows up communication, so this is the time everyone can talk. You have to understand how they’re feeling, whether they need a rocket or whether, OK, there’s a lot of anxiety in this group, we need to be very calm. They can be either overstimulated or under-stimulated, and we try to balance that out, to get back to the midpoint where people are nice and stable and ready to perform their best.There’s less pressure on you than on teams from places like Argentina and Brazil. Does that make it any easier?Because of the weight of expectation placed on them, other teams can be overly anxious about needing to beat us. We see that as an opportunity. We prey on their anxiety. More

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      Referee Stéphanie Frappart Will Lead First All-Woman Team at World Cup

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      Some 92 years after the first World Cup game was held in Uruguay, Stéphanie Frappart is set to become the first woman to be the lead referee during a men’s match at the tournament. Frappart, a French referee, has been appointed to a refereeing crew of all women during a decisive group stage game between Costa Rica and Germany on Thursday.Frappart, 38, will lead alongside Neuza Back of Brazil and Mexico’s Karen Diaz Medina. It is a barrier-breaking moment which both coaches welcomed and suggested was overdue.“I trust her 100 percent,” Germany’s manager, Hansi Flick, said of Frappart’s appointment. “I think she deserves to be here due to her performance and achievements.”Costa Rica’s manager, Luis Fernando Suárez, said the same during his prematch news conference.“I am a great admirer of everything women have conquered,” he said. “And I like that they want to keep conquering things. And this is another step forward, especially in this sport, which is a very macho.”Frappart told French reporters she considered her selection as lead referee “a surprise.” Still, she has had a stellar career for nearly two decades. A native of Le Plessis-Bouchard, a remote town in the far north of the Paris region, she officiated her first game in 2003 at age 19 — a women’s match between the Henin-Beaumont F.C. and La Roche-sur-Yon. Within two decades, she was overseeing a Women’s World Cup final.Since then, she climbed the ladder like no woman before her, racking up accolades. In 2014, she became the first woman to be lead referee during a men’s Ligue 2 game, in France’s second division. She then refereed games in men’s Ligue 1, during international friendlies and in the Champions League.On Aug. 14, 2019, Frappart also became the first woman to referee the UEFA Super Cup between Chelsea and Liverpool. After the game, Jürgen Klopp, the Liverpool coach, praised her performance.“If we would have played like they whistled, then we would have won, 6-0,” he said.Frappart’s also refereed the Women’s World Cup final in 2019, when the United States beat the Netherlands to cap a tournament that was a major public forum for the U.S. team’s fight for equal pay and treatment from its national federation.Pierluigi Collina, the chairman of the FIFA referee committee who is known for being tough on colleagues, has high praise for Frappart. “I hope that there will be more Frapparts in the future and that this will no longer constitute an oddity or news story,” Collina told the Italian press in 2021. At the Globe Soccer Awards in 2019, Frappart won an award as best referee and Collina handed her the trophy.Frappart told French reporters that she was “aware” that her presence in the tournament is “going to inspire.” But she would prefer to let her whistle do the talking.“I don’t want to be judged differently because of my gender but because of my refereeing skills,” she said.In Qatar, Stephanie Frappart has already officiated as fourth referee for two matches during the group phase, when Mexico faced Poland and Portugal played Ghana. More

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      To Get the Best Perks at the World Cup, You Have to Be a V.V.I.P.

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      Every sports venue has its own tiered system of luxury. The World Cup in Qatar is providing a reminder that there is always a higher level.AL KHOR, Qatar — With its haughty aura of exclusivity, the red-carpeted, velvet-roped V.I.P. entrance at Al Bayt Stadium seems designed to inspire maximal awe and envy. As regular fans were herded through their gates at the England-United States game on Friday, the V.I.P. guests were welcomed by an exotic figure dressed as some sort of antelope, covered head to toe in shimmering golden squares.(When pressed on its identity, the figure, who was not supposed to speak, muttered under its breath: “Oryx.”)But this is the Qatar World Cup, where there is something even better than the V.I.P. entrance: the V.V.I.P. entrance.Not that it is available, or even fully visible, to you. Flanked by barriers and cut off from the normal road system, Al Bayt’s V.V.I.P. entrance is a sweeping thoroughfare on which the most important fans, starting with Qatar’s emir, who arrives by helicopter with his entourage and then hops into a Mercedes, are chauffeured directly into their special enclave in the stadium. That way, they are never required to interact with, or even occupy the same general space as, regular fans.Aat Al Thumama stadium, the most high-profile fans enter on a red carpet.Tasneem Alsultan for The New York TimesOn the way to Education City Stadium, drivers select a lane based on their V.I.P. status.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesEvery sports venue has its tiered system of luxury — the owner’s box, the business lounges, the special-access elevators, the ridiculously expensive seats, the even more ridiculously expensive seats. But at this year’s World Cup, the convergence of two entities awash in luxury and entitlement — Qatar, where all power and privilege flow from the emir, and FIFA, soccer’s global governing body, with its vast wealth and patronage network — provides a bracing reminder that there is always a more rarefied degree of exclusive.The main difference between the luxury and non-luxury seats at this year’s World Cup is alcohol. In a shock to fans (and to Budweiser, the official beer of the tournament since 1986), Qatar reversed itself and decreed just before the event began that the sale of alcoholic beer (indeed, alcohol of any kind) would be banned in and around the stadiums.A Brief Guide to the 2022 World CupCard 1 of 9What is the World Cup? More