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    North Korea’s Han Kwang-song Returns to International Soccer

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    Han Kwang-song’s recent appearances in World Cup qualifiers were his first ones overseas since 2020, when U.N. sanctions led to an involuntary career break.When the North Korean men’s soccer team took the field for two 2026 World Cup qualifying matches this month, close observers noticed an important roster change.Han Kwang-song, a high-profile striker, was back, more than three years after vanishing from public view for reasons beyond his control: United Nations-imposed sanctions on North Korean nationals over Pyongyang’s nuclear program.Mr. Han’s story is a rare case of North Korea sanctions reverberating through professional soccer. It also shows how enforcement of U.N. sanctions against individuals varies by country.The government in Italy did not deport Mr. Han, now 25, while he was playing professional soccer there. But once he moved to Qatar, the Qatari government did.“The basic story makes sense; the surprising part is that Qatar complied with the U.N. resolutions,” said Marcus Noland, an expert on North Korean sanctions and executive vice president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington.A prodigy with ‘superhero’ statusMr. Han’s early success was partly a product of North Korea’s push to cultivate soccer talent. After attending a prestigious soccer school founded by the country’s leader, Kim Jong-un, Mr. Han trained in Spain before turning pro in Italy.He quickly made an impression in Europe as a speedy forward with an eye for goal. Back home, North Korea’s official news agency praised him after a 2019 Asian Cup qualifier as “the player that experts and enthusiasts paid the most attention to.”“In North Korea, he’s a superhero,” said Kim Heung-Tae, a professor of sports science at Daejin University in South Korea who follows the North’s soccer program.But in 2017, as punishment for the North’s sixth nuclear weapons test, the United Nations Security Council ordered all North Korean nationals working abroad to be repatriated by December 2019 — a strategy for preventing financing of the North’s military.Mr. Han, one of several North Koreans playing overseas in professional soccer leagues at the time, was among the targets.Sanctions meet realityBut the Italian authorities did not repatriate Mr. Han by the 2019 deadline, United Nations Security Council reports show. Instead, Juventus, the Italian club where he had been earning more than half a million euros a year, struck a deal in early 2020 to send him to Al-Duhail, a soccer team in Qatar, on a five-year contract worth about 4.3 million euros, about $4.7 million.Though a Security Council panel of experts on North Korea contacted Italy and Qatar immediately after that transfer, it was not canceled, and Juventus accepted a transfer fee from the Qatari club, according to the U.N. The panel said in a report that it later “reiterated to Qatar the relevant resolutions concerning the case.”That summer, Mr. Han stopped appearing for Al-Duhail. In January 2021, Qatar’s mission to the United Nations said in a letter to the U.N. panel that Mr. Han had left Qatar after having his contract “terminated” by the club — and that Qatar’s actions reflected its commitments to Security Council resolutions about North Korean nationals who earn income abroad.At the time, the coronavirus pandemic was raging, and North Korea’s borders were sealed. Qatar said in its letter, a copy of which was included in a U.N. report, that Mr. Han had left the country on Qatar Airways Flight 131 — a nonstop flight to Rome.‘He’s probably been training all along’Details of Mr. Han’s movements since leaving Qatar, including the timing and circumstances of his return to North Korea, remain scarce. According to Transfermarkt, a website that tracks soccer players and their contracts, he has not played for a professional club since July 2021.Also unclear is whether any of Mr. Han’s earnings ever made it back to the North Korean government.Mr. Han signed an agreement in 2020 with a Qatari bank, where he had an account at the time, pledging not to transfer any money to his home country, according to a U.N. report. Still, Professor Kim said, North Korean agents had most likely accompanied him everywhere he went overseas and restricted how he spent his earnings.Neither FIFA, the governing body of soccer; nor the Italian or Qatari Foreign Ministries; nor North Korea’s soccer association or the Asian Football Confederation immediately responded to requests for comment. Nor did Al-Duhail, Juventus or Cagliari, another team that Mr. Han played for in Italy.Mr. Han’s return to competition this month was reported earlier by CNN and the website NK News, among other outlets.Professor Kim said that the pandemic had probably curtailed many athletic events in North Korea, where the long-lasting border closing crippled the nation’s economy. But soccer is the country’s most popular sport, and Professor Kim said that domestic competitions had probably been held regularly in recent months.As for Mr. Han, Professor Kim said, “he’s probably been training all along.”Rather than joining another professional league abroad, Mr. Han is likely to focus on preparing for the 2026 World Cup, Professor Kim said. He added that North Korea was competitive in its region and had a good chance of qualifying, in part because FIFA has nearly doubled the number of slots for Asian countries at that tournament, which will be held in the United States, Canada and Mexico.Max Canzi, who coached Mr. Han in Italy for Cagliari’s under-19 team, told CNN that he was “very happy” that the striker had returned to international competition for the World Cup qualifying match against Syria in Saudi Arabia on Nov. 16.As Mr. Han resumes his career, Mr. Canzi added that he was “very curious about the level of his performance after being out for so much time.”Mr. Han was substituted at halftime in the Saudi Arabia match, which North Korea lost, 1-0. But five days later in Yangon, Myanmar, he contributed to a 6-1 win over the home country with a signature headed goal. More

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      An Italian Town Hopes Its Basketball Patron Advances to National Status

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      Porretta Terme, in central Italy, is passionate about basketball, and is pressing the Vatican to officially recognize its local saint as Italy’s patron of the sport.PORRETTA TERME, Italy — In the chapel of a small hillside sanctuary in Porretta Terme — a handsome town in central Italy known for the healing powers of its thermal waters — a single basketball-shaped window, its panes curved like seams, poured light on walls filled with basketball jerseys.On a table, a notebook contained pages of devotionals, including gratitude for a healed meniscus and prayers to “win the championship in the next few years.” The back wall bore a bas-relief of a dying basketball player, palming a ball in his left hand as the Virgin Mary watched his earthly clock run down.“I offer you the joy of every bucket,” Don Filippo Maestrello, a center-sized local priest, prayed to the Madonna of the Bridge in the Chapel of the Basketball Players.A window designed like a basketball inside the Chapel of the Basketball Players, in the Madonna of the Bridge Church.Camilla Ferrari for The New York TimesMemorabilia and a sculpture of a player inside the chapel.Camilla Ferrari for The New York TimesThe founder of the local basketball association and the town’s tourism and sport official bowed their heads at his side as he continued, imploring the Madonna to “guide our shot in the right direction” and to “bless and protect my team.”Residents of Porretta have for centuries venerated the Madonna of the Bridge — named after a 16th-century drawing of the Virgin Mary on a rock near a bridge over the nearby Reno River. Over the years, the rock became a site of devotion, eventually inspiring the building of the sanctuary where Don Maestrello prayed.Locals credited the Madonna of the Bridge with performing miracles, including saving a 17th-century pilgrim on the bridge by stopping bullets fired by a Florentine assassin.But more recently they say she has taken her talents, and divine interventions, to the basketball court. After a decades-long campaign by local basketball fanatics, the Italian Bishops Conference in May gave its approval for her to be officially recognized as the patron saint of Italian basketball.The application now sits with the Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments, which declined to comment on the patron’s progress.Guglielmo Bernardi, the former head of the local basketball association who has been a driving force behind the effort, said he understood the Vatican step to be a lay up.Guglielmo Bernardi in Porretta this month.Camilla Ferrari for The New York Times“A formality,” he said, as he recently walked to the town’s main square, lined with butcher shops, tortellini restaurants, a medieval tower and stores selling fabric, slippers and hiking shoes. The long piazza, he said, had also served as a makeshift outdoor court for a popular regional basketball tournament.“We were famous for the injuries,” said Mr. Bernardi, pointing out the uneven spots on the street.Mr. Bernardi traces Porretta’s basketball passion, loosely, back to Italian prisoners of war who learned the game from their American captors. By the early 1950s, Porretta had emerged as the national center of women’s basketball in a hoops-obsessed part of Italy. In 1956 a religious ceremony consecrated the Chapel of the Basketball Players and a long procession of players carried torches and votive candles to the shrine.Since then, the town has become a capital of youth basketball with tournaments in honor of the chapel’s consecration. Local and regional players started making pilgrimages to the Madonna for game-day assistance, leaving offerings of jerseys just as their ancestors left medals.Nicolò Savigni, the local councilman for sport and tourism, said Bologna’s Virtus team came to pray before a big game — and won. In 2020, Meo Sacchetti, the coach of Italy’s national basketball team, came to the chapel and paid his respects to the Madonna. The team qualified for the Olympics that year, the first time in 17 years.“She surely did look down on the national team,” Mr. Sacchetti said.“If that’s not a miracle,” said Mr. Bernardi.Pennants for various teams, including Virtus from Bologna, hanging in a hotel in town. Camilla Ferrari for The New York TimesThe altar of the church.Camilla Ferrari for The New York TimesMr. Bernardi and other advocates, who have pressed for signatures and testimonials in favor of the Madonna’s application to be a national patron of hoops, have powerful fans in their corner.Cardinal Matteo Maria Zuppi, the archbishop of Bologna, has been called “Cardinal Basketball” by the local newspaper. In 2016, in the middle of a major local basketball tournament, he celebrated an Easter Mass in honor of the Madonna and traveled to Porretta to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the basketball chapel.“Life is like a basketball game,” he said then.Francis himself has used basketball imagery. In 2017, he spoke about a “basketball player who plants his pivot foot on the ground and makes movements to protect the ball or finds room to pass or make a move to the hoop.” The pope continued, “For us, that foot nailed to the soil around which we pivot is the cross of Christ.”For Porretta, it’s also a foothold for economic development.The current town administration recently reached a deal with a Bologna corporation to update its network of thermal baths, which might draw more seniors looking to soothe their aching bones. But official recognition of the Madonna could attract more youthful pilgrims, said Enrico Della Torre, 33, a local official in charge of economic development, as he walked down the main street on a recent morning.Encouraging younger visitors “is the most important thing for the rebirth of these towns,” he said.For a town of 4,000 people, Porretta already has a lot going on. For more than 30 years, fans of soul music have made pilgrimages to the Porretta Soul Festival, when the stone walls are brightened with murals of Sam Cooke, Otis Redding, Booker T. and the M.G.’s. and other stars.Practicing on the local court.Camilla Ferrari for The New York TimesWalking through town, Mr. Bernardi — who is also organizing a Prog Rock festival in Porretta — bumped into Graziano Uliani, 72, the gregarious founder of the soul festival, and a basketball fan too. Mr. Uliani talked about famous basketball players he has met while following musicians in Memphis and Los Angeles. He also plugged his festival until Mr. Bernardi, noting the time, said he was on his way to the sanctuary to meet the priest, Don Maestrello.In his car, with a vintage jersey in the back seat, he passed the run-down thermal baths where he said many locals worked in their youth. He crossed the bridge over the Reno river to the domed sanctuary and waited outside for the priest and Mr. Savigni, the councilman.It was cold and quiet except for the sound of the river’s rushing water. A local man drove by and told Mr. Bernardi that the Madonna had saved his life for a second time after a second heart attack.After Don Maestrello’s prayers in the sanctuary, Mr. Savigni confided “we are planning to build a big arena in honor of the patron.”Later in the day, the three men drove to a local gym where the organizer of a basketball school had prayed to the Madonna for intercession so that the sport could survive coronavirus lockdowns. Children were taking lessons with Francesco Della Torre, a former Italian league player and the brother of Enrico Della Torre, the economic development official. (“To beat him I would have needed days in the chapel,” Enrico Della Torre said.)A ball bounced toward Don Maestrello. He took a shot from the corner. It was an airball.“When I step on the court everyone is terrified,” the tall prelate said. “And then the first pass happens.”Don Maestrello was more at home in the large parish church in the center of town, where he showed off basketball trophies kept in a storage room for a potential museum to the patron saint. Mr. Bernardi opened a gray suitcase of basketball jerseys, some signed by entire N.B.A. teams. With reverence he extracted a Kobe Bryant Lakers jersey, apparently signed by the superstar, who partly grew up nearby and who spoke Italian.A Los Angeles Lakers jersey autographed by Kobe Bryant is among the memorabilia in the town.Camilla Ferrari for The New York TimesBasketball memorabilia.Camilla Ferrari for The New York TimesWhen Mr. Bryant died in a helicopter crash in 2020, Mr. Bernardi said, “All of us said a prayer at the sanctuary. For us he was an idol.” He whispered Mr. Bryant’s nickname under his breath. “Black Mamba.”He kept pulling out jerseys signed by players from N.B.A. teams, sent as offerings, through a well-connected associate, to the Madonna, and talked about the potential of Porretta’s Madonna going global.“The national discussion does not satisfy us,” Mr. Bernardi said. “Either show us another patron saint, or it’s this one. We’re ambitious.”Mr. Savigni, the tourism official, caught the spirit. He ran through his dream team of potential N.B.A. devotees to the Madonna and stopped short in the hall.“Is Michael Jordan Catholic?” he asked. More

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      in Tennis

      The Whirlwind of a Rising Daniil Medvedev

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      He won his first Grand Slam this year and is ranked No. 2, and his impressed peers call him a genius and an octopus.Watching Daniil Medvedev speak is like watching a tornado from inside Dorothy’s farmhouse in “The Wizard of Oz.” His thoughts whirl at such a rapid clip that you do not even have time to run to a storm cellar.Then it becomes clear: Medvedev, the world No. 2 and winner of this year’s United States Open, answers questions a little like he plays tennis — fast and furious, seemingly without stopping to take a breath.“The most important thing is that I’m trying to be myself on the court,” he said on a video chat from Paris when told that his peers have described him as a chess master, a genius and an octopus. “I’m just trying to play good tennis and win matches. Then I let other people decide what they think.”In September, Medvedev, 25, of Russia, served as the ultimate spoiler when he upset the world No. 1, Novak Djokovic, 6-4, 6-4, 6-4 to win his first major at the U.S. Open. Djokovic had already won the Australian and French Opens and Wimbledon in 2021, and a win at the U.S. Open would have made him just the sixth singles player, and third man, to capture the Grand Slam. Medvedev’s win also denied Djokovic a record-breaking 21st career major. Instead, he, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal are still tied with 20 majors apiece.“He has definitely improved a lot, and the Grand Slam win at the U.S. Open did not come as a surprise to me,” Djokovic said. “He has a tremendous serve, and he hits his spots in the box incredibly well. That’s the biggest weapon of his game, without a doubt.“Then, of course, that backhand is very flat, and he’s just as strong as a wall from that side,” Djokovic added. “He just doesn’t miss. And he’s improved his forehand a lot. He’s very professional and very smart on the court. He’s game savvy. He understands how to use the court, how to position himself when he’s defending, when he’s attacking. His net game has improved as well, so he doesn’t hesitate to come forward. Nowadays he’s become a more all-around player, more complete and, as a result, he’s a Grand Slam champion.”Djokovic, right, defeated Medvedev, 4-6, 6-3, 6-3, to win the Paris Masters last week.Justin Setterfield/Getty ImagesMedvedev is trying to defend his championship at the season-ending Nitto ATP Finals, which begins Sunday and has moved from London to Turin, Italy, this year. Last year, Medvedev beat Alexander Zverev, Djokovic, Diego Schwartzman, Nadal and Dominic Thiem to capture the title.When Medvedev first ascended to No. 2 in March, it was, in large part, because he won his last 10 matches of 2020 and his first 10 of 2021. He was finally stopped by Djokovic in the Australian Open final in February.“Daniil has perfected the game that he’s playing that not many players can play,” said the fourth-ranked Stefanos Tsitsipas, who has lost to Medvedev six of the eight times they have played. “I call him ‘octopus’ for a reason. He’s just able to get balls that not many people are able to.”It is odd, then, that Medvedev constantly refers to his flagging self confidence.“There was a moment when I was not confident in myself,” he said. “I was doubting a few things about my physical abilities, my tennis abilities. I was in doubt, which is what tennis is all about. Then I won these two amazing tournaments [2020 Rolex Paris Masters and Nitto ATP Finals], beat a lot of top players, got a boost of confidence where I was like, ‘OK, I believe in myself. There is no reason not to believe anymore.’”“I call him ‘octopus’ for a reason,” said Stefanos Tsitsipas of Medvedev. “He’s just able to get balls that not many people are able to.”Asanka Brendon Ratnayake/ReutersMedvedev was never a prodigy. He was not ranked No. 1 in the juniors, never even went beyond the third round at any of the major junior tournaments. But that did not stop him from aspiring to play among the best.“I was never even in the quarters of a slam,” Medvedev said. “But when you come to these Grand Slams, no matter if you’re ranked 30, 20 or I think I was 13 at the max, you see all these top players that you look at on TV and they actually do normal things. They eat, they take a shower, they go play matches, they can even laugh with you juniors. And you actually feel in a way that you belong with this group.”Before Medvedev ever played tennis, he said he was known in the family for his temper tantrums around the house. His two older sisters, Julia and Elena, were powerless to control him.“I remember when I was 4 years old, I was a little bit ‘wanty,’” Medvedev said with a chuckle. “Like if I wanted something I could start crying. I think that’s the part that could sometimes show on the tennis court, especially when I was younger, because the thing is, what do you want on the tennis court? You want to win.”Medevedev has proved his petulance more than once in his pro career. In 2016, he was defaulted from a Challenger match in Savannah, Ga., for suggesting that the chair umpire was favoring his opponent based on race.Then, during the 2019 U.S. Open, Medvedev was booed by the New York crowd during a match against Feliciano Lopez when he got a warning from the umpire for tossing his racket and then snatching a towel from a ball man. As the fans roared their disapproval, Medvedev tugged on his ear, imploring them to continue.Then, during his post-match interview, Medvedev told the crowd: “Thank you all, guys, because your energy tonight gave me the win. If you were not here, guys, I would probably lose the match. So I want all of you to know, when you sleep tonight, I won because of you.”Medvedev was booed by the New York crowd during his match against Feliciano Lopez at the 2019 U.S. Open.Dominick Reuter/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe crowd responded by booing even louder. Medvedev won his next three matches before he was beaten by Nadal in the final.Just before the start of the Paris Masters in October, Medvedev and Djokovic had a two-hour practice session at the Mouratoglou Academy on the French Riviera. It was the first time the two had seen each other since their U.S. Open final in September. They chatted for 15 minutes after the practice, but neither one mentioned their encounter in New York.“It’s normal, no matter if you lose or win you don’t speak about these matches because there’s going to be one loser who’s not going to want to speak about it,” said Medvedev, who also lost to Djokovic last Sunday in the final of the Paris Masters. “And when I win I also don’t want to say, ‘Hey, remember …’”When Medvedev was about 14, he said, he read the book “Eragon” by Christopher Paolini. He was so captivated by the fantastical story about magic, glory and power that he read all 528 pages in three nights, at the same time imagining he was part of that world.Now that he is enmeshed in his own fantastical world, Medvedev refuses to revel in it.“I don’t look back too much in my life,” he said. “I like to think about the present and the future more than the past, even if the past is good. I use it more as confidence, to say, ‘Wow, I managed to win, to beat Novak in the final of a slam.’ I’m going to use it more if I have doubt in my career, which can happen.“If you lose first round or quarters of some tournaments, maybe two in a row, you’re always going to have questions, like ‘Am I going to be able to come back?’ That’s when you can look back at this match and say to yourself, ‘Wow, it’s possible.’” More

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      in Tennis

      It’s Been a Long Season on the ATP Tour

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      With injuries and fatigue, it has taken its toll on the players, who say they will work through the challenges during these finals.Winning on the ATP Tour means surviving perpetual battles of endurance inside a war of attrition. Relentless baseline rallies lead to longer, more draining matches in a season that runs nearly year-round.There was additional concern that after the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, this year’s schedule might take an even greater toll as players get back into shape.“Our season is too long given the physicality of today’s tennis,” the third-ranked Alexander Zverev said in late October. “We don’t really have time to let our injuries heal.”Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Dominic Thiem were sidelined by injuries this year, and at the Paris Masters last week, the fourth-ranked Stefanos Tsitsipas retired with a nagging arm injury. Tsitsipas said he dropped out to preserve his shot at an even bigger prize, the year-end Nitto ATP Finals.The finals, which moves this year to Turin, Italy, from London, is what the game’s elite have been grinding to reach. The tournament has the game’s top eight players split into two groups of four that confront each other in a round-robin format before two from each half advance to the semifinals.Stefanos Tsitsipas retired from his Paris Masters match with an arm injury.Christophe Archambault/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBrad Gilbert, an ESPN analyst, said the move to Turin should not impact the style of play because, like London’s O2 Arena where the event was played last year, it is indoors with a hard court made by GreenSet, which has produced relatively slow, low-bouncing surfaces.“So we could have more long rallies,” he said. He said that the week off between the Paris Masters and the ATP Finals should benefit the players if there were long points. (This final does not even end the season, with the Davis Cup Finals coming a few days later.)Paul Annacone, who coached Pete Sampras and Federer and is a Tennis Channel analyst, said the players who made it to the ATP Finals feel a sense of accomplishment. “They understand the magnitude of this event, featuring the best of best, so they’ll do whatever they can to win.”The players said that they would indeed play through their fatigue after a grueling season. Zverev, Tsitsipas and Andrey Rublev also said they would not change tactics with bigger serves or ground strokes, more drop shots or a race to get to the net — just for the sake of ending points quickly.“I’ll play the way I play,” Zverev said, who at the United States Open semifinal against Novak Djokovic won a 53-shot rally in a game where the other five points averaged nearly 20 shots each.Novak Djokovic is ranked No. 1 and will be favored to win the ATP Finals.Sarah Stier/Getty ImagesTsitsipas said his game had not changed just because of the time of year, so the players strategies would not budge much either. “If there’s some sort of difference it will be very small.”Rublev said that Tsitsipas, who had the ability to charge the net and the finesse to win on drop shots, was perhaps best suited to change his game if the match demanded it, whereas he was set in his ways. “I’m an aggressive player, and I like to be the one to lead the rally, to dictate the point,” Rublev said. “This is the goal for all the matches.”The home crowd should give an advantage to Matteo Berrettini, ranked No. 7 in the world, the only Italian in the final.“Berrettini has a huge serve and a huge forehand, so he can keep points short,” Annacone said. “And this is a new event for Italy, featuring one of their top young superstars, so I expect the crowd to sound like a concert of Italian fanatics. Berrettini could be right there with the top players.”Annacone said Daniil Medvedev and Zverev had a strong shot at winning because they had proved their stamina, playing excellent tennis since the summer, adding that they had big serves and first strikes so they could shorten points without changing tactics.And Zverev proved his staying power in those long U.S. Open rallies, while Medvedev thrived on counterpunching and could wear tired opponents down, Annacone said. By contrast, Tsitsipas and Rublev have faltered in the second half of the season, making them less likely to survive this gantlet.Still, Djokovic, the world No. 1, remains the favorite. While second-ranked Medvedev beat him in the finals of the U.S. Open on a hard court, and indoors in last year’s ATP Finals, Djokovic has not lost an ATP match in the last two years to any of the other competitors. (Zverev beat him in the Olympics.)Djokovic also took time off after the U.S. Open, meaning he may be fresher than his rivals, which Annacone said could prove crucial.“It will come down to who is freshest and healthiest,” he said, “and can find their form that week.” More

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      in Soccer

      ‘Football Is Like Food’: Afghan Female Soccer Players Find a Home in Italy

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      Members of a team from Herat left behind the lives they had built in Afghanistan in hopes that they can build a future where they can play, and thrive.AVEZZANO, Italy — Two days after Taliban fighters seized Herat, Afghanistan’s third-largest city, the Italian journalist Stefano Liberti received a message via Facebook: “Hi sir, we are in trouble. Can you help us?”The message last month came from Susan, 21, the former captain of Bastan, a women’s soccer team that had once been the subject of a documentary by Mr. Liberti and his colleague Mario Poeta.“Football is like food to me,” Susan would say later, and the fear that she might never play again under Taliban rule, “made me feel as though I was dead.” Like others interviewed in this article, only her first name is used to protect her identity.Thirteen days after she made contact with Mr. Liberti, Susan arrived in Italy along with two of her teammates, their coach and several family members. They touched down at Rome’s main airport after a flight made possible by the two journalists, a Florence-based NGO, several Italian lawmakers and officials in the Italian Defense and Foreign Ministries.The Herat group, 16 people in all, transited through a tent camp run by the Italian Red Cross in Avezzano, in the Apennine Mountains, where more than 1,400 Afghans evacuated to Italy have quarantined in recent weeks.Susan lined up with other Afghan refugees for a clothes distribution at the Red Cross camp.Fabio Bucciarelli for The New York TimesLike so many Afghans, the players left behind the lives they had built in order to make the trip. Susan halted her university studies in English literature to leave the country with her parents, two sisters and a brother.Women were banned from sports during the first Taliban era. Even after the group was ousted from power in 2001, playing sports continued to be a challenge for Afghan women, and for the men who helped them.In “Herat Football Club” the journalists’ 2017 documentary about the team, Najibullah, the coach, said that he had been repeatedly threatened by the Taliban for coaching young women.The Taliban’s return to power has raised fears not only that restrictions on sports will be reimposed, but also that the female athletes who emerged in the past 20 years will be subject to reprisals.Khalida Popal, the former captain of the national women’s team who left Afghanistan in 2011 and now lives in Copenhagen, used social and mainstream media last month to advise women who’d played sports in Afghanistan to shut down their social media accounts, remove any online presence and even burn their uniforms.“They have nobody to go to, to seek protection, to ask for help if they are in danger,” she said in an interview with Reuters. Another Herat player, Fatema, 19, also left behind her university studies, in public administration and policy. She arrived in Italy with a brother, but her father fell ill while they tried to get through the crowds at the Kabul airport, so he and her mother remained behind.“They said to me, ‘You go, go for your future, for football, for your education,’” Fatema said.“Playing football makes me feel powerful and an example for other girls, to show that you can do anything you want to do,” Fatema said. She expressed hope that would be the case in Italy, too. “I want to make it my country now,” she said.Fatema at the tent camp in Avezzano last week. “Playing football makes me feel powerful and an example for other girls,” she said.Fabio Bucciarelli for The New York TimesThe oldest of the three players, Maryam, 23, had already earned a degree in management and had worked as a driving school instructor in Herat. She saw herself as a role model, inspiring young women by example “because of football, because of driving.”“I was an active member of society,” Maryam said, a role she was certain she could not have under the Taliban.Maryam was the only team member to arrive in Italy alone, though she said she was hoping that her family would join her. “It’s hard for me to smile,” she said. “But I hope my future will be good, certainly better than under the Taliban.”The players say that many of their Herat teammates are still in Kabul, hoping to find transit to Australia, where some players on Afghanistan’s women’s national team have been evacuated.Last Friday, the three women and their families were relocated to the Italian city of Florence. In Italy, the national soccer federation, some soccer clubs and the captain of the national team, Sara Gama, have offered their support to the young Afghan players.Administering a coronavirus swab test at the Avezzano camp this month.Fabio Bucciarelli for The New York Times“There’s been a lot of solidarity,” Mr. Liberti, the documentary maker, said.And on a warm afternoon last week, Fatema and Maryam did something they had never done before: They kicked a ball around with a couple of boys.Asked how it felt, Maryam grinned broadly and gave a thumbs up.“It felt good,” added Fatema. “People didn’t look at us as though we had done something wrong.” More

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      in Soccer

      The Two Ciro Immobiles

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      The spearhead of Italy’s attack is either its secret weapon or its fatal flaw. At age 31, it is still not clear which.The raw facts are, on the surface, overwhelming. In the last five seasons, Ciro Immobile has scored 26 goals, then 41 goals, followed by 19, 39 and 25. Over the course of that run, he has won the Golden Boot — the prize given annually to Europe’s most prolific goal-scorer — once, and tied the record for the most goals scored in a single season in Italy’s top league, Serie A.The context of those facts only serves to embellish them. Immobile does not play for an all-conquering superpower, the sort of team that carves out a dozen chances a game and regularly dispatches overmatched opponents by four- and five-goal margins. He plays, instead, for Lazio, a side constructed — by superclub standards — on a shoestring.And he operates in Serie A, a league which no less an authority than Cristiano Ronaldo regards as the most difficult in the world in which to score goals. A league in which Ashley Cole, among the greatest defenders of his era, was regarded as being surprisingly naïve, tactically.The conclusion, then, should be obvious. Immobile, 31, belongs in the front rank of contemporary forwards, perhaps not quite an equal to the only four players in Europe’s major leagues to have scored more than him in the last five years — Lionel Messi, Ronaldo, Robert Lewandowski and Harry Kane — but not out of his depth in their company.Immobile has scored twice at Euro 2020 for Italy, which cruised in the group stage and faces Austria on Saturday in the round of 16.Pool photo by Andreas SolaroThat, certainly, is how he looks up close. Simone Inzaghi, Immobile’s coach at Lazio for the last five years, regards him as “one of the three or five best attackers” in Italy in the last two decades. On his goal totals alone, he should have been in contention for a Ballon D’Or.From a distance, though, everything changes. Immobile’s name is rarely mentioned when lists of the finest attackers of his era are compiled. On the eve of Euro 2020, the most pressing question asked of Italy’s coach was whether his team could hope to fare well in the tournament when it was lacking a top-class forward. And no, Immobile, the striker who had scored 123 goals in 177 games, did not count.A few weeks ago, as the Italian season drew to a close, Immobile had a brief and vaguely unbecoming spat with Urbano Cairo, the president of Torino. Cairo had, at one time, regarded the forward as “a protégé.” It was a prolific season in Turin, in fact, that had first made Immobile one of Italy’s hottest properties.But Cairo was annoyed to see Immobile, in his view, diving to win a penalty in a game between Torino and Lazio, so he waited for him by the locker room to make his feelings known. That night, Immobile posted a message to his Instagram account denying Cairo’s accusation. “Everybody knows who Ciro Immobile is,” he wrote.He was almost right. Everybody thinks they know who Ciro Immobile is. It is just that not everybody thinks the same thing.The Real CiroThe conversation, as Monchi remembers it, was “very open, very honest, very mature.” Five months earlier, in July 2015, he had brokered the deal to bring Immobile to Sevilla from Borussia Dortmund. As Sevilla’s sporting director, Monchi had been looking for a third striker, one “with a different profile” from the two the club currently employed: the rangy Fernando Llorente and the explosive, hard-running Kevin Gameiro.Immobile — who describes his own gifts as “strength, tenacity and cunning” — fit the bill. Monchi, renowned as among the shrewdest pilots of the transfer market, spotted the potential for a deal. Immobile’s service were no longer needed at Dortmund; Sevilla could obtain him on an initial loan, and later, and permanently, at a bargain price if he met certain performance clauses.Instead, the striker would go down as one of Monchi’s rare missteps. He did not score his first goal for the club until November. He made only a handful of appearances. And then, early in January, he requested a meeting with Monchi and Unai Emery, the club’s coach at the time, to discuss his future.Immobile explained that he felt he needed a change of scenery; he admitted that he was not performing as he should. “He was worried about the European Championship,” Monchi said of the 2016 tournament then looming just over the horizon. “He wanted to be in the Italy squad, and he knew that to do that he had to be playing. And he was not playing enough here.” Sevilla acquiesced, and allowed him to join Torino on loan.“There are two reason transfers go wrong,” Monchi said. “One is that the player does not find the confidence they need at their new club, or in a new league. That is especially important for strikers. And the second is that the style of play of the team does not suit them. I think both applied to Ciro.” To him, it was just one of those things. He knows that, sometimes, deals just do not work out. He and Sevilla moved on.Immobile has been a prolific scorer at Lazio, but his ventures outside Italy did not go as well.Pool photo by Friedemann VogelFor Immobile, the consequences lasted a bit longer. He had spent 18 months abroad, and they had been an unmitigated failure. At Dortmund, he would later say, he felt “unsupported” by the club. In eight months, he told Gazzetta dello Sport’s SportWeek magazine, not one of his teammates had invited him out for dinner.Dortmund was “cold,” there was “nothing to do,” and while the coach who signed him, Jürgen Klopp, had insisted on providing him with a German translator, his replacement, Thomas Tuchel, removed that privilege, insisting on holding even one-on-one meetings in German, a language that Immobile found “impossible” to learn.More pertinent, he found himself unable to cope with the weight of expectations. He had been pinpointed as a replacement for the Bayern Munich-bound Lewandowski and he sensed his predecessor’s gold-fringed shadow at every turn. “The error I made at Dortmund was that Lewandowski left and I felt the responsibility,” he said.Immobile looks back on his time in Germany with regret. He and Klopp encountered each other at “the wrong time in their careers,” he has said. Had the timing been different, been right, then he feels that Klopp’s percussive style would have suited him perfectly. As it was, Klopp never had chance — in Immobile’s words — to work with “the real Ciro.”And yet, for many, that was precisely what Klopp, and later Monchi, had seen. Those unhappy 18 months came to define Immobile’s career, to set his reputation. No matter what he did afterward, no matter how many goals he scored in Italy, no matter what the context, the fact that he had failed in Dortmund and in Seville meant his fate was sealed. Everybody thought they knew who Ciro Immobile was.Italy’s coach, Roberto Mancini, at times seemed to be searching for any striker who was not Immobile.Mike Hewitt/Getty ImagesRevengeUntil almost the last moment, the one part of Italy’s team that remained a mystery — to Roberto Mancini, its coach, as much as anyone — was the attack.Over the course of his three years in charge of the national side, Mancini has experimented with various systems, and various options: the young Moise Kean and the experienced Fabio Quagliarella, the traditional Andrea Belotti and the unorthodox Federico Bernadeschi. From the outside, Mancini has looked, at times, like a man searching for a way not to play Immobile upfront.That is not because Mancini doubts whether Immobile is right for international soccer — he has no doubts as to his ability — but if international soccer is right for him. “If we played 38 games over the season, Ciro would score 25 goals,” Mancini said a few weeks before naming his squad for Euro 2020. “It is tougher when you only join up two or three times a year.”That is as close to a consensus as there is on Immobile: He can be devastating, but he needs everything to feel just right, on the field and off it. At Lazio, he has found it. Inzaghi designed the team to suit Immobile’s strengths, deploying Luis Alberto and Joaquin Correa as foils for his darting runs, his elusive movement, his hunter’s instinct.Just as important, his family is settled in Rome. He feels valued by the club — Lazio’s president, Claudio Lotito, organized a private audience with the Pope a few months ago — and he has a grander animating force.Italy may advance only as far as Immobile can carry it.Pool photo by Andreas SolaroIn 2020, when Immobile won the Golden Boot, the first player not based in Spain to win the prize since 2014, he admitted that it was “a kind of revenge.” Quite who he was taking it on was not clear — it was “not against anyone personally,” he said — but it seemed fair to read it as a riposte to all who doubted him, who took the disappointments of Dortmund and Seville as shorthand for his career, who did not see the player that Immobile saw in himself.That award, perhaps, started to shift the debate in his favor just a little. Five goals in five games in the Champions League last season will have helped, too; that is the stage, after all, on which soccer now ordains greatness, and it has been to Immobile’s detriment that he has graced it only rarely.Euro 2020, then, offers him a precious chance to prove his point, to demonstrate that Italy does have a forward fit for a place among the elite, that all of those goals cannot just be written off as circumstantial evidence. He may, yet, be allowed a little autumnal afterglow to bathe his career.The group stage brought two goals in two starts on home soil. The knockout rounds, starting with Austria on Saturday, are an opportunity to build his case. All he needs to do is what he has been doing, with a relentless consistency, for the last five years: scoring goals, making the raw facts of the matter overwhelming. More