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    Everton Stays in the Premier League. But for How Long?

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    A win on the final day of the season kept Everton in the league and relegated Leicester and Leeds. But those results may be subject to change.LIVERPOOL, England — The announcement rang out around Goodison Park before kickoff, and then again ahead of the second half. In a clear, commanding voice, it informed Everton’s fans that they were not, under any circumstances, to invade the field or throw objects at the players on it.With Everton’s long-held place in England’s Premier League hanging by a fraying thread, it was reasonable to assume that Sunday afternoon would end in one of two outcomes: ecstasy or outrage. There was no third option. All the final game of the season would decide, really, was which one materialized.In the end, the former won out. Everton beat Bournemouth, 1-0, on a single, priceless goal by midfielder Abdoulaye Doucouré, rendering the results at Leicester City and Leeds United — the two teams that were hovering, waiting for Sean Dyche’s Everton team to slip — irrelevant. Leeds lost, Leicester won; both were relegated anyway. Everton, for the second time in two seasons, clung to its place in the elite by the quicks of its fingernails.That should, really, have been cause for celebration. There were fans on the field within a couple of seconds of the final whistle ignoring the increasingly desperate pleas of the voice on the public-address system. Flags fluttered at their backs. Plumes of blue smoke trailed from pyrotechnics. Children slid on their knees on the turf.Peter Powell/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesCarl Recine/ReutersEVERTON 1, BOURNEMOUTH 0 Abdoulaye Doucoure’s goal set off the celebrations at Goodison Park, and gritty defending made it hold up.Carl Recine/ReutersRelief, though, is not the same as joy. As the fans milled around the field, many drifted as if on autopilot toward the area beneath the directors’ box. Its usual occupants, Everton’s owners and executives and power brokers, were absent, as they have been since January, when they were advised to stay away for their own security.Still, this was a chance for the fans to send a message. Loudly, repeatedly, they set aside their glee to demand the removal of the club’s board. In what might have been a moment of triumph — or at least something approaching it — the thought of Everton’s fans turned almost immediately to revolt.There is a reason for that. It is not just that the current regime at Goodison Park has brought one of English soccer’s great traditional houses low, thanks to a combination of poor planning, reckless spending and good, old-fashioned witlessness.Even Dyche, brought in as a firefighter, seemed determined to point out after the game that survival should not be a source of pride. “There is still massive amounts of work to do,” he said, as if preparing the fans for the idea that there is more struggle to come. “This has been going on for two years. It is not a quick fix.”That is true, of course. The ownership of Farhad Moshiri has reduced Everton to days like these — ones filled with fear and jeopardy and dread — with ever-increasing regularity. But more damning, and more urgent, is that the club has been managed so poorly that this game, this win, may be nothing but a stay of execution.Joe Giddens/Press Association, via Associated PressMichael Regan/Getty ImagesLEICESTER 2, WEST HAM 1 Early goals and late tears, but the 2016 Premier League champions could only watch the bitter end.Michael Regan/Getty ImagesIn March, the Premier League charged Everton with failing to comply with its catchily titled Profit and Sustainability rules, the regulations formerly known as Financial Fair Play. From 2018 to 2021, the club recorded losses of almost $460 million, three times more than the amount permitted under the league’s protocols.The case is, slowly, making its way through the league’s labyrinthine quasi-judicial system. An independent panel will be appointed to investigate. Representations will be made. Appeals will, doubtless, be lodged. The whole process is dragging to such an extent that even the Premier League itself has suggested it might need to be expedited just a little.In the end, Everton’s punishment might extend beyond being forced to pay compensation to Leeds, Leicester and Southampton, the three teams relegated this season. It could face a points penalty next season. It may even have one retrospectively imposed on this campaign. As things stand, Everton has avoided relegation. But only as things stand.Regardless of the merits of the case against Everton, the fact that 38 games have been played and the table cannot quite be entered into the records should be a source of considerable embarrassment for the most popular sporting competition on the planet.The season has ended and the Premier League cannot say, for certain, which 20 teams will comprise its membership next season. Given that there is also an open case against Manchester City, champion for the last three campaigns and on the verge of a domestic and European treble, it is fair to say that everything that has happened over the last 10 months is still subject to change.Lee Smith/Action Images, via ReutersGareth Copley/Getty ImagesTOTTENHAM 4, LEEDS 1 Two goals from Harry Kane helped send Sam Allardyce and his team down to the Championship.Gareth Copley/Getty ImagesThe significance of that cannot be underestimated. If the Premier League cannot wrangle its teams to abide by the rules that they themselves have established, then it does not so much have a regulatory issue as a legitimacy one. Sports are, in effect, policed by consent. If that process is seen to be tainted, if the playing field does not appear to be level, then that consent is removed.More important, those who watch the league — the people who follow it, fund it, afford it a significance that is not inherent — cannot trust that what they are watching has any meaning. If the outcome of a game cannot be known until a legal process has been exhausted, then the game itself becomes secondary.Just after Doucouré’s goal, as Goodison Park was fizzing and bouncing and melting in euphoria, a fusillade of fireworks exploded in the sky just above the Gwladys Street Stand. They produced, in truth, more sound than light: Their sparkle and their shimmer was lost, just a little, against the bright sunlight.Still, each thud elicited a cathartic, ecstatic roar from the crowd, each one signaling a step closer to salvation. The display felt, though, a little premature. There was still a half-hour left in the game. All Bournemouth had to do was score and, with Leicester winning, everything would change.Everton survived the brush with hubris. It made it to the end unscathed. The whistle blew and the fans stormed the field and the table flashed up on the screen and the team occupied 17th place and sanctuary. And yet there was still a sense of uncertainty, a dull rumble of fear, that things were not yet settled. The fireworks have been set off, even if nobody knows for sure quite what there is to celebrate, not yet. More

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      For Everton and Premier League, Relegation Battle Isn’t the End

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      A club’s battle to avoid relegation is being shadowed by an investigation into its spending, and nudges to announce a resolution before next season.Everything is clear at the top of the Premier League.Manchester City, with what has become an inevitable regularity, is once again the champion of England’s Premier League. Its triumph over second-place Arsenal was sealed last weekend, and those two clubs — along with Saudi-owned Newcastle United and City’s crosstown rival Manchester United — already have secured the league’s four spots in next season’s Champions League.The drama in England now is at the bottom of the standings, where three clubs will enter the final day of the season this weekend locked in a high-stakes fight to retain their places in the league, and where an investigation into the finances of one those clubs — Everton — means that whatever happens on the field may not be the final word on who gets relegated.And that is worrying the Premier League.The issue is this: Everton’s financial losses of 371.8 million pounds between 2018 and 2021 (roughly $460 million) were more than three times higher than a cap imposed by the league. In March, the Premier League charged the club with breaking its cost-control rules and assigned an independent arbitrator to investigate. By league rules, the arbitrator alone is empowered to decide the case and mete out any potential penalties.In the weeks since, however, rival clubs have pressed for a decision before the start of next season. They include, but are not limited to, those teams whose futures are inextricably linked to Everton’s finish in the league, each of them aware that a potential points deduction for financial violations — if it arrives before the new season — might seal Everton’s relegation instead of their own.The Premier League — already under pressure to announce a ruling in a separate and long-running case related to Manchester City’s spending — has quietly been pushing for a resolution, too. According to people familiar with the league’s internal discussions, Premier League officials lobbied the independent commission to reach a decision ahead of next season.The commission’s members have refused to be hurried, however, according to several people familiar with the exchanges. At times, those members even felt the need to remind league officials of the independence of the panel.Both cases come as English soccer is poised to adopt a government-appointed independent regulator, a post that threatens the Premier League’s ability to keep rulings on contentious issues in-house. The league’s critics contend that such a regulator has become necessary to police a group of owners increasingly drawn from all corners of the world, including nation-states with access to seemingly unlimited reserves of capital and lawyers.For the moment, Everton’s focus — like that of its bottom-of-the-table rivals Leicester City and Leeds United — is to avoid the ignominy (and potential financial ruin) of relegation. Only one of the three clubs will be spared that fate on Sunday, and Everton, a fixture in the Premier League since its inception in 1992, currently holds a slim advantage. It is one place — and two points — above Leicester and Leeds, and needs only match its rivals’ results on Sunday to finish above them in the standings.For relegated teams, the loss of a place in the Premier League, and the tens of millions of dollars in revenue that membership guarantees, can be a devastating blow. So-called parachute payments from the Premier League help to cushion some of the financial losses for as many as three seasons, but the consequences of the new straitened circumstances often lead to the gutting of club budgets and the departures of players, coaches and other staff members.The prospect that the fate might fall on a club and then later be reversed has angered even Premier League teams not involved in this year’s relegation fight. One Premier League executive recently expressed surprise that there had not been greater coverage of the claims against Everton and the lack of urgency to adjudicate them; the official equated the accusations of financial rules breaches to doping.The Premier League declined to comment on the Everton investigation or any efforts to speed it to a conclusion. Everton has signaled that it will dig in and fight any possible penalties; when the Premier League charges were announced in March, the club said it was “prepared to robustly defend” its position in front of the commission.Even without the threat of relegation, though, Everton is a club in disarray. Its owner, the Iranian-British businessman Farhad Moshiri, has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on players since buying the club, only to have its on-field results crater and a much-hyped stadium project risk stalling because of a shortage of funds. A search for a new owner, announced earlier this year, has so far not produced a savior.The club’s financial troubles were only made worse when Moshiri’s longtime business partner, the billionaire Alisher Usmanov, was sanctioned by the British government and the European Union for his close relationship with Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin. That forced Everton to end its relationship with companies linked to Usmanov, who in recent years had plowed millions into the club and projects like the team’s half-built new stadium.Everton’s fans have been protesting its ownership for much of the season — as they did last year when the team narrowly avoided relegation. On at least one occasion this season, Everton’s leadership was advised by the police not to attend games. More

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      Harry Kane and the Power of Individual Achievement

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      Soccer prefers to recognize collective triumphs ahead of personal milestones as the true measure of success. But glory comes in many forms.The record had, it turned out, been playing on Harry Kane’s mind. Players always insist that they are oblivious to these things, that they regard them as little more than statistical ephemera. Ordinarily, it is only once the achievement is banked and the challenge met that they will admit to the blindingly obvious.Kane has spent a considerable portion of this bisected, staccato season waiting and wondering. He had the air of a player counting down, rather than up. Every goal he scored for Tottenham was not added to his tally for the campaign, but subtracted from a historical deficit.Nobody had ever scored more goals for Spurs than Jimmy Greaves, the slick, ruthless striker who was the star of the club’s golden team of the 1960s. His mark — a total of 266 — stood for more than half a century. Nobody, in recent years, had looked close to breaking it: not Vincent Janssen, not Steffen Iversen, not Chris Armstrong.And then along came Kane, a homegrown striker, a boyhood fan, an England captain. He started the season on 248 goals, a vast majority of them in the Premier League, 18 behind Greaves, 19 from sole possession of the record. The presumption was that Kane would break it, sooner rather than later. By the time everything ground to a halt for the World Cup, the gap was gossamer thin: five more to equal it, six to surpass it.Kane drew level on a Monday night, against Fulham, and then finally had his moment last Sunday. It was fitting, really: not, as he said, because he scored the goal that secured his place in history against Manchester City, “one of the best teams in the world,” but because he did so with an archetypal Kane goal — a sudden sliver of space, a single touch, an unerring finish.Kane’s goal against Manchester City on Sunday was his 267th for his boyhood club.Adrian Dennis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesSoccer does not, it has to be said, give these moments quite as much pomp as other sports. The N.B.A. not only had Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in attendance when LeBron James broke his scoring record this week, it allowed the game — between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Oklahoma City Thunder — to be paused for a brief ceremony. Kane merely got his name flashed up on Tottenham’s big screen. “Congratulations Harry,” it read.Still, that was enough for Kane. “It is surreal,” he said afterward. “There’s been so much talk about it, and I wanted to get it done as soon as possible. It’s a special feeling. I couldn’t have asked for more. Jimmy was one of the best strikers to ever play the game, so to even be mentioned in his company is amazing. To go above him is a dream come true.”The next record in Kane’s sights is, arguably, even more significant. That strike against City last Sunday made Kane only the third player in history to score 200 goals in the Premier League. He should, with a fair wind, rank as the second highest scorer the competition has seen by the time spring rolls around; Wayne Rooney is only a little ahead of him, now, on 208.He will have to wait a little longer to overtake the current scoreboard leader. Alan Shearer scored the last of his Premier League goals in April 2006, a penalty in an emphatic Newcastle win against Sunderland. He picked up an injury a few minutes later that ended up costing him the final few outings of his valedictory tour.Shearer has never regretted that he might have added to his tally; that he signed off by scoring against his team’s fiercest rivals has always struck him as the perfect conclusion. And besides, 260 goals — excluding the 23 he scored before the Premier League was branded into existence — was not a bad total, all in all.Oddly, for all that he achieved, it never really felt as if Rooney would catch Shearer. Kane, from this point, really should do it. He is still only 29. Convention would suggest that, as long as he avoids major injuries, he has another four years before he is considered an elder statesman. At his current clip, he may have reeled in Shearer by the end of the season after next.Paul Childs/Action Images, via ReutersIt may well be the case, then, that in Kane the Premier League is watching the greatest scorer in its history. Whether that matters or not, though, seems to depend on who you ask.There is a school of thought, one that has been given considerable voice over the past week, that Kane would trade in not only his status as Tottenham’s record goal-scorer but the chance to surpass Shearer for a single medal to place on his shelf at home: a Premier League title, a Champions League, an F.A. Cup, the other one.This is, of course, how soccer thinks. It is unabashedly, resolutely a collective sport, one that does not revere individual achievement as much as, say, baseball or football. There is a reason that it did not occur to anyone at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium last Sunday to do anything other than flash Kane’s name up on the screen, as if it were his birthday, just as there is a reason that many are uncomfortable with the idea of a player actively identifying winning a Ballon d’Or as an ambition.The trophies handed out at the end of the season, and the medals gathered by the end of a career, are seen as the only true gauge of attainment; what a player might achieve individually is always secondary to what success it produces, a means rather than an end. It is in the team that glory lies.It is an admirable philosophy, one to which all those actively involved in the game subscribe almost universally, but it is one that undersells the significance, the status, perhaps subconsciously afforded to the rarest, most precious individual watermarks. Glory, it is fair to say, comes in many forms.Shearer is an apposite example. He did, of course, win a Premier League title; just the one, with Blackburn Rovers in 1995. That is not, though, how he is remembered, as a “mere” English champion. Nobody much under the age of 35 would remember that Blackburn team; a whole generation has been born and raised since he scored that final goal against Sunderland.Instead, Shearer is revered now for his status as the Premier League’s leading goal-scorer. It is, after all, something only he can claim, the one thing that Shearer has that, for two decades, nobody else has possessed. It has carried his name through history in a way that winning the league could not. It is his glory, and it is his glory alone.That is what Kane has at his fingertips: not just a fleeting statistical quirk but a piece of history that is all his, something that will endure long after his career has finished. He would, doubtless, prefer it to be accompanied by something more tangible, a piece of silver and gold, something that can be mounted and framed and admired, a triumph shared with his teammates, with his family, with his fellow Tottenham fans.But to have scored more goals for Tottenham than anyone, to be the player with the most goals in the Premier League: These are no mere trifles. They ensure Kane’s name will echo, resonant and proud, long after he has slipped into the past. And that, in many ways, is the ultimate form of glory.Paul Childs/Action Images, via ReutersCheaper DetergentThink, for a minute, of all the work that went into convincing Cristiano Ronaldo to sign for Al Nassr, the Saudi club where the Portuguese forward is seeing out his (sporting) dotage. The flights. The meetings. The pitching. And all of that just to get in the room with the 38-year-old Ronaldo, to take yet more flights, to hold yet more meetings, to do yet more pitching.And all of that is without mentioning the cost: the salary that scrapes $213 million-a-season, according to some reports; the suite at the Four Seasons in Riyadh where he and his family have set up home; the invitation to Paris St.-Germain to play an unwieldy and vaguely nonsensical exhibition game.It was, of course, worth it in the end: Ronaldo has brought so much attention to Al Nassr, to the Saudi Pro League, to Saudi Arabian sports in general that all of those involved in making the deal happen doubtless regard it as a runaway success.Using sports as a tool of soft power, though, is a funny thing. This weekend, one of Al Nassr’s domestic rivals, Al Hilal, will become the first Saudi team (and only the third Asian team) to compete in the final of the Club World Cup, having beaten the South American champion, Flamengo, in the semifinal. Many of its players will be familiar; Al Hilal provided the bedrock of the Saudi team that beat Argentina in the World Cup a couple of months ago.Salem Aldawsari, whose goal led Saudi Arabia over Argentina at the World Cup, scored twice as his Saudi club, Al Hilal, stunned Brazil’s Flamengo, 3-2, on Tuesday. Al Hilal will face Real Madrid in Saturday’s final.Mosa’Ab Elshamy/Associated PressIn the space of three months, then, Salem Al-Dawsari, Saleh Al-Shehri and the rest have twice proved that the most effective way of using soccer to win hearts and minds, to exert influence, to enter the global consciousness is simply to be good at it.The victory over Argentina, for example, did far more to embed Saudi Arabia in the soccer world than buying Newcastle United or hosting the Italian Super Cup ever could, thanks to the traveling army of raucous Saudi fans. Likewise, the sight of Al Hilal facing off against Real Madrid will do more to promote the Saudi Pro League than a hundred clips of Ronaldo scoring penalties for Al Nassr.Both moments, after all, confer one thing on Saudi as a soccer — and perhaps a sporting — nation that none of those expensive purchases ever could: They grant the country’s players, teams and league legitimacy, authenticity, in front of a global audience. It must be galling, too, that it does not cost nearly as much to put together.Marsching On TogetherJesse Marsch, now the former coach of Leeds United and the future coach of … what exactly?Lee Smith/Action Images, via ReutersFarewell, then, to Jesse Marsch, the Wisconsin native who leaves after 11 months as Leeds United manager neither mourned nor missed. His dismissal, after a run of seven Premier League games without a win, felt unpleasant but unavoidable: That is, ultimately, just how soccer works.That, certainly, is how it felt to the club’s fans. They had not turned on Marsch because they had taken against him, particularly; there was a sense, broadly, that they could see what he was trying to do. It just had not worked. Marsch can take a sort of curious pride in the fact that there has been no great pleasure in his demise.Quite where Leeds goes from here is not clear: The club has failed in its pursuit of at least two possible replacements, Raúl González and Andoni Iraola, and faces a struggle to persuade a third, the Dutchman Arne Slot, to leave title-chasing Feyenoord in the middle of the season.Whoever takes the role will, at least, have a competitive squad to mold, not least in the American midfield — Tyler Adams and Weston McKennie — that Marsch had only just completed. This Leeds team is good enough to avoid relegation; that it is involved at all is testament to how competitive the middle and lower rungs of the Premier League are this season.For Marsch, the future seems a little more clear-cut. He has a résumé better than any American coach of his generation: experience in the Premier League and the Bundesliga with Leeds and RB Leipzig, a taste of the Champions League with Red Bull Salzburg. He would, in other words, be an ideal candidate for any high-profile national team jobs that happen to come available.It’s All in the TimingQuietly, without wishing to cause a stir, the Premier League uploaded a statement to its website Monday morning. It was nothing major, no cause for alarm, just the most popular soccer league on the planet accusing its serial champion, its great modern superpower, of spending more than a decade breaking the league’s financial rules. All of Manchester City’s success, the Premier League was suggesting, might one day require an asterisk.Three days later, a very different kind of story broke, one that was designed to be as loud and eye-catching as possible. A consortium of unnamed Qatari investors, it was reported, were close to submitting a bid for Manchester United, the club they regard as the “crown jewel” of global soccer.There was not, it has to be said, a great deal of detail beyond that. It is not clear who the potential owners are — other than that they are not, apparently, in any way linked to the Qatari state, in case you were wondering — or even how likely the prospective bid is to be accepted. United’s current owners have instructed Raine, the investment bank, to find a buyer. A mystery suitor from a nation thought to be awash with cash going vaguely public is, one would imagine, not a terrible thing for either.Manchester United’s Erik ten Hag, most definitely not making a shopping list for the summer.Phil Noble/ReutersGiven the timing, though, it was curious to read what the mystery group had planned for the club. They might sound like bromides — talking to fans about the redevelopment of Old Trafford, wanting their prospective takeover to be “for the good of the community,” intending to hand Erik ten Hag, United’s manager, a vast amount of money to play with in the transfer market — but they have, remember, been let slip by someone, somewhere along the line.Manchester United does not need an infusion of money to make splashy, expensive signings. It handed Ajax $100 million for Antony less than six months ago. What it has long required, if anything, is a more cogent internal structure and a more streamlined, more effective scouting department. (The club has, in fairness, made considerable progress on this recently.)But that is not exactly a compelling argument to get fans onside, and so those with designs on buying the club did what potential investors always do: promise to spend vast sums of money on new players, tell the fans what you presume they want to hear.There is no reason to believe, of course, that they would do that by taking the same approach as City is alleged to have taken. Given the proximity of the two events, though, it was hard not to wonder if soccer would be better off if spending money was not regarded as the calling card of a desirable owner, if it was not such a reflex, if it was not the first thing anyone promised. More

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      Brenden Aaronson Won Over Leeds. Can He Win at the World Cup?

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      Christian Pulisic might be the standard-bearer for the United States World Cup team, but it is Brenden Aaronson who has captured hearts in England.LEEDS, England — The stadium was already half-empty, and the steadfast few who remained inside Elland Road were in an unforgiving mood. Leeds United had just been beaten, again, this time by Fulham. A fourth defeat in a row, a seventh game without a win, and the specter of the Premier League’s relegation zone were starting to exert a dreaded, inevitable gravity.As the team made a perfunctory tour of the field, thanking the fans for their forbearance, they were met — mostly — with silence. When Jesse Marsch, the team’s American coach, followed a few seconds later, even that veneer of cordiality disappeared. He had been taunted by the crowd during the game. Now, he was being booed.At that point, Brenden Aaronson would have been forgiven for deciding to slip away to the dressing room. Few would have noticed that Aaronson, a 22-year-old American, had not been part of the players’ gloomy procession.Aaronson, though, did not take the easy way out. Instead, he walked slowly, deliberately around the field in Marsch’s wake. In front of all four grandstands, he held his hands up, open-palmed, as if begging for forgiveness. And, as he did so, the mood changed. By the time Aaronson left the field, his self-imposed ordeal over, the silence — if not quite the gloom — had lifted. Even in defeat, Aaronson had brought the fans to their feet.Whether accidentally or by design, Leeds United has spent much of the last three years as English soccer’s great thought experiment, a laboratory for challenging deeply held assumptions.The first hypothesis it tested was whether the outré methods of the Argentine coach Marcelo Bielsa, the sport’s most unapologetic ideologue, could work in the Premier League. The supposition had long been that no, they could not. Leeds gave Bielsa the chance to disprove it.He led the team to a ninth-place finish in his first season after winning promotion from the Championship and then plunged it into danger of relegation the next, but the adoration he earned from a fan base that tends toward cynicism was enough to overturn the established logic: At least one other English club is now toying with the idea of employing Bielsa.Leeds’s next challenge was, if anything, even more fraught. Leeds replaced Bielsa, in February, with Marsch, who became only the second American coach to take charge of a Premier League team. A few months later, he was joined not only by Aaronson — a native of Medford, N.J. — but by Tyler Adams, acquired from RB Leipzig but raised in upstate New York. Fair or not, how Leeds fared would be pitched as a referendum on English soccer’s attitude toward Americans.The results, thus far, have been mixed. Adams has been a steady, subtle success: a diligent, astute defensive midfielder, sufficiently well liked for a vast portrait of him to be hung from the imposing, cantilevered roof of Elland Road’s Jack Charlton Stand. “I didn’t realize it was quite so big,” Adams said after seeing it for the first time. “It’s pretty cool.”Aaronson has not been a starter for the U.S., but his game-changing cameos are a valuable tool for Coach Gregg Berhalter.Patrick T. Fallon/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe verdict on Marsch has been more contested. He earned some credit for steering the team clear of relegation last season, and an early season win against Chelsea in August, But that was followed by a string of disappointments in which Marsch’s team kept, as he put it, “finding ways to lose,” and a recurring theme emerged in the critiques of him: Leeds’ executives, and Marsch himself, noted that his nationality always seemed much more relevant after defeats than in the glow of victory.There has been no such ambivalence about Aaronson. He might have been a relative unknown when he arrived at the start of the summer from Marsch’s former team Red Bull Salzburg as a vaguely underwhelming replacement for Raphinha, the Brazilian wing who was then on his way to Barcelona.Aaronson may not have a regular starting role in Coach Gregg Berhalter’s United States team at the World Cup. In just three months, though, he has established himself as the great American success story of this Premier League season — ahead of even Christian Pulisic, now consigned to the ranks of replacements at Chelsea — and erased every last shred of skepticism that accompanied his arrival.Unlike Marsch, Aaronson’s Americanness does not appear to be a problem. He had already earned a song in his honor within a few weeks of arriving at the club, a reworked version of Estelle’s “American Boy.” “The Square Ball,” an ironic and occasionally acerbic Leeds fanzine and podcast, has taken to referring to him — affectionately — as the “Yank Badger.”The sobriquet hints at the source of his popularity. Under first Bielsa and now Marsch, Leeds has grown used to a style of play that borders on the physically exhausting. Both coaches demand that their players run. The fans have come to expect it, too. And even in a team marked by its (occasionally inefficient) industry and (occasionally counterproductive) intensity, Aaronson’s work ethic, his endless scurrying and snuffling, stands out.Aaronson came on as a substitute his team’s World Cup opener against Wales.Pedro Nunes/ReutersIn a victory at Liverpool in October that most likely saved his manager’s job, for example, Leeds not only ran more than any team had in any Premier League game this season, but Aaronson ran more than anyone else. He registered 8.2 miles, more than any player has run in any league game this year.“Brenden Aaronson loves grass,” Daniel Chapman wrote earlier this season in “The Square Ball.” “Green grass. Yellow grass. Part synthetic grass. All the grass, he loves all the grass, loves running in it, rolling in it, being on it, dancing across it, eating it up metaphorically with his running feet and perhaps literally with his hungry mouth.”Marsch regards that characterization, while not incorrect, as a touch reductive. “He has more quality than people think,” the coach said. “He’s a good finisher, he’s really clever with how to put passes together in tight spaces. It’s so much just about his ability to make final plays, and slow himself down a little bit in the final third.”Even Marsch, though, could not quite resist the lure of making a horticultural analogy. “He’s like a weed,” Marsch, a former M.L.S. coach with the Red Bulls, told MLSsoccer.com’s “Extratime” podcast earlier this season. “You almost see him grow before your eyes.”That is what has endeared him, so quickly, even to Leeds’s most hard-bitten, weather-beaten fans: not just his effort, but his intent. It is what has filled American fans with optimism about his contributions heading into Monday’s World Cup opener against Wales.That day against Fulham, Aaronson had no reason to apologize. The defeat, most certainly, had not been his fault. He had been Leeds’s best, and most effective, player. Still, though, he made his way around the field, still moving, even after the final whistle, still believing he could have done more. More

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      The Artist Who Painted a City

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      As Jesse Marsch takes over Leeds United, he faces the difficult task of replacing Marcelo Bielsa, who was equal parts coach and icon.Out on the Burley Road, where the last vestiges of the city of Leeds slowly dissolve into the Yorkshire countryside, there is a barn in the middle of a field. It stands there, alone, the size of a garden shed, in a patch of land demarcating the boundary between a pet grooming salon and a dog park.For a long time, it was about as unremarkable as any structure can be. A barn, in a field, in a part of the world where there are a lot of barns and a lot of fields. And then one day, a year ago or so, it changed. One side, the side that faces you as you head down the hill, was suddenly covered with a striking, monochrome mural of Marcelo Bielsa.What caught the eye most, perhaps, was the incongruity between the work and its location. Bielsa’s face, solemn and bespectacled, emerging out of nowhere, watching over all he surveyed — which, in this case, amounted to a succession of dogs at varying stages of cleanliness — gave it the air of a border post, a territorial marker. This field was Bielsa country, it proclaimed.Lee Smith/Action Images Via ReutersIn the days after the curtain was drawn on Bielsa’s three-and-a-half year tenure as manager of Leeds United, the discussion focused — understandably — on the state in which he had left the team. Had the Argentine coach’s famously exacting methods, his ideological intransigence, left the club at genuine risk of relegation? Or was his dismissal a premature reaction to a tough run of games and an ongoing injury crisis that had deprived a small squad of key players?Much more significant, though, was how he had left Leeds the place. It can be easy, at times, to overstate the impact that soccer has on a city, a country, a population as a whole. A team’s success or failure is assumed to have some seismic effect on its home; the sport has sufficient hubris to believe that the mood of millions hinges on its every turn.Bielsa’s impact on Leeds, though, has a physical form. The mural on the Burley Road was not the only piece of urban artwork that has appeared in recent years. There is another portrait of Bielsa in Wortley, close to the club’s Elland Road stadium, in which the Argentine is depicted as Christ the Redeemer.In Headingley — which is a bit like Brooklyn, except it is better, because it has a cricket ground and a Greggs — Bielsa’s image is accompanied by one of his axioms: “A man with new ideas is a madman, until his ideas triumph.” In the city center, there is a vast depiction of Kalvin Phillips, the club’s homegrown idol, around the corner from the Victorian grandeur of the Corn Exchange.And all over the city there are electrical boxes — those grim and gray pieces of street furniture that our eyes erase from our vision — that have been daubed in the club’s colors, blue and white and yellow, and decorated with its slogans and its iconography by the street artist Andy McVeigh.Peter Powell/EPA, via ShutterstockAll of that has happened since Bielsa arrived, since he brought a somnolent club to life, since he imposed order on a decade and a half of chaos. By the standards of modern soccer, where the superclubs weigh their trophies by the ton, Bielsa’s legacy is a thin one. He won promotion from the Championship. He guided Leeds to ninth in the Premier League, and left it fretting over relegation. He did not deliver a litany of medals, an era of glory.What he did was far less tangible, but much more important. He gave Leeds an identity. He did not simply make the fans fall in love with their club again, he gave them something to stand for, to represent, to call their own. He made Leeds an emblem of a style, a belief, an approach. And in doing so, he lifted the place it called home.Often, those sorts of assertions are difficult to prove. Not in this case. Bielsa, in a very real sense, has left Leeds a much more colorful place than he found it.That is not, of course, necessarily ideal for his replacement. Jesse Marsch might have exactly the sort of background that most English clubs now expect — an alumnus of the New York Red Bulls, Red Bull Salzburg and RB Leipzig, steeped in the principles of the German pressing game, de rigueur among the denizens of the Premier League — but he lacks Bielsa’s gravitas, his reputation and, most immediately, his emotional bond with the fans, with the city.Lee Smith/Action Images Via ReutersThat is not the only obstacle in Marsch’s path. Whether there are enough American coaches in European soccer is not, in truth, an especially pressing question: Chances certainly seem to fall more easily to them than they do to, for example, African coaches, or those working outside the bounds of the continent.The challenge, instead, is in the perception. Chris Armas, another graduate of the Red Bull school, was nicknamed “Ted Lasso” within a few weeks of arriving at Manchester United as an assistant to Ralf Rangnick. The same punchline was trending within minutes of Marsch’s appointment at Leeds.Bob Bradley, scarred by his experiences at Swansea City, found it surprising just how much controversy was stirred by his use of certain terms — “P.K.” instead of penalty, say — or his pronunciations: He made a conscious effort to say “defence,” instead of “defence,” and never to refer to the Premier League.Will they paint murals of Jesse Marsch in Leeds?Annegret Hilse/ReutersIf he is to succeed, Marsch will have to overcome that same stigma, to make sure he does not fall into any of the linguistic traps that await him. Even if he does so, he will know, most likely, that he will never inspire the same sort of adoration that was awarded to Bielsa. Bielsa was the man, after all, who took Leeds United home. Marsch will never be able to match that.Perhaps, though, Marsch’s predecessor offers the perfect illustration of the nature of the task at hand. Bielsa’s success was not measured in silver and gold, but painted in blue and yellow and white. His rewards were not prizes, but portraits. He won them because he gave a club, and a city, something to be proud of, something to believe in. He made the place more colorful. Marsch’s task, any manager’s task, is to do the same.The Model OwnerRoman Abramovich in better days for Chelsea, and for him.Matt Dunham/Associated PressRoman Abramovich changed far more than Chelsea. His impact on English — on global — soccer extends way beyond his taking a glamorous pretender and transforming it into the most consistently successful English club of the 21st century. It is not just Stamford Bridge that has lived under the “Roman Empire,” as the Russian flag that adorns the stadium’s Matthew Harding Stand has it, for the last two decades. We all have.It was Abramovich’s arrival, those first few years of apparently bottomless spending, that triggered an inflationary spiral that pushed transfer fees and salaries across Europe ever higher, that winnowed down the number of clubs able to compete first for talent, then for trophies, that pushed some of the old elite into irrelevance and others to the brink of something far worse.It was, in no small part, because of Abramovich that European soccer felt moved to introduce some form of financial fair play legislation. It was, in no small part, because of Abramovich that Chinese conglomerates and Gulf states and all manner of princelings decided soccer was the place to put their money, to service their egos, to launder their reputations.And, most of all, it was Abramovich who provided the model of the ideal owner to fans all over the world. Ever since he appeared, out of nowhere, in 2003, fans of countless clubs have craved the appearance of their own Abramovich, someone possessed of an impossible fortune who appears happy to fritter as much of it away as necessary in the pursuit of success.The pervasiveness of his example is evident in the response to his decision, this week, to put Chelsea up for sale. That Chelsea’s fans regard him as a good owner, a fond memory, a silent idol, is not at all surprising. Look at what he has given them. That those with no attachment to the club persist on giving him the same assessment is astonishing.Yes, Abramovich pumped money in whenever it was required. Yes, he delivered trophies on an industrial scale. Yes, he has turned his club into not just a state-of-the-art superpower, but a vehicle for some admirable charitable initiatives, particularly as regards fighting anti-Semitism and promoting Holocaust education.Toby Melville/ReutersAnd yes, it is possible, if you wish, to ignore the questions that linger over all of it: Why? Why did he do all of that? What was the purpose? Was it really that he fell in love with soccer after watching Ronaldo and Real Madrid destroy Manchester United? Did he just want a shortcut to British high society? Or was it something else? If so, what? Why has all of this happened?But it should not be possible to exclude from discussion of his legacy the manner of his imminent departure. Because of Abramovich, Chelsea may still stand under threat of the impact of the economic sanctions (very and possibly conveniently slowly) being imposed on Russia’s oligarchs by the British government.Because of Abramovich, Chelsea is now in the process of being sold effectively as a distressed asset. He has said he will not “fast-track” the sale, but the fact that his advisers appear to have reached out to whoever they can think of, and set a deadline of only a few days for bids, rather suggests he does not have the months such a process would ordinarily take.Abramovich, make no mistake, does not have the time to make sure he is passing “custodianship” of the club to precisely the right people. He will sell it to whoever offers him the most money. And that money, at his current asking price, will cover much of the $2 billion or so he has given Chelsea over the years. Abramovich will not be out of pocket.This is not, put simply, what a good owner does. A good owner does not put a club in this sort of political position. A good owner does not sell in a hurry. A good owner does not cut and run because a war instigated by a despot he insists he has absolutely no connection to changes the world overnight. Chelsea’s fans will treasure the memories Abramovich has given them. It has, they say, been a beautiful romance. But a romance cannot be detached from the way it ends.CorrespondenceOne of the most powerful men in soccer with Gianni Infantino, right.Martin Meissner/Associated PressLast week’s column on soccer’s relationship with money, and with Russia, elicited quite the flurry of responses. Many of them were kind, and as such very difficult for a British person to mention without blushing.“Before it’s too late, can you do another update on Newcastle, and their craven, spineless, unprincipled ownership?” asked Paul Bender, suggesting the club’s nickname might be changed from the “Magpies” to the “Bone Saws.” Newcastle, though, is only one example. Soccer has to reassess its relationship with money on some fundamental level.Fans can lead that conversation. “I had no idea that my beloved (and much despaired) Everton were sponsored by a Russian oligarch,” John MacMillan wrote. “I’d assumed our training ground ‘USM Finch Farm’ was just the location’s proper name and not an ersatz emblem of corporate sponsorship.”I suspect more will be reported on this in the coming days, but Everton’s situation is a complex and a serious one, unfortunately. The companies linked to Alisher Usmanov that the club has “suspended” — not good enough, thanks — its relationships with were responsible for a vast portion of its commercial income. Farhad Moshiri, the Everton chairman, is the chief executive of one of those companies. It feels fragile, and unsustainable.Thomas Jakobsh, meanwhile, asks a very pertinent question. “I fully share your disappointment, outrage, and shame at how our game has been manipulated and debased,” he wrote. “But where do you draw the line, the one that demarcates the grifters, thugs and opportunists? On which side of the line does someone like Silvio Berlusconi fall? As for nation states, on which side of the line does one place Qatar, the U.A.E., or Azerbaijan?”This is the complication, of course. How can anyone have known that Berlusconi was not just a media magnate looking for acclaim, but an aspirant politician using soccer as a vehicle? There is a reason, unpalatable as it may be, that FIFA and UEFA are not keen to arbitrate conflicts: If Russia has to be banned for invading Ukraine, why not ban Saudi Arabia for inflicting countless casualties in its war in Yemen? This is a cop-out, but I have no idea where the line is, or should be. I just believe there has to be one.And, on the other side of the coin, there’s Tom Karsay. “Surely you’re not serious about that column. You know, whether the Ukraine invasion is worse than, say, the machine-gunning of Iraqi civilians by U.S. contractors, or any of the myriad other atrocities across the globe committed by FIFA nations. Your column is biased and lacks any depth. Stick to football.”I realize nobody reads this newsletter for the geopolitical analysis, so I won’t offer my two cents on how Ukraine and Iraq differ, if they differ at all. But there is something Tom misses, I think: The American sponsors of soccer competitions are not backed by the American state. American owners of teams do not act as proxies for the government or serve as the power base for a tyrant.Soccer is vulnerable when those who are not in it just for the sport, or just to make money out of the sport, are involved. That is when the actions of countries stain the name of a team. And that is where we should draw the line.That’s all for this week. All correspondence is welcome at askrory@nytimes.com, even if you have not enjoyed what you’ve read. The standard of criticism is still higher than it is on Twitter. There’ll be a new episode of European Nights, with Roger Bennett of Men in Blazers, ahead of the return of the Champions League next week, too.Have a great weekend, and keep safe.Rory More

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      Newcastle, Leeds and the Importance of Being … Something

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyRory Smith On SoccerNewcastle, Leeds and the Importance of Being … SomethingWandering about without a plan inspires neither affection nor success. So why do so many clubs still do it?Newcastle has won only one of its last 11 Premier League games.Credit…Pool photo by Stu ForsterFeb. 6, 2021, 7:00 a.m. ETNEWCASTLE, England — The sound system at St James’s Park crackled into life just as the whistle blew and the players took the knee, as they have done for every Premier League game since the spring. The announcement was brief and sweet, an unexpected relic of days past: “Enjoy the game.”In the silence, it was not quite clear who the announcer was addressing. There are only 300 people inside the stadium: the players on the field, the two coaching staffs, a handful of executives, a smattering of stewards and security and journalists. Everyone was there for work, rather than pleasure.And besides, even if the announcer’s words were meant for those in exile at home, the people who would ordinarily pack the empty stands, this is Newcastle United. Few, if any, of the fans would suggest they have enjoyed anything to do with this club for some time.Newcastle is — and has been for a long time — a club in the grip of endemic drift. Its owner, Mike Ashley, wants to sell, so much so that he has sought legal recourse against the Premier League for blocking a potential sale to a Saudi-led consortium last year.The fans, tired of Ashley’s absentee management and his lack of investment, either emotional or financial, want him gone so desperately that they appear ready to embrace any would-be savior, no matter how many concerns there might be about charges of content piracy or human rights abuses.If the loathing for Ashley is universal, the contempt for Steve Bruce — the manager installed by the owner last season — is getting there. It is not just that Bruce used to manage Sunderland, Newcastle’s fierce rival. It is not just that Bruce replaced Rafael Benítez, an object of adoration among the fans. It is not just that Bruce was appointed by Ashley and so — in a way that never applied to Benítez — is perceived as an emissary of a hated regime.Newcastle’s fans are confident they have identified the club’s problem.Credit…Eddie Keogh/ReutersIt is that Bruce, like Ashley, seems to have so little ambition for the club. He has articulated no grand vision of what Newcastle could be. His aspiration seems to stretch no further than stasis, the bare minimum required to maintain the club’s Premier League status. He has no vision beyond the literal wording of his job description: manager.In the middle of another difficult winter at Newcastle, Bruce spoke of addressing a slump in form by doing things “his way.” It was not entirely clear, then, whose way he had been following up to that point: He has been in charge for a season and a half. Quite what his way might be, too, remained a mystery.Those who have worked with him say that Bruce is a good coach, thorough and diligent and likable, if perhaps a little staid, a little cautious. But he espouses no distinct philosophy. He does not have a tightly-defined idea of how the game should be played, or what a squad should look like, or what a team should do. He does not seem to believe in anything in particular. He does not represent anything. He does not stand for anything.Steve Bruce’s Newcastle may be saved from relegation only because three teams are playing worse.Credit…Pool photo by Lee SmithHis counterpart last week, crouching on the touchline a few yards away, is the opposite. Before the game kicked off, Newcastle and Marcelo Bielsa’s Leeds United were not having vastly different seasons. Both were skirting the edges of the relegation battle: Leeds had 23 points and Newcastle 19, despite having played one extra game.The coverage of the teams — and the mood around them — could not, though, have been more different. Newcastle, as always, was a morass of discontent and bubbling crisis. Leeds, on the other hand, had taken the Premier League by storm, hailed by fans and neutral observers for their courage, their style, their adventure.Bielsa’s team had spent the season as a source of fascination and praise and, lately, a little resentment: No other team could lose by 6-2 to Manchester United, for example, and come out of it not just without criticism but with credit. Some of that, of course, can be attributed to the fact that Leeds, unlike Newcastle, was newly promoted, playing the Premier League for the first time in 16 years. Oscillations in form were to be expected, tolerated.But much of it is down to Bielsa. The Leeds that he has created is, innately, fun: fun to watch, and, though demanding and energy-sapping, apparently fun to be. His players give the impression they are enjoying themselves. Luke Ayling, the right back, charges out of defense like a toddler doped up on sugar. Jack Harrison scurries around like an eager Labrador. Stuart Dallas, in his first season in England’s top flight, has developed a taste for pinging cross-field passes. They put together wonderful, exuberant moves. They score intricate, breathtaking goals.More important, Bielsa’s dogmatism, his fundamentalism, his refusal to compromise his beliefs — all the things that, previously in his career, have been held against him — are now strengths. Leeds stands for something: a way of playing, a series of assumptions about how the game should be, a theory, a creed, an ideal.Leeds Manager Marcelo Bielsa has defenders, and critics. But his players know exactly what he expects.Credit…Andy Rain/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIn recent years, soccer has slowly, grudgingly accepted the idea that managers who adhere to a philosophy, a certain set of ideas, are not selling snake oil. It is understood, on some level, that possessing a clear sense of what you want your team to be offers a competitive edge: It helps recruit the right players, it makes coaching them more effective, it offers a barometer of success and purpose that is not reliant on individual results. At an executive level, it can even, at times, ease the transition between one manager and the next.But the benefits of a cogent philosophy are not purely sporting. It has been striking, in Leeds’s low moments under Bielsa, how little discord there has been about his methods. Most fans, if not all, are happy to absorb the lows as an unfortunate, but necessary, recompense for the highs.Subscribing to Bielsa’s philosophy gives them something to take pride and solace in, even when the score line offers no succor. It affords the club, and by extension the fans, an identity. They stand for something that does not depend on results. Newcastle is the opposite. A few days after losing to Leeds, Bruce’s team won at Everton. His side produced a smart, disciplined performance, and the victory alleviated mounting concerns over relegation. It did absolutely nothing to dispel the enduring unhappiness.That contrast, between Leeds and Newcastle, holds outside England’s two great one-club cities. Fans, increasingly, no longer see a manager talking about a philosophy and a vision as marketing jargon or corporate bunk. It is, instead, something to cling to and believe in, a reason to be proud.For much of this season, criticism has swirled around Graham Potter and Brighton. The team has lingered in the lower reaches of the table, its neat, attractive, flexible style of play winning plaudits but few games. He did not flinch when he was told he had to deviate from his methods to get results. More impressively, few of the club’s fans did, either. They understood, and appreciated, his plan. In the space of four days this week, Brighton beat Tottenham and Liverpool.The opposite is true at Chelsea. The dismissal of Frank Lampard and his replacement by Thomas Tuchel, vastly more qualified for the role, was made in order to win trophies; that, after all, is Chelsea’s modern, corporate identity. But it left fans feeling rootless: What mattered to them is not just the outcome, but feeling that the route taken has some deeper meaning.Newcastle has big-club resources. What it does not appear to have is a plan.Credit…Laurence Griffiths/Getty ImagesThis is not a uniquely English phenomenon. In Europe, fans “no longer recognize themselves in their clubs,” as Le Monde wrote of Bordeaux, Nantes and Marseille this week, three teams with no apparent broader purpose or identity. [A hat-tip to reader Manuel Buchwald for pointing me in the direction of that piece.]For years, fans have endured a growing sense of dislocation from their clubs, feeling unmoored as teams have morphed into superstores and retail brands and content farms and their players into millionaire entrepreneurs. That feeling will, of course, have only been exacerbated by the physical distance enforced by the pandemic.In that environment, clubs now effectively have to stand for something, anything: a reliance on youth, a certain style of play — expansive or exciting or muscular or intense, whatever it may be — or a distinct, bespoke approach. Those who do, like Leeds, earn not only patience from but also the admiration of their fans.Those who do not, like Newcastle, find that when there is no reason to enjoy the game — not the result, not the journey — the fire of fury and regret can quickly curdle into something much more dangerous for a business reliant on the unyielding affection of its public: apathy. That is the lesson Ashley, and Bruce, can teach the rest of soccer, that those who stand for nothing risk dwindling away into it.Maybe We Were Just Early in the Season?Why are these men smiling again? Take a look at the Premier League table.Credit…Pool photo by Nick PottsThis has been, you will have heard, the most unpredictable Premier League season in history. Well, since Leicester City won it, anyway. It has definitely been the most unpredictable season since that one, five years ago.The reality is slightly different. Yes, pretty much the whole top half of the Premier League might still nurse an ambition to qualify for European soccer next season. But the three teams at the foot of the table seem cut adrift, and by the close of play on Sunday, the title race might have swung fairly dramatically toward Manchester City.If City can beat an exhausted, uninspired and injury-ravaged Liverpool at Anfield, Pep Guardiola’s team most likely will have killed off the reigning champion’s dwindling hopes, and gone at least three points clear of its nearest rival — a vastly improved, but still unfinished Manchester United — with a game in hand. City has won 13 games in a row. It has not conceded a goal since the Franco-Prussian War. In a season of twists and turns, it has found a straight road.There is a strong possibility that, the race for the top four aside, a season that was meant to be marked by the unpredictable will end up with the most predictable outcome imaginable. And, though the circumstances of this year have been unusual, it feels as if this is a sensation we have had before.The table is always tight, chaotic, fluid for the first half of any season. The gaps between teams are smaller, because they have played fewer games, and so it takes a while to settle. In the opening few months, every season has an air of uncertainty.It is only now, as we turn the corner into the home straight, that order emerges. That has happened later, chronologically, this season — because the start was delayed by two months — but at the same time as it always does, in terms of games played. The effect has been more pronounced, thanks to the compacted schedule, the empty stadiums and the greater impact of injury and fatigue, but it is not unique. This is what always happens. It is just that we always forget.CorrespondenceThis Danny Ings goal was ruled offside. Yeah, we don’t know why either.Credit…Pool photo by Michael SteeleSadly, Laurence Dandurant has far too much clarity in his thinking to be consulted on how soccer can extricate itself from the nonsense — as any Southampton fan would describe it — it has made of its own offside rule. “Why don’t they change the offside rule to just a player’s boots? This would end the maddening shoulders and armpits debate.”Personally, I’m an advocate of the daylight rule — if any part of the player’s body is onside, the player is onside — but this works just as well.As I was expecting, last week’s column on the Old Firm inspired quite a bit of feedback, though (amazingly) none of it was especially angry. That must be a first. You raised quite a few points I’d like to address, so bear with me.“I completely agree with the sentiment of the Old Firm buying older players hampering their development on a European stage but think the greatest impact has been on the Scotland national team,” Benjamin Livingston wrote. “The Old Firm and the league as a whole are signing journeymen players from down south, rather than giving their own youth a chance.” This is a really important point: the future for Scotland, like (say) Belgium, is in having a much younger league.Catherine Pereira, meanwhile, pointed out that while Scotland’s men’s team has not been to a major tournament for two decades, its women’s team was at the World Cup in 2019, and performed credibly. “The team is ranked 21 in the world by FIFA,” she wrote. “It’s not great, considering Scotland’s history, but it’s not quite as disappointing as the men’s.” Quite right, too, though much of the praise for that should go to a Glasgow team that is not in the Old Firm.Glasgow City played a Champions League knockout-round match last year. Neither Rangers nor Celtic can say that.Credit…Alvaro Barrientos/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWilliam Bradley noted, quite correctly, that last week’s piece ignored the sectarian roots of the Old Firm animosity. “Your story did not touch on or even mention [that], which I must say from your story’s journalistic quality.” That was deliberate. Everyone involved believes sectarianism to be a stain on Scottish soccer that should be left in the past. In a column addressing the future, I decided to take the same approach.And thanks to Ian Stewart, who has touched on something that is, I think, really important. “There seems to be a strain of thinking that prizes turning clubs into machines of player development, churning out young stars to be sold off to fund the next round of stars-in-development,” he wrote. “This is a front-office mind-set, not a fan’s. As a fan, I simply want to see the best team possible being fielded as often as possible.”This is a tension that a host of teams — right up to the likes of Borussia Dortmund — have to navigate: Soccer would lose a lot of its richness if everyone apart from the established financial elite decided their role was simply to feed the insatiable appetite of the powerful. There is a logical counterargument, though: The process of development-and-sale, if done well, can not only help you win today, but enable you to win more in future, as those funds are reinvested in better-quality players. Perhaps, in this case, a front-office mind-set is healthy.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      San Francisco 49ers Increase Ownership Stake in Leeds United

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storySan Francisco 49ers Increase Leeds United Ownership StakeThe N.F.L. team, a minority owner in Leeds since 2018, now will control 37 percent of the Premier League club.Leeds United currently sits 12th in the 20-team Premier League.Credit…Paul Ellis/Pool, via ReutersJan. 25, 2021, 6:00 a.m. ETTwo years after dipping their toe in English soccer, the N.F.L.’s San Francisco 49ers have doubled down on their bet.The 49ers on Monday announced that they had increased their ownership stake in the Premier League club Leeds United to 37 percent from 15 percent, a move that further embeds American interests in the world’s richest soccer league.Paraag Marathe, the 49ers executive who has held a seat on the Leeds United board since San Francisco’s initial investment in 2018, will become vice chairman of Leeds United, whose majority owner will remain Andrea Radrizzani, the Italian entrepreneur. The 49ers and Leeds United did not provide financial details of the deal to increase the N.F.L. team’s ownership stake, though it is likely to represent a significant premium on the amount the 49ers spent in 2018, when Leeds was still playing in England’s second-tier Championship.In an interview with the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera in July, Radrizzani boasted that his initial investment in Leeds of 100 million pounds (about $140 million) had tripled in value. If the club remains in the Premier League, he predicted its valuation could double again in the next three years.The deal with the 49ers also ends speculation about potential new investment in Leeds. Over the past year, Radrizzani openly talked about selling off more of his ownership stake in Leeds, a team he is hoping to return to its former status as a major player in English soccer.Marathe, whose duties with the 49ers include oversight of the team’s outside business ventures, told The New York Times in July of the 49ers’ wish to increase their investment in Leeds, and to complete a deal as quickly as possible.While a deal is now done, it was not quick, smooth or simple, Marathe said, because of complications created by the coronavirus pandemic.“I’ve been doing deals my whole career, and it’s always easier to have a meeting of the minds when the minds are actually physically next to each other, so that, first and foremost, made it very complicated,” Marathe said in a video interview in which he was joined by Radrizzani.Radrizzani confirmed he had talked to other parties about investing in Leeds United, including the Qatari owners of Paris St.-Germain, the perennial French champion.The 49ers’ new commitment to English soccer underlines the growing synergy and potential for growth that the owners of N.F.L. franchises see in English soccer. The Glazer family, which owns the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, has controlled Manchester United since 2005; Arsenal is backed by the Los Angeles Rams owner E. Stanley Kroenke; and Fulham, which like Leeds United won promotion to return to the Premier League for this season, is owned by Shahid Khan, who also owns the Jacksonville Jaguars. Liverpool, the reigning Premier League champion, is controlled by Fenway Sports Group, owner of baseball’s Boston Red Sox. Crystal Palace and most recently Burnley have also attracted American investment in recent years.“I can’t really speak for other American owners and what they’re doing, but for us it’s about synergy and partnership,” Marathe said. “Whatever sport it is, it’s still operating under the same premise: You have media rights, you have ticket sales, you have commercial, hospitality and you have your players. Everything is the same.”The 49ers executive Paraag Marathe will serve as vice chairman of the Leeds United board.Credit…Lachlan Cunningham/Getty ImagesThe 49ers’ plan in increasing their stake, Marathe added, is to bring the team’s N.F.L. experience to bear on Leeds’s operations on and off the field, through shared proprietary analytics tools to best practices on management and staffing.Leeds, back in the Premier League after a 16-year absence marred by sporting and financial failures, has won plaudits for its swashbuckling, front-foot style of play under its Argentine coach, Marcelo Bielsa. But it remains some distance from recapturing the days when it was in the mix for the championship year after year.In its preparation for its return to the elite, Radrizzani said, Leeds spent the sixth-highest amount on securing new talent during the last off-season. That spending will continue, and be supported by the investment from the 49ers, Marathe said.“If we are able to stay in the Premier League, after two or three years I think this club could step up to be in the group of three or four clubs next to the big ones,” Radrizzani said, picking out Leicester City, the unheralded team that went from relegation danger to Premier League champion in the space of a year in 2016, as a trajectory he would like to emulate. Since Leicester’s title victory, its Thai owners have invested in new players, coaches and infrastructure to maintain the club’s place in the upper reaches of the league.“Our model, I think, is Leicester City,” Radrizzani said. “We have shared this a lot internally. If there’s a club I admire for what has been done in terms of football management, it’s Leicester.”Having completed the stake sale, Radrizzani acknowledged that he was now considering adding to his own portfolio, perhaps by buying other European soccer teams. The idea, he said, would be to find opportunities that would allow Leeds to develop players at smaller clubs, or to invest in larger ones that would allow him to develop their sporting and commercial models in concert with those at Leeds United.He said he would not consider, however, emulating Manchester City’s model of multiple-club ownership, with teams spread across multiple continents. Radrizzani said his sole focus would be on Europe.The relationship between Radrizzani and Marathe has grown to the point that the 49ers executive has come to refer to the Italian as his “brother.” Before the pandemic, Marathe was a frequent visitor to Leeds with Jed York, the 49ers’ chief executive, and an early riser to watch its games from his home in California.Not being able to travel to Leeds’s Elland Road stadium to witness the final weeks of the team’s promotion to the Premier League did not dull Marathe and the 49ers’ intent on following through with an expanded investment. Neither did the financial losses Leeds United has endured as a result of the pandemic, which Radrizzani estimated to be roughly 40 million pounds ($55 million).“Was it a blip on the radar or is it a blip on the radar? Certainly,” Marathe said of the pandemic’s effects on sporting finances. “Do I think sport is going to come roaring back in possibly a bigger way than pre-Covid? Absolutely. Otherwise we wouldn’t be doing this.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More