Lewandowski, Robert (1988- )

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    Bayern Munich and the Myth of Competition

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    In several of Europe’s top leagues, it already feels like the title race is over. But is dominance what fans really want?Just like that, it was over. For two months or so, there had been just the slightest flicker of hope for the clubs of the Bundesliga. They had not felt it in some time. They did not want to admit to feeling it now, not publicly: It was fragile, guilty, most likely forlorn, but it was hope nonetheless.Robert Lewandowski was gone. Serge Gnabry, for a time, seemed as if he might follow. Thomas Müller and Manuel Neuer were another year older. For the first time in a decade, Bayern Munich seemed not weak — Bayern Munich is never weak — but just a little diminished, just a little more human.At Borussia Dortmund, at Bayer Leverkusen, at RB Leipzig, the thought would have formed, unbidden and silent. What if Dortmund’s reinforcements worked out? What if Florian Wirtz flourished? What if Christopher Nkunku was only just getting started? What if this were one of those years, the in-between ones, the liminal ones, when Bayern fades and another rises?And then cold reality intruded. Bayern’s first game of the season was at Eintracht Frankfurt: an intimidating stadium, packed to the rafters, cheering on a team that had won the Europa League only a few months earlier. It was no gentle start. Not for the first five minutes, anyway.Then Joshua Kimmich scored. Five minutes later, so did Benjamin Pavard. Then, on his debut, Sadio Mané, and Jamal Musiala, and Gnabry himself, and now the Bundesliga season was precisely 43 minutes old, and all of the hope had been extinguished and all of the what ifs had been answered. Just like that, for another year, it was over.Sadio Mané needed precisely one game to open his Bundesliga account at Bayern.Christof Stache/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesHope is, of course, a little hardier than that. Nobody, not even Bayern Munich, wins a championship in August. Its defeat of Eintracht was only one game. Perhaps, in the months to come, Julian Nagelsmann’s tactics will go awry. Perhaps Bayern’s squad will break out in full-scale mutiny. Perhaps it will be afflicted by an injury epidemic. Perhaps, as outlined in this space last week, the World Cup will cleave the season into two halves, both of them beset by randomness.Still, the impression left by that opening day rout was indelible. The departure of Lewandowski, and the lingering sense of generational shift that it has engendered at Bayern, has done nothing to change the power dynamic in the Bundesliga. The destiny of its championship feels preordained, if not from the moment the season started, then certainly from the 43rd minute.That, of course, has come to be seen as German soccer’s fatal flaw. Bayern has the most fans, the most commercial clout and the most Champions League prize money, and so it has a supremacy that now circles the absolute. It has won every title for the last 10 years. Sometimes, the gap to the nearest contender stands at 25 points. There is no drama. There is no doubt. It does not feel quite right, at the top of the table, to describe the Bundesliga as a competition.Germany is, at least, not alone. In France, Paris St.-Germain started its season by scoring three in 38 minutes against Clermont and ended up running out 5-0 winners. P.S.G. has won eight of the last 10 available titles in France. Its budget, swollen by Qatari beneficence, bears no relation to any of its rivals. The air in Ligue 1, too, is thick with inevitability.In theory, of course, this not only reflects badly on both of these leagues, but also limits both their appeal and their ambition. Sports, we are led to believe, require two things to retain old fans and attract new ones, to fill stadiums, to command the attention of drifting and distracted television audiences.They are related (and often confused) but distinct. One is what is generally called competitive balance: the idea that a number of entrants to a tournament might, in the end, win it. The other is known, academically, as the uncertainty-of-outcome hypothesis: the belief that an individual game within any given competition is only attractive if fans feel — or at least can trick themselves into feeling — as if both sides stand a chance.Lionel Messi, Neymar and Co. are already atop the Ligue 1 table.Mohammed Badra/EPA, via ShutterstockThe best measure of how important these concepts are held to be by leagues themselves comes in the form of the Premier League’s deeply hubristic, though undeniably successful, marketing strategy.In England, the top flight’s sense of self is inextricably bound to the idea that not only can any team beat any other team at any given moment, but also that it alone boasts a multiplicity of challengers for the ultimate crown.Germany and France, after all, have only one. Spain has a paltry three: Real Madrid, Atlético Madrid, and whichever bits of Barcelona have not been sold off to sign Marcos Alonso. Italy’s contenders might stretch to four these days, but that is only the case because Juventus very kindly decided to spend three years self-imploding.England, though, has no fewer than six, a full half dozen teams that go into the season with a shot of winning the championship that is at least more than theoretical. The reality, of course, is substantially more complex: not just because some of the six are more equal than others, but also because having a comparatively broad swatch of contenders means a less predictable season but more predictable games.But the truth, in this case, matters less than the belief. The Premier League’s success is down, it is broadly accepted, to the fact that it is less processional than all of its rival competitions. It follows, then, that the prospect of yet another season in which Bayern Munich and P.S.G. amble to their domestic crowns is a black mark against the leagues that home them.The Premier League sells stars for sure. But it also regularly offers something more valuable: jeopardy.Frank Augstein/Associated PressThis, to most fans, feels right. It feels just. It is obviously a drawback to know, almost from the start, which team is going to emerge triumphant. Like going to a movie in full knowledge that one lover lets the other drown despite there being plenty of space on the raft, or actually the guy is a ghost, there is not much point staying until the end. There should be competitive balance. There should be uncertainty of outcome. That, after all, is why we watch.Except that, as it happens, it isn’t. A paper published in 2020 by researchers at the University of Liverpool — and drawing on a welter of academic investigation into the motivations of sports fans — found that there was no correlation between how uncertain the outcome of any game was and how many people watched it. The link, they wrote, was “decisively nonsignificant.”That is not, it turns out, why most people watch sports, whether we want to admit it to ourselves or not. According to the researchers, there was a connection between viewership and the quality of player on show. Even more significant, though, was the name of the teams involved. The power of brand, they wrote, tended to “dominate any contribution to audience size.”Those two conclusions suggest that, rather than diminishing the appeal of the Bundesliga, Bayern’s victory did the precise opposite. Here, after all, was a team with a famous name and an established brand packed full of highly talented players. This, it would seem, is what fans want.That is the thinking that has convinced P.S.G. to try to blind the rest of Ligue 1, and much of Europe, with its sheer star power. It is the argument regularly trotted out by the Bundesliga to defend Bayern’s unimpeachable hegemony. Soccer’s dirty little secret is that it cherishes not balance, but dominance; it claims to want diversity, but nothing draws like dynasty.And yet, there is one other finding in that 2020 report that is worth noting. “A match with the highest championship significance observed in our data set would be expected to attract an aggregate audience size 96 percent higher than one with no implications at all for the prizes to be awarded at the end of the season,” even if the teams involved were the same, the researchers wrote.In other words, what fans really want — more than competitive balance, more than uncertainty of outcome, more than famous faces and powerful names — is jeopardy. They want, we want, as much jeopardy as we can get: games when it feels as if everything is on the line. That is what sells leagues. That is what attracts fans.Ultimately, neither Germany nor France can offer that. It is what is growing rarer by the season in the rest of Europe’s major leagues and quite a few of its minor ones, too, given the distorting effects of Champions League revenue throughout the continent.But that is what we want, more than anything. Seeing Bayern and P.S.G. ride roughshod over all and sundry offers a short-term hit, the fleeting satisfaction of awe but at the cost of the greater prize. There will, most likely, be no decider in the Bundesliga this season. There will be no ultimate showdown. How can there be, when everything felt settled 43 minutes in?Difficult NegotiationJorge Mendes: center of the universe.Enric Fontcuberta/EPA, via ShutterstockThe most fraught transfer of the summer, without doubt, was not the one in which a coterie of Europe’s biggest clubs sought to seduce Erling Haaland, or Manchester United’s futile pursuit of Frenkie de Jong, or even Real Madrid’s heartbreak at being rejected by Kylian Mbappé. It is, instead, Gonçalo Guedes’s move to Wolves from Valencia.Each step, after all, would have been full of snares and traps and pitfalls. First, the agent who retains a close bond with the Wolves owners, Jorge Mendes, would have had to get in touch with the agent most aligned with Valencia’s owner, Jorge Mendes, to see if the player was interested in the move.Next, those agents would have had to reach out to the player’s agent — Jorge Mendes — to see if his client was interested in the move. Guedes would then have had to get in touch with the Wolves manager, Bruno Lage, to discuss his role at his new team, perhaps through Lage’s agent: Jorge Mendes.And finally, politeness would have dictated that Guedes convey his desire to leave to Valencia’s new coach, Gennaro Gattuso. Gattuso, doubtless, would have been furious. He had tried to sign Guedes only last year, while Gattuso was (briefly) at Fiorentina. This was his chance to work with a player he so clearly admires. We can only imagine that he would have expressed his frustration at losing him in no uncertain terms to his agent. Jorge Mendes.CorrespondenceMark Cuban: N.B.A. owner and newsletter fixture.Kevin Jairaj/USA Today Sports, via ReutersAn abundance of emails arrived in the inbox this week, addressing an impressive variety of issues. On the ongoing Mark Cuban debate, Vincent LoVoi offers a handy rule of thumb: “A kid will last at a baseball game about as many innings as their age. A nine-year-old should enjoy a whole game, don’t bother taking a toddler, and be ready to leave mid-game with a four- or five-year-old.”That fits nicely, as it happens, with the suggestion from Joey Klonowski for parents of children who prefer TikTok over sports. “Take them to the game,” he wrote. The best way to assess these concepts, I think, is to test them in the wild. My son’s first taste of live soccer will come in September at our local (professional) team, Harrogate Town. He’s almost five, and I reckon he can do an hour, with snacks. I’ll report back.Joanne Palmer, meanwhile, was not alone in noticing an omission in last week’s discussion of next year’s World Cup. “Curious that Canada did not merit a mention, given that Canada beat the United States at the Olympics,” she wrote, and she is of course correct. Canada — like Australia and Brazil — will be a contender in 2023. It’s the U.S., though, that has represented the watermark for women’s international soccer for the last decade, regardless of the defeat last year, and it’s the U.S. that will offer the best gauge for where everyone else stands.As for the other World Cup, the one charging onto our horizons, Charles Kelley pointed out that it might not make this season all that strange in comparison to the 2019-20 campaign. “Temporary suspension of matches, ‘temporary’ rule changes, rescheduling of tournaments, empty stadiums, compacted schedules, emptying coffers, desperation player moves, and no kids to accompany players out onto the pitch,” he wrote.And that leads us nicely on to competing views about the World Cup itself. S.K. Gupta wanted to reflect the benefits of holding the tournament in Qatar. “It expands the game to a geographical region where it has never been held, encouraging the sport’s growth in the Middle East,” he wrote. “It will give ordinary people an opportunity to experience the culture of the Middle East and get beyond the stereotypes. Also, by having the World Cup in the Middle East, it would be feasible to have it broadcast live to most of the world during waking hours.”These are all absolutely valid, of course, though whether they are a counterweight to the fairly substantial “cons” column — the process by which the World Cup was acquired, the human rights issues, the sense that not everyone is entirely welcome in Qatar — is a matter of personal taste.To that list, we can add Juuso Sallinen’s (also valid, though not especially important) complaint. “Has anyone thought about the lack of partying in the country that will win the World Cup? The players are back in training only a few days after the final. It hardly leaves room for any proper celebration in the winning country itself.”I don’t think it’s especially shameful to think this is less than ideal, Juuso. These victories should be savored. The blame for that one, though, does not so much lie with Qatar as with everyone else in soccer, since they proved completely unwilling to sacrifice anything in order to make space for the tournament. More

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      Science and Data Change Soccer’s Definition of Old

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      Top clubs have long looked to shed players once they hit age 30. But those presumptions rely on outdated logic, statistics show.LONDON — The exact location of the threshold has always been contested. At Manchester United, for a time, it lurked close enough to 30 for that to serve as a natural watershed. Once players hit their 30s, Alex Ferguson, the club’s manager at the time, tended to grant them an extra day’s rest after a game, in the hope that the break might soothe their creaking bodies.Arsenal’s Arsène Wenger was a little more nuanced. He had a formula. Once midfielders and forwards reached the grand old age of 32, he was prepared to offer them only one-year contract extensions. “That is the rule here,” he once said. “After 32, you go from year to year.” He made an exception for central defenders; they could sign contracts that carried them to age 34.But while the precise cutoff has always been subjective, the broad and longstanding consensus within soccer is that it lies in there somewhere. At some point early in their 30s, players cross the boundary that distinguishes summer from fall, present from past. And as soon as they do, they can officially be regarded as old.Manchester City spent big, and got younger, in acquiring striker Erling Haaland.Dave Thompson/Associated PressThat delineation has long informed both the player-recruitment and the player-retention strategies of teams across Europe. A vast majority of clubs have, as a rule, adhered for years to a simple principle: buy young and sell old.Tottenham’s acquisition last month of the 33-year-old Croatia midfielder Ivan Perisic, for example, was the first time that the club has signed an outfield player in his 30s since 2017. Liverpool has not done so since 2016. Manchester City has not paid a fee for an outfield player over age 30 for almost a decade. Goalkeepers, widely held to boast greater longevity, are the only players granted an exception.Instead, players approaching the twilight of their careers are generally seen as burdens to be shifted. This summer has been a case in point: Bayern Munich has managed to alienate the almost-34-year-old Robert Lewandowski by (unsuccessfully) trying to anoint Erling Haaland, a decade his junior, as his heir.Liverpool, meanwhile, has started the work of breaking up its vaunted attacking trident by replacing the 30-year-old Sadio Mané with Luis Díaz, 25, and adding the 23-year-old Darwin Nuñez to succeed Roberto Firmino, who turns 31 in October. As it seeks to overhaul its squad, Manchester United released a suite of players — Nemanja Matic, Juan Mata and Edínson Cavani among them — into a market already saturated with veterans, including Gareth Bale and Ángel Di María.The reasoning behind this, of course, is straightforward. “The demands of the game are changing,” said Robin Thorpe, a performance scientist who spent a decade at Manchester United and now works with the Red Bull network of teams. “There is much more emphasis on high-intensity sprinting, acceleration, deceleration.” Younger players are deemed better equipped to handle that load than their elders.Just as important, though, recruiting younger players promises “more return on investment when you’re looking to move them on,” according to Tony Strudwick, a former colleague of Thorpe’s at United who also has worked at Arsenal. Clubs can earn back their outlay — perhaps even make a profit — on a player acquired in his early 20s. Those a decade or so older are, in a strictly economic sense, seen as a rapidly depreciating asset.Those two ideas are, of course, related, and so it is significant that at least one of them may be rooted in outdated logic.Liverpool gave Mo Salah a three-year deal a few weeks after his 30th birthday.Athit Perawongmetha/ReutersAccording to data from the consultancy firm Twenty First Group, players over age 32 are consistently playing more minutes in the Champions League every year. Last season, players over age 34 — practically ancient, by soccer’s traditional thinking — accounted for more minutes in Europe’s big five leagues than in any previous season for which data was available.More significantly, that has not been at any notable cost to their performance.“Age has its pros and cons,” the former Barcelona right back Dani Alves, now 39 and determined to continue his career, told The Guardian this month. “I have an experience today that I didn’t have 20 years ago. When there’s a big game, 20-year-olds get nervous and worried. I don’t.”Twenty First Group’s data bears Alves out. Though players in their 20s do press more than those in their 30s do — 14.5 pressing actions per 90 minutes, as opposed to 12.8 — that reduction is offset in other ways.In both the Champions League and Europe’s major domestic competitions, older players win more aerial duels, complete more dribbles, pass with greater accuracy — if they are central midfielders — and score more goals. More than twice as many players over age 30 now rank in Twenty First Group’s modeling of the best 150 players in the world than appeared in the same list a decade ago.The data suggests, very clearly, that 30 is not as old as it used to be.Luka Modric, who will turn 37 in September, joked recently that he might play until he’s 50.Frank Augstein/Associated PressFrom a sports-science perspective, that is hardly surprising. The idea of 30 as an immutable aging threshold predates soccer’s interest in conditioning: The current generation of players in their 30s, Strudwick pointed out, may be the first to “have been exposed to hard-core sports science from the start of their careers.”There is no reason to assume they would age at the same rate, or the same time, as their forebears. “Look at the condition that players are in when they retire,” Strudwick said. “They haven’t let their bodies go. They might need to be pushed a little less in preseason, and their recovery may take longer, but from a physical and a performance point of view, there is no reason they can’t add value into their late 30s.”That longevity can only be increased, Thorpe said, by improvements in nutrition and recovery techniques.When he was at Manchester United, he said, “the rule of thumb was always that players over the age of 30 got a second day’s rest after games. It felt intuitively like the right thing to do.” The truth, though, was that it wasn’t always the older players who needed the break.“When we researched it, when we looked at the data,” Thorpe said, “we found that it was way more individual. Some of the older players could train, and some of the younger players needed more rest.”As those sorts of insights have become more embedded in the sport, he argued, it follows that “more players should be able to do more later on in their careers.” Luka Modric might have been joking when he told an interviewer, before the Champions League final in May, that he intended to play on “until 50, like that Japanese guy, [Kazuyoshi] Miura,” but it is no longer quite as absurd as it might have once sounded.That the clubs do not appear to have noticed — that players over age 30, with rare exceptions, still seem to be regarded as a burden rather than a blessing — is, as far as Strudwick can see, now almost exclusively an economic issue.“A player’s life cycle is an inverted U shape,” he said. “But salary expectations are linear.”A more scientific approach might have flattened the downward curve of a player’s performance graph, or even delayed its onset, but it cannot eliminate it completely. At some point a player will enter what Strudwick called the “roll-down phase.” The one thing that no club wants — that no club can afford — is to be paying a player a premium salary when that moment arrives. That is what motivates clubs, still, to believe that a threshold arrives at 30: not what players can contribute, but what they cost. More

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      Robert Lewandowski, Bayern Munich and the Bitter End

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      A star striker is eager to move to Barcelona, and his club doesn’t seem to realize it might be its own fault that he wants to go.Robert Lewandowski does not, in his own words, like to make “too much show.” He is, and always has been, a touch more impassive than the average superstar. He does not greet his goals, the ones that have come for so long in such improbable quantities, with a roar, or a leap, or a scream. Instead, he grins. For the really good ones, he might go so far as a beam.He is the same off the field. Lewandowski is warm, smart, immediately likable, but his charisma is more subtle, more steady than that possessed by his peers, the finest players of his generation. He does not have the bombastic streak of Zlatan Ibrahimovic. He does not relish the spotlight quite like Cristiano Ronaldo.His Instagram account encapsulates it. There are, of course, occasional glimpses of yachts and supercars and picture-postcard tropical vacations — he is still a millionaire soccer player, and it is still Instagram — but they are interspersed with images of Robert Lewandowski, the purest striker of the modern era, pushing a child’s stroller at Legoland, and Robert Lewandowski, serial German champion, tickling a small dog.The impression he has cultivated, over the years, is of a player who regards all of the attention, all of the glamour, all of the noise not as an unavoidable consequence of his work, or even as an unwelcome distraction. Instead, he has always treated it as an active hindrance. Lewandowski’s job is to score goals. He is good at it, and he is good at it because he takes it extremely seriously.All of which has made the last two weeks something of an outlier. For perhaps the first time in his career, at the age of 34, Lewandowski has suddenly gone rogue.It started last month, not long after the ticker-tape that accompanied Bayern Munich’s 10th straight Bundesliga had been cleared away, when he declared — publicly — that he wanted to leave the club where he has spent eight seasons, the peak of his glittering career, immediately. “What is certain at the moment is that my career at Bayern is over,” he said.Friedemann Vogel/EPA, via ShutterstockThat was unexpected enough, the silent, reluctant superstar suddenly leveraging all of his renown, all of his influence, all of his clout to make as much noise as possible. But it did not end there. Instead, Lewandowski has doubled down, again and again. He has insisted that he does not want to “force” his way out of Bayern. As ever with Lewandowski, his actions speak for themselves.In a series of interviews — at almost any given opportunity — he has chastised Bayern for its lack of “respect” and “loyalty,” its apparent refusal to find a “mutually agreeable solution,” its failure to “listen to me until the very end.” He said that “something inside of me died, and it is impossible to get over that.”Perhaps most seriously, he intimated that his treatment might make other players reluctant to join the club. “What kind of player will want to go to Bayern knowing that something like this could happen to them?” he asked. Of all the sideswipes, all the jabs, that felt the most damaging, the most irretrievable. “I want to leave Bayern,” he has said, in various formats, over and over. “That is clear.”From the outside, it is not immediately apparent why that should be, why Lewandowski — with a year left on his Bayern contract — would have taken such a provocative path in order to secure his release.After all he has achieved in Germany — eight league championships in a row at Bayern, to go with two he won at Borussia Dortmund, a Champions League title, sundry domestic cups, and more than 40 goals across all competitions in each of the last seven seasons — he would be forgiven for wanting a change of scenery, a different challenge, to end his career at Barcelona, say. His approach, though, suggests something deeper is at play.Lewandowski has led the Bundesliga in goals in each of the past five seasons.Kai Pfaffenbach/ReutersAs is traditional, soccer has tried to answer that question by imbuing trivial details with tremendous narrative power. A few weeks ago, a report in the German outlet TZ revealed, Lewandowski had exchanged angry words with Julian Nagelsmann, Bayern’s young coach, when it was suggested that the latter might like to change his striker’s positioning when competing to win headers.Lewandowski, not unreasonably, pointed out that his career statistics rather suggested that he knew what he was doing. Yet when the inevitable meta-analysis of the incident was conducted, it was concluded that not only did Lewandowski not respect Nagelsmann — whose playing career extended no further than his teens — most likely the rest of the Bayern squad did not, either.It is not with Nagelsmann, though, that Lewandowski’s relationship has collapsed. Such encounters are not exactly rare. Nagelsmann is, by all accounts, broadly popular with Bayern’s players, who admire his verve and his ideas, even if they remain slightly skeptical about his effectiveness after his first season.Instead, the problem has its roots elsewhere in Bayern’s hierarchy. Amid the blizzard of words produced first by and then about Lewandowski, the most incisive came from his agent, the not-exactly-wildly-popular Pini Zahavi. “He hasn’t felt respected by the people in charge for months,” Zahavi told the German outlet Bild. “Bayern didn’t lose the player Lewandowski. They lost the person, Robert.”The source of that tension can be found in Bayern’s ill-concealed, and ultimately futile, pursuit of Erling Haaland. Hasan Salihamidzic, a decorated player in Munich at the turn of the century now installed as the club’s sporting director, had earmarked Haaland as Lewandowski’s eventual replacement. When it became clear to Lewandowski that the club was contemplating his demise even as he closed in yet another record-breaking season, he felt an unspoken covenant had been broken.Bayern’s sporting director, Hasan Salihamidzic.Andreas Gebert/ReutersIt may not soothe Lewandowski’s ego, but it would be remiss of Bayern not to be considering who will, at some point, step into his shoes; no matter what order you eat your meals in, at some point time comes for us all. Where Salihamidzic erred was in allowing his vision to become public; or, more accurately, in allowing it to become public and then not succeeding in signing Haaland. All of a sudden, Bayern had a disaffected superstar and no replacement.That may have ramifications beyond Lewandowski’s immediate future: As he has made abundantly clear, barring an unlikely change of heart, that will now lie elsewhere. “Breakups are part of football,” he said.For Bayern, though, that may only be the first issue. For a club that has spent the last decade collecting trophies so serenely that it has become possible to imagine a world in which it wins the Bundesliga in perpetuity, this is a delicate time. Not in terms of its domestic primacy — that, sadly, is now hard-wired into the system — but most certainly in its attempts to compete in Europe.Bayern has been able to ride out the rise of the petro-clubs, Manchester City and Paris St.-Germain, better than the likes of Juventus, Barcelona and to some extent Real Madrid not only because of its commercial potency, its operational expertise and its corporate appeal, but because it functions essentially as a Bundesliga Select XI.Every year, Bayern has cherry-picked the best talent from the rest of Germany — often using the lure of guaranteed trophies and an inevitable place in the latter stages of the Champions League as leverage to pay a lower price — to fill out its roster. This has a twin benefit: It weakens domestic competition, and enables Bayern to match, and occasionally to overcome, the arriviste elite elsewhere.Lewandowski collected his eighth Bundesliga title with Bayern this season.Ronald Wittek/EPA, via ShutterstockLewandowski, plucked on a free transfer from Dortmund, stood as a symbol of that approach when he arrived; at the moment of his departure, he may well signal the need for its abandonment. The Bundesliga’s clubs, after all, have never wanted to sell to Bayern, and now, given that Germany is the cash-soaked Premier League’s bazaar of choice, they do not have to. English teams pay more, and they do not insist on beating you twice a season afterward.Bayern will, instead, have to plot another course. It may have to start to offer more lucrative salaries — its approach for Liverpool’s Sadio Mané suggests that realization has arrived — and it may even need to identify other markets, other demographics, from which to source its recruits.It will have to do that at a time when its institutional knowledge is in the hands of Oliver Kahn, an intelligent, imposing figure but still relatively inexperienced in his role, and Salihamidzic, whose record in the transfer market was mixed even before his part in the impending loss of Lewandowski.Bayern has weathered the changes in soccer’s ecosystem by sticking, unabashedly, to an approach that produced results, and by entrusting its fate to a grizzled, respected set of executives. For a decade, it has worked. Without much fuss, without too much show, Bayern Munich has constructed the most successful period in its history. The public, toxic departure of Lewandowski is the first hint of rust at the heart of the big red machine.Endless, ShamelessQuick question, Karim: Would you rather have two weeks off, or four more games?Franck Fife/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesYou may not have noticed — you may, in fact, have taken very deliberate steps to avoid it — but, even deep into June, soccer refuses to be stopped. As well as a raft of exhibition games and qualifying matches for the next African Cup of Nations, there have, at the time of writing, already been two rounds of Nations League games in Europe.And the good news is, if you missed them, there are two more to come: After a long, arduous season that came on the back of another long, arduous season and a sprawling European Championship, Europe’s elite men’s players will finally get a vacation starting on June 15.All of this was deemed necessary, of course, because someone decided to squeeze a World Cup into the middle of the traditional European season. They did it for entirely honorable reasons, though, so that’s all fine. Likewise, it is hard to begrudge the coaches of the planet’s various national teams for feeling that they might like to have at least a bit of time working with their players before they decide who will, and who will not, be part of their plans for Qatar in November.The decision to plow on with the Nations League, though, feels counterproductive. The tournament is UEFA’s nascent pride and joy — at least at the international level — and, when the season’s schedule was being mapped out, it made clear that it was not prepared to place it on hiatus in order to afford the players a rest. Doing so, the organization worried, would stifle all the momentum the event had built.Sadly, the alternative may be even worse. The Nations League is being played out to a backdrop of complete indifference from fans and barely-concealed irritation from the players; Kevin De Bruyne, for one, has made it clear he thinks it is a complete waste of his, and everyone else’s, time. All of a sudden, the Nations League has become exactly what it was meant to replace: a series of meaningless games that are met with apathy or resentment.CorrespondenceA French soccer federation official, Erwan Le Provost, said this week that closed-circuit video footage of events outside the Champions League final had been automatically deleted, as required by law, because judicial officials did not request the footage within seven days.Anne-Christine Poujoulat/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIt seems that there is a broad range of views among the On Soccer Newsletter community about the fiasco that marred last month’s Champions League final, and I’ll do my best to represent them.Let’s start with Christopher Smith. “At the African Cup of Nations, there was a stampede at the Olembé Stadium in which eight people died,” he wrote. “I don’t recall seeing anything like the indictment of France and UEFA being leveled at Cameroon and C.A.F. In fact, at least in your newsletter, this event doesn’t seem to have merited a mention at all.”These are valid points. I would suggest that there was plenty of condemnation of both Cameroon and African soccer’s authorities, but I would agree that UEFA attracted more. This is not an easy sentiment to express, but I suspect that is simply because the Champions League final is a far more high-profile event. That doesn’t make it right, of course, but it is (most likely) the determining factor.That the Olembé tragedy did not appear in this newsletter was an oversight, but I would at least direct you to the coverage of both the disaster and the tournament elsewhere in The Times.Others focused, instead, on the tension between the French authorities’ version of events near Paris and the experiences of the fans themselves. “My only thought is how close we came to another Hillsborough,” wrote Alicia Lorvo. “The fans were traumatized at what was supposed to be a happy, fun event. The people who were there with real tickets must be compensated. France must be forced to hold an independent inquiry. The situation is intolerable.”Teresa Olson, sadly, was not surprised. “It was not the fans, but the utter indifference to accommodating the sellout crowd effectively,” she wrote. “We had the same experience during the Women’s World Cup in 2019. Gates were not opened until there was physically no way they could process everyone, and there was complete indifference as to whether the fans could get to their seats in time for the games.”It is important to remember that, I think: The way the Champions League final was policed is not unusual in France. The authorities followed their playbook, with one slight twist, explained by Javier Cortés. “With all due respect, most of us still think that English fans are (for the most part) unbearably arrogant who tend to violence once they have a few beers in their bellies,” he wrote. “English fans are generally not well-liked outside their islands.”Or inside them, as it happens. Nobody enjoys criticizing the English more than the English, Javier, and there is no question that the behavior of some English fans on foreign trips can be abominable. That clearly played into the thinking of the French authorities.The Euro 2020 final was not England’s finest hour (and a half).Andy Rain/EPA, via ShutterstockThe counterargument would run that Liverpool has been to two other Champions League finals in recent years, in Kyiv and Madrid, with no trouble at all. Problems do not trail in its fans’ wake. More important, that line of argument prompts the question as to whether funneling all of these risk factors into one place, and then locking them outside of a stadium, is really the best way to allay your worst fears. I’d suggest that it is not.Larry Machacek saw the situation along similar lines. “I conjure up images of drunk and cocaine-fueled young men, particularly the one with a flare lodged in a personal space, and the stories of Italian fans kicked in the head,” he wrote. “A few bad apples can and do tarnish the lot. France has successfully hosted many major sporting events and will continue to do so. How about advising readers of the outcomes of last year’s Euro 2020 fiasco at Wembley? Are there any profound learnings from the U.K. you would recommend?”My instinct on the first point is similar to my response to Javier: I’m not sure there is any evidence of gaggles of Liverpool fans engaging in the sort of mayhem we saw in London, and I’m not convinced that it is fair to decree them guilty until they have arrived. Doing so belies an ignorance of the differences between fans’ following a club and (a minority of) fans who follow England. They aren’t the same people, and they don’t behave in the same way.On the second, it is indisputable that what happened at Wembley last year was no more or less appalling than what happened in Paris. The problem, in both cases, was with the manner of response: Where the French were too heavy-handed, the English were too laissez-faire. There was no attempt to control the crowd whatsoever until it was too late.The lesson, then, is that neither of those approaches work, and that UEFA needs to recognize that. It should have a sense of best practices for how these occasions are managed, and central to it should be the principle that fans, wherever they are from, are welcome guests to be treated with respect, rather than a problem to be faced. More

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      Messi, Ronaldo and Soccer’s Golden Sunset

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      This year’s World Cup will be the last for some household names, meaning soccer will go into the tournament with one elite and emerge with quite another.In the heady, innocent days of 2016 — before all of the largely dreadful things that have happened since had happened — Nick Serpell was given what was, by the standards of the time, a faintly morbid task.As naïve as it seems in hindsight, a theory had taken hold on social media — the place where all theories take hold — that the year was cursed. It had started, it seemed, with the death of David Bowie, and it did not stop. Alan Rickman died. Zaha Hadid died. Harper Lee died, and Leonard Cohen, and Johan Cruyff, and Muhammad Ali, and Prince.Serpell’s job was to find out whether this really was unusual, or whether it was simply the effect of the public nature of grief in the social media age. As the BBC’s obituaries editor, he searched through the number of prepared obituaries that the broadcaster had published in the first three months of that year — the kind that all news organizations, including The Times, keep on file for a host of well-known figures — and then compared the total to the previous few winters.There had, he found, been a considerable leap: From January to March 2012, for example, only five people deemed worthy of a prewritten obituary had died. It had been eight in 2013, 11 in 2014 and 12 the following year. By 2016, though, that number had skyrocketed: In the first three months alone, Serpell found, the BBC had run 24 ready-made tributes.Serpell, though, remained unconvinced there was a curse; the explanation seemed to him to be far more prosaic. The apparent rise, he divined, was down to the fact that the world was now more than half a century on from the first great flowering of a shared popular culture — with the dawn of television, the growth of pop music and the global reach of Hollywood.Though some of those who had died in early 2016 were distressingly young, many more had been in their 70s and 80s, the products of that blossoming of mass popularity. It was not that a greater proportion of prominent people were dying; it was that there was, 50 years or so after technology made some form of worldwide celebrity more attainable, a much deeper pool of prominent people who might die.That phenomenon has an echo this year in a very different — and thankfully much less mournful — context. The 2022 World Cup will act as a profound watershed for soccer; it will, in a distinct, almost tangible way, mark the ending of one era and the start of another, a generational shift played out live on television.Dani Alves will be 39 when the World Cup opens in November. Brazil is going, but is he?Carl De Souza/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThat it will, almost certainly, provide the conclusion to the international careers of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo — assuming Portugal makes it past North Macedonia in its playoff final on Tuesday — has long been assumed. Their starlight is so bright, though, that it has served to obscure all of the other farewells that will come on the kafala-built fields of Qatar.This World Cup will extinguish the light of a whole galaxy. It will, most likely, be the final time Luka Modric, Thiago Silva, Daniel Alves, Manuel Neuer, Thomas Müller, Jordi Alba, Ángel Di María, Luis Suárez, Edinson Cavani, Eden Hazard and Antoine Griezmann will grace the grandest stage sports has to offer. Robert Lewandowski, Gareth Bale, Arturo Vidal, Alexis Sánchez and James Rodríguez may yet join them, another clutch of superstars on a valedictory tour.World Cups, of course, have always had that purpose. Just as they are the forge of greatness, they act, too, as the place it takes its bow. It is not especially unusual that players — as Silva and Alves, in particular, have — should continue their careers to ensure one more shot at the greatest prize of all. The 2006 World Cup final was Zinedine Zidane’s last ride, after all.In that light, this World Cup is no different from any other. And yet the sheer numbers suggest something different; they give the impression that soccer will go into the tournament with one elite and emerge from it with quite another. That is not because there is a greater proportion of famous players at the end of their career than normal. It is because there are more famous players, full stop.It is likely that the last 15 years will come to be seen almost exclusively through the lens of Messi and Ronaldo. They have, after all, dominated this era of soccer, and so it is fitting, in many ways, that they should come to define it.Such an interpretation, though, would be reductive. It is better thought of, instead, as soccer’s first truly global age: an era in which fans across the world could watch almost every second of a player’s career, in which the great and the good encountered one another with unprecedented frequency in the Champions League and came into our homes through video games, a time when rare talent clustered together at a handful of superclubs.The generation that will exit the stage in Qatar is the last bastion of the first generation of players who started and ended their journeys in that ecosystem; they are the equivalent of that bloom of mass, shared popular culture that germinated in the 1960s. Lewandowski is far more familiar, far more famous than Gerd Müller, his predecessor at Bayern Munich, ever was. More people will notice when Suárez retires from Uruguay than concerned themselves with Enzo Francescoli’s departure.Luis Suárez collected souvenirs after Uruguay sealed its World Cup place.Pool photo by Matilde CampodonicoEdinson Cavani, like Suárez, will be heading to his fourth World Cup.Pool photo by Raul Martinez That they have been so prominent for so long has as much to do with the scientific and medical advances available as it is their ability. There was a reason, a couple of weeks ago, that the two standout midfield displays in the Champions League, all indefatigable energy and irrepressible dynamism, came from Modric, 36, and Vidal, 34. That level of performance, in that rarefied company, would not have been possible even 20 years ago; it has served to prolong their careers and, in doing so, expand their legacies.Qatar, for many of them, will be their last stand. It will lend the tournament a faint air of sorrow. A whole generation, one that we have watched from the start, one that we have come to know like none before, one that has become part of the fabric of the game, will depart, all at once, and we will, at last, have to say goodbye.That Horse Bolted. Quick, Lock the Door.UEFA’s president, Aleksander Ceferin, relented on his efforts to impose a U.S.-style salary cap on European clubs.Vasily Fedosenko/ReutersFinancial Fair Play — no, no, stay with me — was, like deep-dish pizza or the “Sex and the City” reboot, absolutely fine in theory. In the middle of the first decade of this century, it was abundantly clear that European soccer needed to find a way to make its teams less vulnerable to the caprice of reckless owners, to prevent them taking on colossal, unmanageable debts.The problem was with the application. The idea was twisted and contorted by the game’s elite clubs — aided and abetted by pliant governing bodies — until a set of rules that had been intended to promote sustainability became a method to entrench the status quo. Not that it mattered, really, because the punishments for failing to abide by them were pretty quickly proven to be toothless anyway.It is hard to see the system’s successor — the snappily titled financial sustainability regulations — being any more effective. The new guidelines, the product of a decade of squabbling and a year of negotiation, will have little or no impact on the way any of the major teams operate. The regulations’ impact, as before, will be to shut the stable door long after the horse is roaming free in the paddock, eating all of the best grass.By now, it is abundantly clear that the way to manage the central problem in European soccer — the lack of competition engendered by financial imbalance — does not lie in a set of fiscal rules. They are too easily circumvented, too lightly enforced and invariably introduced several years too late.Instead, the solution has to be sporting. The biggest teams will always make the most money — or at least say they make the most money — and will therefore have an advantage when spending is limited to a percentage of income. The more effective way to improve competition, both between clubs and between leagues, is to limit how they can spend it.A hard salary cap, the sort often seen in North American sports, is clearly not something the clubs are prepared to accept. But there is nothing at all to stop UEFA from instituting policies that demand all teams have a significant proportion of homegrown players, or a certain number of squad members under age 23. There is no reason it cannot cap the number of players any team can send out on loan, or even introduce rules that grant effective free agency to players who have not made a specific number of appearances.Any and all of those measures would discourage the hoarding of stars by a handful of teams. In turn, they would allow that talent to be spread more evenly around Europe’s various leagues. They would encourage teams to be more judicious in the market, to think more long-term. They would help to level the playing field not by suppressing some, but by lifting others.Passing on the PainArsenal’s Bukayo Saka complained about rough treatment at the hands of Aston Villa. Nick Potts/Press Association, via Associated PressThe strange thing is that Steven Gerrard knows, better than most, quite how devastating injury can be. By his own estimation, during his career he endured somewhere in the region of 16 operations. He has screws in his hips. He struggles these days to go to the gym.He is aware, too, that the impact is more than physical. A decade or so ago, after missing six months of Liverpool’s season with a groin problem, he admitted that he had been “as low as I have ever been.” He called it the “hardest period of his career.” He felt, at times, as if his “body had given in.”Injury, of course, is unavoidable. Many of the issues Gerrard faced can be attributed to wear and tear, the body buckling under the strain placed on it by any elite athlete. That is, after all, the most common source of injury: not a reckless tackle or a dangerous challenge, but the almost humdrum popping of tightly wound hamstrings or the tearing of overworked ligaments. Gerrard, now the Aston Villa manager, was right to say last weekend that pain is “part of the game.”That does not justify his conclusion, though. The Arsenal winger Bukayo Saka had complained after his team’s 1-0 win against Gerrard’s Villa that his opponents had been “purposefully” targeting him for rough treatment. Gerrard’s response was blunt. Saka, he said, had to “learn, and learn quick” that “it’s not a no-contact sport; tackling is allowed, physicality is allowed.”In part, that can be attributed to ordinary managerial hypocrisy — this was the same Gerrard, after all, who has previously complained that his teams do not “get enough protection” from referees — but it is also, in some way, the passing on of a generational trauma.Just because Gerrard and his peers were exposed to (and occasionally contributed to) a level of brutality that was entirely unnecessary does not mean their successors should have to do the same. Just because injury is part of sports does not mean we should not do all we can to minimize its effects. Players endure enough pain as it is. The game should be seeking to ensure they do not have to go through more than is necessary.CorrespondenceTwo fairly hefty questions dominated this week’s inbox. First, Ian Greig wondered what might happen to the “luxury end” of soccer when “the oligarchs, princes, petty dictators and willing killers of the world come to realize that sports-washing does not work? Who in Newcastle had ever thought about the rate of execution in Saudi Arabia before last weekend?”“When was the last time everyone in Paris had bad thoughts about a Gulf government?” he asked. “I’m willing to bet that there is more than one Qatari prince who understands that the attention brought to their country by the World Cup has not been flattering.”There are, I think, two sides to this. In one sense, I suspect Ian is quite right: I don’t think at least some of these regimes — particularly in Qatar — fully realized the scrutiny that would come with their co-opting of the world’s most popular game. My instinct is that Qatari officials didn’t really expect a decade-long discussion of the kafala system when they set their sights on the World Cup.Qatar: Ready for its close-up?Noushad Thekkayil/EPA, via ShutterstockThe other, sadly, is less positive. Sports-washing most definitely does work, because national branding and reputation laundering are only the most superficial aim of the project. It is as much about enmeshing yourself — or your nation — into both the Western consciousness and the Western financial system as slapping “Dubai 2020 Expo” on some advertising boards.Manchester City is a prime example: Abu Dhabi has won plaudits for regenerating part of the city, yes, but much more important is that the club has become a way for the state to establish links with a whole variety of businesses, from tire companies to hedge funds. If you want a relationship with Abu Dhabi, then Manchester City serves as a convenient front door. And in that, it has been hugely successful.The second, even more challenging query comes from Dan Ross. “The real question isn’t, ‘Who is too evil to own a soccer team?’” he wrote, “but ‘Who gets to decide?’” After all, as he noted, “scoundrels can fly any flag.”“The only acceptable answer is that the world decides as a whole,” he concluded. “When a country becomes a pariah by global consensus (notwithstanding a few holdouts), its ruling class should not be allowed to participate in the global economy and culture — or sport.”This does, indeed, appear to be where we have landed, and I’m inclined to agree that there is no truly elegant solution at hand. That is not to say that more could not be done, though: It seems fairly straightforward to me that no nation state — or investment arm of a sovereign wealth fund — should be allowed to own a club, for one. That would apply just as much to Norway as it does to Saudi Arabia.Of course, plenty of people would be willing to find a way around that, and some would doubtless find a way through. But all that means is that it is incumbent on leagues, clubs and federations to make sure they are at least asking the right questions of prospective purchasers. That should not be too much to ask. More

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      Poland Refused to Play Russia Once. It May Have to Do So Again.

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      Poland’s stars cornered FIFA by threatening to boycott a World Cup qualifier. Now, as Russia appeals the decision, Robert Lewandowski, Wojciech Szczesny and their teammates may have to double down.One by one, late on a Friday evening, Robert Lewandowski called his Poland teammates. They were scattered across Europe, and most of them were busily preparing for club games that weekend, but his question could not wait.They had all seen the footage emerging from Ukraine: Russian tanks rolling across the border, Russian artillery bombarding cities and towns, Ukrainian refugees flooding out of the country, hundreds of thousands of them seeking shelter in Poland.In a matter of weeks, Poland was scheduled to face Russia in a crucial World Cup qualifier. Lewandowski had known immediately, once the invasion of Ukraine had begun, that he did not want the game in late March to go ahead. He had already called the president of the Polish soccer federation and made that clear. Now he wanted to know how his teammates felt.Without exception, the answer was emphatic. Lewandowski did not, he said in an interview, “have to convince anyone.” The conversation he had with Wojciech Szczesny, the Juventus goalkeeper who has been one of Lewandowski’s Poland teammates for more than a decade, was typical. “I just said, ‘I’m not playing the game,’” Szczesny said. “That was how he felt, too. We all said the same thing.”After finishing his calls late on that February night, Lewandowski — the Poland captain and, by some distance, his country’s most high-profile athlete — relayed his conversations to executives at the federation. The players, he said, were unanimous: They would not take the field against Russia. It did not matter if the game was held on neutral territory or if Russia played it under a neutral flag.It did not even matter to them if Poland was thrown out of the World Cup as a result. “We didn’t think about the consequences or whether we might be punished,” Szczesny said. “We only cared about the outcome. We were prepared to forfeit the game. We were not going to play.”The federation readily acceded to the players’ decision. They told Lewandowski they would relay a message to FIFA, world soccer’s governing body, the next morning to inform the organization of the Polish position. “We said that on Saturday we would announce there would be no games at all with Russia,” Jakub Kwiatkowski, the general manager of the Polish men’s national team, told the BBC.Lewandowski said Poland’s players were united in their refusal to play Russia.Albert Gea/ReutersThe move seemed to force FIFA’s hand. The organization had, for much of the first week of the invasion, been studiously quiet on the subject of whether Russia — or any of its club teams — would be allowed to continue to play either in World Cup qualifying or in competitions under the auspices of UEFA, European soccer’s governing body.The Polish authorities had been trying for several days to force FIFA to commit to a position. They had already sent the governing body two letters: one in which it confirmed that Poland would refuse to play games in Russia, and one in which Sweden and the Czech Republic — the two other teams that stand in Poland’s way of a place at the World Cup this winter — joined its boycott. “There was no reaction,” Kwiatkowski said.It took several more days for FIFA to respond at all, and when it did so it “did not go far enough,” Szczesny said. FIFA’s initial punishment prevented Russia only from playing on home soil, and under its own flag. Other than that, it would be free to compete. “It didn’t go down very well with the players,” Szczesny said. “It was not enough.”FIFA’s position changed quickly once the vehemence of the Polish players’ opposition became clear. “We sent them a statement that was very clear,” Kwiatkowski said. “We will not play Russia at all, regardless of the name they play under or where the venue might be.” By the next Monday, Feb. 28, FIFA had reversed course completely. Russia and Russian clubs, it declared, would no longer be able to play in its competitions, or in UEFA events. A subsequent ruling would decree that foreign players on Russian teams would be allowed to break their contracts and complete the season elsewhere.Russia-Ukraine War: Key Things to KnowCard 1 of 4In the city of Mariupol. More

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      FIFA Proposes Penalties for Russia but No Ban, Yet

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      The restrictions proposed by soccer’s governing body for a World Cup playoff next month stopped short of the all-out ban Russia’s opponents have demanded.Under mounting pressure to take action against Russia after its invasion of Ukraine, the leadership of world soccer’s governing body on Sunday agreed on a range of measures that would take effect for Russia’s crucial World Cup qualifying playoff next month. But the proposals — a ban on Russia’s name, flag and anthem and a neutral site for its games — do not include the all-out ban on Russia’s national team that its opponents are demanding, making it unclear if the punishments will resolve the confrontation, or if the games will be played at all.Russia was drawn against Poland in March as part of a four-team group for one of Europe’s final places in the World Cup in Qatar later this year. If Russia were to win its game against Poland, it would meet Sweden or the Czech Republic for a place in Qatar when the tournament opens in November. Russia’s first playoff match and the potential second game had been scheduled to be played in Moscow.Bureau of the FIFA Council takes initial measures with regard to war in Ukraine ▶️ https://t.co/JoHzwIajiX pic.twitter.com/BarqeIDYaP— FIFA Media (@fifamedia) February 27, 2022
      The three other countries involved in the battle for the World Cup place — Poland, Sweden and the Czech Republic — have all refused to play Russia under any circumstances as a protest against Russia’s invasion of neighboring Ukraine.Several top players, including Poland’s Robert Lewandowski, FIFA’s reigning world player of the year, have backed the decision to boycott any games involving Russia. Those statements, and similar ones by other players, have created intense pressure on FIFA to remove Russia from the competition.Other soccer bodies have already taken action against Russia: European soccer’s governing body last week stripped St. Petersburg of this year’s Champions League final, and on Sunday England’s soccer federation said it would not play Russia in any international games for the foreseeable future “out of solidarity with Ukraine and to wholeheartedly condemn the atrocities being committed by the Russian leadership.”Earlier Sunday, a group of FIFA top leaders sought to find a way out of the simmering confrontation by agreeing to penalize Russia: It ordered that its team would be allowed to play only in neutral venues and in empty stadiums; that it must play without its flag or national anthem, and only if its team agreed to be known as the Football Union of Russia, rather than Russia.Cezary Kulesza, the president of Poland’s soccer federation, called FIFA’s decision “totally unacceptable.” In a post on Twitter, he added: “We are not interested in participating in this game of appearances. Our stance remains intact: Polish National Team will NOT PLAY with Russia, no matter what the name of the team is.”Karl-Erik Nilsson, the president of Sweden’s soccer federation, also said it would not play Russia, and urged FIFA to cancel the playoff matches in March involving the country.FIFA’s measures are only the first step in actions against the country’s soccer teams, said three senior soccer officials familiar with the organization’s discussions, and a harsher penalty — most likely an all-out ban on Russian teams — could be imposed if Russia’s attacks on Ukraine continue, or if it refuses to abide by Sunday’s penalties.The measures mirror some of the penalties imposed against Russian teams by the International Olympic Committee after Russia was caught running a large, state-sponsored doping program; those punishments have been widely ridiculed as inadequate by athletes and Olympic officials from other countries.Stadiums across Europe were illuminated in the colors of Ukraine’s flag this weekend.Michael Probst/Associated PressLeft, Deutsche Bank Park in Frankfurt, Germany. Right, London Stadium, the home of West Ham.Paul Childs/Action Images Via ReutersThey also may not be enough to persuade Russia’s rivals to agree to share a field with a Russian team, and put FIFA in the uncomfortable position of expelling three of its members from the playoff — and thus allowing Russia to advance unchallenged to the World Cup, soccer’s showcase event.Understand Russia’s Attack on UkraineCard 1 of 7What is at the root of this invasion? More

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      Lionel Messi Wins Record Seventh Ballon d’Or

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      The Paris St.-Germain star capped a year in which he led Argentina to the Copa América title by edging Bayern Munich’s Robert Lewandowski.Some of the most illustrious names in soccer’s long history only managed to win the Ballon d’Or, the sport’s most prestigious individual prize, once. George Best, Zinedine Zidane and Eúsebio all have just a single award to their names. Ronaldo, the great Brazilian striker, won two. Johan Cruyff, arguably the finest European player in history, has three.After Monday night, Lionel Messi has seven.Messi, 34, effectively retained the trophy he last won in 2019 — controversially, the award was not handed out by France Football last year because of the coronavirus pandemic — after a year in which he ended his long wait for an international honor, winning the Copa América with Argentina, and left Barcelona, the club where he had spent all of his career, for Paris St.-Germain.When your dad wins an other Ballon d’Or 🙌#ballondor pic.twitter.com/UWKir71mX5— Ballon d’Or #ballondor (@francefootball) November 29, 2021
      “It’s incredible to be here again,” Messi said. “Two years ago I thought it was the last time. Winning the Copa América was the key.”“I don’t know how many years I have left,” he added, “but I hope many more.”Messi finished with 613 points in the voting, only 33 more than the runner-up, Bayern Munich striker Robert Lewandowski. In 2019, the last time the trophy was awarded, Messi beat Liverpool defender Virgil van Dijk by only seven points.Barcelona may have lost Messi this year, but it still took home some hardware on Monday: Alexia Putellas, a star midfielder on its treble-winning women’s team, became the third winner of the women’s Ballon d’Or, and the teenager Pedri, a rising talent who is already a fixture for Barcelona and Spain’s national team, was honored as the world’s best player under 21.Messi, who had arrived at the gala at Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris in a shimmering tuxedo, a look matched by his three young sons, was typically soft-spoken in accepting his award. He praised his former teammates at Barcelona and his countrymen with Argentina, and vowed to fight for new trophies with his new club, P.S.G.Messi defeated Lewandowski in voting by 176 journalists and conducted by France Football, which awards the Ballon d’Or (almost) every year. Many experts argued Lewandowski deserved the honor in 2020, when it was not handed out because, organizers said, disruptions to the soccer calendar had made it impossible to judge. Messi said he agreed with that position.“I think you deserved to win the award last year,” Messi told Lewandowski from the stage, calling it “an honor” to stand against him for top honors in 2021.Jorginho, the Brazil-born Italy midfielder, was third in the balloting, reward for a season in which his club team, Chelsea, won the Champions League and Italy won the European Championship. Real Madrid and France striker Karim Benzema was fourth, and Jorginho’s Chelsea midfield partner, N’Golo Kanté, was fifth.Ronaldo, who finished sixth in the voting, was absent from Monday’s ceremony, but his rivalry with Messi was not. On his Instagram account, Ronaldo angrily took issue with a comment made recently by France Football’s editor in chief, Pascal Ferré, in an interview with The New York Times about the award’s prestige.“Ronaldo has only one ambition, and that is to retire with more Ballons d’Or than Messi,” Ferré said, “and I know that because he has told me.”Ronaldo — despite suggesting as much in other interviews — denied he had made the comment, saying, “Ferré lied, used my name to promote himself and to promote the publication he works for.”“It is unacceptable,” he added, “that the person responsible for awarding such a prestigious prize could lie in this way, in absolute disrespect for someone who has always respected France Football and the Ballon d’Or.”Though 2021 has hardly been a vintage year by Messi’s standards — Barcelona was beaten to the Spanish title by Atlético Madrid and eliminated from last season’s Champions League in the round of 16 — his achievement with Argentina, as well as the attention drawn by his move to France after winning six Ballons d’Or at Barcelona, was enough to convince the award’s jurors.That Messi had never won an international trophy with his national team had always been held against him in the debate over whether he warrants the status as soccer’s greatest ever player. His rivals, after all, had triumphed with their countries as well as their clubs: Pelé led Brazil to three World Cups, Diego Maradona inspired Argentina to one and Cristiano Ronaldo helped Portugal claim the European Championship in 2016.Messi finally put that idea to rest in this summer’s Copa América, breaking down in tears on the field after Ángel Di María’s goal had given Argentina its first international trophy since 1993, beating Brazil, the host, in the final.His tally of seven Ballons d’Or now puts him two clear of Ronaldo, his great rival: The Portuguese forward remains on five, but he has not won the prize since 2017, and at age 36 he is more than two years older than Messi.Putellas, the 27-year-old midfielder who is captain of Barcelona’s all-conquering women’s team, won the women’s Ballon d’Or. Her victory completed a clean sweep of last season’s prizes, after she led her Barcelona side to the Champions League title and a league and cup double in Spain, and then was honored as Europe’s player of the year.Her main rivals for the Ballon d’Or were mostly familiar faces: Barcelona had become the first women’s team to register five nominees in a single year, and two of Putellas’s teammates — Jennifer Hermoso, who was second, and Lieke Martens, who was fifth — finished in the top five in the voting.“Honestly it’s a bit emotional, and very special,” Putellas said. “It’s great to be here with all of my teammates, since we have lived and experienced so much together, especially in the past year.”“This is an individual prize,” she added, “but football is a team sport.” More

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      Euro 2020: Ravaged and Resilient, the Show Goes On

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      Euro 2020 will not be the tournament anyone wanted, and it arrives after a year few will care to remember. And yet, once it starts, all of that will fall away.This is not how it was meant to be. The stands were supposed to be full, the cities jubilant, the lights of a carnival illuminating a continent. Euro 2020 was supposed to be the moment when it all began again, the great symbol of a world returning to normal. That is not how the tournament is. Instead, it is all it can be, how it has to be.The name itself is a giveaway. We are, as you will have noticed, in the thick of 2021. Not, though, according to the banners and bunting fluttering outside stadiums in 11 cities across Europe, nor on the television schedules of dozens of broadcasters around the world. There, we are still locked into the year that never seemed to end, hotly anticipating the start of Euro 2020.The anachronism is no accident. Last spring, when UEFA decided that it would postpone its showpiece tournament but not — despite the fact that on an elemental level keeping the incorrect date is wholly absurd — rename it, the organization rationalized it as a purely financial decision. They had printed tickets that said Euro 2020. They had commissioned merchandise. They had a website. You can’t just change a website, you know.Anatoly Maltsev/EPA, via ShutterstockBut the decision to retain the name spoke, too, to something far deeper. Within UEFA, there was a genuine, deep-seated belief that the European Championship, delayed by a year, would act as a potent symbol of recovery: the event that marked the end of the plague year and the restoration of the world we once knew. To still call it Euro 2020 is to say that now is when we pick up where we left off.Over the last year, that sentiment has proved remarkably resilient. As early as March 2020, UEFA felt bold enough not only to postpone the event but to set a (provisional) date for when it would be played. As the world convulsed in the first, bare grip of the coronavirus pandemic, the people who organize European soccer were convinced that the whole thing would be done in a year.And so it has continued. No matter how the circumstances have changed or the ground has shifted beneath its feet, UEFA has pushed on, adamant that this is how, and when, normal will start again.In May 2020, the organization’s president, Aleksandar Ceferin, was insistent that the tournament would be staged exactly as it should have been, had the world never changed. There would, he said, still be 12 host cities, spread across the continent, just as his predecessor, Michel Platini, had planned it.Last May, Ceferin confidently predicted that the stadiums would be full, packed to the rafters with fans reveling in each other’s presence and their mutual proximity after a year of enforced distance, isolation and separation. It would be a festival of rebirth, proof that life “will go back to normal, when we get rid of this bloody virus.”Manu Fernandez/Associated PressHe was still confident in January, as a second wave engulfed Europe and lockdowns returned. Salvation, he said, lay in vaccination. Medicine would triumph over infection, and Austria would meet Ukraine for a goal-less draw in Bucharest, Romania, in front of a full house.There was hubris, of course, and gallons of it: not only the manifest evidence of soccer’s messianic streak, its unchecked sense of its own importance, but its absolute belief that it is not really subject to the same laws as anything and everything else. A financial crisis will hit, and soccer will keep on spending. A pandemic will break out, and it will keep playing.The world can stop but soccer will go on, because soccer does not know how to do anything else, and besides: What would everyone do without soccer?Behavioral economists have a term for this — plan continuation bias — though the one airline pilots use is, perhaps, a little more catchy, a little more immediately understood. They call it get-there-itis, the porcine, obstinate and sometimes fatal refusal to allow the facts at hand to change your intended course of action.The fact that none of Ceferin’s predictions came to pass did not have any material impact on Euro 2020. There will not be 12 host cities — though UEFA eventually managed to press-gang 11 into service — and there will not, by a long shot, be full stadiums. Most are operating at about a quarter of capacity. Some may allow more fans as the tournament progresses.But there will be scarcely any traveling fans, their free and easy movement around Europe either complicated or restricted by rules in place to try to reduce the spread of the virus and its variants, to maintain control of a force that is greater than trade or travel or human interaction, let alone a mere game. There will be no carnival.Still the show will go on. It will do so diminished and deracinated, a shadow of what it was meant to be, but it will go on regardless, irrefutable proof of big-time soccer’s barrel-chested, bullheaded intransigence.Andreas Solaro/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesOdd Andersen/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesScenes of Euro 2020: Aleksandar Ceferin’s optimism, a German fan’s caution and Gareth Bale’s focus.Pool photo by Naomi BakerThe same can be said — more so, in fact — of the summer’s other major tournament, the Copa América. That event supposed to be played in Colombia and Argentina, only for Colombia to be stripped of hosting rights because of civil unrest. The whole competition was then meant to be played in Argentina, until that was ruled out by a surge in Covid cases.At that point, rather than give up, the tournament was simply shifted to Brazil, a country where the virus has killed almost half a million people, and cases continue to run at an alarming rate. Soccer really will not be stopped.It would be easy, then — and to some extent warranted — to chide Ceferin for his lack of foresight, or UEFA for its bullishness and its single-mindedness, or soccer as a whole for a blinkered refusal to cede to reality. It would, though, be slightly hypocritical.We have all, after all, spent much of the last year hoping for the point at which the uncanny, eerie version of existence that we currently inhabit might be banished for good, for the moment that things will go back to what they once were, clinging to the notion, despite all of the evidence, that the normal we once knew will soon be restored.Euro 2020 will highlight how distant that remains. The stadiums will be thinly populated and socially distanced. Fans, in some places, will be asked to present proof of either vaccination or absence of infection to access the games. It will still be a landmark tournament, though perhaps not in the way UEFA envisaged. Not a return to the old, but something entirely new: Euros for the pandemic age.Guglielmo Mangiapane/ReutersAnd yet, once it starts, all of that will fall away. All tournaments exist in and of themselves; once the ball and the field and the players take center stage, they develop a life of their own, they become a self-sustaining universe, a monthlong suspension of the outside world. They are breathless and swift and all-consuming, and they make you fall helplessly in love, once more — not with the business of soccer, not with the industrial complex, but with the game at its heart.Euro 2020 will still be an exercise in hubris and pigheadedness and get-there-itis; it will still be a monument to soccer’s unyielding self-satisfaction. But that’s not what will absorb us, over the next month: it will, instead, be the hope and the desolation and the joy of discovery.That the stands are not full, that the carnival is not in full swing, that the world has not yet returned to normal will not matter in those final few seconds before the final whistle, or as the goalkeeper watches on as the ball sails into the corner, or as dreams are dashed or fulfilled. It will not matter that this is not the tournament it was supposed to be. It will be the tournament that it has to be, and that, for now, will be enough.Print This Part Off and Remind Me on July 12Before you settle on a Euro 2020 favorite, remember that Pepe and Portugal lifted the trophy the last time.Christian Hartmann/ReutersThere has always been something of a non sequitur at the heart of the European Championships. For a long time, its calling card — the thing that differentiated it from the World Cup — was its concentration of quality.It was not nearly as glamorous or as global as the greatest show on Earth, the World Cup. From a purely technical standpoint, it was better. In the halcyon days when it had only 16 teams, there was no room, not really, for chaff. The bar for qualifying was so high that few, if any, of those teams that made it as far as the finals were overmatched.And yet, at the same time, the Euros has always been far more susceptible to upsets. Denmark won it in 1992, despite not actually qualifying for it. Greece emerged from obscurity to claim primacy in 2004. Even Portugal, the reigning champion, hardly ranked among the absolute favorites in 2016.Those are just the teams that have won it: the Czech Republic made the final in 1996, and the semifinals in 2004 (that year, at least in these eyes, the Czechs had the best team in the tournament). Russia and Turkey both reached the final four in 2008. Wales did the same five years ago.Given how afflicted by fatigue most of the anticipated contenders will be, there is a fairly compelling theory that this year’s edition will maintain that tradition. Picking a winner, then, would be a fool’s errand. Even picking a clutch of teams as possible candidates may not prove much of a hedge. Still, let’s have a go.A team to beat? Start with France, whose reserves could probably cruise into the quarters.Francois Mori/Associated PressFrance, the reigning world champion, has a strength in depth — Only able to play Kylian Mbappé and Antoine Griezmann in attack? Why not throw in Karim Benzema? — that nobody in the tournament can match. On paper, Didier Deschamps’s team should end the month trying to get N’Golo Kanté to celebrate with another trophy.Behind the French, the field is a little more open. England probably has the greatest resources, for all that it has spent the last month trying to convince itself that the absence of James Ward-Prowse is an unsustainable body blow. Portugal has a fine blend of canniness and craft. Belgium, the world’s top-ranked team, has an experienced side aware that this may be its last chance to win something. Italy, unbeaten in 27 games, has few famous names but plenty of momentum.If there is to be a surprise, then the likeliest source is Turkey — the youngest squad in the tournament, and a vibrant, undaunted team — or possibly Poland: a quarterfinal place should not be out of the question, given the way the draw has fallen, and with Robert Lewandowski up front, anything is possible.That leaves Germany and Spain, the two great unknowns. Germany has been drifting for three years or more; Spain has seen its preparations undone by at least two positive coronavirus tests. Either could win it. Either could fall at the first hurdle. It’s the Euros. The line between the two is very fine.CorrespondenceFurther to the discussion of Forward, Madison! in last week’s newsletter and the subject of authenticity in American soccer, Ryan Parks believes that the Oakland Roots are worthy of consideration. “They should be applauded for their connection to their city,” he wrote. “Their official website includes pages on ‘Purpose’ and ‘Culture,’ which highlights their Justice Fund, Nurtured Roots program, and Artist Residency.” I’m aware of their work, Ryan, and would be inclined to agree with you.Diaa Baghat has been watching “Baggio: The Divine Ponytail” on Netflix, and has a question. “If there was an option, who would you like to see play again at their peak? Dead or alive players are accepted in your wish list.”There’s a few fairly obvious answers to this — Maradona, Pelé, Duncan Edwards, Ian Ormondroyd — but I’m going to cheat, just a little, and say that I would have loved to have seen the Fiorentina of Rui Costa and Gabriele Batistuta in the flesh, just once. Or possibly Jim Baxter, a Rangers and Scotland midfielder who I heard a lot about from my dad. Almost too much, really. He’d probably be a bit of a disappointment.We can think of one moment Roberto Baggio wouldn’t mind seeing played again.Andre Camara/ReutersAnd finally, an excellent point from John Nekrasov. “Maybe Massimiliano Allegri, Carlo Ancelotti and José Mourinho are all being hired as a reaction to the failure of the club legend experiment that we were all talking about last summer. We had that wave of Artetas, Lampards and Pirlos being hired as an attempt to bring that new blood. Now, Lampard’s gone, Pirlo’s gone, and Arteta (sadly for my beloved Arsenal) is also hardly thriving in his current role.”That has the ring of truth to it, John, and is damning in its own way: that clubs are so easily frit — as Jim Baxter might have put it — that they rush straight back into the arms of the tried and tested at the first glimpse of any trouble. More

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      How to Watch Euro 2020: Schedule, Location, Teams and More

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      11 cities, 24 teams and hundreds of headaches: The European soccer championship is here after a year’s delay. Here’s what you need to know.The European Championship, generally considered the biggest soccer tournament after the World Cup, is being held this summer after a year’s delay because of the coronavirus pandemic. Here’s a rundown on the teams, the players and the host cities for what is still being called Euro 2020.When and where is the tournament?Euro 2020 — back on, with a few changes, but still refusing to admit it’s 2021 now — runs from June 11 to July 11.The Euros, like the World Cup, traditionally have been hosted by one country, or two in partnership. But for the current edition, European soccer’s governing body, UEFA, decided to spread the games around to at least a dozen cities across Europe. The choice was not universally supported, given the inherent logistical hurdles of managing sites as far apart as Spain and Azerbaijan. But it turned out to be an even more awkward decision once the coronavirus hit.First, the entire tournament was postponed a year. Then, only weeks before the first game, coronavirus restrictions for several more changes: Dublin lost its games, and several matches in Spain were shifted to Seville from Bilbao.Unless something else changes, 11 European cities will host games: Amsterdam, Baku, Bucharest, Budapest, Budapest, Copenhagen, Glasgow, London, Munich, Seville, St. Petersburg.The first game, Italy vs. Turkey, is June 11 in Rome. The knockout stages begin on June 26, and the semifinals and final all will take place at Wembley Stadium in London. The final is July 11.Robert Lewandowski, who broke the Bundesliga goals record this season, is Poland’s biggest threat.Roman Koksarov/Associated PressWho’s playing?Twenty-four teams qualified for the tournament, including all the major European powers you would expect: France, Spain, Italy, Germany, England. New rules created qualifying paths for lower-profile countries who normally miss out, allowing North Macedonia to qualify for the first time. Finland, which qualified in the traditional way, is also making its debut.Just about all the top-name players from Europe, like Robert Lewandowski of Poland, Cristiano Ronaldo of Portugal and Kylian Mbappé of France, will be there. Karim Benzema is back in the French team after being dropped five years ago in a sex tape blackmail scandal, but several top players are out, and Spain will arrived at a major tournament without a Real Madrid player for the first time.Who’s missing?Qualifying knocked out regular faces like Serbia and Norway, and Romania and Azerbaijan will host games even as their teams failed to make the field.The absence of Norway will mean no Erling Haaland, whose transfer saga may be the story of the summer. Also missing will be Zlatan Ibrahimovic of Sweden, who has a knee injury, and the veteran Spain defender Sergio Ramos, who was omitted by his coach because of fitness concerns. The Netherlands goalkeeper Jasper Cillessen was dropped after testing positive for the coronavirus, and Germany’s Toni Kroos has only recently returned to training after a recent bout with it.A more recent, more worrisome injury has Belgium concerned: its star midfielder Kevin de Bruyne of Belgium sustained a fractured nose and eye socket in the Champions League final. His status for the monthlong tournament is unclear.Will fans be allowed?Yes, but the numbers and rules vary by city, and the rules are still changing. Scotland recently urged its fans, who can attend games in Glasgow, not to travel to London when the team plays there.The shifting of matches may not be over, either. As teams advance, the tournament schedule still could be affected by rules about travel set by various European governments.Who has won in the past?Portugal is the defending champion. The tournament dates to 1960, and Germany and Spain have the most wins, with three. England is the highest-profile team never to have won it (or even made the final).Who is going to win this time?France is the favorite in the betting at this stage, with England just behind. But the tournament is considered quite open, with Belgium, Spain, Germany, Portugal, Italy and the Netherlands all given a fighting chance. Slovakia and Hungary have the longest shots, at 500-1 or more.Thomas Müller and Germany will rank, as usual, among the tournament favorites.Andreas Schaad/Associated PressYou can also bet on who will score the most goals: The current favorites there are Harry Kane of England, Romelu Lukaku of Belgium, France’s Mbappé and Portugal’s Ronaldo.How does the tournament work?The 24 teams are divided into six groups of four and play three games each in the preliminary round. The top two teams from each group, plus four of the six third-place teams, all advance to a 16-team knockout round.After that, it’s single elimination, with tied games heading to extra time and then penalty kicks, if necessary, to produce a winner.How can I watch?In the United States, the bulk of the games will be on ESPN, with a few on ABC. When two games are played simultaneously, one will run on ESPN2 instead. For Spanish language coverage, many games will be on Univision. Games also will be streamed on ESPN+.Broadcasters elsewhere include Bell Media and TVA (Canada), BBC and ITV (Britain), Optus (Australia), M6 and TF1 (France), ARD and ZDF (Germany) and Wowow (Japan). Here’s a complete list.Now, the most important question. Is there a mascot?Yes. He is Skillzy. He is reportedly inspired by “freestyling, street football and panna,” which is a fancy term for a nutmeg, the move in which a player kicks the ball through an opponent’s legs.Skillzy follows in the footsteps of Super Victor (France 2016), Goaliath (England 1996) and Pinocchio (Italy 1980).Like many sporting mascots, Skillzy has drawn a mixed reception. You be the judge.You might say the Euro 2020 mascot, Skillzy, is edgy. You might also wonder why he’s wearing a hoodie and long sleeves in the summer heat.Robert Ghement/EPA, via Shutterstock More