Liverpool (Soccer Team)

Subterms

    More stories

    • 113 Shares179 Views

      in Soccer

      Real Madrid’s Florentino Pérez Is More Powerful Than Ever

      by

      A year after the Super League debacle, Florentino Pérez is back in the Champions League final, having turned a club owned by its members into his personal kingdom.MADRID — Florentino Pérez strode onto the television set looking somber. Though he knew his questioner would be a little more informal — open-necked shirt, blazer — the Real Madrid president had chosen a straightforward black suit for the occasion. He even wore a tie. This was business, not pleasure, serious, not trivial, and Pérez wanted to project that.On the screens behind him, a lurid orange logo depicted a cartoon soccer ball with flames jetting out of its rotating crown.In England, in Italy and particularly in the United States, an assortment of financiers, tycoons and magnates of various stripes — all of them, like Pérez, among the dozen founding members of what would come to be known as the Super League — watched along in horror.The 12 clubs had struggled, in the weeks before going public, to find someone to act as the frontman for their idea. It was a complex, delicate project, one that needed careful presentation. But while none of the American owners of England’s most illustrious teams wanted to take center stage, nor did they believe Pérez, the architect of much of the idea, would come across as authoritative, weighty, persuasive.Pérez was an imperfect spokesman for the Super League, even though he was largely responsible for its creation.Rodrigo Jimenez/EPA, via ShutterstockPérez might occupy an almost unrivaled position of power at home — president of Real Madrid, chairman of one of the world’s largest construction firms, his box at the Santiago Bernabéu a magnet for the great and the good — but abroad he was often seen as bombastic, hubristic, faintly ridiculous. His appearance on “El Chiringuito” — a late-night, low-rent talk show — seemed to confirm his partners’ fears.Within days, the entire project collapsed. And then, only a little more than 12 months later, it all happened again.For four years, Pérez had been trumpeting the idea that Real Madrid would sign Kylian Mbappé, doing everything he could to court the French striker, a boyhood Real fan. The club had squirreled away a considerable portion of its transfer income for Mbappé’s signing-on fee and his salary, and as recently as March, Pérez was making not especially cryptic remarks to the news media suggesting an agreement was imminent.Then, late last week, Mbappé messaged Pérez to thank him for his offer, and inform him that he had chosen to stay at Paris St.-Germain. Pérez had just enough time to alert his team to Mbappé’s change of heart before the 23-year-old Frenchman appeared on the field at the Parc des Princes to celebrate his new three-year contract.Ordinarily, at a club as proud and demanding as Real Madrid, those twin embarrassments would be enough to spark some sense of mutiny. Pérez, though, remains as powerful, as unassailable as ever.Madrid’s fans are accustomed to a certain level of success. David Ramos/Getty ImagesIn part, of course, that can be attributed to the one aspect of the club not under his direct control. Pérez, ultimately, stands or falls on the fortunes of the team. Despite only cosmetic changes to the squad last summer — the additions of Eduardo Camavinga, a young midfielder; the versatile David Alaba; and the reinstatement of Carlo Ancelotti as coach — this has proved, a touch unexpectedly, to be a vintage season for Real Madrid.A team beaten to the Spanish title last season by its in-city rival, Atlético, has been restored — with ease — to its domestic perch. A team that had been knocked out of the Champions League with little fuss by Ajax, Manchester City and Chelsea in the last three years has returned, imperiously, to the final. Only Liverpool, on Saturday in Paris, stands between Real Madrid and a record 14th European Cup.In Karim Benzema, the last man standing from that first wave of signings that heralded Pérez’s return to the Real Madrid presidency in 2009, the club may possess the world’s standout player. In the likes of Vinicius Junior, Camavinga and Rodrygo, there are the green shoots of a new generation starting to sprout. Pérez has overseen it all while reconstructing the Bernabéu, turning it into a slick, state-of-the-art venue, complete with extensive corporate areas and a retractable turf field.Real Madrid beat Liverpool, its opponent on Saturday, in the 2018 Champions League final.Lluis Gene/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBut Pérez, 75, is not as vulnerable to the vicissitudes of form and fate as might be expected of a democratically elected president. Real Madrid is owned by its members, after all, but increasingly it feels like Pérez’s personal kingdom.Last summer, one of the few figures at the club who served as a counterweight to Pérez, the Galáctico player turned Galáctico coach Zinedine Zidane, resigned, claiming the club was “no longer giving me the trust I need.” On his way out the door, Zidane suggested he had not been “valued” as a “human being.”At much the same time, the club captain, Sergio Ramos, was leaving, too. Ramos broke down in tears at the news conference held to confirm his departure, revealing that the club had reneged on the promise of a one-year contract extension. “They never communicated to me that the offer had an expiry date,” Ramos said. “Maybe I misunderstood it.”They are not the only defining figures in Madrid’s modern incarnation to feel a little alienated by Pérez. His relationships with the earlier-era stars Iker Casillas and Raúl Gonzalez, too, have been strained at times (though both have since returned to the club).Pérez, though, is no longer troubled by the risks of crossing revered former players, not now that his dominion over Real Madrid is essentially unassailable, both officially and conceptually.In 2012, he changed the club’s statutes to decree that any candidate for the presidency must have been a member for at least 20 years, and possess a personal fortune equivalent to 15 percent of the team’s revenue.Pérez is the center of attention in his box at the Bernabéu alongside friends, politicians and business associates.Javier Barbancho/ReutersHe claimed, at the time, that it was a necessary measure to prevent Real Madrid from being sold to an overseas investor, but the joke has run, ever since, that candidates for the presidency also must work in construction, have three children and wear size nine shoes. Pérez has contested three presidential elections since. No rival has been able to meet the statutory criteria.More significant, though, he has quashed almost any outlet for criticism. It has been instructive, for example, to read the accounts in much of Madrid’s news media of the Mbappé deal. Rather than a defeat for Madrid, Mbappé’s decision has been cast as that of a mercenary and a traitor, a turncoat who gave his word to Pérez and then betrayed him.Mbappé’s family has been so distressed by that depiction that his mother moved to correct it publicly, asserting on Twitter that her son had never “given his word” to Real Madrid.That he chose “El Chiringuito” for his first appearance to discuss the Super League was not an accident, either. The show regularly features prominent Madrid-supporting journalists who have been known to break down in tears over the club’s successes, or rail against those — Gareth Bale, Eden Hazard — who are deemed to have dishonored the club.The show is not, in that, an outlier. Pérez oversees a vast network of pliant news media, dependent not only on his grace and favor for information and access but cowed, too, by the sheer scale and heft of his business interests. Pérez has always claimed that he is powerful only because he is president of Real Madrid, but that is not quite true. He is powerful in many other ways, too.That has allowed him to run Real Madrid as he sees fit. Despite its size, the club’s hierarchy is relatively tightknit, with many recruitment decisions overseen by Pérez; his chief executive, José Ángel Sanchez; and his chief scout, Juni Calafat. Real Madrid is, in that sense, something of an outlier, almost a throwback, in an era when most of its peers have diversified and deepened their staffs.Pérez would argue, of course, that it works: five Champions League finals in nine years is all the evidence he needs. That, perhaps, is his greatest gift. No matter what he does, no matter how unlikely it seems, Pérez has a remarkable ability to emerge triumphant.This might have been the year that destabilized the kingdom he has so painstakingly built. It may, instead, prove to be the year that cemented it for good. More

    • 150 Shares129 Views

      in Soccer

      Man City, Liverpool, Tottenham, Arsenal: Premier League Season Hangs on Final Day

      by

      As City and Liverpool take aim at the title and Arsenal and Spurs settle the last Champions League place, Leeds is playing for its Premier League life.From the vantage point of its end, there is something strange and distant — almost alien — about the start of a season. It is only 10 months ago, after all, barely the blink of an eye, and yet beliefs and convictions and truths from back then now seem as archaic as the idea that we once believed you could see the future in the entrails of a goat, or that people carried pagers.It is, for example, not yet a year since Nuno Espirito Santo was chosen as the Premier League’s manager of the month for the start he had made to life in charge of Tottenham Hotspur. Likewise, the idea that Romelu Lukaku “completed” Chelsea’s team, or that Ole Gunnar Solskjaer could deliver a title for Manchester United, or that running a repressive autocracy should prevent you from owning a Premier League team might as well belong to a different world.It may not seem like it, but all of that occurred in the same Premier League season that concludes on Sunday. And while those matters have been settled, countless others have not. As far as we have come, as much as we have learned, very little has yet been decided. There is still no champion crowned, no complete list of teams that have qualified for Europe, no conclusion to the relegation battle. A season can feel like it lasts a lifetime. This time around, it all comes down to one game.

      The TitlePep Guardiola gave Phil Foden and the rest of his team two days off this week.Peter Powell/ReutersPep Guardiola, above all, wants his players to be relaxed. In the aftermath of Manchester City’s draw at West Ham last weekend — the one that effectively guaranteed the identity of the Premier League champion would be decided on the season’s final day — he did not, as might have been expected, haul his squad in for extra work.Instead, with the club’s season now hanging on a single game, he gave them some extra down time. The whole squad was granted two days’ break, a chance to rest and recuperate and escape the pressure. Ilkay Gundogan went off to get married.Guardiola is right, of course, to identify that the test awaiting City is primarily psychological. In ordinary circumstances, it would easily dispatch Aston Villa on home territory: a couple of quick, early goals, a brutal display of superiority, an imperious saunter over the line. The challenge, this weekend, is to make the circumstances appear as ordinary as possible.City does not, as it turns out, have any margin for error. The 14-point advantage over Liverpool it held in January has been whittled to just one. City has had several chances to settle the matter in recent weeks — Riyad Mahrez might have beaten Liverpool in early April; he might have beaten West Ham, too — but it has failed to take them. Now, if Guardiola’s team stumbles again, and Liverpool beats Wolves, the title will go to Anfield.The teams have been in this position before, of course: In 2019, they went into the final day separated by a single point, too.At Anfield that day, a great roar went up when news filtered through that Brighton had taken a first-half lead over visiting City. On the sideline, Jürgen Klopp knew it was “too early.” City duly struck back, emphatically — winning the game by 4-1 and claiming its second successive title. The “intense pride” Klopp felt was tempered only by the knowledge that his team had picked up 97 points and it had still not been enough.Things are a little different this time. Liverpool has already won two trophies this season, sweeping both the F.A. Cup and the Carabao Cup. Just as in 2019, it has a Champions League final on the horizon as solace, too.Liverpool has won two trophies this season and will play for a third in next weekend’s Champions League final.Tolga Akmen/EPA, via ShutterstockMore important, perhaps, its yearning for a domestic title is no longer quite as desperate. It ended its three-decade wait for a championship in the eerie silence of pandemic soccer in 2020. Klopp and his players are more circumspect than they could be in 2019.City’s task is complicated not so much by the nature of its opponent, but by the identity of Guardiola’s counterpart. It is doubtless just a coincidence that it should be Steven Gerrard who should have the final chance to push Liverpool over the line, but soccer does not really do coincidence. Villa has two former Liverpool players — Danny Ings and, in particular, Philippe Coutinho — in its ranks, too. There has been a lot of talk of narrative determinism on Merseyside over the last week.It is City’s great strength, of course, that it rarely succumbs to such superstition. It is more than good enough to swat Villa aside, regardless of Gerrard’s intentions and motivations. Guardiola is well aware, though, that his team will have to be relaxed to do it. No matter how good this City side is, if the outcome is in the balance with 10 or 20 or 30 minutes to go on Sunday, the nerves will start to shred.The Champions LeagueHarry Kane and Tottenham hold the slightest of leads over Arsenal entering the season’s final day,Glyn Kirk/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesOf all the issues yet to be resolved, the battle for Champions League places next season is perhaps the most straightforward. In theory, anyway, the identity of the fourth English team to qualify for next season’s Champions League was settled 10 days ago, when Tottenham beat its bitter rival, Arsenal, in the North London derby.That win — followed by a win over Burnley three days later and Arsenal’s defeat at Newcastle on Monday — allowed Spurs to leapfrog Mikel Arteta’s team. It also means Tottenham goes into the final day with a two-point advantage, and a vastly superior goal difference. Simply avoiding defeat in its final game would be enough to ensure its safe passage back into Europe’s elite, and condemn Arsenal to another year on the outside.That should not be too much of an ask: Antonio Conte’s Tottenham faces Norwich City, long since relegated and the proud owner of precisely one league win since January. The outcome of Arsenal’s curtain call, at home to Everton, should be irrelevant. (The squabble over the last slot in the Europa League is almost a mirror image: West Ham will snatch that from Manchester United if it overcomes Brighton and United fails to beat Crystal Palace.)For both Arsenal and Spurs, the immediate future hinges on which side of that divide they finish. Once a mainstay of the Champions League, Arsenal has not featured in the competition since 2017. The club intends to offer Arteta considerable financial support in the transfer market this summer regardless of where the team finishes, but the options it will have for how to spend that money will be defined by whether it is in the Champions League or not.Spurs’ absence is significantly shorter — a finalist in 2019, it has missed only two years — but its return is no less meaningful. A place in the Champions League may be enough to convince its restive coach, Conte, to stay on, not least because it would allow him greater freedom in bolstering his resources. It might also stave off another summer dominated by doubts over where, precisely, Harry Kane sees his future.The DamnedEverton’s win on Thursday meant it was out of the relegation fight.Oli Scarff/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThere is a photo of Dominic Calvert-Lewin, shirtless and smiling beatifically, that just about sums it up. He is standing on the field at Goodison Park, surrounded by fans and by police officers, wisps of smoke passing above his head. His eyes stare into the camera. It is an image of outright salvation.At halftime on Thursday, Everton looked doomed. It was losing at home to Crystal Palace, and the possibility of the club’s first relegation in close to a century was hovering ever nearer. And then, in 45 minutes, Frank Lampard’s team performed a pulse-quickening rescue act. One goal. Another. Then with five minutes to go, Calvert-Lewin launched his body at a cross and headed home a winning goal. Everton had taken it right to the last moment, but it had survived.As fans flooded onto the field at Goodison Park, swarming their heroes and, in at least one incident, using their moment of euphoria to needlessly antagonize Patrick Vieira, the Palace coach, the relegation battle was reduced to two. Watford and Norwich are gone to the Championship next season. One of Leeds United and Burnley will join them.The probability is that it will be Leeds. It travels to Brentford, a place it has not won since the end of rationing in the 1950s. Leeds must, realistically, win and hope that Burnley loses at home to a Newcastle team that has long since fulfilled its ambition for the season.Jesse Marsch and Leeds are almost out of time.Lee Smith/Action Images Via ReutersThe reason for that is significant. Leeds’s form has turned around, just a little, since Jesse Marsch was installed as its coach — replacing the beloved Marcelo Bielsa — at the end of February. Marsch has won three and drawn three of his 11 games, and three of the five defeats he has suffered have come against teams in the top six. The other two came in his first two games.It is the nature of soccer, though, that it will be deemed Marsch’s fault if Leeds slips back to the Championship after two years in England’s top flight, if the return to the elite that the club spent 16 years dreaming of turns out to be nothing but a fleeting visit. That is the nature of management; the ruthlessness of it explains the salary.And yet, if Leeds is demoted, the defining factor will not have been its form under Marsch but its permeability in the last days of Bielsa’s regime. Bielsa lost his last four games by an aggregate score of 15-0. In the space of four days in December, Leeds conceded 11 goals. Its vulnerability, ever since then, has been its goal difference. That is why it is effectively a point behind Burnley even as they are level on points. That, more than anything, is what leaves Leeds United on the brink of the abyss once again, relying on nothing more than hope for salvation. More

    • 100 Shares149 Views

      in Soccer

      How Liverpool’s Dream Was Delivered, and Villarreal’s Dashed

      by

      Outplayed for a half, Liverpool scored three goals to reach its latest Champions League final. For Villarreal, though, all was not lost.VILLARREAL, Spain — In the corner of the Estadio de la Céramica, the one left totally at the mercy of the elements, the fans started to unfurl their scarves. On the scoreboard at their backs, the clock had ticked beyond 90 minutes. On the field in front of them, Villarreal was on borrowed time in the Champions League.It was then that they started to sing. As Liverpool enjoyed a rare moment of calm after a storm of an evening, and put the finishing touches on its 3-2 victory, the rest of the stadium noticed what was happening in the corner, and picked up the tune. They held their scarves aloft, too, a gesture of defiance, and loyalty, and gratitude.And then, when the whistle blew and it was all over, as Villareal’s players walked mournfully around the stadium, heads bowed and eyes raw, the tempo quickened. The scarves started to twist and to whirl, the mood shifting from regret at what had been snatched away to celebration of all that remained. In the pain, they found pride.Even in defeat, Villarreal’s fans filled Estadio de la Cerámica with noise, and pride.Biel Alino/EPA, via ShutterstockIndeed, quite how much it hurt was, perhaps, the best measure of quite how close Unai Emery’s Villarreal had come. This team was not supposed to be in the Champions League semifinals, not really; the very structure of European soccer’s elite competition is built to make it vanishingly unlikely that a team of its stature could travel this deep into the tournament.Villarreal was certainly not supposed to stand a chance going into the second leg. It had, by common consensus, been summarily dispatched at Anfield last week, its limitations exposed by the depth of Liverpool’s resources and the scope of its firepower and the sheer gravity of Jürgen Klopp’s team. The return leg was, more than anything, an administrative hurdle to be cleared, a form to be completed.Villarreal, the town, is a curious place to stage a game of this magnitude: a satellite of nearby Castéllon, more than anything, quiet and refined and, after a day spent under a torrential downpour, almost entirely deserted. Snatches of songs, in both English and Spanish, echoed around the streets.If the sense of occasion that ordinarily accompanies the most seismic games in Europe’s calendar was missing outside, it was palpable inside. For the first time, Villarreal had arranged a mosaic: a blue submarine against a yellow background, the club’s slogan, Endavant, picked out in giant letters. The public address announcer talked about believing in comebacks.Any doubters would have been converted within three minutes, as Boulaye Dia tapped home from Étienne Capoue’s not entirely intentional cross, and the Céramica seemed to melt. All of a sudden, everything felt possible. Liverpool, so seamless and so smooth in a 2-0 victory six days ago, struggled to complete a pass.Boulaye Dia got Villarreal off to the flying start with a goal in the third minute. Alberto Saiz/Associated PressBy halftime, its rhythm had been broken and its confidence sapped and then, just when it thought it might make it through, its advantage had disappeared completely. Capoue crossed, on purpose this time. Francis Coquelin headed home. Villarreal’s bench emptied onto the field, coaches and substitutes and sundry assistants all scarcely able to believe what they were seeing.At that moment, tied at 2-2 halfway through the second leg, Villarreal’s players stood within touching distance. The final was there, right there, and they could seize a place within it. Villarreal would be the smallest town, by some distance, to send a team to the biggest game in soccer.In an era defined and designed by Goliath, it would be this team, constructed on a shoestring, that did what Ajax and Monaco and RB Leipzig could not and made it all the way. And they could do it by etching their own entry in the Champions League’s ever-expanding book of eye-watering comebacks, a miracle to call its own, just like Barcelona (2017), Roma (2018), Liverpool (2019) and Real Madrid (passim).Hope and belief exist at different points on the same axis. Villarreal, in the space of 45 minutes, had traveled all the way along it.And then, just when it was there, within their grasp, it was taken away. Klopp took off one $45 million forward, Diogo Jota, and introduced another, Luis Díaz. The switch changed the momentum irrevocably. Trent Alexander-Arnold hit the bar. Díaz tried a spectacular overhead kick. And then Mohamed Salah slipped Fabinho through and his shot squirmed through Géronimo Rulli’s legs. In that moment, it was all over.Five minutes later, Díaz had scored, drifting in to head a cross under Rulli. Five minutes after that, Sadio Mané had put Liverpool ahead on the night, latching on to a pass from Alexander-Arnold, darting past Rulli as he charged out of his goal and into midfield, and then calmly rolling the ball into the net.Andrew Roberton, left, with Sadio Mané after Liverpool’s third goal.Eric Alonso/Getty ImagesPerhaps, in hindsight, it would have been easier had Villarreal not heard that siren call of possibility. Perhaps it would have been easier to go quietly, to succumb to the inevitable. That might have hurt less. But then the journey is not defined by the destination.Villarreal beat Juventus in Turin in the round of 16. It silenced Bayern Munich in the quarterfinals. And it produced 45 minutes that saw Liverpool — a team now on its way to a third Champions League final in five years, a team pursuing an unprecedented and scarcely possible clean sweep of trophies — so scrambled that when Klopp asked his assistant, Peter Krawietz, to identify a “single instance” of good play from the first half and show it to the players for inspiration, he came back and told him there was nothing to be found.And it did it all on a budget that is a fraction of its rivals, in an ecosystem in which the big beasts consume most of the oxygen, and with a team patched together from the discarded and the dismissed. There was a common root to the pride and the pain: At times, an aching wound can feel like a badge of honor.“Soccer is beautiful,” Villarreal’s captain, Raúl Albiol, said. In time, he knows, what will matter is not that Villarreal fell 45 minutes short of a Champions League final, but that it came to be in a position to fall 45 minutes short of a Champions League final.“This was a defeat,” he said, “but we’ll always remember this run.”Paul Ellis/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images More

    • 113 Shares179 Views

      in Soccer

      The Champions League’s Drama Is Worth Savoring, and Saving

      by

      The Champions League’s late-stage drama is a feature, not a bug. Let’s hope no one messes that up.The nights happen so often now that the possibility they are a coincidence can be safely discounted. They occur with such startling regularity that they do not really count as rare, not anymore. They still possess the texture and the echo of an exception, but by this stage they are better thought of as part of the rule. They are a feature, not a quirk in the code.There have been 26 games so far in the latter stages of this season’s Champions League. A conservative estimate would suggest that seven of those games — just a little over a quarter, if you prefer your information in fractions — qualify for inclusion in the competition’s ever-growing list of classics.They have not all been identical. Villarreal’s dissection of Juventus was thrilling in a wholly different way than Real Madrid’s stirring comeback against Paris St.-Germain. Benfica’s chaotic, innocent draw with Ajax had little in common with the grit and sinew of Manchester City’s elimination of Atlético Madrid. That they have not followed a pattern, though, does not mean they are not part of one.This is, now, what the knockout stages of the Champions League do. It has been that way for at least five years, if not longer: Barcelona’s 6-1 defeat of P.S.G. in 2017 is as viable a candidate as any for the era’s starting point. After that, the caution and the fear that had characterized this competition for most of the first decade of this century was jettisoned, replaced by an apparently unbreakable commitment to abandon and audacity and ambition. Games that had once been cautious, cagey, cynical were now, instead, reliably conducted in a sort of dopamine-soaked reverie.It has reached the stage where it is possible to wonder at what point the Champions League will run out of ways to top itself, when we all become numb to its wonder. And yet, somehow, it keeps mining new seams, discovering new heights. It was hard to envisage how the tournament might improve on that victory by Real Madrid over Lionel Messi and Neymar and Kylian Mbappé — but sure enough, a month or so later, there were the very same Real players, spread-eagled on the turf of the Bernabéu, trying to process how a game could contain two comebacks, one following in the wake of another.It may be the recency bias talking, but it felt like even that paled in comparison with what the first of the semifinals produced. Real Madrid was involved again — that does not, it is fair to say, appear to be a coincidence — in a frenetic, inchoate, wholly baffling meeting with Manchester City. Real lost the game four times, and might have lost it many more times over, and yet escaped with both its reputation and its hopes of returning to the final for the first time since 2018 somehow, despite it all, enhanced.The drama doesn’t always feel great in the moment.Oli Scarff/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIt is worth at least attempting to consider what lies at the root of this shift. This is, after all, probably the first era in the seven decades or so of the European Cup where the latter stages have been regularly defined not by an inherent tautness, an anxiety over what might be lost, but by a euphoric, wild excitement about what there is to win.In part, that must be attributable to the sheer quality of stars on display, the fact that so many of the very best players in the world are now clustered together at just half a dozen or so clubs, the ones that have become accustomed to reaching this stage of the competition. Likewise, it seems obvious that the margins between these teams are now so fine that their encounters are inevitably volatile. The slightest shift in momentum or belief, the smallest error, the most imperceptible tactical switch can have seismic consequences, one way or the other.The format helps, too. UEFA, led as ever by the booming voices of its leading clubs, has been considering the idea of abolishing home-and-home semifinals in favor of a single, weeklong “festival of soccer,” held in one city, leaving the semifinals dispensed with in only 90 minutes. By UEFA’s standards, this is not a particularly bad idea. Single-leg semifinals increase jeopardy. That is, broadly, to be encouraged. Collecting all the later drama in one city offers a chance to create a carnival-style event, a miniature tournament within a tournament, a defining climax to the European campaign. On the most basic level, it is hard to deny that it would be exciting.There are logistical complications, of course. Only a handful of cities in Europe could play host to four teams at the same time. (So much for spreading the big occasions around.) It seems an idea designed to be transported outside of the continent: That is less than ideal, too. It would most likely lead to the gouging of fans, based on the incontrovertible logic that everything leads to the gouging of fans. And it would, most damaging of all, remove at a stroke the biggest game that any club can host on its own territory.Villarreal kept the result close in Liverpool, which might have been its aim.Oli Scarff/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBut the most compelling argument against change is that, of all the things in soccer that could do with a tweak or an upgrade or a wholesale overhaul, the Champions League semifinals are pretty much at the bottom of the list. The knockout stages of the Champions League have consistently caused jaws to drop and breath to be taken for half a decade. The current structure strikes just the right balance between risk and reward, suffering and salvation, and it is all carried out against a succession of fiercely partisan, deliriously raucous backdrops. That is part of its magic, too.Increasingly, though, it is hard to avoid the suspicion that these spectacles represent the natural culmination and sole benefit of the yawning chasm that separates the game’s elite and everyone else. It seems quite likely that they are a product of soccer’s superclub era.In domestic competition, those teams that are staples of the later rounds of the Champions League are so overwhelmingly superior to most of their opponents that whatever threat they face tends to be fleeting and cursory. Teams overmatched for talent and resources pack their defenses and hang on for dear life; that, after all, is all they can do.That is what happens if the power balance is off in the Champions League, too. Consider this week’s other semifinal, Liverpool’s relatively serene defeat of Villarreal. That, certainly, was not a classic. It felt, instead, far more akin to the matches that account for the vast majority of games between the elite and everyone else in Europe’s five major leagues: one team trying to contain and confound, another trying to pick a way through, the only real question being whether the favorite will take its opportunities when they inevitably emerge.But then how could it be anything else, when one of the teams had been constructed on a comparative shoestring? What other choice did Unai Emery, Villarreal’s coach, have? Command his players to try to match Liverpool and watch them lose badly, all in the name of entertainment? To scold Villarreal for failing to deliver a spectacle is to misunderstand what, precisely, the team was there to do, to forget the unbridgeable gap that lies between what we want a game to be and what the players on the field desire. Villarreal had not traveled to Liverpool to make friends.Smile, Étienne Capoue: You and Villarreal aren’t done yet.Christof Stache/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIt is, of course, relatively rare to have a team like Villarreal in the semifinals, or even the quarters. The latest stages are populated more or less exclusively by teams generally used to taking what might be thought of as the active role in games, rather than the reactive. Real Madrid and Bayern Munich and Liverpool and Manchester City and all the rest — right down to Benfica and Ajax, outside the five major leagues — are used to asking questions, not answering them. The only time their mettle is tested is when they encounter a true peer, a fellow oligarch, and the time they do that most often — when it matters, at least — is later on in the Champions League.The fireworks that follow, with gleeful predictability, are a result of those teams being taken — of them taking each other — out of their comfort zones, finding themselves enduring the sort of heat and light they are used to inflicting. That is what fires the spectacle, what has turned these springtime school nights into compulsive viewing, what has made the knockout rounds of the Champions League soccer’s most reliable forge of wonder.Taking FlightNow playing a starring role in Los Angeles: Angel City F.C.Stephen Brashear/USA Today Sports, via ReutersConsidering it has not yet so much as taken to the field for a competitive game, there is a remarkable sense of anticipation surrounding Angel City F.C., one of two expansion teams in the National Women’s Soccer League this year.In part, of course, that is probably connected to the stardust of the club’s ownership consortium, its slick branding, its considerable presence on social media. Few teams have managed to attract so much attention in so little time, the meaning of which is explored in detail in this excellent piece by my colleague Allison McCann.Mostly, though, the success of Angel City’s launch is testament to the appetite for elite women’s soccer in Southern California. Nearly half a million people watched the broadcast of the team’s preseason encounter with the San Diego Wave a few weeks ago. The team already claims six official supporters’ groups. Some 15,000 season tickets have been sold — not bad going for a team that does not yet have a permanent home.It is not to diminish that achievement to say that, from a European perspective, that raises a fascinating question: How do you come to support a team before it exists?It is an article of faith, here, that fandom cannot be instantaneously generated. Fandom is something that is passed down, handed on, somewhere between a religion and a virus: To support a team is to understand its history and its lore, to identify yourself as a member of a longstanding tribe. It is an expression of solidarity with a geographical place, a social demographic, a pre-existing community.Barcelona’s women, relative newcomers at their century-old club, have a built-in base of support.Joan Monfort/Associated PressThat is why, as the women’s game has grown in Europe, the instinct has been to attach women’s clubs to men’s equivalents, partly in the hope that loyalty might be immediately transferred, partly for financial security and brand recognition, and partly because a team called Manchester Spirit, or equivalent, one that played in red and sky-blue stripes, would alienate an entire city before it had even started.And so it is anathema to think that 15,000 people can have such deep-rooted feelings for something that, until March, was entirely theoretical.That is not to doubt the sincerity of that attachment, to assume it is artificial. Rather, the phenomenon calls into question whether fandom works as those of us who live in Europe assume it does. Perhaps it is a more conscious process than we like to tell ourselves. Perhaps it is a choice, rather than a compulsion. After all, more than a century ago, that is precisely what happened here. Teams were conjured into existence, and people went to watch, and to cheer, and to support.(Bumper) CorrespondenceYou may remember, a few weeks ago — back before I skipped a correspondence section in order to have a few days’ unwarranted vacation — we had an email from a reader named Seamus Malin.“I’m curious if he is the former television commentator,” wrote Douglas Goodwin. “The Seamus Malin to whom I refer was the one and only American — albeit with an Irish accent — voice on television my father, my grandfather and I could tolerate. Often we watched games not featuring him with the volume off. Seamus Malin was a gift, and if he is in contact with you, please pass along my heartfelt thanks.”He was not alone in making that inquiry. Not having watched ESPN in my younger days because, well, we did not have ESPN in Britain then, the name did not immediately leap out at me. But it clearly stirred something in many of you, all of whom wanted to pass their thanks along to Seamus. I’m delighted, as ever, to serve as a conduit.Stop us if you’ve seen this photo before.Kai Pfaffenbach/Reuters“Your last column was needlessly equivocal about why the Bundesliga is so boring,” S.K. Gupta feels. “There is only one reason and that is the 50+1 rule. By precluding outside investment, no one can challenge the status quo. If the Bundesliga wants to become a genuine sporting competition with some uncertainty about the end result, they must make their clubs attractive to investors who would invest funds to build a competitive team.”There have been times, I will admit, when I have been tempted to come to the same conclusion. The Bundesliga acting as Bayern Munich’s fief is, I think, a problem for German soccer.But I’m not convinced that breaking the bond between team and fans is the solution. I suspect that particular road leads to the Premier League, where, instead of one rich team, you end up with a cartel of four or five or six, monopolizing not only the title but all of the other prizes, too. German fans cherish their culture. Change is necessary, but not at any cost.David Hunter is closer to my way of thinking. “You didn’t mention the obvious solution: a salary cap,” he wrote. “American football has one, and there are rarely routine winners season after season.” This is true, of course, but there is one giant hitch: a salary cap could only work if it was agreed to by clubs in every league in Europe, rather than just one. And that prospect is, unfortunately, an extremely distant one.Finally, let’s go back a couple of weeks. “If we, the fans, decide what matters in football, it’s worth noting that the viewing public and teams’ owners have very different ideas of the concept of risk,” wrote Alex McMillan. “Fans cherish risk: It’s what makes winning anything worth something. The owners of the wealthiest clubs detest it: It threatens their billion-dollar investment.”This is, to me, the crux of the issue over soccer’s future. The game thrives on risk. It is the running of it and the taking of it that makes it appealing. But, yes, that is diametrically opposed to what owners want and — if we are being kind — what sustainable businesses need. Almost every debate about where the game goes, or what it must do, boils down to that tension. How it plays out will define what shape soccer takes. More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in Soccer

      Thiago Alcantara’s Passing Stats Don’t Tell Us Everything About His Game

      by

      Statistics have come to favor Thiago, and they did again in Liverpool’s win over Villarreal in the Champions League. But his passing is best measured in how it swung the complexion of the game.LIVERPOOL, England — With no more daring option immediately apparent, Diogo Jota decided to turn around and start again. There were about a dozen minutes remaining, and Liverpool had long ago entered energy-conservation mode. Jürgen Klopp’s team had, in the blink of an eye, established a two-goal lead over Villarreal in the first leg of their Champions League semifinal, and it had no intention of surrendering it.So Jota, as he picked up the ball on the left wing and saw his path was blocked by two defenders, took the safety-first choice. He slipped a pass back across the halfway line. Virgil van Dijk took possession, and play moved off toward the other side of the field. At that point, Thiago Alcantara decided to offer his teammate some instant feedback on his decision.He explained — or, at least, seemed to be explaining — to Jota that while van Dijk was a fine selection, he had been open and available, too, and technically, if he was being picky, in a better position. The correct choice, in that situation, would have been passing to Thiago. This is because the correct choice, in pretty much every situation, is passing to Thiago.It is hard to be certain what, exactly, lies at the root of soccer’s relatively recent but now all-consuming obsession with yield. The game has, in the last decade or so, developed an apparently devout belief that if something cannot be measured that it cannot matter; a player’s worth can be accurately gauged by boiling down their output into something concrete, something definite, some number or percentage that offers the illusion of proof.The temptation is, of course, to connect that tendency to the sport’s growing interest in and reliance on analytics — this is soccer, as the nerds wanted it — or even to the game’s continuing infiltration by people who can only be described as Americans. That may, though, offer only a partial explanation.Just as relevant, perhaps, is the game’s talking-point culture, its entrenched tribalism and endless squabbling for supremacy, its thirst for virality, attention and clout. Cold, hard numbers carry more weight in 280 characters, after all, than such outdated concepts as metaphor, or allusion.Whatever the cause, few have been boiled down to a succession of numbers quite so much as Thiago. In his first season and a half in England, it was generally a convenient stick with which to beat him: His goal and assist tallies, after all, hardly indicated that he was a valuable component of Liverpool, let alone an outstanding performer.Belatedly, in the last few weeks, the dynamic has changed. Thiago had a pass completion rate of 92 percent in the F.A. Cup semifinal victory against Manchester City. He played 129 passes in the most recent humbling of Manchester United, and 123 of them found their intended target.A few days ago, he made more successful passes against Everton than all of his opponents combined. And then, against Villarreal, he turned in 119 touches, 103 passes played, 99 passes completed, 100 percent of tackles won, five interceptions, nine long balls completed and one earnest feedback session with a slightly unwilling Diogo Jota.The problem, of course, is that none of those metrics capture what makes Thiago such an integral part of this version of Klopp’s Liverpool. It is not just that they do not take into account his habit of urging the crowd to maintain its energy, or the way he walks his teammates through a game, or his ability to change something as ethereal and intangible as the feel of an occasion with something as simple as a tackle.Sadio Mane, right, gave Liverpool a 2-0 advantage in the tie entering the second leg.Peter Powell/EPA, via ShutterstockIt is that they do not tell you what any of those passes did. They do not distinguish between the ones played with the inside of his foot and the ones curled from the outside, the ones that keep things ticking over and the ones that slice through a defensive line, the ones that sweep and boom over vast distances, landing unerringly on some grateful recipient’s foot, and the ones that fizz low, at unexpected speed, suddenly launching Liverpool into another attack.They do not advertise which ones start with that quick shimmy of the hips, the one that begins with Thiago facing one direction and ends with him scampering in the other, at least two defenders trailing in his wake, still processing what has happened. They do not capture how unfazed he is by even the most intense pressure, or how flawless his technique is, and they do not begin to touch on the art with which he accomplishes his craft.Nor, of course, do they tell the story of how Thiago has come to encapsulate the growth and the maturation of Klopp’s Liverpool. The first team that Klopp took to the Champions League final, the one that suffered that heart-aching defeat to Real Madrid in 2018, was one that embraced chaos; it had still not, quite, cast off that misleading cliché about its manager and his percussive, heavy metal soccer.The second, the one that returned to the final the following year and left with substantially happier memories, did so by harnessing that chaos; a team of crest and surge, it could pick and choose its moments, unleashing the power and energy that it had once allowed to run uncontrolled in deliberate, irresistible bursts.This iteration should become the third Liverpool team in five years to reach the Champions League final — all it has to do, after all, is not lose by two goals next week — but it is conceptually distinct from both its predecessors. This Liverpool is defined more by control than by chaos, more by patience than percussion.It needed those virtues against Villarreal, a team whose romantic adventure to this stage should not, by any means, be confused with a desire to make friends now that it is here. Liverpool had to wait. It had to think. It had to adapt. It had to get a fortuitous deflection on a Jordan Henderson cross to break the dam, and then it had to strike again, almost instantaneously, before Unai Emery had a chance to repair the leak.There are few midfielders in Europe better suited to that task than Thiago. Every single one of those passes did something: They changed the angle of attack or relieved the pressure or switched gear or altered speed. To reduce them to mere numbers is to miss their point. They are better read, instead, as brushstrokes on a canvas, each one making the image a little clearer, each one signed by a master at work. More

    • 100 Shares179 Views

      in Soccer

      The Numbers Tell Only Part of the Story

      by

      Statistics have come to favor Thiago, and they did again in Liverpool’s win over Villarreal in the Champions League. But his passing is best measured in how it swung the complexion of the game.LIVERPOOL, England — With no more daring option immediately apparent, Diogo Jota decided to turn around and start again. There were about a dozen minutes remaining, and Liverpool had long ago entered energy-conservation mode. Jürgen Klopp’s team had, in the blink of an eye, established a two-goal lead over Villarreal in the first leg of their Champions League semifinal, and it had no intention of surrendering it.So Jota, as he picked up the ball on the left wing and saw his path was blocked by two defenders, took the safety-first choice. He slipped a pass back across the halfway line. Virgil van Dijk took possession, and play moved off toward the other side of the field. At that point, Thiago Alcantara decided to offer his teammate some instant feedback on his decision.He explained — or, at least, seemed to be explaining — to Jota that while van Dijk was a fine selection, he had been open and available, too, and technically, if he was being picky, in a better position. The correct choice, in that situation, would have been passing to Thiago. This is because the correct choice, in pretty much every situation, is passing to Thiago.It is hard to be certain what, exactly, lies at the root of soccer’s relatively recent but now all-consuming obsession with yield. The game has, in the last decade or so, developed an apparently devout belief that if something cannot be measured that it cannot matter; a player’s worth can be accurately gauged by boiling down their output into something concrete, something definite, some number or percentage that offers the illusion of proof.The temptation is, of course, to connect that tendency to the sport’s growing interest in and reliance on analytics — this is soccer, as the nerds wanted it — or even to the game’s continuing infiltration by people who can only be described as Americans. That may, though, offer only a partial explanation.Just as relevant, perhaps, is the game’s talking-point culture, its entrenched tribalism and endless squabbling for supremacy, its thirst for virality, attention and clout. Cold, hard numbers carry more weight in 280 characters, after all, than such outdated concepts as metaphor, or allusion.Whatever the cause, few have been boiled down to a succession of numbers quite so much as Thiago. In his first season and a half in England, it was generally a convenient stick with which to beat him: His goal and assist tallies, after all, hardly indicated that he was a valuable component of Liverpool, let alone an outstanding performer.Belatedly, in the last few weeks, the dynamic has changed. Thiago had a pass completion rate of 92 percent in the F.A. Cup semifinal victory against Manchester City. He played 129 passes in the most recent humbling of Manchester United, and 123 of them found their intended target.A few days ago, he made more successful passes against Everton than all of his opponents combined. And then, against Villarreal, he turned in 119 touches, 103 passes played, 99 passes completed, 100 percent of tackles won, five interceptions, nine long balls completed and one earnest feedback session with a slightly unwilling Diogo Jota.The problem, of course, is that none of those metrics capture what makes Thiago such an integral part of this version of Klopp’s Liverpool. It is not just that they do not take into account his habit of urging the crowd to maintain its energy, or the way he walks his teammates through a game, or his ability to change something as ethereal and intangible as the feel of an occasion with something as simple as a tackle.Sadio Mane, right, gave Liverpool a 2-0 advantage in the tie entering the second leg.Peter Powell/EPA, via ShutterstockIt is that they do not tell you what any of those passes did. They do not distinguish between the ones played with the inside of his foot and the ones curled from the outside, the ones that keep things ticking over and the ones that slice through a defensive line, the ones that sweep and boom over vast distances, landing unerringly on some grateful recipient’s foot, and the ones that fizz low, at unexpected speed, suddenly launching Liverpool into another attack.They do not advertise which ones start with that quick shimmy of the hips, the one that begins with Thiago facing one direction and ends with him scampering in the other, at least two defenders trailing in his wake, still processing what has happened. They do not capture how unfazed he is by even the most intense pressure, or how flawless his technique is, and they do not begin to touch on the art with which he accomplishes his craft.Nor, of course, do they tell the story of how Thiago has come to encapsulate the growth and the maturation of Klopp’s Liverpool. The first team that Klopp took to the Champions League final, the one that suffered that heart-aching defeat to Real Madrid in 2018, was one that embraced chaos; it had still not, quite, cast off that misleading cliché about its manager and his percussive, heavy metal soccer.The second, the one that returned to the final the following year and left with substantially happier memories, did so by harnessing that chaos; a team of crest and surge, it could pick and choose its moments, unleashing the power and energy that it had once allowed to run uncontrolled in deliberate, irresistible bursts.This iteration should become the third Liverpool team in five years to reach the Champions League final — all it has to do, after all, is not lose by two goals next week — but it is conceptually distinct from both its predecessors. This Liverpool is defined more by control than by chaos, more by patience than percussion.It needed those virtues against Villarreal, a team whose romantic adventure to this stage should not, by any means, be confused with a desire to make friends now that it is here. Liverpool had to wait. It had to think. It had to adapt. It had to get a fortuitous deflection on a Jordan Henderson cross to break the dam, and then it had to strike again, almost instantaneously, before Unai Emery had a chance to repair the leak.There are few midfielders in Europe better suited to that task than Thiago. Every single one of those passes did something: They changed the angle of attack or relieved the pressure or switched gear or altered speed. To reduce them to mere numbers is to miss their point. They are better read, instead, as brushstrokes on a canvas, each one making the image a little clearer, each one signed by a master at work. More

    • 125 Shares179 Views

      in Soccer

      How Villarreal’s Eye for Value Cracked the Champions League Code

      by

      A Spanish team’s run to a semifinal against Liverpool offers a template for how European teams can turn the impatience of the continent’s richest clubs against them.A great way to understand how it is that Villarreal — a soccer team from a town of only 50,000 souls, playing in a stadium that can hold a little less than half of them — finds itself in the semifinals of the Champions League is to consider the cleaning products aisle of Spain’s leading supermarket.The supermarket, Mercadona, and the soccer club are corporate cousins. Fernando Roig, Villarreal’s president and benefactor, has a minority stake in Mercadona, Spain’s largest retail chain, but it is his brother, Juan, the majority shareholder, who is credited with turning the latter into a staple case study for business schools around the world.Central to that approach is the idea that the customers are ultimately in charge. They are the ones, after all, who determine what their stores should stock. To ensure the company is meeting their needs, Mercadona, every so often, invites a selection of its most reliable customers to take part in a testing laboratory.These are held at 10 stores around Spain, and each is devoted to a particular strand of the business: pet care, for example, or snacks or personal hygiene. Customers are asked not only to offer feedback on various products — the packaging, the pricing, the taste, the smell — but to advise Mercadona’s staff on how they use them.That was how Mercadona discovered that while a lot of people were buying white wine vinegar as a condiment, they were also using it as a stain remover. “So they created a cleaning product made with vinegar,” Miguel Blanco, a business economics professor at King Juan Carlos University, once told a business journal from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Mercadona, like Villarreal, understands that the appeal of a product depends on how it is used.Villarreal does not, at first glance, follow the blueprint laid down by the handful of teams from outside the exclusive cabal of fabulously wealthy clubs who have gate-crashed the Champions League semifinals in recent years.Francis Coquelin and Villarreal, who will face Liverpool twice over the next week, are 180 minutes from the Champions League final.David Ramos/Getty ImagesMonaco in 2017 and Ajax in 2019 felt a little like glimpses into soccer’s near future. It was in Monaco’s run past Manchester City and Borussia Dortmund that Kylian Mbappé, Bernardo Silva and Fabinho first pierced the sport’s broader consciousness. Ajax’s defeats of Real Madrid and Juventus on its way to the semifinals two years later helped turn Frenkie de Jong and Matthijs de Ligt into stars.RB Leipzig, which made the final four in that strange, ghostly pandemic tournament in 2020, seemed like a team from the cutting edge, too. It featured the likes of Dayot Upamecano and Christopher Nkunku, and was guided by Julian Nagelsmann, the standard-bearer for coaching’s first post-Pep Guardiola generation.Villarreal, on the other hand, does not feel like a vision of what is to come. The core of Unai Emery’s team is homegrown, with the rise of Gerard Moreno, Yeremi Pino, Alfonso Pedraza and, in particular, Pau Torres testament to the outstanding work of the club’s widely admired academy.Apart from Pino, 19, though, none are especially young, not in soccer terms. Even Torres, the club’s locally sourced jewel, is 25, meaning he is unlikely to inspire the sort of feeding frenzy among the transfer market’s apex predators that de Ligt generated in 2019.Instead, around that cadre of graduates, Villarreal gives the impression of being something of a Premier League vintage store, its team stocked with faces vaguely familiar to cursory followers of English soccer. There is Vicente Iborra, a 34-year-old midfielder who struggled to make an impact at Leicester City, and Pervis Estupiñán, the young Ecuadorean left back who noodled around the great Watford loan factory for a while.Like many of his players, Manager Unai Emery has a stint in England on his résumé.Lukas Barth/ReutersÉtienne Capoue, 33, spent six years at Vicarage Road, establishing himself as a rare constant on a Watford team defined by permanent change. Alberto Moreno was released on a free transfer by Liverpool. Francis Coquelin first emerged at Arsenal. Dani Parejo had a short spell at Queens Park Rangers. Arnaut Danjuma had flickered and sputtered at Bournemouth.And then there is the Tottenham contingent: Juan Foyth, a defender who had lost his way; Serge Aurier, ditto; and Giovani Lo Celso, an extravagantly gifted midfielder who found himself out in the cold upon Antonio Conte’s arrival as manager at Spurs late last year.Even Emery, of course, returned to Spain after being given the somewhat daunting task of replacing Arsène Wenger at Arsenal. His team at Villarreal, the one that eliminated Bayern Munich in the quarterfinals, the one that blocks Liverpool’s path to a third Champions League final in five years, has been constructed on the Premier League’s waifs and strays.Those familiar with Villarreal’s strategy say that is not a deliberate policy. Miguel Ángel Tena, the club’s sporting director, and Fernando Roig Negueroles, its chief executive — and the son of the president — have not set out to sift through those cast aside by the Premier League’s wanton, wasteful consumerism.Villarreal’s finances pale in comparison to its Champions League rivals.Biel Alino/EPA, via ShutterstockThere has, instead, been a degree of opportunism. When, halfway through last season, Emery needed a physically imposing, technically adroit central midfielder, he remembered being impressed by Capoue while he was in England. Capoue, who has admitted that he does not watch soccer, did not even know where Villarreal was when the offer came; he was just touched by Emery’s faith in him.Danjuma was another signing recommended by the manager: Villarreal’s analysts had never watched him when Emery suggested, in the aftermath of Villarreal’s winning the Europa League last season, that the team should pay $20 million or so for a player who had just been relegated with Bournemouth. The club, though, paid the fee. Villarreal now believes Danjuma, its breakout star, could one day fetch $100 million.Others have benefited from the club’s eidetic memory. Villarreal has long nurtured connections in South America in general and in Argentina in particular: When it last reached a Champions League semifinal, in 2006, it was with a team stocked with Boca Juniors alumni. Its scouting network picked out Foyth and Lo Celso long ago.Villarreal could not compete with the money on offer from England — or Paris St.-Germain, in Lo Celso’s case — when they first came to Europe, but the club knows well enough that soccer can always bring a second chance, particularly given how quickly English clubs, in particular, discard players.It is that insight that has allowed Emery not only to deliver the first major honor in Villarreal’s history — last year’s Europa League — but to sweep the team to within 180 minutes of the biggest game of them all: the knowledge that a product can have an alternative purpose, a more significant role, than the one stated on the packaging.Villarreal scooped up Arnaut Danjuma when Bournemouth was relegated from the Premier League.Alessandro Di Marco/EPA, via ShutterstockGiovani Lo Celso is one of three former Tottenham players on Emery’s team.Christof Stache/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAnd it is that approach that, while it may not make Villarreal as compelling or as exciting as Monaco or Ajax, perhaps it makes its story a little more imitable, a little more inspiring in an age dominated both by the superclubs and increasingly by the financial might of the Premier League.Monaco’s success was built, in large part, on the unparalleled eye for talent of its chief scout, Luis Campos. Ajax’s was a tribute to the club’s unmatched gift for nurturing and fostering promise. But both contained trace elements of lightning strikes, too: difficult — if not impossible — to repeat or replicate.Villarreal, though, offers a template that might be followed, a vision for how clubs without the finances of the Premier League or the weight of the giants of continental Europe might be able to thrive. It demonstrates that it is possible to grow strong on the scraps from the feast, to thrive in soccer’s increasingly Anglocentric ecosystem, by remembering that the appeal of a product depends on its use. More

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in Soccer

      Liverpool Edges City in Game of Early Goals and Managed Risks

      by

      Liverpool advanced to the F.A. Cup final by beating its Champions League rival at Wembley. But for both teams, every choice matters now.LONDON — In the single corner of Wembley bathed by bright sunshine, Kevin De Bruyne dutifully shuttled up and down. He stretched out his hamstrings and his calves. He made sure his ankles were nice and loose, and, with great time and care, made sure his laces were tight. He wanted everything to feel just right when the call came.It never did. With Manchester City trailing Liverpool by two goals, with its place in the F.A. Cup final and its aspirations of completing a domestic and European treble slipping from its grasp, City’s manager, Pep Guardiola, did not summon De Bruyne, his outstanding playmaker. The Belgian spent a few minutes in the sunshine, his gaze alternating between the game unfolding in front of him and Guardiola, and then he returned to his seat in the shade.Whether De Bruyne knew it or not, Guardiola had never considered anything else. He would, of course, have preferred to throw De Bruyne into the fray — or, indeed, to have him on the field from the start — but he felt, sincerely, that he could not.De Bruyne had sustained a four-inch gash on his foot in City’s Champions League clash against Atlético Madrid, in Spain, on Wednesday. It had been stitched closed before he returned to England, and he had been prescribed a course of antibiotics to stave off an infection. It was starting to heal. Introducing him into a game three days later, though, would risk reopening the wound. “Then we would lose him for more games,” Guardiola said. “At the end, I didn’t want to take that risk.”It was hardly surprising that Guardiola was a little coy on why, exactly, De Bruyne was dispatched to the touchline to warm up, given that he evidently had no intention of allowing him into the game.Perhaps it was a psychological ploy for the benefit of his teammates, a little boost as they sought to build on Jack Grealish’s second-half goal and further reduce the three-goal lead Liverpool had established in a dominant first half. Or maybe it was a little ruse to unnerve Guardiola’s Liverpool counterpart, Jürgen Klopp, to force him to contemplate what he might do if De Bruyne, arguably the most creative player in English soccer, suddenly entered the fray.Either way, the fact that De Bruyne was reduced to playing the role of theoretical threat encapsulated the greatest challenge facing these teams over the next six weeks.Both have been swept to the cusp of not just glory but some multiple of it — City hopeful, still, of winning both the Premier League and Champions League, Liverpool now in contention to complete a sweep of four available trophies — by the prowess of their players and the brilliance of their coaches, by virtue of being not only the most gifted teams but also the most intense, the most intelligent and the most industrious.What unfolds between now and the end of the season, though, will hinge as much on endurance as on ability. The line between absolute success and relative failure is as much a war of attrition as a battle of wits. What will define who wins the Premier League and, possibly, the Champions League will not be which team can soar highest but which can run deepest.Manchester City’s Fernandinho, left, and John Stones at the end of a long week.Tony Obrien/Action Images Via ReutersThat is particularly true for teams that find themselves competing on multiple fronts. Guardiola and Klopp both take great pains to stress that looking too far ahead can lead only to ruin, that allowing thoughts to drift to the hypothetical can serve only to distract from the concrete and the tangible.But every lineup choice, for both coaches, between now and the end of the season, must take into account not just the task at hand but also the challenges to come.Guardiola, at Wembley, named De Bruyne as a substitute despite knowing that he would not play. He was joined on that list by Ilkay Gundogan and Aymeric Laporte, both of whom were in De Bruyne’s boat, omitted from this game with hopes that they would be available for the next, against Brighton, in the Premier League, or so that they would not reduce their chances of playing in the Champions League semifinal against Real Madrid in 10 days.Strange as it seems to say it, for a team that has spent a decade or so building one of the two most expensive squads of all time — a team that includes among its alternates the most expensive player in British history — City’s list of available players is not particularly “long,” as Guardiola put it.“It is OK when everyone is fit,” he said. The subtext, of course, was that it would not be when injury and fatigue set in. Though Guardiola prefers a concentrated, high-caliber squad, for a club of City’s long-term vision — not to mention its unrivaled resources — that is more than a little surprising; it is hard to imagine that the situation will not be amended during the summer transfer window.Sadio Mané scored twice for Liverpool. But more — and bigger — games loom.Tony Obrien/Action Images Via ReutersKlopp has taken the opposite approach. Liverpool’s squad, bolstered by the arrival of Luis Díaz in January and somewhat untroubled by injury in recent months, is sufficiently well-equipped these days that he was able to rest some of his key figures against Benfica in the Champions League last week — a privilege Guardiola, facing a pitched battle with Atlético Madrid, was denied — and still advance. That, in turn, allowed him to name a full-strength side at Wembley on Saturday, a fact that likely proved the decisive factor.The catch, of course, is that Mohamed Salah, Sadio Mané and the rest of the team have only 72 hours before they face Manchester United in the Premier League, with a Merseyside derby against Everton lingering on the horizon. Their legs will be just a little more weary for those games because of their exertions against City.Klopp, in that sense, took as much risk as Guardiola; sticking is no less of a gamble than is twisting, after all. That is the position in which both coaches, and both teams, find themselves: weighing risk and reward, hoping they call it right, knowing that everything is on the line. More