Manchester City (Soccer Team)

Subterms

    More stories

    • 113 Shares189 Views

      in Soccer

      Champions League: Talent From Paris Leaks Away From P.S.G.

      by

      A deep-pocketed club’s Champions League ambitions run up against a familiar obstacle: opposing rosters studded with stars who got away.Paris St.-Germain could not, in the end, have sped Tanguy Nianzou along much quicker than it did. He was captain of the club’s under-19 side when he was only 16. He was called up to the first team at 17, training alongside Neymar and Kylian Mbappé and the rest, and soon made his debut. He even started a game in the Champions League.And still, despite all those opportunities, he left. Nianzou had just turned 18 when, on July 1 last year, he was presented as a Bayern Munich player. P.S.G. did not even have the solace of being able to pocket a premium fee for a player it had nurtured. Nianzou’s contract was expiring. He walked out of his hometown club for nothing.His departure stung. It stung sufficiently that Leonardo, P.S.G.’s sporting director, was citing it as a sort of parable as recently as February, long before the teams were drawn to meet in the Champions League quarterfinals this week.“He played with us in the Champions League, and he has spent almost a year at Bayern without playing,” Leonardo said, undeterred by the fact that injuries — not a lack of quality — have limited Nianzou to 21 competitive minutes at Bayern. “The problem is thinking that there is paradise elsewhere. They say that P.S.G. lost a youngster, but sometimes I think it is not P.S.G. who loses, but the youngsters who leave.”P.S.G. had high hopes for Tanguy Nianzou, but when he turned 18 he signed with Bayern Munich.Christof Stache/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesLeonardo’s sensitivity — and his club’s — to Nianzou’s departure is only partially explained by the teenager’s talent. It is also because Nianzou is not the only prodigy P.S.G. has allowed to slip through its fingers. He is not even the only one at Bayern.Kingsley Coman became the youngest player to play for P.S.G. when he made his debut for the club in February 2013. He was the jewel of the team’s youth system, the standard-bearer for its future. A year later, he left on a free transfer. Last August, he scored the goal that won the Champions League for Bayern, against P.S.G.There are plenty of others like them. There are 11 players left in this year’s Champions League who either grew up in Paris or spent some time in P.S.G.’s youth academy. Only three play for the reigning French champion: Colin Dagba, Presnel Kimpembe and Mbappé, though of course he had to be restored to his hometown at great expense.Some of the others — Chelsea’s N’golo Kanté, Manchester City’s Riyad Mahrez and Benjamin Mendy, Borussia Dortmund’s Raphaël Guerreiro — grew up in the sprawling suburbs surrounding Paris but never caught the club’s attention. A few did: Like Coman and Nianzou, Dortmund’s Dan-Axel Zagadou and Real Madrid’s Ferland Mendy spent time at P.S.G.’s academy before leaving to make their names elsewhere.That would be galling enough; in reality, it is just the tip of the iceberg. Eleven more players born in P.S.G.’s backyard were eliminated from the Champions League in the round of 16, including Christopher Nkunku, Ibrahima Konaté and Nordi Mukiele at RB Leipzig and Jules Koundé of Sevilla.Dozens more can be found in Ligue 1 and across Europe, from Paul Pogba on down. P.S.G. is sitting on what is generally regarded as the richest gold mine of talent in world soccer, and yet it is allowing prospectors to spirit its treasure away by the truckload. Most of the time it receives nothing in return but the lingering, bitter taste of regret.It is understandable that Leonardo, for one, should have tried to blame the speculators. Scouts for rival French clubs have long trawled the Paris suburbs looking for the next big thing. In recent years, they have been joined by representatives of German teams and, before Brexit, Premier League clubs hoping to cut out the middleman.P.S.G. is not without Parisian stars: Kylian Mbappé returned from Monaco, and Presnel Kimpembe never left.Benoit Tessier/Reuters“The German clubs, mainly Bayern, Leipzig and Dortmund, attack young people and threaten French development,” Leonardo told Le Parisien this year. “They call parents, friends, family, the player himself, even with players under the age of 16. They turn their heads. Perhaps the rules should be changed to protect the French teams.”The problem, though, is not one that can be legislated away. Given the number of players emerging from Paris, it is unavoidable that P.S.G. should miss some of them, as it did with Kanté and Mahrez. What should concern Leonardo more is that — as Michael Zorc, Dortmund’s technical director, said — so many young players “see better permeability and greater potential for developing” away from P.S.G.A decade ago, when Qatar Sports Investments first invested in the French capital’s flagship club, it vowed not simply to acquire success; Nasser al-Khelaifi, the club’s president, spoke of wanting to find the next Lionel Messi, rather than buy the original. The owners put their money where their mouth was, investing tens of millions of dollars on the club’s youth system.But as P.S.G. has found in its pursuit of the Champions League trophy, the formula for success is rarely quite that simple. The club’s academy is regularly assessed as one of the best in France. In many ways, the amount of players it has produced for other teams is proof of its eye for talent and the quality of its coaching.All of that is irrelevant, though, if the leap from the academy to playing alongside Neymar and Mbappé is too great. It is here that P.S.G. has failed.What the stories of Coman and Nianzou and so many of the others have in common is that they made it to P.S.G., and all the way through the academy, only to find their path blocked at the last step: by a coach whose job was to focus on today; by an expensively acquired superstar brought in to win trophies; by a club moving too quickly to wait for youngsters to learn their trade.On one level, the loss of all that talent has delivered P.S.G. only a glancing blow. It has still established, with only one exception so far, an effective monopoly on the Ligue 1 title. It has made it to a Champions League final. It can call on some of the world’s finest players. Would Ferland Mendy or Guerreiro or Koundé have made much of a difference? Possibly not.But on another, more fundamental level, the impact has been considerable. Qatar has poured considerable time and resources into not only P.S.G. but French soccer as a whole, bankrolling the transformation of the club through Qatar Sports Investments at the same time it was effectively underwriting the league through broadcast deals with the Qatari broadcaster beIN Sports.It has always had a clear idea in its head of what it wanted P.S.G. to be — winner of the Champions League, mainly — but, 10 years since it arrived, it is not yet obvious that it knows how to get there. Coaches have come and gone, all of them different: the coaching superstar, the canny tactician, the pressing zealot, the former captain.The squad has a patchwork quality that suggests muddled thinking. Is it built around Neymar or Mbappé? Where do Moise Kean and Mauro Icardi fit in? Can any of these players do what the manager at the moment, Mauricio Pochettino, is likely to want them to do? Did they really suit Thomas Tuchel last season? P.S.G. is now, as it has been for a decade, a team in search of an identity.Coman, who had once dreamed of lifting the Champions League trophy with P.S.G., did it last year — with Bayern. The teams meet again in the Champions League on Wednesday.Pool photo by David RamosYet the easiest, most authentic identity has been at its fingertips all along: that of a team built around a Parisian core, young and dynamic and rooted to its location. Jürgen Klopp, the Liverpool manager, has spoken before about his ideal team being one that could compete for honors while being drawn exclusively from its own city. The pool of talent there, as almost everywhere else, renders that idea utopian. Everywhere, that is, except Paris.P.S.G. has failed to claim that birthright. As recently as 2018, coaches at teams in the banlieues expressed surprise at how disconnected the city’s biggest club was from the young players on its doorstep. Perhaps that can be blamed on conceit, a sense that Parisian prospects would always want to play for a Parisian team.Or perhaps it is representative of a broader failing at the club, one that places more weight on what Paris is seen to be than what the city actually is. In 2016, when P.S.G. revamped its stadium, it commissioned the architect Tom Sheehan to “breathe the identity of Paris into the Parc itself.” He drew a parallel between the new V.I.P. entrance at the stadium and the foyer of the Palais Garnier, the opera house.It is that tourist perception of Paris that Q.S.I. hoped would become the team’s identity: the celebrities in the stands, a soccer team as a glamorous boutique nightclub. But that is only one side of Paris. It has not engaged quite so willingly with the other side of Paris, the one that is found in the banlieues, the one that is not quite so easy to sell.Still, the talent keeps coming through. The club holds out great hope, in particular, for a 15-year-old central defender named el Chadaille Bitshiabu. French law prohibits him from signing a professional contract until he turns 16, on May 16, but all of the coaches who have worked with him are convinced he can make it. They can only hope it is with P.S.G. More

    • 150 Shares99 Views

      in Soccer

      The Premier League Race Is Over. The Champions League Lottery Is Here.

      by

      Everyone knows who will win the Premier League. Most can guess who will be relegated. All of the drama is in the race for a spot in the Champions League.Here, then, is the home straight of the Premier League season, the final quarter of a campaign that was heralded as the most chaotic, and least predictable, of them all.At times, throughout autumn and into winter, the combination of empty stadiums, a packed schedule and a frantic pace seemed destined to usurp the established order. Contenders seemed to rise and fall every week. Earnest conversations were held about whether Aston Villa could win the league or if Arsenal was in danger of relegation.It did not, it turns out, quite come to pass. It soon became clear that Manchester City — the team with the best and biggest squad, the side with the brightest coach — would be champion while spring was still fresh in the air. Pep Guardiola’s team sits 14 points clear of Manchester United, its fingers already brushing a third crown in four years.Relegation, too, is largely settled. Sheffield United and West Bromwich Albion will be playing in the Championship next season; all that remains to be decided is whether Fulham can muster enough momentum to condemn Newcastle, drifting and directionless, to a place alongside them.In that relative certainty, the Premier League is something of an outlier across Europe’s major leagues. Elsewhere, the curious circumstances of the pandemic season do seem to have had an effect. In Spain, Barcelona and Real Madrid are slowly reeling in a stuttering Atlético Madrid. In Italy, Inter Milan has six points on its city rival, A.C. Milan, and 10 on Juventus and Atalanta. But with at least one fairly spectacular choke in fans’ relatively recent memory, that is not yet a gap broad enough to permit any comfort.In Germany, the title race may effectively be decided this weekend, when Bayern Munich travels to RB Leipzig on Saturday knowing that victory will all but see off its last remaining challenger. A couple hours earlier, the top two teams in France will meet, though neither Lille nor Paris St.-Germain is in a position to deliver a decisive blow. Lyon and a resurgent Monaco are within touching distance of both, four teams separated by four points.In the absence of questions at the top and bottom of the table, the Premier League has concentrated all of its drama, jeopardy and intrigue into the jostling for position immediately below Manchester City. There are three more spots available in the Champions League for next season and seven teams with a realistic shot at one of them.Some are fallen giants, teams desperate to salvage something from a bitterly disappointing season. Others are surprise packages, those teams that have best adapted to the strangeness of this season. It is at this point that the consequences of all the chaos and unpredictability of the last seven months are made flesh, and it is a race that is all but impossible to sort — at least not yet. “It will go until the last day,” Carlo Ancelotti, the Everton manager, said last month. The challenge, he said, is to make sure you are still in contention by then.Jamie Vardy and Leicester City enter the homestretch with a lead on the teams chasing them.Pool photo by Alex PantlingHead Starts and Tough RoadsA glance at the table would indicate that two of the seven Champions League contenders — Manchester United and Leicester City — have a considerable advantage. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s United has an eight-point lead on West Ham, currently the first team outside the places in fifth. Brendan Rodgers’s Leicester side has a seven-point cushion.But in Leicester’s case, certainly, that head start could yet be canceled out by the fact that its remaining schedule is considerably steeper than some of its rivals’. Leicester faces Manchester City this weekend before traveling to West Ham. Three of its final four games are against direct rivals for a spot in the top four: trips to Manchester United and Chelsea, and a home game against Tottenham. Rodgers’s team surrendered a place in the top four on the final day last season; this year’s calendar brings with it the ghost of past regrets.No other team has quite such an arduous finish to the campaign, though Chelsea is close. The extent of Thomas Tuchel’s impact at Stamford Bridge will be gauged by visits to West Ham and Manchester City, and looming home games against Arsenal and Leicester.If the calendar is kindest to anyone, it is Liverpool, marooned in seventh after a dismal run since late December. That may prove scant solace for a team that has spent the last three months losing at home to Fulham, Brighton and Burnley, but it at least gives Jürgen Klopp’s side a slim chance of returning to Europe.The Price of DistractionsTottenham’s Europa League elimination had a silver lining: fewer games this spring.Darko Bandic/Associated PressIf anything has marked this season, it is the capriciousness of crisis. It is barely two weeks since José Mourinho accused his Tottenham players of being unable to display “the basics of football and the basics of life” during a humiliation at the hands of Dinamo Zagreb in the Europa League. Now he may wonder if being out of that competition is not such a bad thing.Nine league games remain of Spurs’ season, and Mourinho must also make room for the Carabao Cup final on April 24. But, that aside, he has a clear run. So, too, do West Ham and Everton. Leicester has one extra game than its rivals — an F.A. Cup semifinal — but the rest have more demanding commitments to juggle.Chelsea, for one, is still fighting on three fronts: An F.A. Cup semifinal against Manchester City beckons, as well as a two-legged Champions League quarterfinal with F.C. Porto. Should Chelsea reach the final of both competitions, it would have to play almost twice as many games as some of its rivals.Liverpool has a Champions League quarterfinal, too — a more arduous pairing, against Real Madrid — and Manchester United will be expected to reach the final of the Europa League, adding another five games to its schedule. At the end of a season that has been particularly demanding, the strain of any added workload to tired legs may prove crucial.The Fatigue FactorNo Premier League player has logged as many minutes as Harry Maguire.Pool photo by Laurence GriffithsThat injury has proved a defining factor in the outcome of this Premier League season is neither surprising nor particularly debatable. The root of Liverpool’s collapse lies in its loss of its central defense; Leicester’s form stuttered with the absence, at various times, of Jamie Vardy, James Maddison and Harvey Barnes, among others; Everton’s results dipped when James Rodríguez was missing.It would be reasonable, then, to assume that the next two months will be decided by which teams sustain the fewest injuries, particularly to their key players. Liverpool, of course, is still missing Virgil van Dijk, Joe Gomez and Joel Matip. Tottenham is without Son Heung-min. Leicester is without Barnes, Maddison and James Justin, while Manchester United is sweating on Marcus Rashford, Mason Greenwood and Anthony Martial.Injuries can, of course, be sheer misfortune — a bad tackle, a mistimed movement — but they can also be cumulative, the effect of a player pushed too far into what Arsène Wenger used to call the “red zone.” But that is not the only consequence of fatigue. Even if injury is avoided, performance can dip.It is this, more than anything, that should give Solskjaer and Manchester United pause. United’s captain, Harry Maguire, has played 3,946 minutes this season, an order of magnitude greater than every other outfield player in England. He has played the equivalent of five full games more this season than his nearest rival, Leicester’s Youri Tielemans.But Maguire is not alone. United has seven players who have played more than 2,700 minutes this season. Leicester and Everton have only one, Chelsea two, and Spurs and West Ham three. Even Liverpool, its options reduced because of all those injuries, has only five. If fatigue does prove to be a factor, the core of United’s side is more likely to be afflicted in the final stretch than anyone else.To some extent, of course, that is offset by its resources: Solskjaer has options should any of his key players be sidelined or suffer an alarming drop in form. Having to play Donny van de Beek because Bruno Fernandes needs a rest should be no great sacrifice.Indeed, that may well be the formula, more than any other, that comes to define the next two months, that serves to find the signal in the noise of this season. More than in any other season, the final prize on offer in the Premier League will go to the teams that can best minimize the effects of fatigue, thanks to a reduced workload or by possessing the strength in depth to ride it out. In all the chaos, in the end, there will be some sort of order. More

    • 88 Shares169 Views

      in Soccer

      Jesse Lingard and Tricks of the Light

      by

      Be patient, West Ham’s David Moyes said when he signed the out-of-favor forward from Manchester United in January. Both are already reaping the rewards.For possibly the first and only time this season, David Moyes was wrong. As the January transfer window drew to a close, his West Ham side had agreed on a deal to sign Jesse Lingard on loan from Manchester United, and Moyes was keen to stave off the Premier League’s proclivity for rushing to judgment.As far as Moyes was concerned, Lingard was a smart option. He was well aware that what his team needed more than anything was a striker: Sebastian Haller had left for Ajax, leaving the redoubtable Michail Antonio as the club’s only specialist forward. And even he, strictly speaking, was a late-in-life sort of a striker.The problem, as Moyes put it, was a scarcity of plug-and-play replacements on the market. Lingard, he said, might offer a way to think around the problem. He could play as a forward if necessary, but he could also play wide right, wide left, or in a deeper role through the middle. With West Ham chasing a place in Europe for next season, that versatility made him a great value.Not everyone saw it that way. The reaction to Lingard’s arrival at West Ham was mixed. In English soccer’s ever-voluble punditocracy, its content-industrial complex, some saw him as a “diamond.” Others questioned whether a player who had been an outcast at Manchester United would be “good enough” to earn a place at West Ham.As he fell out of favor at Manchester United, Lingard became the butt of jokes.Carl Recine/ReutersA former teammate, Rio Ferdinand — long before he produced what may be the most extraordinary take of the season, on any subject, in any sport — had always been a staunch supporter of Lingard, but even he could see the player was a polarizing figure. He had, he said, “argued with pundit after pundit, on air and off air,” over the 28-year-old Lingard’s merits.Moyes knew all of that, and so he asked for patience. “It will take him a little bit of time to settle, so let’s give him a chance,” he said a couple of days after Lingard arrived. And that is where he was wrong, because 24 hours later, Lingard was busy scoring twice on his West Ham debut, inspiring a rout of Aston Villa, and looking for all the world like the best player on the field.Since then, Lingard has hardly stopped. He did not, it turns out, need any time to settle at all. He has five goals in seven appearances for West Ham, the sort of form that has not only persuaded Moyes to attempt to sign him on a permanent deal but that has attracted the attentions of Leicester City and Aston Villa, too. This week, he returned to the England squad for the first time in two years.Lingard’s form drew the attention of the England coaching staff, which called him up for this week’s World Cup qualifiers.Pool photo by Carl RecineReputations rise and fall precipitously in soccer, but even by those standards, Lingard’s transformation, what he has described as his “new lease of life,” is eye-catching. He had not just become a bit-part player in Manchester United’s eyes; he had, to the wider world, become something close to a figure of fun.Every month, a meme borrowed from the influential, worryingly prescient British comedy series “The Day Today” made its way round Twitter, asking if Lingard had scored or assisted on a league goal over the last four weeks. It had been started innocently enough, but, as is the way of things on social media, had been co-opted by cruelty.The joke, of course, was that he never did. Lingard had enjoyed one golden month in December 2018, scoring four goals and creating two others, but had done nothing before or since. His reputation had been built on the exception, rather than the rule.That the impression stuck was, at least in part, because Lingard was seen as fair game for mockery. Partly, that was through no fault of his own. Pundits assailed him for his extracurricular business interests. The news media, meanwhile, bizarrely insisted on identifying him as a young prospect, long after he had outgrown that particular label. Fans, at least some, objected to his performed, public persona, particularly online.And partly, he did not help himself. It is deeply unfair and moderately pompous to judge a young man for expressing his personality, but at the same time it seems likely that the elaborate goal celebrations, the social media antics and the use of the nickname J-Lingz did not help others take him seriously. Lingard, to some extent, was complicit in his Peter Panning.By January this year, the combination of all those factors seemed to have brought Lingard’s career to a standstill. He had barely played for Manchester United, despite, in his view, the fact that he had returned from lockdown in good form and fine fettle. The only clubs interested in handing him a second chance were West Bromwich Albion and Newcastle United — the transfer market’s last refuge of the damned — and, thanks to the fact that Moyes had worked with him at Old Trafford eight years ago, West Ham.The evidence of the last three months is that he chose correctly. Some credit for Lingard’s renaissance, of course, must go to Moyes, who has filled him with trust and confidence, and provided a space in which he can thrive. Much of it, too, must go to Lingard. He has a whiteboard on the wall at his home filled with a set of targets for him to achieve, including the number of shots he takes, the number of players he beats. In private, he is clearly very serious about his career.But there is a lesson in Lingard’s story, too. More than one, in fact. The first is an old one: that, in soccer, the stage matters as much as the ability of the actor. Players thrive and talent shines in a conducive environment; being in the right place, at the right time, with the right people is as important as an individual’s baseline of talent.Trust me, David Moyes told critics of his decision to acquire Lingard. He knew the player from his brief tenure at Manchester United.Pool photo by Justin SetterfieldThe second lesson is that perception can be skewed by circumstance, that it is too easily forgotten that the higher up soccer’s pyramid one goes, the thinner the air. It is easy to forget that only players of the very highest quality are good enough to be surplus to requirements at Manchester United and the rest of Europe’s rarefied elite.Too often, there is an assumption that those who fail to make the grade at Old Trafford or the Bernabéu or the Allianz Arena have been exposed as talentless hacks, a curling of the nose at the idea of signing another team’s rejects.The reality is not only different, it is the precise opposite: A player who has survived for as long as Lingard did at Manchester United will stand out, in fertile soil, almost anywhere else. Perhaps Lingard was not good enough, not any more, for the club where he started his career. That he was, at one time, should have been reason enough to take him more seriously than we did.Postponing ProblemsBurak Yilmaz and Turkey opened World Cup qualifying with a win over the Netherlands in Istanbul. South America’s players had the week off.Pool photo by Murad SezerThe managers of Europe’s elite clubs would hardly have been alone at breathing a sigh of relief, a couple of weeks ago, when South America’s soccer authorities confirmed the round of World Cup qualifiers scheduled to be held this week would be postponed.It is precisely the outcome Pep Guardiola, Jürgen Klopp and several of their peers had wanted, of course, and it was the correct course of action from a public health perspective. But they were not the only beneficiaries.A two-week break in this most frantic of seasons will be of considerable benefit to those players who would, otherwise, have been traveling thousands of miles to play two matches inside five days. It is an unexpected blessing in a campaign that has pushed those whose job it is to play the game to their limits. Weary bodies will have had time to rest and repair. Tired minds will have had chance to reset.There is, though, a drawback. Obviously there is a drawback. And it is that those games now have to be slotted in somewhere else, and the calendar is no less forgiving once this season is finished.There is little space to play the postponed fixtures this summer. South America’s teams already have two delayed qualifiers to play in early June, squeezed in before yet another Copa América. (There is, as we have seen previously, always a Copa América. But don’t worry, they’ve changed this one, altering the format to make it worse.) And there is little room to breathe next season, with the schedule compressed anyway by the looming logistical problems of a mid-season World Cup at the end of 2022.We have learned this lesson before, of course, but it bears repeating: There is too little slack in soccer’s calendar. What is dressed up as compromise is, in reality, often nothing more than greed, every interested party happy to sign up to anything as long as they get what they want. And, at the end of it all, the people who suffer are the ones who have to fulfill these ludicrous schedules: the players.In Case You Missed It: U.S. 4, Jamaica 1Christian Pulisic newsletter klaxon: The United States, playing regulars like Pulisic and Sergino Dest, left, but also the newcomer Yunus Musah, right, thumped Jamaica, 4-1, in a friendly on Thursday in Vienna.Jakub Sukup/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe Reward and the RiskTo many in women’s soccer in England, Monday was a day of vindication. After months of negotiation, the Women’s Super League — regarded by many, now, as the finest domestic competition on the planet — confirmed that it had agreed to a three-year television deal with Sky and the BBC, one that will earn its clubs almost $11 million per season.The triumphalism is, in large part, warranted. Nobody will pay more to broadcast women’s soccer anywhere in the world. Sky has promised to give the W.S.L.’s games the same treatment — hope you like bombast and slow-motion montages, W.S.L. fans! — that it affords the Premier League. It is a level of exposure and, bluntly, revenue that those who have worked tirelessly to advance the women’s game deserve.The hope, of course, is that the new deal will kick-start a virtuous circle: more investment means better facilities; better facilities attract (and produce, the thinking goes, though whether that part is correct or not is debatable) better players; better players lead to better games; better games attract more viewers; and more viewers lead to more investment.There are, though, two notes of caution worth considering. The first is that the W.S.L. is, increasingly, dominated by two clubs: Manchester City and Chelsea, two teams that have packed their rosters with international players. Indeed, lack of competitive balance is as much an issue for the women’s game as it is the men’s.A new television deal will expose more fans to Women’s Super League stars like Chelsea’s Sam Kerr. But it’s important that the money trickles down, too.Mike Egerton/Press Association, via Associated PressWill this television deal give their rivals the resources to compete, or will it simply entrench their dominance? In the longer term, too, will the money not incentivize clubs simply to buy in talent, rather than develop homegrown players, a problem that men’s soccer has had to wrestle with for years?And second, and more pressing: Though the free-to-air BBC will be showing a handful of games (and matches will be streamed by the Football Association itself), the vast majority will be on cable, effectively paywalled off from consumers.Sports that have a far larger popular following than women’s soccer currently enjoys — including cricket and Formula 1 — have found that can be an obstacle to building, or even retaining, an audience. This W.S.L. deal is rich reward for all those involved in the undoubted success of women’s soccer in recent years. But lack of access is not, necessarily, a price worth paying.CorrespondenceRodrygo, right, and Vinicius Júnior were two significant investments in Real Madrid’s future.Juanjo Martin/EPA, via ShutterstockLast week’s column on the folly of signing Eden Hazard prompted an impassioned and, if we are all completely honest, quite accurate defense of Real Madrid’s transfer dealings from Sebastian Royo.“If you look at the players they have hired in the last few years — Vinicius, Rodrygo, Luka Jovic, Martin Odegaard, Ferland Mendy — they are all in their teens or early 20s,” Sebastian wrote. “If anything, Real can be accused of getting players who are too young and not ready to start, and not giving them enough opportunity to play and grow.”This is a valid rebuttal. Real Madrid has spent a lot of money on young talent; so, for that matter, has Barcelona. But perhaps the problem is that, at the same time, both teams have been unable to resist signing ready-made superstars, which has to some extent limited the young players’ chances.A great point, too, from David Hamlyn on the surprisingly enervating issue of quick free kicks’ being discouraged. “In this era of scripted play, the offensive side will still want to do their setup, thereby slowing play down,” he noted. This is right, I think: Teams work doggedly on set plays. I’m not sure they would automatically take them quickly, even if they could do so more easily.Lynton Smith was in touch on the evergreen subject of video assistant referees and offside, which I’ll be returning to again in the near future — put a note in your diaries for that one — but one (throwaway) comment caught my eye. “We want as many goals in the game as we can,” Lynton wrote, “and the new precision disallows goals which in the past would have stood.” I don’t know if I agree with that assertion. Do we want as many goals as we can? Would that not make them less special? Is the gratification not in the delay?And finally, Atticus Proctor asks a very good question. “Why is soccer so obsessed with always restructuring its tournaments and leagues? I’m only 25, but just in recent memory, Concacaf has restructured World Cup qualification, teams were added to the European Championships and the World Cup, the Nations League was created, and the Champions League has changed format four times since 1999.”The glib answers, obviously, would be a) to make more money and b) to reflect the ever-shifting currents of the sport’s politics. But the endless flux is, in itself, interesting, because I wonder to what extent a prior willingness to be flexible leads to an assumption that everything is permanently up for grabs. More

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Soccer

      Don’t Reject the Champions League’s Changes Out of Hand

      by

      The latest proposals to reallocate European soccer’s riches show that there may be sense even in dumb ideas.Say what you like about Andrea Agnelli, but at least he is not afraid of a bad idea. Even by the standards of Agnelli, the Juventus chairman, this has been a fairly spectacular week, a seemingly never-ending stream of free-form thoughts about the future of soccer, each one somehow worse than the last.There was, first, a stout defense of the coming reform of the Champions League, the so-called Swiss Model, which would see 36 teams qualify for the tournament and then play 10 group games, rather than six, all of them against different opponents.That was just Agnelli getting started, though. It is perhaps easiest to think of him as soccer’s equivalent to Stewart Pearson, the policy strategist/vapid marketing guru skewered so perfectly in “The Thick of It,” the British political satire. Legacy places in the Champions League? Banning elite clubs from buying each other’s players? Selling a subscription to the last 15 minutes of games? Yes, and ho (Parental Guidance: R).The reaction to all of these suggestions, of course, was what even Agnelli, presumably, has come to expect: a panoply of derision and disdain, the sort that in a strange sort of way unites soccer’s various warring tribes in hostility to the machinations of a smart, urbane businessman who seems determined to play the role of cartoonish supervillain.That so many of his ideas emerged in a week in which Agnelli’s Juventus was unexpectedly and dramatically eliminated from the Champions League by F.C. Porto simply served to underline his hubris. This, after all, was the sort of drama he wants to negate, inflicted by the sort of team he wants to disenfranchise. He got, in short, what he deserved.But while that reaction is both understandable and largely justified, it is not desperately constructive. Just as with Project Big Picture — the set of ideas tossed around by the owners of Manchester United and Liverpool for reform of the Premier League and leaked late last year — the immediate rush to outrage means that the islands of common sense in Agnelli’s thought torrent are swept away before they can be properly explored.Take, for example, the last of his suggestions. Why would it be bad, precisely, to sell the rights to watch the last 15 minutes of games? Of course the clubs would benefit from the tapping of another revenue stream, but who suffers?Those who wanted to watch the full match could still do so, through whatever subscription package they currently enjoy. But maybe others — those not able to afford it, those without the time to benefit from it, those who do not wish to watch an entire game — could use a cheaper, shorter, more ad hoc alternative.There will have been plenty, for example, who might have wanted to watch the denouement to Juventus’s game with Porto, once it became clear that it might prove more compelling than anticipated. So why not let them?Porto isn’t in a Big Five league, but it deserves nights to celebrate, too.Valerio Pennicino/Getty ImagesThat the idea could be dismissed out of hand is, in part, down to the fact that it was Agnelli who proposed it. He is, after all, not only the chairman of Juventus, but the president of the European Club Association, too, a body that is designed to represent the interests of all of its members but — in the popular imagination — is largely deployed to lobby for the game’s established elite.As such, it is assumed that everything that is in Agnelli’s interests is automatically tinged with not just self-interest, but also greed. The expansion of the Champions League, according to that argument, is designed to enable a handful of clubs to make more money, at the expense of everyone else, furthering the financial chasm that yawns between teams in the major leagues, and between the major leagues and the minor ones.The idea of legacy places — allowing teams with more European pedigree to leapfrog those with less, ensuring that the traditional powers always have access to the Champions League, regardless of where they finish in their domestic leagues — is seen as offering them a backstop, inuring them from the consequences of failure, breaking the contract that sport should be in some way meritocratic, ensuring their money keeps flowing.This is, doubtless, true. Agnelli is not advocating anything that would damage his, his club’s or his collaborators’ interests. But it does not follow that those who stand in his way are acting out of some sort of higher purpose. This week, several clubs — most notably Crystal Palace and Aston Villa — led the resistance to the reform of the Champions League, insisting that it would irrevocably damage domestic competitions.That Andrea Agnelli is largely looking out for the interests of Juventus does not mean every one of his ideas must be rejected out of hand.Denis Balibouse/ReutersAnd they are right, but their motivations are no purer than Agnelli’s. Crystal Palace and Aston Villa benefit very nicely, thank you very much, from the status quo. They have been made immeasurably rich by their mere presence in the Premier League; they will reject any move that endangers their place on that particular gravy train.It is here that the problem becomes broader, more pernicious. There is a reason Agnelli — and John W. Henry, the owner of Liverpool, and Joel Glazer, his counterpart at Manchester United, and the powers-that-be at Bayern Munich and Juventus and all the rest — keeps having bad ideas, and it is one that cannot be put entirely (though that is relevant) to the big clubs’ greed for trophies and for profit.It is that on some fundamental level, the economics of soccer as they stand do not work, and they did not work even before the coronavirus hit, creating a colossal hole in the accounts of (almost) every club across Europe, rich and poor alike.Ideally, at this juncture, it would be possible to pinpoint just one problem — the spending of Paris St.-Germain and Manchester City, the wealth of the Premier League or the growing gap between haves and have-nots — and then to identify a panacea that would make it all better But that is not how it works. Fairness in top-flight European soccer is a vast and unwieldy and complicated issue, and one without an obvious solution.For the grand houses of continental Europe, the issue is the relentless march of the Premier League. For the big clubs of the Premier League, it is being expected to win an arms race against teams backed by nation states. For those teams, it is trying to crack a cartel that is arranged against them.For all its financial might, P.S.G. is still chasing its first Champions League title with Kylian Mbappé. For all its struggles, Barcelona has won four with Lionel Messi.Gonzalo Fuentes/ReutersFor the teams that fill out the five major leagues of Western Europe, it is finding a way to overcome the enormous financial advantages of their opponents. For those leagues that are not considered the major powers, it is identifying a way to compete with the Big Five, and to deal with the deleterious effect on competitive balance of the Champions League itself.And that is before we get further down the pyramid, to the teams struggling to breathe away from the continent’s top divisions. It is this that makes it too hard to sympathize with the plight of Crystal Palace, which currently makes more money than A.C. Milan and Feyenoord and Legia Warsaw and Panathinaikos and all but a couple of dozen other teams in the world. It is this that means it is dangerous to assume that what is good for Crystal Palace is good for soccer as a whole.There are, unfortunately, no easy answers. But that should not dictate that all suggestions for change are shot down, or that the underlying assumption should be that they are all rooted in bad faith, or even that self-interest itself precludes an idea’s having merit.The people who own clubs are within their rights to want steadier, more predictable incomes, or more restricted spending. It is not feasible to demand, as we currently do, that they just throw as much money against the wall as possible in pursuit of short-term success. Fans, above all, should know by now that such an approach rarely ends well.Will an expanded Champions League still have room for past winners like Ajax and Feyenoord?Maurice Van Steen/EPA, via ShutterstockThat is not to say that Agnelli has yet hit upon the answer. Legacy places for historic teams defeat the purpose of sport, though they are not exactly unprecedented: In South America, there have been various experiments — rarely for good reasons — to make relegation a punishment for years of underperformance, not just a single bad season.Expanding the Champions League — though not something that is personally appealing — has more positives, should the extra places go to national champions from lesser leagues, expanding the horizons of the competition, though even that might then have a distorting effect on those domestic tournaments. (Banning transfers between elite clubs makes no sense: How else would Agnelli, for one, have unloaded Miralem Pjanic’s contract?)But none of this should disguise the need both to talk about and institute change. The status quo might work for a handful of teams — the ones, largely, that finish in the top 15 of the Premier League pretty regularly, and possibly Bayern Munich — but it locks out the vast majority; according to a report this week from Football Supporters Europe, fans* are finding it increasingly off-putting.[*This is a subject for another column, but the issue with these sorts of surveys is that they represent a specific cohort of fans, not a broad spectrum.]It is incumbent on everyone, then, to have the courage to have ideas: not objections rooted in tradition, not utopian daydreams, but concrete, considered suggestions. Would cross-border leagues help teams from smaller nations compete? Should elite teams be allowed to sign strategic deals with partner clubs? Is there a way to make the Champions League more compelling? How do you address competitive balance within and between domestic tournaments? (Answers below.)All of them will have drawbacks. All of them will elicit criticism. But it is a conversation we must be prepared to have, not one that should be shut down just because someone, somewhere, finds it does not align with his interests. Partly because that is the only way anything will change. And partly because if we do not, one of Agnelli’s ideas might just stick.a) Yes, it’s obvious; b) yes, so is that; c) you’d start by changing the seeding; and d) squad and spending limits, and a combination of a) and b).A Year OnA packed house and one mask at Anfield in March 11, 2020, hours before sports called time.Phil Noble/ReutersThe news seeped through as Jürgen Klopp was licking his wounds and Diego Simeone was basking in glory. It had been one of those electric Champions League nights: Atlético Madrid had eliminated Liverpool, the reigning champion, last March, storming what was supposed to be fortress Anfield with that distinctively Cholísta mix of strategy and steel.And then, as the managers were picking over the bones of what had happened, as 56,000 people were drifting into the night, the news flickered through from Italy. Daniele Rugani, the Juventus defender, had tested positive for the coronavirus. The club was sending its squad into isolation for 14 days. Its opponent the previous weekend, Inter Milan, quickly did the same.That was March 11, 2020, a year and a day ago. Even in the slightly frantic, vaguely frazzled surroundings of a press box, it was apparent that what had played out in front of us was not the story. It seemed obvious, even then, that the night’s theme was not just Liverpool’s facing up to an immediate future with no European competition.The World Health Organization had declared a pandemic. Across the Atlantic, Rudy Gobert had tested positive, bringing the virus into the N.B.A. Sports in the United States was shutting down. Over the next 36 hours, Europe reached the same conclusion. The patchwork solutions that had tried to hold back the tide — games in empty stadiums, games being postponed — gave way.In England, at least, the tipping point was Mikel Arteta, the Arsenal manager, and the Chelsea forward Callum Hudson-Odoi testing positive. The Premier League, until then content to stick its fingers in its ears and blunder through, called an emergency meeting. A few hours after insisting the show, that weekend, would go on, the league confirmed it would be mothballed. Nobody could be quite sure that it would come back.Two things now stand out about those few days. One is specific to Britain. It is important to remember that, at the time of Arteta’s positive test, the British government was dallying. The country was still almost two weeks from being locked down. Officials were encouraging people to go to work. Some 56,000 people had been allowed to go to Anfield, including some who flew in from Madrid for the privilege. A quarter of a million had been admitted to horse racing’s Cheltenham Festival.Looking back, it may not be too much of a stretch to suggest that it was the abandonment of the Premier League that concentrated a few minds and forced a few hands. Its elite soccer league is, deep down, one of England’s most high-profile institutions. Its sudden absence denoted, in the most incontrovertible tone, that the pandemic had arrived.The other, broader thing is that for all the criticism, for all the missteps and the arguments and the questionable motives, soccer deserves credit for finding its way back: its players for enduring the schedule; its executives for conjuring solutions; the countless, unheralded staff members at clubs and leagues and broadcasters for making it work. Soccer is not perfect. Sometimes, it is not even good. But in what has been an inordinately difficult year for so many, it has, in some small way, helped.CorrespondenceManchester City and ballet, you say? Set this photo to music.Pool photo by Clive BrunskillLast week’s column on Manchester City — a team that inspires an intellectual response, more than an emotional one, at least in my eyes — prompted many of you to get in touch to set me straight. Matt Noel highlighted not only that Pep Guardiola has been able to “make some tweaks and reunite” his squad, but also the “style in which City plays … is nothing short of miraculous, delicate and ephemeral.”I have no arguments there and, of course, it is not for me to dictate your responses to any team. I was, as the vernacular goes, simply offering you my truth. “I love watching City,” Charlotte Mehrtens wrote. “The skill is such a joy. You claim this football lacks soul? That’s like saying a choreographed ballet lacks soul.”This is a great parallel, because there is something inherently balletic about City, and also I find that ballet leaves me a bit cold, too. I appreciate the art and the skill, but I could do with a bit of talking. The issue here, then, may be that I am a philistine.David Ittah took exception with the idea that Guardiola has invented a new position for João Cancelo. “Marcelo has been playing exactly that role for many years at Real Madrid,” he wrote. He has indeed: Nobody loves Marcelo, pound for pound the greatest signing of all time, more than me. But Cancelo’s role is much more structured, much more part of the tactical blueprint, than the freestyle approach that makes Marcelo a joy.And a wonderful idea from Ian Greig. “Why not try to make a virtue out of the loss by holding games on out-of-the-way unknown pitches in remote places. Pitches without stands, or fans in beautiful places, rural Scotland, Georgia. Years ago I watched a game near Syanky in Poland, a lovely site surrounded by pines. I hold the memory dear.”Consider me on board. Let’s play the Champions League final in Lofoten. Or Qeqertarsuaq. More

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Soccer

      Manchester United Stops Manchester City but Not Its Destiny

      by

      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyOn SoccerManchester United Slows City’s March, but Only for a DayA rivalry victory may only prove a speed bump in the Premier League title. But European rivals will see hope in a blow to City’s rhythm.Manchester United’s celebrations started early on Sunday. City’s, presumably, are still to come.Credit…Pool photo by Peter PowellMarch 7, 2021Updated 3:28 p.m. ETMANCHESTER, England — Manchester United will recognize this feeling, the evanescent satisfaction of a battle won far too late in the day to have any hope of turning the tide of the war, the curious and complex pride that comes from celebrating a victory that highlights only how far you have fallen.It is only three years, after all, since United experienced pretty much the same thing, in pretty much the same place, if not quite in the same circumstances. Manchester City was supposed to claim the Premier League title that afternoon — the first of Pep Guardiola’s reign — at home against its rival, neighbor and longtime persecutor in the spring of 2018.The Etihad Stadium was packed and boisterous, relishing the prospect of the perfect scenario for clinching the championship, with United invited to play the part first of sacrificial victim, and then unwilling observer. What better way, after all, could there be to illustrate the power shift in Manchester, in England, and in Europe, than for City to win the league as United was forced to watch?United, that day, proved recalcitrant guests. Guardiola’s team raced into a two-goal lead, and then hesitated, a brief flash of the old City, the one practiced in the art of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, bubbling up to infect the new. United took advantage, surged back and won.It was clear and obvious at the time that this was a mere postponement of City’s celebrations — even José Mourinho, the United manager, congratulated Guardiola on his looming title win after the game — rather than a threatened cancellation. All concerned knew that City would be proclaimed champion, with ease, sooner rather than later. But for United, victory was a tonic, a solace, a shot across the bow, something to hold on to in the long night of the blue moon.Sunday was not quite a carbon copy. The details were a little different, for a start. It is much earlier in the season, for one, and City remains some way from having the championship mathematically sealed. The Etihad did not need to be silenced: Like every other stadium across Europe, it has been quiet for a year now, the noise and emotion of the fans an increasingly distant and sorrowful memory.United grabbed an early lead and then its best to keep Kevin de Bruyne and his teammates off balance.Credit…Pool photo by Laurence GriffithsThe effect, though, was much the same. United won a penalty inside 38 seconds, Bruno Fernandes converted it within two minutes, and then Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s team set about holding City at arm’s length. Early in the second half, Luke Shaw doubled United’s lead. Anthony Martial might have made it three, but the damage was done. For the day, at least.The extent of the damage will not, in all likelihood, extend beyond that. The 21-game winning run that preceded this result, City’s first defeat since November, makes the Premier League title a foregone conclusion. Guardiola’s team still holds an 11-point lead at the top of the table, with 10 games to play.This loss would need to presage a collapse that is all but unimaginable to prevent Guardiola’s claiming a third championship in four years. United can, once again, claim parochial primacy, but it is not enough to change the map of English soccer’s broader landscape.A few days earlier, United had been flat and uninspired — and a little fortunate — to take a goalless draw at Crystal Palace. Solskjaer’s players had won only twice in the Premier League since January, their stuttering form masked by the stuttering form of, well, everyone else, and in particular the apparently bottomless incompetence of Liverpool. This is not likely to be a corner turned. For United, victory in the derby was a welcome outcome, but nothing more, not really.Bruno Fernandes staked United to its lead with a second-minute penalty kick, but his team still trails City by 11 points with 10 games to go.Credit…Pool photo by Laurence GriffithsBut that does not mean this was a game devoid of significance. For City, certainly, it would be worth pausing to reflect not only on the fact of defeat, but the nature of it. Its loss in this fixture in 2018 was sandwiched by two losses to Liverpool in the Champions League, one comprehensive, one narrow and unfortunate, but both enough to end the club’s hopes of winning its first European crown.With the league title all but in hand now, that is where Guardiola’s focus will shift in the coming weeks. There are two domestic cups to be won, too, but it is that Champions League trophy that Guardiola — and much of City’s hierarchy — craves more than any other, that trophy which they believe will complete the club’s transformation into true European aristocracy.It has been hard, over the last couple of months, to see who might realistically stop City. Real Madrid and Barcelona are shadows of what they once were. Atlético Madrid is tiring, fast. The reigning champion, Bayern Munich, has developed a curious habit of giving almost all of its opponents a two-goal head start. Paris St.-Germain is undermined by inconsistency. No club has been quite so imperious this season as City; it is hardly bold to claim that this is, currently, and defeat notwithstanding, the best team in Europe.All of those teams, then, will have welcomed United’s victory as proof that City is not invincible. They will have seen glimpses that, for all the resources that Guardiola has access to and for all that he has managed them expertly through this compact, condensed campaign, City’s players are not immune to fatigue. Kevin de Bruyne, in particular, seemed unable to influence this game as he would have wished.Raheem Sterling and City will try their rhythm back on Wednesday against Southampton.Credit…Pool photo by Peter PowellRivals will have taken heart from the first 20 minutes or so, when City repeatedly played its way into trouble, unable to find its rhythm, or to piece together United’s plan. And, most of all, they will have noted how Solskjaer — an underrated tactician in games of this ilk — neutralized João Cancelo, the fullback who becomes a midfield playmaker and, in doing so, makes this iteration of City tick.Solskjaer’s antidote was a simple but nerveless one. He instructed Marcus Rashford to play high and wide on United’s left, forcing Cancelo into a choice: either come into midfield and leave space to exploit, or stay in his lane, and defang his own team’s attack. He chose both, and neither: It was no surprise that both of United’s goals originated on his side.Cancelo has been one of City’s great strengths this season. His role has been the innovation that has re-energized Guardiola’s system. On Sunday at the Etihad, Solskjaer turned him into what City has seemed to lack for weeks and for months: a weakness. It will make not the slightest difference to the destiny of the Premier League title race, of course. Most teams will lack the personnel or the inclination to be able to repeat the trick.But for those sides across Europe who stand in the way of Manchester City and a clean sweep of all four trophies, it will be something more than a solace, more than a tonic. For Guardiola, and for City, it is a reminder and a warning, that so high are their sights that one battle lost can cost the entire war.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

    • 88 Shares119 Views

      in Soccer

      Perfection, Art and Pep Guardiola's Manchester City

      by

      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyRory Smith On SoccerPerfection, Art and Manchester CityPep Guardiola’s team has won 15 straight Premier League games and hasn’t lost to anyone since November. But can clinical still qualify as cool?Pep Guardiola has rebuilt Manchester City into a team that meets even his high standards.Credit…Jason Cairnduff/Action Images, via ReutersMarch 5, 2021, 10:15 a.m. ETThe Equitable Building was supposed to be the last of Manhattan’s skyscrapers. When it opened in 1915, it cast — in a very real sense — everything around it into shadow: a 555-foot neoclassical cliff rising sheer from the street between Pine and Cedar, looming over Broadway, condemning a swath of the Financial District to a life of permanent shadow.Its construction spurred New York’s authorities into action. A year later, the city introduced its first zoning law, decreeing that any future skyscrapers would have to taper away from the street, so as to allow light and air to permeate to ground level. “No more would skyscrapers rise sheer and monotonous, stealing sunshine from the city,” Ben Wilson wrote in Metropolis, his global history of cities.But rather than herald the end of the skyscraper era, the zoning law started a boom. Architects scurried to design buildings that complied with the new regulations, capitalist monoliths with a human face. The results — the Chrysler, the Empire State and the rest — stand still as the jewels of Manhattan’s skyline, the beauty that makes them compelling a direct consequence of an obstacle overcome.That truth holds away from architecture: Often, the complications addressed and compromises reached, the workarounds explored and imperfections masked do not diminish that sense of wonder, but increase it. Necessity is not only the mother of invention, but of admiration and affection, too.The iteration of Manchester City that Pep Guardiola has crafted this season is, without question, a marvel of engineering: fine-tuned and slick and working in almost flawless, mechanical synchronicity.City celebrating one of its Premier League-leading 56 goals.Credit…Peter Powell/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe Premier League has been unable to resist: City has won 15 league games in a row, conceding only five goals in the process and building an unassailable 14-point lead over its nearest challenger, and this weekend’s opponent/victim, Manchester United. Guardiola’s team has one foot in the Champions League quarterfinals. It has already reached the same stage of the F.A. Cup, and the final of the Carabao Cup. If it beats United on Sunday at the Etihad, it will have won 22 games in a row. An unprecedented clean sweep of trophies shimmers on the horizon.But while it is impossible not to admire what Guardiola has built — one of the finest teams to grace English soccer, roughly two years after constructing what is possibly the greatest one the country has seen — it can be difficult to establish a deeper, more emotional connection with it. The way City plays fires the brain. It does not follow that it must therefore stir the soul.The club’s fans, of course, would put that down to nothing more than bitterness and envy. Its detractors might, in turn, ask what broader purpose establishing Manchester City among soccer’s elite had for its ultimate backer, Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the Emirati royal and deputy prime minister of Abu Dhabi, whose investment in City is most definitely nothing to do with a nation state.More significant — at least in this case — than either argument, though, may be the absence of complication and compromise from Manchester City’s story. It has the best coach in the world, one of the most expensive rosters in the world, the best facilities, the most advanced data, the finest youth system. As Arsène Wenger once put it, it has petrol, and it has ideas.Raheem Sterling and his teammates are, once again, headed toward a celebratory spring.Credit…Pool photo by Dave ThompsonThere were, true, a few teething problems in the early years of the Abu Dhabi project. But for some time now, City’s ascent to the summit of soccer has been remorseless, smooth and, perhaps, for neutrals, a little cold, a gleaming edifice rising sheer from the ground.The architectural term for what makes the Art Deco skyscrapers of the 1920s so iconic is, as it happens, setbacks. They are what lends those buildings their charm. Manchester City, in recent years, does not seem to have experienced many. Instead, its success has the air of a formula being cracked, an equation being solved. It is impressive, no question, but it is not compelling. Inevitabilities rarely are. The interest, though, is to be found in the blemishes hidden, and the challenges met.There is no point arguing that City’s resources have contributed to the club’s success, both in the long term and, more immediately, in a season in which fatigue and injury are having an outsized influence. All of the Premier League elite can spend fortunes on playing talent, but none of them can run a squad quite as deep in quality as Guardiola’s.He regularly leaves somewhere in the region of $350 million worth of talent on his substitutes’ bench. Even allowing for injury, he has been able to manage his players’ workload far better than most of his rivals. In February, he rotated in at least four players every game, and sometimes as many as seven. It never felt as if he had fielded a weakened team. Although City remains alive in four competitions, none of its players has yet played 3,000 minutes this season. Four of United’s, by contrast, have already passed that mark.Guardiola does not seek to deny that reality. “We have a lot of money to buy incredible players,” he said after victory in the Champions League over Borussia Mönchengladbach, remarks that were for some reason interpreted as a joke, but are, well, true. “Without good quality players,” he said, “we cannot do it.”But while it is the cost of the playing staff that attracts all of the attention, the envy and the criticism, the true impact of City’s resource advantage is a little less obvious. It is in the state-of-the-art training facilities, in the youth academy, in the network of clubs around the globe, in the astrophysicist hired to help the team’s data analysis, in a club that has been built, essentially, to provide the perfect working environment for Guardiola.It feels, at times, like Pep F.C., as one observer put it. And that, perhaps, explains the contrast between this City and Guardiola’s Barcelona: both dominant, era-defining teams, but one that captured the imagination and another that feels too surgical to do so.The difference is not necessarily in the moral relativism of the two clubs’ ownership, or even in their respective historical clout, but in their nature. Barcelona is a big, unwieldy, faintly chaotic institution, one that had been in turmoil before Guardiola arrived. Shaping it in his own image meant dealing with complications. City, on the other hand, was built for him, impeccable and flawless.That reading, though, misses one important aspect. Guardiola might have the best squad and a handpicked coaching staff and a raft of allies in the executive suites, and he may be able to access resources far deeper than any of his rivals can sustain, but his primary task — as it is for any manager — is still to handle people. And his ability to do that lies at the root of City’s imminent glory this spring.Guardiola with Phil Foden. He had to win back his players before they set about winning back their Premier League title.Credit…Pool photo by Andy RainIt would be a stretch to suggest there was a sense of mutiny around City last season. Guardiola’s power is too absolute, and his reputation too lofty, for rebellion to take hold. But there were, as Liverpool strolled away with the Premier League title, mutterings.There was a fiery exchange in the changing room after a defeat to Tottenham, several of his senior players complaining that he was too inconsistent with his team selection, complaints that ran beyond the background chuntering of the substitutes and the fringe players.It intensified in the summer, when City was outfoxed by Lyon in the Champions League. As the inquests played out in the news media, it emerged that there were some in the squad who were starting to waver in their loyalty to their coach, who felt he had shot himself in the foot in the competition he craves more than any other one time too many.Guardiola seemed to recognize it. He has always said, after all, that after four years either the players have to change, or the manager does. He hoped for the former, asking City to bring in four new signings. In the end, only three arrived: The club stepped away from a deal to sign Ben Chilwell from Leicester, and the left back Guardiola had requested never materialized.It did not, immediately, seem to solve the problem. City lost at home to Leicester, tied Leeds, West Ham and Liverpool, and then lost away at Spurs. That proved the final straw for Fernandinho, the club’s influential captain, who gathered the squad together — “only the players, I tried to show them our responsibility, what the club expects, what the fans expect” — for a few hard truths.Guardiola himself waited a couple more weeks. After a dispiriting draw at home to relegation-threatened West Bromwich Albion in December, he held a conclave with his key associates: Juanma Lillo, his assistant; Rodolfo Borrell, his first-team coach; Txiki Begiristain, City’s director of football; and Manel Estiarte, Guardiola’s all-purpose consigliere.For the first time, he had found himself watching his City team with distaste. “I didn’t like it,” he said later. Influenced by Lillo, in particular, the decision was made to revert to what Guardiola called his “ABC” principles. “To stay in position, and let the ball run, not you,” Guardiola said.His reputation as a visionary, of course, dictates that the switch has been interpreted as a tactical innovation: Guardiola had instructed his team to run less, or pass the ball more, or turned João Cancelo into the first fullback-stroke-No. 10, a position that will hopefully one day be known as a “false two.”João Cancelo is a perfectly Guardiola innovation: the playmaking defender.Credit…Shaun Botterill/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBut just as significant was the psychological impact: It represented a return to the ideas Guardiola had evangelized when he first arrived, the ones that some had felt were being lost. It was, perhaps, a tacit acknowledgment that he had diverged a little too much from the path that had brought City two Premier League titles.Gabriel Jesus, the Brazilian striker, was asked last week how Guardiola had changed this season. He could not be sure, he said, but the main difference was that Guardiola “doesn’t talk so much.” “There is less video now,” Jesus said.That, it turned out, was exactly what City needed: a slightly more stripped-down, simplified approach — not quite laissez-faire, not with Guardiola involved, but as close as he can feasibly muster.City does, to an extent, rise sheer and monotonous above the landscape of European soccer. Its polish is, perhaps, a little too gleaming, its finish a little too smooth, to have the sort of character that comes from blemishes.But it takes work to get that sort of sheen, no matter how costly, how plentiful and how fine the materials available, and that work is, ultimately, worthy of appreciation and admiration. Even the Equitable Building, after all, is now a National Historic Landmark.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

    • 150 Shares199 Views

      in Soccer

      The Women's Team Won a Title. Weeks Later, Owners Shut It Down.

      by

      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyA Rising Tide Sinks One BoatA top women’s soccer team won its first league title last season. But as richer rivals pour money into the women’s game, Kopparbergs decided to fold rather than fight.A Champions League defeat against Manchester City turned out to be the final match for Kopparbergs/Gothenburg F.C.Credit…Jason Cairnduff/Action Images, via ReutersFeb. 24, 2021, 12:05 a.m. ETAs far as Elin Rubensson knew, the call was about plans for the coming year, nothing more. Between Christmas and New Year’s Day, she and her colleagues at Kopparbergs/Gothenburg F.C. were summoned for a remote team meeting. They dialed in expecting to hear details of the club’s ambitions for the new season.Things, after all, were looking good. A month earlier, Kopparbergs had been crowned Sweden’s women’s soccer champion for the first time; it had been only a couple of weeks since the team had played Manchester City, the English powerhouse, in the knockout rounds of the Women’s Champions League.Though Rubensson had not played at all in the 2020 league campaign — she opted out while expecting her first child — and had missed the celebrations of the title victory after testing positive for the coronavirus, she was excited. She had given birth to a son, Frans, just before the holidays. She was thinking about when she might start playing again.And then “a bolt from a clear blue sky.” It was over.On the call, the club’s executives told the players that Kopparbergs — on the back of the greatest season in its history — was being closed down, effective immediately. It would not defend its league title. It would forfeit its place in next season’s competitions. The Manchester City defeat would be its last game as a club.“It was a shock for all of us,” Rubensson said. “We did not expect it. Our son was only a week old, and suddenly I had no club to play for. We didn’t know what was going to happen or what to do.”Elin Rubensson, right, learned in a phone call that she did not have a club anymore.Credit…Adam Ihse/EPA, via ShutterstockOver the last decade or so, the landscape of women’s soccer in Europe has shifted so fundamentally as to be unrecognizable. As the game’s popularity has grown, as the broadcast deals and sponsorship money have poured in and more and more fans have come through the gates, it has attracted the attention of the continent’s history-laden — and cash-soaked — men’s teams.The Champions League has been dominated by the game’s hegemon, Olympique Lyonnais, with only the superheated rise of its national rival, Paris St.-Germain, providing any threat to Lyon’s primacy.The lavish spending of the clubs of the Women’s Super League in England has attracted players such as Tobin Heath, Rose Lavelle, Pernille Harder and Sam Kerr, turning it into what many regard as the strongest domestic women’s competition on the planet. Barcelona, Atlético Madrid, Juventus and Bayern Munich have all dedicated a portion of their considerable resources to trying to keep pace. Manchester United fielded its first women’s team in 2018; Real Madrid bought an existing one and rebranded it in its name last year.While that investment is welcome and overdue, it is not without cost. Across the continent, the teams that did so much to sustain and grow women’s soccer before the money arrived, the clubs that constitute so much of its history, have found it all but impossible to compete: England’s Doncaster Belles, Spain’s Rayo Vallecano, Italy’s A.S.D. Torres, even Turbine Potsdam of Germany, a two-time Champions League winner. Glasgow City, champion of Scotland for 13 years in a row, knows it can hold out for only so long now that Rangers and Celtic are showing an interest in the women’s game.It was that same current that forced Kopparbergs’s hand. The club had moved to Gothenburg a couple of decades before — it had previously played “on a bad pitch, close to the airport” in the satellite town of Landvetter, according to its official history — at the invitation of the local authorities, hoping to give the city’s women and girls a place to play and a chance to dream.But though it was backed by one of Sweden’s largest breweries — Kopparberg is one of the world’s largest producers of cider, and it shared a chairman, Peter Bronsman, with the soccer team — the women’s side was always a small-scale enterprise. “It was four friends doing this as a hobby, almost,” said Carl Fhager, a lawyer engaged to oversee the winding down of the club. “It was not a big organization. It did not have many members. In Swedish terms, it was a very small club.”After watching wealthy rivals like Manchester City pour money into women’s soccer, Gothenburg officials said they no longer saw a viable path to success.Credit…Matt McNulty – Manchester City/Manchester City FC, via Getty ImagesThat did not prevent it from enjoying remarkable success. It was able to sign Hope Solo, Christen Press and Yael Averbuch, all United States internationals. Though it had to wait until 2020 for its first championship, it had won the Swedish Cup three times and was a regular participant in the Champions League.It was those forays into Europe — those encounters with the new powers of the women’s game — that convinced Bronsman and his board that their club’s time was passing. A couple of years ago, they had opened discussions with I.F.K. Gothenburg, one of the city’s men’s teams, about folding the club into its operations.The idea was eventually vetoed by I.F.K.’s members — Swedish clubs are member-owned nonprofits, and the idea of one’s taking over another was too alien to be tolerable — but the more it ran into the likes of Manchester City, with its squad packed with international stars and its training facilities shared with the club’s men, the more Kopparbergs felt the writing was on the wall.“It became even clearer in the Champions League,” Fhager said. “The club knew it was not competitive anymore, and the difference in facilities was not fair on the players.” It was the same reasoning that would appear on the statement released by the club on Dec. 29, confirming its closure.By that time, Kopparbergs had contacted Fhager, tasking him with finding a new home for the players: either by identifying a larger club to assume the team wholesale — ideally one in Gothenburg — or finding new homes for as many members of the squad as possible. He contacted not only Gothenburg’s four men’s soccer teams, but its ice hockey clubs, too, anyone who he thought might have an interest in assuming the Kopparbergs players and the team’s place in Sweden’s top tier, the Damallsvenskan.One was particularly responsive. Marcus Jodin, the chief executive of BK Hacken, one of Gothenburg’s biggest men’s teams, had seen the news that Kopparbergs would be shuttered, but had not thought too much of it. “We were really busy,” he said. “We were trying to close a big transfer for the men’s team.”His phone, though, soon started pinging with messages from colleagues and friends. “They said this might be a chance for us,” he said. Hacken had a strategic plan to increase its investment in the women’s game — its women’s team was at the time playing in Sweden’s third tier — as part of an attempt to become a “fully balanced club between men’s and women’s sports.”When Fhager called Hacken on the afternoon of Dec. 29, Jodin was ready to listen. The next day, at a meeting of Hacken’s board, team officials discussed the idea. Though taking over another team was anathema, the appeal was clear.Part of Jodin’s argument was financial. “The economics of women’s soccer are moving really fast,” he said. “If it takes us five to seven years to make it to the top level in the normal way, then where are the economics then? Do we have the time and money to wait that long.”But part of it was moral, too. Without Kopparbergs, Gothenburg would not have an elite women’s team. “The club was founded to give girls in the city a chance to dream,” Jodin said. “And that dream can’t move to Malmo.”BK Hacken, now strengthened by some of the Kopparbergs players, will take the former champions’ place in the new league campaign.Credit…Mattias Ivarsson/BK HackenWith the backing of the board, he set about not just putting the idea to the club’s members, addressing all of their “questions and fears,” but making Hacken ready if they agreed. “We wanted the players to notice a change from Day 1,” Jodin said. “They had been through a nightmare, losing their jobs and income. If we had not been ready for them, we would have failed.”In late January, the merger went to a vote, as all decisions at all Swedish clubs must. Ninety-two percent of Hacken’s fans agreed to it: The club would take on Kopparbergs’s players, its commitments and its place in the league. The team would change its name and its jersey. All that would be left of a quarter-century of history was the nonprofit association number under which Kopparbergs was registered.For those involved, it is a happy ending. “There were only two alternatives,” Jodin said. “Either the club closed, and the players left, or they became part of Hacken.”Fhager said most of the fans he had spoken to were enthusiastic: “The idea of Kopparbergs was to give Gothenburg an elite team that girls can aim for. It still has that.”For Rubensson, “everything feels great.”“The size of the organization and the facilities are the main difference,” she added. “We’ve been very well welcomed. We feel like this will be a very good step for us, at a time when Swedish teams need to improve to be successful in Europe.”For her, as it is for everyone else, this is the future. Kopparbergs, and the teams like it, are the past.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

    • 88 Shares169 Views

      in Soccer

      Champions League Schedule Blurs Home and Away

      by

      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyChampions League Adapts to a Fluid Concept: Home and AwayCoronavirus restrictions have sent multiple games to neutral sites. Will this summer’s European Championship be the next big event to reschedule?RB Leipzig’s Hungarian goalkeeper Peter Gulacsi might have been the only player truly at home last week in a Champions League match against Liverpool in Budapest.Credit…Attila Kisbenedek/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesFeb. 23, 2021, 2:00 a.m. ETTwo European soccer giants, Atlético Madrid and Chelsea, will meet in the Champions League on Tuesday. The site of this much anticipated game? Bucharest, Romania.On Wednesday, Manchester City will play the German team Borussia Mönchengladbach. That game will be in Budapest, the Hungarian capital, where the English champion Liverpool beat Germany’s RB Leipzig last week.In the Europa League, the continent’s second-tier club championship, neutral sites are now almost as common as home games. Last week, Spanish and English teams played in Italy, and teams from Norway and Germany met in Spain. On Thursday, a week after the London club Arsenal played to a draw against Portugal’s Benfica in Rome, the teams will meet again in the second leg of their not-home-and-home tie near Athens.The pandemic has wreaked havoc with international sports schedules for a year, and that chaos continues to have an impact on soccer’s biggest club tournaments. The reasons — government edicts, travel restrictions and quarantine rules — vary around Europe. In some countries, teams are still allowed to travel to and from their opponents’ stadiums without issue. In others, countries have blocked entry to visitors from entire nations, or drawn up onerous rules that make such travel impractical in a soccer season when teams often play two or three games a week.UEFA, the European soccer governing body that runs the competitions, has decided that if restrictions adversely affect any game, it will be played at a neutral site where travel is permitted. But the decision to play knockout games in places seemingly chosen at random has led to confusion, and not a little grumbling.Real Sociedad, for example, played its “home” leg against Manchester United last week in Turin, Italy, but will play the return match at United’s home, Old Trafford, on Thursday.“It does not seem coherent to me that as the home team, we play on a neutral field, and as a visitor, we do it there,” Roberto Olabe, Real Sociedad’s director of football, told Diario Vasco. “I would like the return to also be on neutral ground, or for UEFA to appoint a single venue for a one-game tie as it did last year.”The displeasure has not been universal. Both Hungary and Romania, whose teams almost never go deep in major European competitions, have been eager to bring the games to their countries — even if, in many cases, they must still be played behind closed doors.“A match played in the framework of the most prestigious European interclub competition is a major sporting event, and we offered our support to the organizers as soon as this possibility was raised,” the Romanian soccer federation president, Razvan Burleanu, told Agence France-Presse.The playing of some games at neutral sites has turned the first tiebreaker for the tournament, the away goals rule, into something of a paradox. Normally, if a home-and-away tie ends with neither team ahead in total goals, the team with the most goals away from home advances. The logic is that scoring away from home is a little harder in a hostile environment, and should get a small bonus.But home isn’t the same for everyone. Chelsea, for example, will play its away game not at Atletico’s Wanda Metropolitano stadium but on neutral ground in Bucharest. But any goals scored there still will count as away goals only for the English team.Atlético will then have to defend, or make up, any difference in the score line on Chelsea’s home field in London next month.Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, left, and Arsenal played to a draw against Benfica last week in Rome.Credit…Alberto Lingria/ReutersFor the Benfica-Arsenal matchup, the away-goals rule seemed even more puzzlingly arbitrary. The first leg in Rome ended in a 1-1 tie, when Arsenal was considered the away team. Benfica will be the away team in Greece, but if that leg ends in a higher-scoring draw — say, 2-2 — Benfica will advance by having scored more away goals.(Some European soccer traditions appear immune to the coronavirus: The Serbian club Red Star Belgrade was forced to apologize last week after some of its fans broke into a closed stadium for a Europa League tie against Milan and racially abused Milan striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic, who is of Bosnian descent.)Soccer’s scheduling problems may not be over, however. The continuing reach of the pandemic has called into question the plans to stage this summer’s European Championship in 12 cities around Europe. Traditionally, the event has been a less-sprawling affair hosted by one country, or a pair of neighboring ones.Given the travel complications laid bare by the club competitions, the idea of national teams flying around Europe seems foolhardy, or downright dangerous. Already there are calls for relocating the entire tournament to a single county, probably England, which is already scheduled to host the two semifinals and the final.Over the weekend, The Sunday Times of London reported that the British government had told UEFA it was ready and willing to stand in as host of the full schedule of games, although the country’s health minister promptly denied that report.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More