Marsch, Jesse

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    Harry Kane and the Power of Individual Achievement

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

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

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

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      The Artist Who Painted a City

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