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    Inside Plymouth Argyle’s 46,000-seater World Cup stadium plans as Wayne Rooney’s side battle relegation to third tier

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    PLYMOUTH ARGYLE are battling relegation from the Championship under former England captain Wayne Rooney’s management.And the Pilgrims’ home form has been crucial in keeping their heads above water – with Rooney’s men currently sitting 18th in the Championship and a point ahead of the bottom three.Plymouth Argyle once had ambitious plans for a stunning 46,000-seater stadiumCredit: Rotolok/JLLIt would have hosted four World Cup matchesCredit: Rotolok/JLLArgyle have lost just one home game so far this season at their 17,000-seater stadium.But in a parallel universe, Home Park could have looked very different.That’s because Plymouth once had ambitious plans for the 2018 World Cup, and was chosen by the FA as one of the host cities.However, England’s failed bid to host the World Cup that year – with the tournament instead being handed to Russia – ultimately saw the plans fall flat.READ MORE IN FOOTBALLHad England won the bidding, Home Park, where Plymouth have played since 1893, would have been set to become a stunning 46,000-seater arena.This would have been surrounded by a £150million project of shops, cinemas, restaurants, a hotel and an ice rink.State-of-the-art tramlines, as well as a new pier and stunning Drake’s Island would attract the super-rich.The city’s rejuvenation would also see it playing host to other major sporting events such as the America’s Cup – sailing’s own version of the World Cup.Most read in FootballThe ambitious project would have created 3,700 jobs and £292m in investment for the city.Argyle would have hosted four World Cup matches, along with training camps around the region and “Fan Fests” on the Hoe and at Stonehouse Creek costing over £15m over 31 days.There was widespread support for the bid from locals, while politicians jetted to South Africa to try and promote Plymouth’s campaign.BEST FREE BET SIGN UP OFFERS FOR UK BOOKMAKERSHowever, the light of ambition became shrouded in the darkness of the ashes that nearly became Plymouth Argyle.The Plymouth Herald revealed the city council itself lost £700,000 in the failed bid.Every Premier League stadium ranked by the number of pubs nearby with one boasting over 130 local boozersPlymouth City Council alone spent £147,000 with another £250,000 being underwritten by Argyle.The Devon outfit owed £17m due to the project, sending the club into administration in 2011.James Brent’s Akkeron Group eventually agreed a deal with administrators to buy the club, with former chairman Peter Risdale leaving the club when the deal was completed.Argyle sold Home Park back to the city council for £1.6m and agreed to pay £135,000 a year in rent.READ MORE SUN STORIESIf this project had not been torpedoed by Fifa, Plymouth may well have been among the first names when considering who might host games for Euro 2028.However, the tournament – which will be across England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland after Northern Ireland pulled out – will not feature any trips to the West Country. More

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      North Korea’s Han Kwang-song Returns to International Soccer

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      Han Kwang-song’s recent appearances in World Cup qualifiers were his first ones overseas since 2020, when U.N. sanctions led to an involuntary career break.When the North Korean men’s soccer team took the field for two 2026 World Cup qualifying matches this month, close observers noticed an important roster change.Han Kwang-song, a high-profile striker, was back, more than three years after vanishing from public view for reasons beyond his control: United Nations-imposed sanctions on North Korean nationals over Pyongyang’s nuclear program.Mr. Han’s story is a rare case of North Korea sanctions reverberating through professional soccer. It also shows how enforcement of U.N. sanctions against individuals varies by country.The government in Italy did not deport Mr. Han, now 25, while he was playing professional soccer there. But once he moved to Qatar, the Qatari government did.“The basic story makes sense; the surprising part is that Qatar complied with the U.N. resolutions,” said Marcus Noland, an expert on North Korean sanctions and executive vice president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington.A prodigy with ‘superhero’ statusMr. Han’s early success was partly a product of North Korea’s push to cultivate soccer talent. After attending a prestigious soccer school founded by the country’s leader, Kim Jong-un, Mr. Han trained in Spain before turning pro in Italy.He quickly made an impression in Europe as a speedy forward with an eye for goal. Back home, North Korea’s official news agency praised him after a 2019 Asian Cup qualifier as “the player that experts and enthusiasts paid the most attention to.”“In North Korea, he’s a superhero,” said Kim Heung-Tae, a professor of sports science at Daejin University in South Korea who follows the North’s soccer program.But in 2017, as punishment for the North’s sixth nuclear weapons test, the United Nations Security Council ordered all North Korean nationals working abroad to be repatriated by December 2019 — a strategy for preventing financing of the North’s military.Mr. Han, one of several North Koreans playing overseas in professional soccer leagues at the time, was among the targets.Sanctions meet realityBut the Italian authorities did not repatriate Mr. Han by the 2019 deadline, United Nations Security Council reports show. Instead, Juventus, the Italian club where he had been earning more than half a million euros a year, struck a deal in early 2020 to send him to Al-Duhail, a soccer team in Qatar, on a five-year contract worth about 4.3 million euros, about $4.7 million.Though a Security Council panel of experts on North Korea contacted Italy and Qatar immediately after that transfer, it was not canceled, and Juventus accepted a transfer fee from the Qatari club, according to the U.N. The panel said in a report that it later “reiterated to Qatar the relevant resolutions concerning the case.”That summer, Mr. Han stopped appearing for Al-Duhail. In January 2021, Qatar’s mission to the United Nations said in a letter to the U.N. panel that Mr. Han had left Qatar after having his contract “terminated” by the club — and that Qatar’s actions reflected its commitments to Security Council resolutions about North Korean nationals who earn income abroad.At the time, the coronavirus pandemic was raging, and North Korea’s borders were sealed. Qatar said in its letter, a copy of which was included in a U.N. report, that Mr. Han had left the country on Qatar Airways Flight 131 — a nonstop flight to Rome.‘He’s probably been training all along’Details of Mr. Han’s movements since leaving Qatar, including the timing and circumstances of his return to North Korea, remain scarce. According to Transfermarkt, a website that tracks soccer players and their contracts, he has not played for a professional club since July 2021.Also unclear is whether any of Mr. Han’s earnings ever made it back to the North Korean government.Mr. Han signed an agreement in 2020 with a Qatari bank, where he had an account at the time, pledging not to transfer any money to his home country, according to a U.N. report. Still, Professor Kim said, North Korean agents had most likely accompanied him everywhere he went overseas and restricted how he spent his earnings.Neither FIFA, the governing body of soccer; nor the Italian or Qatari Foreign Ministries; nor North Korea’s soccer association or the Asian Football Confederation immediately responded to requests for comment. Nor did Al-Duhail, Juventus or Cagliari, another team that Mr. Han played for in Italy.Mr. Han’s return to competition this month was reported earlier by CNN and the website NK News, among other outlets.Professor Kim said that the pandemic had probably curtailed many athletic events in North Korea, where the long-lasting border closing crippled the nation’s economy. But soccer is the country’s most popular sport, and Professor Kim said that domestic competitions had probably been held regularly in recent months.As for Mr. Han, Professor Kim said, “he’s probably been training all along.”Rather than joining another professional league abroad, Mr. Han is likely to focus on preparing for the 2026 World Cup, Professor Kim said. He added that North Korea was competitive in its region and had a good chance of qualifying, in part because FIFA has nearly doubled the number of slots for Asian countries at that tournament, which will be held in the United States, Canada and Mexico.Max Canzi, who coached Mr. Han in Italy for Cagliari’s under-19 team, told CNN that he was “very happy” that the striker had returned to international competition for the World Cup qualifying match against Syria in Saudi Arabia on Nov. 16.As Mr. Han resumes his career, Mr. Canzi added that he was “very curious about the level of his performance after being out for so much time.”Mr. Han was substituted at halftime in the Saudi Arabia match, which North Korea lost, 1-0. But five days later in Yangon, Myanmar, he contributed to a 6-1 win over the home country with a signature headed goal. More

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      Manchester United Bidding War Already Has a Winner: The Sellers

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      A Qatari royal and a British billionaire have designs on the Premier League giant. But the Glazer family still gets to set the price.The World Cup in Qatar was in its third day when Manchester United’s press office announced that its American owners were exploring an end game they had long refused to even consider: a potential sale of the famed English soccer club.Every day since that November morning, the swirl of speculation about who might buy United, one of the world’s most popular and most valuable sports teams, has gathered pace.A British billionaire quickly confirmed that he planned to bid. An American hedge fund kicked the tires. Reports of a Saudi Arabian offer sent the club’s stock price surging.But it was from Qatar, rumored for weeks to have investors interested in adding United to the country’s expanding sports portfolio, where details of the first official bid appeared. And just like that, the fight for the club’s future, a battle of differing visions for what kind of Manchester United would emerge from the auction, was on.The official word of concrete Qatari interest arrived in a statement on Friday night: an all-cash offer — reportedly worth as much as $6 billion — by Sheikh Jassim bin Hamad al-Thani, a little-known royal whose power may lie more in his post as the chairman of a major Qatari bank and in the influence of his father, a former prime minister who helped put their small nation on the international map.Sheikh Jassim bin Hamad al-Thani, the son of one of Qatar’s most powerful royals, was the first Manchester United suitor to confirm his bid.Karim Jaafar/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesSheikh Jassim’s statement offered populism, or at least what sounded like a Gulf billionaire’s vision of it. Pledging to invest in United’s stadium and its teams without adding a dollar to its debts, his five-paragraph statement read like a box-ticking exercise in proposals designed to win the support of anyone eager to see the back of the Glazers, the family that has controlled the Premier League giant for nearly two decades.But Sheikh Jassim’s suggestion of a “debt-free” takeover also did nothing to hide the financial muscle behind the offer that would make United, in an instant, the most high-profile Qatari-owned property on earth.His public pitch took other bidders by surprise. Raine, the investment bank handling the sale for United’s board and the Glazer family, had asked prospective buyers to limit any public pronouncements, perhaps to entice as many offers as possible, or at the very least to avoid scaring off any suitors.The Qatari offer changed that, and quickly led another bidder, Jim Ratcliffe, a British petrochemical billionaire based in Monte Carlo, to first privately and then publicly confirm that he had made an offer for 69 percent of United, the amount of the club owned by the Glazers.Ratcliffe pointedly offered United fans an English alternative to the prospect of Gulf ownership. Manchester born and a lifelong United fan, Ratcliffe promised to put “the Manchester back into Manchester United,” to revive a club anchored not to foreign interests but to “its proud history and roots in the northwest of England.”The British billionaire Jim Ratcliffe is bidding for United only a year after losing out on Chelsea.Eric Gaillard/ReutersThe competing offers immediately split the United fan base, with many overseas supporters openly pining on social media for a sale that they hoped would see Qatar’s deep pockets do for Manchester United what billions of dollars from the United Arab Emirates have done for its neighbor Manchester City. That sentiment did not appear to be shared by much of the club’s matchgoing supporters, with concerns raised by fan groups in England about everything from human rights to sporting integrity.The latter may prove to be the more formidable obstacle, because Sheikh Jassim and Ratcliffe can expect to face scrutiny under rules set by European soccer’s governing body, UEFA, that prohibit teams with the same owner from playing in top continental competitions like the Champions League.Ratcliffe already owns OGC Nice, which plays in France’s top league and has drawn some of his fortune to finance its push toward European qualification.Sheikh Jassim will face the challenge of convincing soccer regulators that his interests are different from those of the Qatari ownership group that runs the perennial Champions League contender Paris St.-Germain. Sheikh Jassim’s father was, with the country’s former emir, one of the architects of Qatar’s vision of itself as a player on the global stage, and one of the driving forces behind its flashy purchases of showcase assets like another British institution, the department store Harrods, and the Shard, Britain’s tallest building. The father’s close links to the country’s leadership already have raised doubts that his son’s pursuit of United is merely a private investment.Ratcliffe and Sheikh Jassim may soon face other challenges, too. Friday’s deadline for bids was an artificial one, confected by United’s bankers to create urgency. Other bids may already exist, and new (and possibly higher) ones can still be presented.But one thing all the bids — public, secret or still to come — may benefit from is near universal agreement among United fans of all stripes that the club should no longer be run by the famously unpopular Glazers. The family acquired the team in a highly contentious deal in 2005 in which it leveraged the majority of the purchase price against the club, meaning United has spent hundreds of millions of dollars paying for the right to be owned by the family.Many Manchester United fans agree on one thing: They want the Glazers to sell.Oli Scarff/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThat deal, while infuriating supporters, has been hugely profitable for the Glazers. Through fees and dividend payments, the family has already secured a return far higher than its initial direct investment (a fraction of the roughly $1.4 billion purchase price at the time). The club’s value has skyrocketed, with news media reports suggesting the family is now seeking as much as $7 billion to part with it.That price point will narrow the pool of potential owners considerably. At least one potential buyer told The New York Times last week that anything close to that figure was “madness,” and said that his group had walked away because it believes that United, which still carries debt of nearly $600 million, is not worth more than 3 billion pounds, or $3.6 billion.Yet in Raine, United’s owners have entrusted the job of soliciting offers to a bank with a recent track record of finding buyers willing to pay above-market prices. The firm, led by the New York banker Joe Ravitch, secured £2.5 billion (about $3 billion) last year in the sale for Chelsea. But that was more of a forced sale, one sparked by British government sanctions against Chelsea’s Russian owner, Roman Abramovich, shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.The Glazers do not face similar pressure. Their call for bids for United was framed as merely an effort to “explore strategic alternatives for the club.” That means whatever the billionaires offer, whatever they promise, wherever they call home, Manchester United will be sold only at a price the Glazers are willing to accept. More

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      81 Minutes in, Two Big Goals and One Big Rewrite

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      The Times’s chief soccer correspondent hoped for a “boring” World Cup final. He didn’t get one.DOHA, Qatar — Everything was going swimmingly, right up to the point that my editor — sitting to my left in the cavernous bowl of Lusail Stadium, a soccer arena so vast that the sound from the stand opposite ours seemed to arrive on a satellite delay — turned to me and threw seven casual, careless words out into the universe. “We kind of need France to score.”It’s hard to overstate the scale of a World Cup final. Every one is four years in the making. Every one sends millions of people to the streets in celebration, and millions more back to their homes in sorrow and regret. It is one of the most-watched events on the planet. It is, by some distance, the biggest occasion sport has to offer.So, as a journalist enjoying the honor of covering the 2022 World Cup final in Qatar, at least part of you hopes that it is intensely boring. Not devoid of action. Not the angst-ridden anticlimax that happens more often than not, in which both teams retreat into their shells, the pain of losing far more concerning than the euphoria of winning.No, the perfect World Cup final — as the person who has to have several hundred cogent words, spelled correctly, bound by what might pass as some sort of thematic thread, ready to publish as soon as the final whistle blows — is one in which one team has the game all but won with a quarter of an hour to spare.Which is, as it happens, exactly what we had on Sunday. It was at roughly that point when my editor, Andy Das, decided that what Argentina and France had offered so far wasn’t quite entertaining enough for him. He wanted, apparently, a little drama.There is just one aspect of being a sportswriter that seems to make my wife, children and relatives accept my entreaties that it is a proper job, rather than, and this is a direct quote from my wife, “talking to your friends all day” — the part in which you have to compress everything that happens in a game, all of the content and the context and the consequences, into about a thousand words.Oh, and you have to do it late at night. And within a few minutes, or at most an hour, of the game ending.The truth is, though, that most of the time there is nothing nerve-racking about writing live. I spent a rather pleasant portion of this spring in Madrid, watching Real Madrid stage a series of ridiculous comebacks on its way to the Champions League title. Each one was just a little more absurd than the last. One night, Real Madrid scored in the 90th and the 91st minutes, going from what would have been elimination to the most remarkable success, all in the blink of an eye.No problem: The more cinematic a game feels, the less thinking there is to do as a journalist. That’s part of the glory of sport. There are plenty of times when the story tells itself; we’re just there to transcribe it.World Cup finals are different. You never know how many you will have the chance to cover. And there was only ever going to be one chance to write about this World Cup final, Lionel Messi’s last shot at the ultimate prize, his opportunity to do what Diego Maradona did in 1986 and deliver the World Cup to Argentina.That is one you want to get right, and it is much easier to get right if you have at least a little time to think.Messi had done all he could: Argentina had established a two-goal lead at halftime and looked impressively serene for much of the second half. France seemed resigned to its fate. The shapes were starting to fall into place in my head: a portrait of Messi in those final few minutes, a man whose dream is about to come true. That could work.And then, well, Andy’s hope came to pass: Kylian Mbappé exploded Argentina’s advantage in two minutes. France might have won it inside 90 minutes; Argentina seemed to have won it in extra time. Then Mbappé intervened again. Both teams had glorious, glaring chances to claim the trophy in the last few seconds before the penalty shootout. But of course, only one did: Argentina.It feels like hyperbole — and maybe it is — but the final 40 minutes of the 2022 World Cup final, between Mbappé’s first goal and Gonzalo Montiel’s game-winning penalty shot, might be not only the greatest final in history but the best 40 minutes of soccer, too, the pinnacle of a sport that has become a cultural phenomenon.The write-up would have been easier had the game ended at 2-0, as it looked like it would for so long. Less stressful for me, less mind-blowing. It would not, though, have been nearly so much fun. More

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      Qatar Got the World Cup It Wanted

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      DOHA, Qatar — In the end, Qatar got what it wanted.The tiny desert state, a thumb-shaped peninsula, craved nothing more than to be better known, to be a player on the world stage, when in 2009 it launched what seemed like an improbable bid to stage the men’s soccer World Cup, the most popular sporting event on earth. Hosting the tournament has cost more than anyone could have imagined — in treasure, in time, in lives.But on Sunday night, as the fireworks filled the sky above Lusail, as the Argentina fans sang and their star, Lionel Messi, beamed while clasping a trophy he had waited a lifetime to touch, everyone knew Qatar.The spectacular denouement — a dream final pitting Argentina against France; a first World Cup title for Messi, the world’s best player; a pulsating match settled after six goals and a penalty shootout — made sure of that. And as if to make sure, to put the nation’s final imprint on the first World Cup in the Middle East, Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, stopped a beaming Messi as he made his way to collect the biggest trophy in the sport and pulled him back. There was one more thing that needed to be done.He pulled out a golden fringed bisht, the black cloak worn in the Gulf for special occasions, and wrapped it around Messi’s shoulders before handing over the 18-karat gold trophy.The celebration ended a tumultuous decade for a tournament awarded in a bribery scandal; stained by claims of human rights abuses and the deaths and injuries suffered by the migrant workers hired to build Qatar’s $200 billion World Cup; and shadowed by controversial decisions on everything from alcohol to armbands.Fireworks went off at Lusail Stadium after Argentina was presented the World Cup trophy after its win.Robert Cianflone/Getty ImagesYet for one month Qatar has been the center of the world, pulling off a feat none of its neighbors in the Arab world had managed to achieve, one that at times had seemed unthinkable in the years since Sepp Blatter, the former FIFA president, made the stunning announcement inside a Zurich conference hall on Dec. 2, 2010, that Qatar would host the 2022 World Cup.It is improbable the sport will see such an unlikely host again soon. Qatar was perhaps among the most ill-suited hosts for a tournament of the scale of the World Cup, a country so lacking in stadiums and infrastructure and history that its bid was labeled “high risk” by FIFA’s own evaluators. But it took advantage of the one commodity it had in plentiful supply: money.Backed by seemingly bottomless financial resources to fuel its ambitions, Qatar embarked on a project that required nothing less than the building, or rebuilding, of its entire country in service to a monthlong soccer tournament. Those billions were spent within its borders — seven new stadiums were constructed and other major infrastructure projects were completed at enormous financial and human cost. But when that was not enough, it spent lavishly outside its boundaries, too, acquiring sports teams and sports rights worth billions of dollars, and hiring sports stars and celebrities to support its cause.And all that was on display Sunday. By the time the final game was played in the $1 billion Lusail Stadium, Qatar could not lose. The game was being shown across the Middle East on beIN Sports, a sports broadcasting behemoth set up in the aftermath of Qatar’s winning the World Cup hosting rights. It also could lay claim to the two best players on the field, Argentina’s Messi and the French star Kylian Mbappé, both of whom are under contract to the Qatar-owned French club Paris St.-Germain.Mbappé, who had scored the first hat trick in a final in over a half-century, finished the game sitting on the grass, consoled by President Emmanuel Macron of France, an invited guest of the emir, as Argentina’s players danced in celebration all around him.Despite scoring a hat trick in the final game, Kylian Mbappé of France finished the tournament dejected on his team’s bench.Carl Recine/ReutersThe competition delivered compelling — and sometimes troubling — story lines from the outset, with the intensely political opening at Al Bayt Stadium, an enormous venue designed to look like a Bedouin tent. That night, Qatar’s emir had sat side by side with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, less than three years after the latter had led a punishing blockade of Qatar.For a month, deals were discussed and alliances were made. Qatar’s team was not a factor in its World Cup debut; it lost all three of its games, exiting the competition with the worst performance of any host in the competition’s history.There would also be other challenges, some of Qatar’s own making, like a sudden prohibition on the sale of alcohol within the stadium perimeters only two days before that first game — a last-minute decision that left Budweiser, a longtime sponsor of soccer’s world governing body, FIFA, to fume on the sideline.On the tournament’s second day, FIFA crushed a campaign by a group of European teams to wear an armband to promote inclusivity, part of efforts promised to campaign groups and critics in their home countries, and then Qatar quashed efforts by Iranian fans to highlight ongoing protests in their country.But on the field, the competition delivered. There were great goals and great games, stunning upsets and an abundance of surprising score lines that created new heroes, most notably in the Arab world.First came Saudi Arabia, which can now lay claim to having beaten the World Cup champion in the group stage. Morocco, which had only once reached the knockout stage, became the first African team to advance to the semifinals, pulling off a succession of barely believable victories over European soccer heavyweights: Belgium, Spain and then Cristiano Ronaldo’s Portugal.Those results sparked celebration across the Arab world and in a handful of major European capitals, while also providing a platform for fans in Qatar to promote the Palestinian cause, the one intrusion of politics that Qatari officials did nothing to discourage.Morocco became the first African team to reach the semifinals of the World Cup in the tournament’s history.Kirill Kudryavtsev/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIn the stands, the backdrop was a curious one, with several games appearing short of supporters and then mysteriously filling up in the minutes after kickoff, when gates were opened to grant spectators — many of them the South Asian migrants — entry free of charge. The true number of paying spectators is unlikely to ever be known, their empty seats filled by thousands of the same laborers and migrants who had built the stadium and the country, and who kept it running during the World Cup.That group, largely drawn from countries like India, Bangladesh and Nepal, was the most visible face of Qatar to the estimated one million visitors who traveled to the tournament. They worked as volunteers at stadiums, served the food and manned the metro stations, buffed the marble floors and shined the hand rails and door knobs at the scores of newly built hotels and apartment complexes.By the end of the tournament, most of those fans had gone, leaving the Argentines — an estimated temporary population of 40,000 — to provide the sonic backdrop to the final game. Dressed in sky blue and white stripes, they converged on the Lusail Stadium, creating the type of authentic World Cup atmosphere — bouncing and singing throughout 120 minutes of play, and then long afterward — that no amount of Qatari wealth could buy.They had gotten exactly what they wanted from the World Cup. And so did Qatar.Lionel Messi was hoisted on his teammates’ shoulders after Argentina’s victory.Matthias Hangst/Getty Images More

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      How FIFA Silenced a World Cup Armband Campaign

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      European teams had planned to highlight inclusivity on soccer’s biggest stage. They blinked when the sport’s governing body flexed its muscles.DOHA, Qatar — The opening match of the World Cup was only hours away when the leaders of a group of European soccer federations arrived for a meeting at the luxury Fairmont Hotel. The five-star property, converted into the tournament headquarters for FIFA leadership, was an unlikely setting for a fight. But with the matches about to begin, it would have to do.By then the federations and representatives of FIFA had been meeting on and off for months about a plan by the group of nine national teams to wear multicolored armbands with the message “One Love” during their matches at the tournament in Qatar. FIFA had been displeased by the idea, but the teams — which included the tournament contenders France, Germany, England, the Netherlands and Belgium — felt a tacit peace had been agreed to: The teams would wear the armbands, and FIFA would look the other way, then quietly fine them later for breaking its uniform rules.In a conference room at the Fairmont on Nov. 20, though, everything changed. With the room’s large windows and their sweeping views of the Persian Gulf to her back, Fatma Samoura, FIFA’s second-ranking executive, told the federations that their armbands would not only be against the tournament’s uniform regulations but also considered a provocation toward Qatar, the tournament host, and other Islamic nations and African countries. They would not be allowed, Samoura said. The Europeans were stunned.The 24 hours that followed, a flurry of meetings and threats and raised voices and brinkmanship, are just a memory this weekend, as Argentina and France prepare to play in the World Cup final on Sunday. FIFA did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the discussions; this article is based on interviews with multiple participants in the talks, many of whom asked for anonymity because they were not allowed to relate private discussions to the news media.The One Love campaign, begun in the Netherlands three years ago as an effort to promote inclusivity, morphed into one of the biggest controversies of the early days of the World Cup. A month after its sudden end, it remains instructive as an unusually forceful display of the power FIFA wields over its member federations; the leverage it can bring to bear to force their compliance in disagreements; and the way a social justice campaign set to take place on the sport’s biggest stage could be silenced in a single 24-hour period.FIFA’s secretary general, Fatma Samoura, informed the teams that players who wore the One Love armband risked serious penalties.Stuart Franklin/Getty ImagesWhen seven of the European teams arrived in Qatar in late November, their soccer federations insisted that the plan for their captains to wear the One Love armbands remained intact even though FIFA, advised about the plan months earlier, had yet to respond to the idea, despite letters mailed and talks held at the soccer body’s Zurich headquarters.The European nations competing in the World Cup — England, France, Denmark, Germany, Belgium, Wales and Switzerland — and two nations that had not qualified, Norway and Sweden, had found common cause months earlier. Buffeted by mounting criticism of the Qatar World Cup at home, they had planned to highlight their inclusivity message during matches at the tournament. The campaign came after the host country had faced a decade of scrutiny over its human rights record, its treatment of migrant laborers and its criminalization of homosexuality.The group of teams, eager to show solidarity with minority groups and highlight their concerns, but also wary of offending the sensitivities of their hosts, had decided months earlier that they would wear an armband whose design was similar to, but purposefully different from, the more well-known Pride flag.In September, they went public with the plan, with each soccer federation releasing an announcement simultaneously. In statements, captains like Harry Kane of England, Virgil van Dijk of the Netherlands and the goalkeeper Manuel Neuer of Germany — some of the game’s biggest stars — spoke about their eagerness to share the message.Behind the scenes, as the tournament grew closer, the federations sought clarity from FIFA about what it might do once the captains entered the field with an armband that had not been sanctioned by FIFA.At a meeting on Oct. 12 at FIFA’s headquarters in Switzerland, representatives of the teams met with high-ranking FIFA officials, including the governing body’s deputy secretary general, Alasdair Bell, and ​ FIFA’s human rights department, Andreas Graf. The officials talked about labor reforms in Qatar, about the possibility of compensation scheme for migrant workers and about the safety concerns of gay fans attending the World Cup. The final item on the agenda was the One Love armband.“We expressed quite strongly that we would wear the armband, that for us there was no discussion about it,” Gijs de Jong, the secretary general of the Netherlands soccer federation, told The New York Times. The group told the FIFA officials that their federations were willing to accept fines for breaching World Cup uniform regulations, which they understood to be the maximum punishment FIFA could impose for such a violation.The FIFA officials replied that they would discuss the armband plan and return with a response. They did not. News media inquiries went unanswered, too.De Jong said he took FIFA’s silence as a sign that while soccer’s governing body was clearly not pleased about the plan, it might look the other way long enough for the World Cup to play out.“I thought in this case that they would not forbid it but also not give permission, just sort of let it go,” de Jong said. “I thought that would happen, and maybe we would get a fine.”That all changed when the teams arrived in Doha in the days before the tournament.Some of the teams held events with migrant workers at their training bases, and in news conferences their captains were asked about the plan to wear the armbands. A few recommitted to the idea. But the France captain, Hugo Lloris, who had worn the One Love armband during games in Europe, said he would not join the campaign at the World Cup, citing respect for Qatar, a conservative Muslim nation and the first Arab host of the World Cup.Despite Lloris’s sentiments, nothing appeared to have changed for the other teams. They remained steadfast in their convictions at that point, even though they had been alarmed by a speech by FIFA’s president, Gianni Infantino, who bashed European attitudes toward Qatar on the eve of the opening game.The European representatives had decided to let his words slide when they entered a meeting room at the Fairmont. Seated around a table so large that one executive present compared it to ones used by Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, they held further talks on the rights issues and the armband, which by that point had a competitor. Days earlier, FIFA had surprisingly announced an armband campaign of its own: Its versions bear slogans like “No Discrimination,” “Save the Planet” and “Education for All.”The European delegation praised that campaign — which was co-sponsored by the United Nations — but reiterated that their captains would be wearing One Love armbands as planned. Once again, the federation representatives left with a feeling that there was an unspoken compromise in place.“We will wear the armband, we will acknowledge your campaign and you will take it slow with disciplinary procedures,” de Jong said when asked to describe the mood after that meeting broke up. “Fine us after the World Cup.”Ritzau Scanpix/via ReutersMatthias Schrader/Associated PressSeveral European politicians and officials made quietly colorful protests at the World Cup, including the former Danish prime minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt, top left, and Germany’s interior minister, Nancy Faeser, top right. Belgium’s foreign minister, Hadja Lahbib, wore a One Love armband into a V.I.P. box, where she sat near the FIFA president, Gianni Infantino.Natacha Pisarenko/Associated PressWithin 24 hours, though, the mood and tone suddenly shifted. After a summit for FIFA’s 211 member federations led by Infantino, the European teams and representatives of Norway and Sweden, two countries that did not qualify for the World Cup but had been outspoken over the Qatar World Cup, were ushered once more to the conference room. There, Samoura, a former U.N. official from Senegal who had not been present at the earlier meeting, took a more forceful tone.Stunning those present, she warned that the punishments they faced would be immediate and directly target the players involved. Voices were raised. According to a European official who attended the meeting, Samoura, during a coffee break, even suggested to a delegate from Belgium that, should its team continue to promote the One Love armband, it might embolden African teams to wear versions protesting past colonial abuses. FIFA, asked directly about the incident, said it would not comment on the specifics of the meeting.As the meeting passed the two-hour mark, creeping closer to the time all those present needed to head to Al Bayt Stadium for the World Cup’s opening game, a question was eventually put to FIFA: What are you going to do if the teams go ahead? A FIFA official suggested the match commissioner could remove the armband off any captain who wore one. “We said, ‘Good luck with Virgil van Dijk,’” said de Jong, referring to the 6-foot-5 Dutch captain.Still, by the time the meeting broke up, sporting punishments became, for the first time, a distinct possibility.Upset about a plan by European teams to wear One Love armbands, FIFA came up with its own.Jennifer Lorenzini/ReutersThe FIFA versions included uncontroversial slogans about education and discrimination.Friedemann Vogel/EPA, via ShutterstockAt the stadium that evening, while Qatar was losing the opening game to Ecuador, the members of the European group huddled, preparing for the worst. They quickly came to an agreement that if there was to be a punishment for their players — FIFA was by then threatening to hand out a yellow card to any captain in violation of the uniform rules — they would not put their top stars in a position where they had to make a choice.But FIFA had still not provided any clarity, and by then the World Cup had begun. Three of the European teams would be playing the next day, and the rest in the days that followed. On Monday, the morning after the opening match, the first of those teams, England, received a high-profile delegation from FIFA, including the tournament director Colin Smith and FIFA’s head of communications, Bryan Swanson, at its hotel in Al Wakrah.There, FIFA ratcheted up the pressure. According to de Jong, who said he was called immediately by Mark Bullingham, the English federation’s chief executive, FIFA made clear that the yellow card threat was merely a minimum sanction. “They implied it could be a one-game ban for a player,” de Jong said.The federations agreed that the FIFA threat was “unprecedented” and would likely be overturned in a legal challenge. But they were out of time. “What will you do on the pitch?” de Jong said. “Send your lawyer out there?”The campaign collapsed. The teams announced that they had asked their captains not to wear the armbands. The players complied, and the tournament moved on.All of the teams eventually took the field without incident. When they did, many of their captains were wearing armbands emblazoned with FIFA-approved messaging. More

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      When World Cup Reality Isn’t What It Seems

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      LUSAIL, Qatar — Fatih pulls the car over, letting the engine idle, and reaches for his phone. He hurriedly swipes away the various ride-sharing apps he has open and scrolls through his WhatsApp chats with a practiced finger. He is searching for a group called “Brazil Fans Qatar.” This, he says, will explain everything.Last month, as teams started to arrive in Qatar ahead of the World Cup, several found guards of honor waiting for them at their hotels and training bases: groups of a few dozen fans, clad in national-team jerseys, waving national flags, carrying homemade banners and beating drums.In most circumstances, that would not be especially noteworthy. Here, though, it was impossible not to wonder.There had long been doubts about how many fans would attend the first World Cup in the Middle East, thanks to both practical concerns — the cost of spending weeks in Doha, the relative scarcity of alcohol — and ethical ones, centered on Qatar’s treatment of the migrant workers who had built the tournament, and its criminalization of homosexuality.Qatar, it had already emerged, had recruited several hundred “fan leaders” from across the world, paying for their flights and accommodations in exchange for their enthusiastic, public support. The suspicion ran that the groups waiting to welcome the teams, apparently wholly composed of South Asian men, were another arm of the same program.No, no, no, Fatih said, suddenly stopping the car. He is ordinarily “an accountant and a sales executive,” he said, but for the duration of the tournament he has set up — with permission — as a taxi service, too. Like most foreign workers here, he preferred not to use his last name out of fear of drawing unwanted attention from the country’s authorities.Fireworks and a full house before the United States played Iran.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesAfter a minute or so, he finds what he wants: a video from Kerala, his home state in India. It had been shot that day but had already been forwarded many times. It showed two groups of men, some carrying sticks, brawling in the center of a village. Half of them are wearing bright yellow Brazil jerseys. The others are in the distinctive sky blue and white of Argentina.“This happens every FIFA World Cup,” Fatih said. There are other fans whose loyalties lie with Portugal, or England, or Spain, he explained, but mostly it is Brazil and Argentina. The affiliations run deep. Fatih might change his club team, he said, but Brazil was nonnegotiable.It was fans like these, like him, who had greeted the teams in Doha: Keralans who live and work in Qatar and had been sufficiently enthused by the prospect of seeing these usually remote, distant stars in the flesh that many of them paid hundreds of dollars for tickets to games. Fatih himself was going to see Brazil play Cameroon, he said. Any cost was worth it.A Brief Guide to the 2022 World CupCard 1 of 9What is the World Cup? More

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      Brussels Court Orders 3 Linked to Qatar Bribery Case to Stay in Prison

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      Belgian officials said they suspected a Gulf country of trying “to influence the economic and political decisions of the European Parliament.”BRUSSELS — A court in Belgium ruled on Wednesday that two suspects in a case linking current and former European lawmakers to alleged bribery by Qatar should remain in prison until trial and that a third should wear an electronic monitor, as the snowballing scandal continued to rock European Union institutions.Four people, including Eva Kaili, a former vice president of the European Parliament who is from Greece, were charged last week with corruption, money laundering and participation in suspected bribes from Qatar, in what may be the biggest scandal in the history of the Parliament.A court hearing for Ms. Kaili was postponed until Dec. 22, the office of the Belgian federal prosecutor said on Wednesday, so she remains imprisoned outside Brussels. Parliamentary lawmakers also stripped Ms. Kaili of her title as vice president during a plenary session in France.Court documents seen by The New York Times identified the other suspects as Pier Antonio Panzeri, a former member of Parliament; Francesco Giorgi, Ms. Kaili’s partner and an assistant to a current European lawmaker; and Niccolo Figa-Talamanca, secretary general of a Brussels-based charity. Mr. Panzeri and Mr. Giorgi were ordered to remain detained until trial, and Mr. Figa-Talamanca was ordered to be placed under electronic monitoring.Two others were arrested in Italy in connection with the case, the Belgian prosecutor’s office said.Belgian officials said they suspected a Gulf country of trying “to influence the economic and political decisions of the European Parliament.”The Belgian intelligence services have been working for more than a year with similar services in other countries to “map suspected bribery” of European lawmakers, the justice ministry told The Times.A Brief Guide to the 2022 World CupCard 1 of 9What is the World Cup? More

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      Grant Wahl Died of a Burst Blood Vessel, His Family Says

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      An autopsy in New York showed that the journalist had a tear in the ascending aorta, a large vessel that carries blood from the heart.Grant Wahl, the celebrated soccer journalist who died suddenly last week at the World Cup in Qatar, had a rupture in a blood vessel leading from the heart, his family announced on Wednesday.His death resulted from a weakness in an artery wall called an aneurysm, which may balloon outward and then tear open. An autopsy conducted in New York revealed that Mr. Wahl, 49, experienced a catastrophic rupture in the ascending aorta, which carries oxygenated blood from the heart.The autopsy puts an end to rampant speculation that followed Mr. Wahl’s death. Posts on social media hinted at links to Covid vaccines or retaliation by the Qatari government for an article Mr. Wahl had written about immigrant deaths.Mr. Wahl’s wife, Dr. Celine Gounder, is a leading infectious disease physician who rose to prominence during the coronavirus pandemic and advised President Biden’s transition team on Covid-19. She and the rest of the family rejected, in particular, the speculation linking his death to vaccines, saying that it was especially insulting because of her work.He probably died instantly and did not feel pain, Dr. Gounder said in an interview on Tuesday. “I really do feel some relief in knowing what it was,” she said.Mr. Wahl had been sick with a cold for several days before collapsing, and had written in his newsletter and on Twitter that he felt his body was breaking down after weeks of poor sleep and long days covering the games.He had just turned 49 and was quite healthy, making his death even more of a shock to his friends, family and readers. The sniffles and other cold symptoms he had were most likely unrelated to the aneurysm, Dr. Gounder said.Until the autopsy, Dr. Gounder said, she had been worried that perhaps she could have prevented his death if they had talked more often while he was in Qatar or if she had been there with him.Mr. Wahl’s brother, Eric Wahl, initially said on social media that he suspected foul play and later suggested that his brother might have experienced a blood clot in his lungs. On Tuesday, Eric Wahl said that he no longer believed those were factors in his brother’s death.The autopsy found that Mr. Wahl had an ascending thoracic aortic aneurysm, a weakening of the blood vessel that often goes undetected. As the aneurysm grows, it may produce a cough, shortness of breath or chest pain, some of which the doctors consulted by Mr. Wahl in Qatar might have attributed to his cold and a possible case of bronchitis.In rare cases, the aneurysm can rupture and lead to death. Doctors are now exploring whether Mr. Wahl had Marfan syndrome, a risk factor for this type of aneurysm. He was tall and thin and had long arms, all of which can be signs of the genetic syndrome.Mr. Wahl joined Sports Illustrated in 1996 as a fact checker, a traditional entry route for young journalists, and wrote hundreds of articles on a variety of sports for the magazine over the next two decades.One early profile, a cover story on a teenage LeBron James in 2002, remained a touchstone for both writer and subject 20 years later. Mr. Wahl would occasionally reminisce about it to his 850,000 followers on Twitter, and Mr. James spoke about its meaning to him and his family while eulogizing the writer at a news conference and on social media over the weekend.But Mr. Wahl was best known for writing about soccer, which he began covering while he was a student reporter at Princeton University in the early 1990s. Through his books, tweets, podcasts and magazine articles, he became a guide of sorts for a generation of fans and readers just learning the game.He also used his profile and social-media megaphone to highlight the growth of women’s soccer, the breadth of corruption in soccer, human rights violations and gay rights.Mr. Wahl had worked at Sports Illustrated for more than 23 years when the magazine’s publisher abruptly fired him over a dispute about pandemic-related pay cuts. But he had a large following by then, and started an email newsletter and podcast that quickly became successful.In Qatar, Mr. Wahl was covering his eighth World Cup. He was in the press box in the closing minutes of the quarterfinal match between Argentina and the Netherlands when he collapsed.According to two New York Times journalists who were present, medical personnel tried to revive Mr. Wahl for about 20 minutes before he was transported to a hospital in Doha. He was pronounced dead at the hospital.Dr. Gounder’s relationships with the Biden administration and public health agencies, including the New York City health department, helped her bring the unembalmed body to the United States for the autopsy.Dr. Gounder said she wanted to ascertain the circumstances of her husband’s death in part to quell online speculation. “I wanted to make sure the conspiracy theories about his death were put to rest,” she said. More