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      Luis Díaz Is the Liverpool Star Who Never Should Have Made It

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      Follow live updates of the UEFA Champions League final.LIVERPOOL, England — Luis Díaz bares his forearm and places a finger on his wrist, as if taking his own pulse. He does it without breaking eye contact, without pausing for breath. He does not seem to notice he is doing it. It is a reflexive, unconscious motion, the best way to demonstrate what he means.Díaz does not, he says, speak Wayúu, the language of the Indigenous community in Colombia to which he can trace his roots. Nor does he wear traditional clothing, or maintain every custom. Life has carried him far from La Guajira, a spit of land fringed by the Caribbean Sea on one side and Venezuela on the other, the Wayúu homeland.It is at that point that he traces his veins with his finger, feels the beat of his heart. “I feel Wayúu,” he says. He may not — by his own estimation — be “pure” Wayúu, but that does not matter. “That is my background, my origins,” he said. “It is who I am.”As Díaz has risen to stardom over the last five years or so — breaking through at Atlético Junior, one of Colombia’s grandest teams; earning a move to Europe with F.C. Porto; igniting Liverpool’s journey to the Champions League final after joining in January — his story has been told and retold so often that even Díaz, now, admits that he would welcome the chance to “clarify” a few of the details.Luis Díaz joined Liverpool in January, and helped fire its run to Saturday’s Champions League final.Paul Ellis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesSome of those have been muddied and distorted by what Juan Pablo Gutierrez, a human-rights activist who first met Díaz when he was 18, describes as the desire to “take a romantic story and make it more romantic still.” The great Colombian midfielder Carlos Valderrama, for example, is often credited with “discovering” Díaz. “That’s just not true,” Gutierrez said.And then there is the tendency toward what Gutierrez labels “opportunism.” Countless former coaches and teammates and acquaintances have been wheeled out by the news media — initially in Colombia, then through Latin America, and finally across Europe — to offer their memories of the 25-year-old forward. “There are a lot of people, who maybe met him for a few days years ago, who bask in the light that he casts,” Gutierrez said.Still, the broad arc of his journey is familiar, in both senses. Díaz had an underprivileged upbringing in Colombia’s most deprived area. He had to leave home as a teenager and travel for six hours, by bus, to train with a professional team. He was so slender at the time that John Jairo Diaz, one of his early coaches, nicknamed him “noodle.” His first club, believing he was suffering from malnutrition, placed him on a special diet to help him gain weight.Though its contours are, perhaps, a little more extreme, that story is not all that dissimilar to the experiences of many of Díaz’s peers, an overwhelming majority of whom faced hardship and made remarkable sacrifices on their way to the top.What makes Díaz’s story different, though, and what makes it especially significant, is where it started. Díaz does not know of any other Wayúu players. “Not at the moment, anyway, not ones who are professional,” he said.There is a reason for that. Scouts do not often make their way to La Guajira to look for players. Colombia’s clubs do not, as a rule, commit resources to finding future stars among the country’s Indigenous communities. It is that which lends Díaz’s story its power. It is not just a story about how he made it. It is also a story about why so many others do not.Paul Ellis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesDaniel BolívarAs far as Gutierrez could tell, Luis Díaz was not only not the best player in the tournament, he was not even the best player on his team. That honor fell, instead, to Diaz’s friend Daniel Bolívar, an inventive, shimmering playmaker. “Luis was more pragmatic,” Gutierrez said. “Daniel was fantasy.”In 2014, the organization Gutierrez works for, O.N.I.C. — the official representative group of Colombia’s Indigenous populations — had set up a nationwide soccer tournament, designed to bring together the country’s various ethnic groups.“We had seen that the one thing they all had in common, from the Amazon basin to the Andes, was that they spent their free time playing soccer,” Gutierrez said. “Some played with boots and some played barefoot. Some played with a real ball and some played with a ball made from rags. But they all played.”The event was the first of its kind, an unwieldy and complex logistical affair — the travel alone could take days — that unspooled over the course of a year. Its aim, Gutierrez said, was to “demonstrate the talent that these communities have, to show that all they lack is opportunity.”The message was intended to resonate beyond sport. “It was a social and political thing, too,” Gutierrez said. “The word ‘Indian’ is an insult in Colombia. The Indigenous groups are called primitive, dirty, savage. There is a long legacy of colonialism, a deep-seated prejudice. The tournament was a way to show that they are more than folklore, more than the ‘exotic’, more than headdresses and paint.”Daniel Munoz/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIt is a long way from the dusty fields of Diaz’s Colombian hometown, Barrancas, to the manicured pitches and bright lights of the Champions League.Daniel Munoz/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesSome teams, like F.C. La Guajira, now train on artificial turf fields, but that is no guarantee that scouts from the country’s biggest clubs will ever see them play.Daniel Munoz/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBy the time the finals — held in the capital, Bogotá — came around, Gutierrez was involved in another project. In 2015, with Chile scheduled to host the Copa América, a parallel championship was arranged to celebrate the continent’s Indigenous groups. Colombia’s squad would be drawn from the best players in its national tournament.The team from La Guajira, representing the Wayúu community and featuring Díaz and Bolívar, had made the finals, and its two standout players were selected for inclusion in the national team. It would be coached by John Jairo Diaz, with Valderrama — referred to throughout Colombia exclusively as El Pibe — included as technical director.Valderrama’s involvement meant a lot to Luis Díaz. “That he saw me play and liked me is a beautiful thing,” he said. “I didn’t know him at all, but I admired him a lot. He’s a reference point for all of Colombian football. It was a huge source of pride that Pibe Valderrama might choose me for a team.”Valderrama was not, though, quite as hands-on as has often been presented (a misconception he does not appear eager to correct). “He was an ambassador,” Gutierrez said. “We knew that where the Pibe goes, 50,000 cameras follow. It was a way of making sure our message was heard.”Díaz shone at the tournament, performing well enough that Gutierrez received at least one approach, from a club in Peru, to try to sign him. It would prove a watershed. There were, Díaz believes, plenty of good players in that team. “The problem was that some of them were a little older, so it was difficult to become professional,” he said. He would prove to be the exception.Valderrama’s seal of approval, as well as the news media coverage the tournament generated, led to a move to Barranquilla F.C., a farm team for Junior — the first step on the road to the elite, to Europe, to Liverpool. It was the start of Diaz’s story.And yet, as Gutierrez points out, laughing, Díaz was not exceptional. “He was not the best player in that tournament,” he said. “He wasn’t even the best player on his team.” By common consensus, that was Bolívar.Daniel Bolívar was a former teammate of Díaz’s. Those who watched them say he was a better player.Daniel Munoz/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBolívar’s story is not as well-known as that of Díaz. It does not have the stirring ending, after all: Bolívar now works at Cerrejón, the largest open-pit coal mine in South America, back in La Guajira.But his story is far more typical of Colombia’s Indigenous communities: not of a gift discovered and nurtured, but of talent lost. “There is no reason he could not be playing for Real Madrid,” Gutierrez said of Bolívar. “He did not lack ability. He lacked opportunity.”The Lucky OneFor all the challenges he faced, the obstacles he had to overcome, Díaz knows he was one of the lucky ones. His father, Luis Manuel, had been a gifted amateur player in Barrancas, the family’s hometown; Díaz still grins at the memory of how good his father had been. “Really good,” runs his assessment.By the time Díaz was a child, his father was running a soccer school — La Escuelita, everyone called it — and in a position to give his son the benefits of a more structured sporting education than he had received. “You could see that he was a little more professional, even then,” Gutierrez said. “He was a bit more advanced, and the credit for that goes to his father.”His father’s dedication to his career is what made the difference, what turned Díaz into a unicorn: He not only helped him train, but his decision to run the soccer school meant his son had competitions to play in. Those enabled him to win a place in the Wayúu team for the Indigenous championship as a 17-year-old, which positioned him to win his spot in the national team a year later, which led to his move into the professional game.Díaz’s first drew notice at an Indigenous tournament in Colombia. That led to a move to bigger teams and, eventually, to Porto.Manuel Fernando Araujo/EPA, via ShutterstockNot everyone, of course, can benefit from that constellation of factors. “In these regions, there is not the support in place,” Díaz said. “There are a lot of good players there, but it is hard for people to leave, to take that step and follow their dream. They can’t leave for reasons of money, or for family reasons. And that means that we are losing a lot of players with a lot of talent.”Gutierrez hopes that Díaz can be an antidote to that pattern. “For a long time, the view has always been that Indigenous peoples do not exist,” he said. “That is the legacy of colonialism: that they are not seen, or they are only seen as something exotic, something from folklore.”Díaz’s presence on soccer’s grandest stage — he could, on Saturday, become the first Colombian to play in and win the Champions League final — is a way to “deconstruct” that image, Gutierrez said. “This is a community at immediate risk of extinction,” he said. “And now, because of Lucho, it is in the light of the world’s cameras. He is sending a message that his community cannot send.”There is no doubt in Díaz’s mind about where he comes from, of whom he represents. He does not speak the language, but it is the blood in his veins, the beat of his heart. Díaz is the exception, the talent that was found while all the others were lost. His hope, Gutierrez’s hope, is that he will not be alone for long.Daniel Munoz/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images More

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      Champions League Final Preview: Liverpool vs. Real Madrid

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      Real Madrid and Liverpool will square off on Saturday in Paris. The game is a rematch of the 2018 final.PARIS — As collisions of star power, pedigree and history go — and provided you don’t support one of their rivals — it would be hard to conjure a better Champions League final this season than Liverpool vs. Real Madrid.The teams meet Saturday in Paris to crown Europe’s club champion. Real Madrid, which won the Spanish league this year, is chasing a record 14th Champions League title after narrowly dodging elimination in the semifinals. Liverpool, the runner-up in the Premier League but holder of two cups already this spring, will be hoping to lift the Champions League trophy for the seventh time.Here’s what you should know.Paul Ellis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesHow can I watch the game?Saturday’s final will be broadcast by CBS (English) and TUDN (Spanish) in the United States, and streamed on Paramount Plus. Coverage begins at 1:30 p.m. Eastern time but — and this is critically important — the game will not start for another 90 minutes. Plan your day accordingly.Not in the United States? You can find your local viewing options — from Canal+ to Canal Dos to the wonderfully named Silknet and Wowow — on this list of UEFA’s television partners.What time is the final?The ball will roll off the spot at 9 p.m. in Paris, which is 3 p.m. Eastern. It will almost certainly travel backward, though that hasn’t been required by the rules for eight years now.Federico Valverde may start on Saturday. His son is not expected to play.Kirsty Wigglesworth/Associated PressWhat’s the vibe in Paris?Our correspondent Tariq Panja was on the streets on Friday, where he reports that it was oddly quiet compared with previous finals. His dispatch:France is the center for world sports this weekend, with the Champions League final at the Stade de France in the northern suburb of Saint-Denis, the French Open across town at Roland Garros and Formula One’s Monaco Grand Prix on the south coast, if you prefer your sporting twists and turns in the literal sense.Paris was easily able to absorb the influx of fans, though in its usual tourist hot spots there was little sign that soccer’s biggest game was in town. That might have been owed to a warning issued to supporters of both teams that they risked fines of 135 euros (almost $150) if they turned up wearing club colors in places like the Eiffel Tower or the Champs Élysées, the grand avenue that is typically flooded with visitors.Instead, the tournament organizer, UEFA, and city officials hosted fans of the rival teams in separate venues closer to the city limits. That could be normal caution, fears of the coronavirus or the fact that France may not be entirely thrilled to have the game: It only got the hosting rights in February, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine made it untenable to go to the original host city, St. Petersburg.Still, the final — the first to be played in front of a full stadium since Liverpool last won the tournament in 2019 — did attract the well-heeled and well-connected, with UEFA’s luxury hotel a magnet for former players, high-ranking officials, politicians, agents and assorted extras.About a mile away, Real Madrid’s leadership, led by the club president, Florentino Pérez, gathered before heading in a convoy of buses to watch the team train at the Stade de France. Perez traveled to Paris with a security detail amid concerns his presence might be seen as provocative only a week after he failed in his efforts to lure Kylian Mbappé, the star player on France’s biggest team, Paris St. Germain, to Madrid.The final also was the first time that Pérez and the UEFA president, Aleksander Ceferin, met in person since a Pérez-led effort to create a European Super League failed spectacularly just over a year ago. Pérez, who is still suing UEFA over the Super League’s demise, and Ceferin, who called some of the plotters behind it “snakes” and “liars,” sat alongside one another at an official dinner at the Louvre on Friday night.Let’s hope the meal didn’t require sharp knives at each place setting.What kind of game can we expect?Luis Díaz, second from left, and his Liverpool teammates kept the mood light at their final training session on Friday. Frank Augstein/Associated PressOur soccer columnist Rory Smith offered a quick preview in his newsletter this week (sign up here):Paris St.-Germain almost looked as if it were waiting for the wave to crash. Chelsea seemed determined to resist, right up until the moment that the storm hit. Only then did Thomas Tuchel’s team realize its powerlessness. Manchester City, meanwhile, had almost made it to shore. Once it felt the tide change, though, it could do nothing but succumb.It is difficult, on the eve of the Champions League final, to avoid the suspicion that this Real Madrid story cannot possibly end in a dispiriting 2-1 defeat to Liverpool in Paris. There has been too much drama, too much magic, in the last two months for it to conclude in any way other than smoke and fire and white ticker tape drifting down from the sky.Indeed, the test for Liverpool on Saturday — more than technical or tactical or systemic — is psychological. Real Madrid has been able to snatch victory from defeat against three of the best-equipped opponents in Europe because its players believe in the club’s almost mystical refusal to wilt.But Madrid has been helped by the fact that the opposition are inclined to believe it, too. Particularly in the Bernabéu, there is a distinct, almost palpable edge to otherwise accomplished teams, a discernible awareness that at some point — almost entirely unannounced — Real Madrid is going to do something elemental and unfathomable, and nobody will be able to stop it.To win its seventh European Cup on Saturday, Liverpool will have to break that sequence. Its manager, Jürgen Klopp, said this week that he finds it more helpful to focus on preventing Real Madrid from getting into a position to wreak its particular brand of havoc — easier said than done, of course — than simply to watch the highlights of those two frenzied minutes against Manchester City, over and over again. “There are another 88 minutes in the game,” he said.In that sense, Liverpool is probably the toughest test Madrid could have faced in the final. Not necessarily because it is a better team than Manchester City — the Premier League table, indeed, rather suggests it is not — but because it will see in this Madrid an echo of its former self.Don’t worry: Marcelo is fine. Manu Fernandez/Associated PressThe Madrid players at Carlo Ancelotti’s disposal are of a higher quality, of course, and the experience of his squad — many of his stars are going for a fifth Champions League crown in nine years — is incomparable. But the nature of the way the team plays, conjuring those irresistible surges, is not.It was that sort of style, after all, that carried Liverpool to the final in 2018, the one it lost to Real Madrid in Kyiv: the ability to “finish” a game, as Klopp put it, in no more than a couple of 10- or 15-minute stretches. The roles have reversed completely now. Liverpool will seek to control events in Paris, while Madrid waits for its storm to gather from a cloudless sky. It will come. Liverpool will know that. The challenge is what you do when it breaks.Haven’t we seen this movie before?Liverpool and Real Madrid met in the 2018 final in Kyiv.Lluis Gene/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesYes, in a way. Both teams have been regulars in the latter stages of the Champions League, and regular visitors to the final, over the last decade.Liverpool is playing for the trophy for the third time in five years, a stretch of some of the most thrilling — and most beautiful soccer — in its proud history. Real Madrid is in the final for the fifth time since 2014; in each of its previous four visits since 2014, its fans will quickly point out, it has left with the trophy.But despite their storied histories, Liverpool and Real Madrid have met in the final only twice.Liverpool beat Real Madrid, 1-0, in 1981, when the tournament was still known as the European Cup, and when it was Liverpool that was in the midst of a string of recent titles.Real Madrid won the rematch by 3-1 in 2018, continuing its own string of recent titles.That final still stings for Liverpool, which endured two horrible mistakes by goalkeeper Loris Karius that sealed its fate and lost forward Mohamed Salah to an ugly tackle from Real Madrid supervillain/legend (descriptions may vary) Sergio Ramos in the first half.Salah was forced from the game with a shoulder injury after the tackle, in which it appeared Ramos had hooked his arm as they fell. Ramos no longer plays for Madrid, but Salah does not appear to have forgotten.“We have a score to settle,” he said this week.Any injury concerns?It doesn’t look like it. Liverpool’s Thiago, who has been the precision-passing engine of its midfield, and Fabinho, who does a lot of the hard work behind him, were both back in training this week, Coach Jürgen Klopp said.I haven’t prepared. Tell me something I can say to sound smart.“The matchup between Vinícius Junior and Trent Alexander-Arnold on the wing should be fascinating, given how involved Alexander-Arnold usually is in Liverpool’s attack despite playing right back. If he gets caught forward too often, Vinícius can punish him.”My friends say I should skip the final because soccer is boring.Get better friends. More

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      The True Cost of Kylian Mbappé’s New Deal

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      It is easy to be dazzled by money in soccer, especially as the figures blur into incomprehension. But the numbers matter because of what comes next.It was not, Kylian Mbappé would like you to know, about the money. True, it might look — to the childlike, the innocent, the uninformed — as if he has spent the last year or so playing Real Madrid and Paris St.-Germain off one another in order to drive up his value and elicit the most lucrative contract possible. But that, rest assured, is just an illusion.Money, in fact, barely came into the negotiations, certainly with P.S.G. In Mbappé’s telling, that particular subject appeared only at the end: There were a “few minutes” of discussions about how much he would be paid, he said, but there were many months picking over the precise nature of P.S.G.’s “sporting project.”Quite what shape that project takes is not yet clear, of course. Mbappé has denied that the three-year deal he signed last week includes a set of clauses that guarantee he has a veto, in effect, over various appointments at the club, ranging from managers to sporting directors to players.Whether the clauses are written down hardly matters. It is inconceivable that any club would make the sort of financial commitment P.S.G. has made to the 23-year-old Mbappé and not run crucial decisions past him. Lionel Messi enjoyed similar influence in his later years at Barcelona. That is the privilege afforded to the world’s best players.Mbappé and the P.S.G. president Nasser al-Khelaifi both declared themselves thrilled with the player’s new contract.Michel Spingler/Associated PressIt does not, though, indicate that there has been quite so much of a shift in P.S.G.’s “sporting project” as Mbappé might want to believe. For the past 10 years, P.S.G.’s policy has been to hire extravagantly gifted superstars at eye-watering costs and cater to their whims. There are countless stories about Neymar’s occasionally laissez-faire approach to training. At least one coach found that his squad did not, deep down, agree with him that it might need to press its opponents.P.S.G. has fostered an indulgent, individualistic ethos, with little or no thought for structure or system, and that has, ultimately, prevented the club realizing its greatest ambition: winning the Champions League. To break with that, P.S.G.’s plan appears to be to retain an extravagantly gifted superstar at an eye-watering cost and cater to his whims.And the cost is eye-watering. Mbappé will pick up at least $75 million in salary over the course of his contract, after taxes. There is a $125 million golden handshake to sign on. Factor in the roughly $200 million P.S.G. turned down from Real Madrid last summer, and the deal has cost P.S.G. $400 million or so.It is easy, now, to be dazzled by money in soccer, to feel inoculated against the sport’s excess. There are after all just so many zeros. After a while, the numbers cease to offend, creeping higher and higher until it seems arbitrary to draw a line — why is $25 million-a-year too much, but $15 million-a-year acceptable? — and the figures start to blur into incomprehension.But they do matter in the end, and they matter because of what follows in their wake. Money in soccer is not really about money. The players do not genuinely believe that they require those extra few hundred thousand dollars because otherwise they will be bereft. Yes, they generally (and understandably) want to maximize their earnings from a brief career, but their motivations are often more rooted in power, and status, and worth.P.S.G.’s star power may be unmatched. But does it have a plan?Michel Spingler/Associated PressThe parable about Ashley Cole, the former Arsenal defender, nearly swerving off the road because his club had offered him $63,000-a-week, rather than the $69,000-a-week he believed he was due, is not about a man appalled by the prospect of looming penury. There is almost nothing, after all, that $3.5 million-a-year can buy you that $3.2 million-a-year cannot.No, what upset Cole was the sense that Arsenal did not value him as much as his teammates or — worse — his peers. Other players of his quality were earning far more than him, he knew, and if Arsenal was not prepared to offer the going rate, then perhaps the club did not value his contributions quite as much as he thought it should.That is the problem with the Mbappé deal. Every time the salaries of the superstars rise, they slowly but surely drag everyone else’s with them, pulling the sport’s Overton window further and further into the stratosphere.P.S.G. will be able to cope with that, of course, when Mbappé’s teammates appear asking for improved terms in light of the new normal. Even $400 million is not a figure that will rattle the nation state of Qatar. And perhaps its peers among Europe’s elite will be fine, too, when Mohamed Salah or Kevin De Bruyne or Vinícius Junior or Pedri start their next set of negotiations by using Mbappé as a starting point.But further down the food chain, there will be a problem. Some clubs will swallow the extra cost of retaining talent, with all the risk that entails. Others will choose to cash in and sell on, further entrenching the divide between the aristocrats and everyone else.The statement released in the aftermath of Mbappé’s decision by Javier Tebas, the outspoken president of La Liga, was a strange one, fermented almost entirely from sour grapes. His central tenet — that the best way to protect everyone from competitive imbalance was to introduce more of it to the competition he runs — fell somewhere between craven and hypocritical.And yet, under all of that, Tebas has a point. It is dangerous for salaries to be artificially inflated by clubs with no constraints whatsoever on their finances. It does pose a threat to the health of soccer as a whole. It is, in certain lights, not entirely dissimilar to the basic problem of the Super League.The issue, of course, is that there is nobody, nobody at all, who is prepared to do anything about it. Tebas was not the only executive to be provoked by Mbappé’s signing into making a slightly odd statement. His Ligue 1 counterpart, Vincent Labrune, responded to Tebas by reminding everyone that both Real Madrid and Barcelona have been found to have benefited from illegal state aid.Al-Khelaifi himself took the unusual stance of suggesting Tebas was concerned that Ligue 1 might catch La Liga, simultaneously misunderstanding that worrying about that sort of thing is the essence of Tebas’s job, and apparently denigrating the league that both his club and his broadcast network, beIN Sports, have done so much to subsidize in recent years.(None of this was quite so strange as Emmanuel Macron, the French president, intervening to persuade Mbappé to stay in Paris: Macron is a sincere and passionate Marseille fan, and should presumably love nothing more than to see Mbappé disappear to Spain, along with most of his teammates.)That all of them could see no further than their own agendas was neither surprising nor outrageous. Tebas’s role is to promote and protect La Liga, just as al-Khelaifi’s role — or one of them, at any rate — is to act in the best interests of P.S.G. And it is, without question, in the best interests of P.S.G. not only to hoard as much talent as possible, but to make it incrementally more difficult for all of its rivals to keep up.What is more disappointing is that there is nobody, anywhere, who appears willing or able to confront these issues, not from the perspective of an individual club or a specific league but with the interests of the sport — the industry — in mind. What is good for P.S.G. or Real Madrid is not necessarily in the best interests of the game as a whole; soccer is crying out for someone in a position of influence to say that, but they remain conspicuous by their absence.La Liga’s president, Javier Tebas, criticized the deal that kept Mbappé in France but not the offer that might have brought him to Madrid.Pierre-Philippe Marcou/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe most obvious candidate, UEFA, has recused itself of its responsibilities, confounded by its twin role as weighty ultimate authority and callow competition organizer. It is UEFA that has allowed the self-interest to fester and the venal to prosper. It is UEFA that has forgotten that for soccer to function in good health, it has to be treated as a collective endeavor.If it is not, it risks being fractured beyond repair, the golden goose trussed and quartered, sold off to the highest bidder in a market contorted beyond all reason by a handful of teams — and that description fits both Real Madrid and P.S.G. — and, now, by a single deal, one act of vanity and bravado by a club that refuses to allow anything to stand in its way, whose vision for the future is that everywhere should be Paris, for whom it really is not about the money. Because when you have enough of it, money is meaningless, and there are so many zeros that it loses all sense at all.CorrespondenceChelsea: champions of England six times, but never Europe.Matthew Childs/Action Images Via ReutersWilliam Ireland, clearly, has been picking through this column with a fine-toothed comb. “I have seen it said that England’s Women’s Super League is the strongest in the world and I don’t understand why,” he wrote.“Chelsea has been humbled in the Champions League in the last two years. Arsenal looked well off the pace this year. When teams from Europe have played teams from the N.W.S.L., Lyon and Barcelona Femení have been matched. The W.S.L. has been getting more publicity and more fans, and that’s great, but right now it seems it’s not the best in Europe, much less the world.”This is a great point, and there are a few factors that go into it. First, of course, is your general English exceptionalism. Second, soccer’s innate Eurocentrism. Third, a degree of hyperbole that is linked, deep down, to the W.S.L.’s rapid rise.But most interesting is the fourth, something noted by at least a couple of Barcelona players: television. A lot of soccer from the Spanish women’s top flight, for example, is not broadcast. That makes it hard for people to know how high the standard is; much of what we see is Barcelona winning games, 8-0, and it is natural, to some extent, to assume that many of its opponents are substandard.Domestic dominance can make it hard to take the measure of Lyon and Barcelona. Marco Bertorello/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe view of Barcelona’s Norwegian wing Caroline Graham Hansen, certainly, is that it is not the case; she argues that the ease with which Barcelona wins games is testament to its ability, rather than an indictment of its opponents. Until fans can judge that with their own eyes, though, the tendency will be to assume that the league we see most — the W.S.L., say, or the N.W.S.L. — is the strongest.Bob Honig, meanwhile, wonders whether the presence of the (men’s) World Cup in the middle of next season might “make club teams that are not so reliant on national team players more competitive?”This is a logical conclusion, of course. Those teams whose players are given a rest halfway through next season should benefit from that break; the skill gap should, to some extent, be closed by a greater degree of freshness. I think we can all hope that is the case, but let’s not forget the golden rule of modern soccer: Whatever happens, the big teams win. More

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      Real Madrid’s Florentino Pérez Is More Powerful Than Ever

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

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      Kylian Mbappé Will Stay at P.S.G., Rejecting Real Madrid

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      The battle to sign the world’s best young player produced dueling offers worth more than $200 million. Mbappé picked the one that will keep him in Paris.Paris St.-Germain has persuaded Kylian Mbappé to sign a new contract, one of the richest in soccer history, that will keep the French striker at the club for the next three years while he pursues a second consecutive World Cup with France and attempts to end the club’s string of failures in the Champions League.His decision, announced by the club Saturday, ended Real Madrid’s hopes of luring Mbappé, arguably the best young player in the world, to the most successful team in European soccer.Real Madrid, a 13-time European champion, had given Mbappé a contract offer that would have made the 23-year-old forward the highest paid player in its history. Its offer included a signing bonus of almost $140 million, a net salary of more than $26 million every season and complete control over his image rights.But P.S.G., the perennial French champion that is bankrolled by gas-rich Qatar, prevented him from leaving as a free agent by offering even better terms. P.S.G. offered a similar fee but a far higher base salary (also after taxes), keeping him on a team that already includes the Argentine star Lionel Messi and the Brazilian forward Neymar, who was acquired by P.S.G. for a world-record fee of $263 million in 2017.The saga surrounding Mbappé’s future had gripped France, and was considered a matter of such national importance that last month the French president, Emmanuel Macron, told a news conference he would do whatever he could to keep Mbappé, considered a national treasure, in the country.P.S.G.’s success in persuading Mbappé to stay is the latest sign that the dominance of global soccer that once rested in the hands of legacy clubs like Real Madrid, Barcelona and Manchester United has now shifted to a few deep-pocketed, Gulf-backed teams.The Spanish league La Liga in a statement called the deal “scandalous,” given P.S.G. had reported large financial losses last season, and said it would file a complaint with European soccer’s governing body, UEFA, as well as other authorities, including the European Union.P.S.G.’s confirmation that it had retained Mbappé came just over a week after Manchester City, owned by the brother of the ruler of the United Arab Emirates, confirmed that it had acquired Erling Haaland — a prolific Norwegian goal-scorer whose signature was considered by many an acquisition as highly sought-after as Mbappé’s.But unlike Haaland, whose contract had to be acquired by Manchester City for an eight-figure transfer fee, Mbappé’s expiring contract in Paris made him a free agent, effectively able to choose from among the highest bidders for his prodigious talents. The unusually brief length of his new contract at P.S.G. — three years — suggests he could already be planning his move, and his next payday.Amid an economic downturn caused by the coronavirus pandemic, few teams but the wealthiest elite have been able to make the type of marquee signings that were once a staple of every soccer off-season. But Mbappé had made no secret of his desire to move to Real Madrid from P.S.G., and the Spanish powerhouse went all out to recruit him. His expiring contract in Paris also meant he was a free agent, available without a multimillion-dollar transfer fee.In addition to the nine-figure signing bonus and the stunning annual salary — a huge offer even by Real Madrid’s standards — the club also was said to have offered Mbappé complete control over his image rights, a lucrative revenue stream that Real Madrid typically shares with its roster of stars.But P.S.G. and its Qatari owners managed to offer an even better deal in a transfer soap opera that has dragged on for more than a year, ever since Real Madrid first tried to extract Mbappé from Paris with the offer of a record transfer fee.Last summer, Real Madrid and its president, Florentino Pérez, were so intent in making Mbappé the centerpiece of the club’s efforts to return to the top of domestic and European soccer that they committed to pay more than $212 million for the forward, even though he would have been available as a free agent again this summer.For P.S.G., retaining Mbappé provides a welcome highlight in a season that has been played against a backdrop of uncertainty after yet another failure in the Champions League. The club was eliminated early in the knockout stages — ironically by Real Madrid, which will face Liverpool for the trophy in the final next Saturday — even though it had added several A-list talents in the preseason, including Messi, who joined from Barcelona on a rich contract of his own.P.S.G.’s strategy of bringing the most exciting talents, whatever the cost, has had mixed results. The team continued its dominance of the French league, the weakest of the five major European competitions, with yet another title this season, but success on the continental stage has continued to elude it, raising questions about the team’s durability in the toughest games.It remains unclear if anything more than an enormous salary increase convinced Mbappé to remain in Paris. He was reported to have been frustrated when P.S.G. rejected Real Madrid’s offers last season, with the P.S.G. sporting director Leonardo saying at the time that Mbappé wanted out.Mbappe has continued to flourish this season, however, leading the French league in goals (25) and assists (17). All the while, Real Madrid had continued to court him, and until late this week the Spanish club was convinced it had finally managed to persuade a player coveted by its president, Florentino Pérez. News media reports in Spain at the start of the week even suggested a deal was done.In recent days, though, that confidence began to evaporate as Mbappé delayed on putting pen to paper. Then, on Friday, Mbappe’s mother, who has been involved in the negotiations, said her son was weighing two offers. Real Madrid’s worst fears were confirmed on Saturday, when Pérez, in Belgrade to follow Real Madrid’s basketball team in a European final, received a message telling him Mbappé had decided to stay at P.S.G.For Mbappé, the deal comes amid major efforts to build his brand away from the field. The striker has spent months in talks with the United States-based talent agency Endeavor to create his own media company that will be modeled on one similar to a business built by the basketball star LeBron James. That new company could lift Mbappé profile, and his wealth, into the same ranks as Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, superstars whose global stardom now outstrips the sport they play.With both Messi and Ronaldo now in their 30s, it is players like Mbappé and Haaland who will look to dominate soccer’s biggest prizes, including individual honors like the Ballon D’Or, awarded to the world’s best player, and competitions like the Champions League, a trophy both P.S.G. and Manchester City covet, but which neither has won. More

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      Real Madrid Secures $380 Million From Sixth Street

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      The Spanish soccer giant has agreed to a joint venture with the investment firm Sixth Street in which profits from the Santiago Bernabéu Stadium will be shared.Real Madrid, the European soccer behemoth, closed a deal in which the investment firm Sixth Street, based in the United States, will pay about $380 million for a 30 percent stake in the team’s stadium operations.The announcement Thursday came amid growing optimism among executives that Real Madrid, a 13-time European champion, could complete a deal to sign Kylian Mbappé, one of the most sought after players in world soccer, as a free agent on a contract that could make him the highest-paid athlete in Real’s history.Under the terms of the contract, Real, which strolled to a 35th Spanish championship this month, would have no restrictions on how it spends its money. Capturing Mbappé would be a coup for Real, which has been chasing him since failing to persuade his current club, Paris St.-Germain, to accept as much as $200 million for him during last summer’s postseason.The deal between Real and Sixth Street also includes Legends, an American sports event management and hospitality company that is partly owned by Sixth Street. The partnership will last for 20 years and be run through a joint venture that will contain all of Real’s in-stadium income, with the exception of season-ticket sales.The investment is the latest part of Real’s attempts to grow new revenue streams from its celebrated stadium, which is undergoing a $1 billion retrofit, after which games will be played on a retractable field.“The transformation of the Santiago Bernabéu Stadium will be a turning point in the history of Real Madrid,” Real’s president, Florentino Pérez, said in a statement. “This agreement strengthens the club’s goal of continuing to significantly increase the stadium’s revenues from both sporting and other types of events.”While Real remains the dominant player in Spanish soccer and will compete in the Champions League final once more next week, it has been facing pressure to keep up with changing forces in the global soccer landscape. Despite generating more wealth year over year than practically any other soccer team, Real has struggled to compete for the best talent with clubs backed by deep-pocketed Arab states and billionaires. Turning the Bernabéu into what club officials have likened to a version of Madison Square Garden may help it maintain its muscle in the marketplace.The agreement also bears some hallmarks of the one Spain’s domestic league, La Liga, signed with another investment fund, CVC Capital Partners, that Real rejected and is suing against. CVC agreed to part with more than $2 billion in return for almost 10 percent of the league’s broadcast income for 50 years, a price that Real — and the league’s other best-supported team, Barcelona, as well as member-owned Athletic Club from Bilbao — thought was too steep.Real officials have pointed out that unlike that deal, the arrangement with Sixth Street, which also owns a portion of the N.B.A.’s San Antonio Spurs, is limited to the investment fund’s sharing in profits, not revenue, from the venture.“Real Madrid’s Santiago Bernabéu is hallowed ground in the world of football, and we are honored to be joining this partnership to invest in the innovative, long-term strategic vision that has guided the club’s consistent success over its storied history,” said Alan Waxman, a founding partner and the chief executive of Sixth Street.Real benefited from the pandemic by moving to its training stadium at a time when supporters were barred from attending public events. It returned to the arena this season even though construction work continues. The stadium’s refurbishment is expected to be completed in time for the start of the 2023-24 season.The team’s finances are largely under control even though the stadium debt is almost $1 billion. Servicing costs about $40 million a year. The cash infusion from Sixth Street will mean the club’s short-term debt will be wiped out and replaced with $260 million available to spend.Those finances could allow Real to add reinforcements should it manage to secure Mbappé. The striker said recently that he was close to announcing his plans for next season. P.S.G., his current club, has offered him a contract extension worth far more than the offer from Real. But Mbappé has made several comments indicating his desire to play in Madrid, a destination and team that have been magnets for the game’s best talent. More

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      How Real Madrid Beat Manchester City

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      All but beaten in its Champions League semifinal, Real Madrid scored once, then twice, then a third time to snatch a victory and add to its legend.MADRID — There was nothing. There was no noise. The Santiago Bernabéu stood silent, subdued, waiting for the bell to toll. There was no spark. Real Madrid had long since run out of ideas, and they were running low on hope, too. Most pressingly, there was no time. There were 30 seconds left, plus maybe a little extra purgatory, and then it would be over.Real Madrid’s campaign in the Champions League this season has run on magic and miracles. The comeback against the glittering array of Instagram influencers arranged in the vague shape of a team by Paris St.-Germain. The revival against Chelsea that hinged on a single, unstoppable pass from Luka Modric.But there comes a point when reality has to intrude, when the chaos has to give way to order. There are certain inevitabilities that even Real Madrid, soccer’s great self-actualizers, a team that runs exclusively on the power of its own imagination, have to acknowledge. This was one of them. This was the point where all of it came to an end.And then, in a single, blinding flash, it happened. There were no warning signs, no rumbles of thunder, no auguries, no harbingers. One minute Manchester City was in complete control of its semifinal, leading by a single goal on the night and by two, a yawning chasm, on aggregate. Jack Grealish had missed a couple of chances to add a little gloss to the score line, but nobody seemed overly concerned.Then, in a beat, the world turned upside down. With 89 minutes and 30 seconds played, Rodrygo reacted quickest to Karim Benzema’s knockdown and stabbed a shot past Éderson. He gobbled the ball from the back of the net, and sprinted straight back to the halfway line. The Bernabéu stirred to life. There was noise.Even Real Madrid fans thought it was over. Until it wasn’t.Carl Recine/Action Images Via ReutersOn the sideline, the fourth official, Davide Massa, was fumbling with his electronic scoreboard. He lifted it above his head, the number six illuminated in bright, lively green: six more minutes. Now, suddenly, there was time, and it carried hope in its wake. Real Madrid, though, did not need it. It does not work like that. It swept up the field again. Dani Carvajal conjured a cross. There was Rodrygo again, his header flashing past Éderson.This time, he did not seek out the ball. This time, he raced off, sprinting to the edge of the field, careering as close to the stands as he could. His teammates followed him. The fans poured over each other, a liquid mass, in their delirium. This is exactly what they had been expecting when they had arrived at the stadium a few hours earlier, and still they could not quite conceive of how, exactly, Real Madrid had done it.Vinícius Júnior collected the ball after Rodrygo’s second, and for the first time Real Madrid felt victory was within reach.Juan Medina/ReutersNor, for that matter, could anyone else. It does not seem too florid, too ethereal, to suggest that Real Madrid does not so much beat teams at soccer as overwhelm them by harnessing some elemental force, something that naturally occurs in its environment. Its players spend a considerable portion of their time encouraging their fans to make more noise, whipping them into an ever-increasing Eleusinian frenzy, for that very purpose.At times, it resembles a form of alchemy, the transformation of a succession of base metals — a smattering of garlanded veterans, a couple of raw hopefuls, a coach with an expressive eyebrow and an easy charm, a team with no recognizable, cogent plan beyond a pervasive sense of its own destiny — into something precious.Here, though, it was something else, something more akin to a Big Bang. Real Madrid did not particularly like the turn the universe was taking. It did not have any great desire to exist in a dimension in which Manchester City was in the Champions League final and it was not. So it simply, in the blink of an eye, created a new one, one it found much more to its liking.That second goal, the one that sent the game to extra time, marked the moment that one reality ended and another came into being. Manchester City was now living in Real Madrid’s world, and the ending in Real Madrid’s world is always the same.A few minutes into extra time, Karim Benzema tumbled over Ruben Días’s outstretched leg. The referee, Daniele Orsato, pointed with a theatrical flourish to the penalty spot. Benzema, obviously, scored, because Benzema was always going to score. In the space of five minutes, with a break and a breather in between, Manchester City’s understanding of how things worked had been shattered.Benzema sent Ederson the wrong way and sent his penalty into the side netting in extra time.Gabriel Bouys/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesPep Guardiola’s team is not the first to experience that, of course. It is hard to tell whether it is something about the Bernabéu that does it, or whether it is the effect of feeling like you are living in a self-fulfilling prophecy, but this place has an unrivaled ability to unsettle even the greatest players, the smoothest teams. It scrambles the brain, jumbles the code, shorts the wiring.It happened to P.S.G., too, when Gianluigi Donnarumma stumbled on the ball and Neymar and Lionel Messi disappeared from view. It happened, too, to Chelsea at the last — or what seemed, until very recently, like the last — with the European champion seemingly coasting to victory and then, without ever really noticing, staring down the barrel of defeat.City, more than anyone, should have been immune. It is hard to imagine a team more versed in its ideas than Manchester City — though Liverpool would have a case — or a team better equipped to remain steadfast to its principles.And yet City, too, froze. Even before everything fell apart, it had seemed inhibited, cagey, troubled by something, a reduced version of the team that might — with a little more ruthlessness and a touch more luck — have scored six or seven in the first leg last week. It had only found a little composure after Riyad Mahrez had scored, when the prospect of a place in the final against Liverpool at the end of May was so tantalizingly close.That, ultimately, is the effect of Real Madrid’s belief. It believes it will win with such conviction that it proves contagious. That is the form its magic takes: it is a glamour, the power to dazzle an opponent, to convince it that the world should be as you see it, as you would want it to be.It cannot be explained. It does not require specific ingredients, or any ingredients at all, really. There can be no noise, no hope, no spark and no time, and yet Real Madrid can still conjure it from the air, from the sky, from something deep within. It is something that happens, something that happens to Real Madrid, and to whoever has the misfortune to be standing in its way. More

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

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