Ronaldo, Cristiano
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Cristiano Ronaldo and the Long Walk
Soccer’s biggest stars used to have places to wind down their careers with dignity. The sport’s economics now require their humiliations be public.MANCHESTER, England — Manchester United’s starting team appeared first, walking out at Old Trafford shoulder-to-shoulder with its opponent for the evening, Tottenham Hotspur. Then came the substitutes, clutching fluorescent training bibs and bottles of water, followed by two small armies of coaches, assistant coaches and assistants to the coaches.Only then, once the players had lined up, the replacements had taken their seats and the respective coaching staffs had claimed their territory, did Cristiano Ronaldo emerge, strolling a couple of yards behind midfielder Scott McTominay. It may have been by instinct or it may have been by design, but for that moment, the camera was drawn, inexorably, to him.Not, of course, that it needs much excuse. Four minutes later, as the game was settling into its pattern, there was Ronaldo again, in situ on the substitutes’ bench, in the center of the screen. It has become a familiar role for him for much of this season: one of the finest players in the game’s history, reduced to the most important spectator in the stadium.Cristiano Ronaldo’s new position: left out.Laurence Griffiths/Getty ImagesStrictly speaking, this should not be worthy of note. For much of last season, the first of his second spell at Old Trafford, Ronaldo was the inspiration for and subject of what was — initially, anyway — a moderately compelling debate about the balance between individual attainment and collective success.He scored goals, and plenty of them — 18 in 30 games in the Premier League alone, the most prolific at the club by some distance — but his presence, at times, seemed to inhibit the attempts of first Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and then Ralf Rangnick to imbue the team with a more modern, dynamic sensibility. How, then, should his contribution be assessed? Were the goals justification for Ronaldo’s inclusion, or was the cause being confused with the cure?It has been abundantly clear for months where Erik ten Hag, United’s current manager, stands on that particular conundrum. He has been unstinting in his praise for Ronaldo in public — both in terms of his lasting legacy on the game and his ongoing usefulness — but his words have been rather drowned out by his actions.Ronaldo has started only two Premier League games this season. The first involved being 4-0 down at halftime against Brentford. The second ended in a stalemate against Newcastle. He has, instead, spent most of his time facing Omonia Nicosia, Sheriff Tiraspol and Real Sociedad in the Europa League. Few have questioned the wisdom of it.United’s win against Spurs on Wednesday night, the product of probably the finest performance yet in ten Hag’s nascent reign, provided a compelling illustration as to why. Without Ronaldo, United is stirring. There is an energy, a zest, in its performance, a sense of disparate parts gradually binding into a distinct unit, the early, emergent signs of a genuine style of play.And yet such is Ronaldo’s fame, his draw, his magnetism that even now his absence defines things as surely as his presence. His exclusion from the field is a talking point. The camera pans to him, seeking to discern his mood, his state of mind, as soon as the opportunity arises. The fans, mindful of what he was, unconcerned by what he might be, sing his name as he trots down the touchline to stretch his muscles, to shake off the gathering rust.Ronaldo has twice as many starts in the Europa League (four) as he does in the Premier League (two) this season.Ian Hodgson/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIt is not, of course, quite the coda to his glittering career Ronaldo might have anticipated. It is not, in truth, the coda his achievements warrant. There is scant reason to offer sympathy for that: His predicament, after all, comes with the not-irrelevant consolation of being the best-paid player at one of the world’s richest clubs.But it is true, too, that Ronaldo is trapped by a function of modern soccer’s economics. Few players, if any, have done as much as Ronaldo, 37, to turn the game into the financial monster it has become; he has, for years, been one of the twin spearheads (and prime beneficiaries) of its relentless drive for global growth.Now, though, he finds itself at the mercy of his own creation. All players, even the very best, reach an end. Their legs weary or their bodies creaking, they look for a slightly more comfortable place to spend their twilight years, somewhere the scrutiny is less glaring or the demands not quite as exacting or the task a touch less mountainous than at the game’s absolute peaks.At times, whole leagues have served as an escape valve. European fans tend to sneer when players choose to move to Turkey or M.L.S. or (in former times) Russia and (briefly, brightly) China, but it is worth considering that it is not so long since the game’s great retirement home — the one that drew Ruud Gullit and Jürgen Klinsmann and all the rest of them with a promise of fat paychecks and supine opponents — was the Premier League of the 1990s.More frequently, though, there were a whole cast of clubs who were willing to play that role. For the original Ronaldo and Ronaldinho, it was a waning A.C. Milan. For their Brazilian teammate Rivaldo, it was Olympiacos. Even Diego Maradona, after not one but two drug scandals, could find a safe landing spot for a time at Sevilla.For some, those routes still exist. The lure of stardust took Gonzalo Higuaín to Inter Miami and brought Giorgio Chiellini and Gareth Bale to Los Angeles F.C. More telling, though, is the presence of Ángel Di María at Juventus and Alexis Sánchez at Marseille. Players associated with the Champions League, increasingly, are either not permitted or not prepared to escape it, their autumn days directly compared with the heat of their summers. Sinecures are not what they used to be.It is easy — and not wholly inaccurate — to accuse Cristiano Ronaldo of not only greed but hubris, too, to point out that he would find countless willing suitors if only he would accept a substantial pay cut and a demotion in status. He would be adored at Valencia, or Lazio, or Galatasaray. After all, his forebears as the world’s best players were prepared to accept the ticking of the clock.The problem, of course, is that he does not need to do so. That he was slowly displaying signs of his own mortality was clear when he left Juventus, a little more than a year ago, and yet Manchester United — a club that regards itself as the biggest in the world — was still willing to sign him, not just for the romance of it but for the brand impact, the exposure, the Instagram followers. There is no reason to believe, when he leaves United, it would be different for his next club.Ronaldo and Coach Erik ten Hag in a rare moment when both wanted the same thing.Phil Noble/ReutersRonaldo is, put simply, too valuable, too famous, too much of a draw to be allowed to drift into the sunset. (It goes without saying, of course, that Lionel Messi — the impending recipient of contract offers from both Paris St.-Germain and Barcelona — is exactly the same.) Someone, somewhere, will offer him a colossal sum of money to score the occasional goal in the Champions League, or to aid their pursuit of it.And so this is his lot, as one of the most glorious careers ever does not draw gracefully to a close but is drained of every last drop of glamour, every last ounce of energy, every last lingering camera shot, forced to watch on as the game he once dominated and the stages he once owned move on without him.A minute or so before the final whistle on Wednesday night, with United’s victory secure, Ronaldo lifted himself from his seat, strolled along the side of the field and disappeared into the Old Trafford tunnel. There were still four minutes to play.By the time they had elapsed, he had left the stadium, and disappeared off into the night, leaving in his wake only rancor and resentment. The next day, ten Hag decreed that Ronaldo would be banished from training with his teammates for the rest of the week as punishment. He may have played his final game for Manchester United.That will not be the end of it, though. There will be another club, another team, one with ambitions of gracing the Champions League or perhaps even designs on winning it, that cannot quite resist his draw, his power, that will not be able to look away from a star grown too big to fall.Kylian Mbappé Says Everyone Got It WrongFranck Fife/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesKylian Mbappé was, he would like you to know, napping. He was napping when the first reports emerged, last week, that he felt “betrayed” by Paris St.-Germain and wanted to leave the club at the first available opportunity.He was napping while pretty much every news organization ran with those reports, and he was still napping when he, as well as the variety of family members, friends and business associates who constitute his entourage, failed for several days to rebut any of them. Say what you like about Kylian Mbappé, but he is a sound sleeper.No wonder, because as it turns out, he is actually very happy at P.S.G. You can tell, because he said so. “I am very happy,” he said. The very notion that he might not be is “completely wrong.”“I never asked for my departure in January,” he said, after helping his team beat Marseille last week, which is a lot less reassuring as a sentence the more you think about it. “The information that came out, I didn’t understand. I was as shocked as everyone else.”Still, at least all of that is cleared up now. There is absolutely no need to wonder where, exactly, the suggestions of his disaffection came from in the first place. It was not Mbappé — he was tucked up in bed — and it was not, he said, any member of his entourage. “They were at my little brother’s game,” he said. Presumably it took place in some sort of mountain lair, where there is no cell service. Or perhaps it was some sort of dream. If you would just take Mbappé’s word for it, that would suit him just fine.CorrespondencePaul Ellis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe mere mention of mud in last week’s column brought an avalanche — well, not an avalanche; maybe a slow ooze — of mud-related nostalgia. Mud, it turns out, is something people miss.“Elite soccer would be better with more mud, right?” asked Joey Klonowski. “Every game would obviously be too much. I’m asking for like one percent of games. For variety.”Good news, then, from Ben Cohn. “The third round of the F.A. Cup was still a place to see mud quite recently,” he pointed out. “I have a vague image in my mind of Jürgen Klopp talking to an old-school tea lady before a really muddy fixture.”While I think we can agree that soccer is improved by being played in a range of climatic conditions, I have to take issue with Jeff Geer. Jeff has been watching a lot of Brentford, and has been left wondering: “Why do people like Bryan Mbeumo? What I see: not extremely fast; cannot target corners of the goal; weak passer in the penalty area; can’t take advantage of the counterattack.”This is slightly unfortunate for Jeff because I found myself thinking this week what a good player Mbeumo is: industrious, intelligent, always in the right place to offer a teammate an option. Perhaps that is his problem. Perhaps he is good enough to be given many chances to prove his limitations.And a final one from a regular correspondent. Shawn Donnelly would like to know whether Premier League ball boys get paid. “And why aren’t there more ball girls?” The answers to these are related: Most ball boys are players from the home team’s academy. It does feel like perhaps it is an honor that could be shared between both the boys’ and girls’ schools, though. More
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Manchester United and the Mounting Cost of Failure
The problem at United is not, and never has been, a lack of money. It is the lack of a plan.Manchester United’s problem has never been money. Not a dearth of it, anyway. Even now, in what may prove to be the twilight of the Glazer family’s 17-year ownership of the club, as prospective suitors and self-appointed saviors circle, great torrents of money continue to flow through Old Trafford.Enough, certainly, for the club to end a week that started with Gary Neville railing against the Glazers’ chronic parsimony by submitting not only a bid worth $60 million for a 30-year-old midfielder, but a contract offer sufficiently generous that the midfielder, Casemiro, reportedly indicated to his Real Madrid teammates that he could not, in good conscience, turn it down.There could have been more of it, of course. Since the Glazers’ arrival, United has in effect paid out somewhere in the region of $1.2 billion for the privilege of being owned by the family: a billion or so in interest payments, and a couple of hundred million in dividends, the majority of them paid to the Glazers themselves.All of that — the bottomless bounty generated by United’s relentless commercialism, the unstinting riches brought in by the Premier League’s broadcasting appeal — could have been invested in the squad, had circumstances been different, had the Glazers not effectively placed the club in debt bondage to itself all those years ago.But even without it, even with all of that money seeping away, Manchester United has never had to go without. The Glazers have, according to one estimate, spent around $1.7 billion in transfer fees alone since the family patriarch, Malcolm, took control at Old Trafford. The team broke the British transfer record to sign Paul Pogba. It made Harry Maguire the most expensive defender in history. It made Cristiano Ronaldo the highest-paid player in England.Cristiano Ronaldo is merely the most high-profile bad fit in Manchester United’s squad.Lindsey Parnaby/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAnd while precise figures are difficult to obtain, it pays just as well as its rivals, both domestically and in Europe. United’s salary roll is not drastically different to Manchester City’s, or Liverpool’s, or Chelsea’s: sometimes a little more, and sometimes a little less, but always among the highest in the world.No, as easy and as accurate as it is to berate the Glazers for what they have cost Manchester United, blaming the club’s demise on a lack of investment is to misunderstand what has gone wrong at Old Trafford, and to misrepresent the solution for any new owner. The problem is not, and never has been, a lack of money. It is that there has always been rather more money than sense.The last decade, since Alex Ferguson’s retirement, has brought any number of illustrative examples — trying to sign Thiago and Toni Kroos but deciding, in the end, that Marouane Fellaini served just as well; watching 804 right-backs and choosing Aaron Wan-Bissaka — but it is hardly necessary to strain the sinews of memory. There have been plenty of fresh examples this summer. There have been quite a few in the last week.The looming signing of Casemiro, say. It is a coup, without doubt, for United to bring in a player who has won five Champions League titles, and established himself as one of the finest exponents of his subtle art in the world in the process. But Casemiro is 30. He is being offered a four-year contract.He is also a very different sort of player than United’s primary target, the one the club spent much of the summer pursuing, the deep-lying Barcelona playmaker Frenkie de Jong. He is also hardly a straight swap for Adrien Rabiot, the player United identified as an alternative, once it became clear — after months of wasted time — that de Jong was not prepared to spend a season in exile from the Champions League.United never found a way forward after Alex Ferguson delivered its last title in 2013.Action Images/Action Images Via ReutersIt is possible, of course, that United reassessed its plans once it realized Casemiro might be obtainable. His arrival would, by any measure, make Erik ten Hag’s team more resilient, more obdurate, at least in the short term.But it still leaves a question hanging in the air: If ten Hag was adamant that he required a player of de Jong’s ilk to play the way he prefers, does being presented with Casemiro mean he now has to reimagine his whole approach? Is Manchester United doing what it has done for some time: acquiring players, or even coaches, and then figuring out how everything will fit together later?That, after all, is the abiding impression of the squad the club has built. It is not, despite appearances, stocked with bad players. It is, instead, littered with disparate — but high-quality — parts, a patchwork of ideas and concepts and impulses, rather than a cogent, coherent whole.Ten Hag, for example, wants to build play from the back, but finds himself with a goalkeeper, David de Gea, who might be among the finest shot-stoppers in the world but is far less comfortable with the ball at his feet. He wants to play an intense, high-pressing game, but is slowly confronting the reality that he — like both of his predecessors — will have to do so while incorporating a striker, Ronaldo, who has shown precious little inclination to buy in to such an approach.Erik ten Hag spent the summer chasing one kind of midfielder. After two losses, he wants something completely different.David Klein/ReutersThis is the failure that has held Manchester United back for the last decade. This is the failure that means the club is about to pass a decade without winning — or even, really, challenging for — a Premier League title. Neville, and the Glazers’ many other critics, are right to assert that United might have spent more if the club could only keep the money it generates. There is, sadly, precious little evidence that they would have spent it well.This, as much as anything, is the Glazers’ great failing, the shortcoming that has allowed United to drift: an absolute, and somewhat baffling, inability to staff their business adequately, to allow those charged with running it on their behalf to do so in such a haphazard, thoughtless fashion. Accountability, like money, flows up, after all.And it is this that any new owner, whoever they might be, must address. Quite what clubs want from those who buy them is indicated by the breathless way the various contenders for United are described: the billionaires and the magnates, the tycoons and the titans. That is the great dream of the modern fan, after all: to have a bigger, wealthier owner than everyone else.The experience of Manchester United and the Glazers, though, rather disproves that idea. Money has never been the problem at Old Trafford, and money, most likely, is not the solution, either. It is not how much of it you have. It is, instead, what you do with it that counts.The Super League Is HereMatheus Nunes traded a place in the Champions League for one at Wolves.Jose Sena Goulao/EPA, via ShutterstockMatheus Nunes should, logically, have stayed where he was. European soccer runs according to a strict, structural hierarchy, in which smaller domestic leagues feed into larger ones, and they, in turn, send their best and brightest — or at least their richest — to the Champions League. That is where players aspire to be. That, strictly speaking, is the aim.At 23, Nunes had made it. Last season, he was a key part of the Sporting Lisbon team that reached the Champions League knockout rounds. Sporting had qualified again; around this time next week, Nunes would have been waiting to discover whether he would have been visiting the Bernabeu, or the Camp Nou, or the Allianz Arena in this season’s competition.Instead, Nunes left. He did not leave, as the hierarchy would dictate, for a team with a better chance of winning the Champions League, or one with a realistic hope of making the semifinals, but for Wolves, last seen finishing 10th (creditably) in the Premier League. Wolves might, conceivably, reach the Europa League this season, but it is a safe bet that Nunes will never appear in the Champions League in an Old Gold jersey.He is not the only player to have inverted the hierarchy this summer. His erstwhile teammate, João Palhinha, traded Sporting for Fulham, for whom a 17th-place finish in the Premier League this season would be a success worth celebrating.Remo Freuler swapped Serie A for Nottingham Forest.Denis Balibouse/ReutersRemo Freuler, a cornerstone of the effervescent Atalanta team that has been a European fixture for the last few years, now plays for Nottingham Forest. He may yet be joined by Houssam Aouar, a quick-witted, inventive playmaker from Lyon. Forest’s relationship with Europe has long roots, but it is not likely to bloom any time soon.Moves like these are easily lost amid the thunderstorm of the transfer market. The eye, after all, is drawn much more easily to what Chelsea or Manchester United or Barcelona are doing than to whatever is happening amid the Premier League’s aspirants and also-rans.But their moves are, perhaps, the most significant transfers of the summer, not just because these clubs can afford these players, but because the players themselves, having made it to the Champions League, appear to be happy to remove themselves from it in order to scrap for survival in the Premier League.That speaks volumes for the status of European soccer, not simply in terms of its finances but in terms of its balance of power, too. The Premier League, it would appear, is just as much of a draw — if not more so — than the Champions League. Ambition always flows upward, and that suggests that the hierarchy no longer holds.CorrespondenceLet’s start this week with a clarification. “The Premier League doesn’t seem far off the Bundesliga or Ligue 1,” wrote Cristian Ardelean, referring to last week’s newsletter on European soccer’s lack of competitiveness. “Manchester City won four of the last five titles. Some were more thrilling than others, but the trend is very similar.”This, as it happens, is a position I agree with wholeheartedly, and was one I hoped was conveyed last week. Yes, the Premier League has more variety than the Bundesliga and Ligue 1, but no, it’s not by much. And yes, you can make a case that the form of oligopoly in play in England is actually more corrosive than its equivalent in Germany or France, by virtue of the fact that access to the Champions League has been cut off to all but a few, too.You’ll recognize this photo as one of a series.Toby Melville/ReutersMike Connell is on the same page as me on another matter, too. “This team dominance is why an N.F.L.-style league will be in place within five years, or at least after the 2026 World Cup,” he wrote. “Not aligned with FIFA, and owned by the clubs. Everything is in place.” My only caveat here would be that I suspect it will not, for now, include teams from the Premier League. As an idea, it makes more sense for the continental European teams than anyone is really prepared to admit.And finally, on the same subject, Tim Connor has kindly volunteered to further my baseball education (which currently extends to knowing that there is a team called the “Tampa Bay Rays.”)The subject of competitiveness, Tim wrote, made him “reflect on the days when the Yankees were unquestionably dominant in the American League, and there was an all-but-overt conspiracy to keep them so. The owners kept the Yankees on top because it was great for ticket sales when the team everyone loved to hate came to town. I’d like to think that unpredictability makes for more interest, but maybe people like to know in advance how the story is going to end.”The fact that the global explosion in popularity in the Premier League came at a time when the story always seemed to end with a late Manchester United winner in a strangely extended period of injury time would certainly support that thesis, Tim, so you may be on to something. More
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Premier League Preview: Has Arsenal Pulled It Together? Will United Fall Apart?
Six contenders (more or less) and five story lines (plus a few extra) as the new season kicks off with everyone chasing Manchester City (again).Somehow, it is that time again. Cue the dramatic music, crank up the content generator and get ready to absorb the hottest takes around: the Premier League season is upon us once again.Quite what form this edition of soccer’s great hubristic soap opera will take is, of course, not yet clear. That, after all, is the fun of the thing.As the 20 teams in the richest league in the world return to the field this weekend, though, there are several questions that linger over everything. How they are answered will go a long way to determining how things play out.Will Manchester City Beat Manchester City?Manchester City’s reaction every time someone suggests its time with the trophy is up.Dave Thompson/Associated PressThe obvious question before the start of every new Premier League season is which team is likely to have won the thing at the end. Unfortunately, in the current incarnation of the league, it is not a particularly interesting inquiry. Manchester City will win it, as it has four of the past five editions, and it will most likely do so by seeing off a spirited but ultimately futile challenge from Liverpool. Although, this time, there is just one small caveat.The idea that Erling Haaland’s presence will somehow disrupt City’s rhythm sufficiently to impact the team has been overblown; it may be an awkward marriage for a few months, but both are more than good enough to thrive despite that.Far more important is the fact that Haaland is currently just one of 16 senior outfield players at Pep Guardiola’s disposal. That would be a risk in a normal season. This one has a great big World Cup in the middle, making it seem like a colossal gamble.Is Arsenal Back?Gabriel Jesus practicing a pose Arsenal expects to see a lot this season.Justin Tallis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIt sounds like damning Arsenal with faint praise to suggest that Mikel Arteta’s team has won the preseason — largely because it is — but, amid all of the hype and exaggeration, the last few weeks have produced some genuinely encouraging signs for the Spaniard and his fellow documentary stars.Gabriel Jesus, certainly, has the capacity to be a transformational signing, and his former Manchester City teammate Oleksandr Zinchenko may not be far behind. Arsenal looks like a much more complete side than it did a year ago. Not one ready to challenge City or Liverpool, perhaps, but one that could end the club’s long exile from the Champions League.Will Tottenham’s Impatience Pay Off?Richarlison traded life at the bottom of the table at Everton for a view of the summit at Spurs.Andy Buchanan/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe biggest obstacle to Arsenal’s resurrection sits just down the road. Not at Chelsea, where a chaotic transfer window will most likely end with a stronger and yet somehow less coherent squad, but at a Tottenham transformed by Antonio Conte, the sort of supernova coach who comes in, pushes his players to the limit and then implodes. The worry, when he arrived at Spurs, was that the club had an almost diametrically opposed approach.That, it seems, was not a problem. Tottenham is very much in win-now mode. Ivan Perisic, Richarlison and Yves Bissouma have been brought in to turn a side good enough to get into the Champions League last year into one that can push for the title. Given the strangeness of the season, that does not seem impossible. Spurs has one chance under Conte, effectively. It has done all it can to take it.Manchester United: DiscussA rare sight this season: Cristiano Ronaldo happy at Manchester United.Ed Sykes/Action Images, via ReutersIn what may have been the purest distillation of modern soccer imaginable, Cristiano Ronaldo received a rapturous reception upon his return to Old Trafford last weekend. Manchester United’s fans clearly wanted him to know how much he meant to them, even as he has made it very obvious he does not wish to remain at the club.Roughly 45 minutes later, having been substituted, Ronaldo was leaving the stadium at halftime, very much against the wishes of his manager, Erik ten Hag, and apparently convinced that he did not need to stick around.There has, believe it or not, been progress at Manchester United this summer. Ten Hag is a smart appointment. The club has made a couple smart signings. But it is a curious progress, one tempered by the fact that United does not appear to have a list of recruits beyond players ten Hag knew and liked and undercut by the Ronaldo saga. As things stand, he may be forced to stay merely because nobody else wants to sign him. How ten Hag handles that will define the early months of his reign.Can Anyone Break the Seal?Declan Rice and West Ham floated into Europe last season. Is more in their future?Justin Tallis/AFP, via Getty ImagesIn one view, this season should be the best chance since 2016 for a team outside the traditional Big Six to make a run for a place in the Champions League. The whole campaign will be affected by the World Cup, and it is hardly ridiculous to suggest that the superpowers — stocked as they are by players headed to Qatar — may be more susceptible to fatigue in the aftermath.Whether any team can emerge from the pack, though, is a different matter. Newcastle ended last season on a Saudi-bankrolled high, but it has been substantially quieter than the LIV golf series this summer. Leicester and Wolves seem to be stagnating. That leaves, perhaps, West Ham — bolstered by a couple of smart additions — as the only viable candidate. More likely still, of course, is that David Moyes’s team cannot last the pace either and that at the end of a season unlike any other, everything will be precisely the same as before. More
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Welcome to Soccer’s Strangest Season
The World Cup will split seasons in two in much of the world, including the Premier League campaign that opens this weekend. What is revealed could be fascinating.Gian Piero Ventrone surveyed his handiwork with just the hint of a smile. A few minutes earlier, Ventrone, Tottenham Hotspur’s fitness coach, had gathered the club’s players together on the turf at the Seoul World Cup stadium and informed them of their next assignment.They had, by that stage, already been training for more than an hour, in searing heat and cloying humidity. Now they had one final exercise: Ventrone instructed the players to run the length of the field. Not once, or twice, but 42 times. The winner, he said, would be the last man standing.Now, as he looked around him, he saw those same players strewn across the field. Son Heung-min had collapsed, his muscles screaming and his lungs burning. Richarlison had sunk to his knees, gasping for air. Harry Kane had vomited. Ventrone was satisfied. Preseason, as far as the club’s fitness coach could see, was going swimmingly.Son Heung-min is feeling the effects of Conte’s gruelling pre-season drills 😳pic.twitter.com/g5mvtjlPV1— The Spurs Web (@thespursweb) July 11, 2022
There was something strange, though, about the footage of that session — held in front of 6,000 fans during Spurs’ tour of South Korea — when it emerged last month. The methods deployed by Ventrone felt just a touch anachronistic, a relic of a bygone era, when players let themselves go over the summer, before they invented tactical periodization, before everyone was strapped to a GPS vest at all times.They felt particularly outdated this summer of all summers, though, given what lies ahead not only for Son, Kane and the rest of Tottenham’s team, but for several hundred of the world’s best players in England’s Premier League and elsewhere. The season on which they are embarking — the Premier League and the Bundesliga kick off this weekend — may well be the busiest, longest and most draining they will ever experience. As a result, it might also be the strangest.Arsenal, rebuilt around striker Gabriel Jesus, kicks off the Premier League season at Crystal Palace on Friday. It could send players from a half dozen countries to the World Cup in November.Paul Childs/Action Images Via ReutersIt is not quite right, of course, to say that this is the first time in soccer’s history that there has been a winter World Cup. Chile in 1962, Argentina in 1978 and South Africa in 2010 were all winter World Cups. Nor is it strictly accurate to declare this the first time there has been a World Cup in the middle of the club season; after all, not every domestic competition runs from August to May.What makes Qatar 2022 unique, instead, is the fact that it will be the first World Cup to take place in the middle of the season for the overwhelming majority of its participants.Eight days before the tournament starts, most of the players summoned by their nations will still be locked in club combat in Europe. Exactly a week after it finishes, those employed by teams in the Premier League, at least, will be expected to take up the cudgels once more.In between, some of them will have taken part in seven of the most important games of their careers, all of that stress and emotion and exertion condensed into only a few weeks and played out in a series of purpose-built stadiums surrounded by towns and neighborhoods that exist for no reason other than the staging of a single event. This World Cup is not just a hiatus, a brief intermission to the season; it is a lacuna, a disconnect, a deus ex machina.Quite what its impact will be is difficult to predict. As usual, the return of the Premier League brings with it a suite of known unknowns that will define the season: Will Erik ten Hag turn Manchester United around? Why has Pep Guardiola decided that Manchester City does not need a full complement of substitutes? Can Arsenal be trusted?Manager Erik ten Hag is navigating a tricky situation with Cristiano Ronaldo, who wants out of Manchester United.Ed Sykes/Action Images Via ReutersNone of those questions, though, is nearly as pressing as attempting to discern the effect of the World Cup. It is hardly revelatory to suggest that there will, in effect, be two halves to this season: the first, a jostling for position, running from this weekend until the first week of November, and then a second, a sprint for the line, commencing late in December and concluding with the Champions League final on June 10.Those two periods, though, may not bear any real relation to one another. It is easy to imagine that, in the weeks immediately before the tournament, players anticipating a place in Qatar might suddenly become conspicuously — if not entirely consciously — risk-averse, and that afterward, the usual order of things will be upturned by players exhausted from the World Cup being thrust immediately back into action against colleagues who have had a month to rest and to relax.That might, in an optimistic reading, be a good thing. Perhaps the creeping predictability of even the Premier League — the league where anything can happen, as long as it involves Manchester City winning the title — will be put on hold, even just for a year, as the randomness invoked by a midseason World Cup upturns the established order.Julián Álvarez and Erling Haaland give Manchester City an entirely new look up front.Tony Obrien/ReutersOr perhaps not. Perhaps the gap between the elite and the also-rans is now so great that it takes more than a few weary limbs to level the playing field. Perhaps the squads of the self-appointed aristocrats are so strong that they will emerge not only unscathed, but with their dominance somehow enhanced.All that can be certain is that there will be an impact. What was so noteworthy about Ventrone’s brutal training session in Seoul was not that it was taking place on the eve of a season in which managers might have been expected to safeguard their players’ fitness, rather than risk burning them out long before the end, but that it was in South Korea at all.Tottenham, like the rest of the Premier League’s big beasts, had seen preseason as a chance to take the show on the road, to play a couple of money-spinning exhibition games around the globe. The players were not gently introduced to the longest, strangest season of their careers. They were, instead, flown across the world and then run into the ground. That is just the start of it. More than ever, this season, the winner will be the last one standing.The Real Test AwaitsThe United States beat England in the semifinals of the 2019 World Cup. The teams will collide again in a friendly in October in London.Pete Kiehart for The New York TimesA few minutes before the final whistle, Vlatko Andonovski rose from his seat, smoothed the figure-hugging salmon-pink sweater he had chosen for the occasion, summoned his colleagues and made for the exit. He had, apparently, seen enough of both France and the Netherlands. He did not need to know who won. (France, futilely.)Andonovski, the United States women’s coach, seemed quite relaxed that night in Rotherham, just as he has throughout his stay in England for the final stages of Euro 2022. He was not making notes. He chatted happily with the phalanx of other managers and executives and scouts gathered in the tournament’s various directors’ boxes. He seemed unperturbed, unruffled.Do not, though, be fooled. Andonovski will have departed Europe in no doubt that next summer will not be quite so insouciant as this one. In a host of ways, Euro 2022 represented a seismic shift for women’s soccer in England and in Europe: the size of the crowds, the interest of the television audiences, the immediately discernible boost in momentum and, most pressing for Andonovski, in terms of the caliber of its play.Over the course of his stay, he will have noted that the threats to the United States’ hegemony are many and varied: a French side sufficiently gifted to beat the Dutch, the defeated World Cup finalists of three years ago, despite the absence of three of its brightest stars; a Germany reborn thanks to the blazing promise of Lina Magull and Lena Oberdorf.And, of course, most notably, an England team blessed with a depth of resources and richness of talent that perhaps makes it the equal of the United States, a team imbued with a conviction and a purpose by its coach, Sarina Wiegman, and now pulsing with the confidence and self-belief that only triumph can bring.The United States remains the standard-bearer in the women’s game, of course. There is a reason that tickets for its visit to Wembley in October sold out in only hours, and it is not just to do with coursing English pride. Alex Morgan, Rose Lavelle, Sophia Smith and the rest are a blockbuster draw. But Andonovski will have left the Euros in no doubt that his team’s dominance is in more peril now than it has been for a decade, as Europe surges into view. His job is to quell that rebellion. His days of relaxation will not last for long.Wants Are Not the Same as NeedsJoan Laporta: man of the people (but especially the people who demand new signings).Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesOf all the many eye-catching lines in my colleague Tariq Panja’s interview with Joan Laporta, the man hoping he will find the exit to the hole currently occupied by Barcelona if only he keeps digging, one in particular stood out. The club’s 400 million fans, he said, “require a level of success” that renders the idea of a patient, painstaking rebuild impossible.There is no question that Laporta’s approach to Barcelona’s crisis — spending vast sums on new signings in the hope of winning trophies immediately and kick-starting a “virtuous cycle” of triumph and investment — is risky. Still, though, it is just about possible to discern some sort of logic behind it.What is curious is the notion that this is what his club’s fans not only desire, but demand. Laporta almost seemed to be suggesting that, if Barcelona does not maintain a steady supply of flashbulb moments and fond memories, then those 400 million souls would simply drift away.To many, that is not how fandom works. Fan, after all, is not a synonym for consumer. A fan does not drift away when thick turns to thin. A fan can bear a couple of fallow years (especially at a time when Barcelona could very easily point to Pedri and Gavi and Ansu Fati and convince those same fans that a golden dawn lay at the end of a brief period of night). A fan should, in theory, be more concerned by the club’s long-term health than its short-term glory.And yet, for Barcelona as much as any elite team, that does not appear to be how all fans work. Laporta’s approach is defended to the hilt by an army of supporters on social media. His lionization is such that one member compared him, in what may be a first, to both the Pope and Kim Jong-un.Perhaps Laporta is right. Perhaps there is a section of Barcelona’s public that demands immediate satisfaction, that cannot countenance the idea of a few years of finishing as low as, say, third. Those are the people that Laporta believes he has to appease. Perhaps he is right. They are, it seems, real. They do exist. Whether they should be described as fans or not is a different matter.CorrespondenceMark Cuban would be delighted to know that he has prompted such contemplation among the readership of The New York Times’s pre-eminent soccer newsletter. He’d be even happier to know that so many of you agreed that he was right to worry that fans who come to sports through TikTok may not have the attention span to watch a whole game.“Kids may have grown out of ‘Tom and Jerry,’ but cartoons and the networks they ran on didn’t have an algorithm in their pocket, one they’ll carry for the rest of their lives, to keep that impulsive short-fix delivery method in their hands and vision,” wrote Eric Blind.Joel Gardner wrote along similar lines. “Cuban got rich in the sports business from his college days, so we ignore him at our peril. Kids have always had attention issues. Never before, though, have there been so many stimuli. The evening news is no longer Walter Cronkite. Ditto ‘SportsCenter,’ with its plays of the day. Cram that down through social media to TikTok, and it bodes ill not just for sports but for all human discourse.”Tim Ireland/EPA, via ShutterstockFor Brian Yaney, meanwhile, Cuban sounded like “another parent engaged in a desperate daily struggle to extract his child from the mind-numbing oblivion offered by transient social networks and to engage them in positive developmental activities.” Brian worried that by demurring, I was not “paying enough attention to the real world,” outside of sports consumption.I did not want to dismiss Cuban’s concerns glibly, certainly. I’m a parent, too, and though my children are too young to have encountered social media, we have already seen the effects of on-demand streaming on one of them. (Just cartoons and some portent of doom called ‘Blippi,’ but only because we couldn’t get him to pay attention to ‘Succession.’)And, as Neil Postman so brilliantly illustrated, I have no doubt that the condensation of information, and the conflation of news and entertainment, has wreaked untold damage on public discourse.In the context of sports, though, I have more hope. It doesn’t strike me as especially unusual that kids wouldn’t watch entire games; it seems logical that appreciation for a sport develops as we grow older and more comprehending of its nuances. And even if that is not the case, it strikes me as a shame that nobody in sports ever thinks that maybe it would be easier to address things like a lack of competitive balance than work out a way to boil down an entire game into a 12-second video clip. More - in Soccer
A Day of World Cup Drama Goes Down to the Last Kick
In Algeria, a berth in Qatar changed hands in an instant. In Senegal, a shootout settled another long night. And in Portugal, Cristiano Ronaldo set up one final hurrah.Algeria’s players were strewn on the turf, their faces covered, their chests heaving. Their coach, Djamel Belmadi, seemed frozen by shock. Tears streamed from his eyes. The moment they had been waiting for, the goal that would send them to the World Cup, took 118 minutes to arrive. They had their last-minute winner. And then, in an instant, so did Cameroon.Across three continents, it was that kind of evening: one of frayed nerves and quickened pulses, of fine margins and small details, of exquisite suffering and perfect joy. Nowhere was that encapsulated better than in Blida, a city a little south of Algiers, where Algeria and Cameroon took turns breaking each other’s hearts.The Qatar World Cup has been 12 years, dozens of arrests and one F.B.I. investigation in the making. Its qualification process has been one of interruptions and complications and delays, the result first of the coronavirus pandemic and then of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Even now, scarcely eight months out from the tournament’s opening match, the field is not yet complete, not fully.Tuesday, though, was the day when much of what was left took shape. In the space of six hours, there were seven slots to be filled in Europe and Africa, each of them decided in the straight shootout of a head-to-head playoff. For 14 countries — and a few more in South America battling for the last hope of an intercontinental playoff spot — this was the culmination of the past two years and more. This was the moment of no return.A couple nations, in the end, made it through relatively comfortably. Morocco swept past the Democratic Republic of Congo. Poland — handed a bye to the final playoff round after refusing to play Russia — stirred itself to see off Sweden.Portugal toiled for a while against North Macedonia, but seized on the first opportunity it was granted: a single loose pass, punished ruthlessly by Bruno Fernandes, seemed to sap the strength of the team that had conquered Italy only a few days ago. Fernandes scored again, in the second half, as Portuguese flags fluttered serenely around him, Cristiano Ronaldo safely delivered to his fifth World Cup.Bruno Fernandes scored the goals that sent Cristiano Ronaldo, left, and Portugal to the World Cup.Jose Coelho/EPA, via ShutterstockFor the rest, though, there was nothing but tension and anxiety and dread. Ghana edged Nigeria thanks to a goalkeeping slip and the fact that Africa, for now, remains wedded to the away-goals rule. Tunisia held on for a goal-less draw against Mali, its slender victory in the first leg last week enough to end Mali’s dream of qualifying for its first World Cup.In Senegal, the pressure seemed to be at its most suffocating. Africa’s qualification process is uniquely cruel: a long, winding series of group stages followed by a set of winner-take-all playoffs, drawn at random, without anything as manipulative as a seeding system.A Guide to the 2022 World CupThe 32-team tournament kicks off in Qatar on Nov. 21.F.A.Q.: When will the games take place? Who are the favorites? Will Lionel Messi be there? Our primer answers your questions.The Matchups: The group assignments are set. Here’s a breakdown of the draw and a look at how each country qualified.U.S. Returns: Five years after a calamitous night cost the U.S. a World Cup bid, a new generation claimed a berth in the 2022 tournament.The Host: After a decade of scrutiny and criticism, there is a sense that Qatar will at last get the payoff it always expected for hosting the World Cup.That allowed Senegal and Egypt, then, to face each other: the two teams who are, arguably, the continent’s strongest — they contested the final of the Africa Cup of Nations in February, after all — and which, most likely, are home to its two finest players: Sadio Mané and his club teammate turned international opponent, Mohamed Salah.Egypt had won the first leg, narrowly, but saw its lead wiped out within a few minutes of the start of the second. From that point on, the Egyptians almost seemed to be playing for penalties, as if driven by a desire to exact the most fitting revenge for the way they lost that Cup of Nations final.The luck of the draw, or lack of it, meant that at least one Liverpool star, Mohamed Salah or Sadio Mané, would miss the World Cup.Stefan Kleinowitz/Associated PressWhat few opportunities there were fell to Senegal; all of them were wasted. The home fans did what they could to tilt the balance, directing a fusillade of laser pointers onto each and every Egyptian player, but it made no difference. The clock ticked inexorably on, the game locked in a stalemate.When penalty kicks arrived, they underlined how exacting the stress had become. Kalidou Koulibaly, the Senegal captain, hit the crossbar with his attempt. For the first time all evening, Senegal’s new national stadium fell silent. Salah — denied the chance to take one in February — stepped up for Egypt, a sure thing, only to blaze his shot over the bar. He turned away, tearing at his jersey.Senegal had a reprieve, and immediately blew it: Mohamed El Shenawy, the Egypt goalkeeper, saving a shot from Saliou Ciss. No matter: Zizo, Egypt’s second selection, confidently sent his effort wide.Senegal did not prove so forgiving a second time around. Ismaila Sarr and Bamba Dieng scored, meaning that everything hung, once more, on Mané. He had scored the decisive penalty in the Cup of Nations final; he knew, now, that if he did so again, Senegal would go to the World Cup.A moment later, he was tearing off to the side of the field, smoke billowing around him, fans trying to push past security onto the field. Once again, Mané had delivered the coup de grâce.But while that was the heavyweight clash, it was in Algeria that the denouement was most frenzied. Cameroon had canceled out Algeria’s lead from the first leg, forcing the game to extra time, withstanding anything and everything its host could muster.Thanks largely to the determination of its goalkeeper, Andre Onana, it seemed to have done enough to force penalties, only for Ahmed Touba to break its resistance in the 119th minute. Algeria had its late winner. Now, at the last, it stood on the brink. It needed only to hold out for a couple of minutes to make it to Qatar.It could not. Cameroon launched one final free kick into the penalty area, and Karl Toko Ekambi, the Lyon striker, forced the ball home. There were 124 minutes on the clock. It was, effectively, the last kick of the game, the last kick of the last two years.Algeria’s players sank to the grass, disbelieving, disconsolate. Everything they had worked for, everything they thought they had achieved, had disappeared in a flash. They had arrived at the end, and there had still been more. It had, across three continents, been that type of evening.Algeria’s coach, Djamel Belmadi, was inconsolable after his team’s loss to Cameroon.Ryad Kramdi/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images More
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Messi, Ronaldo and Soccer’s Golden Sunset
This year’s World Cup will be the last for some household names, meaning soccer will go into the tournament with one elite and emerge with quite another.In the heady, innocent days of 2016 — before all of the largely dreadful things that have happened since had happened — Nick Serpell was given what was, by the standards of the time, a faintly morbid task.As naïve as it seems in hindsight, a theory had taken hold on social media — the place where all theories take hold — that the year was cursed. It had started, it seemed, with the death of David Bowie, and it did not stop. Alan Rickman died. Zaha Hadid died. Harper Lee died, and Leonard Cohen, and Johan Cruyff, and Muhammad Ali, and Prince.Serpell’s job was to find out whether this really was unusual, or whether it was simply the effect of the public nature of grief in the social media age. As the BBC’s obituaries editor, he searched through the number of prepared obituaries that the broadcaster had published in the first three months of that year — the kind that all news organizations, including The Times, keep on file for a host of well-known figures — and then compared the total to the previous few winters.There had, he found, been a considerable leap: From January to March 2012, for example, only five people deemed worthy of a prewritten obituary had died. It had been eight in 2013, 11 in 2014 and 12 the following year. By 2016, though, that number had skyrocketed: In the first three months alone, Serpell found, the BBC had run 24 ready-made tributes.Serpell, though, remained unconvinced there was a curse; the explanation seemed to him to be far more prosaic. The apparent rise, he divined, was down to the fact that the world was now more than half a century on from the first great flowering of a shared popular culture — with the dawn of television, the growth of pop music and the global reach of Hollywood.Though some of those who had died in early 2016 were distressingly young, many more had been in their 70s and 80s, the products of that blossoming of mass popularity. It was not that a greater proportion of prominent people were dying; it was that there was, 50 years or so after technology made some form of worldwide celebrity more attainable, a much deeper pool of prominent people who might die.That phenomenon has an echo this year in a very different — and thankfully much less mournful — context. The 2022 World Cup will act as a profound watershed for soccer; it will, in a distinct, almost tangible way, mark the ending of one era and the start of another, a generational shift played out live on television.Dani Alves will be 39 when the World Cup opens in November. Brazil is going, but is he?Carl De Souza/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThat it will, almost certainly, provide the conclusion to the international careers of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo — assuming Portugal makes it past North Macedonia in its playoff final on Tuesday — has long been assumed. Their starlight is so bright, though, that it has served to obscure all of the other farewells that will come on the kafala-built fields of Qatar.This World Cup will extinguish the light of a whole galaxy. It will, most likely, be the final time Luka Modric, Thiago Silva, Daniel Alves, Manuel Neuer, Thomas Müller, Jordi Alba, Ángel Di María, Luis Suárez, Edinson Cavani, Eden Hazard and Antoine Griezmann will grace the grandest stage sports has to offer. Robert Lewandowski, Gareth Bale, Arturo Vidal, Alexis Sánchez and James Rodríguez may yet join them, another clutch of superstars on a valedictory tour.World Cups, of course, have always had that purpose. Just as they are the forge of greatness, they act, too, as the place it takes its bow. It is not especially unusual that players — as Silva and Alves, in particular, have — should continue their careers to ensure one more shot at the greatest prize of all. The 2006 World Cup final was Zinedine Zidane’s last ride, after all.In that light, this World Cup is no different from any other. And yet the sheer numbers suggest something different; they give the impression that soccer will go into the tournament with one elite and emerge from it with quite another. That is not because there is a greater proportion of famous players at the end of their career than normal. It is because there are more famous players, full stop.It is likely that the last 15 years will come to be seen almost exclusively through the lens of Messi and Ronaldo. They have, after all, dominated this era of soccer, and so it is fitting, in many ways, that they should come to define it.Such an interpretation, though, would be reductive. It is better thought of, instead, as soccer’s first truly global age: an era in which fans across the world could watch almost every second of a player’s career, in which the great and the good encountered one another with unprecedented frequency in the Champions League and came into our homes through video games, a time when rare talent clustered together at a handful of superclubs.The generation that will exit the stage in Qatar is the last bastion of the first generation of players who started and ended their journeys in that ecosystem; they are the equivalent of that bloom of mass, shared popular culture that germinated in the 1960s. Lewandowski is far more familiar, far more famous than Gerd Müller, his predecessor at Bayern Munich, ever was. More people will notice when Suárez retires from Uruguay than concerned themselves with Enzo Francescoli’s departure.Luis Suárez collected souvenirs after Uruguay sealed its World Cup place.Pool photo by Matilde CampodonicoEdinson Cavani, like Suárez, will be heading to his fourth World Cup.Pool photo by Raul Martinez That they have been so prominent for so long has as much to do with the scientific and medical advances available as it is their ability. There was a reason, a couple of weeks ago, that the two standout midfield displays in the Champions League, all indefatigable energy and irrepressible dynamism, came from Modric, 36, and Vidal, 34. That level of performance, in that rarefied company, would not have been possible even 20 years ago; it has served to prolong their careers and, in doing so, expand their legacies.Qatar, for many of them, will be their last stand. It will lend the tournament a faint air of sorrow. A whole generation, one that we have watched from the start, one that we have come to know like none before, one that has become part of the fabric of the game, will depart, all at once, and we will, at last, have to say goodbye.That Horse Bolted. Quick, Lock the Door.UEFA’s president, Aleksander Ceferin, relented on his efforts to impose a U.S.-style salary cap on European clubs.Vasily Fedosenko/ReutersFinancial Fair Play — no, no, stay with me — was, like deep-dish pizza or the “Sex and the City” reboot, absolutely fine in theory. In the middle of the first decade of this century, it was abundantly clear that European soccer needed to find a way to make its teams less vulnerable to the caprice of reckless owners, to prevent them taking on colossal, unmanageable debts.The problem was with the application. The idea was twisted and contorted by the game’s elite clubs — aided and abetted by pliant governing bodies — until a set of rules that had been intended to promote sustainability became a method to entrench the status quo. Not that it mattered, really, because the punishments for failing to abide by them were pretty quickly proven to be toothless anyway.It is hard to see the system’s successor — the snappily titled financial sustainability regulations — being any more effective. The new guidelines, the product of a decade of squabbling and a year of negotiation, will have little or no impact on the way any of the major teams operate. The regulations’ impact, as before, will be to shut the stable door long after the horse is roaming free in the paddock, eating all of the best grass.By now, it is abundantly clear that the way to manage the central problem in European soccer — the lack of competition engendered by financial imbalance — does not lie in a set of fiscal rules. They are too easily circumvented, too lightly enforced and invariably introduced several years too late.Instead, the solution has to be sporting. The biggest teams will always make the most money — or at least say they make the most money — and will therefore have an advantage when spending is limited to a percentage of income. The more effective way to improve competition, both between clubs and between leagues, is to limit how they can spend it.A hard salary cap, the sort often seen in North American sports, is clearly not something the clubs are prepared to accept. But there is nothing at all to stop UEFA from instituting policies that demand all teams have a significant proportion of homegrown players, or a certain number of squad members under age 23. There is no reason it cannot cap the number of players any team can send out on loan, or even introduce rules that grant effective free agency to players who have not made a specific number of appearances.Any and all of those measures would discourage the hoarding of stars by a handful of teams. In turn, they would allow that talent to be spread more evenly around Europe’s various leagues. They would encourage teams to be more judicious in the market, to think more long-term. They would help to level the playing field not by suppressing some, but by lifting others.Passing on the PainArsenal’s Bukayo Saka complained about rough treatment at the hands of Aston Villa. Nick Potts/Press Association, via Associated PressThe strange thing is that Steven Gerrard knows, better than most, quite how devastating injury can be. By his own estimation, during his career he endured somewhere in the region of 16 operations. He has screws in his hips. He struggles these days to go to the gym.He is aware, too, that the impact is more than physical. A decade or so ago, after missing six months of Liverpool’s season with a groin problem, he admitted that he had been “as low as I have ever been.” He called it the “hardest period of his career.” He felt, at times, as if his “body had given in.”Injury, of course, is unavoidable. Many of the issues Gerrard faced can be attributed to wear and tear, the body buckling under the strain placed on it by any elite athlete. That is, after all, the most common source of injury: not a reckless tackle or a dangerous challenge, but the almost humdrum popping of tightly wound hamstrings or the tearing of overworked ligaments. Gerrard, now the Aston Villa manager, was right to say last weekend that pain is “part of the game.”That does not justify his conclusion, though. The Arsenal winger Bukayo Saka had complained after his team’s 1-0 win against Gerrard’s Villa that his opponents had been “purposefully” targeting him for rough treatment. Gerrard’s response was blunt. Saka, he said, had to “learn, and learn quick” that “it’s not a no-contact sport; tackling is allowed, physicality is allowed.”In part, that can be attributed to ordinary managerial hypocrisy — this was the same Gerrard, after all, who has previously complained that his teams do not “get enough protection” from referees — but it is also, in some way, the passing on of a generational trauma.Just because Gerrard and his peers were exposed to (and occasionally contributed to) a level of brutality that was entirely unnecessary does not mean their successors should have to do the same. Just because injury is part of sports does not mean we should not do all we can to minimize its effects. Players endure enough pain as it is. The game should be seeking to ensure they do not have to go through more than is necessary.CorrespondenceTwo fairly hefty questions dominated this week’s inbox. First, Ian Greig wondered what might happen to the “luxury end” of soccer when “the oligarchs, princes, petty dictators and willing killers of the world come to realize that sports-washing does not work? Who in Newcastle had ever thought about the rate of execution in Saudi Arabia before last weekend?”“When was the last time everyone in Paris had bad thoughts about a Gulf government?” he asked. “I’m willing to bet that there is more than one Qatari prince who understands that the attention brought to their country by the World Cup has not been flattering.”There are, I think, two sides to this. In one sense, I suspect Ian is quite right: I don’t think at least some of these regimes — particularly in Qatar — fully realized the scrutiny that would come with their co-opting of the world’s most popular game. My instinct is that Qatari officials didn’t really expect a decade-long discussion of the kafala system when they set their sights on the World Cup.Qatar: Ready for its close-up?Noushad Thekkayil/EPA, via ShutterstockThe other, sadly, is less positive. Sports-washing most definitely does work, because national branding and reputation laundering are only the most superficial aim of the project. It is as much about enmeshing yourself — or your nation — into both the Western consciousness and the Western financial system as slapping “Dubai 2020 Expo” on some advertising boards.Manchester City is a prime example: Abu Dhabi has won plaudits for regenerating part of the city, yes, but much more important is that the club has become a way for the state to establish links with a whole variety of businesses, from tire companies to hedge funds. If you want a relationship with Abu Dhabi, then Manchester City serves as a convenient front door. And in that, it has been hugely successful.The second, even more challenging query comes from Dan Ross. “The real question isn’t, ‘Who is too evil to own a soccer team?’” he wrote, “but ‘Who gets to decide?’” After all, as he noted, “scoundrels can fly any flag.”“The only acceptable answer is that the world decides as a whole,” he concluded. “When a country becomes a pariah by global consensus (notwithstanding a few holdouts), its ruling class should not be allowed to participate in the global economy and culture — or sport.”This does, indeed, appear to be where we have landed, and I’m inclined to agree that there is no truly elegant solution at hand. That is not to say that more could not be done, though: It seems fairly straightforward to me that no nation state — or investment arm of a sovereign wealth fund — should be allowed to own a club, for one. That would apply just as much to Norway as it does to Saudi Arabia.Of course, plenty of people would be willing to find a way around that, and some would doubtless find a way through. But all that means is that it is incumbent on leagues, clubs and federations to make sure they are at least asking the right questions of prospective purchasers. That should not be too much to ask. More
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World Cup Hangs in Balance for U.S., Mexico and Cristiano Ronaldo
A week of high-stakes games will fill out the field for the winter’s World Cup. Not everyone gets to go.This is the week of final chances. The World Cup in Qatar is not quite eight months away, and more than half of the 32 places at the tournament have been taken. That number will increase over the course of the next seven days, as teams from Tunisia to Tahiti compete to join the 15 countries who have already qualified.By the time the draw for the group stage of the finals takes place in Doha on April 1, the picture will still not be complete. Delays to qualifying caused by the pandemic, as well as the compassionate break given to Ukraine after the Russian invasion, mean that the field will only be filled once the last phase of European qualifying, and the two intercontinental playoffs, are completed in June.But for the vast majority of teams, this is the week that will make or break their hopes, that will determine whether the stresses and strains of the last two years have been worthwhile.Canada stands on the verge of ending a 36-year wait to return to the tournament. The Democratic Republic of Congo is 180 minutes away from qualifying for the first time since 1974. And at least one major power, Portugal or Italy, faces the ignominy of missing out. Here’s what is at stake around the world.EuropeCristiano Ronaldo and Portugal will face Turkey on Thursday.Patricia De Melo Moreira/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAll but three of Europe’s places in Qatar have already been filled, and the vast majority of the continent’s teams likely to be in consideration to win the World Cup — the reigning champion, France, as well as Spain, Germany, Belgium and England — have long since known that they would be in the field.The exceptions are Portugal and Italy, both of whom failed to win their groups and must, therefore, endure two anxiety-inducing playoffs to join the party. Italy takes on North Macedonia and Portugal meets Turkey this week. Should both get through those games, they will play each other for a spot in Qatar, in a game that could be Cristiano Ronaldo’s final international engagement.The other two European playoff groups have been unaffected by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Russia’s (belated) ban from global sport means Poland will face either Sweden or the Czech Republic in its playoff on Tuesday; all three had refused to play Russia if FIFA and UEFA did not act.Ukraine’s game with Scotland, meanwhile, has been pushed back until June, meaning Europe’s final qualifier will not be known until the summer. The winner of that game will meet either Wales or Austria.North AmericaCanada can qualify for its first World Cup since 1986 by beating Costa Rica on Thursday.Kamil Krzaczynski/Associated PressThe specter of 2017 is starting to loom large once more for the United States, with the Estadio Nacional in San José standing in for the Ato Boldon Stadium in Couva, Trinidad, and Costa Rica playing the role of Trinidad and Tobago. Gregg Berhalter’s team will have to confront the ghosts of a previous generation if it is to vanquish them.If that seems a little exaggerated — given that the U.S. sits in second place, needing to win only two of its three games to qualify for the World Cup — it is because it is easy to see Berhalter and his young squad having to wait until the very last minute next week to be sure of qualification.The same is not true of Canada, which needs only one win to be sure of a first return to World Cup since 1986, and has the relative comfort blanket of the knowledge that a single point might just about do it. Nor is it the case for Mexico, which also needs two wins, but has a far kinder schedule over the next week than the Americans.The Americans’ problem is that they face three teams — Mexico and Costa Rica on the road, with a home meeting with Panama sandwiched in between — who all harbor their own ambitions of being in Qatar next winter. The U.S. failed, five years ago, when the situation was no less finely poised. A young, promising team must find a way to ensure things turn out different this time.South AmericaEcuador needs a single victory to book its place in Qatar.Martin Mejia/Associated PressOther than the sight of officials from the Brazilian health ministry striding onto the field to extract a handful of quarantine-busting Argentine players last summer, there has been precious little drama for either of South America’s great rivals. Neither Brazil nor Argentina has lost a game; both qualified for Qatar with months to spare.Beneath them, though, the tension is bubbling. Ecuador needs a single win from its remaining two games — either away at Paraguay or home to Argentina — to qualify for its fourth World Cup this century. The continent’s fourth definite slot at the finals, however, is very much still up for grabs.Uruguay is the team currently in possession of the final spot, but it has to face two direct rivals over the next week: fifth-place Peru in Montevideo, followed by a trip to sixth-place Chile. Either of those teams could usurp Diego Alonso’s Uruguay at the last hurdle. Automatic qualification may be just out of reach, but do not rule out Colombia — currently in a disappointing seventh place — staging a late surge for fifth place, and a chance at a side door to Qatar through an intercontinental playoff in June.AfricaSenegal beat Egypt to win the Africa Cup of Nations in February. Now the teams will meet again for a World Cup place.Sunday Alamba/Associated PressJürgen Klopp’s team selection offered a clear illustration of where Mohamed Salah and Sadio Mané’s priorities lie. The Liverpool manager left both players out of his team’s F.A. Cup win against Nottingham Forest last weekend; it was the only way, he said, of making sure he did not inadvertently find himself embroiled in an international scandal.Africa’s final round of qualifying is always unforgiving — five home-and-away knockout ties, with the winner going to the World Cup and the loser left with no recourse and no safety net. But fate, this time, has been almost cruel: Salah’s Egypt has been drawn to face Mané’s Senegal, a replay of February’s Cup of Nations final. One of Liverpool’s forward line is having the winter off.That is not the only appetizing tie. Two of the continent’s traditional heavyweights, Ghana and Nigeria, will face one another, as will Cameroon and Algeria, regarded as the strongest of the African sides before its disappointing display in the Cup of Nations. Morocco will be expected to make it past the Democratic Republic of Congo, while Mali must beat Tunisia to qualify for its first World Cup.AsiaJapan and Saudi Arabia have eyes on two of the final places from Asia.Eugene Hoshiko/Associated PressWith two games to play, both Iran and South Korea have already booked their spots in next week’s World Cup draw, alongside Qatar, which qualified automatically as the host nation. Saudi Arabia and Japan are best-placed to join them, with each realistically needing only one more win to seal its place at the finals.Australia still has a slender hope of overhauling one or the other, but it will need to beat Japan in Sydney on Thursday and the Saudis in Jeddah next week to avoid a playoff, most likely against the United Arab Emirates, for the right to take part in another playoff, against the fifth-place team from South America, this summer.OceaniaQatar’s big moment is still months away, but it is hosting a series of qualifiers for teams from regions like Oceania this week.Noushad Thekkayil/EPA, via ShutterstockEighteen months after it was supposed to start, Oceania’s qualifying process finally got underway in Qatar last week. New Zealand, as expected, promptly secured a place in the semifinals. Papua New Guinea and Fiji will face off on Thursday to decide who joins the All Whites in the final four.Quite who they will play in the knockout rounds remains a mystery. Both Vanuatu and the Cook Islands returned a number of positive Covid tests after arriving in Qatar and have subsequently withdrawn from the tournament. That has left the Solomon Islands and Tahiti as semifinalists by default, left to play a single match to decide their seeding for the next stage.The eventual winner of the most drawn-out qualification process on the planet will still, though, not be sure of a place in the World Cup; it will have to navigate an intercontinental playoff against whoever finishes fourth in North America to get into the field for the finals. More
