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      Bayern's Alphonso Davies Wants to Share His Story

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      The Bayern Munich star didn’t learn his own refugee story until his parents talked about it in a team video. He has come to embrace its power, and its effect on others.For a long time, Alphonso Davies knew only the outline of the story. His parents had given him the bare facts, but little more: that they had fled the bloody civil war engulfing their native Liberia; that he had been born in the refugee camp in Ghana where they sought shelter; that they had moved to Canada when he was 5.He had been too young not only to understand where he was and what his family was enduring, but also for those years to leave any imprint on him at all. His memory kicks in, he said, at age 6 or so: He remembers starting school in Windsor, Ontario, but nothing before that. His parents, Debeah and Victoria, never volunteered to fill in the gaps.“They didn’t really explain it,” Davies said. “It’s not something they talked about a lot. They didn’t really want to. It was a dark time in their history. They just wanted us to enjoy our lives in Canada, to be really happy in a safe place, where we could be whatever we wanted to be.”Davies discovered much of the detail of his own story at the same time as almost everyone else. On the day in 2017 when he was officially granted Canadian citizenship, the Vancouver Whitecaps — the club where he made his name as a 16-year-old — produced a short film, part celebration and part commemoration of his journey.It was the first time Davies had heard his parents’ firsthand account of the part of their life — and his — that he had never known. They described the decision to flee the violence stalking Liberia. They spoke about the hand-to-mouth realities of existence in Buduburam, the camp on the edge of the Ghanaian capital, Accra, where they found themselves. They talked about the hunger, the poverty, the uncertainty, the fear.“They said it was like being in a container that you can’t leave, because you don’t know what would happen to you,” he said. “It was hard to find food and water. You don’t know what’s coming the next day. My mum didn’t know how she would feed me, take care of me. She cried. They were struggling, for themselves and for me. I didn’t know any of it until they did that interview.”Davies with his parents and family members in 2018, before his final game with the Vancouver Whitecaps. A few months later, just after he turned 18, he made his debut for Bayern Munich.Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press, via Associated PressDavies was not alone in being touched by his parents’ account. He had always known he was Liberian: The gospel music that Victoria played at 7 a.m. every Sunday at their new home in Edmonton, Alberta, gave that away. He had known, too, that he had been a refugee. “It is part of my identity,” he said. “It is part of me.”But it was only after his parents’ interview that he started to realize the significance of his story. “A lot of people reach out to me on social media to say what it means to them,” he said. “I started doing interviews about it, and I got a lot of feedback. It opens your eyes. It was amazing that people were inspired by it.”Over the last couple of years, Davies has done all he can to share it. He has given interviews to Gary Lineker and the BBC about his background. Bayern Munich — the club that signed him from the Whitecaps as a 17-year-old and made him a German and European champion before he turned 20 — produced a report from Buduburam on the early years of his life.Most important, though, in the first few months of his coronavirus-imposed lockdown last year, Davies started to use his fame and his platform to become an advocate for those suffering as his family once had.For many of the 80 million or so displaced people around the planet, he said, “food and water can be hard to come by.” He continued: “It is not always possible in those conditions to social distance. Access to the vaccine is difficult. People are passing away. I wanted to tell people that they are not alone, that there are people out there who were in their shoes.”He started to lend his support to the work being done by the U.N.H.C.R., the United Nations refugee agency, the body that helped organize his family’s resettlement in Canada. This week, the organization will appoint Davies as a good-will ambassador. He hopes to use the position to raise money to renovate soccer facilities in refugee camps. He is not only the first Canadian, but also the first soccer player, to be afforded the honor.It is fitting in more ways than one. It is not just the first act of Davies’s story that makes him suitable, but the second, too. In his first few years in Canada, he struggled a little academically, partly because of a language barrier and partly, he will admit, through a lack of inclination.As a gifted athlete, though, he never found any trouble fitting in. Edmonton is Gretzky country, but he did not take to ice hockey. (His skating has improved in recent years, he said.) Instead, he played a little basketball, and emerged as a talented track runner. But soccer was his first love, his clear gift, the sport he had grown up watching with his father, a keen fan of both Chelsea and, in particular, Didier Drogba.Alphonso Davies when he was younger in Canada.Courtesy Davies Family, via UNHCRHe was — this is no surprise — the standout player on every team he joined. As such, friends came relatively easily. “Other kids saw I was good at sports, so they wanted to be my friends,” he said. Being picked first on every team is a reasonably sure shortcut to preteen popularity. “Also,” Davies said, with the air of a man keen to underline the point, “I was a cool guy.”Though Davies’s soccer talent was unusual — not everyone, after all, is gifted enough to play for Bayern Munich as a teenager — this element of his story, according to those who work with refugees and asylum seekers around the world, is much more universal. “It is hard to think of an equivalent that has the same reach or impact,” said Naomi Westland, the founder of Amnesty International’s Football Welcomes program.Though it is natural, perhaps, to cite those from a refugee or migrant background who go on to professional careers as examples and inspirations — not only Davies, but the likes of Bournemouth goalkeeper Asmir Begovic and Bologna striker Musa Juwara, too — the most valuable work, in truth, is not concerned with unearthing talent.Instead, it is helping refugees and asylum seekers to build a new life, to integrate and combat racism and prejudice, through soccer. Europe is dotted with teams dedicated to doing just that: Some of them, like the five English clubs that are part of Amnesty’s program, use the resources of the professional game to help. Others, like Liberi Nantes and Afro Napoli in Italy, are grass-roots organizations.Davies’s trophy case already includes two Bundesliga titles, two German Cups and a Champions League winners medal.Pool photo by Adam Pretty“You don’t need to be able to speak the language,” Westland said. “But playing in a team gives you a chance to forget about the stresses of being in the asylum system, a way to make friends, a chance to make connections. For people who have had to leave their homes, their countries and their lives behind, it can give you a sense of belonging, and a sense of purpose. That’s incredibly important.”Davies would not disagree. In those earliest memories of his, what mattered was not just his nascent brilliance on the field, the preternatural talent that would eventually take him far from home, to Vancouver and on to Munich, but the fact that he could use soccer as a common language and a shared interest. It was his way of “settling in,” he said. “It wasn’t a big soccer school, but there were enough kids who followed and understood.”He can still recall the endless, cyclical conversations about whether Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo was the superior player; when he first met Arjen Robben, in the changing room in Munich, he remembers being “star struck” by the sight of the man Davies was ardently convinced should have been anointed world player of the year in 2013.He still, he said, has to remind himself at times that he is actually talking to Robert Lewandowski, the guy who used to score goals for him on the FIFA video games. He did not know that is how his story would turn out at the time, of course. He did not know he would go on to be an inspiration. All he knew was that he wanted to talk about, and play, soccer. “Talking about it, being surrounded by it, that’s how you make friends,” he said. More

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      Cuban Soccer Is Stocking Up on Overseas Players. Why?

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      Cuba’s soccer team has called up a handful of players who developed outside the country’s sports system for its World Cup qualifying matches, a subtle but potentially significant shift in policy.When its campaign to qualify for the 2022 World Cup begins this week, Cuba will try an approach it has not tried in years: fielding many of its best eligible players.For years, only Cuban players who had contracts with INDER, the country’s governing body for sports, were selected to represent the national team. This month, that will change. Cuba has called in several players who are based abroad — and outside the official Cuban sports system — to play in a set of World Cup qualification matches.That means potential national team debuts for Norwich City wing Onel Hernández, the Spain-based defender Carlos Vázquez Fernández and the San Marino-based forward Joel Apezteguía. It also means a return to the national team after six years away for defender Jorge Luis Corrales.“I didn’t know if I should shout or laugh because there are a lot of conflicting feelings,” said Corrales, who currently plays in a second-tier league in the United States. “The images of many years playing with the national team and all the great moments went through my mind. I think once again participating in those moments will be one of the best experiences I’ve had since arriving here to the United States.”To outside observers, the overseas-based players fall into a category that is difficult to distinguish from Cubans who walked away from national teams during tournaments abroad or defected elsewhere. But there is an important distinction that makes all the difference to Cuban officials: All of them either left the island with their parents as children, or were given permission by the government to go abroad.Corrales, for example, was allowed to visit his father in Miami after the 2015 Gold Cup, a major regional championship, and decided to stay after he was granted a five-year visa. He has since played for several teams in Major League Soccer and the U.S.L. Championship, the second division in the United States, including for his current employer, F.C. Tulsa.Jorge Luis Corrales, left, during his days in Major League Soccer. He is hoping to make his first national team appearance in six years.John Raoux/Associated PressApezteguía is hoping to make his national team debut at age 37. He played in Cuba until he was 24 before leaving to help his father run a bar and restaurant in Spain. After years of laboring in Europe’s smaller leagues (Moldova, Albania and his current home in San Marino are highlights) and hoping to be noticed by Cuban soccer officials, the call finally came.Hernández, 28, left Cuba when he was a child to move to Germany. He started his professional career in the German second division before moving to Norwich City, which he helped earn promotion to the Premier League in 2019. That summer, he became the first Cuban to play in the Premier League. A few months later, in a match against Manchester United, he became the first Cuban to score a goal in it.Hernández had expressed interest in representing his country of birth in the past, even accepting an invitation to train with the national team, but suiting up in an official game still seemed impossible until this month.Vázquez Fernández, a 21-year-old known as CaVaFe, left for Spain with his parents when he was 3. He developed his soccer game there, rising through Atlético Madrid’s academy and training with the first team at times. He has expressed his desire to wear the Cuba jersey for years, but had no timeline in mind.“I knew this first call-up was going to come,” he said. “What I didn’t know if it was going to be sooner or later, in 2028, 2025, 2021, but I knew it was going to happen. I’ve always been positive.”What none of the players is sure about, though, is why the calls are coming now.Cuba has rarely been competitive against regional powers like the United States. It is currently ranked 180th by FIFA, just behind Chad and Puerto Rico, and just above Liechtenstein and Macau.Scott Taetsch/Getty ImagesHernández has had regular contact with Cuba’s manager, Pablo Elier Sánchez, including video chats to get up to speed on the team’s tactics. He and the other players said they felt Sánchez and a handful of other officials had facilitated their call-ups by working for several years to convince soccer and government officials to bring them into the fold.Sánchez addressed the new faces in a brief airport interview upon arrival in Guatemala on Sunday, saying they would “undoubtedly” strengthen his team.“They’re players who are playing in important leagues, first-class leagues in the world,” he said. “They’re going to bring a lot when it comes to the results the team can get.”Cuba has offered no official explanation for its sudden openness to players from outside the national sports system, or if the success of these initial steps might usher in an openness to a prospect that has to date been unthinkable: reinforcing Cuban sports teams with the defectors who represent the elite of the Cuban sporting diaspora, not just soccer players like Osvaldo Alonso and Maikel Chang but potentially baseball stars like José Abreu and Yuli Gurriel.Messages left with Sánchez, federation officials and INDER were not returned.The players are hoping they can make a difference. Apezteguía said it had been difficult to watch Cuba’s national team, ranked 180 of 210 FIFA members, and know he could raise its level of play.“It bothers you a bit because you feel a bit powerless,” he said. “You’re watching it on TV without being able to help or represent your country, fight and give everything on the field. Now that this opportunity is here, we have to think about the present and about this chance we’ve been given.”Cuba’s dream is to see its name called at a World Cup draw again. It has played in only one, in 1938.Kurt Schorrer/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesCuba plays both of its first qualification matches in Guatemala, playing the hosts on Wednesday and Curaçao, the favorite to advance to the next round, four days later. But these games could lay the groundwork for a larger Cuban goal: a run at qualifying for an expanded 48-team World Cup in North America in 2026.Even without a concrete answer about the timing of the decision, Cuba’s reinforcements are optimistic this will be a first step toward the nation’s realizing its potential, especially if Cuba-based players are increasingly allowed to go abroad to try their luck in the world’s best leagues.“We have so many kids in Cuba that love football, and they want to live the dream that I lived,” Hernández said. More

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      Rooting for Your Home Team in Person? Here’s What You Need to Know.

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      This spring, big-league games are luring fans to stadiums and arenas. Expect varying levels of mask-wearing, social distancing and pregame testing.From strict testing, masking and physical-distancing protocols in New York and California, to a full 40,000-seat stadium with almost no coronavirus restrictions outside Dallas.These are the widely varying conditions sports fans can expect as large-scale spectatorship returns to big-league stadiums and arenas this spring. Americans are still getting infected with the coronavirus each day, and hospitalizations and deaths continue to add to the virus’s ghastly toll — but even the most Covid-weary cannot deny the life-affirming joy of root-root-rooting for the home team.The question is, should you be rooting in person?“The devil’s always in the details,” said Dr. Thomas A. Russo, chief of infectious medicine at the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at the University at Buffalo. But when masking and distance standards are closely enforced, “the risk is going to be low,” he said.Fans were present on a very limited basis for some games at the end of last baseball season and in the N.F.L. season that concluded last month, and more recently for some N.B.A. and N.H.L. games. As of Friday, there have been no reports of community spread, but an argument can be made for waiting a bit before applying the face paint and heading out.“We’re still going to have a moderate community burden of disease for another six to eight weeks,” Dr. Russo said. “After that, as we’re working on the vaccinations, I expect it to lighten. So baseball in July may be very comfortable,” he continued, “whereas Opening Day may be less so.”This spring, the spectator policies of big-league baseball, soccer, hockey and basketball teams in the United States are governed primarily by the Covid-19 regulations of the 27 states where they are located, and the District of Columbia. The N.H.L. has extensive protocols for players, fans and buildings, and “none are independent of local, state, provincial or federal guidelines,” said John Dellapina, the league’s senior vice president of communications.But that leads to wide variations in how many are able to watch a game at the stadium or arena — and the lengths to which they must go to get in. The best thing for prospective spectators to do is check on their favorite team’s website and see what they need to do for a ticket.In New York, regulations currently allow 10 percent capacity at indoor sports venues — that translates to roughly 2,000 fans at Madison Square Garden for Knicks and Rangers games, 1,300 Islanders fans at Nassau Coliseum and 1,800 Nets fans at the Barclays Center — and 20 percent at outdoor venues.Those fans must present evidence of a negative virus test taken within 72 hours of the game (at a cost of $60 or more); have that test result linked to their ID via an app, like the tech company Clear’s digital health pass or New York State’s Excelsior Pass; complete a health survey before entry; submit to a temperature check; and, once inside, wear a mask except when eating or drinking.Outdoors, the same entry procedures will be in place, but with 20 percent capacity, when fans return to Yankee Stadium on Opening Day, April 1, and to Citi Field for the Mets home opener on April 8. (Both teams also say they will accept proof of full vaccination.) Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced the doubling of capacity for outdoor stadiums on Thursday, which means the Yankees can host almost 11,000 fans and the Mets about 8,400.That will also hold true for the Toronto Blue Jays, who are likely to play home games in Buffalo’s intimate Sahlen Field starting in May or June if the U.S.-Canada border remains closed. At Sahlen, 20 percent capacity translates to about 3,300 fans.Limited tickets and lots of social distancingOf course, all of this is dependent on scoring a ticket. Season-ticket holders get first crack at seats, so resale sites are the best bet for the casual fan.For some teams those secondary prices will be steep, given the limited supply, like the $260 nosebleed seat listed on Thursday for Islanders-Rangers at the Coliseum April 11. The cheapest resale price for a Red Sox-Orioles Opening Day ticket at Fenway Park (12 percent capacity) was put at $344. Currently, resale sites don’t even list tickets for Yankee Stadium or Citi Field until June.Baseball fans kept their distance from each other during the game between the New York Yankees and the Pittsburgh Pirates at George M. Steinbrenner Field in Tampa, Fla., on March 13.Eve Edelheit for The New York TimesNew Jersey is allowing 10 percent capacity at Devils games indoors in Newark (about 1,800 fans), and 15 percent capacity for Red Bulls games outdoors in Harrison (about 3,750) when the Major League Soccer season starts on April 17. But unlike New York, no negative Covid-19 test is required. “If you buy tickets together, you can sit together, but otherwise, we have to spread apart,” said Gov. Phil Murphy of New Jersey.Sports and health officials use algorithms to determine what percentage of capacity allows for six feet of spacing. For most arenas, that figure is 20 to 25 percent, so the Devils are well below that threshold.In California, a color-coded system determined by local infection rates determines restrictions. Until recently, Los Angeles County was in the strictest purple tier, which would have restricted attendance to 100 fans at LA Galaxy and LAFC soccer games and Dodgers baseball games.But the county has since moved to the red tier, which allows 20 percent capacity at sports venues. So when the Dodgers play their home opener on April 9, as many as 11,200 fans will be on hand at Dodger Stadium. Orange County also moved to red, which will enable 9,000 fans to turn out at Angel Stadium. So did San Diego County, giving the OK for 10,000 Padres fans at Petco Park.And so it goes in a checkerboard manner across the country. The Colorado Rockies can fill their ballpark to just over 42 percent of capacity, or 21,000 fans who must wear proper masks. In Missouri, the St. Louis Cardinals can fill up to 32 percent of their stadium, and in Pennsylvania, the Philadelphia Phillies and Pittsburgh Pirates can fill 20 percent. But in Michigan, current regulations mandate that the Detroit Tigers admit only 1,000 fans, though the team says that figure could be increased.In Oregon, state officials have not yet cleared the Portland Timbers men’s and Portland Thorns women’s soccer teams to allow fans into Providence Park. That’s also true for 13 N.B.A. basketball teams, though that number could shrink in the coming days.Indeed, the N.B.A. has perhaps the most uniform leaguewide policy regarding Covid protocols. In the 17 arenas that currently admit fans, none are allowed to sit courtside and must be at least 15 feet behind team benches. Fans with seats within 30 feet of the court must present a negative Covid-19 test within 48 hours of game time or pass a rapid test on-site, and they are prohibited from eating.The N.H.L. has also made rink-side adjustments after a few early-season outbreaks among players and officials in closed-door games. The plexiglass panels were removed from behind the team benches and the penalty boxes to promote air circulation. And at 18 of the 24 U.S. rinks that now or will soon allow attendance, fans are prohibited from sitting behind the benches and penalty boxes or along the glass.And then there’s Texas…Then there’s the Lone Star state, where Gov. Greg Abbott recently removed all Covid-19 restrictions.The Texas Rangers took that as their cue to allow full capacity, all 40,518 seats, for the first three games at their new retractable-roof baseball stadium in Arlington — the first team in North America to do so. There will be no protocols beyond a mask-wearing rule at those two exhibition games on March 29 and 30 and the season opener on April 5. Subsequent games will be at less-than-full but still undetermined capacity.Dr. Catherine Troisi, an infectious disease epidemiologist at UTHealth School of Public Health in Houston, said she would not recommend attending those first three games in Arlington.“Will people keep their masks on, will they be drinking alcohol, will they be shouting, will the roof be open or closed?” she said. “There are so many risk factors. Even if you’re fully immunized, I’d advise against going.”However, another Dallas team is showing more restraint. The N.B.A. Mavericks will continue to cap their attendance at about 25 percent capacity and require fans to complete a health questionnaire. “Nothing will change,” the Mavericks owner, Mark Cuban, said.Golf fans, buoyed by the principle that outdoors is better when it comes to the coronavirus, are returning to PGA Tour events. Some 10,000 were expected for this weekend’s Honda Classic in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. That’s 20 percent of maximum capacity.But if it still seems like a lot of people on a golf course, don’t worry. The PGA Tour website reminds all spectators to make sure their temperature is under 100.4 degrees before they arrive and to maintain six-foot distancing.And, as a final reassurance for those who simply must get out and watch a tournament in person, the PGA warns that “no autographs, fist bumps or selfies are permitted with players.”Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. And sign up for our weekly Travel Dispatch newsletter to receive expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation. More

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      Hazard, Griezmann and the Summers We Won't See Again

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      The 2019 signings of Eden Hazard (by Real Madrid) and Antoine Griezmann (by Barcelona) already feel like they’re from another era. It’s one that might be gone for good.All was right with the world. There were 50,000 or so Real Madrid fans packed into the Santiago Bernabéu, all there to catch a glimpse of the latest gift bestowed upon them by Florentino Pérez, their club’s president. Out on the field, Eden Hazard was juggling a ball from one foot to another as the cameras flashed and the crowd cooed its approval.The ritual of presenting a new signing to the public like this — a tradition not unique to, but certainly pioneered and popularized by, Real Madrid — is one of those familiar, unquestioned parts of soccer’s landscape that grows more curious the more you examine it.What is the appeal of seeing someone stand on a field? What is that simple juggling exhibition meant to demonstrate? That the player is real? That the asset a club has paid hundreds of millions of dollars to acquire because of his proven ability with a soccer ball can — yes, look, you can see for yourself — control one?The answer, of course, is power. Those showcases — particularly those held at the Bernabéu or Barcelona’s Camp Nou — were designed to send a message. One is for the fans in attendance: a conspicuous display of the largess and wealth and general virility of the owner who acquired the player now performing tricks on demand out on the field.And the other is broadcast to the world outside, a declaration of status. The sight of Hazard — like Kaká and Karim Benzema and Cristiano Ronaldo and all the others before them — on the field at the Bernabéu was intended to show to soccer as a whole that this place, this club, sat at the very summit of the sport’s global pyramid. Hazard had been the best player in the Premier League for some years. And now he was here, because everything else is, at root, nothing more than audition for a place on this stage, the inevitable destination for greatness.Hazard’s presentation was only two summers ago, and yet, in hindsight, much about the scene — beyond the fact that 50,000 people gathering in the same place is a strange, uneasy and, in a substantial portion of the world, currently illegal concept — seems to belong to another life.Hazard’s time at Real Madrid has been bitterly disappointing. This week, the club confirmed that he had sustained yet another muscle injury — he seems, and this is not an attempt to make light of his travails, to be injuring muscles he probably did not know he had — and faces another few weeks on the sidelines.Since that day when the Bernabéu thrilled at the mere sight of him, he has played only 36 times, across two seasons. Hazard had dreamed of joining Real Madrid to work under his idol, Zinedine Zidane, but he has scarcely been able to play for him. He has scored only three goals in La Liga.His story is, deep down, a sorrowful one. It feels somehow uncomfortable to describe his transfer as a failure, or his Real Madrid career as a letdown, when he has been so assailed by injury.Soccer is a cutthroat sort of business, though, and so the conclusion and the impression are inevitable: At 30, it appears that Hazard has been betrayed by his body, which has been ravaged by more than a decade at the very pinnacle of the game. Real Madrid has had to get used to life without him; his presence, rather than his absence, is now the noteworthy event. The days when he was mentioned as a peer of Neymar and Kevin De Bruyne, in that cohort of players who seemed destined to inherit the mantle of Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, are far gone. His time has passed.Hazard’s time in Madrid has been characterized by more injuries than goals.Rodrigo Jimenez/EPA, via ShutterstockNot quite a month after Hazard was wheeled out at the Bernabéu, Barcelona — as it always must — responded in kind, forcing Antoine Griezmann to prove that he, too, could juggle a ball, before going one better and asking him to pass it around with a few children.Griezmann, like Hazard, was 28. Griezmann, like Hazard, had cost more than $130 million. Griezmann, like Hazard, saw his move to one of Spain’s Big Two as the culmination of his career. “My Dad always told me that sometimes a train only comes once,” he said after his presentation. This was not a train he could afford to miss.And Griezmann’s star, like Hazard’s, has waned since that day. He has played — and scored — far more frequently. His injury record is infinitely better. He is closing in on 100 appearances for Barcelona and has managed 28 goals.It is a respectable, but hardly spectacular, return for a player who was hired to solve Barcelona’s on-field problems but whose transfer stands now as a cipher for its off-field troubles: Griezmann was not just exorbitantly expensive; he was indicative of the club’s failure to think in the long term, to invest wisely, to place what it might need tomorrow ahead of what it wanted today.The two Spanish giants were not the only clubs that were guilty of that sort of thinking at the time. Juventus had spent heavily in previous seasons on Gonzalo Higuaín and Cristiano Ronaldo, players whose moves were predicated on the idea of their delivering immediate success. For much the same reason, Manchester United had agreed to pay Alexis Sánchez an eye-watering sum of money to join from Arsenal.Antoine Griezmann with the man who brought him to Barcelona, Josep Maria Bartomeu.Emilio Morenatti/Associated PressAll of those deals now seem to belong to another era. It is unthinkable, as soccer comes to terms with the long-term economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic, that clubs would invest so heavily in players already at — or in some cases beyond — their peaks.Even before last March, though, the sport was moving away from these grand, short-term statement signings. Most clubs had started to consider things like resale price before committing funds on transfers. Where clubs still decided to spend heavily, it was generally on players under the age of 24, those who might yet appreciate in value.In that light, those two days in 2019 represent not only the passing of a moment — the final two deals from another age — but a warning from history. Both stand as proof of why it is wiser to invest in youth, of the rectitude of the approach that favors the future over the now. Proven talent comes not only at a financial cost but at considerable risk.And so, now, Real Madrid has no choice but to hope that Hazard can recover his fitness and then his form. Barcelona must rebuild itself around Griezmann’s onerous contract or accept a sizable financial hit by selling him at a discount — if it can find a buyer. In the meantime, both clubs can only watch as soccer’s center of power shifts inexorably away from them, to Manchester and Munich, in particular, and to Paris and Liverpool and London, to the clubs where players used to hold their auditions, to the places where they thought about tomorrow, while they were glorying in today.A Merger That Makes SensePlaying in a league with Belgium’s top clubs can only help PSV Eindhoven and Feyenoord improve. The reverse is true, too.Maurice Van Steen/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAnd just in the nick of time, along comes a faintly revolutionary idea — albeit one that has been whispered for some time — for the sort of change that might actually benefit soccer. As detailed in this newsletter last week, the sport has no dearth of ideas at this point. It is good ideas that have been sadly lacking.Kudos, then, to the clubs of the Belgian Pro League, which on Tuesday unanimously backed an agreement in principle to merge with the league next door, the Dutch Eredivisie. Assuming the Dutch are as open-minded, the new competition — the BeNeLiga, or some such — would most likely start in 2025, when the current television deals for both existing competitions expire.This seems, on the surface, an obvious win. Independently, neither league can possibly hope to command the sort of broadcast rights that Europe’s big five domestic championships do. Together, they are a more attractive proposition: a combined market of more than 28 million people, with a roster of clubs that would include Ajax, PSV Eindhoven, Feyenoord, AZ Alkmaar, Anderlecht, Club Brugge, Standard Liege, K.R.C. Genk and K.A.A. Gent, among others. The league would feature some of Europe’s brightest young talent.The clubs themselves believe the unified league could earn an annual $476 million in television and marketing deals — not a patch on what Serie A or La Liga makes each year, but more than double what the leagues currently bring in on their own.There are, of course, valid questions here, and potential victims, too. What happens to those clubs that are locked out of the combined league? How much of that newfound wealth will flow down to clubs outside the top flight? Will there be a promotion and relegation system to allow a way back to the respective national divisions, to maintain the integrity of those lower-tier competitions?None of those questions, though, should prevent this idea’s being explored further. There are two ways to alter the dominance of the big five leagues — both in a financial and a sporting sense — and to make European soccer a more level playing field.One is to reduce the power of the elite — a valid, but inherently utopian, idea. The other is to increase the power of those locked out by the status quo. They might be heresy to tradition, but cross-border leagues are the first, most immediately apparent, route to doing precisely that.Mr. ZeroThomas Tuchel has started his rebuilding of Chelsea at the back.Pool photo by Mike HewittIt has been 13 games since Thomas Tuchel replaced Frank Lampard as Chelsea’s manager. In those 13 games — a run that has included two meetings with Atlético Madrid and encounters with Manchester United, Tottenham and Everton, as well as the admittedly guaranteed three points that now come to anyone traveling to Anfield — Chelsea has conceded two goals.One of those was a freakish, and hilarious, own goal from Antonio Rüdiger at Sheffield United, which makes Takumi Minamino the only opposition player to have scored against Tuchel’s Chelsea in almost two months.This is not, of course, necessarily what Tuchel was hired to do. In time, he will be expected to turn Chelsea into a slick, adventurous attacking team, playing the sort of cutting-edge high-pressing style that is now de rigueur among Europe’s elite. But, for now, it is a more than useful trick.Manchester City is running away with the Premier League, in part, because of the obduracy of its defense. It is too late for Chelsea to derail that particular juggernaut — though it has the air of the most likely challenger next season — but defensive improvement makes Tuchel’s team a clear and present threat in the Champions League.Friday’s draw only served to strengthen that perception. Chelsea’s quarterfinal pairing with F.C. Porto will not, most likely, be festooned with goals, but it offers Tuchel and his team a smooth path to the semifinals. There, Chelsea would encounter either a Real Madrid that is a shadow of its former self, or a Liverpool team that has collapsed since Christmas. On the other side of the draw, Bayern Munich, Paris St.-Germain and Manchester City will be busy eliminating each other.As recently as January, Chelsea looked like nothing more than makeweights in the Champions League. All of a sudden, though, Tuchel has turned the club into a credible contender to win it. That he has done so with precisely the same resources Lampard had reflects well on him, and poorly on his predecessor.It also rather neatly encapsulates the value of a truly elite manager.CorrespondenceLet’s get this over with: It turns out that the crossover between “Readers of This Newsletter” and “People Who Like Ballet” is greater than I was expecting. “Ballet leaves you cold?” Charlie Henley asked, incredulously, echoing the sentiments of several others. “Have you seen ABT or the Royal Ballet perform ‘Romeo and Juliet’? All by itself, Prokofiev’s score covers the entire landscape of human emotions. The dancers put faces to those emotions, and their movement and bodies are wonders to behold.”I can only apologize for my lack of sophistication. If it’s any consolation, I understand the skill involved. I appreciate that it is, clearly, something of great beauty. But there is, alas, no accounting for taste. And that’s before we even get on to my views on Shakespeare.Lazio tried everything to stay in the Champions League, but Bayern Munich showed it the door anyway.Matthias Schrader/Associated PressOn much more comfortable ground, James Armstrong wonders if the Champions League might be improved by “eliminating the league part.”“You play 96 games in the group phase to eliminate 16 teams,” James notes. “In the old European Cup, you played 32 games to eliminate 16 teams. When each pair of games is an elimination pair, excitement is raised.”For a long time, I’ve found this argument unconvincing. The straight knockout format of the old European Cup has a pared-back, unadulterated simplicity, of course, but it also emphasized the random a little too much. The nostalgia it inspires is, I have always thought, a little deceptive. Do you really want Manchester United and Real Madrid meeting in the first round?In the last couple of weeks, though, I’ve started to soften. As Jonathan Wilson wrote in The Observer last week, Andrea Agnelli and those who pull his strings seem to have fundamentally misunderstood what we, as fans, want from games: not endless showpiece encounters between famous clubs, but genuine jeopardy. That is what lifts a fixture from mundane to compelling, whoever is involved: when there is something riding on it. Look at the success of the Nations League for proof.There are enough glamorous teams that the latter stages would still feel heavyweight even if a couple fell by the wayside early on; the idea of an Olympiacos or a Zenit St. Petersburg or a Benfica reaching the semifinals would enliven a tournament, rather than detract from it. Still, it will never happen, so to an extent the whole idea is moot anyway.And in the regular correspondence slot that I may start calling “Good Idea, I Agree,” we have Steve Marron. “Why does the attacking team have to wait until the defenders are ready before they can take a free kick? The defending team conceded the free kick, usually to stop an immediate threat, so why give them all the time in the world to regroup, set up a wall, lie someone on the ground behind it, get a handle on the player they are supposed to mark?”In theory, they don’t — the referee can give permission to the attacking team to take the free kick quickly — but most often, that is precisely how it works, and it probably should not. More

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      P.S.G. Robberies Cast Light on Soccer's Security Problem

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      A string of robberies at the homes of soccer stars has cast a spotlight on the wealthy athlete’s newest luxury items: protection dogs, private guards and even panic rooms.Ángel Di María got the news as soon as he stepped off the field. Pulling him in the middle of a tie game appeared to make little sense, but Paris St.-Germain’s coach quickly provided an explanation: Di María’s wife had called the team’s security officer. He needed to get home immediately. His family’s house had just been robbed.His teammate Marquinhos received a similar message almost as soon as Sunday’s game ended: A property he had bought for his parents outside the city also had been targeted by intruders, and his father had been involved in a physical altercation with the robbers.A third P.S.G. player, striker Mauro Icardi, would have understood the emotions each player was feeling: Less than two months ago, Icardi’s home was ransacked while he was away at a game. That day, according to news media reports, the thieves left with designer clothing, jewelry and watches worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.The millionaire stars of P.S.G., though, are not the only soccer players being targeted by criminals for whom matches have increasingly become lucrative opportunities. In recent years, sophisticated operators have mined published match schedules and social media postings almost as a guidebook in their schemes to pilfer the trappings of fame and wealth belonging to some of soccer’s biggest names.For years, gangs in England have targeted the manicured neighborhoods and luxury high-rises that are home to the stars of clubs like Manchester United and Liverpool. Last May, Manchester City’s Riyad Mahrez told the police he had lost items worth hundreds of thousands of dollars when his apartment was raided. Only weeks earlier, the Tottenham Hotspur star Dele Alli revealed that he had been roughed up by robbers inside his London home.But as the latest P.S.G. cases showed, home invasions are not only a Premier League problem. In Spain, the police broke up a crime ring that they said had targeted the homes of players from clubs like Real Madrid and Barcelona. In Italy, the American midfielder Weston McKennie told ESPN that he had designer clothes and other items stolen while he played for Juventus in a cup match.The Spanish police broke up a criminal gang that had targeted the homes of players in 2019.Nacho Izquierdo/EPA, via ShutterstockWith similar home invasions becoming more common — Everton goalkeeper Robin Olsen reportedly was robbed by masked intruders wielding machetes earlier this month — rich athletes are increasingly expanding their lists of must-have luxury items to include not only expensive jewelry and the latest electronics but also fearsome dogs, private guards and even panic rooms. “It’s a problem here for footballers because everyone knows where they will be,” said Paul Weldon, the managing director of The Panic Room Company, an English firm that now counts several Premier League stars among its high-net-worth clients.“It’s become normal,” Weldon said of the safe rooms his company manufactures and installs. “When a client is going to build or restore a property it’s on a tick list: sauna, swimming pool, four-car garage, bowling alley and a panic room.”Weldon said his company also can retrofit safe rooms into existing properties; typical locations include walk-in closets and utility spaces. Prices start from around $50,000 but can rise to as much as $1 million, depending on the requirements of his clients. The most expensive panic room Weldon’s company had been asked to supply, he said, included multiple generators, air conditioning units and protection from biological and chemical attacks. The room would be able to sustain life for more than a month, he said.Other players have taken a more warm-blooded approach. Months after Tottenham’s Alli was robbed of watches and other items by knife-wielding attackers, he was photographed walking a Doberman guard dog he had purchased after the robbery.Dogs like Alli’s are so commonplace among soccer stars that Richard Douglas, the co-founder of a company, Chaperone K9, that trains protection dogs, said his business now can count at least one client at every Premier League club.The company’s website is filled — perhaps not accidentally — by photos of current and former Premier League stars posing with their specially trained dogs. Manchester City forward Raheem Sterling and Aston Villa defender Tyrone Mings acquired their Rottweilers through the company, and the West Ham captain Mark Noble posed for a photo on a bench between his two large shepherds. He loved the first one so much, Noble said, that he bought a second.Douglas said his family-run business has flourished since it made its first sale in 2011, to the former West Ham and Fulham striker Bobby Zamora. “Our market is tailored more to footballers because they come straight from friends who are also footballers,” Douglas said. “The trust in that little circle is benefit for us.”A typical guard dog takes as long as two years to train from the time it is a puppy, and the service is often extremely personal. Douglas said that he only deals directly with players and their families; emissaries like agents are told that they cannot buy dogs on behalf of their clients.“We need to know the level of understanding of dogs, their strength of character, what breed they can keep up with,” Douglas said. He tells clients, “I have to meet you to prepare the dog for you.”Prices for highly trained protection dogs often start at around $50,000 and increase depending on the dog’s pedigree and lineage. (Some players, ever competitive, now angle to have the best in class.) And while Douglas declined to provide specific details, he said there had been several examples when the dogs have proved their value.“It’s just done what it’s supposed to do,” he said. “We’ve had a lot of dogs bite and others warn people off.”“If an armed gang arrives with bats and machetes,” Douglas added, “you’re going to need a next level of dog that doesn’t fear that kind of aggression but runs toward it.”In Paris, police and club officials were still trying to piece together what happened last Sunday night. Contrary to initial news reports, Di María’s wife was not attacked by the thieves, and only noticed a theft from the family safe after they had gone, according to a person with knowledge of the investigation. Frightened, she immediately contacted a club official, who raised the alarm with P.S.G.’s head of security.That led to a call — caught on video — to the team’s sporting director, who shouted down from the stands to Coach Mauricio Pochettino. He quickly agreed to remove Di María from the game.Like all of the club’s players, Di María would have received a security briefing, including a site visit to his home and advice about security measures, when he joined P.S.G. But the club typically leaves decisions on additional security measures to the players and their families; its biggest stars, Neymar and Kylian Mbappé, employ private personal security teams.Jonathan Barnett, a leading soccer agent whose client roster includes Dele Alli’s Tottenham teammate Gareth Bale, said some of the athletes he represents do the same after they have been victims of burglaries.“The top guys have their own security, especially when they’re away from their wives and families,” Barnett said.The Tottenham star Dele Alli was assaulted by robbers who broke into his London home last year.Alex Livesey/Pool, via ReutersStill, in the wake of the most recent robberies, P.S.G.’s management has decided, at least in the short term, to provide extra security around the properties of first-team players whenever the club plays. A club spokesman declined to answer questions about the measures or the robberies, saying the team does not comment on security matters.But its decision will be similar to those already made by several top Premier League teams, who are well aware that their player’s movements are increasingly documented in real time on social media platforms, including when they are staying in hotels, arriving at training session or traveling to games.As well as routine patrols around players homes, an official at a top English team said, most top clubs now invest significant sums of money in hiring in-house security experts to provide advice.“We have learned the corrosive impact these kind of things can have on players, particularly recent recruits,” said the Premier League team official, who asked not to be named because they were not authorized to speak publicly about team security. “It can really unsettle a player, and then they will have family members saying they don’t want to be here.” More

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      El cohetero de la Real Sociedad mantiene viva la tradición

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      En cuanto el balón cruza la línea de meta, Juan Iturralde se pone de pie. Corre al interior de su palco, dirigiéndose a la puerta. Solo se detiene brevemente, para arrebatar dos cohetes de una bolsa de plástico colocada con cuidado, y deliberadamente, en su camino. Su ubicación es estratégica: Iturralde está, fundamentalmente, en el negocio de las noticias, y cada segundo cuenta.Salta, tan rápido como se lo permiten sus rodillas, baja dos tramos de escaleras agarrando los fuegos artificiales. Luego atraviesa corriendo la Puerta 18 en el Reale Arena, sede de la Real Sociedad de fútbol español, y sale a la calle. Comprueba que los alrededores están despejados, mete el primero de sus dos cohetes en un lanzador de mano y da la noticia en el cielo nocturno de San Sebastián.Esta vez, es una historia alegre. Cuando el primer cohete resuena sobre su cabeza, Iturralde lanza otro y una lluvia de chispas cae a sus pies, luego, una nube de cordita se esparce a su alrededor. En la ciudad todos saben lo que significa ese código. More

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      The Rocketman of Real Sociedad Is Still Breaking News

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      As soon as the ball crosses the line, Juan Iturralde is on his feet. He darts back inside his suite, heading for the door. He pauses only briefly, to snatch two bottle rockets from a plastic bag placed carefully, deliberately, in his path. Its location is strategic: Iturralde is, essentially, in the news business, and every second counts.He bounds — as fast as his knees will allow — down two flights of stairs, clasping the fireworks by their stalks. He sprints out of Gate 18 at the Reale Arena, home of the Spanish soccer team Real Sociedad, and onto the street outside. He checks that the coast is clear, slips the first of his two rockets into his hand-held launcher, and breaks his story across San Sebastián’s night sky.His news, this time, is good. As the first rocket shrieks above his head, Iturralde sets off another, another shower of sparks falling at his feet, another cloud of cordite writhing around his sleeve. Everyone in the city knows how to crack the code. More

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      Inter Milan Is Threatened by Challenges at Suning, Its Chinese Owner

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      The storied Italian soccer club’s Chinese owners spent heavily on big stars, and now the it is winning again. But the bill is coming due, putting the team’s future in doubt.HONG KONG — The new, high-rolling Chinese owner was supposed to return Inter Milan to its glory days. It spent heavily on prolific scorers like Romelu Lukaku and Christian Eriksen. After five years of investment, the storied Milan soccer club is within striking distance of its first Italian league title in a decade.Now the bill has come due — and Inter Milan’s future is suddenly in doubt.Suning, an electronics retailer that is the club’s majority owner, is strapped for cash and trying to sell its stake. The club is bleeding money. Some of its players have agreed to defer payment, according to one person close to the club who requested anonymity because the information isn’t public.Inter Milan has held talks with at least one potential investor, but the parties couldn’t agree on a price, according to others with knowledge of the negotiations.Suning’s soccer aspirations are crumbling at home, too. The company abruptly shut down its domestic team four months after the club won China’s national championship. Some stars, many of whom chose to play there instead of in Chelsea or Liverpool, have said they have gone unpaid.China has failed in its dream of becoming a global player in the world’s most popular sport. Spurred in part by the ambitions of Xi Jinping, China’s top leader and an ardent soccer fan, a new breed of Chinese tycoons plowed billions of dollars into marquee clubs and star players, transforming the economics of the game. Chinese investors spent $1.8 billion acquiring stakes in more than a dozen European teams between 2015 and 2017, and China’s cash-soaked domestic league paid the largest salaries ever bestowed on overseas recruits.But the splurge exposed international soccer to the peculiarities of the Chinese business world. Deep involvement by the Communist Party make companies vulnerable to sharp shifts in the political winds. The free-spending tycoons often lacked international experience or sophistication.Now, talks of defaults, fire sales and hasty exits dominate discussions around boardroom tables. A mining magnate lost control of A.C. Milan amid questions about his business empire. The owner of a soap maker and food additive company gave up his stake in Aston Villa. An energy conglomerate shed its stake in Slavia Prague after its founder disappeared.Suning’s plight reflects “the whole rise and fall of this era of Chinese football,” said Zhe Ji, the director of Red Lantern, a sports marketing company that works in China for top European soccer teams. “When people were talking about Chinese football and all the attention it got in 2016, it came very fast, but it’s gone very fast, too.”Suning paid $306 million in 2016 for a major stake in Inter Milan. Suning is a household name in China, with stores stocked with computers, iPads and rice cookers for the country’s growing middle class. While it has been hurt by China’s e-commerce revolution, it counts Alibaba, the online shopping titan, as a major investor.On a brightly lit stage to announce the Inter Milan deal, Zhang Jindong, Suning’s billionaire founder and chairman, raised a champagne glass and talked about how the famous Italian team — which has won 18 championships since 1910 but none since 2010 — would help his brand internationally and contribute to China’s sports industry.Boasting about Suning’s “abundant resources,” Mr. Zhang promised the club would “return to its glory days and become a stronger property able to attract top stars from across the globe.”Zhang Jindong, right, Suning’s chairman and founder, with his son, Steven Zhang, at a match in Italy in 2017. Suning put Inter Milan’s stars  to work selling air-conditioners and washing machines.Claudio Villa – Inter/FC Internazionale via Getty ImagesUnder the leadership of Mr. Zhang’s son, Steven Zhang, now 29, the club spent more than $300 million on stars like Lukaku, Eriksen and Lautaro Martínez, an Argentine forward nicknamed The Bull for his relentless pursuit of goals.Suning also agreed to pay $700 million to England’s Premier League for the rights to broadcast games in China beginning in 2019, stunning the industry.Suning lavished money on a domestic club that it bought in 2015. It spent $32 million to acquire Ramires, a Brazilian midfielder, from Chelsea, and 50 million euros for Alex Teixeira, a young Brazilian attacker, who chose the Chinese team over Liverpool, one of soccer’s most popular franchises.The recruits were put to work selling air-conditioners and washing machines. In one advertisement, Mr. Teixeira urged viewers to buy a Chinese brand of appliances. “I am Teixeira,” he says in Mandarin, adding, “come to Suning to buy Haier.”The money, said Mubarak Wakaso, a Ghanaian midfielder, helped make China attractive. “The money that I’m going to make in China is far better than La Liga,” he said in a mix of Twi and English in an interview last year, citing the league in Spain where he once played. “I’m not telling lies.”Suning’s soccer bets were badly timed. The Chinese government began to worry that big conglomerates were borrowing too heavily, threatening the country’s financial system. One year after the Inter Milan deal, Chinese state media criticized Suning for its “irrational” acquisition.Then the pandemic hit. Even as Inter Milan won on the field, it lost gate receipts from its San Siro stadium, one of the largest in Europe. Some sponsors walked away because their own financial pressures. The club lost about $120 million last year, one of the biggest losses reported by a European soccer club.Back in China, Suning was slammed by e-commerce as well as the coronavirus. Its troubles accelerated in the autumn when it chose not to demand repayment of a $3 billion investment in Evergrande, a property developer and China’s most indebted company.Suning’s burden is set to get heavier. This year, it must make $1.2 billion in bond payments. The company declined to comment.Suning began to take drastic steps. Last year it abandoned its broadcasting deal with the Premier League.Jiangsu Suning players celebrate winning the Chinese Super League football championship last year. The team was shut down four months after the win.Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThen, in February, it shut down its domestic team, Jiangsu Suning, nearly four months after the team won China’s Super League title against an Evergrande-controlled team. At least one of the team’s foreign recruits has hired lawyers to help recoup unpaid salary, according to a person involved in the matter.One former Suning player, Eder, a Brazilian-born star forward, set the soccer world buzzing after media reports quoted him saying Suning had not paid him. On Twitter, Eder said the comments had been taken from a private, online chat without his permission. His agent did not respond to requests for comment.To save itself, Suning took a step that could complicate Inter Milan’s fortunes. On March 1, it sold $2.3 billion worth of its shares to affiliates of the government of the Chinese city of Shenzhen. The deal gave Chinese authorities a say in Inter Milan’s fate.Greater financial pressure looms for Inter Milan. It must pay out a $360 million bond next year. A minority investor in Hong Kong, Lion Rock Capital, which acquired a 31 percent stake in Inter in 2019, could exercise an option that would require Suning to buy its stake for as much as $215 million, according to one of the people close to the club.Inter Milan officials are looking for financing, a new partner or a sale of the team at a valuation of about $1.1 billion, the person said.The club until recently was in exclusive talks with BC Partners, the British private equity firm, but they were unable to agree on price, said people with knowledge of the talks.Without fresh capital, Inter Milan could lose players. If it can’t pay salaries or transfer fees for departing players, European soccer rules say it could be banished from top competitions.“We are concerned but we are not frightened yet about this situation — we are just waiting for the news,” said Manuel Corti, a member of an Inter Milan supporters club based in London.“Being Inter fans,” he said, “we are never sure of anything until the last minute.”Alexandra Stevenson More