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      Manchester United Stops Manchester City but Not Its Destiny

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyOn SoccerManchester United Slows City’s March, but Only for a DayA rivalry victory may only prove a speed bump in the Premier League title. But European rivals will see hope in a blow to City’s rhythm.Manchester United’s celebrations started early on Sunday. City’s, presumably, are still to come.Credit…Pool photo by Peter PowellMarch 7, 2021Updated 3:28 p.m. ETMANCHESTER, England — Manchester United will recognize this feeling, the evanescent satisfaction of a battle won far too late in the day to have any hope of turning the tide of the war, the curious and complex pride that comes from celebrating a victory that highlights only how far you have fallen.It is only three years, after all, since United experienced pretty much the same thing, in pretty much the same place, if not quite in the same circumstances. Manchester City was supposed to claim the Premier League title that afternoon — the first of Pep Guardiola’s reign — at home against its rival, neighbor and longtime persecutor in the spring of 2018.The Etihad Stadium was packed and boisterous, relishing the prospect of the perfect scenario for clinching the championship, with United invited to play the part first of sacrificial victim, and then unwilling observer. What better way, after all, could there be to illustrate the power shift in Manchester, in England, and in Europe, than for City to win the league as United was forced to watch?United, that day, proved recalcitrant guests. Guardiola’s team raced into a two-goal lead, and then hesitated, a brief flash of the old City, the one practiced in the art of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, bubbling up to infect the new. United took advantage, surged back and won.It was clear and obvious at the time that this was a mere postponement of City’s celebrations — even José Mourinho, the United manager, congratulated Guardiola on his looming title win after the game — rather than a threatened cancellation. All concerned knew that City would be proclaimed champion, with ease, sooner rather than later. But for United, victory was a tonic, a solace, a shot across the bow, something to hold on to in the long night of the blue moon.Sunday was not quite a carbon copy. The details were a little different, for a start. It is much earlier in the season, for one, and City remains some way from having the championship mathematically sealed. The Etihad did not need to be silenced: Like every other stadium across Europe, it has been quiet for a year now, the noise and emotion of the fans an increasingly distant and sorrowful memory.United grabbed an early lead and then its best to keep Kevin de Bruyne and his teammates off balance.Credit…Pool photo by Laurence GriffithsThe effect, though, was much the same. United won a penalty inside 38 seconds, Bruno Fernandes converted it within two minutes, and then Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s team set about holding City at arm’s length. Early in the second half, Luke Shaw doubled United’s lead. Anthony Martial might have made it three, but the damage was done. For the day, at least.The extent of the damage will not, in all likelihood, extend beyond that. The 21-game winning run that preceded this result, City’s first defeat since November, makes the Premier League title a foregone conclusion. Guardiola’s team still holds an 11-point lead at the top of the table, with 10 games to play.This loss would need to presage a collapse that is all but unimaginable to prevent Guardiola’s claiming a third championship in four years. United can, once again, claim parochial primacy, but it is not enough to change the map of English soccer’s broader landscape.A few days earlier, United had been flat and uninspired — and a little fortunate — to take a goalless draw at Crystal Palace. Solskjaer’s players had won only twice in the Premier League since January, their stuttering form masked by the stuttering form of, well, everyone else, and in particular the apparently bottomless incompetence of Liverpool. This is not likely to be a corner turned. For United, victory in the derby was a welcome outcome, but nothing more, not really.Bruno Fernandes staked United to its lead with a second-minute penalty kick, but his team still trails City by 11 points with 10 games to go.Credit…Pool photo by Laurence GriffithsBut that does not mean this was a game devoid of significance. For City, certainly, it would be worth pausing to reflect not only on the fact of defeat, but the nature of it. Its loss in this fixture in 2018 was sandwiched by two losses to Liverpool in the Champions League, one comprehensive, one narrow and unfortunate, but both enough to end the club’s hopes of winning its first European crown.With the league title all but in hand now, that is where Guardiola’s focus will shift in the coming weeks. There are two domestic cups to be won, too, but it is that Champions League trophy that Guardiola — and much of City’s hierarchy — craves more than any other, that trophy which they believe will complete the club’s transformation into true European aristocracy.It has been hard, over the last couple of months, to see who might realistically stop City. Real Madrid and Barcelona are shadows of what they once were. Atlético Madrid is tiring, fast. The reigning champion, Bayern Munich, has developed a curious habit of giving almost all of its opponents a two-goal head start. Paris St.-Germain is undermined by inconsistency. No club has been quite so imperious this season as City; it is hardly bold to claim that this is, currently, and defeat notwithstanding, the best team in Europe.All of those teams, then, will have welcomed United’s victory as proof that City is not invincible. They will have seen glimpses that, for all the resources that Guardiola has access to and for all that he has managed them expertly through this compact, condensed campaign, City’s players are not immune to fatigue. Kevin de Bruyne, in particular, seemed unable to influence this game as he would have wished.Raheem Sterling and City will try their rhythm back on Wednesday against Southampton.Credit…Pool photo by Peter PowellRivals will have taken heart from the first 20 minutes or so, when City repeatedly played its way into trouble, unable to find its rhythm, or to piece together United’s plan. And, most of all, they will have noted how Solskjaer — an underrated tactician in games of this ilk — neutralized João Cancelo, the fullback who becomes a midfield playmaker and, in doing so, makes this iteration of City tick.Solskjaer’s antidote was a simple but nerveless one. He instructed Marcus Rashford to play high and wide on United’s left, forcing Cancelo into a choice: either come into midfield and leave space to exploit, or stay in his lane, and defang his own team’s attack. He chose both, and neither: It was no surprise that both of United’s goals originated on his side.Cancelo has been one of City’s great strengths this season. His role has been the innovation that has re-energized Guardiola’s system. On Sunday at the Etihad, Solskjaer turned him into what City has seemed to lack for weeks and for months: a weakness. It will make not the slightest difference to the destiny of the Premier League title race, of course. Most teams will lack the personnel or the inclination to be able to repeat the trick.But for those sides across Europe who stand in the way of Manchester City and a clean sweep of all four trophies, it will be something more than a solace, more than a tonic. For Guardiola, and for City, it is a reminder and a warning, that so high are their sights that one battle lost can cost the entire war.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Perfection, Art and Pep Guardiola's Manchester City

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyRory Smith On SoccerPerfection, Art and Manchester CityPep Guardiola’s team has won 15 straight Premier League games and hasn’t lost to anyone since November. But can clinical still qualify as cool?Pep Guardiola has rebuilt Manchester City into a team that meets even his high standards.Credit…Jason Cairnduff/Action Images, via ReutersMarch 5, 2021, 10:15 a.m. ETThe Equitable Building was supposed to be the last of Manhattan’s skyscrapers. When it opened in 1915, it cast — in a very real sense — everything around it into shadow: a 555-foot neoclassical cliff rising sheer from the street between Pine and Cedar, looming over Broadway, condemning a swath of the Financial District to a life of permanent shadow.Its construction spurred New York’s authorities into action. A year later, the city introduced its first zoning law, decreeing that any future skyscrapers would have to taper away from the street, so as to allow light and air to permeate to ground level. “No more would skyscrapers rise sheer and monotonous, stealing sunshine from the city,” Ben Wilson wrote in Metropolis, his global history of cities.But rather than herald the end of the skyscraper era, the zoning law started a boom. Architects scurried to design buildings that complied with the new regulations, capitalist monoliths with a human face. The results — the Chrysler, the Empire State and the rest — stand still as the jewels of Manhattan’s skyline, the beauty that makes them compelling a direct consequence of an obstacle overcome.That truth holds away from architecture: Often, the complications addressed and compromises reached, the workarounds explored and imperfections masked do not diminish that sense of wonder, but increase it. Necessity is not only the mother of invention, but of admiration and affection, too.The iteration of Manchester City that Pep Guardiola has crafted this season is, without question, a marvel of engineering: fine-tuned and slick and working in almost flawless, mechanical synchronicity.City celebrating one of its Premier League-leading 56 goals.Credit…Peter Powell/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe Premier League has been unable to resist: City has won 15 league games in a row, conceding only five goals in the process and building an unassailable 14-point lead over its nearest challenger, and this weekend’s opponent/victim, Manchester United. Guardiola’s team has one foot in the Champions League quarterfinals. It has already reached the same stage of the F.A. Cup, and the final of the Carabao Cup. If it beats United on Sunday at the Etihad, it will have won 22 games in a row. An unprecedented clean sweep of trophies shimmers on the horizon.But while it is impossible not to admire what Guardiola has built — one of the finest teams to grace English soccer, roughly two years after constructing what is possibly the greatest one the country has seen — it can be difficult to establish a deeper, more emotional connection with it. The way City plays fires the brain. It does not follow that it must therefore stir the soul.The club’s fans, of course, would put that down to nothing more than bitterness and envy. Its detractors might, in turn, ask what broader purpose establishing Manchester City among soccer’s elite had for its ultimate backer, Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the Emirati royal and deputy prime minister of Abu Dhabi, whose investment in City is most definitely nothing to do with a nation state.More significant — at least in this case — than either argument, though, may be the absence of complication and compromise from Manchester City’s story. It has the best coach in the world, one of the most expensive rosters in the world, the best facilities, the most advanced data, the finest youth system. As Arsène Wenger once put it, it has petrol, and it has ideas.Raheem Sterling and his teammates are, once again, headed toward a celebratory spring.Credit…Pool photo by Dave ThompsonThere were, true, a few teething problems in the early years of the Abu Dhabi project. But for some time now, City’s ascent to the summit of soccer has been remorseless, smooth and, perhaps, for neutrals, a little cold, a gleaming edifice rising sheer from the ground.The architectural term for what makes the Art Deco skyscrapers of the 1920s so iconic is, as it happens, setbacks. They are what lends those buildings their charm. Manchester City, in recent years, does not seem to have experienced many. Instead, its success has the air of a formula being cracked, an equation being solved. It is impressive, no question, but it is not compelling. Inevitabilities rarely are. The interest, though, is to be found in the blemishes hidden, and the challenges met.There is no point arguing that City’s resources have contributed to the club’s success, both in the long term and, more immediately, in a season in which fatigue and injury are having an outsized influence. All of the Premier League elite can spend fortunes on playing talent, but none of them can run a squad quite as deep in quality as Guardiola’s.He regularly leaves somewhere in the region of $350 million worth of talent on his substitutes’ bench. Even allowing for injury, he has been able to manage his players’ workload far better than most of his rivals. In February, he rotated in at least four players every game, and sometimes as many as seven. It never felt as if he had fielded a weakened team. Although City remains alive in four competitions, none of its players has yet played 3,000 minutes this season. Four of United’s, by contrast, have already passed that mark.Guardiola does not seek to deny that reality. “We have a lot of money to buy incredible players,” he said after victory in the Champions League over Borussia Mönchengladbach, remarks that were for some reason interpreted as a joke, but are, well, true. “Without good quality players,” he said, “we cannot do it.”But while it is the cost of the playing staff that attracts all of the attention, the envy and the criticism, the true impact of City’s resource advantage is a little less obvious. It is in the state-of-the-art training facilities, in the youth academy, in the network of clubs around the globe, in the astrophysicist hired to help the team’s data analysis, in a club that has been built, essentially, to provide the perfect working environment for Guardiola.It feels, at times, like Pep F.C., as one observer put it. And that, perhaps, explains the contrast between this City and Guardiola’s Barcelona: both dominant, era-defining teams, but one that captured the imagination and another that feels too surgical to do so.The difference is not necessarily in the moral relativism of the two clubs’ ownership, or even in their respective historical clout, but in their nature. Barcelona is a big, unwieldy, faintly chaotic institution, one that had been in turmoil before Guardiola arrived. Shaping it in his own image meant dealing with complications. City, on the other hand, was built for him, impeccable and flawless.That reading, though, misses one important aspect. Guardiola might have the best squad and a handpicked coaching staff and a raft of allies in the executive suites, and he may be able to access resources far deeper than any of his rivals can sustain, but his primary task — as it is for any manager — is still to handle people. And his ability to do that lies at the root of City’s imminent glory this spring.Guardiola with Phil Foden. He had to win back his players before they set about winning back their Premier League title.Credit…Pool photo by Andy RainIt would be a stretch to suggest there was a sense of mutiny around City last season. Guardiola’s power is too absolute, and his reputation too lofty, for rebellion to take hold. But there were, as Liverpool strolled away with the Premier League title, mutterings.There was a fiery exchange in the changing room after a defeat to Tottenham, several of his senior players complaining that he was too inconsistent with his team selection, complaints that ran beyond the background chuntering of the substitutes and the fringe players.It intensified in the summer, when City was outfoxed by Lyon in the Champions League. As the inquests played out in the news media, it emerged that there were some in the squad who were starting to waver in their loyalty to their coach, who felt he had shot himself in the foot in the competition he craves more than any other one time too many.Guardiola seemed to recognize it. He has always said, after all, that after four years either the players have to change, or the manager does. He hoped for the former, asking City to bring in four new signings. In the end, only three arrived: The club stepped away from a deal to sign Ben Chilwell from Leicester, and the left back Guardiola had requested never materialized.It did not, immediately, seem to solve the problem. City lost at home to Leicester, tied Leeds, West Ham and Liverpool, and then lost away at Spurs. That proved the final straw for Fernandinho, the club’s influential captain, who gathered the squad together — “only the players, I tried to show them our responsibility, what the club expects, what the fans expect” — for a few hard truths.Guardiola himself waited a couple more weeks. After a dispiriting draw at home to relegation-threatened West Bromwich Albion in December, he held a conclave with his key associates: Juanma Lillo, his assistant; Rodolfo Borrell, his first-team coach; Txiki Begiristain, City’s director of football; and Manel Estiarte, Guardiola’s all-purpose consigliere.For the first time, he had found himself watching his City team with distaste. “I didn’t like it,” he said later. Influenced by Lillo, in particular, the decision was made to revert to what Guardiola called his “ABC” principles. “To stay in position, and let the ball run, not you,” Guardiola said.His reputation as a visionary, of course, dictates that the switch has been interpreted as a tactical innovation: Guardiola had instructed his team to run less, or pass the ball more, or turned João Cancelo into the first fullback-stroke-No. 10, a position that will hopefully one day be known as a “false two.”João Cancelo is a perfectly Guardiola innovation: the playmaking defender.Credit…Shaun Botterill/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBut just as significant was the psychological impact: It represented a return to the ideas Guardiola had evangelized when he first arrived, the ones that some had felt were being lost. It was, perhaps, a tacit acknowledgment that he had diverged a little too much from the path that had brought City two Premier League titles.Gabriel Jesus, the Brazilian striker, was asked last week how Guardiola had changed this season. He could not be sure, he said, but the main difference was that Guardiola “doesn’t talk so much.” “There is less video now,” Jesus said.That, it turned out, was exactly what City needed: a slightly more stripped-down, simplified approach — not quite laissez-faire, not with Guardiola involved, but as close as he can feasibly muster.City does, to an extent, rise sheer and monotonous above the landscape of European soccer. Its polish is, perhaps, a little too gleaming, its finish a little too smooth, to have the sort of character that comes from blemishes.But it takes work to get that sort of sheen, no matter how costly, how plentiful and how fine the materials available, and that work is, ultimately, worthy of appreciation and admiration. Even the Equitable Building, after all, is now a National Historic Landmark.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Police Raid F.C. Barcelona and Detain Four People

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyPolice Raid F.C. Barcelona and Detain Four PeopleThe authorities have been investigating the club’s relationship with a company that produced disparaging content about Lionel Messi, Gerard Piqué and other star players.The police in Catalonia said they seized evidence in their raid of Barcelona and detained four people.Credit…Lluis Gene/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMarch 1, 2021Updated 9:54 a.m. ETThe police in Spain raided the headquarters of F.C. Barcelona on Monday, seizing evidence and detaining four people. The arrests, on the eve of the club’s presidential election, created another crisis for a soccer behemoth brought low by crippling debt, boardroom infighting and poor performances on the field.A spokeswoman for Mossos d’Esquadra, Catalonia’s regional police force, said its economic crimes unit had seized evidence from Barcelona’s offices. She added that the investigation was continuing and that four people have been detained but, citing police policy, declined to name the individuals.Dispositiu en marxa de l’Àrea Central de Delictes Econòmics de la DIC relacionat amb el @FCBarcelona_es S’estan duent a terme diverses entrades i escorcolls pic.twitter.com/N0GZEMHN4W— Mossos (@mossos) March 1, 2021
      Several news media outlets reported that the four people detained were prominent current and former executives of the club: the former president, Josep Maria Bartomeu, who resigned in December, shortly before he was to face a vote of no confidence; Oscar Grau, the club’s chief executive; Roman Gomez Ponti, its head of legal services; and Jaume Masferrer, an adviser to Bartomeu.Barcelona said in a statement that the club had offered “full collaboration to the legal and police authorities to help make clear facts which are subject to investigation.”Investigators have been looking into Barcelona’s affairs for months, after incendiary revelations suggested the club had secretly hired an external marketing company to produce disparaging content about some of its most important and high-profile players, including Lionel Messi and Gerard Piqué.The team denied any wrongdoing and hired a consultant, PWC, to complete an audit of its relationship with the marketing company, I3 Ventures, but the police continued their investigation.The police investigation into Barcelona has been closely followed by Spanish news media, which has called the affair “Barcagate.” Bartomeu said in February that he had no idea the company was involved in spreading negative content targeting Barcelona players, and although the club terminated the contract, the stain remained.The raid on the club’s offices come just days before more than 140,000 Barcelona members will elect Bartomeu’s successor, and it is another hit to the reputation of a club that for years had portrayed itself as a benchmark in world soccer. The team liked to portray itself as a team with values that put it in a class of its own, operated under the slogan, “More than a club.”Bartomeu’s resignation came months after a humiliating 8-2 defeat to Bayern Munich that eliminated the club from last season’s Champions League, Europe’s richest club soccer competition, and a public falling out with Messi, arguably the greatest player in the game’s history.Messi described Bartomeu’s board as “a disaster” and demanded to be allowed to leave the club he joined as a 13-year-old from Argentina. The club refused Messi’s request and the player backed down and announced he would stay rather than drag the issue through the courts.Messi’s contract allows him to leave at the end of this season, but he has said he has not decided what he will do.Bartomeu has been fighting negative headlines for more than a year, and his tenure as president, which began amid an earlier scandal in 2014, has been marked by periods of turbulence. Last spring, six members of the club’s board resigned and went public with their criticism of Bartomeu.At the heart of their falling out was the contract with I3 Ventures, and allegations that it was behind fake social media accounts — purporting to be Barcelona supporters — that attacked those perceived to Bartomeu’s opponents. Those included Victor Font, an outspoken candidate to be the club’s next president, and popular players like Messi and Piqué.The raid on Barcelona’s offices came days before the club’s 140,000 members will elect a new president.Credit…Lluis Gene/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe team’s finances are also more precarious than at any time in its recent history. Earlier this year, it published financial statements showing it owed more than 1 billion euros, about $1.2 billion, to its lenders, tax officials and rival clubs, with more than 600 million euros required to be paid in the short term.The club has entered emergency talks with banks to find a solution to its problems, and club officials are also weighing selling some of the team’s commercial assets to investors to raise as much as $250 million.The club has played without spectators this season because of the coronavirus pandemic, as is the case for most teams in Europe, and the team’s revenue forecasts have cratered. The club’s cavernous Nou Camp stadium and museum are ordinarily two of the most visited tourist sites in Spain, and the loss of those revenues and other income could reach as much as 600 million euros, club executives recently told The Times.On the field, the picture is hardly better.Even though Messi returned, the club’s performance has been a shadow of its dominating past. Barcelona endured yet another Champions League humiliation last month, losing by 4-1 against Paris St.-Germain in the first leg of its two-game, round-of-16 match. The defeat means elimination from this year’s tournament is all but assured.Barcelona has rallied from a poor start to move into second place in the Spanish league table, but it is still five points behind the leader, Atlético Madrid, whose success in part has been attributed to the goals of striker Luis Suarez, whose contract was canceled by Barcelona before the start of season.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Black Players and Common Goal Join Forces for Anti-Racism Project

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyNew Anti-Racism Project Hopes to Push Soccer Past GesturesBlack players, joining with the charity Common Goal and backed by teams in North America, say they hope to reinvigorate the campaign against racism in the game.Wilfried Zaha and other Premier League players still kneel briefly before every match, but he and other Black players said the time had come to do more.Credit…Pool photo by Clive RoseFeb. 24, 2021, 7:00 a.m. ETTony Sanneh saw the pattern while he was a player. It is precisely the same one he sees now, more than a decade after his retirement.Soccer confronts its struggle to combat racism only sporadically. The abuse of a player on the field, the denigration of a team from the stands, a sudden reminder of the lack of opportunities for Black coaches or executives — all of it sparks a conversation, a campaign, a vow to do better. “It is always talked about,” Sanneh said. “And then it goes away again.”Several prominent Black voices within the sport have suggested, in recent weeks, that it must not be allowed to happen again. After almost a year of protests inspired by the Black Lives Matter demonstrations that swept the globe after the killing of George Floyd, a number of players, in particular, have suggested that gestures are no longer sufficient.“It has become something we just do,” the Crystal Palace forward Wilfried Zaha said of players’ taking a knee before Premier League matches. “That is not enough for me.”The players say they want actions, not gestures, and Sanneh — a veteran of the Bundesliga, Major League Soccer and the 2002 World Cup — and others are hoping to kick-start that effort. Sanneh has joined with Common Goal, a player-led social movement in global soccer; clubs from the three major leagues in North America; and the American Outlaws, the United States national team’s largest fan group, to launch the Anti-Racist Project, a program designed to tackle all aspects of soccer’s problem with racism.The program’s scale is ambitious: It aims to engage some 5,000 coaches and 60,000 young people in more than 400 communities in its first year, using an educational antiracism tool kit established and honed by the work Sanneh’s personal foundation, based in St. Paul, Minn., has done over the last two decades. Sanneh said he hoped it could be “refreshed and globalized” to be rolled out beyond the United States next year.Flickers of players’ impatience with the pace of change in the game are already starting to show. In England, where the sight of players taking a knee is now part of the pregame ritual, the Brentford striker Ivan Toney has suggested it has become “pretty pointless.” “Take the knee and the people at the top can rest for a while now,” he said.The United States women’s team did not kneel during the national anthem before its game against Brazil on Sunday, a collective decision made by the team after nearly a year of protests. “It is all to say that we are now ready to move past the protesting phase and actually move into putting all of the talk into actual work,” the midfielder Crystal Dunn told reporters afterward.The United States women’s national team on Sunday ended its ritual of kneeling during the national anthem.Credit…Alex Menendez/Getty ImagesSeveral players, including Manchester City’s American goalkeeper Zack Steffen, have backed the project, but its advantage, according to Evan Whitfield, a former Major League Soccer player who now works with Common Goal, is the breadth of its coalition.“There is a rich history of player-led demonstrations,” he said. “That will continue, but what is unique about this is that sense of collective action.”For a long time, Whitfield said, “corporate entities and clubs” have sought to use “their messaging to pacify player voices.” There is a sense that has changed now, not only because clubs are prepared to “back up what they espouse” through action, but also because there are those, like Sanneh and Steffen and others, who have sufficient clout to “put their thumb on the scale.”The Chicago Fire of M.L.S., the Oakland Roots of the lower-tier U.S.L. and Angel City F.C., the National Women’s Soccer League expansion club that will join that league next year, all have lent support to the project.“I cannot tell you how important it is that we step up before we take the field,” said Cobi Jones, the former United States international who is now one of Angel City F.C.’s owners. “It shows everyone that the club has an understanding of where it stands on racism, that we are at the forefront. It is inherent in what we stand for.”The hope is that they will be just the first to take part. The project is, Whitfield said, “a call to action,” not just for other clubs, but “for leagues and fans, too.”“We had to step up and work collectively,” Sanneh said. “To use our success to work for others in this industry. We have to all work together to combat societal challenges.”Steffen was a little more succinct, echoing the views of a growing chorus of players. “We have talked a lot for the last few months,” he said. “Now is the time to take action, to get out there, and to show people that we are serious.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      The Women's Team Won a Title. Weeks Later, Owners Shut It Down.

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyA Rising Tide Sinks One BoatA top women’s soccer team won its first league title last season. But as richer rivals pour money into the women’s game, Kopparbergs decided to fold rather than fight.A Champions League defeat against Manchester City turned out to be the final match for Kopparbergs/Gothenburg F.C.Credit…Jason Cairnduff/Action Images, via ReutersFeb. 24, 2021, 12:05 a.m. ETAs far as Elin Rubensson knew, the call was about plans for the coming year, nothing more. Between Christmas and New Year’s Day, she and her colleagues at Kopparbergs/Gothenburg F.C. were summoned for a remote team meeting. They dialed in expecting to hear details of the club’s ambitions for the new season.Things, after all, were looking good. A month earlier, Kopparbergs had been crowned Sweden’s women’s soccer champion for the first time; it had been only a couple of weeks since the team had played Manchester City, the English powerhouse, in the knockout rounds of the Women’s Champions League.Though Rubensson had not played at all in the 2020 league campaign — she opted out while expecting her first child — and had missed the celebrations of the title victory after testing positive for the coronavirus, she was excited. She had given birth to a son, Frans, just before the holidays. She was thinking about when she might start playing again.And then “a bolt from a clear blue sky.” It was over.On the call, the club’s executives told the players that Kopparbergs — on the back of the greatest season in its history — was being closed down, effective immediately. It would not defend its league title. It would forfeit its place in next season’s competitions. The Manchester City defeat would be its last game as a club.“It was a shock for all of us,” Rubensson said. “We did not expect it. Our son was only a week old, and suddenly I had no club to play for. We didn’t know what was going to happen or what to do.”Elin Rubensson, right, learned in a phone call that she did not have a club anymore.Credit…Adam Ihse/EPA, via ShutterstockOver the last decade or so, the landscape of women’s soccer in Europe has shifted so fundamentally as to be unrecognizable. As the game’s popularity has grown, as the broadcast deals and sponsorship money have poured in and more and more fans have come through the gates, it has attracted the attention of the continent’s history-laden — and cash-soaked — men’s teams.The Champions League has been dominated by the game’s hegemon, Olympique Lyonnais, with only the superheated rise of its national rival, Paris St.-Germain, providing any threat to Lyon’s primacy.The lavish spending of the clubs of the Women’s Super League in England has attracted players such as Tobin Heath, Rose Lavelle, Pernille Harder and Sam Kerr, turning it into what many regard as the strongest domestic women’s competition on the planet. Barcelona, Atlético Madrid, Juventus and Bayern Munich have all dedicated a portion of their considerable resources to trying to keep pace. Manchester United fielded its first women’s team in 2018; Real Madrid bought an existing one and rebranded it in its name last year.While that investment is welcome and overdue, it is not without cost. Across the continent, the teams that did so much to sustain and grow women’s soccer before the money arrived, the clubs that constitute so much of its history, have found it all but impossible to compete: England’s Doncaster Belles, Spain’s Rayo Vallecano, Italy’s A.S.D. Torres, even Turbine Potsdam of Germany, a two-time Champions League winner. Glasgow City, champion of Scotland for 13 years in a row, knows it can hold out for only so long now that Rangers and Celtic are showing an interest in the women’s game.It was that same current that forced Kopparbergs’s hand. The club had moved to Gothenburg a couple of decades before — it had previously played “on a bad pitch, close to the airport” in the satellite town of Landvetter, according to its official history — at the invitation of the local authorities, hoping to give the city’s women and girls a place to play and a chance to dream.But though it was backed by one of Sweden’s largest breweries — Kopparberg is one of the world’s largest producers of cider, and it shared a chairman, Peter Bronsman, with the soccer team — the women’s side was always a small-scale enterprise. “It was four friends doing this as a hobby, almost,” said Carl Fhager, a lawyer engaged to oversee the winding down of the club. “It was not a big organization. It did not have many members. In Swedish terms, it was a very small club.”After watching wealthy rivals like Manchester City pour money into women’s soccer, Gothenburg officials said they no longer saw a viable path to success.Credit…Matt McNulty – Manchester City/Manchester City FC, via Getty ImagesThat did not prevent it from enjoying remarkable success. It was able to sign Hope Solo, Christen Press and Yael Averbuch, all United States internationals. Though it had to wait until 2020 for its first championship, it had won the Swedish Cup three times and was a regular participant in the Champions League.It was those forays into Europe — those encounters with the new powers of the women’s game — that convinced Bronsman and his board that their club’s time was passing. A couple of years ago, they had opened discussions with I.F.K. Gothenburg, one of the city’s men’s teams, about folding the club into its operations.The idea was eventually vetoed by I.F.K.’s members — Swedish clubs are member-owned nonprofits, and the idea of one’s taking over another was too alien to be tolerable — but the more it ran into the likes of Manchester City, with its squad packed with international stars and its training facilities shared with the club’s men, the more Kopparbergs felt the writing was on the wall.“It became even clearer in the Champions League,” Fhager said. “The club knew it was not competitive anymore, and the difference in facilities was not fair on the players.” It was the same reasoning that would appear on the statement released by the club on Dec. 29, confirming its closure.By that time, Kopparbergs had contacted Fhager, tasking him with finding a new home for the players: either by identifying a larger club to assume the team wholesale — ideally one in Gothenburg — or finding new homes for as many members of the squad as possible. He contacted not only Gothenburg’s four men’s soccer teams, but its ice hockey clubs, too, anyone who he thought might have an interest in assuming the Kopparbergs players and the team’s place in Sweden’s top tier, the Damallsvenskan.One was particularly responsive. Marcus Jodin, the chief executive of BK Hacken, one of Gothenburg’s biggest men’s teams, had seen the news that Kopparbergs would be shuttered, but had not thought too much of it. “We were really busy,” he said. “We were trying to close a big transfer for the men’s team.”His phone, though, soon started pinging with messages from colleagues and friends. “They said this might be a chance for us,” he said. Hacken had a strategic plan to increase its investment in the women’s game — its women’s team was at the time playing in Sweden’s third tier — as part of an attempt to become a “fully balanced club between men’s and women’s sports.”When Fhager called Hacken on the afternoon of Dec. 29, Jodin was ready to listen. The next day, at a meeting of Hacken’s board, team officials discussed the idea. Though taking over another team was anathema, the appeal was clear.Part of Jodin’s argument was financial. “The economics of women’s soccer are moving really fast,” he said. “If it takes us five to seven years to make it to the top level in the normal way, then where are the economics then? Do we have the time and money to wait that long.”But part of it was moral, too. Without Kopparbergs, Gothenburg would not have an elite women’s team. “The club was founded to give girls in the city a chance to dream,” Jodin said. “And that dream can’t move to Malmo.”BK Hacken, now strengthened by some of the Kopparbergs players, will take the former champions’ place in the new league campaign.Credit…Mattias Ivarsson/BK HackenWith the backing of the board, he set about not just putting the idea to the club’s members, addressing all of their “questions and fears,” but making Hacken ready if they agreed. “We wanted the players to notice a change from Day 1,” Jodin said. “They had been through a nightmare, losing their jobs and income. If we had not been ready for them, we would have failed.”In late January, the merger went to a vote, as all decisions at all Swedish clubs must. Ninety-two percent of Hacken’s fans agreed to it: The club would take on Kopparbergs’s players, its commitments and its place in the league. The team would change its name and its jersey. All that would be left of a quarter-century of history was the nonprofit association number under which Kopparbergs was registered.For those involved, it is a happy ending. “There were only two alternatives,” Jodin said. “Either the club closed, and the players left, or they became part of Hacken.”Fhager said most of the fans he had spoken to were enthusiastic: “The idea of Kopparbergs was to give Gothenburg an elite team that girls can aim for. It still has that.”For Rubensson, “everything feels great.”“The size of the organization and the facilities are the main difference,” she added. “We’ve been very well welcomed. We feel like this will be a very good step for us, at a time when Swedish teams need to improve to be successful in Europe.”For her, as it is for everyone else, this is the future. Kopparbergs, and the teams like it, are the past.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      ‘Pelé’ Review: A National Treasure

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘Pelé’ Review: A National TreasureThis Netflix documentary surveys the Brazilian soccer player’s pioneering career.Pelé, the famed Brazilian soccer player, is the subject of a documentary.Credit…NetflixFeb. 23, 2021, 7:00 a.m. ETPeléDirected by Ben Nicholas, David TryhornDocumentary, Biography, Sport1h 48mFind TicketsWhen you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.There are two documentaries contained within “Pelé,” David Tryhorn and Ben Nicholas’s film about the Brazilian soccer phenom. The main one is the starry survey of Pelé’s record-setting achievements and national adulation. But a second, more sobering story steadily drops the temperature in the room, once Brazil’s military violently takes power in 1964 and shows a strategic interest in “the beautiful sport.”The filmmakers run through a storied history, from Brazil’s 1950 loss to Uruguay in the World Cup (when Pelé, as a boy, told his sobbing father that he’ll win it back) to its triumph at the 1970 final. In a recurring sit-down interview, the now 80-year-old legend is both genuine and diplomatic after decades of worship as “the King.” Teammates remain fond, journalists kibitz, and the singer-songwriter Gilberto Gil and Brazil’s former president, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, proffer pop analysis.[embedded content]But as we hear soccer repeatedly invoked as the life-force to Brazil’s sense of self, one interviewee sticks out: a matter-of-fact former cabinet minister, Antônio Delfim Netto, who signed the dictatorship’s infamous “AI-5” act institutionalizing torture and censorship. The filmmakers go on to suggest that the national team’s success became part of military propaganda, and Pelé shares his own guarded thoughts on the era.The dictatorship’s involvement takes the pressures of championship play to another level; Pelé later calls the 1970 World Cup victory simply a “relief.” I did yearn to see more of his talents in action; his header goal in that year’s Italy final feels cosmically liberating. But however conventional as a whole, the movie feels troubled by the traumas of Pelé’s heyday.PeléNot Rated. In Portuguese, with subtitles Running time: Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. Watch on Netflix.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Luis Suárez Rediscovers His Bite

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyOn SoccerLuis Suárez Rediscovers His BiteAfter a summer of indignity and humiliation, the striker has been reborn with Atlético Madrid.Luis Suárez has scored 16 goals this season after swapping his colors in the Liga title race.Credit…Pablo Morano/ReutersFeb. 23, 2021, 12:01 a.m. ETLuis Suárez had already been made a scapegoat, blamed for all that had gone wrong at Barcelona. He had already been rejected, told bluntly by the club’s new coach, Ronald Koeman, that his services were no longer required.He had been forced to sit alongside the president who had precipitated it all and say thank you for having me, even as the thought of being forced to go brought him to tears. Worse, though, was still to come, a final indignity in his summer of humiliation.On Sept. 17, Suárez touched down in the Italian city of Perugia to considerable fanfare. The airport where he landed put out a statement celebrating his arrival. His progress to the city’s University for Foreigners was accompanied by a crowd of fans and photographers. Even the university thanked him for gracing its halls.His stay was to be brief. Suárez was there to sit for an Italian exam. His wife, Sofía Balbi, is of Italian descent, making her husband eligible for citizenship, providing he could demonstrate competency in the language.Suárez brief visit to Italy in September attracted the attention of fans and, later, the authorities.Credit…Crocchioni/EPA via ShutterstockIt was something he had been planning for at least a year, he would say later, but at the time his motivation seemed much more immediate: Juventus was offering Suárez a swift exit from Barcelona, but could not employ any more players from outside the European Union. Suárez’s getting an Italian passport was the key to the transfer. A few minutes after arriving, he left. He had passed the test.That, though, was only the beginning. A few days later, the Perugia prosecutor’s office and the Guardia di Finanza, part of Italy’s mosaic of law enforcement agencies, announced that they were investigating “irregularities” in the exam. Suárez, they suggested, had been informed of the questions beforehand, and been asked only to do the oral portion of the test.The university was accused of agreeing to give him an intermediate grade — enough to pass — before he had taken the test. Juventus, the prosecutors would later claim, had sought to exert pressure “at the highest institutional levels” to accelerate the process. A phone call from his Italian tutor to one of the examiners had been intercepted, revealing that she admitted Suárez could not “utter a word” of Italian.Though both the university and Juventus deny any misconduct, and Suárez himself was never accused of wrongdoing, the reputational damage was nevertheless substantial.He has, of course, long been used to being cast — often rightly — as a villain. As his summer descended through tragedy and all the way on into farce, though, his image shifted again: unwanted by Barcelona; accused of cheating in an exam; and at 34, while still one of the most talented strikers of his generation, condemned to play out the coda to his career as a figure of ridicule.A timeline of Luis Suárez’s actual and suspected crimes, clockwise from top left: a handball against Ghana at the 2010 World Cup; accusations of racial abuse leveled by Patrice Evra in 2011; an accusation of biting (the third of his career) in 2014; and diving, every time he steps on the field.Credit…From top left, clockwise: Ivan Sekretarev/Associated Press; Lindsey Parnaby, via European Pressphoto Agency; Ricardo Mazalan, via Associated Press; Manu Fernandez, via Associated PressThat is not quite how things have worked out. Suárez did not end up signing with Juventus. Instead, freed from his Barcelona contract, he joined Atlético Madrid. Barcelona’s hierarchy would have preferred to see him leave for Italy or France — Paris St.-Germain was interested, too — rather than for a direct rival. There was some trepidation that the executives might come to regret the move. Even they, though, could not have predicted quite how much.As he prepares to lead Atlético’s line against Chelsea in the Champions League on Tuesday night, Suárez is in “one of the best moments of his career,” as the Atlético president, Enrique Cerezo, put it.He has scored 16 goals in 20 La Liga games for Diego Simeone’s team. Atlético sits atop the Spanish table, with a three-point lead and a game in hand on the second-place Real Madrid. Thanks in no small part to Suárez, Atlético is dreaming of its first league title since 2014, and only its second this century. He has, in the first six months of his Atlético career, proved one thing beyond doubt. “Luis Suárez is not old,” Cerezo said.Simeone, certainly, never believed that he was. He had admired the Uruguayan for some time — he had hoped to sign Suárez while he was still with Liverpool, calling his performances in England “extraordinary” — and, when it became clear Barcelona was prepared to jettison him, Simeone urged Atlético to make its move. Cerezo and the club’s executives did not take much persuading. “When a player of his quality is available, you have to try,” Cerezo said.In his final days with Barcelona, Suárez, like Lionel Messi, became an easy target for those looking to assign blame for the club’s failings.Credit…Pau Barrena/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWhen coach and player first spoke by phone, Simeone detected “the energy, the hunger, the defiance” that have not only characterized Suárez, but that also were Simeone’s finest attributes as a player. Most of all, though, Simeone felt that Suárez had something to prove. “He had a desire to show that he is still relevant,” the coach said.It is tempting to ascribe Suárez’s form in Madrid to the re-ignition of that inner fire. He has always, after all, given the impression that he is at his best when he has something or someone to rage against, whether it is an opponent, an authority or, in this case, simply the dying of the light. “Some did not believe I was still capable of playing at the top level,” Suárez said this week.And yet it is possible, too, to believe that the opposite is true: that Suárez has found himself again not in war, but in peace.His former international teammate Sebastián Abreu told the Spanish newspaper El País this week that he believed Barcelona had, in Suárez’s final year with the club, “mounted a campaign where they identified Luis as the problem with everything, together with Lionel Messi.” Suárez, judging by his public comments, seems to agree with that assessment.With Atlético, by contrast, he has not only encountered a coach who — as Abreu put it — “knows perfectly how to treat a player,” he has also found a club that is not “blaming Suárez for every situation, and so that has liberated him to enjoy playing soccer completely.” Without battles to fight off the field, he has been able to dedicate himself once again to winning them on it.Just as crucially, he has found himself on a team prepared to offer him the support he needs to do so. Just as Atlético has revived Suárez, so he has revived Atlético. Simeone had always regarded Suárez as the finest pure striker in the world, but he was aware that he was, in his mid-30s, no longer able to play on the counterattack quite so devastatingly as he had, say, with Liverpool in his mid-20s.Atlético Madrid adjusted its style of play to get the most out of Suárez. It’s working: The club leads La Liga by three points.Credit…Jose Breton/Associated PressIn order to restore Suárez to his former grandeur, then, Simeone dispensed with the counterpunching approach that had long characterized his tenure at the club. In its stead came a more possession-oriented, high-pressing style, one designed to get more players closer to Suárez, and the ball to him in the areas where he could do the most damage. “The team is accompanying him, so that he can become the best version of himself,” Simeone said. “And that is scoring goals.”Even for someone, like Simeone, who never doubted Suárez’s ability — who never mistook the ticking of a clock for the tolling of a bell — there is still the occasional surprise.Late in January, the Atlético coach found the striker lingering on the training field, practicing free kicks with a couple of teammates, Thomas Lemar and João Félix. Simeone, sensing an opportunity to set Suárez a challenge, remarked that he had not seen him score from set pieces all that often during his career.A few days later, Suárez lined one up in a game against Cádiz. He was about 30 yards from goal. He whipped the ball into the top corner. Suárez had passed that test, too.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Everton Beats Liverpool at Anfield, Adding to the Champions' Pain

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyOn SoccerA Collision at Anfield Does Little to Slow Liverpool’s FallEverton’s victory, a cause for deserved celebration, reveals a broken Liverpool team holding tight to a system that has stopped working.Mohamed Salah cut down by Tom Davies, a fair reflection of Liverpool’s afternoon, its month, its season.Credit…Pool photo by Phil NobleFeb. 20, 2021, 4:50 p.m. ETLIVERPOOL, England — It is every week, now, that Liverpool seems to lose another little piece of itself. An unbeaten home record that stretched back more than three years disappeared in January, spirited away by Burnley. The sense of Anfield as a fortress collapsed soon after, stormed in short order by Brighton and then by Manchester City.The golden afterglow of the long-awaited Premier League crown that arrived last summer has been dimming for some time, but it darkened for good last week, with Jürgen Klopp conceding the Premier League title while still in the bitter grip of winter.And then, as fireworks boomed and car horns blared across Merseyside on Saturday evening, came what may be the most hurtful shift of all. Everton had not tasted victory at Anfield this century. It had not won a derby at all in more than a decade. For Liverpool, the impotence of its neighbor and rival had been a source of such unbridled glee that it had long since been fused into part of its self-identity.But now, all of that, too, has gone. Richarlison put Everton ahead after just three minutes. Carlo Ancelotti’s team held Liverpool at arm’s length with a degree of comfort, ruffled only in flurries, for the rest of the evening.The only hint that the Everton players knew they were close to making — or, perhaps, ending — history came in their celebrations when Gylfi Sigurdsson settled the game from the penalty spot with 10 minutes to play, completing the 2-0 score line. The reactions were raucous and definitive, the sound of a curse being lifted. On the touchline, Duncan Ferguson, part of the fabric of Everton for almost all of that 20-year spell, first as a player and now as a coach, bounced and roared.Liverpool’s defeat was its fourth straight at home.Credit…Pool photo by Laurence GriffithsEverton’s victory was its first at Anfield since 1999.Credit…Pool photo by Laurence GriffithsOf course, Ancelotti and his players deserve praise and admiration for the precision and the poise of their performance, but the approach that brought them victory relies on a confluence of factors. First, of course, is that your team must be focused and disciplined and organized: not far from perfect, in fact.Second, you must be, if not lucky, then at least not unlucky: even the most finely laid plan can be undone by an unfortunate bounce of the ball, an arbitrary deflection, a moment of wonder.And third, you need your opponent to be found wanting. A team full of confidence and energy and ideas will, most often, pick a way through even the most masterful defense. Liverpool lacked all of those things utterly and absolutely.It is not desperately hard to work out why Liverpool has toiled so much this season. Klopp, certainly, does not believe there is any great mystery here. Liverpool has lost not only Virgil Van Dijk, but Joe Gomez and Joel Matip to injury, tearing the base out of its defense, of its team. Klopp has had little choice but to dismantle his midfield to patch up his defense.But that is just the start. At times, it has seemed as if everything that could have gone wrong for Liverpool this season has gone wrong. It is easier to list the players who have not spent at least a few weeks in the treatment room: Andy Robertson, Georginio Wijnaldum, Roberto Firmino, Mohamed Salah, Sadio Mané.Fabinho, the first midfielder drafted into defense, is currently absent with his own injury. Jordan Henderson, the second, limped off in the first half Saturday with a groin injury. Alisson Becker, widely regarded as the one of the world’s best goalkeepers and the one reassuring presence in Liverpool’s make-do-and-mend back-line, made three glaring errors in the defeats to Manchester City and Leicester.Jordan Henderson became the latest indispensable Liverpool player lost to injury.Credit…Pool photo by Laurence GriffithsIf the root of the problem does not require forensic investigation, though, the response to it might. Klopp has, at times, appeared noticeably more irascible than usual this season, clashing with television reporters, snapping at journalists in news conferences, exchanging cross words with opposing managers.When it emerged earlier this month that he had endured a personal tragedy — the death of his mother — it seemed as if that offered an explanation for the change in mood. Klopp, though, is adamant that he is able to compartmentalize his emotions; those who work with him say there has been no real change. Klopp has always been prickly. What has changed is the perception. Terseness from a position of strength is a flexing of the muscles. From a position of weakness, it looks a lot like a tantrum.Indeed, it is striking that, even as what started as a dip has become a slump and now, on the back four consecutive home defeats — the club’s worst run since 1923 — has the look of a spiral, Liverpool has not sought change of any sort.That is true of the club as a whole — its failure to have a central defensive reinforcement ready to go on January 1 was the act of a club operating in the old world, not the new — and it is especially true of Klopp. The style has stayed the same. The system has stayed the same. “The only way I know is to try it again, and again, and again,” he said Friday.It was a telling statement. Klopp is the archetype of what might be called a system coach: He has a way of playing that is baked into his soul. His counterpart at Everton, Ancelotti, is the opposite: a manager who once coached Andrea Pirlo but who is perfectly content, in a different time, to instruct Michael Keane and Ben Godfrey to punt the ball long and hopeful, over and over again, hoping to catch the right current in the wind.Everton’s victory pulled it even with Liverpool on points in the Premier League table. But the teams are headed in different directions.Credit…Pool photo by Laurence GriffithsSuch pragmatism is anathema to Klopp. Changing his style, so integral to his identity, would mean changing himself. That is the trait that has brought him such success, of course; it is possible, though, that it might also be what limits it in certain circumstances, that his loyalty to the system is damaging when external factors mean the system itself can no longer work.Klopp has experienced a run like this — a period when it feels as though nothing goes right — once before, in his last year at Borussia Dortmund. Then, too, his squad was ravaged by injuries. He had, in the previous seasons, dealt with the departure of a raft of key players, too. He refused to compromise his beliefs. Dortmund finished seventh, and he stepped down.The echoes of that year grow stronger with every passing week at Liverpool, with every new and unwanted record that falls. Liverpool keeps doing the same things, expecting different results, a team banging its head against a brick wall. It keeps losing all those little pieces of itself, lost in the shadow of an identity that cannot countenance change.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More