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      Palmeiras Wins Copa Libertadores, Far From Its Fans

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesSee Your Local RiskVaccine InformationWuhan, One Year LaterIn Brazil, Risk and Reward, Side by Joyous SideThe coronavirus kept Palmeiras fans far from their team when it played Santos in the Copa Libertadores final. A last-minute winner made everyone forget the distance, and the rules.Credit…Supported byContinue reading the main storyJan. 31, 2021, 8:36 a.m. ETSÃO PAULO, Brazil — In the cramped streets around Allianz Parque, hundreds of Palmeiras fans huddled together, craning their necks to try to catch a glimpse of whatever television screen they could find. The pandemic meant they could not go to the final in Rio de Janeiro. But it also meant they could not even go into the bars and restaurants, which are restricted to takeout service on weekends.Instead, the fans improvised. A handful of them, residents of the apartment buildings and houses around the stadium, home to their beloved Palmeiras soccer team, angled their screens so they could be seen on the streets outside. Other fans crowded outside the bars and cafes, packed cheek by jowl, flags draped over their shoulders.Virus restrictions forced fans outside, where they huddled around any available screen.Their thoughts were 300 miles away, in the sweltering heat of Rio, inside the famed Maracanã, where their team was facing its rival Santos in the final of the Copa Libertadores, facing off for the greatest prize in South American club soccer.In a normal world, of course, many of them would have been there instead, flooding in by the tens of thousands, by plane and by car and by road, just to be there, to festoon the spiritual home of Brazilian soccer in green and white. This was, after all, a historic moment: the first time since 2006 that the Libertadores final had been contested by two Brazilian teams, and the first time ever that it had been contested by two teams from the state of São Paulo.Social distancing took a back seat to enthusiasm, but stadium officials in Rio still made an effort.Credit…Pool photo by Mauro PimentelThe vast majority of them could not be there, of course, because this is not a normal world. Only 5,000 fans were allowed to attend the final in person — all of them specially selected by the respective clubs, rather than through a sale of tickets, and all of them, counterintuitively, packed into the few open sections of the 78,000-seat Maracanã rather than spreading out across its vast, largely empty bowl.But even if the circumstances had been altered, the old instincts had not. Over the last 10 months, it has become clear that — no matter the risk or the restrictions — if soccer is played, for the moments that mean the most, then fans will feel an urge to be together.The final, a cautious and nervy affair, was settled on a last-minute goal that released all the tension at once.Credit…Pool photo by Ricardo MoraesIt happened in England, when Liverpool won the Premier League and when Leeds won promotion. It happened in Italy, when Napoli won the Coppa Italia. It happened in Argentina when Diego Maradona died. It is not advisable. It is not wise. It is not safe. But it appears, in some way, that it is irresistible.And so the Palmeiras fans came to Allianz Parque on Saturday, to the place that feels like home, hours before the game started, to drink and sing and wave their flags. They had waited a long time for this — their team had not been crowned South America’s champion since 1999 — and they would have to wait some more, through 90 minutes of a game defined more by its caution than its quality, played by teams more conscious of what might be lost than what might be won.A Copa catharsis: hugs in São Paulo, confetti in Rio and fireworks over Allianz Parque.Credit…Pool photo by Ricardo MoraesCredit…Victor Moriyama for The New York TimesThen, in a flurry, it happened. A melee on the sideline, and Santos’s veteran coach, Cuca, was sent off. The 90 minutes were up, the clock ticking deeper and deeper into injury time. After eight minutes, Rony, Palmeiras’s star forward, conjured a deep, searching cross. Breno Lopes, timing his jump, steered his header over the Santos goalkeeper.He raced toward the fans, and they poured over the seats to get to him and his teammates. Palmeiras had its victory. And in the cramped streets around Allianz Parque, those who could not be there felt, at last, as if they were.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Rangers, Celtic and the Perils of a Zero-Sum Game

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyRory Smith On SoccerOld Rivals, New Ideas and Why Some Clubs Are Reluctant to TryRangers and Celtic are so focused on beating one another that they may have lost sight of the future. In Brazil, two rivals enter the Copa Libertadores final toying with a new concept: coaching stability.Is it possible Rangers and Celtic are too tangled up in their rivalry for their own good?Credit…Russell Cheyne/ReutersJan. 29, 2021Updated 12:04 p.m. ETNobody wants to say it is over. Steven Gerrard, the Rangers manager, will not tempt fate. He will only believe the title is won, he has said, when the math says so. Neil Lennon, his counterpart at Celtic, similarly cannot concede defeat. His team, he has said, will keep going, keep fighting, while there is still some small glimmer of hope.But both must surely know that it is over, and has been for some time. It was over long before this last, toxic month, when Celtic staged a winter training break in Dubai in the middle of a pandemic and flew back into a coronavirus-infected storm.It was over before two Celtic players duly tested positive, before pretty much the whole first-team squad had to go into isolation, before criticism rained down on the club from the Scottish government and even its own fans. It was over before Lennon gave a startlingly bellicose news conference defending the trip only a few days after Celtic’s hierarchy had admitted it had been a mistake.All of that has served to foster a sense of crisis around Celtic, created an impression that the club was falling into disarray as its dream of a 10th straight league title disappeared, but the narrative does not quite match up to reality.Rangers has been clear at the top of the Scottish Premiership for some time, stretching further and further ahead of its great rival, the gap spooling and yawning until it became a chasm. Its lead currently stands at 23 points. Rangers needs to win only eight more games to be crowned Scottish champion again. Or, to put it another way: Rangers needs to win eight more games so that Celtic cannot be crowned Scottish champion again.It is hard to pinpoint, precisely, when the idea of Celtic’s winning 10 titles in a row was first touted as an ambition, or floated as a possibility. A mixture of instinct and memory suggests it was after the club had won three or four straight, in the early years of the last decade.It is easy, though, to see why it appealed. The power tussle between Rangers and Celtic — the twin, repelling poles of Scottish soccer — has long provided the driving animus in that country’s sporting conversation. With only occasional exceptions — particularly in the 1980s, when Hearts, Dundee United and Aberdeen all had their moment in the sun — the story of the former has felt like the story of the latter. Seasons turned on their head-to-head meetings. Trophies were a zero-sum game: the more won by one, the fewer by the other.Celtic has led Scotland in trophies, and confetti, for a decade.Credit…Russell Cheyne/ReutersIn 2012, though, the rivalry disappeared — if not as a sentiment, then certainly as an event. Rangers, after years of mismanagement, went into liquidation and was forced to start life again in Scotland’s semiprofessional fourth tier. Unmoored from its counterweight, Celtic effectively found itself in a league of its own, its financial firepower vastly superior to any of its putative rivals’, any challenge to its hegemony entirely theoretical.In lieu of an opponent, it set out to play against history. Celtic’s great team of the 1960s and 1970s had won nine league titles in a row. So, too, had the Rangers teams of the late 1980s and the 1990s. But nobody had ever made it to double figures. Celtic was in need of a target, and Scottish soccer in need of a plotline.And so, for the better part of the last decade, the quest for 10 in a row has consumed both sides of the Old Firm: for Celtic, the chance to outstrip its rival once and for all; for Rangers, an almost existential urgency to prevent it from happening.For several years, though, the achievement seemed inevitable. Even after it was restored to the top flight in 2015, Rangers was operating at such a vast financial disadvantage that the prospect of overhauling Celtic seemed fanciful. Under Brendan Rodgers and his successor, Lennon, Celtic completed the quadruple treble: winning all three of Scotland’s senior domestic competitions, four years in a row.And then, this season, it happened. Under Gerrard, now in his third season in his first managing job, Rangers has an air of invincibility. It has only conceded seven goals. At the same time, Celtic has all but collapsed. Though Lennon has pointed to the fact that his team has only lost twice in the league, he also has confessed that he does not know where his all-conquering players of the last few years “have gone.”Celtic has dreamed of 10 titles in a row for almost nine years. All of that work, all of that hope, has evaporated over the course of a few months. The race is over. The story is, too. And while one side of Glasgow will greet that with delight and the other with despair — happiness in soccer is a zero-sum game, too — that may be a good thing, for both teams.Steven Gerrard and Rangers can clinch the league as early as April.Credit…Andy Buchanan/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesScotland occupies a strange, outsize place in soccer’s landscape. By most measures, it is a small country: five and a half million people or so, roughly the same size as Slovakia, a little smaller than Bulgaria, half the size of Portugal.But partly because of its historical significance to the sport — it is the place that invented passing, inspired professionalism, produced some of the game’s most celebrated players, and for a considerable period of time quite likely possessed the best or second-best national team in the world — it does not judge itself like a small country.The fact, for example, that until it qualified for this summer’s postponed European Championship, Scotland had not been to a major tournament since 1998 was a source of the sort of embarrassment and disquiet that, in all likelihood, would not really happen in Slovakia (though, in fairness, Slovakia has been to major tournaments much more recently).The nature of the Old Firm, too — both the size and scope of its clubs, with their vast stadiums, global fan bases, rich histories and unyielding enmity — distorts the reality of Scottish soccer.What matters to Celtic and Rangers, at all times, is winning — to garland their own reputation and to dent that of their rival. It leads to a form of thinking in which tomorrow must necessarily be sacrificed for today, because losing today is unfathomable.That logic has been on full display as the thought of 10 in a row consumed both clubs. Celtic has failed to refresh its squad, fearful of the consequences of getting it wrong. Rangers has had to invest heavily, often in players in their peak years, in order to catch up as quickly as possible.But that approach is out of step with the most forward-thinking clubs in leagues of comparative size: places like Belgium, Denmark, Austria and, to an extent, even Portugal.There, even the most dominant clubs have accepted that they are no longer a destination, but a way-point on a journey. Teams like Club Bruges, Genk and Red Bull Salzburg may not have the history of the Glasgow clubs, but they are not without pride. Still, though, they have embraced the idea of being steppingstones and have made it work for them.They have worked to scour specific markets for players, offering them the chance to hone their craft in a Western European league before making the jump to one of the big five. They have focused almost exclusively on either recruiting or developing young players. In doing so, they have found not only domestic success but often European relevance, too.For fairness, this is a picture of Rangers celebrating.Credit…Mark Runnacles/Getty ImagesAnd this is a picture of Celtic celebrating.Credit…Russell Cheyne/ReutersThanks to the geographical and stylistic proximity of the Premier League — as well as their almost guaranteed places in European competition — Celtic and Rangers should be well-placed to do the same. Celtic, indeed, was the first point of arrival in Britain for the likes of Virgil van Dijk and Victor Wanyama.But the obsession with today, with outdoing each other, mitigates against it. Celtic has lost two of the stars of its academy to Bayern Munich in recent years; both should have been able to see a more viable pathway to first-team soccer in their homeland than at one of Europe’s superclubs.Though Celtic sold defender Jeremie Frimpong to Bayer Leverkusen this week, only three more of Lennon’s regulars are 23 or under. Only one, the French striker Odsonne Edouard, is likely to catch the eye of the Premier League. The Rangers squad is older still: Gerrard has fielded only one under-23 player, Ianis Hagi, regularly. His most salable asset is the controversial Colombian forward Alfredo Morelos.Rangers, of course, needs only to point at the league table to justify its approach, just as Celtic has done for the last nine years. But now it is over. There will be no 10 in a row. And as both teams ask themselves what comes next, they must determine whether it is enough to have eyes only for each other, or whether, perhaps, it is time to shift their horizons.Read This Before You Send That Angry NoteCan’t we all get along, at least in this newsletter?Credit…Russell Cheyne/ReutersTwo more Rangers-Celtic points before we move on:A NOTE ON NAMES Some Celtic fans, perhaps even a majority, reject the use of the term Old Firm. That was a rivalry, they say, between Celtic and Rangers, and it ended in 2012. The team that replaced Rangers, in their mind, is not that Rangers. It is just another team that plays in blue, in Glasgow, at Ibrox, called Rangers.ON THAT OTHER WORD From experience, the exact meaning and nature of the term liquidation, at least as it applies to the demise and revival of Rangers, is contested by Rangers fans. It is effectively impossible to write about this subject without transgressing some minor, semantic point of difference. When you don’t have a horse in the race, it is almost too much trouble to bother with.Now, onward.Long-Term Thinking and Short-Term RewardsFans turned out to see off Palmeiras as it departed for Saturday’s Copa Libertadores final.Credit…Amanda Perobelli/ReutersEven by the standards of Brazilian soccer managers, Cuca’s résumé is pretty remarkable. Not just for the successes it contains — half a dozen regional trophies, a national title, a Copa Libertadores — but for the sheer length of it. Cuca is 57. He has been coaching for 23 years. He is currently on his 27th job.All but one of those roles have been in his native Brazil. He has taken charge of Flamengo, Fluminense and Botafogo twice each. He coached Cruzeiro and Atlético Mineiro — fierce crosstown rivals in Belo Horizonte — back to back. Grêmio and São Paulo are on the list, too. In August, he was appointed coach of Santos for the third time.Five months later, he has steered the club to its first Copa Libertadores final since 2011. Whether or not Santos beats its local rival, Palmeiras — quick check; yep, Cuca has coached there too, twice — at the Maracanã on Saturday is unlikely to make much of a difference to Cuca’s long-term prospects. He led Atlético Mineiro to the biggest trophy in South American club soccer in July 2013. It was the first Copa Libertadores title in the club’s history. He was fired that December.Name a Brazilian club, and chances are good that Cuca has coached it.Credit…Pool photo by Alexandre SchneiderBrazilian soccer has been this way for some time, and its managers are accustomed to its volatility. Indeed, in some ways, both Cuca and his counterpart on Saturday — Abel Ferreira — are advertisements for its benefits. Ferreira has only been in his post since October. Cuca, by contrast, has almost had time to get comfortable: He rejoined Santos last August.And yet there are signs that this cycle may be changing. Palmeiras’s rationale for appointing Ferreira, a 42-year-old Portuguese, rather than plucking a name off Brazilian soccer’s endless carousel was that it wanted to build for the long term, rather than seek yet another short-term fix.In the context of Brazilian soccer, that makes sense. Each of Saturday’s finalists boasts a cadre of bright young things: Gabriel Menino, Gabriel Veron, Danilo and Patrick de Paula at Palmeiras; Kaio Jorge and the Venezuelan Yeferson Soteldo at Santos. What players at that stage of their development need is stability, a clear pathway, a long-term vision.Changing coaches is not in their interests, or those of their clubs, which rely on the transfer fees they can generate to compete. A second continental crown would be ample reward for Cuca’s long, circuitous journey. But so too would be the thought that it might buy him time to settle into a job for once.The Danger of Too Much, Too YoungAt Chelsea, all eyes have turned to Thomas Tuchel, who coached his first game Wednesday.Credit…Pool photo by Neil HallManagerial instability is, of course, not unique to Brazil. A few months after leading a young Chelsea team to a creditable fourth-place finish in the Premier League, and on the back of a career in which he became one of the greatest players in the club’s history, Frank Lampard was fired on Monday morning. His replacement, Thomas Tuchel, was in position by Tuesday afternoon.There has been an abundance of wailing and gnashing of teeth in England in the days since about what that might mean for the young players — Mason Mount, Reece James, Tammy Abraham and the rest — who flourished under Lampard’s aegis, but in truth those worries are misplaced.Tuchel, after all, has a background in youth coaching, and he made his name at Borussia Dortmund, a club that draws its very identity from the dynamism of youth. More tellingly, Tuchel took that approach with him to Paris St.-Germain, where he blooded a host of academy products in the superstar-infested first team.More interesting is what it means for Lampard. A few months ago, the Manchester City player Raheem Sterling questioned whether high-profile white players were more readily given opportunities in management than high-profile Black players.Lampard did not disagree with the general assertion, but resented the suggestion that he might be a living example of the phenomenon. “I certainly worked from the start of my career to try to get this opportunity,” he said. “And there’s a million things along the way that knock you, set you back, that you fight against.”At the time, it felt a little like Lampard had misunderstood the point — the difficulties he has faced are not equivalent to structural discrimination — and had also misinterpreted his own journey. His first managerial job was at Derby County, in the Championship. His second, a year later, was at Chelsea, in the Champions League. He had not, as a coach, experienced any setbacks at all.Now he has, and how he responds will be telling. It is fair to assume that he would have regarded Chelsea as the pinnacle of his managerial ambitions, the club he wanted to coach above all others. Will he now be prepared to work his way back up? How low will he be ready to drop to do so? And most of all: Will he be willing to undertake the journey without a clear destination in mind?CorrespondenceMesut Ozil’s move to Fenerbahce is a fresh start, not a swan song.Credit…Ozan Kose/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesA valid concern from Steve Marron over last week’s column on Mesut Ozil: “You make it sound like he’s retired,” he wrote. “Just because he’s not playing in the Premier League any more doesn’t mean he’s suddenly irrelevant.” No, of course not — and he may have a wonderful grandmother’s summer in Turkey — but it is legitimate, I think, to look back on his Arsenal career at this point, and ask whether he is remembered there as he should be.The issue of Inter Milan’s forthcoming rebranding, though, seemed to exercise more of you than expected — enough, in fact, that it is probably worth a more thorough investigation. The current crest “was designed by Giorgio Muggiani,” Gavin MacPhee, a man of exceptional musical taste, wrote. “It’s a testament to his craft that the crest, 113 years later, remains classic and modern at the same time. One wonders if Juventus’s ‘J’ will stand the test of time.”I think I know the answer to that. It is: “No.”Some looks never age: Ronaldo in 1998.Credit…Luca Bruno/Associated PressRomelu Lukaku on Tuesday.Credit…Matteo Bazzi/EPA, via ShutterstockCallum Tyler, meanwhile, wonders if the crest is not the most iconic component of Inter’s jersey. “To a certain generation, the Pirelli logo is arguably far more synonymous with Inter, its history, and personality. It’s been on the shirt since 1995. It has outlived four versions of the crest itself.”Pirelli, Inter’s sponsor for a generation, is likely to go in the rebranding, too — the Chinese company Evergrande is the favorite to replace it — and, weirdly, it will feel strange to see those blue-and-black stripes promoting something other than tires.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Chelsea Fires Frank Lampard as Manager

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyHoping to Salvage a Troubled Season, Chelsea Fires Frank LampardLampard, a title-winning player, failed to draw out the same type of success from his team as a manager. The German Thomas Tuchel is expected to replace him.Frank Lampard’s job security vanished as Chelsea slipped down the Premier League standings.Credit…Pool photo by Andy RainRory Smith and Jan. 25, 2021Updated 8:50 a.m. ETLONDON — Lying ninth in a congested Premier League table and with only two wins in its last eight league games, Chelsea confirmed on Monday morning that it had fired Frank Lampard, one of the club’s greatest players, from his post as head coach after 18 months in the role.Chelsea’s recent slide, despite a handful of expensive summer signings, had not only dashed any remaining hopes of contenting for the Premier League title but also imperiled the club’s chances of qualifying for next season’s Champions League, Europe’s richest club competition. Chelsea’s board said in a statement that an immediate change was the only option “to give the club time to improve performances and results this season.”Such is Lampard’s standing at Stamford Bridge — where he spent 13 years as a player, winning three Premier League titles, four F.A. Cups and the Champions League and establishing himself as Chelsea’s career goals leader — that Roman Abramovich, the club’s reclusive Russian owner, took the rare step of explaining his departure to the team’s fans.“This was a very difficult decision for the club, not least because I have an excellent personal relationship with Frank,” Abramovich, a largely silent presence in his 17 years at the club, said in a statement on Chelsea’s website. “I have the utmost respect for him. He is a man of great integrity and has the highest of work ethics. However, under current circumstances we believe it is best to change managers.”Lampard took the job in the summer of 2019, on the back of a single season’s experience as a manager at the Championship team Derby County. In his first year at Chelsea, he guided the club to a creditable fourth-place finish in the Premier League, despite the club’s losing his star, Eden Hazard, to Real Madrid and working under the restrictions of a FIFA-imposed transfer ban.The stakes this season were always likely to be higher: Chelsea spent $300 million on new players last summer, despite the economic uncertainty caused by the coronavirus pandemic, with a view to challenging Liverpool and Manchester City for the Premier League title.Under those increased demands, Lampard has struggled. Two of the most expensive summer signings, Timo Werner and Kai Havertz, have made little impression, and the club has dropped out of the title race at the season’s halfway point.Fearful that qualification for next season’s Champions League was at risk, the club felt it had no choice but to act. Chelsea is expected to appoint Thomas Tuchel, the former Paris St.-Germain and Borussia Dortmund coach, as Lampard’s replacement.“We are grateful to Frank for what he has achieved in his time as head coach of the club,” the club said in a statement confirming his firing. “However, recent results and performances have not met the club’s expectations, leaving the club mid-table without any clear path to sustained improvement.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      San Francisco 49ers Increase Ownership Stake in Leeds United

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storySan Francisco 49ers Increase Leeds United Ownership StakeThe N.F.L. team, a minority owner in Leeds since 2018, now will control 37 percent of the Premier League club.Leeds United currently sits 12th in the 20-team Premier League.Credit…Paul Ellis/Pool, via ReutersJan. 25, 2021, 6:00 a.m. ETTwo years after dipping their toe in English soccer, the N.F.L.’s San Francisco 49ers have doubled down on their bet.The 49ers on Monday announced that they had increased their ownership stake in the Premier League club Leeds United to 37 percent from 15 percent, a move that further embeds American interests in the world’s richest soccer league.Paraag Marathe, the 49ers executive who has held a seat on the Leeds United board since San Francisco’s initial investment in 2018, will become vice chairman of Leeds United, whose majority owner will remain Andrea Radrizzani, the Italian entrepreneur. The 49ers and Leeds United did not provide financial details of the deal to increase the N.F.L. team’s ownership stake, though it is likely to represent a significant premium on the amount the 49ers spent in 2018, when Leeds was still playing in England’s second-tier Championship.In an interview with the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera in July, Radrizzani boasted that his initial investment in Leeds of 100 million pounds (about $140 million) had tripled in value. If the club remains in the Premier League, he predicted its valuation could double again in the next three years.The deal with the 49ers also ends speculation about potential new investment in Leeds. Over the past year, Radrizzani openly talked about selling off more of his ownership stake in Leeds, a team he is hoping to return to its former status as a major player in English soccer.Marathe, whose duties with the 49ers include oversight of the team’s outside business ventures, told The New York Times in July of the 49ers’ wish to increase their investment in Leeds, and to complete a deal as quickly as possible.While a deal is now done, it was not quick, smooth or simple, Marathe said, because of complications created by the coronavirus pandemic.“I’ve been doing deals my whole career, and it’s always easier to have a meeting of the minds when the minds are actually physically next to each other, so that, first and foremost, made it very complicated,” Marathe said in a video interview in which he was joined by Radrizzani.Radrizzani confirmed he had talked to other parties about investing in Leeds United, including the Qatari owners of Paris St.-Germain, the perennial French champion.The 49ers’ new commitment to English soccer underlines the growing synergy and potential for growth that the owners of N.F.L. franchises see in English soccer. The Glazer family, which owns the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, has controlled Manchester United since 2005; Arsenal is backed by the Los Angeles Rams owner E. Stanley Kroenke; and Fulham, which like Leeds United won promotion to return to the Premier League for this season, is owned by Shahid Khan, who also owns the Jacksonville Jaguars. Liverpool, the reigning Premier League champion, is controlled by Fenway Sports Group, owner of baseball’s Boston Red Sox. Crystal Palace and most recently Burnley have also attracted American investment in recent years.“I can’t really speak for other American owners and what they’re doing, but for us it’s about synergy and partnership,” Marathe said. “Whatever sport it is, it’s still operating under the same premise: You have media rights, you have ticket sales, you have commercial, hospitality and you have your players. Everything is the same.”The 49ers executive Paraag Marathe will serve as vice chairman of the Leeds United board.Credit…Lachlan Cunningham/Getty ImagesThe 49ers’ plan in increasing their stake, Marathe added, is to bring the team’s N.F.L. experience to bear on Leeds’s operations on and off the field, through shared proprietary analytics tools to best practices on management and staffing.Leeds, back in the Premier League after a 16-year absence marred by sporting and financial failures, has won plaudits for its swashbuckling, front-foot style of play under its Argentine coach, Marcelo Bielsa. But it remains some distance from recapturing the days when it was in the mix for the championship year after year.In its preparation for its return to the elite, Radrizzani said, Leeds spent the sixth-highest amount on securing new talent during the last off-season. That spending will continue, and be supported by the investment from the 49ers, Marathe said.“If we are able to stay in the Premier League, after two or three years I think this club could step up to be in the group of three or four clubs next to the big ones,” Radrizzani said, picking out Leicester City, the unheralded team that went from relegation danger to Premier League champion in the space of a year in 2016, as a trajectory he would like to emulate. Since Leicester’s title victory, its Thai owners have invested in new players, coaches and infrastructure to maintain the club’s place in the upper reaches of the league.“Our model, I think, is Leicester City,” Radrizzani said. “We have shared this a lot internally. If there’s a club I admire for what has been done in terms of football management, it’s Leicester.”Having completed the stake sale, Radrizzani acknowledged that he was now considering adding to his own portfolio, perhaps by buying other European soccer teams. The idea, he said, would be to find opportunities that would allow Leeds to develop players at smaller clubs, or to invest in larger ones that would allow him to develop their sporting and commercial models in concert with those at Leeds United.He said he would not consider, however, emulating Manchester City’s model of multiple-club ownership, with teams spread across multiple continents. Radrizzani said his sole focus would be on Europe.The relationship between Radrizzani and Marathe has grown to the point that the 49ers executive has come to refer to the Italian as his “brother.” Before the pandemic, Marathe was a frequent visitor to Leeds with Jed York, the 49ers’ chief executive, and an early riser to watch its games from his home in California.Not being able to travel to Leeds’s Elland Road stadium to witness the final weeks of the team’s promotion to the Premier League did not dull Marathe and the 49ers’ intent on following through with an expanded investment. Neither did the financial losses Leeds United has endured as a result of the pandemic, which Radrizzani estimated to be roughly 40 million pounds ($55 million).“Was it a blip on the radar or is it a blip on the radar? Certainly,” Marathe said of the pandemic’s effects on sporting finances. “Do I think sport is going to come roaring back in possibly a bigger way than pre-Covid? Absolutely. Otherwise we wouldn’t be doing this.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Mesut Özil's Long Goodbye

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyRory Smith On SoccerThanks for the Moments, Mesut ÖzilAs he trades exile at Arsenal for a new start at Fenerbahce, Özil should be measured by what he brought to London, not what he didn’t.Mesut Özil on the ball could bring the Emirates Stadium crowd to its feet in an instant.Credit…Adrian Dennis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesJan. 22, 2021, 11:50 a.m. ETMesut Özil watched Jack Wilshere’s pass as it drifted over his shoulder, and then plucked it down from the sky, a coin landing on a cushion. Most players might have accelerated then, with an empty penalty area unfolding before him, an opponent giving chase at his back.Özil, though, slowed down, almost to walking pace. He did not look at the ball; he did not need to. He knew where it was. Instead, he glanced to his right, assessing Olivier Giroud’s intentions. He had called the Frenchman his teammate for only 12 days — a handful of training sessions, no more — but he read him perfectly.If anything, it looked as if he under-clubbed the pass he then sent Giroud’s way, a soft-shoe roll across the penalty area that seemed to sell the striker slightly short. The appearance was deceptive: The ball invited Giroud to dart away from his marker, and gave him enough space and time to pick his spot. He swept a shot past the goalkeeper.[embedded content]As he wheeled away in celebration, he sought out the man who had made it possible. Özil had been unwell in the buildup to the game. Already, though, he had made quite the impression. His very presence had lifted his teammates. Online, his new fans swooned. “If that’s Özil under the weather, with little or no relationship with any of his colleagues, then I can’t wait to see him when he’s firing on all cylinders,” Arseblog wrote. He had, at that point, played 11 minutes for Arsenal.In truth, he did not even need that long. On the night he signed — transfer deadline day in September 2013 — a throng of fans congregated outside the Emirates Stadium, mobbing the Sky Sports News reporter stationed outside as he delivered updates on how the complex negotiations were proceeding. When the deal was completed, they celebrated with the sort of gusto that would ordinarily greet a late winning goal.Özil had Arsenal at hello. Even at the time, his arrival felt a little like another milestone in soccer’s blooming transfer culture, an age in which acquisition is a success in and of itself, an expression of power and clout and virility that renders what happens afterward — whether the player is, in fact, any good — if not irrelevant then very much secondary.Such a reading of Özil’s time in London — that the most significant aspect of his Arsenal career was the fact of it — is not entirely invalid, but it is a touch misleading.Özil’s Arsenal career isn’t having the happy ending everyone expected when he signed.Credit…Facundo Arrizabalaga/EPA, via ShutterstockThe sense of jubilation on the night he signed was understandable. The previous seven years had been difficult for Arsenal: not difficult in any real sense, not difficult in a way that fans of Rochdale or Torquay or York City would recognize, but difficult by thoroughly modern superclub standards.Hamstrung by the need to repay the loans required to build the Emirates, Arsène Wenger had been forced to work on a relative shoestring. The sight of players’ leaving Arsenal for more money and broader horizons at Manchester City had become a common one. A year earlier, the club had allowed its talisman, Robin van Persie, to sign with Manchester United, a gesture taken as a symbolic surrender. An Arsenal team that had always seen itself as a title contender seemed to have downgraded its ambitions to merely qualifying for the Champions League.Özil’s arrival was greeted as a sign that the dark days were over. Here was a bona fide superstar, lured from Real Madrid no less, for a record fee. He was a symbol of a new dawn: The debt paid down and the calvary completed, the club could now take its place as one of the game’s true superpowers, equipped with a team fit for its home.It did not, of course, quite work out like that. Özil’s tenure ended this week, when he flew to Istanbul to join his boyhood team, Fenerbahce, on a free transfer, several months after Arsenal effectively shrink-wrapped him and left him on the loading dock.Özil arrived in Istanbul this week to complete his move to Fenerbahce.Credit…Fenerbahce.Org, via Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIn the course of seven and a half years at Arsenal, Özil won three F.A. Cups and played a central role in one genuine title challenge, in 2016, but he could not be said to have signaled a change in the club’s fortunes. (He would also, of course, win the World Cup with Germany during this period.)The Arsenal team he joined was a fixture in the Champions League; the one he left was scrabbling to claim a place in the Europa League. Özil, in some quarters, was held responsible for some part of that decline; a kinder interpretation would be that he was simply not a bulwark against it.Either way, his time in London did not have the outcome that either he or his club would have preferred. Instead, as The Guardian neatly put it this week, he left a sort of “half-legacy” at the Emirates: one of games that he dominated, rather than seasons; one of eternal promise that something more was around the corner; and, in later years, one of intense division among those who hold Arsenal close, some of whom saw him as the problem, and some who still believed he might be the solution.To most, then, even if he cannot be deemed a failure, then he certainly cannot be cast as a success. There was no Premier League title, no Champions League crown, not even a Premier League player of the season award. He never lived up to that initial hype. In his twilight, Özil came to be dismissed as a player of great moments, and nothing more.And yet that seems a strange reason to condemn him as a letdown. It is a common misconception that supporting a team is about trophies and championships and glory. It is not. If it were, millions of us would simply not bother. It is, instead, about memories of moments.Özil after losing in the 2019 Europa League final. Arsenal, and its fans, expected better.Credit…Yuri Kadobnov/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWinning, of course, is cherished because it tends to create more of those moments than losing. Winning is prized because the instant of victory is the greatest moment of all. But that does not strip meaning or value from all of the moments along the way; the journey is as much the point as the destination.And Özil, though he never took Arsenal where the club hoped he might, provided plenty of those moments. That pass, 11 minutes into his first game, was just one of many, which went beyond the goals against Newcastle and Ludogorets and Napoli, plus all the others that might grace a YouTube compilation soundtracked by off-the-rack E.D.M., or all of the 19 assists he recorded in his finest season.There were the countless deft first touches, the hundreds of clever passes, the ones only players of the rarest gifts can see. There were the otherwise tedious games — true, often against weaker opposition — that he illuminated, especially in his first few seasons. There was, most important of all and yet least tangible, the sense that with him in the team and on the field, something might happen at any moment.None of that is worthless. Özil might not have heralded a new dawn for Arsenal, after all; he might not even have been able to stay the decline. He might feel, with the benefit of hindsight, when the final verdict is issued, like something of an anticlimax. But the journey is as much the point as the destination, and Özil provided plenty of moments along the way.The Crest of a WaveRespect the crest. Play hard for the crest. Never, ever get a tattoo of the crest.Credit…Jennifer Lorenzini/ReutersIn many ways, Inter Milan’s decision to undertake a comprehensive rebrand should be welcomed by anyone who has cause to refer to the club in English. It solves a rather knotty problem, you see, one that is rooted in the fact that Inter Milan does not, strictly speaking, exist.The club’s name is Internazionale, which can be abbreviated, in Italian or in English, to Inter. But there is no mention of Milan. Inter Milan is a widespread, longstanding (and ultimately pretty harmless) Anglicism, but it is not — technically — a thing, any more than Arsenal London is a thing.So the club’s reported plan to change its name to Inter Milano should, to some extent, make everything easier for us — and what, ultimately, is more important than the convenience of the English-speaking world? — just as it would be in our interests for Sporting Clube de Portugal to accept the inevitable and start calling itself Sporting Lisbon.Inter’s plans extend beyond its name, though. The club intends to alter its crest, too, in line with the redesign of its great rival, Juventus, a couple of years ago. That, too, should be unremarkable: Inter has had 13 versions of its crest in its 113-year history, though the basic style has been the same since 1963 (with the exception of a weird decade from 1978 to 1988 in which its ornate design was replaced by a cartoon snake).But this is all uncomfortable, for two reasons. One is quite what the point of it all is: Juventus defended its own change as a sign of its progression from simple, all-conquering soccer team into a brand capable of “delivering lifestyle experiences.” But what does that mean? How can Juventus deliver a lifestyle experience? And how does it do that through its crest?The other, more important, reason is that a crest is more than a corporate logo. It is a symbol of all the history and emotion and communal experience that compose a soccer team. The best of them — in which Inter’s might be included — are immediately identifiable: They have a glamour and a power that can be accrued only through tradition.To change a crest through a desire to become more recognizable not only risks the precise opposite — if anything, a new crest can only be poorer in its connotations — but also threatens to alienate those fans who feel a kinship with the current one. Worse still, it suggests a lack of faith in your own history, your own lore, your own identity. It seems a heavy price to pay for the marginal, and largely theoretical benefits, of being a lifestyle brand.A Morality TaleMoisés Caicedo will move to Europe — he’s too good not to — but it won’t be easy.Credit…Jose Jacome/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe key thing to remember, strictly speaking, is that there is no villain in the story of Moisés Caicedo. For the last couple of weeks, I have been trying to piece together the reason so many European clubs have been given the same warning: That for all Caicedo’s immense promise, a deal for him is just too complicated to pull off.The reason for that is, on one level, unremarkable. The transfer market is saturated with agents who try to interject themselves into any prospective deal. They approach players with promises that they can get them to a certain club or to a certain league. They receive mandates from clubs to sell a player in a specific territory.In Caicedo’s case, at least three separate agencies are thought to have some sort of legal claim on his transfer; the likelihood is that several more are touting their own connections across Europe in an attempt to conjure a transfer out of nowhere. And, to reiterate, this is all (seemingly) perfectly above board, as things currently stand.Whether it should be that way is a different matter. It feels, from the outside, as if much of this is completely unnecessary, as if soccer’s authorities are vaguely complicit in allowing the transfer market to operate as a free-for-all. It is hard to see how any of this is in the players’ best interests. The benefits to the clubs seem indistinct, at best, too.It should not be hard to regulate things a little more effectively. Agents, certainly, should not be allowed to operate for more than one party in any deal. The practice of allowing clubs to nominate agents to act on their behalf makes sense — it allows them to retain some negotiating power — but the issuing of multiple mandates seems ripe for complication. And it might help if representation agreements had to be signed long before deals were completed.Caicedo, it is to be hoped, will find himself in the right place regardless of the squabble over his future. Brighton, the running favorite to land him, is a well-run, forward-thinking club, much like his current employer, Independiente del Valle. But it is a shame that his emergence — as the standard-bearer for a talented young generation of players in Ecuador — should be allowed to become a faintly tawdry opportunity for lots of people to try to get rich quick.CorrespondenceFar more fans experience soccer this way than watch it in stadiums.Credit…Louisa Marie Summer for The New York TimesLast week’s piece on the hierarchy of fandom — and the underestimated importance of the armchair viewer — prompted Kevin Hegarty to point out that, at least in Britain, “there is a split among those who follow their team from home on TV, between following your team from home within England, and following your team from home from abroad. The latter is the lowest rung, and I find weirdly takes the blame for what TV has done to the game.”This is absolutely right, and is entirely nonsensical. I had this conversation with people on Twitter, too. The idea that not everyone can just go to a game at the drop of a hat is something that is not factored in enough. Nor is the fact that it is, increasingly, those international viewers who enable teams to have the funds to sign and pay the superstar players all fans crave.Keith Woolhouse, meanwhile, wants to know what Sam Allardyce’s secret is. “What elixir does he have that enables him to prevent otherwise doomed clubs from sinking into oblivion? Whatever it is that Sam has that turns clobbers into nimble-footed magicians, he should have applied his skills to politics: England needs resurrection, and all hands to the pump.”Sam Allardyce is in another race against time.Credit…Pool photo by Tim KeetonSadly, I suspect reviving the British government at this point might be beyond even Allardyce. He’s a fascinating character, though: an undoubted pioneer and an impressive coach scuppered to an extent, I think, by his own thirst for validation.I do worry that his latest trick is his hardest, though. In most of his previous jobs, he has taken over teams drastically underperforming, and restored a little order and belief and purpose to them. West Bromwich Albion is not underperforming: Its squad is doing exactly as it should in the Premier League. His test, now, is to find out if he can get players to play above themselves. My instinct is that he will fall short, albeit narrowly.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Players in a New Super League Would Be Barred From the World Cup

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyPlayers in a New Super League Would Be Barred From the World CupFIFA sends a stern warning to clubs that are considering forming their own lucrative competition.Barcelona and Bayern Munich are two of the teams that could be candidates for a European Super League.Credit…Pool photo by Manu Fernandez/EPA, via ShutterstockJan. 21, 2021Updated 9:39 a.m. ETTop players will be barred from playing for their national teams in events like the World Cup if their clubs join a breakaway league, the major governing bodies warned on Thursday.The announcement by FIFA and soccer’s six regional confederations follows weeks of talks and months of disquiet after the revelation of plans hatched by some of the world’s richest and most popular clubs — led by Real Madrid and Manchester United — to create a so-called Super League. That competition, which would be controlled by the teams, could at a stroke render irrelevant the Champions League, European soccer’s immensely popular club competition.Talks about a new league come as discussions with European soccer’s governing body UEFA over a new format for the Champions League beginning with the 2024 season are close to completion. Some senior leaders at UEFA are hoping to announce the changes, the biggest to the event in a generation, as soon as the organization’s annual meeting next month.FIFA said in a statement that a Super League “would not be recognized by either FIFA or the respective confederation. Any club or player involved in such a competition would as a consequence not be allowed to participate in any competition organized by FIFA or their respective confederation.”According to documents reviewed by The New York Times, plans for the breakaway European Super League, a project that has been mooted for decades, gathered pace since the summer. Top clubs sought to take advantage of uncertainty in the soccer industry caused by the coronavirus pandemic to forge a new path that would insure a degree of financial stability for them but almost certainly lead to a loss in the value and revenue for teams excluded from the project.Under the proposals, the Super League, which would be played in the middle of the week, would have 16 top soccer franchises as permanent members and add four qualifiers from domestic competitions. The clubs would be split into two groups of 10 with the top four teams in each group qualifying for the knockout stages, culminating in a final that would take place on a weekend. The event would, according to the documents, generate hundreds of millions of dollars in additional revenue for the participating teams, already the richest clubs in the sport. (An alternative version of the plan has 15 permanent members and 5 qualification spots.)The group has already entered into discussions with JPMorgan Chase&Co. to raise financing for the project, according to people with knowledge of the matter. A spokesman for the bank declined to comment.The clearest public indication of how advanced the talks among the clubs are came when Josep Maria Bartomeu, the former president of Barcelona, announced in October that his team had agreed with the leaders of what he described as Europe’s other “big clubs” to participate in a European Super League. Bayern Munich, Germany’s biggest team, spoke out this week against a breakaway, but should other top teams find an agreement it would be unrealistic for that club not to be involved as well.The project has long been the brainchild of Florentino Perez, the president of Barcelona’s rival Real Madrid. Leaked documents from 2018 revealed he had drawn up plans with a Spanish consultancy for a new competition and then held a meeting with FIFA’s president Gianni Infantino in 2019 to discuss the plans further, telling him that teams from the Super League competition would be willing to participate in FIFA’s expanded World Cup for clubs, a quadrennial event that Infantino believes could grow to become one of the most important properties in all of sports.Since the summer, Perez found a new ally in Joel Glazer, the chairman of Manchester United, who has also joined forces with the American owners of Liverpool in an effort to force through changes to the Premier League that would benefit his team. Glazer has been promoting the idea of the Super League, according to people with knowledge of the discussions. A spokesman for United said the team would not comment.The joint announcement by FIFA and the six confederations follows talks on Monday between Infantino and his counterpart at UEFA, Aleksander Ceferin. The two men have had a bumpy relationship since 2018 when Infantino announced his ambitions for FIFA’s own club competitions and growing suggestions of his involvement in the breakaway talks. Infantino has always publicly denied any interest in supporting a European breakaway.Ceferin has frequently launched broadsides against the Super League discussions. “It would be hard to think of a more selfish and egotistical scheme,” he said after one iteration of a breakaway was discussed. “It would clearly ruin football around the world; for the players, for the fans and for everyone connected with the game — all for the benefit of a tiny number of people.”UEFA’s proposals for the new version of the Champions League go a long way to meeting the demands of the biggest clubs for an expanded tournament. If agreed, the tournament will feature 36 teams instead of the 32 it currently does, with two of those places reserved for teams that have been historically successful in European competition but failed to meet the qualification criteria. That would mean the possibility of a return to top tier action for the likes of A.C. Milan, a soccer heavyweight that has fallen on hard times. UEFA’s reforms would also scrap the current opening stage in which teams are separated into eight groups of four, and instead place them into one table, with qualifiers for the knockouts determined by results after each team has played as many as 10 games.Access to the competition, unlike the Super League, would largely be from the domestic leagues, ensuring they remain relevant.The European Leagues, an umbrella group for many of the continent’s leagues, issued a statement endorsing the declaration against the Super League by the governing bodies.“The European Leagues’ board of directors has discussed the initiative of some European football clubs to create a closed European Super League for a limited number of clubs similar to those franchise models operating in North America,” the group said.“UEFA and the other football Confederations from all over the world have, together with FIFA, published a strong statement against this initiative and our member leagues are unanimously supporting that statement.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Moisés Caicedo and the Perils of Too Much Interest

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyOn SoccerA Promising Star. A Gaggle of Suitors. A Wake of Vultures.It did not take long for the performances of a 19-year-old in Ecuador to catch the eyes of Europe’s biggest clubs. In soccer’s cutthroat transfer market, they were not the only ones watching.It did not take long for Moisés Caicedo to establish himself as a star for Independiente del Valle in Ecuador.Credit…Jose Jacome/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesJan. 21, 2021, 8:30 a.m. ETNothing stays secret for long in soccer. So thorough is the game’s hunt for talent and so desperate its thirst for players that no territory goes uncharted, no stone unturned, no prospect unobserved. Distance is no barrier. Remoteness is not a factor. The searchlight is so bright that there is no such thing, any more, as obscurity.And so, over the course of the last year, the powerhouse clubs of Europe’s major leagues have been turning their attention to Sangolqui, a suburb to the south of the Ecuador’s capital, Quito. They have focused on a club that hardly uses its own tight, compact stadium, and on a teenage midfielder not yet two seasons into his senior career.Moisés Caicedo would not have known it — not until recently — but his name has been playing on the lips of scouts and technical directors across Europe for months.Few, if any, clubs from the old world have a dedicated scout for leagues like Ecuador’s. Instead, emerging players are spotted in South America’s continental competitions — the Copa Libertadores and the Copa Sudamericana — or tracked through international youth tournaments.When a player of interest is identified, members of the recruitment staff trawl through footage of his domestic displays, and the corresponding performance data, on platforms like Wyscout, InStat and Scout7. Only then, if the numbers add up, will scouts — either club employees or trusted freelancers in specific markets — be sent to watch the player in person.An energetic and composed midfielder, Caicedo, now 19, passed every test. Manchester United’s South American scout alerted his employers to Caicedo’s ability. A.C. Milan found that the data and the assessment of their talent spotters tallied up. Club Bruges, the Belgian champion, noticed him, too. So did a phalanx of teams from England — Brighton and Chelsea among them. Nothing, after all, stays secret for long.All, independently, determined that Caicedo was an interesting proposition. Many of them started making discreet enquiries, performing the due diligence on both the player and his club — Independiente del Valle — to work out how a deal might be done. And they all heard precisely the same warning: Finding Caicedo was the easy bit. Working out how, exactly, to sign him would be much more difficult.A Rapid RiseCaicedo’s development came faster than his team expected, but the club felt it was a vindication of the model it built for finding stars.Credit…Pool photo by Rodrigo BuendiaEven at Independiente del Valle, there was some surprise at just how quickly the teenager the club had found playing in Santo Domingo — a small city a few hours west of Quito — had developed.When he moved to Sangolqui, Caicedo was not one of the standouts on the under-16 team that he joined, but he was quiet, determined, a fast learner. That squad contained several players who would represent Ecuador at the youth level, but by late 2019, Caicedo had outstripped them all.He made his league debut for Independiente in October that year, as a substitute against Liga de Quito; by the end of the month, he had his first start. In February 2020, he captained the club’s youth side to victory in the under-20 Copa Libertadores. When he returned, he went straight to the first team: He appeared in his first senior Libertadores game in April.If the speed of his success was a touch unexpected, it was treated within Independiente as vindication of the club’s model. Though the team had been founded in 1958, its modern incarnation came into being only in 2007, when it was taken over — and turned into a private enterprise — by a group of entrepreneurs, led by Michel Deller.“There was a clear vision,” said Luis Roggiero, the club’s sports manager. “There is a pool of talent in Ecuador that had not been given an opportunity to develop: The players that had come through had done so on their own merit, not because they found a club or federation that helped them. The idea was to construct a club to compete at national and international level by finding our own talents, finding them early, and developing them our way.”To do that, the club commissioned a study of the districts in Ecuador that produced the most players, Roggiero said, and then constructed training bases in each of them: dragnets to capture whatever talent came through. The best prospects would then be recruited to the club’s main training facility in Sangolqui — which contains accommodations for 120 young players and an on-site school — to be inculcated in the team’s style of play.“We built an idea of how we wanted to play, and then designed training — technical and physical and mental — to help them produce that,” Roggiero said. It was a long-term plan that has born fruit: In 2016, less than a decade after Deller and his associates found the club in Ecuador’s third division, Independiente reached the final of the Copa Libertadores, where it lost to Colombia’s Atlético Nacional. The club is now a regular sight in the latter rounds of South America’s biggest club competition.Roggiero attributes that success to the fact that — unlike many teams in Ecuador, and across South America — Independiente is privately owned. “We are not subject to elections, so we can have long-term horizons,” he said. “We can be responsible financially, we can maintain the same administration. The club can be sustainable. The idea has been reinforced by the results we have had in our short history. It shows the road we have chosen is valid.”Success on the field, though, is not the only gauge of the club’s success. So, too, are the players it has produced. Graduates from Independiente’s finishing school are now a regular sight on Ecuador’s various national teams: Seven members of the current men’s squad came through the club’s system, as did six players on the women’s national side. Scouts, agents and technical directors now flock to Sangolqui to scour its youth teams for signs of promise; an annual international under-18 tournament it hosts has become compulsory viewing for those in the recruitment business.In recent years, Independiente has been able to sell players not only to the leagues that have some tradition of importing from Ecuador — those in Argentina, Mexico, Brazil — but also, increasingly, to clubs in Europe: Players have left for Granada and Real Valladolid in Spain, for Italy’s Atalanta, for Brighton in England, for Genk in Belgium and for Sporting Lisbon in Portugal.As Caicedo’s star rose, it became clear that he would be the next to make that journey.But while more European teams might be aware of Independiente — and Ecuador as a whole, after a run of success for its international youth teams — as a source of talent, the country remains an unfamiliar market for most.Its clubs, generally, prefer to sell to other South American leagues, where the initial fee can often be higher; the most powerful agencies in the country tend to have well-established links with Brazil, Mexico and the United States. Few European teams have a presence, or a way in. For them, it can be uncertain, unfamiliar ground.And there are always plenty of people, in soccer’s transfer market, ready to capitalize on any uncertainty at all. Unfamiliarity, for some operators, means opportunity.The SquabbleMultiple teams in Europe have expressed interest in Caicedo. It is not entirely clear whom they must work with to acquire him.Credit…Rodrigo Buendia/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMost of Europe’s clubs received the same feedback when they started to delve a little deeper into Caicedo’s situation: It was not immediately clear, they were told, precisely who was representing the player, who had the power to agree to terms on his behalf. “Too many agents involved,” as the note sent to one recruitment department read.A transfer deal should, on the surface, be a straightforward thing. The buying club should — strictly speaking — contact the selling team, establish a price, and then contact the player’s agent in order to work out the personal terms.If that is a little naïve, then the pragmatic alternative — contact the agents first, find out if the player is interested, ask what a deal would cost, and then present the selling club with a fait accompli before haggling over price — might be more cynical, but it is not substantially more complicated.The reality, though, is much messier. Teams frequently give an agent a mandate to sell their own player, in order to retain a degree of negotiating power. Often, different agents will be given mandates to sell players to different countries: One will do the deal if an Italian team is interested, someone else if it is a Spanish club. Those mandates can then be traded and sold between agents.As soon as a talented player emerges, a suite of agents will typically descend on him, offering exclusive access to a particular team or league, or simply an ability to negotiate a better deal. Sometimes players sign multiple agreements with multiple agents, based on nothing more than promises.Most of those involved in recruitment accept this as the way things are, and the way they have always been across the world, though many find it especially difficult to untangle deals to take players out of South America. The sporting director at one major European club, though, believes the problem has become much worse since FIFA moved to deregulate agents in 2015. “Now, you can basically do anything you like,” said the director, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to address the issue publicly.It is precisely that sort of free-for-all that engulfed Caicedo. For much of his nascent professional career, he has been represented by Kancha, an Ecuadorean agency with a roster of young players and a cohort at Independiente. As clubs’ interest in him grew, though, so too did interest from agencies, eager to profit not only from his promise but also from teams’ comparative inexperience in buying players in Ecuador.Members of the Caicedo’s family — he is the youngest of 10 siblings, and has 25 nephews — were inundated with offers from agents seeking a mandate to sell him. Those close to the dealings, though not authorized to speak on the record about private business arrangements, said they believed that relatives had reached agreements with two of them: a German-based firm, PSM Proformance, and a company in Argentina. PSM Proformance did not respond to a request for comment.All of a sudden, there were three agencies — including Kancha — claiming to speak for Caicedo, to have the power to do a deal. Independiente, the club that had nurtured him, was effectively rendered irrelevant in the sale: It will receive roughly the same fee regardless of which agent strikes a deal, and is expected to ask for a clause that will bring the club a 30 percent cut on any future transfer, too.But if his club is unaffected, the same cannot necessarily be said of Caicedo. With multiple agents not only touting him across Europe but also peppering the news media, in Ecuador and farther afield, with tips about his potential destination, many clubs that had been enticed by Caicedo’s enormous promise chose to walk away. Manchester United and Milan both decided not to become embroiled in a situation they deemed too knotty to unravel.Others stayed the course. Brighton — currently considered his most likely destination — had the advantage of a pre-existing relationship with Independiente and Kancha, having signed a player from both in 2018. Caicedo will get his move: His talent, ultimately, guarantees that.What concerns those who have watched him flourish over the last couple of years is whether it will be the right move, for the right reasons. Caicedo’s rise, so far, has been unexpectedly, almost impossibly smooth. Being exposed to the perils of the transfer market, though, means the road ahead is littered with obstacles. He has been found. The risk now is that he might yet be lost.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      In Defense of Television, Soccer's All-Purpose Villain

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyRory Smith On SoccerSpeaking Up for the Armchair FanTelevision, which influences everything from salaries to kickoff times, is soccer’s most convenient villain. But for the vast majority of fans, it’s the only connection they have.Critics of television’s influence on soccer ignore that it’s still the way most fans experience the game.Credit…Felix Schmitt for The New York TimesJan. 15, 2021, 1:22 p.m. ETTelevision is not a dirty word. It is not the sort of word that should be spat out in anger or growled with resentment or grumbled through gritted teeth. It is not a loaded word, or one laced with scorn and opprobrium and bile. It is not a word that has a tone. Not in most contexts, anyway.In soccer, television is treated as the dirtiest word you can imagine. It is an object of disdain and frustration and, sometimes, hatred. Managers, and occasionally players, rail against its power to dictate when games are played and how often. They resent its scrutiny and its bombast. Television is never cited as the root of anything pleasant. Television is the cause of nothing but problems.There is no need to linger for long on the irony and the hypocrisy here. Television, of course, is also what pays their wages. It is what has turned them into brands and businesses. It is television that means managers can accumulate squads full of stars, and it is television that means that, when they are fired, they leave with generous compensation packages. Television, and the money it pays to broadcast soccer, is what makes the whole circus possible.If anything, though, the contempt of players and coaches for television pales in comparison with that of most fans. They, too, talk about television with a certain tone: television as the force behind the erosion of the game’s values, television as the driver of unwelcome change, television as the root of all evil.Match-going fans in Germany have protested Monday games (Montagsspiele), which they deride as a surrender to television’s priorities.Credit…Armando Babani/EPA, via ShutterstockTo many fans, television has become something close to an antonym of tradition. It is television that has eaten away at the way the game used to be, distorting its form for its own ends. It is because of the needs of television that fixtures are spread across a weekend, rather than packed into a Saturday afternoon, as they always used to be. It is because of television that fans are forced to travel vast distances at inconvenient times. It is because of television that the game feels more distant, a religion reduced to just another form of entertainment.There is, and always has been, a strict hierarchy of authenticity among fans. At its head sit those who follow their team home and away, who devote countless hours of their lives, and whatever money they have, to the greater glory of the colors. They might, in some cases, be ultras, or members of some organized fan group, though that is not necessarily a prerequisite.Below them are those who hold a season ticket for home games. A step down are various stripes of match-going fans: those who attend regularly, those who go sometimes and so on, until we come to the bottom, where those who follow the game, their team, from the comfort of their own homes, through the television, reside. And there, almost audible, is that tone again.Both that hierarchy and that attitude are baked into the conceptual landscapes of most fans. It is as close as soccer comes to a universal truth. Even broader organizations, the ones that speak for fans’ rights and work to protect their interests, hover somewhere between disinterest in and outright scorn for “armchair fans.”In the latest annual report of the Football Supporters’ Association — a well-meaning, important body that represents soccer fans in England — there is a section entitled “TV Hell.”“In previous years this chapter has been full of the misery that broadcast changes have inflicted on match-going fans,” it begins. “From late changes to kickoff times, to Monday night away games 300 miles away, supporters’ encounters with broadcasters have been fraught and adversarial.”For the vast majority of fans, a television is part and parcel of the matchday experience.Credit…Boris Streubel/Getty ImagesWhat follows is not to suggest that any of those complaints are invalid. By the time fans return to stadiums after the pandemic, it would be nice to think that both leagues and broadcasters — having become painfully aware, in their absence, of how crucial they are to the spectacle of soccer — would take the needs of match-going fans into account far more than they once did.Capping ticket prices would be a start, a way of ensuring that seeing live sports in the flesh is no longer an innately privileged activity, one only readily available to certain demographics. Crowds need to become younger, more diverse in both color and gender, and cost — as the Chris Rock joke about luxury hotels has it — is the primary barrier to that.Beyond that, subsidizing travel to games — as happens in Germany — would reflect the importance of fans to the experience. So, too, would scheduling them in such a way to make it as easy as possible for fans to attend. No more Monday nights for Newcastle fans in London; no more games that finish after the last train home has left.But for an organization like the F.S.A. to suggest that the relationship between fans and television is inherently adversarial is a comprehensive misunderstanding of the dynamic between the two. It is one that it is far from alone in making, but it is one that serves to reinforce what is, in truth, an entirely false schism.With stadiums closed during the pandemic, television revenue has been paying a significant share of soccer’s bills.Credit…Pool photo by Julian FinneyThat is because we are all, deep down, armchair fans. If not all, then overwhelmingly: there may, it is true, be a few hundred die-hards attached to each team who travel to watch their side home and away and never watch another game of soccer.But for most of us, even match-going fans, television is the way we consume the sport, whether we are season-ticket holders who follow away games remotely or fans who, by pure accident of geography, happen to live thousands of miles from the stadium our team calls home.You might be an ardent supporter of a team mired in the lower leagues who regularly tunes in to watch whatever the big game of the weekend is. You might find yourself idly watching a distant Champions League game most weekday evenings in fall and spring. You might support one team, but take pleasure and hold interest in the sport as a whole. You might just like falling asleep in front of “Match of the Day.” Whatever their circumstances, television is the vector by which most fans get the bulk of their hit.And those fans — although the traditional hierarchy does not recognize it — deserve an advocate for their interests, too, because their interests are our interests. Indeed, their interests are soccer’s interests.Cameras are an intrusion until the moment they’re not.Credit…Pool photo by Fernando VergaraThis is the part that is always missed, whenever the sport bemoans the power of television: Television, that dirty word, does not actually mean television. It does not even, really, mean the broadcasters who produce the content and carry the games. It means, at its root, the fans who watch, the ones who buy the subscriptions and watch the games and make the advertising space valuable.Because, ultimately, television does not pay for soccer: We do. The broadcasters only pay a prince’s ransom for rights to leagues because they know that we will tune in. Their aim is to make a profit from their investment, whether direct — through the advertising sales and subscriptions — or indirect, as is the case in Britain, where both Sky and BT, the Premier League’s principal broadcasters, see soccer as a weapon in the war to dominate the country’s broadband market.Deep down, it is not television that keeps the circus rolling, it is us. We are the ones that pay the salaries, that provide the millions, that have turned the players into stars. (This very same argument, as it happens, can be applied to the issue of the need for more transparency in soccer.)The relationship between television and fans is not adversarial because, at heart, television is the fans. When soccer comes to consider how it will look in the post-pandemic age, it would do well to remember that: not to present those who go to games and those who do not as antagonists, but as two overlapping groups, with interests that dovetail more than they divide. Television should not be soccer’s dirty word. Television, at heart, means all of us.Political Football (Reprise)Just checking: Anyone hugging? No? Carry on then.Credit…Pool photo by Laurence GriffithsBritain’s hospitals are close to their breaking point. Intensive care departments are full, or close to it. Ambulances are lining up at the gates. More than a thousand people are dying a day. Case rates are soaring. The population, or at least that part of it that is not being compelled to go to work, is locked down once more.Underprivileged children are being sent individual potatoes and zip-lock bags full of cheese in lieu of school meals. The bleak realities of Brexit are starting to bite at the country’s ports and docks. And yet, listening to a substantial portion of the country’s public discourse this week, it is almost as if Britain’s most pressing issue is soccer players who hug after scoring a goal.We have been here before. Back in the spring, during the first wave of the pandemic, British lawmakers seized eagerly on the idea that the Premier League’s millionaire stars should all take a pay cut, as many of their clubs were requesting. Matt Hancock, the health secretary, used a news briefing to urge them all to “make a contribution,” even though it was not clear how them allowing the billionaire owners of their teams to save money would help the beleaguered National Health Service.This time, the central axis of the debate is a little different. The government is concerned, apparently, that players’ celebrating goals is “sending the wrong message” at a time when the country as a whole is forbidden by law from even seeing friends and family, much less hugging them. Lawmakers have written to the leagues to remind them of the need to follow restrictions. The leagues have, duly, written to their clubs. The news media has brimmed with fulmination.To be clear: there are protocols in place that players and their clubs must adhere to if soccer is to continue in the pandemic, rules that exist for their own protection and the protection of society as a whole. Players who are proved to have broken those protocols away from the field, if anything, have not been punished enough.But a ban on celebrating goals is not part of those protocols. The players have all been tested, often more than once a week. If they are on the field, we have to assume they are clear of the virus. If we cannot assume that, they should not be playing at all. They are no closer during celebrations than they are at corner kicks. If the former is not safe, then neither is the latter. There have been no cases of transmission between teams during games, or even among a single team: Where there have been outbreaks, they seem to have taken place at training facilities.Celebrating goals, in other words, is a nonissue. That it has been allowed to become a controversy, to take air away from all of those things that genuinely matter, is because lawmakers are once again in need of a convenient villain, and because sections of the news media cannot resist a chance to indulge the cheap thrill of click-inducing indignity. And both, in such circumstances, know exactly where to look.CorrespondenceThat’s George Best on the right there. Not to be confused with Pete Best.Credit…Victor Boynton/Associated PressFirst, to address a query expressed by a couple of readers: Yes, I am aware that George Best was not actually in the Beatles. No, I am not mixing him up with Pete Best. How could I? Pete Best never won a European Cup, for a start.The confusion arose from some poor phrasing in last week’s column (a lesson, here, on the importance of precision in language). I wrote that Best (George) was “regarded as the fifth Beatle,” though perhaps “presented as a fifth Beatle” would have been better.As the story goes, Best (the footballer) was nicknamed “O Quinto Beatle” by the Portuguese news media after starring in a game between Manchester United and Benfica in 1966. That was then picked up by the British newspapers, who referred to him as “El Beatle.” Presumably because the idea that Portuguese and Spanish were distinct languages was too much for them. Still, we all go wrong with the direct article sometimes.On the subject of the fading of the F.A. Cup, George McIntire wonders whether the most conclusive proof of its reduced status came from Arsenal. “What truly sealed its declining relevance was the futility of three wins in four years to save Arsène Wenger’s job,” he wrote. “There’s no Wenger Out campaign if he wins three leagues or Champions Leagues.” This is entirely right, and it’s interesting to note that — at certain clubs — domestic titles appear to be going the same way.And a depressing note to end on from Casey Lindstrom. “You wrote that fame and values are interlinked,” he wrote. “However, one does not need to look far [outside sports] to see those who are famous with all the values, ethics and integrity of robber barons.” This is also entirely right, and I do not have a convincing response to it. Though I find it hard to imagine that an athlete would achieve, say, Marcus Rashford’s level of prominence espousing less admirable views, and that is some solace.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More