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      Selling Saudi Soccer, One Like at a Time

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      The standard of play in the Saudi Pro League doesn’t matter when no one’s watching the games.Neymar’s endorsement was not, perhaps, the most ringing. Back in Brazil to play for his national team this month, he had been asked — not for the first time — to address the lingering suspicion that, in leaving Paris St.-Germain for Saudi Arabia and Al-Hilal, one of the finest players of his generation might not have chosen the most challenging coda to his career.Neymar’s immediate instinct was to dismiss the premise. “I can assure you the game in Saudi Arabia is the same: The ball is round, we have goal posts,” he said with a slight smile and a nervous laugh. “For the names that have gone to Saudi Arabia, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Saudi league was better than the French,” he added. He was still smiling then, but it did not feel quite as warm.Clearly, the accusation — one thrown not just at Neymar, but at the dozens of players who have been enticed to the Saudi Pro League over the course of the summer — touches a nerve.That is no surprise. Nobody likes to be told that they have chosen the easy route. No athlete would tolerate the intimation that what they do, and where they play, does not really count. In general, soccer players fall philosophically somewhere between realism and cynicism, but even they tend to bristle when they are told their primary — their only — motivation is money. The early evidence, though, does not exactly play in Neymar’s favor.Neymar’s signing by Al-Hilal, like so many others this summer, was about attracting attention as much as talent.Associated PressEstablishing the comparative quality of different leagues is an inexact science. What makes one competition stronger than another? Is it the technical brilliance of the best teams? Is it incompetence of the worst? Or is it the cumulative accomplishment of the tournament’s constituents? Is it the peak, the trough, or the median?Or does it have nothing to do with the ability of the players at all? Is the best league the one that is most entertaining, or the most competitive, the one in which the greatest proportion of games are evenly balanced? (Other answers include: “The one in which you are most emotionally invested” and “The one with the highest production values and smartest marketing strategy.”)It is hard to believe, though, that the first installment of the new-and-improved Saudi Pro League outstrips France’s Ligue 1 — by common consensus the weakest of Europe’s five major leagues — on any of those criteria.(To be clear, it would be unreasonable to think it should. A whole competition cannot be transformed in a single summer, and even the Saudi authorities themselves accept it is an ongoing process. Those who have been working there for longer than Neymar regard the standard as hugely variable, still, with the strongest sides roughly on a par with mid-table Premier League teams, and the weakest some way below.)Still, Neymar — who missed more than 100 games through injury during his six seasons in France, a crude but not entirely irrelevant gauge of the intensity of that competition — cannot have failed to notice the difference.At Al-Nassr, Cristiano Ronaldo is the star even when he doesn’t score.Fayez Nureldine/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesOn Thursday, during Al-Ittihad’s win against Al-Okhdood, the Cameroonian striker Léandre Tawamba performed a nutmeg on another of the league’s high-profile recruits, the Brazilian midfielder Fabinho. The trick itself was neat, inventive, worthy of a ripple of applause. Fabinho’s reaction, though, was telling.He did not immediately snap at Tawamba’s ankles. He did not tussle with the forward, his brow furrowed in grim determination, as he surely would have done during his days at Monaco, or Liverpool. He chose, instead, just to stand and watch for a moment. So did the rest of Al-Ittihad’s midfield. The whole thing seemed to play out in slow motion.Any number of brief vignettes from the opening weeks of the Saudi season create the same impression. There are gifted players present, of course. There are moments of wonder. But for all the screaming headlines and the triumphalist spin that tends to greet another goal for Cristiano Ronaldo or another virtuoso improvisation from Karim Benzema, everything is undercut by quite how laissez-faire it all seems to be.That is not necessarily a bad thing, of course. Soccer does not have to be played in the pell-mell style that is de rigueur in England and Germany. Intensity does not always equal beauty. Argentina, for example, has long had a tradition of a slightly more thoughtful playing style. And besides, there are extenuating circumstances: Saudi Arabia, even on a September evening, is still really quite hot.More important, as Neymar and those who have made the same career choice this summer reflect on and come to terms with their decisions, there is a very good chance that the quality of the league does not matter in the slightest.Saudi Arabia did not spend the summer just signing superstars. Through its media rights partners, its soccer authorities also reached agreements with a host of international broadcasters. This season, the league’s games will now be available in more than 130 territories, among them the United States (Fox), Britain, Germany and Canada (DAZN), and, eager to see what real soccer looks like, France (Canal+).But that is not how the vast majority of people will engage with the Saudi league, because it is not how the vast majority of people engage with any league.Does it even matter that Karim Benzema and Al-Ittihad entered Friday atop the Saudi Pro League table? Maybe not to Saudi Arabia.Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThere has always been a discrepancy between live soccer’s value as content and the number of people who actually watch it. Even the most mouthwatering Premier League games attract only a couple of million viewers in Britain, and roughly the same number in the United States. (Where there are, you may have noticed, significantly more people.)Instead, most fans consume the sport in either an abbreviated form — game highlights — or an abstract one, as a rolling, character-based drama that plays out across various strands of the media. In recent years, social media has allowed those to dovetail: You can follow the plot interspersed with brief clips of Ronaldo scoring a penalty or Neymar fooling a defender or Fabinho not really bothering to tackle someone.It seems unlikely that Saudi Arabia is ignorant of that. The country’s approach has been sufficiently considered that it is reasonable to assume it has been factored into its plans. The way to win hearts and minds, in the digital age, is not to construct a league and imbue it with a slow-burn dramatic tension. That is hard, and takes time.It is much quicker, and much easier, to use a competition to generate digestible, fun-size content, the sort that can be quickly and easily shared on Instagram and TikTok and whatever Twitter is called now, the kind that generates neither an emotional nor an intellectual response but one that can be encapsulated in an emoji. If people do not watch the games, the standard is irrelevant. All that matters is that you hit that like button.Quite what that means for the future of the sport itself — of all sports, in fact — is not clear. Soccer’s authorities, the various feuding bodies in charge of the most popular pastime the world has ever known, have spent a surprising amount of time in recent years considering that very issue.For Neymar and the others, though, as for Saudi Arabia, the answer is no more pressing than whether the average game in the Saudi Pro League is as good as the average game in Ligue 1. Nobody is judging Saudi Arabia on what its billion-dollar, oven-baked competition looks like over 90 minutes. All it takes is a few seconds.Destination: TajikistanThe Asian Champions League schedule will send Cristiano Ronaldo and Al-Nassr to Tajikistan, Qatar and Iran.Fayez Nureldine/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAll through the fall of 2009 and the spring of 2010, it seemed impossible that Barcelona would not retain the Champions League title. Pep Guardiola’s team was, by some distance, the best in Europe. Lionel Messi, Xavi Hernández, Andres Iniesta and their teammates breezed through the group. They blew past Stuttgart and then Arsenal in the knockout phase.There are two interpretations for what happened next. José Mourinho, the coach of the Inter Milan team that knocked Barcelona out in the semifinals, would tell you that his tactical acumen derailed his great philosophical counterpoint’s attempt to conquer the continent once again.Everyone else would suggest that the explosion of Eyjafjallajökull, the volcano that sent an ash cloud over Europe and forced Barcelona to travel overland to the first leg of its semifinal with Inter in Milan, might have had something to do with it.All of which is a long-winded, self-indulgent way of saying that — from this vantage point — any serious rationale for Manchester City’s not winning a second straight Champions League needs to involve at least one volcano. It is hard, certainly, to see it losing to any of its supposed rivals over two legs. (A final, I will concede, can be a little more arbitrary.)Perhaps, then, it is time to concede that the UEFA Champions League is not the most interesting continental tournament this season. It is not even the most interesting tournament of that name. For intrigue, it cannot hope to compete with the Asian iteration of the competition.There are, as you might have read, pros and cons to Saudi Arabia’s sudden taste for soccer teams and players, but it is hard to argue that seeing an Al-Hilal team featuring Neymar play in Mumbai is not a benefit. That is not all. Karim Benzema’s Al-Ittihad is set to travel to Iran, while — a personal favorite — Cristiano Ronaldo and Al-Nassr will make the trip to Istiklol, in the Tajik capital of Dushanbe.Partly, the pleasure is sincere: The prospect of welcoming Neymar, in the flesh, for a competitive game, is one that millions of fans in India will treasure. Partly, though, it is vicarious.Quite how Al-Nassr tempted Ronaldo to Saudi Arabia is not clear; precise details of the pitch remain private. It is hard to imagine, though, that at any point anyone mentioned the bit about a game in Tajikistan, an autocracy so repressive that even the Premier League might think twice before allowing it to buy one of its soccer teams.CorrespondenceNot really a correspondence section, this week, so much as a brief note to say thanks to all of you who have been in touch in the last few weeks to seek clarification on the future of this newsletter/my general whereabouts. Each message has been gratefully received, and hopefully this edition settles some of the more outré conspiracy theories. If not, I can happily provide a contemporaneous photograph with a copy of today’s newspaper for verification. More

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      2026 World Cup: FIFA Delays Have Cities Worried About Planning

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      With about 1,000 days until the opening game of soccer’s showcase event, U.S. organizers are waiting for answers, and action, from the sport’s governing body.When FIFA announced several years ago that it would take the preparations for soccer’s 2026 World Cup in-house, it argued the change would streamline the planning for a sprawling championship that would be larger and more complex and require greater expertise than ever before. That the change would also grant FIFA greater control over the $11 billion in revenue it expects from its biggest cash cow was perhaps even more important.But as teams begin their campaigns to qualify for the tournament, cities across the United States are growing frustrated with the tortured pace of FIFA’s preparations and communications and a lack of clarity about their roles in what will be the biggest, and richest, sporting event ever staged on American soil.Cities and stadiums still do not know, for example, how many matches they will host, or on which dates. Opaque rules about sponsorships have left local governments unable to secure deals to cover the millions of dollars of public money they have committed to spend. And delays in hiring could leave FIFA without the kind of seasoned operations, marketing and hospitality professionals required to put on its showpiece tournament.Even the most basic facts remain in question: Five years after the United States, Canada and Mexico were awarded the hosting rights to the World Cup, and more than a year after FIFA selected the 16 host cities, the date of the opening game is still not set.In interviews over the past two months, many officials overseeing World Cup preparations in several cities also expressed concerns about public relations missteps, leadership confusion and sudden changes of plans by FIFA that have left them scrambling to form and adjust their own plans. A few worried that soccer’s global governing body, now far behind the pace of preparations in the past two World Cups, in Russia and Qatar, might be squandering its greatest opportunity to entrench the sport in the United States market.A crucial bit of clarity could come in the next few weeks, when FIFA finally reveals the tournament’s full match schedule, including which city will host the final. FIFA has whittled its choice to two contenders: New York, a global powerhouse city with immense cultural importance, and Arlington, Tex., home to an ultramodern stadium complex and an 80,000-seat arena with a retractable roof to keep out the rain, and the heat. FIFA expects to make an announcement next month or, at the latest, in November, in order to meet its self-imposed deadline of releasing the schedule by the fall.All the while, there has been growing disquiet in several U.S. cities that FIFA’s lack of urgency is wasting valuable time.Alan Rothenberg, who as president of U.S. Soccer led the preparations for the 1994 World Cup and now works as a consultant to a group of 2026 host cities, said that FIFA had had “its hands full” and that had resulted in “more uncertainty and confusion among host cities than they’d like to have.”“The uncertainty makes it difficult to plan,” Rothenberg said. “When it all shakes out, it will be a spectacular event. It’s just a little frustrating.” His concern was echoed by officials in several U.S. cities; all asked to speak anonymously to describe confidential planning discussions.Mexico, a World Cup co-host, played at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Tex., outside Dallas, in a friendly match this month. The stadium is one of two contenders to host the 2026 World Cup final.Jerome Miron/USA Today Sports, via ReutersAsked about concerns from its partners, FIFA said in a statement that “the existing infrastructure and local know-how when it comes to major sporting events are impressive and reassuring.”“We are working hand-in-hand with our hosts to develop strong operational plans,” FIFA said, “and our efforts remain on pace to deliver an unforgettable event for fans in 2026.”Awarded to three North American neighbors on the eve of the World Cup in Russia five years ago, the 2026 World Cup was always going to be a monumental planning challenge.No previous sporting event will compare to its scale, profile and complexity: more than 100 games, played in 16 cities in three countries over about a month. The event has already required the coordination of multiple federal bodies both for security reasons and to ease the movement of fans as they follow their teams across the borders of the United States, Mexico and Canada. A State Department spokesman confirmed that the World Cup “will be categorized as a national security event.”The government’s efforts are being led by the National Security Council, which earlier this year started to coordinate interagency meetings that also included representatives of FIFA and U.S. Soccer, which until then had largely been sidelined by FIFA.The White House has been coordinating similar meetings for the Los Angeles Olympics, an event that does not take place until 2028. Yet that planning started years earlier, in part because the lines of communication were much clearer, and because Los Angeles established an organizing committee much earlier than FIFA.The World Cup’s procrastination, some of it related to the coronavirus pandemic but much of it self-inflicted, has come as FIFA has labored to find ways to reconfigure the event after expanding it to 48 teams from 32. It changed the tournament’s format for a second time in March, a move that will require it to stage 104 games in total, a major increase from the current 64.In previous World Cups, FIFA delegated much of the on-the-ground planning to local governing bodies, usually led by the host country’s soccer federations. But starting with the recent Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand, it took on those responsibilities itself; this year, that led to grumbling from soccer officials in those countries — sometimes publicly — about the new planning model, which granted FIFA almost total control over the event.With FIFA in charge of the 2026 preparations, U.S. Soccer has found itself largely excluded from major decisions, even as a FIFA office that was set up in Coral Gables, Fla., has struggled to recruit staff members and has failed to enlist the commitments of partners, tournament ambassadors and influencers who might carry the tournament’s messaging to new and wider audiences.Clouding matters even more was the sudden departure this summer of Colin Smith, the top FIFA official responsible for organizing the World Cup. Smith’s interim replacement, his former deputy Heimo Schirgi, is expected to visit the 2026 host cities this fall to provide much-needed answers and reassurance.In May, when FIFA held an event for the tournament’s brand identity in Los Angeles. The event, a prime opportunity to trumpet the tournament to consumers and sponsors, was a public relations dud, notable mostly for a lack of coordination with existing American soccer properties like Major League Soccer and U.S. Soccer, which were not engaged in amplifying the organizers’ message.A senior FIFA official directly involved with the 2026 tournament planning acknowledged “being behind the eight ball” but said the circumstances were not as dire as some critics were keen to portray. The official asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the planning and the potential embarrassment for FIFA.Some of the acrimony and frustration is related to money. By taking total control of organizing its biggest event, FIFA now has more leverage over how the World Cup can be commercialized. Its own revenue projections are almost double the pretournament figures for the most recent tournament in Qatar, which itself broke income records. But cities still mired in negotiations with FIFA over their share in revenue sources, like local sponsorships and hospitality packages, fear that they are missing out on the commercial benefits of hosting, the bulk of which will flow to FIFA.At the same time, FIFA’s relationship with the U.S. government also appears to have cooled. Its president, Gianni Infantino, was a frequent visitor to the White House during the administration of former President Donald J. Trump, and he made a welcome speech at a dinner hosted by Trump in 2020 at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.But Infantino has not visited the White House since Trump left office, and his relationship with the current U.S. leadership is not nearly as close. Infantino had hoped to meet with Secretary of State Antony Blinken at the Qatar World Cup late last year, but Blinken, there to attend games involving the United States, declined to carve out time in his schedule, according to a senior soccer official who was present at the time but was not authorized to discuss the events publicly.Rothenberg, who ran the planning for the 1994 World Cup, said some of the tension in host cities might ease once FIFA announces the tournament schedule. But he also said Infantino could help by loosening FIFA’s iron grip on the preparations.“Better that he just turns over some authority to us in the U.S. and stay in Qatar or Zurich,” Rothenberg said. “We know how to get things done. There’s a huge event going on virtually every day.” More

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      Spain’s Female Soccer Players Call Off Wage Dispute Strike

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      The breakthrough in the labor dispute, which has delayed the start of the season and has added to a turbulent period in Spanish soccer, was an agreement over minimum pay.Players in Spain’s women’s soccer league have called off a strike that delayed the opening of the season after reaching an agreement with the league over minimum salaries, a rare moment of harmony in what has been an acrimonious period in Spanish soccer.The agreement, confirmed early Thursday, would raise the minimum salary for players in the league to 21,000 euros, or about $22,500, from 16,000 euros this season, a significant increase but still far short of what their male counterparts make.The minimum is scheduled to rise to €23,500 for the 2025-2026 season, with the potential for an even higher benchmark “if enough profits are obtained from commercial assets,” such as sponsorship, according to a statement from the unions representing the players.Spanish soccer is in the midst of a turbulent moment, touched off by an unwanted kiss by Luis Rubiales, the nation’s top soccer official at the time, on Jennifer Hermoso, one of the national team’s top players. The episode occurred last month after Spain’s 1-0 victory over England in the Women’s World Cup final in Sydney, Australia.The furor over Mr. Rubiales’s conduct — both the kiss and what came after — has put a spotlight on the various inequities and accusations of misconduct in the Spanish game, with claims of deeply rooted discrimination and chauvinism. The episode has been described in some quarters as Spain’s #MeToo moment.The negotiations were “tough, intense and long,” Beatriz Álvarez, the president of Spain’s fledgling professional women’s league, said during a late-night news conference in announcing the agreement that clears the way for the season to begin on Friday, after matches last weekend were called off.Despite the raise, female players will still make far less than male players in Spain’s top division. According to A.F.E., the main soccer union in Spain, the minimum salary for first-division male players is 180,000 euros, although Ms. Alvarez said that as the women’s league increases its income, “the conditions of the players will improve.”The unions, in their statement, made clear that they were looking for more than just increased compensation, highlighting the need to continue to work not just for higher pay but also for better maternity conditions and “harassment protocol.”The A.F.E.’s chief lawyer, María José López, who was involved in the negotiations, said that “types of behavior that could be considered harassment, such as a pat on the backside or a kiss, need to be redefined, and sanctioning procedures made more agile.”That could be interpreted as a reference to Mr. Rubiales, who is expected to appear in court on Friday in connection with a criminal case that could lead to sexual assault charges, and to the developments surrounding him since the World Cup victory that have deeply unsettled Spanish soccer.After he refused to step down in response to widespread criticism of his kiss, current members of the national team and dozens of other players said they would not take the field for Spain unless significant changes were made in the leadership of the Spanish soccer federation.Mr. Rubiales eventually resigned on Sunday, and Jorge Vilda, who was accused by players last year of controlling behavior, was fired as the team’s coach this month.The team is scheduled to play its first match since the World Cup next week, against Sweden, and it is not clear whether the players will consider the departures of Mr. Rubiales and Mr. Vilda to be enough to bring them back into the fold.The answer to that question may come on Friday, when Montse Tomé, who was chosen to replace Mr. Vilda and is the first woman to lead the national team, will name her roster for the match next week. More

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      They Shot at Her. They Forced Her From Her Home. She Won’t Stop Fighting for Girls.

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      Khalida Popal, the former captain of the Afghanistan women’s national soccer team, woke up on the floor of her apartment near Copenhagen, drenched in sweat and shaking.She had collapsed and couldn’t speak. An ambulance rushed to her.It was two years ago last month, and the Taliban were taking control of Afghanistan. Female soccer players on the national team Popal helped create in 2007 were desperate to leave the country, fearing that the Taliban would kill them for playing the sport.Players were deluging Popal with requests for help, and she felt smothered by guilt. For more than 15 years, much of that period spent in exile, she had encouraged Afghan girls to participate in all areas of society, including sports, jobs and education.The message was everything the Taliban despised.“I feel responsible for these girls,” Popal said later. “I’d rather die than turn my back on them.”So on that blue-sky summer afternoon in 2021, Popal had a panic attack and thought she might be dying. But in a show of her resilience in a life marked by trauma, she waved away the medical workers and returned to her desk to continue coordinating an evacuation of players and their families from Kabul, the Afghan capital.Relying on a network she built through her activism, she helped rescue 87 people, including the senior national team. Months later, another 130.Popal is pushing world soccer officials to let the exiled Afghan women’s team represent the country in international competition. In July, she was in Melbourne for the Hope Cup, a game between the Afghan team and a team that represented the area’s migrants and refugees.Isabella Moore for The New York TimesNow Popal is on another mission, one that reached its height at this summer’s Women’s World Cup. She is trying to convince FIFA, soccer’s global governing body, to let players on the Afghan women’s national team represent their country again after the Taliban barred girls and women from playing sports.The players, after escaping Afghanistan with Popal’s help, are living in Australia, which hosted this year’s World Cup with New Zealand. Though the team is competing for the Melbourne Victory soccer club, FIFA refuses to recognize it as a national team because the Afghanistan Football Federation claims it does not exist. Under the Taliban, no women’s team does.“These players dreamed of playing football for Afghanistan and men just came and took that dream from them,” Popal said. “FIFA is saying, ‘We are sorry that you’ve lost your right to play football, girls, when you have done nothing to deserve it.’ It’s disgusting.”In an emailed statement, FIFA said it cannot recognize a national team unless it is first acknowledged by its national federation. FIFA has declared it a priority to ensure equal access to soccer without discrimination. But in Afghanistan’s case, it is just “monitoring the situation very closely,” according to its statement.A spokesman for the Afghanistan Football Federation said the organization could do nothing to help because the women’s national team dissolved when the players fled the country — an assertion the players reject.With coffee in hand and the energy of someone who has consumed far too much of it, Popal, 36, has been sharing the Afghan team’s story with everyone she can, in every way she can. While working for Right to Dream, a soccer nonprofit, and Girl Power, her own nonprofit, she organized a petition, which has been signed by more than 175,000 people since publishing online in late July. More than 100 politicians, across four countries, endorsed a letter she wrote to FIFA with the British parliamentarian Julie Elliott and Malala Yousafzai, the Nobel Peace Prize winner who was shot in the head by the Taliban when she was 15.Also, days before the World Cup began, Popal flew to Melbourne for a match that Melbourne Victory arranged, at her suggestion, between the exiled Afghan team and a team that represented the area’s migrants and refugees. They called the event the Hope Cup.Popal founded the Afghan women’s national team in 2007. Current members played in the Hope Cup in Melbourne in July.Isabella Moore for The New York TimesAbout 50 fans watched the Afghan players wave their nation’s flag and sing about their country. One Afghan wore a T-shirt that said, “Save our families,” because many players’ relatives were still hoping to receive humanitarian visas to live in Australia.Like a Hollywood publicist, Popal played cheerful yet determined host, rooting for the players, taking photos and speaking to reporters.“Khalida is reminding the world that we are still here, don’t forget us,” said Fati Yousufi, the Afghan team’s captain and goalkeeper. “I know a lot of us have said, ‘I want to be like Khalida one day, a strong and powerful woman.’”Anyone who wants to be like Popal should understand that her advocacy for the Afghan team has come with serious sacrifices.“It has taken a huge toll on her,” said Kelly Lindsey, an American whom Popal recruited to coach the Afghan national team in 2016. “But she won’t stop for a moment to take care of herself. Because if she did that, there would be no time for her to take care of others.”Creating the National TeamEven before the Taliban ruled Afghanistan, men would throw rocks at Popal when she played soccer in the street, claiming it was immoral for girls to play sports. Yet she always believed women could earn respect through soccer because it was a language men understood.During the Taliban’s first reign, from when Popal was age 9 to 14, she was stuck in a Pakistani refugee tent city, with soccer as her only outlet. When her family returned to Kabul in 2002 after a U.S.-led coalition drove out the Taliban, she was eager to grow the sport.Popal’s mother, Shokria Popal, thumbed through an album of photos from Khalida’s childhood. When Khalida was a girl, men threw rocks at her when she played soccer in the streets because they believed that women playing sports offended Islam.Her mother, Shokria Popal, a physical education teacher, helped recruit players, often contending with parents who called her a prostitute trying to destroy the culture. Teachers slapped Khalida in the face and tried to expel her for her work. But from the Popals’ efforts, high school teams were born. Five years later, the Afghanistan Football Federation accepted Khalida’s team as the women’s national team.It was too dangerous for the team to play in public because religious conservatives said the sportswear showed the shapes of women’s bodies, defying Islam. So the team practiced inside a NATO base, using hand-me-down equipment from the federation’s men’s teams and practicing on an active helipad. Helicopters kicked up dust that caked the players’ faces and coated their throats.The squad once lost an international match by 17-0. But to Popal, winning was not as important as the message.The team, which played its official matches outside the country, first made national news in 2010 when it played NATO soldiers in Kabul. Speaking to journalists, Popal denounced the Taliban. There was an immediate cost.Some of her teammates were forced to quit because their families hadn’t known that they were playing. Popal recalled receiving death threats, including from one caller who said he would cut her to pieces.Her father and one of her four brothers were slashed with knives and beaten with guns because, as the assailants said to them, they “were not real men for letting their daughter and sister play football,” her father, Timor Shah Popal, recalled.Popal at a training session in London in 2018.Daniel Leal-Olivas/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIn 2011, Popal was working as the head of finance and women’s soccer at the otherwise all-male federation, trying to blend in with her colleagues by wearing baggy clothes and speaking in rough slang, when she complained on national television that the women’s team wasn’t getting enough support. She blamed corrupt sports officials for it.Days later, she said, a truck rammed into the car she was riding in. Uniformed men fired shots through the windows, but she was not physically harmed. Then, when the Afghanistan Olympic committee’s headquarters were vandalized, Popal was among those blamed.Though she denied involvement, the police issued a warrant for her arrest. Hours before the government barred her from traveling, she boarded a plane to India.The Death of a BrotherPopal was on the run. Multiple times, she changed her phone number and her hotel, but threats found their way to her. One text message said, “We will not let your parents live. Come back for payback.”The next summer, she learned that her brother Idris had been shot and killed on the way to a university math class in Kabul, and was sure that the death was connected to her activism.She made her way to Denmark after the sportswear company Hummel, the Afghan team’s sponsor, helped her apply for asylum there. For a year, she lived in a refugee center surrounded by barbed wire fences. Gunfire from the adjacent military shooting range provided an unnerving soundtrack.Popal in a group hug with girls at the asylum center in Sandholm, Denmark, where she volunteers as a coach. Charlotte de la Fuente for The New York TimesEvery day, she woke up with her eyes swollen from crying. At night, she kept the lights on in her barracks because of a recurring dream that a man was at the foot of her bed, trying to kill her. She considered suicide.“I spent a lot of time looking at the birds and feeling jealous because they have wings to fly and I was just a useless body with no identity,” she recalled.With the help of a therapist and medication, her depression lifted. In exile, Popal eventually volunteered as the Afghan national team’s program director, organizing tournament appearances and hiring coaches. She also coordinated surreptitious exits to safe countries for gay players who feared persecution and forced marriages.But even women who remained with the team were not safe. In 2018, Popal saw federation officials sexually harassing players at a training camp in Jordan. Players told her that they had been sexually abused by those and other officials, including Keramuddin Keram, who was the federation’s president and a powerful politician. Popal reported what she had heard, but for eight months FIFA officials did nothing, according to Popal and Lindsey, the coach.Popal persuaded 10 players to come forward and obtained blueprints of the federation’s headquarters. That paperwork showed Keram had a secret bedroom attached to his office where, players told her, he beat and raped them.FIFA eventually barred Keram from the sport for life and the Afghan courts punished him and four others. The case was the first of its kind in the country, said Fawzia Amini, who was a senior judge on Afghanistan’s supreme court before fleeing Kabul in 2021.“Khalida is my hero,” Amini said when she and Popal were in Washington last year to accept the Lantos Human Rights Prize. Amini had been the judge assigned to the soccer federation’s sexual abuse cases.“Because of her, girls know how to go to the courts to fight for their rights,” she said of Popal.In Washington in 2022, Popal and Judge Fawzia Amini accepted the Lantos Human Rights Prize for championing human rights and women’s rights in Afghanistan and around. Popal travels extensively to accept awards, speak at conferences and meet with refugees.Kenny Holston for The New York TimesNews of the case reached other national team players, including those in Haiti, Argentina, Canada and Venezuela. They felt emboldened to speak up about sexual abuse committed by men in their sport, said Jonas Baer-Hoffmann, the general secretary of FIFPro, the union for professional soccer players that helped Popal with the abuse case.“Khalida started a big wave,” he said. “She’s changing the world.”She is also trying to protect others from what she endured.When she was a teenager, Popal said, she woke up after a routine surgery to find her limbs tied to the bed. A doctor was on top of her, fondling her.He stopped, she said, only when she vomited.“I want to be there for the girls,” she said, “because no one was there for me.”When Kabul fell two years ago, Popal worried about those girls. While faced with terrifying flashbacks from her own experiences fleeing the Taliban, she felt a duty to the generations of girls she had urged to test society’s limits.“Save me, sister,” the player Nilab Mohammadi begged her one night in a video call while holding a gun. “The minute the Taliban knocks on my door, I will shoot myself in the head.”Popal soothed her, promising help. She rushed to social media and television to warn players to erase evidence that they had played soccer. Burn your jerseys, she said. Delete your social media accounts.Popal on the phone at her parents’ home in Denmark while her mother, Shokria Popal, prepared dinner. Shokria Popal encouraged Khalida’s soccer ambitions and helped her recruit players in Afghanistan.Charlotte de la Fuente for The New York TimesHands trembling and heart racing, she called her wide network. A team of lawyers, politicians and human rights advocates joined her to evacuate the players. Some of those players were forced to leave family members behind, and Popal empathized. When she left Afghanistan, she never again saw her grandfather, whom she called the love of her life. He had told her she could become an independent woman and make a difference in the world instead of marrying at 13 or 14 and relying on a husband.Eventually, Popal helped more than 200 players and their family members make it safely out of Afghanistan, where girls and women have since lost the freedom to work, attend school and even to go outside without a man.“People fail to acknowledge what a strategically brilliant mind she is,” Lindsey said. “Without her, none of this happens.”‘Like a Mother Fighting for Her Kids’Popal’s work continues. On any given day, she may be on a train to Berlin or a long-haul flight to Australia, off to accept awards or speak at conferences or meet with refugees. She often wears dresses or skirts, with her long, wavy black hair flowing over her shoulders, to make up for the years she had to dress like a man.After one trip in the fall of 2021, Popal and her boyfriend, Russell Pakzad, visited her parents, who had received asylum in Denmark in 2016. The smell of lamb simmering on the stovetop wafted through the apartment as Khalida gave her mother, Shokria, the latest honor she had won, the FIFPro Hero Award.With a bittersweet smile, Shokria leafed through a pile of Khalida’s accomplishments: a magazine article from Afghanistan, with a portrait of Khalida clutching a trophy; a photo of Khalida and the national team in Pakistan. Her only daughter always gave her trouble, she said, starting when Khalida was a schoolgirl who refused to keep her opinions to herself.Popal holding her award from FIFPro.Charlotte de la Fuente for The New York Times“I just think you are so brave and fearless,” she told Khalida. “I don’t know where it comes from.”The next day, Khalida Popal’s phone had 252 unread messages, many from players on Afghanistan’s developmental team. Popal helped evacuate those players from Kabul by choreographing a journey to Pakistan that included the girls huddling inside an abandoned house while Taliban fighters roamed outside.Popal had relied on a connection at the Pakistan Football Federation to help the team cross the border and into a government-sponsored hotel. But now the Pakistani government wanted the players to move along.Popal sought help from Rabbi Moshe Margaretten of the Tzedek Association, a Brooklyn-based social justice group she worked with during the initial evacuation of players. “She really inspired me because she was like a mother fighting for her kids,” he said.Popal was on a train to Brussels from Paris when the rabbi got back to her.“Kim Kardashian paid for the girls’ flight!” Popal said, laughing loudly enough to startle other passengers.The players flew to London, and then settled in Doncaster, about 50 miles east of Manchester. It’s just one place Popal routinely visits newly transplanted Afghans.Though the players’ hotel was not open to the public, Popal strolled by the security guards in the summer of 2022 as if she were in charge. She had work to do: link the players to local soccer teams, set up job training and ensure that they had mental health services — the same help she had given the national team in Australia. That weekend, she took the players to the beach and to the European women’s soccer championship, pulling several coffee-fueled all-nighters to fit it in. No one gave her that kind of attention, she said, when she was a refugee.Popal, at center in the booth, enjoying a meal with members of Afghanistan’s developmental team in Doncaster, England in July 2022. She helped plan their escape from Afghanistan through Pakistan and then to England.Mary Turner for The New York TimesNarges Mayeli, one of the players, said Popal provided hope.“I have nothing in my life right now,” Mayeli said. “But the only thing that I know is that if I put Khalida as my role model, I’m going to be successful someday.”Gaining AlliesThe Women’s World Cup was ending in a day and Popal was eking out all the publicity she could get for the Afghan team before the world stopped watching.Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani activist, helped with that.Malala had flown to Melbourne from Sydney, where she and her husband, Asser Malik, had attended a World Cup game. After reading in The New York Times about Fati Yousufi and the Afghan team, she wanted to meet the players and help Popal in her efforts.On a tiny indoor field, with about a dozen television cameras present, Popal listened as Malala and Yousufi, the team captain, gave speeches. She took deep breaths and stared at the ground to fight back tears.Malala, who wore the Afghan team’s jersey to the World Cup final the next day, said FIFA needed to change its regulations to let the team compete because playing a sport is a basic human right.Malala Yousafzai, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, received a jersey from Fatima Yousufi, captain of the Afghan team, last month in Melbourne.Kelly Defina/Getty Images“It is time for people to decide that they are not standing on the Taliban’s side,” she said.Yousufi was next. Since her story became public, she had been featured at human rights and women’s rights conferences, and last May gave the commencement speech for Chapman University’s law school near Anaheim, Calif. (Yousufi once did not use her surname publicly, but does so now that her family has safely left Afghanistan.)“We are asking them to open the door, open the door for our team, open the door for Afghanistan women,” Yousufi said, referring to FIFA, as Popal and Malala nodded. “We don’t want to lose this opportunity.”Popal never thought she would work alongside someone with Malala’s stature, or that players, like Yousufi, would become forceful leaders worldwide.“It’s so lonely and tiring to do this on your own, which was what I did for a long time, but now I see that the new generation gets it,” she said, choking up. “It’s not all on my shoulders anymore.”Safiullah Padshah More

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      Luis Rubiales, Spain’s Top Soccer Official, Resigns Over World Cup Kiss

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      Pressure had been building on Luis Rubiales, with prosecutors opening an investigation, his soccer federation calling for him to step down and FIFA suspending him.The head of the Spanish soccer federation, Luis Rubiales, resigned on Sunday, weeks after kissing a member of Spain’s women’s team on the lips after the team won the World Cup last month, setting off a national scandal and drawing accusations of abusing his power and perpetuating sexism in the sport.In a statement posted to X, formerly known as Twitter, on Sunday, Mr. Rubiales said he had submitted his resignation as the federation’s president and as vice president of UEFA, European soccer’s governing body.“After the rapid suspension carried out by FIFA, plus the rest of proceedings open against me, it is evident that I will not be able to return to my position,” he wrote. “My daughters, my family and the people who love me have suffered the effects of persecution excessively, as well as many falsehoods, but it is also true that in the street, the truth is prevailing more every day.”Mr. Rubiales, 46, was largely unrepentant about his actions, but pressure had grown on him and the group he leads, known formally as the Royal Spanish Football Federation, and it became clear that his position was untenable as the outrage against him showed no signs of abating.Spanish prosecutors opened a sexual assault case on Friday after the player Jennifer Hermoso, who said she was made to feel “vulnerable” and a “victim of an attack” when he kissed her, filed a formal complaint, and there were signs of opposition to his continued presence at the top of Spanish soccer at every turn.The soccer federation had called for him to resign “immediately,” female players had said they would not take the field for the national team as long as he was in charge, the men’s team had condemned his actions, and FIFA, soccer’s governing body, had suspended him for 90 days.Some commentators have described the events as a watershed moment in Spain’s #MeToo movement, as they put a spotlight on a divide between traditions of machismo and more recent progressivism that placed Spain in the European vanguard on issues of feminism and equality.The controversy centers on the conduct of Mr. Rubiales, who kissed Ms. Hermoso, one of the team’s star players, after Spain defeated England, 1-0, at the World Cup final in Sydney, Australia, on Aug. 20.He offered a tepid apology the next day, but by the end of that week he had dug in his heels and reversed course, insisting that Ms. Hermoso had “moved me close to her body” during their encounter onstage, feet from the Spanish queen. He also accused his critics of targeting him in a “social assassination” and declared that he would not step down.Ms. Hermoso has vigorously disputed his account and has received support far and wide, with players and others — including the United Nations’ human rights office — using the hashtag “se acabó,” or “it’s over.”The Spanish government was limited in its ability to punish Mr. Rubiales, but Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez described the soccer chief’s actions as “unacceptable,” and the secretary of the opposition People’s Party, Cuca Gamarra, described them as “shameful.”The scandal has taken some of the shine off the national team’s World Cup triumph, diverting attention from the rapid ascent to soccer glory by a squad that qualified for the tournament for the first time eight years ago after decades of mediocrity.On Sunday evening, Mr. Rubiales gave an interview on “Piers Morgan Uncensored,” in which he said he came to the decision to resign after speaking to friends and family. “They say to me, ‘Luis, now you have to focus on your dignity and to continue your life, because if not, probably, you are going to damage people you love,’” he said.Victor Francos, the president of Spain’s National Sports Council, said on Onda Cero radio that Mr. Rubiales’s resignation was “good news for the government” and “what the citizens were asking for.” Minutes earlier on Cadena Ser radio, he said the government was considering “legislative changes that can improve, strengthen and enrich public control over the federations.”“We must reflect so that certain things that have happened don’t happen again,” he said.But Mr. Rubiales was not without his supporters.When he spoke at a federation meeting in late August, his robust defense was met with loud applause by some in attendance, and his mother locked herself in a church and began a hunger strike to protest what she considered a witch hunt of her son.Before Mr. Rubiales was punished, the controversy led to the ouster of another high-profile figure in the world of Spanish women’s soccer: Jorge Vilda, the coach of the World Cup winning squad but a polarizing figure, who was fired on Tuesday.Mr. Vilda, who was hired in 2015 when his predecessor was ousted amid accusations of sexism, had been dogged by scandal in recent months. And last year, 15 star players refused to play on the national team, complaining about controlling behavior by Mr. Vilda and a general culture of sexism. More

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      Spain’s Female Soccer Players Strike Over Wage Dispute

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      The season was scheduled to begin on Friday, but the players refused to play after talks with the league brought no agreement. The dispute comes amid a debate over sexism and soccer in Spain.Female soccer players in Spain are going on strike as the club season begins, a union representative said on Thursday, as a dispute over conduct by the head of the country’s soccer federation widened into a fight with their clubs over pay.Early this month, the women’s players’ union announced that if working conditions did not improve considerably before the start of the season on Friday, the women would not play the matches set to begin this weekend.The dispute is playing out amid broader upheaval in Spanish soccer, with the firing on Tuesday of the women’s national soccer coach, Jorge Vilda, whom players had criticized for his domineering management style, and the filing of a criminal complaint against Luis Rubiales, the head of the country’s soccer federation, by Jennifer Hermoso, a player on the national women’s team whom he forcibly kissed during a public celebration of the team’s World Cup final victory in Australia last month.Representatives of the Spanish women’s soccer league and unions failed to reach an agreement during meetings in Madrid this week, with pay being the biggest point of contention.Protesters holding red cards calling for the resignation of Luis Rubiales, the head of Spain’s soccer federation, in Barcelona this week.David Ramos/Getty ImagesThe players asked for three years of progressive increases to bring their minimum wage up to 30,000 euros (about $32,000) a year, but the league proposed an increase, over three years, to €25,000. The current minimum for female players in the country is €16,000, compared with €180,000 for their male counterparts, according to Spain’s chief player union, A.F.E.“The irresponsibility and lack of spirit and vision of the unions lead clubs and players to a strike that seriously damages the image of Spanish women’s football,” the women’s league said in a statement on Wednesday.Spain’s female soccer players have been demanding higher wages and better conditions for years. They reached their first collective bargaining agreement in 2020 and have since been pushing for the country’s soccer league to improve conditions. The players are seeking higher wages, contracts that continue during maternity leave, and access to the same nutritionists and physical therapists as the male players.The strike will affect games scheduled for Friday through Sunday and Sept. 15 to 17.Discussions are due to continue next week between the league and unions in the hopes of reaching an agreement. More

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      Sexism in Spanish Women’s Soccer: Bedtime Check-Ins and Verbal Abuse

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      More than a dozen women described sexism ranging from paternalism to verbal abuse. “What you really need is a good man,” a former national captain said players were told.Last summer, when Beatriz Álvarez landed the job as president of the Spanish women’s soccer league, she asked to meet the chief of the country’s soccer federation by videoconference, she said, so she could remain home with her newborn child.After decades of being an inconsistently run afterthought, women’s soccer had recently become fully unionized and professional. Ms. Álvarez had much to discuss.But Luis Rubiales, the now-embattled president of the soccer federation, refused, Ms. Álvarez recalled in an interview. He told her to send someone else. She said he told her that, rather than attending a meeting, she should set an example by “devoting myself to my maternity.”Ms. Álvarez said the meetings went on without her. She said the incident was just one of many subtle and not-so-subtle reminders over the years that, in the eyes of Spain’s top soccer official, women should know their place.This power imbalance burst into public view after Spain won the World Cup last month and Mr. Rubiales forcibly kissed the star player, Jenni Hermoso, on live television. On Wednesday, Ms. Hermoso filed a criminal complaint with state prosecutors, advancing an inquiry into whether the kiss was an act of sexual aggression.The kiss unleashed widespread backlash and provoked a reckoning in women’s soccer in the country. On Tuesday, Spain fired its women’s national coach, Jorge Vilda, whom players had separately criticized for his domineering, even humiliating management style. Replacing him is Montse Tomé, 41, the first woman to hold that position in Spain.Jorge Vilda, Spain’s recently fired national coach, left, and Luis Rubiales, president of the Spanish Soccer Federation, at the Women’s World Cup in Auckland, New Zealand, last month.Molly Darlington/ReutersIn interviews with The New York Times, more than a dozen women involved in Spanish soccer described more than a decade of systemic sexism ranging from paternalism and offhand remarks to verbal abuse. Women said they got bedtime checks and were ordered to leave their hotel doors ajar at night. One high-ranking official quit after concluding that her hiring was just window dressing. And Veronica Boquete, a former national team captain, recalled that Mr. Vilda’s predecessor, Ignacio Quereda, told players, “What you really need is a good man and a big penis.”Mr. Quereda has denied being verbally abusive.With his kiss and his defiance in the face of suspension and public recrimination, Mr. Rubiales is the face of that system. Ms. Álvarez called him an “egocentric chauvinist” who never cared about the women’s league and ran the sport “based on belittlement and humiliation.”Mr. Rubiales did not respond to an interview request, and his soccer federation declined to answer questions from The New York Times or even forward them to Mr. Rubiales, citing his suspension by FIFA, soccer’s world governing body. He has described himself as a victim of “false feminism.” While players say they will boycott the national team unless Mr. Rubiales is gone, they also say that his departure would not be enough. The issues in Spanish soccer predate his arrival and require major changes to address, they say. Dozens of current and former players have signed a statement demanding management changes. They air their grievances and strategize in a WhatsApp group called Se Acabó, Spanish for “It’s Over.”Players want higher wages, contracts that continue during maternity leave and access to the same nutritionists and physical therapists as men. And they are discussing a potential strike to get them. Union officials say that the minimum wage for women is 16,000 euros (a little over $17,000), compared with 180,000 euros, over $193,000, for their male counterparts.A protest against Mr. Rubiales and his treatment of Jennifer Hermoso at the World Cup final in Madrid last month. The sign reads, “With you, Jenni. It’s over.”Isabel Infantes/ReutersAna Muñoz, the soccer federation’s former vice president for integrity, said that instead of prize money at the end of a competition she witnessed, players received tablets. “I have daughters,” she recalled Mr. Rubiales remarking. “I know what women would want.”Ms. Muñoz, who resigned in 2019 after a year on the job, recounted for the first time the reasons for her departure. “I was just there for decoration,” she said. “A flower pot.” She said she questioned the ethics of several Mr. Rubiales’s decisions, including a $43 million deal to move a soccer competition to Saudi Arabia. That move is under investigation, along with public allegations by his former chief of staff and others that Mr. Rubiales used federation money to host a sex party at a coastal villa in the south of Spain. (Mr. Rubiales has previously denied any wrongdoing in either case).Fifteen of the federation’s 18 board members were men, Ms. Muñoz recalled. When she called for the temporary removal of a member pending a criminal investigation into whether he had spent federation funds on home renovations and his wife’s business, she said she was swiftly voted down. She said she had no authority. “I couldn’t understand that a department of integrity didn’t deal with integrity issues,” she said.Players tried and failed to force change last year over the behavior of Mr. Vilda, the now-fired national coach.Ms. Boquete recalled that on the national team from 2015 to 2017, when she was captain and Mr. Vilda was coach, he insisted that, when women gathered for coffee, they do so where he could see them. She said he wanted to monitor their body language, whom they were meeting and whether they were complaining about him. Team captains were told where to sit at meals, she said, so he could maintain eye contact with them.Mr. Vilda also required players to keep their doors open at night until he could check that each of them was in bed. “If you go into the other rooms, maybe you’ll talk about him,” Ms. Boquete said. “He wanted to control everything.”It’s unclear whether that continued for the most recent national team. The players have declined to speak publicly amid the controversy. People close to the players said the women feared retribution. And in the few cases in which agents said their clients did want to talk, the clubs shut them down.Fifteen players ultimately banded together and refused to play under Mr. Vilda. Mr. Rubiales refused to fire him, and the federation responded by requiring that the players apologize for their actions before considering whether to allow them to return to the team.Beatriz Álvarez, president of the Spanish women’s soccer league, said that Mr. Rubiales told her to set an example by devoting herself to her maternity.Carlos Lujan/Europa Press, via Getty ImagesSome players were particularly angry last month, after the World Cup victory and the controversy over the kiss, when Mr. Rubiales not only refused to step down and apologize but also announced that he planned to renew Mr. Vilda’s contract and give him a raise. That plan came to a halt this week with Mr. Vilda’s termination, but Mr. Rubiales is clinging to his job. Though the federation has not fired him, it called his behavior at the World Cup “totally unacceptable.”Mr. Rubiales resisted the idea of professional women’s soccer from the beginning, records obtained by The Times show. In 2020, during discussions about creating a unionized, official women’s soccer league, the national federation under Mr. Rubiales opposed the idea, according to a document from Spain’s National Sports Council.Mr. Rubiales questioned whether clubs could afford the upgrade, recalled María José López, the top lawyer for Spain’s chief players’ union, who was involved in the discussions. But she suspected Mr. Rubiales really did not want to cede power to the women’s teams. “In particular, he didn’t want the clubs to negotiate TV broadcasting rights,” Ms. López said.Generations of female athletes have endured demeaning comments.When an unofficial Barcelona women’s team played its inaugural match on Christmas in 1970, the public announcer kept asking, “Has her bra broken?” as players ran the field, team members have recalled.The following year, José Luis Pérez-Paya, then the president of Spain’s soccer federation, said: “I’m not against women’s football, but I don’t like it, either. I don’t think it’s feminine from an aesthetic point of view. Women are not favored wearing shirts and shorts.”Dozens of current and former players have signed a statement demanding management changes.Catherine Ivill/Getty ImagesDecades later, Mr. Rubiales cracked a similar joke on live television. Monica Marchante, a Spanish sports commentator, recalled being on air with him as players wore T-shirts and shorts after practice. “They’re in their underwear,” he joked. In an interview, Ms. Marchante said she smiled politely but realized then that Mr. Rubiales was “old-fashioned and rancid.”Ms. Álvarez, the league president, said the soccer federation also tried to sabotage the opening of the 2022-23 women’s season by helping to orchestrate a referee strike that postponed the opening weekend. The federation, she said, is a “corrupt structure.”In January, when the Barcelona club team won the Women’s Super Cup, an important Spanish competition, Mr. Rubiales and other top federation officials skipped the medal ceremony. Players had to collect their medals from containers.Spain is far from alone in its treatment of female players. In 2004, FIFA’s president at the time, Sepp Blatter, suggested that women could enhance their sport by wearing tighter shorts. During a 2015 interview in Zurich, he repeatedly petted a Times reporter’s hair.European powers like England and Germany barred women from playing for years until 1970.“The Spaniards are not outliers,” said Andrei Markovits, a University of Michigan politics professor and the author of “Women in American Soccer and European Football.” “They are totally the norm.”Spain’s professional women’s soccer season kicks off this weekend. But on Wednesday, the attention was on an office in downtown Madrid, where league and union representatives were meeting to discuss salaries and working conditions. Union leaders say that, if no agreement is reached, a strike is possible that could delay the season. More

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      Jorge Vilda, Coach of Spain’s Women’s Soccer Team, Is Fired

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      Players had accused the coach, Jorge Vilda, of outdated methods and controlling behavior. His boss, Luis Rubiales, is still embroiled in scandal over a nonconsensual kiss.The coach of the Spanish national soccer team that won the Women’s World Cup trophy last month was ousted on Tuesday by the country’s soccer federation, after months of complaints from players who accused him of outdated methods and controlling behavior.The firing of the coach, Jorge Vilda, comes as the fate of one of his most ardent supporters, Spain’s soccer federation chief, Luis Rubiales, hangs in the balance. Mr. Rubiales forcibly kissed a member of the national team at a medals ceremony in Australia, setting off a national controversy in Spain and highlighting sexism in the sport.The federation said in a statement that as one of the “first measures of renewal” announced by the interim president, Pedro Rocha, it had decided “to do without the services” of Mr. Vilda as sporting director and national women’s coach, a role which he accepted in 2015.The federation also thanked Mr. Vilda for his work with the national team and the success during his tenure, crowned by the World Cup victory. It said it was highlighting “his impeccable personal and sporting behavior,” which “was a key piece in the notable growth of Spanish women’s football.”The federation has called on Mr. Rubiales to resign, and Spanish prosecutors have opened an investigation into whether he could be charged with committing an act of sexual aggression. Players have said they would not take the field for the national team unless changes were made on a managerial level. And FIFA, soccer’s governing body, has suspended him for 90 days.Mr. Vilda, who was hired in 2015 after one of his predecessors was ousted amid accusations of sexism, had long been the subject of complaints from players regarding unequal pay and what they called his controlling behavior, as well as a general culture of sexism. Last year, 15 star Spanish players staged a protest, refusing to play on the national team unless Mr. Vilda was fired.That rebellion drew a stern rebuke from the Spanish soccer federation, which backed Mr. Vilda. Not only would it not fire him, the federation said, but the players must apologize for their actions before they would be allowed back on the team. The standoff ended with most of the mutinous players returning to the field.Mr. Rubiales backed Mr. Vilda at the time. In an interview with the Spanish newspaper El País in October 2022, Mr. Rubiales connected the success of the women’s team to Mr. Vilda’s coaching skills and dismissed the accusations of ill treatment. In a speech last month, he doubled down in his support for the coach, vowing to increase his salary to 500,000 euros ($543,000) after the World Cup win, Spain’s first in the women’s tournament.Mr. Rubiales has been at the center of a maelstrom over sexism in Spanish women’s soccer since he grabbed and kissed Jennifer Hermoso, a member of the national team, during the medals ceremony after Spain beat England, 1-0, in the final in Sydney, Australia.After the forced kiss, players again issued an ultimatum. The entire women’s team and dozens of other players signed a statement saying they would not play for Spain “if the current managers continue.” Alexia Putellas, who is widely recognized as one of the best players in the world, coined the hashtag #seacabo, or “it’s over.” Some people protested in the streets of Spain. On Monday evening, the Spanish men’s team captain, Álvaro Morata, flanked by his teammates issued a joint statement rejecting “the unacceptable behavior of Mr. Rubiales.”Some commentators have described the episode as a watershed moment in Spain’s #MeToo movement, highlighting a divide between the country’s traditions of machismo and more recent progressivism that has put Spain in the European vanguard on issues of feminism and equality.Mr. Rubiales has denied doing anything wrong, arguing that he has been a victim of “social assassination” and even suggesting that Ms. Hermoso had initiated the encounter, which she has strenuously denied. His mother went on a three-day hunger strike in a church in his hometown, Motril, in southern Spain, demanding that Ms. Hermoso “tell the truth.”Ms. Hermoso, for her part, has said that “at no time did I consent to the kiss that he gave me.”As the scandal mushroomed, the federation, known as the Royal Spanish Football Federation, called an emergency meeting. Mr. Vilda was one of the many men in the room who gave Mr. Rubiales a standing ovation.Later, however, Mr. Vilda tried to distance himself from Mr. Rubiales, saying that he regretted his boss’s “inappropriate conduct.” The Spanish men’s coach, Luis de la Fuente, also apologized for applauding. But the damage was done.The firing of Mr. Vilda comes on the same day as the Spanish government published the awarding of a Gold Medal for Sporting Merit of the Royal Order to the entire women’s team, including Mr. Vilda.But with a match against Sweden set for Sept. 22, and with none of Spain’s star players apparently willing to compete, the soccer federation cut Mr. Vilda loose. More