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      Lionel Messi Scores Twice for Inter Miami in Win Over Orlando

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      Messi is scoring in bunches and last-place Inter Miami is a contender in the Leagues Cup. Could an M.L.S. playoff push be next?When it was announced that Lionel Messi was coming to Major League Soccer, there was excitement, of course. But there were also doubts. Would he treat his stay in the league as a retirement tour or even a vacation? Would the lower stakes lead to less effort? Would his age — 36 — catch up to him?In retrospect, it should have been obvious. It turns out that if you put the best player of his generation into M.L.S., less than two years removed from winning the Ballon d’Or as the game’s best player, and less than a year since he was named best player at the World Cup, he is going to be really, really good.Really good.Messi had two more goals on Wednesday night, bringing his total to five in his three games for his new team, Inter Miami. Still saddled with the worst record in the league, Inter is playing with panache, and Messi, at times, looks unstoppable.Messi’s arrival after two years at Paris St.-Germain coincided with the start of the Leagues Cup, a newly expanded tournament for teams from M.L.S. and Mexico’s Liga MX.He entered his first game on July 21 against Cruz Azul of Mexico early in the second half. And perhaps with the flair of a showman he waited until deep into injury time to hit a free kick from behind the circle over the wall and in the corner of the net to break a 1-1 tie.Eight minutes into his first start on July 25 against Atlanta, Messi was sprung clear, barely onside. He hit the post but slotted in the rebound. Later in the half, he latched onto a cross and had an easy second goal in what would eventually be a 4-0 win.That put Miami in the round of 32 against Orlando on Wednesday night. In the first half, Messi, completely unmarked, chested down a pass in the box and one-timed it into the net. In the second half, again with lots of space, he took a little chip from Josef Martínez and volleyed it home. Miami won, 3-1.Miami is now four wins away from the Leagues Cup title. Its form is all the more remarkable because the team pre-Messi was, quite simply, bad. It sits dead last of the 29 M.L.S. teams in the league standings with a 5-14-3 record. But that record does not matter at all in the Cup; Miami next travels to Dallas for a round of 16 game on Sunday.Inter Miami made the playoffs last year with a .500 record and was expected to improve with the addition of Martínez. But nothing seemed to go right for the team in the early going.Inter’s midseason revamp did not end with Messi. They also added two former greats at Barcelona, Messi’s longtime club, midfielder Sergio Busquets and defender Jordi Alba, as well as Diego Gómez, a young Paraguayan midfielder. Messi is often said to make his teammates better, and one who seems to have benefited is Robert Taylor, a Finnish wingback, who has been regularly involved in Messi’s attacks and also had two goals of his own in the Atlanta game.It is impossible not to notice that in his games so far, Messi has been getting a lot more space to maneuver than he did in Europe. Of course, Messi is a genius at finding space. But the quality of the defending he is now facing is a clear cut below what he is used to.In Champions League play, it was hardly unusual for him to be swarmed by strong, technically skilled defenders, some of whom had little compunction about pushing the physicality of their challenges to or beyond the legal limit.M.L.S. defenders, whether overawed, less adept positionally or just too slow, haven’t kept anything like the same kind of pressure on him, at least so far. In his third game, Orlando did try to turn up the physicality, but the success of that tactic was debatable given his two goals.Win or lose the Leagues Cup, Miami will return to M.L.S. league play on Aug. 20. With Superman now playing attacking midfielder, can they actually come back and make the playoffs, or even win the title?They are 12 points and six places away from the playoff spots with just 12 games to play. That seems like a big gap. But based on his first three games, Messi looks like he can make a run at bridging it. More

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      Spain’s Team Went to War. At the World Cup, It Has to Win the Peace.

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      A failed rebellion against Coach Jorge Vilda ended with a dozen players dropped for the Women’s World Cup. Those who remain might be good enough to win it.A couple of days before Spain’s first genuine test of this World Cup — an encounter with Japan in Wellington, New Zealand — team officials became aware of an issue. The players, it turned out, were bored. Their families and friends, who had traveled halfway around the globe to watch their games, were bored. Some of the squad had young children in tow. They were bored, too.Spain had chosen the town of Palmerston North as its base for the tournament. It made perfect sense. The team was guaranteed to play all of its games until the semifinal on New Zealand’s North Island. Palmerston, a university town a couple of hours north of Wellington, and a short flight from Auckland, fit the bill.But three weeks into their stay — Spain arrived in New Zealand well in advance of its first game, hoping to draw the sting from the jet lag — the place had started to pall. New Zealand’s second-largest noncoastal city boasted precious little to do, particularly in the evenings. The players, and their families, wanted to move.Even with the game with Japan looming, the Spanish federation acceded to the players’ request. Officials began the laborious task of moving an entire elite sports team — 23 players, 31 coaches and support staff, piles of equipment and mounds of accouterments — to the James Cook Hotel in Wellington in the middle of a tournament.And as if that was not enough, the federation did what it could to help the dozens of family members who formed the team’s traveling caravan with their arrangements, too. Logistically, it was a considerable heave. The kind that is hardly ideal from a sporting perspective. In Spain’s case, though, it was worth it, just to keep the peace.Alexia Putellas, the two-time Ballon d’Or winner, racing upfield against Japan.Marty Melville/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesFew teams arrived in Australia and New Zealand with more pedigree than Spain. Jorge Vilda’s team, after all, boasts not only Alexia Putellas, the two-time Ballon d’Or winner, but also Aitana Bonmati, the midfielder regarded as her heir apparent. They are two of nine members of the squad drawn from Barcelona, European club soccer’s unquestioned powerhouse.No team, though, landed in quite such a fragile state. Last September, in the aftermath of Spain’s elimination from the European Championship a month or so earlier, 15 players sent the country’s federation a boilerplate email withdrawing themselves from consideration for the national team.The signatories included not just Bonmati, but Patri Guijarro, Mariona Caldentey and Mapi León, central figures in the great Barcelona side, as well as Ona Batlle, Laia Aleixandri and Leila Ouahabi, some of the country’s most high-profile exports. Three players — Putellas, the forward Jenni Hermoso and Irene Paredes, then the national team’s captain — did not send the email but were seen as giving it their tacit support.Spain had, in an instant, lost the core of its golden generation.The precise nature of the grievances that had forced the players’ hand remained oblique in public — the email referred only to “the latest events that have occurred in the national team, and the situation they have created” — but, privately, the list of complaints was both long and, in the context of women’s soccer, distinctly familiar.The players, now ensconced in professional environments at their clubs, felt the national team program was outmoded, not up to the standard they had come to expect. The facilities the federation provided for them were subpar, the players believed. They traveled to some games by bus, rather than plane, as many of their rivals did, or as they would at club level.Vilda with Luis Rubiales, center, the federation president, in Wellington on Monday.Jose Breton/Pics Action/NurPhoto, via Getty ImagesVilda, the coach, was said to have fostered an oppressive workplace environment, one in which the players’ every move was monitored by his staff. Nobody ever confirmed as much, but it was widely assumed that his removal would be required if the players were to contemplate returning.The federation, though, decided on a less conciliatory approach. Vilda was, in the words of Luis Rubiales, the federation president, “untouchable.” If the group of “15 plus three,” as it had come to be seen, did not want to play for Spain, that was fine: Spain would go and find some people who did. Vilda called up a scratch squad, and immediately embarked on a run of 16 games in which his team drew once, lost once, and won the rest. Among the teams it defeated was the mighty United States, but also Japan, Jamaica and Norway.As the World Cup drew closer, though, the hard-line stance started to soften. Hermoso and Paredes, only informally associated with the strike, were called back into the team, forging a path for the others. The Spanish players’ union volunteered to mediate a meeting between the holdouts and Ana Álvarez, the federation’s director of women’s soccer.Ana Álvarez, the federation’s director of women’s soccer.Luis Millan/EPA, via ShutterstockThe federation refused, but made an alternative suggestion: Álvarez would meet with every player individually, giving them an opportunity to lodge their complaints. Through May and June, she held more than a dozen meetings with the disaffected players, inviting some to Madrid and traveling to Barcelona to see others.Each meeting lasted two or three hours, according to people in soccer with direct knowledge of the talks who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the private, and personal, discussions. Álvarez sought to understand the roots of their discontent, to gather feedback, to ask how each player would like things to change in the future. Most of the meetings were cordial, and constructive.At the end, though, there was an awkward coda. The players had removed themselves from international contention by email. They had to make themselves available again in the same way. The federation would not risk calling up anyone who might reject the olive branch.Conscious of not only their own professional ambitions but various commercial agreements, the majority of the players acquiesced. Guijarro and León were among the handful who refused. “Some things have to change, and if they don’t, then it won’t go away,” León told the Spanish newspaper Mundo Deportivo earlier this year. “Missing the World Cup will bother me a lot, but I have values and beliefs.” Her Barcelona teammate, Guijarro, cited “consistency” as her explanation.Patri Guijarro, left, and Mapi León, second left, during a Barcelona match in March. They are missing the World Cup.Albert Gea/ReutersWhen Vilda named his World Cup squad, though, only three of the players to have signed the original email — Bonmati, Batlle and Caldentey — were included. The others had all been omitted. The coach had decided, instead, to prioritize those players who had helped Spain prepare for the tournament.Still, the situation was febrile. The 23 players under Vilda’s aegis might all have “wanted to be here,” as Paredes put it, but that unity of purpose veiled deep schisms. His squad now contained both mutineers and their replacements.He had done what he could to ease the tensions, not only visiting a Barcelona training session in the spring but, according to those players who had remained in the national team squad throughout, relaxing his approach. “It has been a tough, special season,” Vilda said on the eve of the World Cup. “But it has given us chance to learn. The federation has always been open to dialogue, and to solve things.”The decision to listen to the players’ requests to move their base midway through the tournament, then, is perhaps the most dramatic illustration of that détente, but it is not the only one. Spain now boasts a vastly expanded coaching staff, including for the first time both a nutritionist and a podiatrist in the traveling party. The standard of accommodation and transport has improved, too.The players were encouraged to expand that further, too, by inviting family and friends along at the federation’s expense: Each member of the World Cup squad was granted an allowance of $16,000 to pay for the travel and lodging.A training session in Wellington. Spain moved its team to a new training base after players complained of being bored. Amanda Perobelli/ReutersThe newspaper El País has reported that dozens of parents, siblings and children are in New Zealand, sitting behind the dugouts at Spain’s games, arranging their activities on a WhatsApp group titled “Free Tours.”The players have been allowed to spend considerable amounts of down time with them. Even after the game with Japan ended in a deflating 4-0 loss, they were given a morning off to see their loved ones. The atmosphere, according to those on the squad, is much more relaxed and “flexible” than it has been at previous tournaments.There has been a concerted attempt among the players, too, to defuse any lingering tensions. They have veered toward the traditional: long sessions playing two card games, Virus and Brandy, and a renewed focus on forfeits — singing or dancing in front of their peers — for those players who lose games in training.“Things are not forgotten,” Paredes said in an interview with El País. “But we must put them aside knowing that we have a common goal and that we are going for it.”The sense of purpose is such that Bonmati, one of the signatories of the original email, even cast the defeat to Japan as a bonding experience. “This is going to unite us more than ever,” she said.Whether that is how it plays out, of course, remains to be seen. Should Spain lose to Switzerland on Saturday in round of 16, it is not difficult to imagine the uneasy truce breaking.Spain’s preparation for this World Cup, one it genuinely believed it could win, has been fraught and tense and, at times, toxic. It has had enough drama.What it needs, from this point on, is for everything to be as boring as possible. More

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      The Knockout-Stage Showdown Between Sweden and the U.S. Is On

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      Sweden did what the United States could not: It got the goals it needed, secured the win it wanted, and marched toward the game everyone expected.Propelled by a second-half header by Rebecka Blomqvist and a late penalty kick by Elin Rubensson, Sweden earned a 2-0 victory in Hamilton, New Zealand, that sent Argentina out of the World Cup and the Swedes into a highly anticipated round of 16 game against the Americans on Sunday in Melbourne.It will be joined in the round of 16 by South Africa, which stunned Italy, 3-2, with a goal by Thembi Kgatlana two minutes into second-half injury time.The goal sent South Africa to the knockouts for the first time. It will face the Netherlands on Sunday in Sydney.The bigger showcase that day, though, will be the United States-Sweden matchup that had loomed as a possibility for weeks. It really should come as no surprise: The teams will meet for the sixth straight World Cup, and for the seventh time overall in the tournament.The Americans have won four of the previous five meetings, including a 2-0 victory in the group stage four years ago. But Sweden ran circles around the United States two years later at the Tokyo Olympics.Its main advantage over the United States this time, though, may be momentum. Sweden has looked fearsome so far at this World Cup, winning all three of its first-round games and outscoring its opponents by 10-1. More

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      U.S. Tries to Focus on What Comes After Portugal Tie

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      A close call against Portugal at the Women’s World Cup gave the United States a chance to consider what might have been, and then move past it.From where she stood, the ball looked to be headed straight into the goal, and Megan Rapinoe cursed loudly in her head.“My whole international career is over,” she said she thought as a shot by Portugal whistled toward the United States’ net in the final minutes on Tuesday, threatening to end Rapinoe’s final Women’s World Cup.Neither team had scored yet. The tie that loomed would mean the United States would advance to the next round. A loss would send the Americans packing their bags in what would have been the biggest upset in Women’s World Cup history.And so Rapinoe swore as the shot delivered by Portugal forward Ana Capeta headed toward the goal, watching wide-eyed with players on both sides as it veered just a smidgen too far to the right. The ball hit the right post and then, to the relief of Rapinoe and her team, caromed off it and away from the goal.“Girl,” Rapinoe said with a nervous laugh, “that was stressful.”Megan Rapinoe’s World Cup is not over yet. But for a moment, she thought it might be.Buda Mendes/Getty ImagesA few minutes later the game ended, still stuck in a 0-0 tie that meant the United States had finished second to the Netherlands in Group E. Now it’s off to the round of 16 in Melbourne, Australia, where on Sunday the U.S. team most likely will play Sweden. It is trying to forget just how close it came to the exit. It is ready to move on.Forget this long, frustrating night, Rapinoe and her teammates said. Forget that the United States has had trouble scoring at this tournament, they said, and that it just cannot figure out how to convert its passes and its possession into goals.That was the message delivered by Kelley O’Hara, a defender at her fourth World Cup, to the team as it huddled together near midfield after Tuesday’s great escape. O’Hara leaned in and looked around at the faces of her teammates — some sad, some blank, some determined. It doesn’t matter what happened here, she told them.“I just told them, ‘Listen, guys, we did what we had to do,’” O’Hara said. “‘This game’s done.’”Defender Crystal Dunn got the message. “We know we can be better,” she said. “It’s not like everyone’s sitting there like, ‘Wow, that was the most amazing performance we put together.’ But that’s where you have to dig deep.“That’s what it takes to win a World Cup. It’s not easy to do this. Right now we are very fortunate to have another opportunity to put on a great performance.”U.S. Coach Vlatko Andonovski changed his lineup but his team’s mistakes were worryingly familiar.Andrew Cornaga/Associated PressLater, the team’s coach, Vlatko Andonovski, took time to reflect on the result against Portugal, a team that was expected to be a challenge, but perhaps not quite that much of one.He said that he has seen bright spots in the way the U.S. team has played over its three group stage games, although Tuesday was a low point.“It’s not like we played well, by any means,” he said. “We all know it’s not good enough.”The United States, he knows, has work to do. But none of that is anything to panic about, striker Alex Morgan said. She had finished second in the group at past World Cups. Now the team has all the pieces it needs “to make it all the way” to the final. It just needs to put them together.It’s Andonovski’s job to do that. Against Portugal, he finally made some changes to his lineup. Now he will need to make a few more.On Tuesday, Rose Lavelle, the star midfielder restored to the starting lineup, used her creativity and energy to drive her teammates forward, to create chances for them to score. But after knocking down a Portuguese player, she received her second yellow card in two games, meaning she will be suspended from the round of 16 game.A second yellow card in two games means Rose Lavelle will be suspended in the round of 16.Buda Mendes/Getty ImagesO’Hara said it was disappointing that Lavelle wouldn’t be able to play on Sunday, especially after she came back from an injury and was building back her minutes. She had been restored to the lineup to maximize her “energy, her fight and her aggressiveness and just her flair,” O’Hara said, though she had no details about how the team would regain its confidence now that Lavelle will be out. She frowned when asked how the team will regroup mentally.“We’re just going to do a couple of Kumbayas, and we’ll be good,” she said before quickly turning and walking off.Rapinoe was not sure, either, of how, exactly, the team would rebuild its confidence. But, she said, it can easily be done. Earlier this week, she recalled a moment in the quarterfinal game versus Brazil at the 2011 World Cup, when the U.S. team was in extra time and was just seconds from elimination before she fired in a cross to Abby Wambach that was headed in for a tying goal.“I thought about that in the moment,” she said, a sensation she repeated on Tuesday. Facing an early exit back then, she added, left her talking to herself. “Actually, I’m like: ‘We’re going to be the worst team ever in the history of the national team. It’s going to be terrible.’“And then, obviously, you know, that play happens.”With one brilliant pass, Rapinoe had altered her team’s fate.Those kinds of small miracles, she knows, can happen again. More

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      The Gaps Get Smaller as the World Cup Gets Larger

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      Expanding the Women’s World Cup was a good idea. Just not for the reasons FIFA thinks.Given where the journey had started and where it had led, it was no wonder that watching the Philippines win a game at the Women’s World Cup felt as if it defied rational explanation, even to those involved.Not quite two years ago, the Philippines had toiled to beat Nepal in a qualifying game just to earn a place in a low-profile regional tournament. Now that same team had beaten New Zealand — on home soil, no less — and with the whole world watching.For those who were part of that journey, the distance traveled and the ground traversed seemed too great to be feasible. It was impossible to imagine that a team that had been there could ever be here, and vice versa.“Overwhelming, crazy,” said Sarina Bolden, the live-wire forward who had scored her country’s first goal at a World Cup. Her coach, Alen Stajcic, found it hard to pitch his hyperbole. He started out at “staggering” and went from there, cycling through “miraculous and unbelievable” before landing on “mind-blowing.”The emotion, the euphoric instinct to attribute the wondrous to the divine, was understandable. The Philippines had entered the World Cup as a rank outsider. “No one expected us to win,” Bolden said. “We’re used to that.” Its team had never won a game at the tournament before. That was not desperately surprising: It had previously played only one, and that was last week. Just a few months ago, it was ranked outside the world’s top 50.The Philippines went out of the World Cup, but not before leaving its mark on it.Marty Melville/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe thing about miracles, though, is that their mechanics can be a little more mundane than they may first appear. The Philippines might have left the tournament precisely as anticipated — after the group phase, eliminated thanks to an unceremonious 6-0 defeat to Norway — but not before it left an indelible mark.Its victory against New Zealand was the greatest surprise of a World Cup brimming with them. It is just that, beneath the surface, it was perhaps not that much of a surprise at all.To watch the first 10 days of this tournament has been to experience the sensation that the world is simultaneously expanding and contracting. The Philippines beat one of the World Cup’s co-hosts, and Nigeria overcame Australia, the other.Morocco, the first North African team to reach the finals, beat South Korea. Colombia scored in the 97th minute to beat Germany, Europe’s great powerhouse. Jamaica held firm to take a point against France, a result the country’s coach, Lorne Donaldson, described as “No. 1” in its history, “for men or women.”Most of those nations will, of course, follow the same arc as the Philippines. Nigeria and Colombia apart, it is unlikely any will make it as far as the knockout rounds. The phosphene imprint of their brief, dazzling moments in the spotlight, though, will last.And so, too, will the fact that even in defeat, most of those teams making their debuts on this stage have emerged with credit. True, there have been a couple of shellackings: Germany against Morocco, both Spain and Japan against Zambia, Norway against the Philippines.Top women’s players no longer see a gap between themselves and stars from bigger nations because they know one another from club play.David Gray/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThose, though, have been isolated cases. Haiti lost only narrowly to England. Ireland has run both Australia and Canada close. The United States scored only three against Vietnam. Nobody has conceded 13 in a single game. Nobody has been humiliated. The horizons of women’s soccer are both broader and closer than ever before.“We’ve been saying this all along,” said Vlatko Andonovski, the coach of the United States. “Whether it’s Nigeria or Jamaica, South Africa and the Philippines: These are the teams that actually show how much women’s soccer has grown.”Regrettably, at some point, FIFA will seek to take credit for that. Effect will be mistaken for cause. Four years ago, with what appeared to be suspiciously little warning, global soccer’s governing body decreed that the Women’s World Cup — previously contested by 24 teams — would expand to 32, the same size as the men’s tournament (for now).At the time, the idea was met with considerable skepticism. The move was announced only a few weeks after Thailand had conceded more than a dozen goals in a game against the United States. Many suspected the expansion would turn an exception into a rule. “A lot of people were worried with the expansion that we weren’t ready for it on the women’s side,” said Randy Waldrum, the Nigeria coach.FIFA’s president, the never less than bombastic Gianni Infantino, was unmoved. “The astounding success of this year’s FIFA Women’s World Cup in France made it very clear that this is the time to keep the momentum going and take concrete steps to foster the growth of women’s football,” he said. He said he believed more countries would invest in their women’s teams if they had a “realistic chance of qualifying.”From his vantage point — on the Cook Islands, the sun-kissed paradise where for reasons that are not entirely clear he has spent a considerable part of the early stages of the tournament — Infantino would doubtless claim he has been vindicated.Morocco, like the Philippines, posted its first World Cup win in its first trip to the tournament.Brenton Edwards/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWould the Philippines have moved to appoint the experienced Stajcic, the former coach of the Australian women’s team, if it had not seen the World Cup as a realistic target? Without his presence, would his players have garnered the “tournament experience” — in a parade of competitions in both Southeast Asia and Asia as a whole — and “maturity” that Stajcic felt allowed them to hold off New Zealand last week in Wellington?“The commitment level in terms of who they brought in as a coach and the things they’re putting into the program are paying dividends for them,” Waldrum said of the Philippines. “I think that’s why we are seeing the growth.”More than anyone, though, Waldrum is well aware of the holes in Infantino’s logic. His team, after all, is still locked in a pay dispute with its national federation, which has so far withheld the players’ win bonuses; Waldrum himself has previously complained that he has been “very frustrated by the federation and the lack of support.”Donaldson, in charge of a Jamaica side that might yet qualify for the tournament’s knockout phase, could make a similar case. At least some of the expenses associated with bringing Jamaica to the World Cup were paid for by a fund-raising campaign arranged by the mother of one of its players.The expansion of the World Cup has, instead, worked despite the national associations — still, in many cases, chronically lacking in both money and commitment — rather than because of them. And it has done so because of a host of factors that have little, if anything, to do with the tournament itself.The increased professionalization of the game, particularly in Europe, has led to vast and rapid improvements in everything from conditioning to diet to tactical sophistication. The coaches, on the whole, are more experienced, more adroit, more suitable to the talent of their players.“Our preparation is a little bit better this time around,” Donaldson said. “Just the ability to have proper coaching, proper diet and the understanding of what’s going on in world soccer” had helped his team to compete despite a colossal resource gap to the game’s bigger, richer nations, he said.Haiti has left an impression on bigger nations despite not posting a win.Dan Peled/ReutersAt the same time, the whirlwind growth of the game has led to the players themselves being granted more opportunities to play competitive, elite soccer, as the clubs of the surging European leagues — as well as the National Women’s Soccer League in the United States — cast their nets ever wider in the hunt for talent.Waldrum’s squad with Nigeria, for example, contains a host of players employed in France and Spain, including Asisat Oshoala, the Barcelona forward. Ireland’s team is drawn, in large part, from the teams of England’s Women’s Super League.As many as 14 of Haiti’s squad currently play in France — not all for clubs like Lyon, as the teenage midfielder Melchie Dumornay now does, but professional, committed clubs nonetheless. Even the Philippines, the ultimate underdog, has called up only three players from its domestic league. The majority of its team plays, instead, in Sweden, Norway and Australia.“Some of these players are getting a chance now to go and play in some of the top leagues, and they’re taking it,” Donaldson said. “You can see it, the Jamaican players, the Haitian players. They’re developing.”And as they do so, the players they have encountered — the ones who might once have seemed so distant — become just a little more familiar. They know they belong on the same field, because they have done it before. The horizon, the one that seems so broad, is far closer than it might appear. What looks, at first glance, like a miracle, a bolt from a clear blue sky, is really nothing more than the landfall of a gathering storm. More

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      Megan Rapinoe Is Not Going Quietly

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      Sitting on the bench as her United States team played at the Women’s World Cup last week, Megan Rapinoe was sure that she was in the wrong spot. She was just as sure that her coach, Vlatko Andonovski, should see that, and fix it.“I’m always shocked when I don’t play,” Rapinoe said with a laugh, joking with reporters on Sunday about her uneasy new role: reserve. “Every player who starts thinks they should play,” she added. “And everyone on the bench thinks they should be on the field.”What else was Rapinoe supposed to think, having come to this World Cup as a marquee player who had been a game changer in its last three editions? For the first time in 12 years, Rapinoe, the outspoken and accomplished leader of the U.S. team for the past decade, is watching the World Cup instead of starring in it. In the first U.S. game at this tournament, a 3-0 victory over Vietnam that was her 200th appearance for the United States, Rapinoe came into the game as a substitute for the final half-hour. In the second game, she did not play at all, even as her team struggled to create space and scoring chances in a 1-1 tie with the Netherlands.Rapinoe, 38, expected this World Cup to be a sort of changing of the guard, of course. She is the oldest player on the team, and on the eve of her team’s departure for New Zealand she announced that this would be her final World Cup and her final professional season.She will never be happy about sitting out, she said. But she also knows she has a role to play.Rapinoe speaking with reporters on Sunday.Abbie Parr/Associated Press“Ultimately, we’re at the World Cup — this is where everybody wants to be, whether you’re playing 90 minutes or whether you’re a game-changer or whatever,” she said. “I think it’s a lot similar to what I thought it would be, bringing all the experience that I can, all the experience that I have, and ultimately being ready whenever my number is called up.”She is, she said, embracing her new role. Maybe the United States needs a player — a player like her, was the clear implication — who gives “20 minutes in two games that wins the team the tournament, or wins a team a game that gets it to the next round.”The United expects to have a long road yet at this World Cup, and no one — including Rapinoe — wants it to be a weekslong eulogy to her career. But Rapinoe’s teammates are already mourning her departure, no matter how many minutes she plays here. When Kelley O’Hara, the defender who has played with Rapinoe at the past three World Cups, was asked days before the tournament started to consider what it will be like when Rapinoe is gone, she broke into tears.“She’s done such incredible things for this team and for the world, so to be able to see the up close and personal Pinoe, and be close to that has been really special,” O’Hara said. “I hope that we all send her out on a high.”“This is where everybody wants to be, whether you’re playing 90 minutes or whether you’re a game-changer or whatever,” Rapinoe said.Catherine Ivill/Getty ImagesAlex Morgan called Rapinoe a special player, one the team can still count on. “She makes things happen out of nothing,” Morgan said. “We’ve seen that time and time again.”It is unclear if Rapinoe will have many more chances to make something out of nothing at the World Cup. Andonovski has committed to his new lineup, so much so that he declined to make changes even as it struggled to find a goal against the Netherlands. But Rapinoe made it clear that, from her seat, the United States missed out on controlling its fate against the Netherlands.The team could have set itself up to claim first place in its group if it had beaten the Dutch, most likely locking in an easier path in the knockout rounds. It still controls its destiny — a win, especially a big one, over Portugal on Tuesday would achieve the same result. But Rapinoe knows as well as anyone that World Cups are won or lost by the finest of margins. On the biggest stages, she said, the smallest details can matter, and so she will keep working, keep pushing to play.Rapinoe and the rest of the U.S. reserves who didn’t play against the Netherlands had time to consider their fate as they gathered at training the day after the match. The starters were back at the hotel, resting, as is usual after a game. For Rapinoe, the substitute, there was training. It was a hard lesson, she acknowledged, but also an opportunity.“You cry in your shower or you cry with your friends in the sauna,” she said. But after that, you have no choice but to make the best of it.Marlena Sloss for The New York TimesRapinoe reminded everyone on Sunday that she is not any less of a competitor than she was in her first World Cup, in 2011, the tournament in which, she said, she “announced herself.” In the quarterfinals that year against Brazil, it was Rapinoe who delivered a last-second ball from midfield to Abby Wambach, who scored the header that saved the Americans from a humbling early elimination. The U.S. went on to reach the final.Pressure-filled moments like that remind Rapinoe of where the United States stands in this World Cup. And while she might not be the go-to player anymore, she still has a lot to offer, she said. Watching from the sideline on Thursday, she said, she spotted “some really simple fixes” that she was more than happy to share with her teammates and her coaches.On Sunday, Rapinoe was quick to emphasize that just because she is OK with her role as a sage and helpful veteran, that doesn’t mean she is going any easier on the younger players during practices.Every day in training, she said, her job is to try to take one of theirs. “And that makes them better,” she said. “That makes me better. That makes the whole team better.” More

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      Savannah DeMelo’s World Cup Trial by Fire

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      DeMelo had never played for the United States women’s team when she was named to the World Cup roster. Thrust into a starting role, she’s doing her best to fit in.Savannah DeMelo said the reality that she was playing for the United States in the Women’s World Cup finally hit her as the fans in the stadium counted down the final 10 seconds before her first match. She only started to get truly comfortable, though, once people starting kicking her.The hair pulls and the shoves and the elbows? Those were just a bit of welcome familiarity for DeMelo, one of the most fouled players in the National Women’s Soccer League. “I’m used to getting kicked,” DeMelo said.It is all the rest that is still new: the global stage; the sky-high expectations inside and outside the U.S. team; the constant pressure to not let down a squad that has won the last two World Cups. DeMelo, after all, had never played a game for the United States before she was named to the World Cup roster last month.Her inclusion, as the least experienced of the 14 World Cup rookies on the U.S. roster, was one of the biggest surprises of the Americans’ run-up to the tournament. But it has been her presence in Coach Vlatko Andonovski’s starting lineup, and the role she has been asked to play as a midfield orchestrator and instigator, that could prove pivotal as the United States tries to navigate its way through the knockout rounds of the tournament.Buda Mendes/Getty ImagesDeMelo’s first start, against Vietnam, was only her second game for the U.S. team.Buda Mendes/Getty ImagesJackie Groenen and the Netherlands offered a sterner, more physical test.Marty Melville/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesNamed as a starter in the United States’ first two World Cup games, DeMelo, 25, has been a reliable fit for the position normally filled by Rose Lavelle, who arrived at the World Cup still working her way back to full fitness after an injury-marred spring.While Andonovski manages Lavelle’s minutes — he has said he prefers to have her finish games than start them, for now — DeMelo took her place in the U.S. games against Vietnam and the Netherlands.“Rose brings a creativity to the team, a fluidity,” said Andi Sullivan, who has started alongside both Lavelle and DeMelo for the national team. “And for me, having played with her for a long time, I know where she’s gonna be.”But Sullivan added that DeMelo has been a seamless replacement, “and I think it’s been awesome have both Rose and Savannah play in that position, because they both bring such awesome qualities on the ball, on the dribble, interchanging positions.”DeMelo has started in the position normally occupied by Rose Lavelle, whose match fitness has rendered her a substitute in the first two games.Andrew Cornaga/Associated PressAndonovski saw a place for DeMelo in his team months ago.He first called her into camp last year, both to reward DeMelo’s performances for Racing Louisville, where she had been one of the league’s top players as a rookie, but also, perhaps, to see how she fit within the group of World Cup winners and eager rookies he was assembling to take to New Zealand and Australia.Coach and player kept up a regular exchange of text messages and critiques through the winter, the first sign for DeMelo that she might have a shot to win a place on the World Cup team despite her relative inexperience. The problem, she knew, was that she might not have a lot of chances to show the national team coaching staff what she could do.In January, she said last week, she realized there would only be one camp before the World Cup, and she remembered that Andonovski had told the team he would be closely watching their performances in club games. So she resolved to follow some advice her father, a soccer coach, had always repeated about “controlling the controllables.” She vowed to focus on her play for Louisville, and “make it almost like they couldn’t not take me.”The goals followed, five in 12 games this season. But when DeMelo and the rest of the team got an email setting the day when Andonovski would call them individually to tell them if they had made the World Cup team, all her stresses came back. The news, though, was exactly what she wanted to hear.Keeping her place in the lineup, though, is not a given. The U.S. has struggled to finish its chances in its first two games, and Andonovski spoke last week about “how can we help the players that are in a position to finish, giving them a little bit of service, whether it’s finding them on the right step or the proper foot, the final touch — the service before the finish.”That creativity is what Lavelle has offered in her two relief appearances. She brought an urgency to the Americans’ attack in the opener against Vietnam, when she entered after the first hour. She did the same against the Netherlands, when she replaced DeMelo at halftime, restored some bite to a midfield that was being bullied and outplayed, and delivered the assist on Lindsey Horan’s tying goal.Andonovski has been purposely vague about when Lavelle might be fit enough to go 90 minutes. Instead, he has preached the value of getting game-time minutes for his inexperienced starting lineup, a preference so strong that he only made one of his five available substitutions as his team pressed for a winning goal in its draw against the Netherlands on Saturday.Lavelle had replaced DeMelo by then, and she may offer do the same on Tuesday against Portugal, perhaps even earlier. The team will find out the lineup on Monday night. But DeMelo said she won’t be looking over her shoulder.“The reason I’m here is just to be myself,” DeMelo said, “so that’s what I kind of want to bring to the team.” More

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      Australian TV Deal Has World Cup Viewers Asking: Where Are the Games?

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      When FIFA sold Australia’s World Cup broadcast rights to a streaming service, it made it harder for casual fans to find the matches.The Women’s World Cup is by most estimates the biggest sporting event to be staged in Australia since the Sydney Olympics. FIFA, the tournament’s organizer, has trumpeted record ticket sales, and it has hailed the event both as a celebration of the popularity of women’s soccer and as a way to carry it to new fans and new markets.But while viewers in Australia could watch all 64 games of the recent men’s World Cup played in Qatar on a free-to-air network, FIFA struck a deal for the broadcast rights to the Women’s World Cup — as it did when the tournament was played in France four years ago — with the cellphone operator Optus, which has placed the bulk of the matches on its pay television network.For viewers in Australia, that has meant the majority of games can only be watched via subscription, making it harder for viewers living in one of the tournament’s host countries to watch the tournament than it has been for fans in places like Europe and the United States.“It’s very disappointing to not have the coverage the women deserve,” said Beth Monkley, who was in Brisbane with her daughter this week to follow Australia’s team. “It’s a fantastic sport for everyone, so inclusive. And for some reason Australia has decided not to show all the games free to air.”Legislation in Australia means the entire event cannot be placed behind a paywall, since games involving the men’s and national women’s soccer teams are considered of such significant importance that they are on a list of protected events that must be broadcast for free nationwide. The World Cup final also has a place on that protected list.This year, 15 tournament games will be available on Channel Seven, a free-to-air network authorized by FIFA and Optus to sub-license some rights. (Optus separately said it would offer to stream 10 games for free to users who sign up for its platform.)But the uncertainty about which games will be on the air, and when, has led to significant frustration among soccer fans, but also casual fans in sports-mad Australia, where soccer lags behind the country’s most popular sports, rugby, cricket and Australian rules football.On Thursday morning, Andrew Moore and his wife joined the throng of visitors to a FIFA fan park set up on the banks of the Brisbane River to watch the most eagerly awaited game of the group stage, a clash between the United States and the Netherlands. The Moores stood out.While most of the crowd were outfitted in the yellow and green of the Australian team that would play later in the day against Nigeria, the Moores were wearing matching maroon and golden jerseys of their favorite rugby team, the Brisbane Broncos, which was scheduled to play at the same time as the Matildas’ kickoff against Nigeria.While Australia’s matches are easy to find on television, the same is not true of all teams.Dan Peled/ReutersMoore said all the pretournament advertising and promotion had led him believe that all the games would be broadcast on Channel Seven, a network familiar to Australian sports fans. So a day after he watched Australia and New Zealand play their openers on free television, he settled in to watch the next round of games.But when he grabbed his remote control and flicked to Channel Seven, and then to its subsidiary channels, he could not find a game. “I thought there was something wrong with the television,” he said.Moore said for casual soccer viewers like his family, which already has several pay television subscriptions, signing up to Optus to watch the Women’s World Cup did not make sense, particularly since the sports he favors are on other networks. In Australia’s fragmented television market, most domestic sports rights are split across a number of pay and free-to-air networks. Fans seeking telecasts of major soccer leagues and tournaments from outside the country often must turn to more networks and more subscriptions.That has left FIFA trying to defend disparate priorities: its desire to attract new fans to women’s soccer, and a new commercial approach that seeks to maximize revenue for a tournament that it hopes will eventually grow closer to the popularity of the men’s event, which is the most-watched tournament in global sports.FIFA declined to comment on the rationale for its broadcast agreements in Australia beyond issuing a statement saying that both Optus and Channel Seven “have committed significant resources to covering and promoting the tournament” and claiming that their “combined efforts have led to record viewership figures for the FIFA Women’s World Cup in the region.”That record, experts said, was always likely to be met, given Australian and New Zealand’s host nation status and a favorable time zone for the games. David Rowe, a professor at the Institute for Culture and Society at Western Sydney University, described the lack of the type of blanket coverage that the men’s tournament typically enjoys as a “missed opportunity.”Optus, reacting to the outcry from viewers, has pointed out that broadcasters’ rights fees “are key to ensuring the continued growth and equality of women’s sport, and contribute to everything from grass roots momentum to salaries for our national players.”Soccer’s place within Australia’s sporting landscape has always been a precarious one, said Rowe, an expert on sports and media in Australia. He said the sport was for decades viewed with suspicion by a population grappling with a wave of migration after World War II.“Football got a reputation as foreign at time when there was a lot of suspicion toward people who were not British in the early days of multiculturalism,” he said.He credited the relative success of Australia’s women’s team in establishing itself as one of the best in the world as helping boost the sport’s appeal at home, much as victories and championships by the United States women’s team had popularized the sport in America.That popularity has been visible in the tournament, with record attendances and packed stadiums for Australia’s first two games.FIFA’s sale of the broadcast rights in Australia comes as it tries to promote the women’s game more broadly. Darrian Traynor/Getty ImagesStill, for FIFA, the Women’s World Cup is not close to being the cash cow that the men’s event has become. The estimated $300 million it will earn from selling broadcast rights to the women’s tournament is only about a tenth of what the organization brought in for the rights to the Qatar World Cup in 2022. FIFA and its president, Gianni Infantino, have accused broadcasters in Europe of undervaluing the tournament, and at one point even threatened to not sell rights in key territories — essentially imposing a blackout — if the offers were not increased. As the tournament neared, FIFA eventually backed down on that threat.With FIFA’s coffers swelling with reserves of $4 billion and forecasts of more to come with the next men’s World Cup estimated to generate $11 billion, there was little urgency to sell domestic Women’s World Cup rights to the highest bidder, Rowe said.“It’s chump change for FIFA,” he said. “I do think it’s a lost opportunity.”In Brisbane, as Matildas fever gripped the Queensland capital ahead of the Nigeria game, the sense of a missed opportunity appeared to be near universal.By the time Monkley got to Brisbane with her daughter this week to follow the Australian women’s team, she had been forced to fashion an unusual routine to watch other games in the tournament, by connecting a cable between her phone and her hotel television to stream the games.In Melbourne, where Australia now faces a must-win game against Canada, Alyssa Birley and her husband, Cameron, had traveled across the state so their children could watch the match. The family even booked the same hotel as the Australian team so that their children could get even closer to their heroes. But they said that they have not shelled out for an Optus subscription.The result, Alyssa Birley said, was that her children could not follow other top nations.“It’s inspirational, especially for young girls, to see these top tier athletes and it should be accessible to them,” Cameron Birley said. “Where else can they get that?” More