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      A Victory at Last for San Marino, the World’s Worst Soccer Team

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      San Marino scored its first competitive win. “To beat Liechtenstein has been an incredible joy,” one player said.Take a look at the men’s world soccer rankings. At the top, you will find the giants of the sport, Argentina, France and Spain.Then descend, past good teams like the United States and Australia, past decent teams like Honduras and Armenia. Keep going, past Mongolia and Djibouti. Even past the tiny island nations like Guam and Anguilla. And at the very bottom, below all of them, you will find San Marino, ranked 210th and last.When you are the worst team in soccer, you lose. A lot.San Marino had not won a men’s soccer game since 2004. And that game was a friendly match. The team had been playing official competitive games since 1990 and had never won.Until this week. San Marino beat Liechtenstein (ranked 199th) on Thursday, 1-0, finally getting a victory, which was played in San Marino before fewer than 1,000 fans.“We had a great performance,” said Dante Rossi, 37, a defender for San Marino who had never before tasted the thrill of winning at this level. “To beat Liechtenstein has been an incredible joy. It is complicated to find the right words to describe the massive emotions we felt.”Nicko Sensoli, a 19-year-old midfielder, scored the winning goal. He was not even alive when San Marino last won. “I’m over the moon,” he said after the game. “To win at home in front of your family and fans is just something that is priceless.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Uruguayan Soccer Player Juan Izquierdo Dies Days After Collapsing on Field

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      Juan Izquierdo, 27, suffered cardiac arrest on Aug. 22 while he was playing for Nacional against São Paulo in Brazil.Juan Izquierdo, a Uruguayan soccer player who collapsed on the field during a game in Brazil last week, died on Tuesday, his team said.Izquierdo, 27, was playing for Nacional, a Uruguayan club, in the Copa Libertadores, a top South American tournament, when he suffered cardiac arrhythmia, or an irregular heartbeat, and cardiac arrest on Aug. 22, his team said. They were playing against the Brazilian team São Paulo.Players from both teams appeared shocked and distressed at the Morumbi stadium as Izquierdo was placed in an ambulance and rushed to a hospital.Nacional said doctors at a hospital in São Paulo put Izquierdo in intensive care and placed him on a ventilator. The episode also affected his brain.Izquierdo started his professional career in 2018. This was his second stint for Nacional, one of Uruguay’s top soccer clubs. He was married with two children, according to the Montevideo-based team. More

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      Issa Hayatou, ‘the Emperor of African Soccer,’ Dies at 77

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      In his posts atop the governing bodies for African and global soccer, he fought to establish the continent as an equal to Europe and South America.Issa Hayatou, a savvy Cameroonian deal-maker who was hailed as “the emperor of African soccer,” leading its confederation for nearly 30 years and raising its international profile, including helping to steer the 2010 World Cup to South Africa, a first for the continent, died on Aug. 8 in Paris. He was 77.His death, in a hospital during the Olympic Games, was announced by the Confederation of African Football, the governing body of African soccer. It did not cite a cause. He had been receiving kidney dialysis treatment for several years.When Mr. Hayatou took over the confederation in 1988 — he would remain its president until 2017 — it was “an ossified organization that seemed far more concerned with internal power and privilege politics than the development of African football,” New African Magazine observed in 2017.But, the magazine added, he soon “deployed his own substantial diplomatic and leadership skills and his wide contacts to move African soccer swiftly and surely out of the ghetto” and lead it “onto the world stage.”Mr. Hayatou was a member of the International Olympic Committee for 15 years, starting in 2001, and later an honorary member. He was also a vice president of FIFA, global soccer’s governing body, and was its interim president from October 2015 to February 2016 following the resignation of the longstanding president Sepp Blatter amid a corruption scandal that led to the arrest of many FIFA officials.Mr. Hayatou in 2010, the year he helped steer the World Cup to South Africa.Fethi Belaid/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Are Games Like the Euro 2024 Final the Riskiest Gig in Music?

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      Performing before a major match like the Euro 2024 final offers priceless visibility, and the nonzero chance that you’ll be booed.Even to some of the most glittering names in music, the pitch is compelling.There is a gig. It is a very short gig: a tight six minutes or so. It is also unpaid. In exchange, though, the offer promises exposure that borders on priceless: a live crowd numbering somewhere around 70,000, and a captive television audience in the hundreds of millions.The appeal of serving as the pregame entertainment at one of European soccer’s twin showpieces — the finals of the Champions League and the European Championship — is so obvious, and the benefits of that brief performance so extravagant, that the likes of Camila Cabello, Alicia Keys and the Black Eyed Peas (albeit without Fergie) have signed up to do it.There is, however, a catch. For most, what is likely to be one of the most high-profile gigs of their career might also be the riskiest booking in music, one that comes with a nonzero chance of being loudly, unapologetically, unremittingly booed.Regret is not a guarantee, of course. There are acts that look back on their brush with soccer fondly, artists who serve as beacons of hope for the (somewhat unwieldy) trio that is scheduled to play just before the final of Euro 2024 on Sunday in Berlin. That lineup — the Italian dance act Meduza, the German singer Leony and the American rock band OneRepublic — have presumably chosen to focus on the more positive precedents.Dua Lipa was such a hit at the 2018 Champions League final that she has subsequently suggested she now considers herself an honorary Liverpool fan. Oceana, a German singer who performed at the final of the 2012 European Championship, remembers it as one of the highlights of her career. “The whole stadium was singing,” she said in an interview last week.Dua Lipa’s performance at the 2018 Champions League final forged a lasting connection with Liverpool and its fans. Kai Pfaffenbach/ReutersWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      In England, a Changed Nation Hopes for a Change in Soccer Fortunes

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      After installing a Labour government for the first time in 14 years, the country is looking to a historical precedent as a presage to a long-awaited sporting success.Whether “football’s coming home” is as unpredictable as ever. But in England, watching this weekend as its men’s national soccer team comes within touching distance of glory, the dreaming and dreading seem less anguished this time around.Three years ago, in the deadly grip of the coronavirus pandemic and the acrid wake of Brexit, England suffered a heartbreaking loss to Italy, on penalty kicks, in the final of the European championships in London.England’s run through that Covid-delayed tournament had lifted a country that badly needed it. The team’s unofficial anthem, “Three Lions,” swelled in pubs and living rooms across the country, offering the hope, however far-fetched, that after five decades of tournament disappointments and 14 months of lockdowns, “football’s coming home,” as the lyrics of the song go.Home looks very different this year.As England prepares to play Spain in the final in Berlin on Sunday, there’s a sense of a country turning the page, on the field and off. Last week, the Labour Party swept out a Conservative Party that had been in government for 14 years, leaving a professed soccer fan, Keir Starmer, as prime minister, and raising a tantalizing historical precedent.England flags in London. As the country prepares to play Spain in the European final in Berlin on Sunday, there’s a sense of a nation turning the page, on the field and off.Andy Rain/EPA, via ShutterstockThe last time England won a major international championship, the World Cup in 1966, it came four months after the Labour Party, led by Prime Minister Harold Wilson, had scored a landslide victory over the Conservatives. The 58 years since then have been a sad litany of missed chances and unfulfilled promise — or as the song pitilessly puts it, “England’s gonna throw it away, gonna blow it way.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      This Soccer Player Wanted to Wear Her Hijab on the Field. France Wouldn’t Let Her.

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      Lina Boussaha joined a team in Saudi Arabia so she could wear her head scarf while playing the sport she calls “a part of my soul.”During Ramadan, as her family fasted and prayed, Lina Boussaha, a professional soccer player, eagerly tore open a package in her bedroom in France. Inside were two head scarves she had ordered, labeled Nike, and marketed as a symbol of empowerment for Muslim women in sports.Ms. Boussaha, 25, turned pro when she was 17. Her parents are Algerian, she grew up in one of Paris’s poorest suburbs, and until that Ramadan, in 2022, had never worn a hijab outside prayers. She usually wore her heavy curls in a high ponytail.But she had recently decided she wanted to wear a hijab regularly, even during games. And that decision put her on a journey that eventually took her from France to start her career anew in the Middle East.It also gave her a chance to unite her religious beliefs with her secular pursuit of soccer.“It is with great pride that I announce that I am wearing the veil (hijab),” Ms. Boussaha wrote on her Instagram account that night. “My religion, my inner peace, and my spirituality are my priorities, and these come before my worldly pleasures like football & my career as a professional player. Nothing prevents doing both, even if (here in France), it remains complicated.”As she recalled writing those words, she said in an interview in a cafe near her childhood home in Seine-Saint-Denis, a wave of relief washed over her.“Soccer is not just a game for me,” she said. “It’s a part of my soul.”Ms. Boussaha at a mosque in Khobar. France’s soccer federation has barred players from wearing conspicuous religious symbols or clothing like hijabs during matches.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      At Euro 2024, France Stars Pivot From Political Fight to a Soccer One

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      Some of the country’s top players had urged voters to reject the far right in a pivotal election. With that battle over, a date with Spain in Euro 2024 offers a more familiar challenge.For once, Didier Deschamps could reflect on a news conference that passed by almost without incident. Given the timing, that had seemed unlikely. On Sunday, French voters had issued a stinging rebuke to their country’s resurgent far right in a seismic legislative election. On Tuesday, the country’s increasingly activist soccer team will face Spain in a European Championship semifinal.Sandwiched between the two was an appearance by Deschamps, the coach of the French national team, in the full megawatt glare of the world’s news media. Although he has always been studiously inscrutable, his players have not. Over the past month, a half dozen members of his squad have made their feelings on the rise of the National Rally perfectly clear.The forward Marcus Thuram called on the French to “fight daily” against the threat of the far right. The defender Jules Koundé expressed his hope that the country would reject those who “seek to take away our freedom.” His teammate Ibrahima Konaté urged that power should not be handed to “certain people who are intent on division.”Deschamps, then, may well have been expecting awkward exchanges on Monday. Instead, he found himself fielding the sort of questions that must have come as blissful relief. How fit was Kylian Mbappé? What does he think of Spain’s midfield?Marcus Thuram, left, and Kylian Mbappé were among the France players who spoke out forcefully before the elections in France.Patricia De Melo Moreira/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThere was only one moment of tension. Deschamps had been asked by a Swedish journalist if it might be fair to characterize his France team as a little, well, boring: It has, after all, managed to reach the semifinals of the tournament without scoring a goal from open play.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Before LeBron and Bronny, These Fathers and Sons Made Sports History

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      The Los Angeles Lakers are poised to have the first father-son N.B.A. duo in league history. But other dads and sons have played pro sports together as well.When the Los Angeles Lakers selected Bronny James, 19, in the second round of the N.B.A. draft on Thursday night, the team set up an intriguing story line. Next season, he could play in the same lineup as his father, the 39-year-old superstar LeBron James.While there have been many great parent-child combos in sports history — Bobby and Barry Bonds in baseball; Peter and Kasper Schmeichel in soccer; Pamela, JaVale and Imani McGee in basketball — seldom do they play at the same time, much less on the same team.But at least on a few other occasions, the stars have aligned to make it possible.The Ageless Gordie Howe and SonsGordie Howe retired from hockey at age 43 after an illustrious career. But when his sons Mark and Marty joined the Houston Aeros of the World Hockey Association three seasons later, he could not resist.“They knew my greatest wish has always been to play pro hockey with my sons,” he said, “and when they asked me, ‘Would you be interested?’ I said, ‘Hell, yes.’”His return proved not to be a brief cameo. Astonishingly, he played with his sons for seven seasons, moving on to the New England Whalers, who joined the N.H.L. for the 1979-80 season as the Hartford Whalers. Howe Sr. was skating on major league ice at 51.He played 80 games with the Whalers in his final season, scoring 15 goals before finally hanging up his skates. “I think I have another half-year in me,” he declared at the announcement.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More