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      Luciano Spalletti and the Power of Walking Away

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      The Napoli coach led his team to a long-delayed title and then left because the job was done. That is worth celebrating.Luciano Spalletti’s farm sits high on a ridge outside Montaione, a peaceful, strikingly pretty Italian village set on a hilltop an hour or so southwest of Florence. It is picture-perfect Tuscany: cobbled piazzas lined with cafes; echoing, cobbled streets; a panorama of deep blue skies and verdant olive groves on rolling hills.It is, though, just a little off the beaten path. The stretch of the Tuscan countryside Spalletti calls home is not quite so well-touristed as, say, Chianti. But Spalletti grew up here, in the medieval walled city of Certaldo, and he saw in the farm the chance to draw more people to the region. The five vacation cottages he has constructed on its grounds can be rented for a (surprisingly competitive) few hundred euros a night.Business was not his primary motivation. The farm serves as Spalletti’s haven. He has turned it into something approaching the Platonic ideal of an idyll. As he says in a promotional video on the farm’s website, it is “a place to rediscover simple, forgotten emotions, between nature and animals.”He makes his own olive oil. He uses the grapes from his vineyard to produce his own wine. There are hens and ducks, donkeys and horses and alpacas, and even a couple of ostriches. The view stretches all the way from Pisa, in the west, to the Apennines in the east. “For my family, it was love at first sight,” he tells prospective visitors.It is here, to his own little slice of Arcadia, that Spalletti withdrew at the start of the month, his two-year spell as the coach of Napoli at an end. He had informed the club of his decision a few weeks earlier. “I told them I needed a year off,” he said. “I will not work for any club. I’ll rest for one year.”Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, top, and Victor Osimhen, who led Napoli to the Italian title, will eventually follow Spalletti out the door.Alberto Pizzoli/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesSpalletti, of course, has earned the break. His first year at Napoli ended as most first years at Napoli do: in a swirling eddy of uncertainty and disappointment and regret. The club’s ultras stole his car and vowed to return it only once they had proof of his resignation. A raft of key players left.His second season, though, was utopian. For the first time in 33 years, Napoli won the Italian title. That is, in fact, underselling it. Napoli swept to the Italian title, obliterating the rest of Serie A. It lifted the trophy with a month to spare. Its final few games were a carnival, a celebration. Spalletti and his players found their images splayed across the city, afforded the same kind of worship as more traditional religious icons.That he should choose precisely that moment to step away, then, is so unorthodox that it borders — in soccer’s traditional thinking — on heresy.Napoli was vastly superior to all of its domestic opponents. Spalletti’s team was on autopilot for the last five games of the campaign and still finished 16 points ahead of second-place Lazio. Even allowing for the impending departures of two key players, Victor Osimhen and Kim Min-jae, there is little reason to assume it will not at the very least compete for the title next year.More important still, it was at Napoli that Spalletti, 64, had finally made manifest his vision of how the sport should be played. He had, for much of his career, been admired as a gifted coach, a sophisticated tactician, even an occasional visionary. It was Spalletti, during his time at Roma, who either pioneered or popularized the idea of the “false nine.”He was, though, widely — and not a little affectionately — regarded as one of the sport’s “nearly” men. He almost won Serie A with Roma, but did not. He almost won it with Inter Milan, but did not. He was one of several managers dismissed as the possessors of “zeru tituli” — zero titles — by José Mourinho, for whom significance is only gauged by the honors section of a Wikipedia page.At Napoli, Spalletti’s style finally found its substance. His team played no less attractively, no less innovatively, no less imaginatively than the sides he had forged elsewhere, but this one won, and won, and won. Napoli was his masterpiece, and yet no sooner had he completed it than he left it abandoned.Long a runner-up, Spalletti finally became a champion this year.Pool photo by Ciro FuscoHe did not do so, as tradition would dictate, to take on a bigger, or better, or more lavishly remunerated role. In his own telling, he did so because he wanted to take a break, to retreat to his farm, to find sanctuary from the stress and the strain of the last two years. The real rationale, though, is in the subtext. Spalletti left because his job was finished.There is an adage in soccer — in sports in general, in fact — that there is no such thing as a happy ending. All managers are fired, sooner or later, regardless of what they achieve or how much they win. At some point, results will turn, and take the fans and the front offices with them.That is true, of course, but it is partly true because managers are so rarely willing to do what Spalletti has done, and walk away. There is always some problem to solve, some improvement to make, some slight flaw to polish and burnish and finesse. There is always the chance that next year will be even better. And there is always, most of all, another trophy to win.The finest managers are — as they should be — conscious of their legacies. They are driven not just by proving their superiority to their peers, but by winning their place in history. There is a reason that Alex Ferguson, and Arrigo Sacchi, and Pep Guardiola are held in the first rank of managers: They are the coaches, after all, who attained not just dominion, but dynasty. Their example encourages managers to twist, rather than stick.Spalletti has done the opposite. At some point in Napoli’s monthlong celebration, he decided that he had reached the pinnacle, and that whatever came next would inevitably involve a descent.Rather than risk tarnishing what he has achieved, rather than doubling down, he has preferred to leave it, perfect and inviolable, where it stands. He has his prize, and in winning it he has his monument, too. In doing so, he has done what so many others expend so much energy doing: He has ensured that his legacy will remain unsullied, untouched. In the haven he has built for himself on the outskirts of Montaione, Spalletti will savor the simple, forgotten joy that comes from knowing when to step away.In announcing his decision early, Spalletti and the fans got to say goodbye.Ciro Fusco/EPA, via ShutterstockHimbo JesusAt some point in the far-off future — when his role in public life is limited to a sofa in a television studio, just another bromide dispenser — someone will make a documentary about the 72 hours of Jack Grealish’s life that followed Manchester City’s victory in the Champions League final last weekend.That film will do a small service to Grealish, because the chances that his memories will be anything other than hazy are fairly slim. Corroborating witnesses will be required to answer key questions: Where, exactly, did he and his teammates ask the team’s plane to fly on the way back from Istanbul? What is this thing with the turkey about? How did so many of them acquire luminescent jackets, and why?Jack Grealish: life of the Man City party.Oli Scarff/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIt is possible — churlish, but possible — to suggest that Grealish’s celebrations were, if not excessive, then probably not the sort of thing that should be glamorized too much. For English fans of a particular age, it brought an uncomfortable, unhappy echo of Paul Gascoigne. And it is legitimate, certainly, to wonder if a Black player having the same weekend as Grealish would have been indulged in quite the same way by the news media.Grealish’s unapologetic revelry, though, served two important functions. It acted, first, as a reminder that while the meaning of Manchester City’s triumphs is far more complex than the club’s fans would like, the players themselves are athletes who have made countless sacrifices, who have committed years of their lives, to reach this point. That release, at times, can be lost in the broader story of financial rules and foreign investment; in his delight, Grealish brought the joy front and center.But even more significant, it was a powerful rebuke to soccer’s traditional stoicism. Alex Ferguson, among many others, always held it as an aphorism that one medal should simply be used as motivation for the next. In his mind, there was no such thing as an ultimate victory. Celebrating was simply a harbinger of complacency.It is an approach that to a large extent has become grizzled, hypermasculine dogma. It is also entirely miserable. If you are not going to enjoy your victories, then what is the point in pursuing them? What is the point, in fact, in the whole exercise? Manchester City has won a treble. If that is not the sort of occasion that warrants an impromptu flight to Ibiza, then what does?Do as I Do, Not as I SayKylian Mbappé wants you to know that his future lies in France. Until it doesn’t.Franck Fife/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesKylian Mbappé would like you to know that he is perfectly happy at Paris St.-Germain, thank you very much. “I have already said that I am going to continue next season,” he wrote on Twitter, the formerly popular social networking platform, on Tuesday.He would also like you to know that he does not need another intervention from Emmanuel Macron, the French president, to persuade him to stay. “He hopes for me to stay, and I hope so too,” he said while on international duty with France on Thursday. “My only option is to stay at P.S.G. I plan to be there when the season starts.”It’s refreshing, really, to have all this cleared up so early in the summer. No long, drawn-out transfer saga. No will they, won’t they, Ross and Rachel drama with Real Madrid. (In this scenario, Real Madrid is 100 percent Ross.) Mbappé is happy. Mbappé wants to stay. Macron can get on with lesser matters of state.Except, of course, that Mbappé’s stance is deeply disingenuous. Or, more kindly: He is telling the truth, but he is not telling the whole truth.As my colleague Tariq Panja reported this week, Mbappé used another formerly popular social networking platform — the letter — to inform P.S.G. that he does not plan to extend his contract beyond 2024. (The exact timing of Mbappe’s communicating his desire to the club is in dispute, but it is almost entirely irrelevant to the meat of the case.)Mbappé knows full well that effectively forces P.S.G. at least to contemplate the idea of selling him this summer. The unpalatable alternative, after all, is to lose him for nothing next year. And that is perfectly reasonable. P.S.G. is not a club that easily attracts sympathy. Mbappé has every reason to feel he would be better off elsewhere.Presumably, he does not want to come out and say that for fear that it would damage his brand in some vague, ephemeral way. And yet the approach he has taken, hiding behind sophistry and omission and innuendo — all delivered with a straight face; he knows that we know he knows — has exactly the same effect.Mbappé has always seemed an intelligent, judicious sort of a character, impeccably prepared for the fame that has been his destiny since he hit his teens. Doubtless, that reputation is warranted. Still, it took some time to build. As things stand, the longer this draws out, the more threatened it will become.CorrespondenceWe’ll start, this week, with a bitterly disappointed Mark Harris. “Your bitter invective every time you cover Manchester City has finally turned me off once and for all,” Mark wrote. (This was not his first piece of correspondence on the subject.) “It is as if you can only see Novak Djokovic through the eyes of his father’s Russian sympathies, or Tiger Woods through his failings as a husband. Follow the sport. The back story will be elsewhere, no doubt.”It’s a frank letter, so I may as well respond in kind. Writing about Manchester City, at this stage, is difficult. Everyone knows the context. Every avenue for original thought on that subject has long been clogged. But merely “following the sport” is unsatisfactory, too, for two reasons.The first is that leaving the context to others is a professional dereliction. The general idea is to present the full picture, rather than merely one aspect of it. To ignore everything else that Manchester City represents is, effectively, to choose a side. (Perhaps not ignoring it is, too.) The second, and more important, reason is that it is impossible to separate the two: The sport and the financial, political and diplomatic project are inextricably bound together, because the former is the manifestation of the latter.Elena Zlatnik’s disappointment is rather better placed, I think. “If I were married to a footballer, or the daughter of one, I would be outraged if he chose to play in Saudi Arabia,” she wrote. “Anyone who is already rich from years in Europe’s top leagues but chooses to go to a place where his wife can’t wear what she wants, can’t go out by herself or with a male friend, can’t play football herself, is an anti-feminist.”They have already painted murals of Lionel Messi in Miami.Lynne Sladky/Associated PressAnd let’s finish with a slightly more uplifting subject. “This Lionel Messi business has me wondering: Who, outside of Miami, has the most to gain from his arrival?” asked Austin Underhill. “Millions of new fans are coming to Major League Soccer. Thousands will stay even after he leaves. Who are they going to follow?”My guess is that there are two ideas running in parallel here. One is that Inter Miami dominates the sudden attention, and converts at least a portion of it into long-term interest. The second — a corollary, really — is that those who tune in for Messi eventually stay because of everything else M.L.S. offers. Predicting how that will manifest, though, is tricky. Perhaps it will be a team that beats Miami? Perhaps it will be a team that loses pluckily? Or perhaps it won’t work like that at all, and the counterweight to the spike in interest that having Messi generates is the drop that comes when he is gone. More

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      Mbappé’s Split With P.S.G. Widens Into a War of Words

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      In dueling statements, the French striker and Paris St.-Germain disputed basic facts about the breakdown of their relationship.The summer’s biggest soccer soap opera may have just begun.One day after news broke that Kylian Mbappé, the French star of Paris St.-Germain, had told the club via letter that he would not extend his contract beyond 2024, Mbappé broke his silence.In a statement and on social media, Mbappé said his decision not to extend his contract had been communicated to P.S.G. last summer, a declaration that was immediately rejected by the club. And on social media, Mbappé denied a French newspaper report that he wants to join Real Madrid this summer, calling any such suggestion “lies.”He was, he wrote on Twitter, “very happy” at the club.MENSONGES…❌En même temps plus c’est gros plus ça passe. J’ai déjà dis que je vais continuer la saison prochaine au PSG où je suis très heureux. https://t.co/QTsoBQvZKU— Kylian Mbappé (@KMbappe) June 13, 2023
      By then, however, the player and the club were engaged in a contentious, and very public, back and forth.P.S.G. officials had privately expressed shock and surprise on Monday after receiving the letter informing them that Mbappé would leave the club next summer, which had been leaked to French news media before it arrived at the club’s offices. The team believed it had been making progress in negotiations over a new multiyear contract, according to an executive familiar with the negotiations who was not authorized to discuss the sensitive talks publicly.But in a statement sent to France’s national news agency on behalf of Mbappé, the player’s representatives denied there had been any negotiation on a contract extension and said the letter was merely a written confirmation of what Mbappé had told the club a year ago, less than two months after signing his current nine-figure deal. The club knew then, Mbappé’s side said, that he would not be taking up his option to remain with the team for a third year, despite holding up a team jersey with the year “2025” printed on the back at his signing ceremony.The club made no public statements about Mbappé or his plans on Monday. But after his claim that he had never discussed renewing his contract, it issued a curt response. “It is emphatically untrue to say Mbappé’s team have not been involved in renewal discussions,” a club spokesman said.The rising divide between Mbappé, one of the world’s most famous athletes, and the club, one of the richest teams in European soccer, could lead to an endgame P.S.G. had hoped to avoid: Mbappé’s exit from Paris, his hometown, perhaps as soon as this summer.But as was the case during a similar period of brinkmanship last summer, the possibility remains that player and club could still reconcile — but only if he agrees to change his stance and sign a contract extension.Mbappé in the stands at Sunday’s French Open men’s final. He said suggestions that he was trying to force P.S.G. to sell him to Real Madrid this summer were “lies.”Clive Brunskill/Getty ImagesMbappé’s statement said his intention was to stay in Paris for the final year of his current contract before moving on. But the statement also raised unanswered questions, including why the letter had been signed and dated July 15, 2022, the day he said he informed the club verbally of his intentions, but only delivered to the club this week.It also ensured that Mbappé’s club status will be the talk of soccer for the second straight summer.Last year, it required the personal intervention of the president of France, Emmanuel Macron, to finally persuade Mbappé to commit to at least a few more years in Paris. Now the club is gaming out possible outcomes: Should it sell Mbappé’s playing rights immediately, rather than risk losing him for nothing as a free agent next year? Or can it find a way to persuade a club to pay a sizable transfer fee now to secure the promise of Mbappé’s signature once his P.S.G. contract ends?What is unthinkable, at least from P.S.G.’s perspective, is for the club to receive nothing for a player in which it has invested more than $500 million since his arrival in 2017. Just last year, P.S.G. paid a signing bonus of more than $100 million to seal his new contract. Now, club officials fear Mbappé has already given his word to Real Madrid that he will sign with the Spanish club.Real Madrid’s president, Florentino Pérez, did little to tamp down that paranoia this week, when he responded positively to a question from a fan about whether the Spanish club would recruit Mbappé. Pérez replied that Madrid would pursue the French star, “but not this year.”For now, Mbappé has reiterated in his statement his intention to stay in Paris for one more season.“After maintaining publicly in recent weeks that he would be a P.S.G. player next season, Kylian Mbappé has not asked to leave this summer and has just confirmed to the club that he would not be activating the extra year,” read the statement attributed to Mbappé and his representatives.The publication of the letter by the French news media before the club had received it, the statement said, had “the sole aim of damaging their image and the discussions with the club.”P.S.G. had expected that Mbappé would eventually move on, and club officials knew — given his stated affinity for Real Madrid — that any negotiations to extend his contract might have failed. But the club did not expect his intentions to be made public via Monday’s letter, according to the executive familiar with the talks between the club and the player. The executive said the P.S.G. president, Nasser al-Khelaifi, had discussed the matter with Mbappé’s mother, Fayza Lamari, and that other club executives had reached out to Mbappé directly. But there was little clarity over what had happened, only confirmation of the player’s intention to leave. More

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      Kylian Mbappé Tells P.S.G. He Won’t Extend Contract in 2024

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      Mbappé has one year left on his current deal. His decision not to extend it could force a long-awaited move to Real Madrid.First it lost Lionel Messi. Now Paris St.-Germain, the Qatar-backed French soccer champion, could be facing the loss of another of the game’s biggest stars: Kylian Mbappé.Mbappé, 24, one of the world’s most famous athletes and the cornerstone of the club’s plans to rebuild its identity around a core of top French talent, has informed P.S.G. in a letter that he will not renew his contract when it expires next June, according to an executive familiar with the discussions between Mbappé and P.S.G. The executive was not authorized to speak publicly about the talks, given their sensitive nature.Mbappé’s decision could force P.S.G. to consider a move it would prefer to avoid: selling Mbappé’s playing rights as soon as this summer, rather than risk losing him for nothing when his deal expires. If the club does entertain offers for Mbappé, P.S.G. will be expected to demand a price well in excess of $200 million, and possibly one that might eclipse the world record for a player.P.S.G.’s top officials were surprised by Mbappé’s letter, according to the executive, and learned of it after first being contacted by a French news outlet claiming to have received a copy of it before it was sent to the club. A spokeswoman for Mbappé did not respond to a request for comment. Representatives of P.S.G. also did not comment on the letter or how the club was informed of Mbappé’s intentions, which were first reported by the French sports newspaper L’Equipe.Mbappé, center, helped P.S.G. collect another French league title this season.Alain Jocard/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesP.S.G. had faced a similar crisis over Mbappé’s future only last summer, as the forward, then out of contract, had been poised to join Real Madrid before a last-gasp effort, and cold, hard cash, persuaded him to stay in Paris. Keeping him was a priority for Qatar, which has bankrolled P.S.G. for more than a decade and was eager to keep its team’s biggest star in its colors during a year when it was to host the men’s World Cup.The contract Mbappé eventually signed was a two-year deal, with a player option for a third season. In his letter, a copy of which was seen by The New York Times, Mbappé told the team that he would not exercise the option, meaning his current contract, and most likely his association with P.S.G., will end after the coming season — unless P.S.G. finds a team willing to pay to acquire him sooner.Once again, the most likely destination for Mbappé is Real Madrid, the Spanish club that was his favorite team when he was a boy, and which offered him the richest contract in its history only a year ago.Since then, Mbappé’s star has only grown, notably at the World Cup in Qatar, where he led France to the final against Messi and Argentina. Mbappé almost single-handedly wrestled a second consecutive championship to France by scoring all three of his team’s goals in a thrilling final that Argentina won in a penalty-kick shootout.Both Messi and Mbappé then returned to Paris and helped lead P.S.G. to its second straight French league championship.Mbappé’s stated desire to leave P.S.G. comes only days after Real Madrid’s president, Florentino Pérez, responded positively to a question from a fan about whether the Spanish club would recruit Mbappé. Pérez replied that it would, “but not this year.” That may be about to change.Last summer, in an interview with The Times ahead of the European season and the World Cup, Mbappé discussed his admiration for Real Madrid, a club that had invited him to Spain to train even before he reached his teens, and whose stars once peered out at him from posters on the wall of his childhood bedroom. After his invitation to train in Madrid, Mbappé vowed to return to the club one day, he said, but his decision to reject a record offer from Madrid to re-sign with P.S.G. had raised doubts about whether his dream would ever be realized.“You never know what’s going to happen,” Mbappé said at the time, acknowledging that even though he had not played for Real Madrid, the team had orbited his professional career in the most profound way. “You’ve never been there, but it seems like it’s like your house, or something like this.”Real Madrid’s presence in negotiations last year had helped bid up Mbappé’s price. When Real Madrid offered a contract worth more than $250 million over three years, P.S.G. was forced to counter with an even richer deal, one that included the opt-out clause he now plans to exercise.While P.S.G. was not particularly sad to see the back of Messi after his two seasons in France, the potential loss of Mbappé, a French national treasure groomed in the Paris banlieues, the ring of suburbs and satellite towns that surround the capital, would herald a major crisis about the direction of the club.Mbappé had largely escaped the wrath of the club’s supporters for a season that yielded yet another French title, a success that has now become so commonplace that it is hardly celebrated, but included another year of failure in the Champions League, the biggest prize in European soccer.Mbappé with Lionel Messi, who has already left P.S.G., and Neymar, who might.Carl Recine/Action Images, via ReutersMessi, in his final months with the team, became an object of scorn: jeered by fans during matches and suspended for two weeks by the club after an unauthorized late-season vacation to Saudi Arabia. Fans this season also voiced their anger at other key players, including Neymar, the Brazilian who with Messi and Mbappé formed the most-feared forward line in soccer. After signing his extension with P.S.G. in 2022, Mbappé said in an interview in New York that his decision to stay with the club was partly out of a desire not to leave the club as a free agent, thus depriving it of a nine-figure transfer fee. “I think even if I was a great player, and I wrote the history in the past in the league, and with the national team, it was not the best way to leave,” he said. Now he and the club find themselves in exactly the same situation.Under his current deal, Mbappé had until July 31 to inform the club whether he would sign up to automatically extend his contract on terms that the club believes are the richest in European soccer. In the months before sending his letter this week, Mbappé’s family and his lawyer had been in discussions with the club about a new multiyear agreement.His apparent desire to move could mean a reprise of the same soap opera that gripped France last year, when even France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, was enlisted to persuade Mbappé to remain in France as it prepared to defend the World Cup title it won in 2018.For P.S.G. the biggest impediment to winning over Mbappé again is not a financial one, but a sporting one. The team, which despite its routine domestic success, seems to be locked in a perennial crisis behind the scenes: It is already facing a rebuild on and off the field, including the hiring of a new coach for the second straight summer.Messi’s departure — he has expressed a desire to join Inter Miami in the United States — was predicted, and the club is open to selling Neymar as it retools. Losing Mbappé, too, under the circumstances, could plunge a team long known for its stars into a worrying period of uncertainty. More

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      Champions League: Manchester City Bends the Story to Its Will

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      This season’s City might be Pep Guardiola’s coaching masterpiece: a juggernaut so fearsome that not even Hollywood writers dared suggest it could be beaten.The writers of “Ted Lasso,” the acclaimed, sugar-sweet Apple TV comedy, never particularly worried about being hidebound by reality. The world they created was, after all, based on an inherently fantastical premise: an American coach with no knowledge of soccer succeeding in the tumult of the Premier League.There would have been little point, then, in dismissing as too far-fetched the idea of a makeweight sort of a team signing a proxy for Zlatan Ibrahimovic just because its owner insulted him in the bathroom, for example, or a dog being killed by a wayward penalty kick, or West Ham being invited to take part in a global super league.It was notable, then, that there was one line the writers felt they could not cross. At the end of “Ted Lasso” — in all other aspects a determinedly romantic and uplifting show, an unabashed underdog story of empowerment and personal growth and the overwhelming power of nice — Manchester City still wins the Premier League. Even in fiction, City cannot be dislodged.City is not the villain, not really, in the Lasso Cinematic Universe. That role goes, instead, to a combination of conventional thinking and West Ham. Pep Guardiola even makes a cameo appearance in the show’s penultimate episode, offering a brief, distinctly Lassoist homily about winning being significantly less important than his players being good people.Rather than the bad guy, City serves as what the show’s eponymous hero refers to as his “white whale.” It functions as the series’ final level boss, a portrait of immutable sporting perfection, the one opponent that cannot be overcome by Lasso’s mustachioed, good-humored positivity.Even when his team eventually defeats Guardiola, the victory proves futile. The following week, City goes and wins the league anyway. Lasso, like so many others, finds that second place is the best outcome available to everyone else. “Such a shame,” one character tells Lasso in the show’s final scenes. “City are just too good.”As a piece of analysis, it is hard to top. This year, as for five of the last six, City has been far too good for anyone else in England. Even when it sat eight points behind Arsenal in the Premier League table, the season drifting to its conclusion and the distance to the finish line winnowing, it felt like City’s title to lose.From the middle of February — when a wasteful draw at Nottingham Forest prompted a full and frank exchange of views among the City players that Guardiola himself has described as the season’s pivotal moment — until the moment the title was won, City played 12 games in the Premier League and won them all. In that three-month spell, as The Independent pointed out, it found itself behind in a match only once. The unusual state of affairs was rectified after 10 minutes.Shaun Botterill/Getty ImagesThe F.A. Cup was the second leg of Manchester City’s quest for a treble.Glyn Kirk/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe Premier League trophy came first, City’s fifth title in six years.Oli Scarff/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesEven as it reeled in Arsenal, Guardiola’s team had an even grander prize in its sights. It was sailing smoothly through both the F.A. Cup and the Champions League, the prospect of a treble — victories in the league, the cup and in Europe — starting to loom on the horizon.The treble is, in truth, a distinctly English obsession. Manchester United’s 1999 squad is the only English team to have won all three major trophies in the same season. Though the feat has become significantly more common in recent years — Barcelona and Bayern Munich have both done it twice in the last decade and a half — it still functions as a trump card, the ultimate claim to greatness.Its rarity is precious, to United more than anyone else. That last week’s F.A. Cup final should have pitted the two Manchester clubs against each other felt fitting: Here was United’s chance to preserve the club’s honor, to protect its proudest accomplishment. It duly held out for roughly 12 seconds. The last vestige of English soccer’s resistance melted away. City, it turned out, was just too good.Nowhere, though, has that been made more plain than in the Champions League. That it is glory in Europe that Manchester City’s power brokers and paymasters — as well as its coach — crave more than anything else has long since drifted into cliché.Winning the Champions League has become, if it has not always been, Manchester City’s animating force: its final rite of passage, its final challenge, its white whale. To some extent, it is the purpose of the whole project.Everything — the fortunes spent on players, the state-of-the-art academy, the appointment of Guardiola, the global network of clubs, the accusations of breaches of financial regulations in both the Premier League and the Champions League, the legal battles, the risk that everything it achieves may yet be tainted, the distortion of the sport’s entire landscape — will be vindicated, at least in the club’s own estimation, only if and when City can call itself champion of Europe.City has, then, attacked the Champions League with a singular determination this season. Bayern Munich was obliterated in the first leg of the quarterfinals. Real Madrid held out for a little longer in the semifinal, but was routed at the Etihad in the second leg, the reigning champion dismantled both surgically and brutally.Guardiola made an exception for that victory against Real Madrid — it was, he conceded, among the very finest of his tenure — but as a rule he tends toward the coy when presented with all of the superlatives his team attracts. Habitually, he will always insist that his Barcelona team remains the finest he has ever coached, simply because it was spearheaded by Lionel Messi. His presence alone, Guardiola believes, automatically elevates any team.Perhaps that is true: Messi did lend Barcelona a wonder, a sense of the breath being taken away, that no other player — not even Erling Haaland or Kevin De Bruyne — can hope to match. And yet, by the same token, perhaps that makes the team Guardiola has crafted at City even more impressive. From a coaching perspective, it may be that this is his true masterpiece.Pep Guardiola with his most recent Premier League winner’s medal. He’s desperate to add a Champions League version.Carl Recine/ReutersCity has, of course, provided Guardiola with the most conducive working environment in the sport. He benefits not only from a budget that, effectively, allows him to obtain whichever players he wants, but from the sort of complete, uniform institutional support that can only ever be an aspiration at most clubs.That he has used it to produce a team that does not have a single apparent flaw, though, is testament to nobody but him. Manchester City, the 2023 edition, barely concedes chances, let alone goals. It scores from set pieces and counterattacks and long spells of possession. It can hurt opponents on the ground and in the air.It does not, as previous versions might have done, have an ever so slight tendency toward profligacy, thanks to the seamless integration of Haaland into Guardiola’s side, something that — perhaps more in hope than expectation — many expected to be at least a little bit of a challenge when the Norwegian arrived last summer.But that is not the switch that defines this vision of Manchester City; Guardiola’s most significant contribution, this season, lies elsewhere.John Stones anchored a rebuilt Manchester City defense that held Arsenal, and every other opponent, at bay.Adam Vaughan/EPA, via ShutterstockLast summer, he was concerned, just a little, about his resources at fullback, a key position in his system. Oleksandr Zinchenko had left. His replacement, Sergio Gómez, had initially been pointed out to the club as an investment for the future. João Cancelo’s form was patchy and his attitude, at times, questionable.And so Guardiola invented a solution. Rather than asking one of his fullbacks to step into midfield, as he had for the last year or two, he gave the task to a central defender, John Stones, and drafted in Nathan Aké and Manuel Akanji, two of the less prominent members of his squad, to balance things out.He explained the idea relatively briefly to his players; they had a few training sessions to try to iron out any kinks. And then, a couple of weeks later, they were trying it in a game. There were one or two who felt it was a risk, but it proved worth it: Stones, as much as Haaland, has emerged as City’s key player.More than anything else, it is that change that has made City untouchable in England, and in Europe, since the turn of the year. It has already delivered two trophies; only Inter Milan, now, stand in the way of a complete set.It is curious, then, that it should also — effectively — be one of the major plotlines in the final season of “Ted Lasso”: the coach has an epiphany, and everything clicks into place. That, of course, was a mere piece of fiction. Guardiola’s success is concrete, factual, real. Both have the same ultimate conclusion, though. In the end, Manchester City wins. More

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      Champions League Final: Inter Milan Tries to Live in the Now

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      Inter made the Champions League final with Italy’s oldest squad and its highest debts. Whatever happens in Istanbul cannot stop the financial squeeze to come.Barely six weeks ago, Inter Milan defender Milan Skriniar was lying in a hospital bed in France, recovering from spinal surgery. A lumbar issue had been bothering him for some time and, reluctantly, he had decided that endoscopic intervention was required. He had not played a second of competitive soccer since the early days of March, nor has he played since.Yet when Internazionale names its team for the Champions League final against Manchester City on Saturday — the club’s most significant game in 13 years — Skriniar will, in all likelihood, be among the available substitutes.His teammate Henrikh Mkhitaryan, the veteran Armenian midfielder, has not played for three weeks after picking up an injury in Inter’s semifinal win against A.C. Milan.His treatment began immediately: His thigh strain was being addressed even as the celebrations of that victory unspooled around him. Mkhitaryan has not yet been given medical clearance to train with his teammates. Still, there is a decent chance that he will be named in the starting lineup for the biggest game club soccer has to offer.Manchester City, the overwhelming favorite to win this season’s Champions League, arrives in Istanbul best represented by Erling Haaland: a perfectly tuned, purpose-built machine, running smoothly, silently, an irresistible masterpiece of engineering.Inter, on the other hand, is best represented by the likes of Skriniar and Mkhitaryan: It is a team that is creaking, straining, pushing at the outer limits of its ability, an avatar for a patched-up, jury-rigged sort of a club that is held together, these days, by little more than bandages and hope.Joaquin Correa and Inter held off their city rival A.C. Milan to reach the Champions League final.Gabriel Bouys/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThere have, certainly, been less likely Champions League finalists than Inter, one of the great old names of European soccer: Bayer Leverkusen in 2002, perhaps, or Monaco a couple of years later, or even Tottenham in 2019. Few, though, made it to the game’s grandest showcase against a background of such uncertainty.It is not just that Simone Inzaghi, the club’s coach, presides over the oldest squad in Italy, a team in which the focal point of the attack — Edin Dzeko, 37 — might regard the cornerstone of the defense, the 35-year-old Francesco Acerbi, as a youthful ingénue.Nor is it simply that, for as much as half of the team, this may be the final hurrah in an Inter jersey: Skriniar is one of 11 players whose contracts will expire, or whose loan spells will end, at the close of the current season. That reality has left the club facing the prospect of having to restock its squad almost from scratch.Inter, though, has far graver concerns about its future. In 2016, Suning, the Chinese retail conglomerate, paid $307 million to take a 70 percent stake in Inter, a deal that was — at the time — seen as the spearhead of China’s sudden, lavish and state-approved investment in European soccer. The new ownership would, in theory, finance Inter’s return to the game’s head table. The team’s training facility would be upgraded. So, too, would the club’s offices. And, of course, the players would follow.Simone Inzaghi became Inter’s manager in 2021, after his predecessor quit rather than sell off his title-winning squad.Gabriel Bouys/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesRomelu Lukaku, right, left in that purge but has since returned. Lautaro Martínez chose to stay.Gabriel Bouys/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesSuning’s ownership has not, on the field, been disastrous. In 2021, Inter won its first Italian title in more than a decade. Inzaghi has subsequently added the Coppa Italia, both this season and last, to the club’s honors. Inter has become something of a mainstay of the Champions League; it made the round of 16 last year, and has reached the final this time.That relative return to success, though, has come at a cost. Inter is the most indebted club in Italy; according to its most recently published accounts, its total liabilities run at around $931 million. In the last two years for which information is available, it recorded losses of almost $430 million, leading to punishment from European soccer’s governing body. It fined the club 4 millions euros (about $4.3 million) for breaching fiscal controls last year, and it has threatened a bigger penalty (26 million euros, or roughly $28 million) if it does not get its finances in order.Inter has been caught in a sort of rolling financial crisis for several years, thanks to the combined impact of the coronavirus pandemic, the dwindling support of the Chinese state for investing in European soccer and, most notably, Suning’s own troubles.In 2021, the conglomerate had to accept a $1.36 billion bailout, financed in part by local government, in the face of its spiraling debts. The same year, it permanently closed its Chinese team, Jiangsu Suning, months after it secured the title, citing the need to focus exclusively on its core retail business. Last year, Steven Zhang, the 32-year-old son of Suning’s founder who serves as Inter’s president, was held liable for $255 million of debt and defaulted bonds in a Hong Kong court.If Inter has been shielded from the worst of the fallout — it continues to exist; its players still get paid — then it has suffered at least some collateral damage. Suning has been engaged, for years, in efforts to cut costs: In 2021, Antonio Conte, the coach who delivered the Serie A title, stepped down when it became clear that many of the players who had delivered the trophy would have to be sold.Inter’s two most valuable assets, the forward Romelu Lukaku, now returned to the club on loan, and the defender Achraf Hakimi, left anyway. To save its investment, Suning secured a $294 million loan from Oaktree Capital, a California-based asset management firm, to help with the club’s running costs.Ever since, Inter’s days of plenty have receded further and further into the past. This season, it spent several months playing without a sponsor on the front of its jersey, a significant and ordinarily reliable source of income for all of Europe’s major teams, after DigitalBits, a cryptocurrency firm, failed to make scheduled payments on its $80 million agreement.Inter’s blank jerseys were a throwback look for the latter stages of the Champions League, but the reason behind them was a problem.Gabriel Bouys/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesOn Saturday, Inter’s jerseys will instead bear the logo of Paramount+, the streaming service that broadcasts both Serie A and the Champions League in the United States. The arrangement is the product of a last-minute deal reportedly worth $4.5 million. For the same fee, Paramount’s branding will appear on the backs of Inter’s jerseys next season.That sum, though, does not begin to address Inter’s problems. The loan to Oaktree is due next May. With interest, the total sum to be repaid stands at around $375 million. The revenue from Inter’s unexpected run in the Champions League will certainly help with that, but so, too, would acquiescing to another fire sale of talent.If the club cannot meet its obligations, Suning will automatically cede control of the club to its creditor. “Paying a debt at the level of interest that the club is paying Oaktree is not sustainable,” Ernesto Paolillo, the club’s former general manager, said last month. “Steven Zhang won’t be able to export capital from China and nor will he be able to cover the debt with other resources. He will have no choice but to default on the agreement and sell the club to them.”“It’s not our plan,” Oaktree’s managing director, Alejandro Cano, said in March, when asked if the firm’s intention was to take control of the club. “We want to work as excellent partners and offer support. But who knows?”Suning reportedly has opened talks with Oaktree to extend the loan, but it has also started exploring another possibility: an outright sale. Zhang has twice denied that Inter is on the market, insisting last October that he was not “talking with any investors” and reasserting in April that he had “not had talks with anyone.”Inter’s president, Steven Zhang, with Inzaghi after the club won the Coppa Italia final in May.Daniele Mascolo/ReutersIn September 2022, though, the boutique investment bank Raine — the firm that handled the sale of Chelsea to Todd Boehly and Clearlake and which is currently overseeing the Glazer family’s efforts to divest itself of Manchester United — won the mandate to seek new ownership for Inter.Several parties have expressed an interest in buying the club, according to executives with knowledge of the talks who insisted on anonymity to discuss the sensitive discussions. A handful, largely drawn from the United States and including both private families and equity investors, have been given a tour of Inter’s facilities and a broad rundown of its accounts.So far, though, there has been one major sticking point: the cost. Suning values the club at around $1.2 billion, not coincidentally the exact amount that RedBird Capital Partners paid to buy A.C. Milan last year. Given the realities of Inter’s financial position, nobody has yet been willing to bite.That has left Inter in purgatory. In negotiations, the club remains defiant: Those who have worked on transfers with Inter in recent months have noted that at no point have its executives pleaded poverty. The club retains an undeniable, undimming appeal, too. Lautaro Martínez, its World Cup-winning striker, was presented with a chance to leave last summer but chose to reject it, so settled did he feel in the city and at Inter itself.Pride, though, does not pay the bills. There have been times when cash has been in such short supply that the club has not been up-to-date on its share of the payments for the architects and designers working on the stadium it is intending to build, together with A.C. Milan, not far from San Siro.Inter, perhaps, cannot afford to think about the future now. It arrives in the Champions League final battered and bruised, taped and strapped, aging and fading. There is a chance — slim, but a chance nonetheless — of glory in the immediate present. What it means, where it goes from here, can wait for another day. More

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      Karim Benzema Joins Saudi Arabia’s Al-Ittihad

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      The acquisition of Benzema is part of a billion-dollar project to lure global stars to Saudi Arabia’s top league and expand the kingdom’s sports profile.Karim Benzema, one of soccer’s best players and a fixture at the Spanish giant Real Madrid for more than a decade, has agreed to join the Saudi champion Al-Ittihad on a three-year contract that will make him the latest prize acquisition for a kingdom rapidly expanding its ambitions and influence in sports.The decision by Benzema, a 35-year-old French striker, to move to Saudi Arabia was confirmed by Al-Ittihad on Tuesday after days of rumors. While it is an unusual choice for a player still perceived as an elite talent in one of Europe’s best leagues, his acquisition might not be the last high-profile signing by the Saudi league, which is embarking on a billion-dollar project, backed by the seemingly bottomless wealth of the state-controlled Public Investment Fund, to turn the kingdom into a major player in world soccer.W E L C O M E ! B E N Z E M A 💪💪 pic.twitter.com/Oc9IK4OoDj— Ittihad Club (@ittihad_en) June 6, 2023
      Benzema’s arrival will come only months after a different Saudi club lured another star, the Portuguese forward Cristiano Ronaldo, with one of the richest contracts in soccer history.Among the other marquee players said to have been targeted by the Saudi league is Lionel Messi, who led Argentina to the World Cup title in December in Qatar. The salaries offered to the players are some of the largest in sports history, according to interviews with agents, Saudi sports officials and consultants hired to execute the project. All spoke on condition of anonymity because the negotiations are private.Saudi officials are hoping that the presence of stars like Ronaldo and Benzema will persuade dozens more successful players from Europe’s top leagues to follow them to the kingdom. The signings are part of an ambitious plan, supported at the highest levels of the Saudi state and bankrolled by the Public Investment Fund, to raise the profile of the Saudi league and the country’s status in global sports, and alter perceptions of Saudi Arabia on the world stage.Similar in scale and ambition to a Saudi-financed campaign to dominate professional golf through the year-old LIV Golf series, the soccer effort is a centralized plan to turn a domestic league that has long been an afterthought into a destination for elite talent.The signing of Benzema came days after Saudi Arabia passed ownership of the Saudi Premier League’s four biggest clubs to the PIF from the government by announcing the fund had taken a 75 percent ownership stake in each team: Al-Ittihad, the newly crowned Saudi champion; Al-Nassr, which employs Ronaldo; and Al-Ahli and Al-Hilal. They are among the biggest and best followed clubs in Saudi soccer.Those four clubs are expected to be the primary beneficiaries of the PIF’s new focus on raising the league’s profile. But their common ownership by the fund is already raising questions about sporting integrity, since the rules of soccer’s global governing body, FIFA, and Asian soccer’s ruling confederation prohibit the same owner to control multiple clubs in the same competition. Saudi officials said this week that they have taken measures to ensure the PIF-owned teams comply with these regulations, but they offered no evidence that such safeguards were in place.The state’s involvement in soccer comes on the heels of a surprisingly strong performance by Saudi Arabia’s national team at last year’s World Cup, where the team’s run included a stunning victory over Argentina. The project’s stated goal is to make the country’s top division, the Saudi Pro League, one of the world’s 10 best domestic leagues. The league is unlikely to become a true rival of more established leagues in Europe and elsewhere, but the resources of the PIF could destabilize the multibillion-dollar global market for players, and drive up the price of top talents around the world.Al-Ittihad clinched the Saudi league title in May.Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe plan to buy a foothold in world soccer is reminiscent of a similar one a decade ago in which China used high-profile and high-dollar acquisitions of players and European clubs. That plan, marred by broken contracts, economic implosions and the coronavirus pandemic, now appears to be in retreat.The Saudi project, government officials have said, has broader aims than just a few dozen showcase signings. The government sees sports as a promising sector as it attempts to diversify the Saudi economy, and officials also have said raising the importance of sports would help tackle the problem of obesity in the country.The Saudi plan will start on solid financial footing: The PIF already has signed 20-year commercial agreements worth tens of millions of dollars with the clubs it now controls, and it sponsors the league itself through one of the companies in its portfolio, the real estate developer Roshn.The goal is for the four biggest teams to field three top foreign players each, and for another eight players to be distributed among the remaining 12 teams in the league, according to one of the people briefed on the plans to bring foreign stars to the league, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss them publicly.Critics of Saudi Arabia have labeled its heavy spending in sports as an attempt to improve the kingdom’s image abroad and divert attention away from its human rights record; Saudi officials have repeatedly rejected these allegations.It is unclear when Benzema will arrive in Jeddah, where Al-Ittihad is based, now that he has committed his future to a country that has a rich soccer history and where the sport is passionately followed.One thing is certain, however: Whenever he does, Al-Ittihad fans, known as some of the most passionate in the country and riding high after winning their latest league title, will be ready to roll out the welcome mat. More

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      Saudi Soccer League Creates Huge Fund to Sign Global Stars

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      A coordinated effort financed by the kingdom’s Public Investment Fund is offering huge paydays to some of the sport’s biggest stars if they join Saudi Arabia’s best teams.The lists have been drawn up and the financing secured. Saudi Arabia is looking to lure some of the world’s best known soccer players to join Cristiano Ronaldo in its national league. And to close the deals, it is relying on money, the one commodity it knows it can offer more of than any of its rival leagues.Similar in ambition to the Saudi-financed campaign to dominate golf through the new LIV series, the plan appears to be a centralized effort — supported at the highest levels in Saudi Arabia, and financed by the kingdom’s huge sovereign wealth fund — to turn the country’s domestic league, a footnote on the global soccer stage, into a destination for top talent.To make that happen, Saudi clubs are already approaching players receptive to moving to the kingdom with some of the highest annual salaries in sports history. The deals could require in excess of $1 billion for wages for some 20 foreign players.Cristiano Ronaldo, a five-time world player of the year, has led the way. He joined the Saudi club Al-Nassr after the 2022 World Cup, in a deal reported to be worth $200 million per season. Last month, Al-Nassr narrowly missed out on the league championship on the penultimate week of the season, but for those running the Saudi league Ronaldo’s presence alone was a victory in that it ensured unprecedented attention on the country’s top division, the Saudi Premier League.Cristiano Ronaldo signed with the Saudi club Al-Nassr after the World Cup in Qatar.Ahmed Yosri/ReutersSince Ronaldo arrived, the Saudi league has been considering whether to centrally coordinate more big-money signings in order to distribute talent evenly among the biggest teams, according to interviews with agents, television executives, Saudi sports officials and consultants hired to execute the project, the details of which have not previously been reported. The people spoke on condition of anonymity because the deals involved were private.In recent weeks, leaks about huge offers to famous players have mounted: Lionel Messi, who led Argentina to the World Cup title in December, is said to have been tempted by a contract even richer than Ronaldo’s Saudi deal; and the French striker Karim Benzema, the reigning world player of the year, has reportedly agreed to leave Real Madrid for a nine-figure deal to play in Saudi Arabia.The Saudi league’s British chief executive, Garry Cook, a former Nike executive who briefly ran Manchester City after it was bought by the brother of the ruler of the United Arab Emirates, has been tasked with executing the plans. Cook did not respond to an email seeking comment. League officials also did not respond to requests for comment about the plans.The project comes on the heels of a surprisingly strong performance by Saudi Arabia at last year’s men’s World Cup in Qatar. The team’s run included a stunning victory over the eventual champion, Argentina, which stoked pride on the Saudi streets and in the halls of power in Riyadh. The project’s goal is not so much to make the Saudi league an equal of century-old competitions like England’s Premier League or other top European competitions, but to increase Saudi influence in the sport, and perhaps boost its profile as it bids for the 2030 World Cup.But the effort also is reminiscent of a similar scheme a decade ago in which China sought to force its way into the global soccer conversation through a series of high-profile and high-dollar acquisitions. That bold plan, eventually marred by broken contracts, economic implosions and the coronavirus pandemic, is now seemingly at an end.The plans for the Saudi league to become the dominant domestic competition in Asia are similarly subject to the whims of the country’s leadership, and could yet be derailed by a sudden change of direction, or an ability to sign the kind of elite talents being pursued. The players, too, would be committing to contracts with teams that in the past have been regular attendees at arbitration hearings claiming unpaid fees and salaries.According to the interviews with people familiar with the project, the league, and not the clubs, would centrally negotiate player transfers and assign players to certain teams, in a model similar to one used by Major League Soccer as it built its global profile. Centralized signings would be a departure from what is typical in much of the rest of the world, where clubs directly acquire and trade players independently.The size of the Saudi war chest is unclear, but officials briefed on the subject say it is as hefty as the list of players the league has identified as potential recruits. Much of the money invested in the league and the clubs in recent times has come from the Public Investment Fund, the country’s sovereign wealth fund chaired by the kingdom’s powerful crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman.The fund has signed 20-year commercial agreements worth tens of millions of dollars with the four most popular clubs in the Saudi Premier League. Those deals will require the teams, two from Riyadh and two from the port city of Jeddah, to play games at new arenas in entertainment complexes being built by PIF subsidiaries. The PIF also sponsors the league itself through one of the companies in its portfolio, the real estate developer Roshn.A fan shopping for an Al-Hilal jersey in May, after published reports that the Argentina star Lionel Messi was considering signing with the decorated Saudi club.Ahmed Yosri/ReutersAccording to one of the people briefed on the plans, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss them publicly, the goal is for the four biggest teams to field three top foreign players each, and for another eight players to be distributed among the remaining 12 teams in the league.The move for greater centralization of the league would end a period of autonomy granted to the clubs, and is further indication of the Saudi state’s interest in using sports as part of a drive to alter perceptions of the kingdom on the global stage, and diversify its economy away from oil. Saudi Arabia has been among the biggest spenders in global sports in recent years, bringing major events to the kingdom and investing in sports properties.PIF has been the driving force behind much of that, too. Two years ago it acquired Newcastle United, an English Premier League club, and through its funding and smart recruitment helped it to achieve its best league finish in decades and a place in next season’s Champions League. The Saudi oil company, Aramco, is a major sponsor of the Formula 1 auto racing series. But perhaps the PIF’s splashiest efforts have been in golf, where it has poured billions into creating LIV, the rival competition to the established tours in North America and EuropeAll of those projects have attracted scrutiny amid claims Saudi Arabia is using its investments in sports to divert attention from its human rights record. But the golf series, in particular, has shown that Saudi Arabia’s interest in sports may not be deterred even if the promised financial bonanza does not arrive. And Saudi officials have vigorously denied “sportswashing” allegations, arguing that some of the motivations behind their push into global sports include catering to their sports-loving population and encouraging greater physical activity in a country where obesity and diabetes are common.Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, watching the King’s Cup final between Al-Hilal and Al-Wehda in May.Saudi Press Agency/via ReutersDiscussions with potential soccer recruits and their agents are underway. Saudi Arabia’s sudden and cash-soaked presence is likely to create further chaos in soccer’s typically frenzied summer trading window, which typically runs from June through August.Beefing up the four best teams may not be universally popular in the kingdom which has its own rich soccer history and where the sport is passionately followed. Teams not considered to be counted in the elite group are already expressing frustration at the prospect of being left behind.The sense of unfairness has been felt most visibly at Al-Shabab, the third-largest club in the capital, Riyadh, which has had to contend with living in the shadows of its prominent rivals Al-Nassr and Al-Hilal and their two Jeddah-based counterparts, Al-Ittihad and Al-Ahli.“I have buried the ‘big four’ myth with my own hands,” the Al-Shabab president Khalid al-Baltan told reporters at the end of last season, when Al-Ahli was relegated to the second division for the first time in its history. Al-Baltan’s team dominated the Saudi league in the 1990s, when it was home to stars such as Fuad Anwar Amin and Saeed al-Owairan, who led Saudi Arabia to the knockout stage in the kingdom’s first World Cup appearance in 1994.While Saudi Arabia’s ministry of sports is currently funding a major renovation of Al-Shabab stadium in northern Riyadh, al-Baltan has complained bitterly about a lack of support — while taking care to avoid criticizing the government or the PIF by name.“The gap is getting too large, the financial situation does not allow us to compete with other clubs,” al-Baltan said during a news conference last week, as he wondered aloud how Al-Shabab was supposed to compete when Ronaldo’s salary for one season is four times the size of his club’s annual budget.“Am I expected to close that huge gap myself?” he asked. “My car is a small Japanese sedan, and I’m somehow expected to race against Lamborghinis and Ferraris. If I don’t win then I’m bad? This is not logical.” More

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      Women’s Champions League: Barcelona’s Aitana Bonmatí Chases Perfection

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      Aitana Bonmatí always asks the same question. Every game Barcelona Femení plays generates a flood of performance data. The team’s fitness coaches know how far each player ran, how fast, how long. There is so much information, in fact, that they need two days to download it and tabulate it and parse it. Only then is it passed back to the squad.Not every player pays much heed to that sort of feedback. Some disregard it entirely. Bonmatí is different. She does not just want the answer; she wants to see the work, too. More than anything, she wants to know the why.“After some games, you feel so fatigued, so exhausted,” she said. “But the data can be low. That’s because sometimes it is not just a physical thing. It can be to do with stress, with the nerves you had. I like to talk about it with the coaches. I want to understand why these things happen.”As far as the raw figures go, the 25-year-old Bonmatí’s season looks like this: nine goals scored, and 10 created, from midfield as Barcelona swept, yet again, to the Spanish title; five goals scored, and seven more created, in the Champions League on the way to her — and her club’s — fourth final in five years. Only Wolfsburg’s Ewa Pajor has scored more goals than Bonmatí. Nobody has more assists.The case that Bonmatí has been the most decisive, most valuable player in Europe this season is a compelling one. There is a strong body of evidence, too, to suggest that she should be considered the leading candidate for the Ballon d’Or, at least until the World Cup rolls around.Bonmatí, with striker Fridolina Rolfo, will lead Barcelona against Germany’s Wolfsburg in Saturday’s Women’s Champions League final.Joan Monfort/Associated PressThe easiest explanation for why is one that she rejects without a second thought. It is Bonmatí, the theory goes, who has emerged as Barcelona’s heartbeat in the injury-enforced absence of Alexia Putellas, the club’s captain. “She has taken a huge responsibility in midfield,” Fridolina Rolfo, Barcelona’s Swedish striker, said earlier this year. “She deserves all of the attention, in my opinion.”Bonmatí has a slightly different interpretation. “The coach is the boss,” she said. This season, that coach — Jonatan Giráldez — has asked her to play a more advanced role than in previous years, not only to mitigate the absence of Putellas but because the presence of Patri Guijarro, Ingrid Engen and Keira Walsh means the club is well-stocked with defensive midfielders. “The role has changed,” Bonmatí said. “But not because of me.”Replacing Putellas, she said, has been a collective effort. “The media always tries to find someone in the team to focus on, and now this year it is me,” she said. “But I have been having good seasons for the last few years. I am ambitious. I just want to be better, more complete, than last year.”Standing out at Barcelona is more complex than it might appear. Lucy Bronze, the English defender who moved to Catalonia last summer, perhaps captured it best. At Barcelona, she said earlier this year, she has found herself surrounded by an almost industrial quantity of prodigiously gifted players, all spooling off the academy’s production line.“There are just like clones and clones and clones of these amazing, technical, intelligent players,” she said, sounding simultaneously awe-struck and possibly just a little frightened. “There are hundreds of them.”That Bonmatí has been able to stand out from that group — even at a club that has been carefully calibrated to churn out excellence, and on a team that is packed with the world’s finest players — can be attributed to her search for completeness.Xavi Hernández, the coach of Barcelona’s men’s team and Bonmatí’s childhood idol, described her as a “perfectionist” in the prologue to the book she published last year. She puts it a different way. “I try to understand everything,” she said. “I am a very curious person.”Barcelona’s women, serial champions of Spain, have struggled to match that success in the Champions League.Lluis Gene/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesCod psychology would suggest that she inherited that trait from her parents: both academics, both lecturers in Catalan literature, both sufficiently animated by the pursuit of equality that they forced a change in the law to allow Bonmatí to take her mother’s surnames, rather than a patronymic followed by a matronymic.It is a streak that Bonmatí has not lost, and one best illustrated not so much by her continuing education — she is studying sports management, already aware at age 25 of the need to prepare for a life after soccer — but by her approach to her career itself.Bonmatí is — her words — “always doing things.” “Making a schedule is quite complicated,” she said. “I need to make sure to get time for myself, because otherwise I feel like I can’t breathe.” Her teammates, she believes, consider her to be “hyperactive.”She has roles, away from the field, with the United Nations refugee agency, with the Johan Cruyff Foundation, with the Barcelona Foundation. She works with a team for female refugees.When Walsh and Bronze arrived at Barcelona, Bonmatí immediately volunteered to act as their de facto translator. If they needed anything, she told them, they just had to tell her. The gesture was rooted in kindness, but there was a payoff, too. “It means I get to improve my English,” she said. There was no ulterior motive for that — Bonmatí wasn’t hoping to parlay it into an imminent move to England or the United States. She just wanted to be better at English.Bonmatí with Barcelona’s coach, Jonatan Giráldez. “The more things that I know, the more I can apply what I know,” she said.Albert Gea/ReutersAlmost everything Bonmatí does is geared toward a process of endless improvement, of smoothing out flaws and making sure nothing has gone unconsidered. She reads, and she reads widely: Her home, she said, is full of books on nutrition, on performance, on psychology. (Even her downtime is not really downtime: The likes of Primo Levi and Viktor Frankl occupy the light reading slot.)“The more things that I know, the more I can apply what I know,” she said. “The smarter I am about those subjects, the better it is for my performance.”Then there is her kinesthetic learning: Away from Barcelona’s orbit, but with the club’s blessing, she employs her own fitness coach, nutritionist and psychologist. She questions them, too. “I want to know what I have to improve, and how to do it,” she said.It is not exactly a surprise, then, that Bonmatí is hardly satisfied by Barcelona’s achievement in reaching the Champions League final yet again. It is her, and her club’s, third in a row, and their fourth overall. This stage is so familiar that Barcelona will go in as the heavy favorite to beat Wolfsburg on Saturday.That is an achievement in itself, of course, testament to how far Barcelona’s women’s team has come, to the status it has attained, to the progress made by Bonmatí and her teammates. That is not what Bonmatí sees, though, when she looks at the data. “We have only won one of the finals,” she said. “We’ve lost two. Personally, I want to win more.” More