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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

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      Chelsea Says Executive Accused of Bullying Has Left the Club

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      A Premier League team confirmed the departure after an investigation into workplace behavior, but employees said they had received little information about its findings.Almost a year after one of England’s richest and most decorated soccer teams opened an investigation into a senior executive accused of workplace bullying so severe that several staff members said colleagues took mental health leave to escape it, the team, Chelsea F.C., confirmed that the executive has left the club.The accusations against the executive, the former Chelsea director of marketing Gary Twelvetree, were outlined in a report in The New York Times last June that detailed mounting concerns about a toxic workplace culture inside the department he led. The Times article was based on interviews with almost a dozen Chelsea employees who described how being humiliated and berated in front of colleagues had become commonplace in the club’s marketing department.Chelsea declined to comment on any aspect of its investigation but did confirm that Twelvetree no longer worked at the club. Twelvetree did not respond to telephone and text messages requesting comment.He had not returned to the team’s offices at its Stamford Bridge stadium since the allegations against him surfaced in the Times article, team employees said, but remained on the payroll for months until his exit. Several employees said the team’s failure to inform them of the findings of its investigation had only created new frustration inside the club.The pressure of working under Twelvetree’s leadership led multiple employees to quit their jobs. Others took medical leaves that in some cases lasted months. Several of the employees came forward after the death in January 2022 of a former well-liked member of the department, Richard Bignell, who killed himself after being forced out at Chelsea.While suicide is a complex issue and it is unknown if other factors played a role, Bignell’s death stunned many of his former colleagues. Speaking with family members at a memorial service for him early last year, a group of them said they were convinced that Bignell, the married father of 8-year-old twin daughters, had died because of events at Chelsea. A coroner’s report had seemed to concur, stating after Bignell’s death that he had been “deeply troubled by anxiety, depression and despair following the loss of his job.”Months after his death, Chelsea was under new ownership, with an American-led group having acquired the club from its longtime owner, the Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich. In July, the new owners said the club would conduct an investigation into the accusations, led by outside lawyers, to get a clearer picture of how the marketing department of one of the world’s most well-known sports teams had become so dysfunctional and marked by unhappiness, intimidation and fear.“The club’s new board believes strongly in a workplace environment and corporate culture that empowers its employees and ensures they feel safe, included, valued and trusted,” the club said at the time. No replacement for Twelvetree was named, and in his absence the marketing operation was directed by consultants from Viral Nation, a company in which a Chelsea co-owner, Todd Boehly, is an investor.It is unclear how many people were interviewed by investigators looking into the workplace claims, or how those people were selected. Interviews began shortly after the club issued its statement in July and lasted several months. Some former staff members told The Times that they had to reach out to the club to ask to be included as part of its process. Others were contacted directly.One former club executive said she spoke with a lawyer last September and was allowed “the opportunity to say what I needed to say” without being steered in any particular direction.She declined to be identified because of concerns about future employment in the soccer industry. And while she said she was pleased to learn there had been a resolution to the matter, she also noted there had been several missed opportunities by the previous management to correct the situation.After several complaints from staff in the marketing department, for example, Chelsea’s former leadership hired outside consultants to undertake a “cultural review” of workplace practices. But the review was to be led by Twelvetree, who had been the focus of many of the complaints. That decision incensed many former employees, and several who contributed to the monthslong process said it was unclear if it was ever completed.The more recent review also dragged on for months, employees said. Beyond the departure of Twelvetree, they said little has been said about what was learned. The club declined to comment on whether the investigation had been completed or if any changes had been made as a result of its findings. Chelsea would only confirm that Twelvetree had left the club, without providing details of the terms of his exit.His quiet departure was in stark contrast to other recent high-level moves at Chelsea, many of which were marked with a statement or news release. In the last few months alone, Chelsea has heralded the arrival of a new chief executive and a new head coach — its fourth manager since the American-led takeover last year — and a redeployment of leaders in its development and recruitment departments.Away from the field, Chelsea had been in contact with Bignell’s family over compensation, but the status of those talks remains unclear. The family continues to receive bereavement counseling, according to friends, and has taken part in fund-raisers for his children. Another one is planned for next month at the stadium of Wycombe Wanderers, a lower-league team that Bignell supported.If you are having thoughts of suicide, the following organizations can help.In the United States, call or text 988 to reach the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources.In Britain, contact Samaritans at 116-123 or email jo@samaritans.org. Calls are free and confidential. Or call Papyrus at +44 800 068 4141 (9 a.m. to midnight), or message Young Minds: text YM to 85258. You can also find a list of additional resources on Mind.org.uk. More

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      L.A. Galaxy Fire Chris Klein, a Target of Fans’ Anger

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      Last in the standings and facing a boycott from fans, the Los Angeles Galaxy ousted Chris Klein.When the world’s most famous soccer player, David Beckham, came to Major League Soccer in 2007, his arrival put the league on the map and affirmed the Los Angeles Galaxy’s status as the young league’s superteam. During his tenure, the Galaxy played in three M.L.S. Cups, won two of them and exuded a Hollywood glamour that resonated around the world.So it is startling to see that the Galaxy has the worst record in the league this season, with only two wins from 14 games. In response, and after missing the playoffs in four of the past five seasons, the team on Tuesday fired its longtime president, Chris Klein, who had also played with Beckham at the Galaxy.Klein’s dismissal came after months of clamor from hard-core fans upset at the club’s direction. Several supporters groups had called for Klein’s dismissal and threatened to boycott games; some already have done so. The Galaxy’s attendance is down about 10 percent from last season, a reflection of both the team’s cratering on-field results and simmering anger among its fans.“I hope that there’s a resolution, and the supporters’ groups — who are really important to all of us, and to the players — find the right way, whatever the resolution is for them to show up,” Galaxy Coach Greg Vanney told ESPN in February. “Because it’s probably not going to be ‘Chris out.’”Now Chris is out. “We believe it is in the best interest of the club to make a change and begin a comprehensive process to seek new leadership that will return the club to the level that our fans and partners expect,” Dan Beckerman, the president of A.E.G., the team’s parent company, said in announcing Klein’s departure. Vanney will remain in his job as coach, the team said.The Galaxy’s last M.L.S. championship came in 2014, its third in four years, but it has not won anything significant since then. Last year’s playoff appearance, its first in three seasons, ended in the conference semifinals.The team that knocked out the Galaxy at that stage particularly rankles: It was Los Angeles F.C., the new club in town, which has only been a member of the league since 2018 but already has more honors in its trophy case (three) than the Galaxy have in the past decade.L.A.F.C. has twice won the Supporters Shield, awarded to the team with the best regular-season record, and last season it won its first M.L.S. Cup championship. It also has advanced to the final of this year’s Concacaf Champions League, where it will meet Club León of Mexico in a home-and-home series this week for the regional club championship.The Galaxy, meanwhile, are staggering. The team is a league-worst 2-9-3 with a minus-14 goal difference this season. Going into Wednesday night, the Galaxy have lost three straight league games without scoring a goal. After the last of those defeats, by 1-0 at home to Charlotte on Saturday, fans chanted, “We want better!”While L.A.F.C.’s Dénis Bouanga leads M.L.S. with 10 goals, the Galaxy’s scoring leader, Dejan Joveljic, has two. Among the underachieving big-name Galaxy players are the Mexico striker Javier Hernández, known as Chicharito, and Douglas Costa of Brazil, who scoreless in four appearance Costa also faces arrest in Brazil on charges of nonpayment of child support, it was revealed this week.In the aftermath of Klein’s firing, supporters groups congratulated each other on the news and vowed to return to games.Klein had his own problems late last year: He was suspended in the off-season after M.L.S. found violations in a deal to sign the Argentine wing Cristian Pavón. The sanctions also limit the moves the Galaxy can make in the international transfer market this summer. That means rebuilding the Galaxy will be a tall order. Even with their fans back on board, a return to glory may take a while. More

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      Everton Stays in the Premier League. But for How Long?

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      A win on the final day of the season kept Everton in the league and relegated Leicester and Leeds. But those results may be subject to change.LIVERPOOL, England — The announcement rang out around Goodison Park before kickoff, and then again ahead of the second half. In a clear, commanding voice, it informed Everton’s fans that they were not, under any circumstances, to invade the field or throw objects at the players on it.With Everton’s long-held place in England’s Premier League hanging by a fraying thread, it was reasonable to assume that Sunday afternoon would end in one of two outcomes: ecstasy or outrage. There was no third option. All the final game of the season would decide, really, was which one materialized.In the end, the former won out. Everton beat Bournemouth, 1-0, on a single, priceless goal by midfielder Abdoulaye Doucouré, rendering the results at Leicester City and Leeds United — the two teams that were hovering, waiting for Sean Dyche’s Everton team to slip — irrelevant. Leeds lost, Leicester won; both were relegated anyway. Everton, for the second time in two seasons, clung to its place in the elite by the quicks of its fingernails.That should, really, have been cause for celebration. There were fans on the field within a couple of seconds of the final whistle ignoring the increasingly desperate pleas of the voice on the public-address system. Flags fluttered at their backs. Plumes of blue smoke trailed from pyrotechnics. Children slid on their knees on the turf.Peter Powell/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesCarl Recine/ReutersEVERTON 1, BOURNEMOUTH 0 Abdoulaye Doucoure’s goal set off the celebrations at Goodison Park, and gritty defending made it hold up.Carl Recine/ReutersRelief, though, is not the same as joy. As the fans milled around the field, many drifted as if on autopilot toward the area beneath the directors’ box. Its usual occupants, Everton’s owners and executives and power brokers, were absent, as they have been since January, when they were advised to stay away for their own security.Still, this was a chance for the fans to send a message. Loudly, repeatedly, they set aside their glee to demand the removal of the club’s board. In what might have been a moment of triumph — or at least something approaching it — the thought of Everton’s fans turned almost immediately to revolt.There is a reason for that. It is not just that the current regime at Goodison Park has brought one of English soccer’s great traditional houses low, thanks to a combination of poor planning, reckless spending and good, old-fashioned witlessness.Even Dyche, brought in as a firefighter, seemed determined to point out after the game that survival should not be a source of pride. “There is still massive amounts of work to do,” he said, as if preparing the fans for the idea that there is more struggle to come. “This has been going on for two years. It is not a quick fix.”That is true, of course. The ownership of Farhad Moshiri has reduced Everton to days like these — ones filled with fear and jeopardy and dread — with ever-increasing regularity. But more damning, and more urgent, is that the club has been managed so poorly that this game, this win, may be nothing but a stay of execution.Joe Giddens/Press Association, via Associated PressMichael Regan/Getty ImagesLEICESTER 2, WEST HAM 1 Early goals and late tears, but the 2016 Premier League champions could only watch the bitter end.Michael Regan/Getty ImagesIn March, the Premier League charged Everton with failing to comply with its catchily titled Profit and Sustainability rules, the regulations formerly known as Financial Fair Play. From 2018 to 2021, the club recorded losses of almost $460 million, three times more than the amount permitted under the league’s protocols.The case is, slowly, making its way through the league’s labyrinthine quasi-judicial system. An independent panel will be appointed to investigate. Representations will be made. Appeals will, doubtless, be lodged. The whole process is dragging to such an extent that even the Premier League itself has suggested it might need to be expedited just a little.In the end, Everton’s punishment might extend beyond being forced to pay compensation to Leeds, Leicester and Southampton, the three teams relegated this season. It could face a points penalty next season. It may even have one retrospectively imposed on this campaign. As things stand, Everton has avoided relegation. But only as things stand.Regardless of the merits of the case against Everton, the fact that 38 games have been played and the table cannot quite be entered into the records should be a source of considerable embarrassment for the most popular sporting competition on the planet.The season has ended and the Premier League cannot say, for certain, which 20 teams will comprise its membership next season. Given that there is also an open case against Manchester City, champion for the last three campaigns and on the verge of a domestic and European treble, it is fair to say that everything that has happened over the last 10 months is still subject to change.Lee Smith/Action Images, via ReutersGareth Copley/Getty ImagesTOTTENHAM 4, LEEDS 1 Two goals from Harry Kane helped send Sam Allardyce and his team down to the Championship.Gareth Copley/Getty ImagesThe significance of that cannot be underestimated. If the Premier League cannot wrangle its teams to abide by the rules that they themselves have established, then it does not so much have a regulatory issue as a legitimacy one. Sports are, in effect, policed by consent. If that process is seen to be tainted, if the playing field does not appear to be level, then that consent is removed.More important, those who watch the league — the people who follow it, fund it, afford it a significance that is not inherent — cannot trust that what they are watching has any meaning. If the outcome of a game cannot be known until a legal process has been exhausted, then the game itself becomes secondary.Just after Doucouré’s goal, as Goodison Park was fizzing and bouncing and melting in euphoria, a fusillade of fireworks exploded in the sky just above the Gwladys Street Stand. They produced, in truth, more sound than light: Their sparkle and their shimmer was lost, just a little, against the bright sunlight.Still, each thud elicited a cathartic, ecstatic roar from the crowd, each one signaling a step closer to salvation. The display felt, though, a little premature. There was still a half-hour left in the game. All Bournemouth had to do was score and, with Leicester winning, everything would change.Everton survived the brush with hubris. It made it to the end unscathed. The whistle blew and the fans stormed the field and the table flashed up on the screen and the team occupied 17th place and sanctuary. And yet there was still a sense of uncertainty, a dull rumble of fear, that things were not yet settled. The fireworks have been set off, even if nobody knows for sure quite what there is to celebrate, not yet. More

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      For Everton and Premier League, Relegation Battle Isn’t the End

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      A club’s battle to avoid relegation is being shadowed by an investigation into its spending, and nudges to announce a resolution before next season.Everything is clear at the top of the Premier League.Manchester City, with what has become an inevitable regularity, is once again the champion of England’s Premier League. Its triumph over second-place Arsenal was sealed last weekend, and those two clubs — along with Saudi-owned Newcastle United and City’s crosstown rival Manchester United — already have secured the league’s four spots in next season’s Champions League.The drama in England now is at the bottom of the standings, where three clubs will enter the final day of the season this weekend locked in a high-stakes fight to retain their places in the league, and where an investigation into the finances of one those clubs — Everton — means that whatever happens on the field may not be the final word on who gets relegated.And that is worrying the Premier League.The issue is this: Everton’s financial losses of 371.8 million pounds between 2018 and 2021 (roughly $460 million) were more than three times higher than a cap imposed by the league. In March, the Premier League charged the club with breaking its cost-control rules and assigned an independent arbitrator to investigate. By league rules, the arbitrator alone is empowered to decide the case and mete out any potential penalties.In the weeks since, however, rival clubs have pressed for a decision before the start of next season. They include, but are not limited to, those teams whose futures are inextricably linked to Everton’s finish in the league, each of them aware that a potential points deduction for financial violations — if it arrives before the new season — might seal Everton’s relegation instead of their own.The Premier League — already under pressure to announce a ruling in a separate and long-running case related to Manchester City’s spending — has quietly been pushing for a resolution, too. According to people familiar with the league’s internal discussions, Premier League officials lobbied the independent commission to reach a decision ahead of next season.The commission’s members have refused to be hurried, however, according to several people familiar with the exchanges. At times, those members even felt the need to remind league officials of the independence of the panel.Both cases come as English soccer is poised to adopt a government-appointed independent regulator, a post that threatens the Premier League’s ability to keep rulings on contentious issues in-house. The league’s critics contend that such a regulator has become necessary to police a group of owners increasingly drawn from all corners of the world, including nation-states with access to seemingly unlimited reserves of capital and lawyers.For the moment, Everton’s focus — like that of its bottom-of-the-table rivals Leicester City and Leeds United — is to avoid the ignominy (and potential financial ruin) of relegation. Only one of the three clubs will be spared that fate on Sunday, and Everton, a fixture in the Premier League since its inception in 1992, currently holds a slim advantage. It is one place — and two points — above Leicester and Leeds, and needs only match its rivals’ results on Sunday to finish above them in the standings.For relegated teams, the loss of a place in the Premier League, and the tens of millions of dollars in revenue that membership guarantees, can be a devastating blow. So-called parachute payments from the Premier League help to cushion some of the financial losses for as many as three seasons, but the consequences of the new straitened circumstances often lead to the gutting of club budgets and the departures of players, coaches and other staff members.The prospect that the fate might fall on a club and then later be reversed has angered even Premier League teams not involved in this year’s relegation fight. One Premier League executive recently expressed surprise that there had not been greater coverage of the claims against Everton and the lack of urgency to adjudicate them; the official equated the accusations of financial rules breaches to doping.The Premier League declined to comment on the Everton investigation or any efforts to speed it to a conclusion. Everton has signaled that it will dig in and fight any possible penalties; when the Premier League charges were announced in March, the club said it was “prepared to robustly defend” its position in front of the commission.Even without the threat of relegation, though, Everton is a club in disarray. Its owner, the Iranian-British businessman Farhad Moshiri, has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on players since buying the club, only to have its on-field results crater and a much-hyped stadium project risk stalling because of a shortage of funds. A search for a new owner, announced earlier this year, has so far not produced a savior.The club’s financial troubles were only made worse when Moshiri’s longtime business partner, the billionaire Alisher Usmanov, was sanctioned by the British government and the European Union for his close relationship with Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin. That forced Everton to end its relationship with companies linked to Usmanov, who in recent years had plowed millions into the club and projects like the team’s half-built new stadium.Everton’s fans have been protesting its ownership for much of the season — as they did last year when the team narrowly avoided relegation. On at least one occasion this season, Everton’s leadership was advised by the police not to attend games. More

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      Dortmund, Bayern Munich and the Chance of a Lifetime

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      A Dortmund victory on Saturday will end Bayern Munich’s streak of 10 straight titles. The prospect of a new champion should be a cause of celebration beyond a single city.The requests had started to flow almost as soon as the final whistle blew last Sunday. All through Monday, they came in great torrents to members of the Borussia Dortmund staff, to the club’s executives, to the players themselves. They came from family, of course, and from friends, and from friends of friends, and acquaintances and colleagues and that guy you met in that restaurant.Pretty quickly, Dortmund officials realized the club had to do something or, in a week where nothing is quite so precious as serenity, the situation risked spiraling into a source of stress. The team called the players together and advised them to get all their ticket requests in by the end of Tuesday, and allow the executives to take care of everything from there. After that, nobody else would be able to come to the place where everyone wants to be.That knowledge, they hoped, would allow the players to focus on the task at hand. Officially, there will be 81,365 people inside Signal Iduna Park on Saturday to watch Dortmund play Mainz in the final game of the season, but demand has been so high that Sebastian Kehl, Dortmund’s sporting director, was probably only exaggerating a little when he said it could have sold “half a million tickets.”Those in attendance will cherish the rare, beautiful simplicity of the equation. If Dortmund wins, it will be the champion of Germany for the first time since 2012: The length of the waiting list is reflective of the length of the wait. “There is no better place to celebrate winning something than Dortmund,” Kehl said. He should know: He was a player at the club the last time it claimed the title.If Dortmund can win on Saturday, it will claim its first German title since winning consecutive championships in 2011 and 2012.Ina Fassbender/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesDortmund’s triumph, though, would not just be a cause of jubilation in the city itself. No team other than Bayern Munich has lifted the German championship in the past decade; every spring since Dortmund’s last win, the title has headed without fail to Allianz Arena. With a few notable exceptions — Schalke, Dortmund’s fierce rival, in particular — German soccer as a whole will toast the breaking of that stranglehold.“It is not to say anything against Bayern, because they work pretty hard and perhaps they deserved to be champion in the last 10 years,” Kehl said. “But of course it is good for everyone that the competition in our league is still there, and that maybe on Saturday there is a different champion.”Until relatively recently, this season did not look especially likely to end with that particular conclusion. Dortmund had sold Erling Haaland last summer, a year after losing Jadon Sancho. Once again, the model that had made the club such a financial success — buying bright young talent and selling it at a vast profit — would hold it back on the field.When the Bundesliga broke for the World Cup in November, Dortmund was adrift in sixth place, and Bayern appeared to be set to overtake Union Berlin and Freiburg — the two improbable early pacesetters — to take its 11th consecutive title. That seeming inevitability would further compound the impression that the Bundesliga had become little more than Bayern’s private fief.Dortmund improved, markedly, in January and February — winning nine games in a row to move into Bayern’s slipstream — but when the teams met on April 1, Bayern swatted aside its challenger. “The stories were already done,” Kehl said. “That once again it was Bayern Munich that destroyed our dream.”Bayern’s sporting director, Hasan Salihamidzic, left, and its chief executive, Oliver Kahn, not enjoying themselves.Matthias Hangst/Getty ImagesIn the weeks since, the temptation has been to ascribe the drastic swing in the clubs’ fortunes more to Bayern’s missteps than to Dortmund’s merits. Dismissing Julian Nagelsmann and appointing Thomas Tuchel has backfired on Bayern, laying bare the flaws in its squad planning. Civil war, as it tends to do in the face of disappointment, is brewing in Munich.But to attribute agency to Bayern and Bayern alone ignores the fact that something has changed in Dortmund, too. It has, for the last 10 years, generally been Bayern’s closest contender, its successor-in-waiting, the team that would benefit from any slip-up. The difference this year is not that Bayern has erred — it has done that every so often over the past decade — but that Dortmund has been able to take advantage.Manager Edin Terzic deserves credit for that, of course, and so do his players. “If you’d seen the coach after the game in Munich, or the squad, you would know that we still believed we could win it,” Kehl said.But it is testament, too, to a slight change in focus in Dortmund’s approach. The club invested not only in promise last summer, as it always does, but in the likes of Sébastian Haller, Niklas Süle and Salih Ozcan, too — players with just a little more experience, a touch more grit, veterans who saw the club not as a showroom but as the ultimate stage.Jude Bellingham is expected to leave Dortmund this summer, as most of its most valuable young players regularly do.Ina Fassbender/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIt is that blend that has enabled Dortmund to stay the course, to cling on and now to take advantage. It is that blend that, in Kehl’s eyes, will kick-start a virtuous circle. Dortmund will sell again this summer — not least Jude Bellingham, the most coveted player in Europe — but the proposition it can offer to reinforcements and replacements is now more convincing than ever.“It shows that we do not just develop players, produce high potential, but we can also win trophies,” Kehl said. “We want to be ambitious, but at some point you have to deliver. The capacity to win titles is massively important for me as a sporting director, to bring players to Dortmund, to convince their families, their agents, the players themselves.”That, in turn, will allow Dortmund to keep Bayern within its sights. “I am optimistic that we can now be much closer,” Kehl said. “That Bayern will not be so clearly champion all the time.”And that, of course, would be something for everyone to celebrate, not just those fortunate enough to have tickets for Signal Iduna Park on Saturday. Dortmund would not be the only unexpected champion in Europe this season: Napoli ended a 33-year wait for a title in Italy. Feyenoord swept past Ajax (and PSV Eindhoven) to win the league in the Netherlands.Both of those titles were greeted with a fervor, a euphoria that seeing another trophy added to an ever-growing pile could not possibly match. Dortmund, come Saturday evening, hopes to be in a position to do the same. Everyone wants to be there, to be part of the celebrations, because they know, deep down, that these things do not happen every day.Antiracism Is Not Just a Job for Black PlayersCarlo Ancelotti and Vinícius Júnior at Valencia on Sunday.Pablo Morano/ReutersCarlo Ancelotti did all the right things in the moment, and then, in its aftermath. He said all the right things, too. All, that is, except the one that might actually have made a difference.After 70 minutes of Real Madrid’s defeat in Valencia last week, Vinícius Júnior — certainly Real Madrid’s best player, and quite possibly the finest talent in La Liga — approached the referee and pointed out a handful of the members of the home crowd who were clearly and audibly racially abusing him, and had been for some time.The referee, as dictated by Spanish soccer’s antiracism protocols, ordered an announcement to be made to the crowd, warning that the game would be terminated if the abuse continued. Ancelotti, an astute, caring and principled sort of a coach, asked Vinícius if he felt he could continue.The Brazilian said he did. The game duly resumed, though only as a prelude to what came afterward. Real Madrid described the abuse, correctly, as a hate crime. Vinícius, clearly at his limit, having faced this kind of invective repeatedly in recent months, said that “La Liga belongs to racists.” His teammates, like his coach, offered him their resolute support. Javier Tebas, the league’s president, for some reason chose to pick a fight with Vinícius on social media, before hurriedly backtracking.The whole episode raises countless questions, though at least some of them have obvious answers. Does Spanish soccer take racism seriously enough? (No.) Are its protocols up to the job? (No.) Is Tebas’s position untenable? (Yes.) Is Valencia’s punishment, in the form of a moderate fine and a partial stadium closure, sufficient? (Obviously not.)One question that did not feature quite so much as it should have is why the decision as to whether the game should continue fell on Vinícius. Ancelotti felt the game should have been abandoned. Thibaut Courtois, the Real Madrid goalkeeper, hinted afterward that he was of the same mind. So why didn’t either of them walk off? Or the rest of the team? Or, more powerful still, why didn’t Valencia’s players?Ancelotti, doubtless, checked in on Vinícius’s state of mind with the best intentions. But he placed Vinícius in an invidious position, too, where his only two choices were to play on — and expose himself to the possibility of more abuse — or walk off, which may well have felt like giving in to the racists.Ideally, of course, this is a stain on Spanish soccer that the authorities would handle. Clubs and fans would know, in no uncertain terms, that racist abuse would be met with the most severe sanctions: docked points, games forfeited, fixtures voided. Until that happens, sadly, the burden of objection falls on the players. All the players, that is. Not just some of them.One for the RoadJosé Mourinho has not gotten better with age. Not in any practical sense, anyway: He is still just as mischievous, just as bombastic, just as provocative now as he was in his halcyon days. He hit 60 earlier this year, and so it is probably fair to assume at this point that he is never going to enter his elder statesman phase.Perhaps it is nostalgia, then, a yearning for an era when the lines were crisper and clearer than they are now — a time that is both recent and distant — that makes the prospect of Mourinho’s guiding his Roma team to victory in the Europa League next week seem surprisingly appealing.It helps that it is Roma, of course, a club of considerable scale and sweep but without the trophies to match. It helps, too, that all of these twilight victories for Mourinho feel just a little like hubris: the manager who was so dismissive of anything but the game’s biggest prizes now discovering that, as it turns out, achievement really was relative all along.José Mourinho and Tammy Abraham, Champions League winners now chasing the Europa League trophy.Lars Baron/Getty ImagesA decade ago, Mourinho scoffed at the very notion that he would ever be competing in the Europa League, let alone care about winning it. And yet here we are. He would doubtless have laughed heartily at seeing one of his peers in the Europa Conference League, too. He celebrated picking up that trophy last year by getting an image of it tattooed on his right arm.Mostly, though, it is that time has softened not Mourinho himself but the perception of him. His recidivist fire-starting, his absolute refusal to mature or mellow in the slightest, now has a charm that it lacked when he was at the game’s peak.It has the effect, now, of hearing a familiar, forgotten song, and serves as a reminder of lost innocence, youth passed, a memory of the days when the bad guys looked and talked and acted like bad guys, rather than convincing themselves and their fellow travelers that they are, in fact, the plucky heroes of the tale.CorrespondenceA contender for best question ever received by this mailbox, courtesy of Gary Karr. “By dint of some inexplicable rule, you are forced to be a beat writer covering one nation’s professional league,” he wrote, deftly providing me with an opportunity to discuss every journalist’s favorite subject: themselves. “It cannot be the Premier League. What league would provide you, and your readers, with the most interesting stories and games?”I have spent some time considering this, Gary, and I think the answer is Italy: major teams, iconic stadiums, fallen giants, feisty underdogs, plentiful gelato. But there are cases to be made for Argentina and Brazil — largely for the way the game is threaded into the culture — and, from a different angle, the Netherlands, too. Dutch soccer has always been a sort of laboratory for ideas and approaches. And a nod to Turkey, home of a league that provides endless goals, scandal, crisis and internecine wrangling.“I have a question that can’t be answered,” Bob Foltman told me, portentously. “How should we measure the quality of a coach? I ask this thinking about Pep Guardiola: I don’t doubt his greatness, but I also can’t dismiss the fact that every place he’s been, he’s had resources that 95 percent of coaches could only dream of.”This is also an excellent question, and it’s one that I think is not given enough weight in coverage of the sport. I liked Vincent Kompany’s definition, alluded to in our interview with him: Success, for a coach, comes in two forms — making the players better, and outperforming your resources. “If you have the fifth-biggest budget, and you come fourth, you have won,” he told me.Taking names in M.L.S.Dan Hamilton/Usa Today Sports, via Reuters ConShawn Donnelly is a reliable interrogator of the game’s major issues, and he is back with what looks suspiciously like vengeance. “Why do referees still scribble down the names of yellow card recipients on the back of the yellow card itself with a small pen or pencil? In 2023, isn’t there a better way? A digital assistant or voice recorder or app or something?”There are doubtless more technologically sophisticated ways, Shawn, obviously, but there’s a key question here: Would any of them be better? Would any of them actually improve on the effect of writing something down with a tiny pencil? Or would they just be … different? More

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      Man City to Burnley and Back? Vincent Kompany Says Not So Fast

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      As he looked ahead to the summer, Vincent Kompany realized he was entering unfamiliar territory.He had spent his whole career with barely a moment to catch his breath. During his playing days, the seasons whirled by: league games, cup games, European games, international games, all piled on top of each other. Summers were squeezed into the brief gap between major tournaments and energy-sapping, globe-trotting preseason tours.As a manager, if anything, Kompany’s summers had been more hectic still. Not that it had come as a surprise: He had chosen Burnley, freshly relegated from the Premier League to England’s second tier, as his first head coaching post outside his native Belgium. The Championship is proudly, unapologetically, gleefully grueling, a competition that self-identifies as an endurance event. “Just mentioning the name is fatiguing,” Kompany said.And so it had proved. From the outside, Kompany and Burnley had made it all look rather easy. The club had confirmed an immediate return to the Premier League by clinching promotion with a month to spare. It ended the campaign with more than 100 points. To Kompany, though, that was a misconception. “This league is brutal,” he said.As evidence, he pointed to the fixture list: 46 league games crammed into 39 weeks, with the season wrapped up by May 5. “And we had a month’s holiday for the World Cup,” he said. The most valuable reward of promotion, in his mind, is not the riches that it brings but the prospect of not having to go through all of that again.“Coming out of the Premier League is the best motivation for getting back into it,” Kompany said.Kompany with midfielder Jack Cork after Burnley clinched its return to the Premier League in April.Richard Sellers/Press Association, via Associated PressAll of that, of course, had been precisely as he had expected. The trouble was figuring out what to do once the motion stopped. There would be three months between Burnley’s last game in the Championship and its first of next season in the Premier League — a break far longer than Kompany had previously experienced. All of a sudden, there was too much time.The solution he alighted on — something he had, by his own admission, never tried before — was in effect to give his players two preseasons. They would have two tranches of vacation on either side of a training camp in Portugal, an attempt to find a balance between allowing them to recharge and not permitting their sharpness to dull.He did not, though, quite practice what he preached. His season did not finish with the conclusion of the Championship schedule. On his first free weekend in 10 months, he attended four games: three in the Premier League, already scoping out the opposition for next season, and one at Salford, in England’s fourth tier.That combination, of a perfectionist’s attention to detail and an obsessive’s work ethic, is characteristically Kompany. It is what those who played with him, particularly at Manchester City, remember most clearly: a focus, a sense of responsibility and a studiousness that is perhaps best encapsulated by the fact that he used to record all of the various (and largely warranted, he was not an unjust ruler) fines he had levied as captain in an actual ledger.Nigel Roddis/EPA, via ShutterstockJames Boardman/EPA, via ShutterstockKompany was a reliable defender and serial trophy collector in his days at Manchester City. Some see him as a potential successor for Pep Guardiola.Phil Noble/ReutersAnd it is what made his move into management — first with Anderlecht, the club where he started and finished his playing career, and then at Burnley — seem so natural, so obvious, so clearly destined for success. It is impossible, of course, to predict with any surety which players will make fine coaches; Kompany, though, seemed a pretty safe bet.Safe enough, certainly, that Burnley was not his only option last summer, or his only offer since then. Kompany has a policy of not engaging with speculation on any level; the only time he grew at all flustered, during an interview at Burnley’s training facility this month, was when his determination not to discuss it chafed against his natural inclination to openness.And so while he did acknowledge that he turned down a number of “really big clubs” last summer in favor of joining Burnley in the Championship — thereby volunteering to partake in what even he describes as a “fight with a load of hungry dogs” — he would not be drawn whatsoever on what has happened since.Fortunately, others are not quite so discreet. Those voices said Tottenham got in touch after it fired Antonio Conte. Chelsea, a team seemingly permanently on the hunt for a new manager, approached him, too. Leeds considered him as a replacement when it fired Jesse Marsch. He said no to them all.This summer would, doubtless, have brought more offers, not just because of the fact that Kompany led Burnley to promotion, but the manner of it. In the space of 10 months, he has completely refashioned the club’s style, taking a team that had for years been defined by a gruff, battle-hardened, pared-back style and filling it with youth, and flair, and élan.“I built on the values that defined Burnley,” Kompany said. “Culture is different to style. What was Burnley before? Hard-working, brave, tough. I say to my players that while we might not be the biggest team any more, we can still be the toughest, the smartest, the bravest. There is a grit to our game. That hasn’t changed. We couldn’t have the flair players that we do if they did not understand what it is to be a Burnley player.”He may not see it quite as the transformation it appears to be, but it is an impressive body of work nonetheless. Rather than parlay that into a lucrative offer elsewhere — the Spurs job is still available, and Chelsea’s will doubtless come up again in a few weeks — Kompany elected, just before the end of the season, to sign a new five-year contract with Burnley.It was an unorthodox, vaguely heretical decision. Elite soccer is a shark, forever moving forward. Managers, like players, are conditioned to believe that they have to grasp bigger, better things the very instant they appear.Rather than accept offers from bigger and richer clubs after leading Burnley to promotion, Kompany signed a new five-year contract. “We are still really far from our ceiling,” he said.Matt McNulty/Getty ImagesThis, surely, was Kompany’s moment. He is only 37 — in his infancy, by managerial standards — and he had served his apprenticeship. Now was the time to clamber up another rung on the ladder toward what many assume to be his ultimate, inevitable destiny: to replace Pep Guardiola as manager of Manchester City, whenever he chooses to step aside.That Kompany chose to wait instead can be attributed, in part, to his relationship with the hierarchy at Burnley — “I trust the people” — and his excitement at what is left to achieve. The game’s economic reality might place winning the Premier League with Burnley, for example, out of his reach, but he is confident that his team, this club, has not yet topped out. “We are still really far from our ceiling,” he said.Mostly, though, his decision to stay is down to his conviction that speed should not be confused with progress. Soccer, Kompany knows, offers very few “good settings” for coaches, places where they can hone their abilities and define their methods without worrying about needless interference or the sudden, wild mood swings that can come on the back of a couple of dispiriting weeks.At Burnley, he feels he has found one. “If I am with the right people, that is a big advantage,” he said. Moving on, moving in what most would see as the general direction of up, treating management as a series of challenges to be met and levels to be passed might not be the accelerant it seems. Standing still might be a better guarantee that he gets to where he wants to go.“The only destination I have in mind, from a coaching perspective, is to be the best,” he said. “The pathway is not how quickly I get there. I want to be the best, whatever the steps are, and that outcome takes time in any walk of life.” In his mind, it is a “universal recipe,” though perhaps it is best thought of as an equation.Kompany clearly has an aptitude, and a talent, for management. His work at Burnley proves that. But talent is just the first step. “You develop talent into quality through time and effort,” he said. He has never been short on the latter. It is what has marked his whole career. For once, he feels he has the former, too. He has time, and he is prepared to take it. More