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      Julian Nagelsmann Is the Most Important Man in Germany This Month

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      Julian Nagelsmann was hired to win a European Championship on home soil. Can he restore a divided nation’s self-esteem at the same time?A little more than a week before the start of this summer’s European soccer championship, one of Germany’s national broadcasters aired a documentary examining the national team’s history through its multiculturalism. Or, rather, the lack of it.While the thrust of the film, “Unity and Justice and Diversity,” focused on the progress that Germany had made, it has reverberated inside the country, and beyond, for a very different reason.In it, the film’s director, Philipp Awounou, included the results of a survey commissioned by the broadcaster, ARD, that asked more than 1,300 people if they agreed with the statement: “I would prefer it if more white players played in the German national team again.” About 21 percent of respondents said that they did.The backlash was immediate. Joshua Kimmich, a senior member of Germany’s national team, described the survey as racist. The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, declared, “We will not allow ourselves to be divided.” They, and many others, focused not on the findings but on the decision to ask the question in the first place.The job of changing the subject over the next few weeks, though, will fall to a figure who, in his own way, represents how the country wishes to see itself. Julian Nagelsmann, the coach of the national team, is passionate, uncompromising and ambitious. He is also 36, by some distance the youngest man to occupy the post. The task on his shoulders is both lofty and unenviable. He has to lead Germany to glory, in one form or another. And he has to try to restore the country’s sense of self at the same time.Man of the MomentAlexander Rosen cannot quite recall which newspaper ran the headline, but eight years later, the phrasing still sticks in his mind. He had just appointed a new coach for the team he runs, TSG Hoffenheim, a small but striving club in Germany’s top division.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Borussia Dortmund Deal with Weapons Maker Rheinmetall Stirs Debate in Germany

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      For some fans of Borussia Dortmund, an advertising deal with Rheinmetall, a major arms manufacturer, has overshadowed the run-up to the Champions League final on Saturday.Borussia Dortmund, one of Germany’s most successful soccer clubs, is rooted in the industrial Ruhr region and prides itself on retaining its working-class roots, community engagement and anti-establishment mentality.That’s why, in the week before one of the biggest games in the club’s history, some Dortmund fans are angry about a sponsorship deal with Rheinmetall, a major German weapons producer. Everyone from club officials to lawmakers have weighed in on the move, which has provoked a debate about the normalization of the military in German society. Still, many fans would rather just focus on Dortmund’s appearance in the showcase game of the European season, the Champions League final on Saturday against Real Madrid. Dortmund’s three-year partnership with Rheinmetall, announced on Wednesday, includes advertising and marketing rights in Dortmund’s stadium and club grounds but not — crucially for some — a place on the team’s famed black and yellow jerseys. Neither side would confirm the amount of the deal.Generations of Germans, raised on the postwar idea that “never again” should their nation foment an armed conflict, remain uneasy associating with the defense industry. Unlike in the United States, where professional and college-level sports games often feature soldiers in uniform unfurling American flags and flyovers from fighter jets, at sporting events in Germany outward displays of patriotism and associations with the military are rare.Some fans would like to keep it that way.“Borussia Dortmund is a soccer club that has been a standard-bearer for tolerance and social projects,” said Inge Fahle, a retired teacher from Dortmund and a fan of the club since childhood. “A sponsorship with a weapons manufacturer just doesn’t work,” she said.Hans-Joachim Watzke, Dortmund’s chief executive, said in a statement that the club was “consciously opening ourselves up to a dialogue” by becoming partners with a weapons manufacturer. He said the partnership reflected the role that a company like Rheinmetall has come to play in German society, since the country stepped in to support Ukraine after it was invaded by Russia.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Barcelona’s Success Transforms the City Into the Women’s Soccer Capital

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      The success of Barcelona’s team has made Catalonia a laboratory for finding out what happens when the women’s game has prominence similar to the men’s.A little more than an hour before the game begins, the gates outside the Johan Cruyff Stadium swing open and a thousand or so fans rush inside. Some scurry to the turnstiles. Others wait patiently at the merchandise stalls, anxious to buy a jersey, a scarf, a commemorative trinket.The busiest and longest line, though, forms outside a booth offering fans the chance to have a photo taken with their heroes. Within a couple of minutes, it snakes all the way back to the entrance, populated by doting parents and spellbound preteens hoping they arrived in time.They have come to see the most dominant women’s soccer team on the planet. Barcelona Femení has been Spanish champion every year since 2019. It has not lost a league game since last May, a run during which eight of its players also lifted the Women’s World Cup. On Saturday, the team can win its third Women’s Champions League title, which crowns the best professional team in Europe, in four seasons.That success has turned the team’s standouts into global stars and the club into what often seems like a juggernaut. It has also transformed Barcelona, and the broader region of Catalonia, into the global heartbeat of women’s soccer, a case study in what happens when the women’s game wins the same prominence as the men’s.Aitana Bonmatí, right, is the reigning world player of the year. She has helped lead Barcelona to the Champions League final against Olympique Lyon of France on Saturday.Maria Contreras Coll for The New York TimesOn the city’s streets, jerseys bearing the name of Alexia Putellas or Aitana Bonmatí, Barça Femení’s biggest stars, are just as common as those with the names of an icon of the men’s team. And on the region’s soccer fields, a boom is playing out, with what was once a male-dominated space now awash in women and girls.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Premier League’s Asterisk Season

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      As it concludes an epic title race, soccer’s richest competition is a picture of health on the field. Away from it, the league faces lawsuits, infighting and the threat of government regulation.With five minutes left in his team’s penultimate game of the Premier League season, Manchester City Manager Pep Guardiola found the tension just a little too much. As a rival striker bore down on his team’s goal, Guardiola — crouching on his haunches on the sideline — lost his balance and toppled over onto his back.Lying on the grass and expecting the worst, he missed what may yet prove to be the pivotal moment in the Premier League’s most enthralling title race in a decade.But the striker did not score. His effort was parried by goalkeeper Stefan Ortega, sending Manchester City above its title rival Arsenal in the standings and positioning it, if it can win again on Sunday, to become the first English team to win four consecutive championships.“Ortega saved us,” Guardiola said afterward. “Otherwise, Arsenal is champion.”That the destiny of the championship should have been determined only so late in the season seems fitting for what has, on the surface, been a vintage Premier League campaign.All of that drama, though, comes with a figurative asterisk. This season’s Premier League has been defined as much by turbulence off the field — points deductions, internecine bickering, legal disputes, fraud accusations and the looming threat of government intervention — as it has been by City’s (eventual) smooth sailing through it.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Luis Rubiales, Ex-Soccer Chief, to Be Tried in Spain for Unwanted Kiss

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      Luis Rubiales, the former head of Spanish soccer, is charged with two different counts in connection with the unsolicited kiss of a star player.Luis Rubiales, Spain’s former soccer chief, will stand trial on a count of sexual assault for grabbing the head of Jennifer Hermoso, a star player, and forcibly kissing her on the mouth at the Women’s World Cup medal ceremony in August.The decision on Wednesday evening by Spain’s National Court came after a judge concluded in January that Mr. Rubiales should be held to account for the kiss, which the judge said “was nonconsensual” and within the bounds of the “intimacy of sexual relations.”Public prosecutors and Ms. Hermoso’s lawyers are seeking a total of two and a half years of prison time for Mr. Rubiales: one year for the sexual assault charge and an additional 18 months in connection with a coercion charge. Mr. Rubiales is accused of pressuring Ms. Hermoso to show support for him after the kiss.Three other former soccer officials, including Jorge Vilda, the former women’s team’s coach, are also accused of coercion. They could each face 18 months in prison.The confirmation that Mr. Rubiales will face a count of sexual assault is the latest development in a high-profile case that has disrupted soccer in Spain and fueled a public reckoning about sexism and power imbalances.Mr. Rubiales initially resisted calls to resign as president of the Royal Spanish Football Federation and as a vice president of UEFA, European soccer’s governing body, but he stepped down after a court issued a restraining order against him. FIFA, soccer’s governing body, barred him from the sport for three years.Mr. Rubiales was briefly arrested in April as part of a wide-ranging investigation into corruption and money laundering linked to taking Spain’s Super Cup tournament to Saudi Arabia. He is also under investigation on allegations of hiring detectives to spy on the head of Spain’s players’ union; misusing federation funds to pay for personal expenses; and hosting a sex party, paid for with federation funds, in Granada in 2020 — all claims that emerged after official complaints were made to prosecutors.Mr. Rubiales has denied any wrongdoing.The court set his bail at 65,000 euros (about $70,000) on the sexual assault charge and another €65,000 to be posted jointly with the three other former officials who are also accused of coercion. More

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      César Luis Menotti, Who Coached Argentina to a World Cup, Dies at 85

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      He led the national team to a championship in 1978 but was convinced that it didn’t get the recognition it deserved in the shadow of the country’s dictatorship.César Luis Menotti, the charismatic coach who in 1978 led Argentina to its first World Cup title, achieving that milestone in the country’s capital, Buenos Aires, has died. He was 85.The Argentine Football Association announced the death on Sunday but did not give a cause or specify where or when he died. Local media reports said that he had been admitted to a clinic in March with severe anemia. He reportedly underwent surgery for phlebitis in April and then returned home.Passion for soccer and a sharp ability to explain its mechanics were Menotti’s hallmark characteristics as a trainer. He was considered one of the most emblematic and influential coaches in Argentine soccer.Menotti during a training session in 1980. His own playing career extended from 1960 to 1970. Duncan Raban/Allsport, via Getty ImagesMenotti, whose nickname was El Flaco (The Thin One), coached Argentina’s national team from 1974 to 1983. He was convinced that the team did not get the recognition it deserved when it won the World Cup because the country was ruled at the time by a military junta responsible for widespread human rights violations.His detractors often recalled a photo in which Menotti, after Argentina defeated the Netherlands in the final, 3-1, shook hands with Jorge Rafael Videla, who was the head of the junta. The victory came at the height of the so-called dirty war, in which thousands of political opponents of the regime were tortured, killed or “disappeared.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Investor’s Lawsuit Accuses 777 Partners of $600 Million Fraud

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      In a suit filed in federal court in New York, a firm that provided hundreds of millions of dollars to 777 accused the company of double-pledging its collateral to other investors.The American investment firm 777 Partners, whose bid to buy the English Premier League soccer team Everton has been on hold for months amid doubts about the company’s finances, was accused by one of its lenders on Friday of running a yearslong fraud scheme worth hundreds of millions of dollars.The accusation came in a lawsuit filed Friday in federal court in New York by Leadenhall Capital Partners, a London-based asset management company. It said that it had provided 777 Partners with more than $600 million in financing, only to discover that roughly $350 million in assets serving as collateral for the loans either were not in 777’s control or had already been pledged to other lenders.The lawsuit is the latest, most serious claim against 777 Partners, which has for years made bold assertions about its financial health — it has previously claimed $10 billion in assets — even as it was trailed a string of lawsuits, corporate failures and unpaid bills.The suit could have immediate implications for 777’s stalled bid to buy Everton: The Premier League has not approved the sale, and the financially strapped club recently said it was seeking alternate investors.But questions about the company’s balance sheet also carry the risk of contagion for the broader world soccer market, given that 777’s portfolio includes ownership stakes in teams in Australia, Brazil, Belgium, France and Germany, and because it owes debts at all of them.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Luton Learns the Power of Premier League Status

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      Having a team in the world’s richest sports competition might alter how people think of Luton, a place long dogged by a ramshackle image and links to extremism.As the announcement trilled out over Kenilworth Road, the jumble of rusted metal and peeling paint that Luton Town F.C. calls home, the tone started to shift. At the start of the sentence, it was little more than the traditional polite welcome to the stadium for that evening’s visiting team, Manchester City.By the end, though, the voice of the announcer seemed overcome by what sounded a little like awe. Luton, the fans in the stands and the players on the field were reminded, was about to face “the champions of the F.A. Cup, the champions of England and the champions of Europe.” Luton seems to be having a hard time believing the company it now keeps.There is a reason for that. Fifteen years ago, Luton Town had been relegated to the fifth tier of English soccer, a world away from the power and the prestige of the Premier League. There was, for a time, a genuine risk that the club, founded in 1885, several years before the invention of the zipper, might fold altogether. For years afterward, money remained tight, ambitions modest.Now, Luton Town’s horizons are much grander. Last summer, it won an unexpected promotion to the world’s richest, most popular sports league. Three decades after it last played in England’s top division, it could again call Manchester City, Manchester United and the rest its peers.Outside Luton Town’s Kenilworth Road stadium, which offers none of the polished sheen of the homes of many of its Premier League rivals.Andrew Testa for The New York TimesThat meant an immediate transformation in the club’s financial outlook: Playing in the Premier League for a single season is worth around $150 million. More important, the status that came with it gave the town — a place that has long suffered a chronic reputation problem — a global platform on which to change not just how it is perceived by others, but how it thinks of itself.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More