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      Liverpool, Napoli and the Problem With Systems

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      As system clubs start to falter, the future seems to belong to the teams and coaches who are willing to be a little more flexible.There is no such thing as a 4-3-3. The same goes for all those pithy threads of numbers that are hard-wired into soccer’s vernacular, the communal, universal drop-down list of legitimate patterns in which a team might be arrayed: 3-5-2 and 4-2-3-1 and even the fabled, fading 4-4-2. They are familiar, reflexive. But none of them exist. Not really.The way a team lines up to start a game, for example, most likely will bear very little relation to what it looks like during it as players whirl around the field, engaged in what anyone who has not watched a lot of mid-table Premier League soccer might describe as a complex, instinctive ballet.Most teams will adopt one shape when blessed with the ball, and another without it. Increasingly, many will shift their approaches in the course of the game, responding to the lunges, the parries and the ripostes of their opponents.A team presented in a 4-3-3 on a graphic before kickoff might be playing a 3-5-2 while that image is still fresh in the memory. A coach might choose to drop a midfielder between the central defenders to control possession, or push the fullbacks daringly high, or draw a forward a little deeper. The nominal 4-3-3 might, if it all comes off, be more accurately denoted as a 3-1-4-1-1. Sort of. Maybe.And besides, every manager will have a different sense of what each of those formations means. As Thiago Motta, the Bologna coach, has said: a 3-5-2 can be a front-foot, adventurous sort of a system, and a 4-3-3 a cautious, defensive one. How the players are arranged does not, in his view, say very much at all about their intentions.Luciano Spalleti’s aversion to a system is working just fine at Napoli.Armando Babani/EPA, via ShutterstockNone of that is to say that formations are completely meaningless. As a rule, managers tend to scoff at the very mention of them. They assume that hearing any value ascribed to the idea of “formation” is a surefire sign that they are in the helpless company of a slow-witted civilian, or perhaps a child.They are, though, useful shorthands: broad-brush, big-picture guidelines that fans and opponents can use to try to find a pattern in what can look — at first — like unfettered chaos. They are a way of establishing what you think a team might look like once it takes the field, what it might be trying to do, how it might be attempting to win.Or, at least, that is what formations have always been. It may not last. There is a chance, now, that soccer’s great leap forward will render all of those old, comfortable ideas almost entirely moribund.The three decades on either side of the Millennium — the period, in soccer terms, that starts with Arrigo Sacchi’s A.C. Milan and ends with Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City — will, in time, be remembered as the sport’s age of the system, the first time its most coveted talents, its defining figures, have been not players but coaches.On the surface, there may be scant similarity between the tiki-taka that turned Barcelona into the finest club in history and the sturm-und-drang of the energy-drink infused, heavy-metal inflected German pressing game.Underneath, though, they share two crucial characteristics. They are both precisely, almost militaristically choreographed, players moving by rote and by edict in preordained patterns learned and honed in training. And they both rely, essentially, on a conception of soccer as a game defined less by the position of the ball and more by the occupation and creation of space.Fernando Diniz, the coach of the Brazilian side Fluminense, rejects the idea of rigid positions.Sergio Moraes/ReutersSoccer’s history, though, is a process of call and response, of action and reaction. One innovation holds sway for a while — the process happens increasingly quickly — before the competition decodes it and either counteracts or adopts it. Both have the same, blunting effect.And there are, now, the first glimmers of what might follow on the horizon. Across Europe, the system teams are starting to falter. The most obvious case is Jürgen Klopp’s Liverpool, struggling not just with a physical and mental fatigue but a philosophical one, too. Its rivals and peers are now inoculated to its dangers.But there are others: Jesse Marsch’s travails as the manager at Leeds United can be traced in some way to his refusal to bend from what might broadly, and only moderately pompously, be called the “Red Bull School.” Barcelona, its characteristic style now widely copied across the continent, is scratching around with limited success for some new edge. Even Manchester City, where suffering is always relative, seems less imperious than once it did.The future, instead, seems to belong to the teams and coaches who are willing to be a little more flexible and see their role as providing a platform on which their players might extemporize.Real Madrid, of course, has always had that approach, choosing to control specific moments in games rather than the game itself, but it has done so with the rather significant advantage of possessing many of the finest players on earth.Pep Guardiola has some thoughts.Filip Singer/EPA, via ShutterstockThat others, in less rarefied climes, have started to follow that model is much more instructive. Luciano Spalletti’s Napoli, the most captivating team in Europe, is barreling toward the Serie A title thanks to a free-form, virtuosic style that does not deploy the likes of Khvicha Kvaratskhelia and Victor Osimhen as puppets but encourages them to think, to interpret, for themselves.Fernando Diniz, the coach of the Brazilian side Fluminense, has even given it a name: the “apositional style,” placing it in direct (but perhaps not intentional) conflict with the “positional play” that Guardiola and his teams have perfected.Diniz, like Spalletti, does not believe in assigning his players specific positions or roles, but in allowing them to interchange at will, to respond to the exigencies of the game. He is not concerned with the control of specific areas of the field. The only zone that matters to him, and to his team, is the one near the ball.In his eyes, soccer is not a game defined by the occupation of space. It is centered, instead, on the ball: As long as his players are close to it, what theoretical position they play does not matter in the slightest. They do not need to cleave to a specific formation, to a string of numbers coded into their heads.Instead, they are free to go where they wish, where their judgment tells them. If it makes it all but impossible to present a shorthand of how the team plays, then so much the better. After all, systems are designed by coaches with the express purpose of stripping the game of as much spontaneity as possible. Managers want, understandably, to control what a player does in any given circumstance. They crave predictability. They yearn for it.In that environment, it is only natural that unpredictability becomes an edge.Split VoteAlexia Putellas, world player of (some of) the year.Franck Fife/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAlexia Putellas’s year effectively ended last July 5, the day she felt a click in one of her knees during a small-sided training game. A few hours later, she was in the King Edward VII hospital in London, attempting to absorb the news that she had ruptured an anterior cruciate ligament with the European Championship only days away. She would miss the tournament, and at that stage her participation in this summer’s Women’s World Cup was in doubt, too.Putellas is, thankfully, making excellent progress. Her recuperation has gone sufficiently well that she is not only running again, but engaging in what everyone in soccer refers to as “ball work”: the delicate process of ensuring that the repaired connections in her knee can handle the sudden, jarring twists and turns that games will likely demand. Barring any major setbacks, Putellas will feature for Spain at the World Cup that opens in July, and the tournament will be all the better for it.It was hard, though, not to be struck by her election as the best female player on the planet at FIFA’s flashy awards show Monday night in Paris. It would be unfair to suggest that Putellas was an undeserving winner. She is an outstanding player, after all. But at the same time, she had played only half the year. She did not feature in the Euros, the year’s pre-eminent women’s tournament. Her club team, Barcelona, lost the final of the Champions League.The immediate suspicion, where any FIFA award is concerned, is that her victory is a testament to the power of reputation. Both the men’s and the women’s prizes, after all, have had a habit of reverting to the default: The national team coaches and captains, and the international media representatives, generally favor whoever is the most famous, the most high-profile, the safest choice.In the case of Putellas, though, it is likely to be something else. The European champions, England, did not have a single standout player, though a case could be made for Beth Mead, the leading scorer, or Leah Williamson, the captain. Keira Walsh of England was the tournament’s best player, but she is a defensive midfielder, and defensive midfielders do not win awards.Likewise, Lyon’s run to the Champions League title was not inspired by a single individual, as it had been when the goals of Ada Hegerberg powered it to glory in 2019.This year’s field, in other words, was both broad and deep. In that context, both what Putellas achieved — Spanish champion, leading scorer in the Champions League — and what she could not played in her favor: The perception that Spain’s bid for the European Championship fell apart in her absence was supporting evidence for her legitimacy.More Like David AlibiThere comes a point, really, where everyone involved should take a look at their behavior and feel their cheeks flush with shame. There is a level of pettiness that is unavoidable in a rivalry as virulent and intractable as the one shared by Real Madrid and Barcelona. But then there is the controversy that engulfed David Alaba this week, which makes all concerned look like children.Alaba, the Real Madrid defender, is also the captain of the Austrian men’s national team. As such, he was eligible to cast a vote for The Best Men’s Player at FIFA’s sparkling celebration of self-importance. He picked, not unreasonably, Lionel Messi, as did an overwhelming majority of the appointed electorate. (A note, here, for the captain of Gabon and the coach of Botswana, who watched Messi inspire Argentina to the World Cup title and both declared Julián Álvarez the real star of the show.)Only Alaba, though, subsequently had to explain his decision. A Real Madrid player not selecting Karim Benzema, you see, was considered unacceptable not only by Madrid fans on social media but by several Madrid-based news outlets. That he would instead throw his weight behind Messi, so indelibly linked with Barcelona, was beyond the pale.Alaba, to his credit, indulged the nonsense, explaining that the Austrian team voted as a collective and that the majority of the players’ council had favored Messi. He wanted to make it plain that he considered Benzema the “best forward in the world.” Most impressively, he did this all without once mentioning how stupid the whole debate was, or noting that encouraging players to vote politically renders the concept of the award itself completely meaningless.Alaba was perfectly entitled to vote for Messi, whether in consultation with his teammates or not. Benzema would have understood that instantly. He would have been no more offended by Alaba’s selection than he would have been at the sight of France’s captain, Hugo Lloris, and coach, Didier Deschamps, not voting for him either. He is, after all, a grown-up. It is a shame that so many of those commenting appear not to be. 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      Just Fontaine, Record-Setting French Soccer Star, Dies at 89

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      His stellar career was cut short by injury, but he made his mark by scoring 13 goals at the 1958 World Cup.Just Fontaine, the French soccer star who scored a record 13 goals at the 1958 World Cup, died on Wednesday. He was 89.Fontaine’s former club Reims and the French soccer federation announced his death, but did not say where he died or cite a cause.Fontaine took six games to achieve his feat at the 1958 World Cup in Sweden, when he was a last-minute inclusion on the French squad.Entering the tournament, Fontaine, a forward, was little known outside the French league. Yet he tormented opponents with his speed and finishing touch, even though had to borrow a pair of cleats after damaging his own boots in practice.Fontaine scored four goals in the third-place game against West Germany, and he could have had five if he had taken the penalty kick.In addition to his feats with the national team, Fontaine won the French league title four times, won the French Cup and reached the final of the 1959 European Cup during his career with Casablanca, Nice and Reims.The French soccer federation said there would be tributes to Fontaine across France this weekend, with a “minute of homage” that will also be observed on Wednesday before French Cup games at Toulouse, Marseille and Nantes.The highest scorer at a World Cup tournament is now acknowledged with the Golden Boot award. FIFA did not begin presenting that award until after Fontaine set the record.“Beating my record? I don’t think it can ever be done,” Fontaine told The Associated Press in a 2006 interview. “The person who wants to beat me has a massive task, doesn’t he? He has to score two goals per game over seven games.”Playing in the days when no substitutions were allowed, France lost in the semifinals, 5-2, to a Brazil team featuring the 17-year-old Pelé.The men’s record for most goals scored in a World Cup career is 16, by the Germany striker Miroslav Klose, who played in four tournaments. Fontaine, who broke the record of 11 goals scored by the Hungary striker Sandor Kocsis at the 1954 tournament, played in only one World Cup.The Brazil striker Marta has scored 17 goals in five Women’s World Cup tournaments.Fontaine scored 200 goals in 213 games, including 30 goals in 21 games for France. But his career was cut short when he was only 28.Renowned for his lightning pace and ruthless finishing, Fontaine suffered a serious leg fracture after a mistimed tackle in March 1960. He retired as a player just after his 29th birthday. He briefly coached France’s national team before going on to coach Luchon, Paris Saint-Germain, Toulouse and the Moroccan national team.Just Fontaine was born in Marrakesh, Morocco, on Aug. 18, 1933. Information on survivors was not immediately available. More

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      France’s Le Graët Steps Down but Lands on His Feet With FIFA

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      Noël Le Graët quit after an investigation found federation staff members had endured sexual and mental abuse, but he will stay in soccer: FIFA has hired him to run its Paris office.PARIS — Noël Le Graët, the embattled president of France’s soccer federation, stepped down on Tuesday, bringing an end to the long tenure of an executive whose grip on power — aided by powerful friendships — endured through on-field triumphs and off-field scandals.Battered by accusations of misconduct and mismanagement, Le Graët finally yielded to mounting calls for his removal at a special meeting of the board of the French federation, widely known by its three letter acronym, F.F.F. His announcement came two weeks after the completion of an audit into the organization revealed years of improper behavior even as France produced some of its best national teams, sending its men’s team to consecutive World Cup finals and hosting the Women’s World Cup on home soil in 2019.The audit had been commissioned by France’s sports minister amid growing reports of personal misconduct by Le Graët, including his sending inappropriate late-night text messages to female staff members. The sports minister, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, had publicly called for Le Graët’s resignation in January. On Tuesday, she hailed what she called “the right decision for the F.F.F. and for himself.”But even as he quit the federation under pressure, his place in soccer seemed secure: FIFA, world soccer’s governing body, appointed Le Graët last year to oversee its new office in Paris, and on Tuesday several of his federation colleagues offered him congratulations on that role.Misgivings about Le Graët’s continued presence in the presidency he had held since 2011 only increased as he created a string of controversies while the investigation was ongoing. Late last year, he infuriated French government officials before the World Cup by playing down the treatment of migrant workers in Qatar. After the tournament, he made derogatory statements about Zinedine Zidane, a World Cup winner considered to be one of the best players France has ever produced. Le Graët later took back his remarks and apologized to Zidane.Still, the 81-year-old Le Graët retained numerous allies despite the turmoil, including Gianni Infantino, the president of FIFA, who had reportedly lobbied on his behalf as his ouster neared. Infantino last year named Le Graët as his presidential delegate to oversee FIFA’s new office in Paris, an outpost that has taken on increasingly important roles that had once been the exclusive preserve of staff members at FIFA’s headquarters in Switzerland.Éric Borghini, a member of the French federation board present at Tuesday’s meeting, suggested Le Graët would continue in that role. It is unclear, though, if Le Graët will continue with his efforts to retain his seat on the soccer body’s governing board, the FIFA Council, in an election in April.Philippe Diallo, the vice president of the federation, will act as interim president of the F.F.F. until June 10, the date of its next general assembly.Far from excoriating Le Graët, his former colleagues rallied around the now ex-president. “Everywhere he has gone, the institutions and clubs he has led have been successful,” Diallo said.The official federation statement announcing his exit sought to celebrate French soccer’s successes under Le Graët, noting that under his direction France’s men’s and women’s teams had secured 11 titles and played in six international finals. The statement also pointed to infrastructure developments and the economic health of the federation.It did not make reference to the turmoil that has enveloped the federation since the men’s team’s success at the 2018 World Cup in France, including allegations of sexual harassment and sexual abuse. Some of those problems grew so toxic that several senior staff members complained about the workplace environment, a crisis that in 2020 forced Le Graët to call in an outside expert specializing in repairing damaged workplaces.Those efforts failed to yield results beyond preserving the positions of Le Graët and his second in command, Florence Hardouin. Hardouin is negotiating her departure from the federation after the government-sponsored investigation accused her of employing “brutal methods and erratic behavior.” Her legal team has since suggested she acted as a whistle-blower in the claims against Le Graët.The federation sought to protect itself in the aftermath of his resignation, claiming the investigation failed to reveal any systemic failure or any failure to fulfill its core mission. “The F.F.F. nevertheless notes that this report is based less on objective facts than on assessments which have sometimes led to a disproportionate denigration of the body,” it said.Current and former officials, meanwhile, continued to insist that removing Le Graët would not be enough to fix the federation’s problems.“The important point is not Le Graët and Hardouin,” said Pierre Samsonoff, the former head of the federation’s amateur soccer division. “What is important is the way the institution is ruled.” More

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      Ahead of Paris Olympics, France’s Sports Minister Faces Trials by Fire

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      Amélie Oudéa-Castéra’s first year in office brought chaos at the Champions League final and scandals in multiple sports. With the Paris Olympics looming, her toughest days may be ahead.PARIS — It was the middle of September and Amélie Oudéa-Castéra needed to know if there was any truth in the lurid headlines she was reading.As France’s sports minister, Oudéa-Castéra had the power to summon Noël Le Graët, the octogenarian who has run French soccer for more than a decade, and confront him about the allegations about his behavior: serious accusations of inappropriate comments and text messages to female staff members; whispers about heavy lunchtime drinking sessions; news reports that the federation had ignored sexual harassment and sexual abuse.“Before those revelations from the press I personally did not know Noël Le Graët,” Oudéa-Castéra said in an interview last week. “I had never met him.”So Oudéa-Castéra, not yet four months into her post, reached out arranged a meeting. On the appointed day, the two executives sat down at a circular glass table in Oudéa-Castéra’s cavernous sixth-floor office, and she began to ask questions. Unable to reconcile the two conflicting narratives, the news coverage and the denials being offered by Le Graët, Oudéa-Castéra commissioned an independent investigation.By the time it was underway, the stack of problems on her desk had already grown.Dark CloudsThese should be heady days for French sports. The country’s men’s soccer team played in its second straight World Cup final in December, and its women’s squad will be among the favorites in its own championship this summer. France will host the Rugby World Cup later this year, and then step onto the biggest stage in sports in 2024, when it will welcome the world to the Summer Olympics in Paris.All of those events had been expected to bring an outsize focus on French sports and by extension on Oudéa-Castéra, an old friend and college contemporary of President Emmanuel Macron who took the job of sports minister last May. Few could have predicted how hot that spotlight would become.A former junior tennis champion and professional player, Oudéa-Castéra had arrived at the sports ministry from a short stint leading the French tennis federation. She came armed with folders filled with big ideas and grand plans, excited to use her office to promote youth affairs, health and job creation.Instead, she has been fighting fires almost nonstop.Noël Le Graët faces a board vote this week that could see him removed as president of the French soccer federation.Alain Jocard/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesOne of her major headaches may be addressed this week: A decision on the status of Le Graët is expected during a meeting of the soccer federation’s board on Tuesday.But there are more ahead, as leadership scandals, ugly public disputes and mounting security concerns have cast a cloud over French sports that never seems to lift. The soccer federation’s leadership problems, for example, extend far beyond one man. The same is true for rugby. And, most disconcertingly for Oudéa-Castéra, she is still facing withering criticism for her role in the response to security problems at last year’s Champions League final.That game took place only eight days after Oudéa-Castéra took office. But her comments in the aftermath of the match, which descended into chaos after organizational and policing failures saw thousands of Liverpool fans trapped in dangerously small areas, cast her as a central figure in a near disaster, and continue to shadow her to this day. That no one died in the crushes outside the stadium gates, investigators later concluded, was “a matter of chance.”Much of the criticism of Oudéa-Castéra is linked to a specific claim that she and France’s interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, made publicly: that 30,000 to 40,000 fans with fake tickets, or without tickets at all, were partly to blame for the crowd problems.Oudéa-Castéra said she had merely relied on numbers supplied to government officials at the time, and in an interview said that she still believes the figures, in the context they were provided to her, remain true. But the anger, particularly among Liverpool fans, shows no sign of abating. Hours after she sat for an interview in her office last week, a banner was raised in the stands at a Champions League game in Liverpool — a rematch of the final with Real Madrid — that featured cartoon images of Oudéa-Castéra and Darmanin with long noses, captioned with the French word for liars.“Can I ask you a question?” Oudéa-Castéra said, stopping the interview at one point. “It always feels a little bit like we have not apologized.” She has done so repeatedly, she said, writing letters to Liverpool’s chairman and maintaining a regular dialogue with him about the final. She says that she recognizes her initial comments were particularly sensitive for Liverpool fans since some in Paris that day had survived the 1989 Hillsborough disaster.That is why, she said, she has sought to make amends in the nine months since the game. It is also why the ongoing criticism stings. “For me it’s very sensitive because I cannot admit people say that we have lied,” Oudéa-Castéra said. “It’s not true.”Liverpool fans delivered their scathing verdict on Oudéa-Castéra and Gérald Darmanin, France’s interior minister, during a Champions League match last week, calling them liars. Michael Regan/Getty ImagesAn independent report commissioned by European soccer’s governing body came to a different conclusion. It argued that the figures for fans without tickets or with fake tickets had been incorrectly inflated and then stated as fact by top officials “to deflect responsibility for the planning and operational failures of stakeholders.”Oudéa-Castéra acknowledged mistakes were made in real time and in the immediate aftermath as officials scrambled to parse fact from fiction. She said her office eventually concluded ticketing was only one of “seven or eight things” that combined to create a potentially deadly crush. But she also conceded that the veracity of official remarks was not the only issue.“The one thing we should have clearly done much better was right from Minute 1 to say how sorry we were to Liverpool fans,” she said. “Clearly the time lag in showing that sorrow and that empathy lacked.”Weeks after the chaotic scenes at the Stade de France, Oudéa-Castéra and others were summoned by a French Senate committee to explain the failures. Almost as soon as the senate delivered its verdict in July, though, she was facing a whole new set of crises.New ProblemsWeeks after the Senate hearing, chaos engulfed the organizers of the Rugby World Cup, which will be the biggest sporting event in France before next year’s Olympics.In August, the tournament’s chief executive was suspended and Oudéa-Castéra ordered an investigation amid reports of a “climate of terror” within the organizing committee. In October, the chief executive, Claude Atcher, was fired.The plans for the tournament were further undermined when the powerful head of French rugby, Bernard Laporte, was convicted in December on charges of corruption and influence peddling. Laporte resigned in January, reportedly minutes before he arrived for a meeting in which Oudéa-Castéra was to be present.(Days later, the head of France’s national handball league, Bruno Martini, was out, too; he quit after pleading guilty in a child pornography case.)Oudéa-Castéra with Alexandre Martinez, right, the interim president of the embattled French rugby federation, at France’s Six Nations game against Scotland on Sunday.Franck Fife/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesPersuading Le Graët, the French soccer federation’s president, to leave has proved a far sterner task. Oudéa-Castéra has said publicly that he should resign but has to date declined to fire Le Graët herself, wary that ignoring the autonomy of French sports bodies — and soccer’s rules about government interference — might only make the situation worse.She has done little, though, to hide her opinions. Even before the investigation into Le Graët’s conduct had been completed, Oudéa-Castéra said she worried that he had begun to exhibit what she labeled “weird” behavior. First, he infuriated the French government by downplaying concerns over the treatment of migrant laborers in Qatar ahead of the World Cup. Then, after the tournament ended, he enraged fans and others by making derogatory statements about the French soccer legend Zinedine Zidane.“It was so inappropriate, so disrespectful, that you can only feel that is someone who is not 100 percent with his mind there,” Oudéa-Castéra said.The investigation has only strengthened Oudéa-Castéra’s belief that Le Graët should step down or be removed. “He cannot continue,” she said. “That is clear.”Asked why well-established problems inside the soccer federation, including accusations of bullying, harassment and sexism by top administrators reported by The New York Times in 2020, were only now being examined, Oudéa-Castéra said the true scale of the crisis had only recently emerged.Virgile Caillet, a former senior official at France’s athletics federation, said it was more likely something else that had stalled a reckoning: “a lack of courage” by sports administrators unwilling to take on powerful officials.Fabien Archambault, a sports historian, argued that Oudéa-Castéra’s presence in the post underlined its importance to Macron, especially as the Olympics approach. Previous sports ministers wielded far less power than Oudéa-Castéra, Archambault said, and would not have taken on entrenched leaders the way she has without the French president’s full support.“We have to do it,” Oudéa-Castéra said, “because there is also the need for the image of France to be a clean and positive one before we welcome the world.”The Current StormFor now, the focus in France remains on Le Graët, a man with powerful allies.After Oudéa-Castéra publicly called on him to resign in January following his comments about Zidane, FIFA, soccer’s world governing body, wrote to the French federation to remind it of the organization’s firm rules on government interference.“I think they wanted to say, ‘OK, the state is something, but we should be managing our own destiny,’” Oudéa-Castéra said. “In France it doesn’t work this way.”That will mean new oversight for soccer and other sports. It will mean a new focus on security ahead of the Olympics, and on fan safety during the Games. It will mean navigating a treacherous path between the International Olympic Committee, which is studying ways to return Russian athletes to competition, and a group of more than 30 nations — including France — that wants to see Russians banned while the war in Ukraine continues.It also suggests that the pile of problems on the desk in Oudéa-Castéra’s office will only continue to grow.“The responsibility is very heavy so I try to leverage every minute to be up to the challenge,” she said. “It’s clearly the challenge of my life.”The Stade de France, the site of serious crowd control failures at last May’s Champions League final, and the venue for track and field events and the closing ceremony at the Paris Olympics.James Hill for The New York Times More

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      How Should Fans Feel About Newcastle United?

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      Saudi money has revived a Premier League soccer team and sent it to a cup final on Sunday. Those cheering say they shouldn’t have to answer for the source of its recent success.NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE, England — As he walked out of the tunnel and onto the field at St. James’ Park, Eddie Howe paused for a beat. Much of the time, Newcastle United’s manager makes a conscious effort to maintain the distance between himself and the effects of his work. It is a natural instinct, a self-defense mechanism.But for once, Howe could not stop himself from taking in the tableau. All around him, the steep banks of seats were filled with striped black-and-white flags. In the Gallowgate, the grandstand that serves as the stadium’s heart and lungs, there were banners for heroes current and past.“A lot of the time, you do separate yourself from some of the feeling around the city,” Howe reflected a couple of hours later. “But it’s good to get an idea of what it means. The view of the stadium, all of the scarves and the flags: It is an incredible place to play.”In recent years, that has not always been the case. For more than a decade, as it bristled under the unpopular and at times deliberately provocative ownership of the British sportswear tycoon Mike Ashley, St. James’ Park stewed in melancholy and resentment and despair.The contrast, these days, is stark. Newcastle has the distinct air of a club going places: possibly to Europe, and the Champions League, by the end of the season; and, more immediately, to Wembley, to face Manchester United in Sunday’s league cup final.On the bitingly cold night in January when Howe’s team confirmed its place in that showpiece, the club unveiled to the crowd Anthony Gordon, a winger acquired from Everton for more than $45 million a couple of days earlier. Clutching a Newcastle scarf and blinking under the floodlights, he seemed just a little taken aback by the fervor of his greeting.“All we saw was relegation,” Manager Eddie Howe said of the club he took over in November 2021. It now sits in fifth place.Paul Ellis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesGordon is just the latest in a string of a dozen or so new signings added to the squad at considerable expense in the past year, but that recruitment drive is not the only explanation for Newcastle’s rise.Howe has also reinvented or repurposed many of the players he found when he first arrived: Joelinton, a misfiring forward turned into an all-action midfielder; Sean Longstaff, an academy product given a second chance; and, most spectacularly, Miguel Almirón, an eager but mercurial winger who suddenly, on either side of the World Cup, decided to be the Premier League’s deadliest finisher.That all have flourished, unexpectedly, under Howe has burnished Newcastle’s underdog sheen, one that fits neatly with the club’s and the city’s sense of itself. There is something inherently romantic about the restoration of Newcastle. In one light, it is a rare and precious feel-good story for English soccer. The problem is that, in another, it really isn’t.RevitalizedEvery couple of minutes, Bill Corcoran has to put the brakes on his train of thought to engage another fan wanting to throw a some coins or a folded bank note into his collection bucket. A volunteer for Newcastle’s West End Foodbank, Corcoran greets them all like old friends.He chews the fat with each of them about the evening’s game. Only lowly Southampton, bottom of the Premier League and on the verge of firing its coach for the second time this season, stood in between Newcastle and Wembley. Most of the fans, though, seem suspicious of this state of affairs. A twist, they assume, is coming. Loving a team and trusting it are very different things.In between, without missing a beat, Corcoran returns to the subject at hand. Or, rather, subjects: At various points, he sweeps in the Tasmanian genocide of the 1820s, the relative merits of freeing Julian Assange, the Irish famine and the history of the Mikasa, a 20th-century Japanese battleship. This is not traditional pregame chatter.It is, though, indicative of the strange intellectual territory Newcastle’s fans have found themselves occupying over the last 18 months, ever since their club was purchased by a consortium fronted by the British financier Amanda Staveley and her husband, Mehrdad Ghodoussi, but backed largely by the Public Investment Fund, Saudi Arabia’s enormous sovereign wealth fund.Yasir al-Rumayyan, the governor of the Public Investment Fund, has been a regular guest in the owners’ box at Newcastle.Fayez Nureldine/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe deal itself was wreathed in controversy. The Premier League blocked the sale, at first, on the grounds of suspected Saudi involvement in the piracy of its broadcast rights. It only allowed it to go through after it had received “binding assurances” that the P.I.F. was a distinct entity from the Saudi state. (Last week, in a legal dispute over the P.I.F.-backed LIV Golf series, the fund claimed “sovereign immunity” in front of a federal judge in California.)The deal’s eventual approval drew thousands of fans to St. James’ Park in celebration. A smattering waved Saudi flags. A handful wore traditional Saudi dress. The effect was jarring and disorienting: a brutal, repressive autocracy being greeted as liberators from the hated regime of Sports Direct.Since then, the club’s owners have delivered everything the fans could have asked. Howe was appointed as manager. Newcastle has twice broken its transfer record to acquire a new star. It spent more money in last year’s January transfer window than any other club on earth. A team that had been languishing at the foot of the Premier League table has, in the blink of an eye, become a contender.The effect has reverberated beyond the confines of the stadium. “There is a real buzz in the air,” said Stephen Patterson, the chief executive of NE1, which represents the interests of 1,400 businesses across Newcastle’s downtown. “The success has spilled out of the club and into the city itself.”In part, that is to do with a slate of major infrastructure projects getting underway in a city — and a region — that has long felt both underappreciated and underfunded by England’s political and financial power center in London. “The skyline is evidence of investor confidence,” Patterson said. “I’ve never known so much public and private investment in the city.”The soccer team, though, has acted as an accelerant. “It has de-risked a lot of projects,” said Rachel Anderson, the assistant director of policy at the North East England Chamber of Commerce. “Developments that have sat on ice for a long time have come online. The takeover has acted as a catalyst. It makes it easier to raise financing or to greenlight a project.”“There is a real buzz in the air,” a business executive in Newcastle said. “The success has spilled out of the club and into the city itself.”Paul Ellis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThat “buzz in the air,” though, has come at a cost. The P.I.F.-led takeover of Newcastle has been condemned by a host of human rights organizations: Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, FairSquare.Democracy for the Arab World Now, a group launched by colleagues and friends of the murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi, said that allowing the takeover to go through normalized “a dictator who literally goes around butchering journalists.” Khashoggi’s fiancée, Hatice Cengiz, said before the deal was announced that she was “horrified” at the prospect of Saudi ownership of an English club.In the same time frame that its team and its city have started to soar, Newcastle has been turned into a cipher for the dangers of sportswashing, accused of being nothing but an attempt by the Saudi state to “distract from serious human rights violations,” as Amnesty put it. Inside Newcastle, the club’s new reality still feels a little like a dream. Outside, it has been cast as something far darker.Moral ArbitersThe day the takeover went through, Charlotte Robson was invited onto a prominent national radio show to discuss the meaning and merit of Newcastle’s new ownership. At one point, she remembers, another member of the panel bemoaned that the club’s fans had allowed it to happen. “It really struck me,” said Robson, a board member of the Newcastle United Supporters Trust. “Because I don’t remember us being given much of a say.”It would be wrong to suggest there has been a uniform response among Newcastle’s fans to their new reality, beyond the fact that absolutely nobody misses Mike Ashley. At times, as the initial celebrations suggested, there have been some who are happy to embrace the links to Saudi Arabia, or at least the iconography of that connection.For many, though, it has been a more complex, considered process. Robson herself would ideally like to see the club owned — at least in part — by the fans. She does not equate being a Newcastle fan with being a “supporter of the nation state of Saudi Arabia.”Striker Chris Wood, acquired last January, in Newcastle’s alternate jersey, which critics gleefully noted is in the colors of the Saudi flag.Ed Sykes/Action Images, via ReutersShe has, though, been able to take pleasure in the club’s rise. “The fact that the majority owners are not especially visible is important,” she said. “That’s been helpful for a lot of fans trying to dissociate the club from the ownership.”So, too, has the nature of the team. The club’s spending has been considerable, but hardly wanton by the bloated standards of the Premier League. What she calls the “redemption story” of the more long-serving members of the squad, meanwhile, has made it feel more organic. “Almirón was signed by Rafa Benítez, three managers ago,” Robson notes. “You can point to the coaching staff and say it’s because of them.”Her instinct, though, is largely that many fans resent the idea that it should fall on them to act as “moral arbiters” for the game, when nobody in a position of power — the Premier League, UEFA, the British government — is prepared to do the same.“The league has a policy dating back years of letting potentially unscrupulous actors in,” she said. “The average fan is a bit put out that it’s apparently their job to object, when all they want to do is watch their team.”That, certainly, is where Corcoran falls on the spectrum. Despite his unprompted disquisition on the many and varied failings of British and American foreign policy, 1820-2023, he insisted he has not had to “persuade himself” to accept the ethical legitimacy of Saudi ownership.All he has seen so far, he said, has been encouraging: The owners have pledged to match whatever donations to the food bank he and his fellow volunteers can raise on matchdays. There have been no edicts passed that contravene his sense of what Newcastle United should represent.St. James’ Park, which stewed in resentment under its former owner, now bounces with life again on matchdays.Lee Smith/Action Images Via Reuters“If they asked us to compromise our morals, we would be the first to protest,” he said. “Newcastle is about being inclusive, being welcoming, open to everybody, and those values will not change. It is not worth being a great team if it comes at the cost of being ourselves.”Not everyone has been able to make that sort of accommodation. “There is no glory in success obtained like this,” said John Hird, a member of NUFC Fans Against Sportswashing, a lobbying group set up in the aftermath of the takeover.Though a vast majority of fans have “respected our right to protest,” Hird said, his group has been regularly falsely smeared — particularly online — as some sort of sleeper cell composed of Sunderland fans, seeking to effect the destruction of Newcastle’s impending golden age.In reality, its aims are a little more modest. Hird said he would like to see the city’s lawmakers, as well as larger, more established fan groups, “make good on their promise to be a critical friend to the Saudi owners.” He would encourage those fans won over by the benefits of the takeover “at least to speak up on human rights.”Though its numbers are small — “we accept we are a minority,” Hird said — the group has done what it can to make its voice heard, staging protests outside St. James’ Park and, last week, delivering a letter to Eddie Howe on behalf of the family of a dissident imprisoned in Saudi Arabia.Thus far, though, it has been lost in the clamor generated by Newcastle’s ascent. Every train south is booked this weekend. St. James’ Park is an “incredible” place to play once more. Newcastle has the air of a club going places. Most fans do not see it as their job to stop and think about how it got there.Lee Smith/Action Images, via Reuters More

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      The Oligarchs’ Derby

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      When the top teams in Greece meet, the story lines, and the rivalries, regularly extend far beyond the soccer field.Olympiacos called it the Match for Peace. On April 9 last year, a little more than a month after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Greek club staged a friendly with Shakhtar Donetsk. It was a heartfelt, poignant sort of occasion, the first game Shakhtar had played since it had fled a war in its homeland.Before the game, each of Shakhtar’s players emerged with Ukraine’s flag — cornfield yellow, summer blue — draped over their shoulders. Both teams’ jerseys were adorned with the slogan: “Stop War.” All proceeds from ticket sales for the game, held at Olympiacos’s Karaiskakis stadium in Piraeus, would be used to help support refugees from the fighting. “We use football as a tool for peace,” said Christian Karembeu, the Greek club’s sporting director at the time.Four days earlier, Alkinoos, a crude oil tanker sailing under the flag of Liberia, arrived in Rotterdam from the Russian port of Primorsk, according to data from the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air and analyzed by Investigate Europe and Reporters United, a Greek investigative journalism project.Quite how much Russian oil the vessel was carrying is not known, only that the ship’s capacity is 109,900 deadweight tons, and that it is operated by Capital Ship Management. So, too, is the Aristidis, an oil and chemical tanker that arrived in Teesport, in northern England, a couple of days later. That ship, too, had come from Primorsk.Capital Ship Management is owned by a Greek tycoon named Evangelos Marinakis. Though he has since diversified his holdings into media and retail, Marinakis can trace his fortune to shipping. That is where he made his money. It is in soccer, though, that he found fame. Marinakis is the man who turned Olympiacos into Greece’s serial champion.Olympiacos fans during a Europa League match in September. It hosts its most bitter rival, league-leading Panathinaikos, this weekend.Panagiotis Moschandreou/EPA, via ShutterstockMarinakis — also, much more recently, the owner of Nottingham Forest, now restored to the Premier League — has not broken any laws, or defied any sanctions, by facilitating the flow of Russian oil around the world. The only transgression here, given Olympiacos’s support for Shakhtar, was that his private and public stances did not match.He is not alone in that. Giannis Alafouzos, like Marinakis, has a formidable portfolio of interests. He owns the SKAI television network, as well as Katherimini, Greece’s leading newspaper. Both have been fiercely critical of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Alafouzos has maintained a similar stance in his (relatively few) public statements on the issue.At the root of his fortune, though, is Kyklades Maritime, a shipping company with a fleet of 22 tankers that has continued to transport Russian oil in the year since the war began. Investigate Europe calculated that Kyklades vessels have “carried out 26 shipments of crude oil or oil from Russia internationally” between the start of the invasion and Jan. 5 this year.Alafouzos, it should be pointed out, also owns Panathinaikos, traditionally Olympiacos’s fiercest rival and its closest domestic competitor. In recent years, he has struggled to keep up with the juggernaut that Marinakis has built. Olympiacos, its revenues spiraling thanks to its frequent involvement in the Champions League, has claimed all but four Greek league titles this century. Panathinaikos, by contrast, has not been crowned Greek champion since 2010.This year, though, it seems to have been restored. Under the astute coaching of Ivan Jovanovic, it sits 4 points clear of its nearest rival — AEK Athens — with only three games left in the regular season.Aitor Cantalapiedra and Panathinaikos are closing in on their first Greek league title since 2010.Martin Divisek/EPA, via ShutterstockThis weekend, though, brings its sternest challenge. Olympiacos currently sits third, 5 points back, but with a far deeper, more illustrious squad. It can call on the likes of James Rodríguez on Saturday when the clubs meet in Piraeus, at the Karaiskakis. Nobody will be describing it as a match for peace.It is hard to capture the scale of meetings between Panathinaikos and Olympiacos. Perhaps the best way is to note that the game is known in Greece as the Derby of the Eternal Enemies, and that is probably underselling it. There is a case to be made that this has long been the most heated rivalry in Europe.Between them, though, Marinakis and Alafouzos have managed what really ought to have been impossible: They have stoked it further. Greek soccer has for decades been dominated not by its players and managers but by its owners: proud, bombastic, fabulously wealthy strongmen drawn from the country’s oligarch class, drawn to the sports less for the competition or the glory and more for the power it can bestow.AEK, for example, is owned by Dimitris Melissanidis, another oil and shipping tycoon. PAOK, in the northern city of Thessaloniki, is a plaything of Ivan Savvidis, a Russian-Greek tobacco tycoon. Their clubs bring them a profile, provide them with a constituency, and offer a base from which to promote themselves and the interests of their empires.As owners of the country’s two most prominent and popular clubs, though, Marinakis and Alafouzos occupy the grandest stage. The friction between them has, at times, appeared to go beyond the professional and the commercial and into the deeply, virulently personal.Alafouzos has previously sued Marinakis, among others, in relation to a match-fixing scandal — and attendant wave of violence — in which Marinakis was accused of involvement. He was later acquitted of all charges, and strenuously denies the accusations, painting them as a plot to discredit his success.In return, Alafouzos’s news media outlets have more than once been accused of breaking Greece’s privacy laws in relation to Marinakis. In 2015, a meeting of the country’s Super League teams had to be suspended after a “violent” altercation between the two men, which ended with one of Alafouzos’s bodyguards nursing a split lip.Quite how much any of this has to do with soccer is anyone’s guess. Olympiacos, Panathinaikos and Greek soccer as a whole are, in all likelihood, caught in the crossfire of something far bigger than a mere sport. They are, instead, pieces in a game in which there is no time for morals, where any route to success is considered fair game, where a billionaire rivalry is played out not just on the field but in courts and ports, across the shipping lanes and the airwaves. There, the real prize is not a trophy but pure, uncontested power.The PlayStation PresidentDon’t let Pablo Longoria’s boyish face fool you.Nicolas Tucat/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesFor a while, Pablo Longoria had a nickname. As the best nicknames do, it caught on because it worked. Longoria was young, but he looked even younger. And his route into professional soccer’s executive ranks from Asturias, in northern Spain, had been unorthodox. He had honed his scouting acumen as a teenager by hours spent on various computer games. So they called him what he was: Niño De La Play — The PlayStation Kid.At one point, soccer would have held that outsider status against him. Now, though, there is no longer a tightly defined, strictly controlled entry policy to the game’s backstage areas. Regardless of playing experience, any earnest striver, compulsive observer or slick charlatan can barge in the door. All it takes is enough persistence, self-belief and chutzpah.Longoria’s story suggests he has all of those in abundance. By his own account, he set up a website to analyze players when he was 12, which is both unusual and the most 12-year-old thing imaginable. At 16, he wrote to clubs across Europe offering his services. Newcastle United, one of three to respond, showed him the proper form for completing scouting reports.He did not stop there. He got a job as an analyst for Recreativo de Huelva, a venerable, cash-strapped team in Spain’s deep south. He worked for Newcastle, apparently, though it is not clear for how long and for what purpose. He built enough of a network to become a scout for the Italian side Atalanta.By the time Longoria was 34, his résumé was positively glittering. He had been the head of recruitment at Sassuolo. He had been chief scout at Juventus and sporting director of Valencia before taking the latter role at Marseille. A little more than two years later, he earned a promotion: In 2021, he was appointed president of what is — historically — France’s biggest club.Beyond his experience, Longoria did not have any actual qualifications for any of those jobs. A few bad decisions and he might have been dismissed as a self-generated myth, his lack of a playing career held up as conclusive evidence for his failure. The entrance to soccer may be open to anyone, after all, but so is the exit.That Longoria has only risen, then, is testament to the fact that he appears to be good at his work. Very good. At Marseille, he has recruited a mix of reliable Ligue 1 stalwarts, aging castoffs and promising youngsters, and placed them at the service of Igor Tudor, a manager whose appointment was so underwhelming that he was jeered by his own fans simply for taking the job.But it has worked, and worked spectacularly. Marseille sits second in Ligue 1, behind the stuttering traveling circus of Paris St.-Germain. P.S.G. travels to the Stade Velodrome this weekend for France’s great gala derby. Should Marseille win — as it did against P.S.G. in the French Cup a few weeks ago — it would close the gap to only 2 points. Nobody uses Longoria’s nickname any more. Where he came from no longer seems so relevant. Where he is going is much more interesting.State of the UnionUnion Berlin, offering hope to neutrals all season.Robert Michael/DPA, via Associated PressUnion Berlin was supposed to have fallen away by now. Ragtag stories tend, after all, to have a relatively brief shelf life. Unlikely teams rise to the top of the table in the early weeks of the season, as the superpowers are still limbering up. They are flooded with praise for their spirit and their tenacity and their derring-do, and then they slip away with good grace and happy memories of their time in the spotlight.Union, it would appear, has not been handed that particular copy of the script. The Bundesliga is roughly two thirds of the way through its season, and Union — the ultimate underdog, really — is still there, battling with Borussia Dortmund and Bayern Munich, Union’s opponent this weekend, at the top of the table.The likelihood remains, of course, that in the white heat of the final stretch, Bayern (or possibly Dortmund, which moved on top — temporarily — with a victory Saturday) will have the players, the legs and the resources to leave the others behind, but the longer it goes on, the more of a boon it is for the league as a whole.The Bundesliga has always insisted that Bayern’s dominance is a good thing, not a bad one, no matter how counterintuitive that sounds and how wrong it very clearly is. But the mere possibility of Union’s staying the course has energized the competition.There is no such thing as romance in any major league now, not really. Competition, in the truest sense, is an illusion. There is a hegemony, an unmoving hierarchy, in every corner of Europe. But maintaining that illusion is in itself quite important. It does not matter, in the long run, if Union can stave off gravity. What matters is that, for quite some time, it has looked as if it might.CorrespondenceAs ever, this newsletter seeks to strike a balance between the pragmatic and the philosophical. Joe Light’s question belongs very much to the first category. “I’ve become fan of Wrexham since watching ‘Welcome To Wrexham,’” he wrote, clearly unaware of my close personal friendship with Ryan Reynolds, to whom I recommended a museum in York.“I’m intrigued by the long throw-ins by Ben Tozer, which have the effect of a corner and often lead to scoring chances. Why don’t more clubs utilize this strategy?”The answer to this question, Joe, is common decency. Well, a perception of common decency. Long throws were a familiar approach in the heyday of what I think we can all agree was the true beautiful game — burly Englishmen booting balls as far as possible on mud-stained fields, their turf not so much mowed as plowed — in the 1980s and 1990s.Ben Tozer can probably reach you with a throw, wherever you are.Jon Super/Associated PressAfter that, the idea became a little bit stigmatized. It has had something of a renaissance recently, though, thanks to the data-inflected, marginal gains philosophy of teams like Brentford, the Danish side Midtjylland and the Real Madrid subsidiary Liverpool. Ben Tozer may be a harbinger of the future.Richard Lesser’s question is similarly pragmatic. “Why are Champions League knockout games scheduled at the same time?” he asks. “It makes no sense from a television fan’s perspective. Even if you record one game and watch the other, you still have to cloister yourself from hearing the other result.”There will, I suspect, be practical reasons for this — kicking off one game earlier or later would impact match-going fans, after all — but I would agree it seems a little outdated. It should not be beyond human imagination for the games to be staggered by an hour or so, at least.Ken Bariahtaris, on the other hand, is contemplating weightier matters: “The beauty of soccer at this level is the narrow margins. Goals, fundamentally, are hard to come by. Skill, technique, money to build a side all matter, but tactics, effort, a magical moment or two can overcome disadvantages. Over a season, the aggregate talent rises. But we all love the possibility of a single game or tie making the difference.” Scarcity, in other words, is soccer’s secret ingredient.And a point from Walid Neaz that already has been added, even before you read this, to my list of prospective subjects. “We’re witnessing some of the best ever players for their respective nations in terms of appearances and goals: Neymar breaking Pelé’s record, Messi and Ronaldo setting all time-greatest marks, the likes of Luis Suárez for Uruguay, Robert Lewandowski for Poland, Romelu Lukaku for Belgium, Olivier Giroud for France. Is this truly the generation where we’re seeing players reach the highest heights, or is it helped by playing more games and competitions than ever before?”My kneejerk, hot-take reaction is that the latter is certainly a substantial factor. Cristiano Ronaldo has scored a lot of goals for Portugal. Nobody is denying that. Nobody is devaluing his achievement. But it does seem like most of them came against Luxembourg, doesn’t it? More

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      Reputation Meets Reality in the Champions League

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      The Premier League’s financial might should allow it to dominate Europe’s top soccer competition. So why hasn’t that happened?Everyone involved was taking the positives. In Dortmund, Chelsea’s Graham Potter was talking about a “step forward” in his efforts to solve the gilded thousand-piece puzzle he has been handed by his club’s new owners. In Milan, Tottenham’s Antonio Conte was happy his “trust” in a youthful emergency midfield pairing had been repaid.Both were doing all they could to project an air of calm assurance. Conte, a man who could never be accused of bottling up his emotions, even used the word “relaxed” to describe his state of mind. Sure, Chelsea and Tottenham had both lost the first legs of their Champions League round of 16 ties, but that was nothing to worry about. There are the home games to come in a few weeks. Things will be better then. Wrongs will be righted. Everything is breezy.Neither manager’s pose was particularly ludicrous. Neither team had played especially badly. Both sides might have felt just a little unfortunate to have lost. Chelsea, still feeling its way to a settled identity after its winter excess, created a raft of chances against Borussia Dortmund. Spurs, its squad winnowed by injury and suspension, had menaced A.C. Milan. Both had lost only by a single goal. Both remain firmly in contention to make the quarterfinals.And yet, for all the legitimacy of those mitigating circumstances, for all the fine margins that separate victory from defeat and one interpretation of history from another, it is hard not to feel as if this sort of thing should not happen to the moneyed elite of the Premier League any more.Kepa Arrizabalaga and Chelsea lost at Borussia Dortmund. But all is not lost. Yet.Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesChelsea, in case you have forgotten, spent more on players in January than every club in France, Spain, Italy and Germany combined. A.C. Milan found itself unable to compete on salaries with Bournemouth, a team with a stadium that has a capacity of 11,379 people. Dortmund’s business model involves the annual sale of its best players to England.Here they were, though, not just standing up to two of the best that the Premier League can offer but beating them. It may have been with home-field advantage, the backing of 80,000 or so bellicose fans, and it may only have been by the skin of their teeth. And it may not, in the end, mean much at all, should Chelsea and Spurs assert themselves in the return legs.And yet still they beat them, the reality of England’s unassailable financial power not quite living up to the theory.Two games is far too small a sample, of course, to draw any firm conclusions, but those defeats are part of a broader, more established pattern.For years, as the Premier League’s wealth has grown — its television revenues more than twice that of its nearest competitor, its clubs the richest on the planet — the assumption among its clubs, and the fear among its competitors, has been that at some point it would be able to break the Champions League to its will. Its teams, stuffed with the choicest fruits the market has to offer, would leave the rest of Europe trailing in their wake.It has not, though, quite worked out like that, certainly not as definitively as might have been expected.Chelsea beat Manchester City in the 2021 Champions League final, one of two recent finals matching Premier League opponents.Pool photo by David RamosIn the last five years, the Champions League has taken on a distinctly English inflection. Two of the finals in that time have been all-Premier League affairs, and there has been at least one English side (mostly Liverpool) in every final but one since 2018. And yet the long-anticipated wholesale takeover of the tournament has failed to materialize.Perhaps it is no more than an accident of fate that no English team has won a Champions League final against a foreign opponent since Chelsea’s victory against Bayern Munich in 2012. But it feels significant that only once — in 2019 — has the full cohort of four Premier League teams all made it through safely to the quarterfinals.The likelihood that this year will break that trend is minimal. Chelsea and Spurs might both be at only a slender disadvantage — and the absence of the away goals rule works in their favor from here — but even if they both recover to make it through, the chances of Liverpool’s overcoming Real Madrid remain slim.There are a host of possible explanations for that. The most obvious is that money is not necessarily a measure of virtue: Just because England’s teams have cash to burn does not mean they always spend it well, as Chelsea is currently doing its best to illustrate.Harry Kane and Spurs have work to do in the second leg against Milan.Marco Bertorello/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe most appealing, certainly in England, is that the very competitiveness of the Premier League is in itself a disadvantage; teams are so exhausted from domestic combat that they are prone to fatigue when it comes to Europe.The most likely explanation, and the most simple, is that an unwillingness to succumb to economic logic is coded into the algorithm of a knockout competition. Financial might is likely to prove decisive over the course of a league season. Turn a competition into an arbitrary shootout, conducted over the course of 90 or 180 minutes, and what can seem like a chasm in terms of revenue streams suddenly manifests as nothing more than the difference in the technical and psychological capacity of two sets of players.And that, most often, is nothing more than a hairline crack. Dortmund and Milan and all the others might find the English clubs calling every year, seeking to extract another star from them ranks in exchange for a king’s ransom, but they know too that there will be another player along soon enough, that they will be able to replace and replenish. There are, after all, always more players.There is something to celebrate and to cherish in that, a relief and a pleasure in the fact that wealth does not make a team — or a set of teams — invulnerable to misfortune or immune to the vicissitudes of fate, that European soccer has proved just a little more resilient to the Premier League’s supremacy than even its own clubs anticipated, that even now, money is no guarantee of happiness.Red Letter DayHistoric English soccer club seeks new owner. Serious offers only. Inquire within.Molly Darlington/ReutersTime for another addition to English soccer’s ever-expanding calendar of high holidays: alongside Cup Final Day, League Cup Final Day and the two Transfer Deadline Days, we can now reliably celebrate Soft Deadline for Investors to Submit Bids for a Major Club Day.Like Easter, this one moves around. It fell in April last year, in the midst of the scramble to take Chelsea off the hands of Roman Abramovich. This time, Raine, the investment bank that plays the role of Hallmark for this particular holiday, has decreed that the Manchester United sequel should come as early as mid-February.As of Friday, only one contender had gone public: Jim Ratcliffe, the British billionaire and one-time Chelsea suitor who seems to have remembered late in life that his real passion is for sports rather than chemicals, had confirmed he would bid. He was expected to face competition, though, from at least one “U.S.-based consortium,” as well as “private” bidders from both Qatar and Saudi Arabia.That last prospect, of course, might have been greeted with caution, or even concern. The questions are obvious. How “private” could any bid emanating from a tightly controlled autocracy ever really be? What would be the implication for the integrity of both the Premier League and the Champions League, given the Saudi ownership of Newcastle United and the Qatari control of Paris St.-Germain?Or it might have been greeted with a breathless frenzy, focusing exclusively on what Gulf ownership might buy for the club and its success “starved” fans: Kylian Mbappé, or Jude Bellingham, or (genuinely, inexplicably) a new monorail running directly from Manchester airport to a giant mall outside Old Trafford.There are no prizes at all for guessing which description best fits the tone of much of the coverage, because there are no winners here. That serious questions over the integrity of the sport — let alone the issue of whether it is ideal that the Premier League should be a stage on which global power games are played out — should be so easily ignored thanks to the specter of yet more consumption, yet more acquisition, makes you wonder if the spirit of the whole enterprise has been lost along the way. The way you celebrate your holidays, after all, says a lot about where you are as a culture.An Old Truth, RevisitedStop us if you’ve heard this before but P.S.G.’s star-studded experiment doesn’t seem to be working. Again.Anne-Christine Poujoulat/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIf the misadventures of the Premier League’s moneyed elite in the Champions League this week served as a reminder of one of this newsletter’s mottos — that there are always more players, no matter how many of them you buy — then the starting teams at the Parc des Princes brought another to mind.On one side, of course, there was P.S.G., a team that is rapidly becoming a definition of insanity in and of itself. It is now perfectly apparent that building a team around Lionel Messi, Neymar and Kylian Mbappé does not work, not at the elite level, not when all three of them essentially refuse to engage in any defensive effort. P.S.G. may yet recover from a first leg deficit to Bayern Munich, but this is not a side that can win the Champions League.On the other was a Bayern team, its attacking line led by Eric Maxim Choupo-Moting. The Cameroonian striker suffers, as many do, from the long shadow of the Premier League.He has spent the better part of a decade and a half as a professional. He has built a steady, respectable career, one crowned unusually late by trophy-laden spells at P.S.G. and Bayern. To many fans, though, he will always be a curiosity: Hey, look at that, it’s that guy who played for Stoke City, except that now he’s in the Champions League.That is a shame, because Choupo-Moting’s story is telling in a number of ways. It proves, as he discussed with the Times, the value of patience. The timing of his rise suggests a shift in what elite clubs want from forward players, and as a corollary perhaps highlights a deficiency in the academy system. That tends, after all, to produce what teams want now, rather than what they might need in the future.Most of all, though, it illustrates that Choupo-Moting did not fail to shine at Stoke because of a lack of talent. Ability is often not what determines whether a move is successful or not. More important is whether the team, the style, the environment is right for a player to thrive. Choupo-Moting is evidence of the old truth that there is no such thing as a bad player, only the wrong context. More

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      M.L.S. Preview: St. Louis S.C., Apple TV+ and More

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      St. Louis City S.C. will hit the field as the league’s 29th franchise, but to watch it, and every other team, fans will have to get to know Apple TV+.St. Louis, a city with a rich soccer history dating back more than a century, will finally get its Major League Soccer team this year. But to watch it, and the league’s other 28 teams, armchair supporters will have to make the transition from television to streaming, whether they like it or not.Here’s what is happening with M.L.S. in 2023.What’s new?For the seventh straight season, M.L.S. is expanding. St. Louis City S.C. will be the league’s 29th team — a total that may grow in the next few months — and play in a new stadium downtown, Citypark.St. Louis had long been a target for expansion; the city had a pioneering professional soccer league in the early 1900s and N.A.S.L., indoor and minor league teams more recently. But previous efforts all failed, torpedoed either by inadequate financing or, in 2017, a public referendum in which voters rejected a plan to finance a stadium for an expansion franchise.Even when St. Louis did finally get a team, its debut was put on hold for a year because of delays brought on by the coronavirus pandemic. Now, though, the team that M.L.S. and St. Louis fans have long coveted is here.St. Louis City will christen its new stadium, Citypark, with its home opener against Charlotte on March 4.Jeff Roberson/Associated PressThe new team includes Roman Burki, a 32-year-old Swiss goalkeeper with seven years at Borussia Dortmund under his belt, and Klauss, a Brazilian striker. But if recent M.L.S. history is any indication (not you, Atlanta United), St. Louis City is likely to suffer typical expansion woes as it tries to build a winner.It may not be the lowest team on the M.L.S. totem pole for long, however: Commissioner Don Garber has made clear that the league’s expansion will not stop at 29. “We do need more teams,” Garber said this week in New York. A 30th franchise will be announced by the end of the year, he said, with San Diego and Las Vegas currently leading the contenders. Garber also cited Phoenix, Sacramento, Detroit and Tampa, Fla., as possibilities for further expansion in the near future.What will Week 1 bring?Thirteen games will be played on Saturday, starting with New York City F.C.’s visit to Nashville on Saturday afternoon. The big game comes later in the day: M.L.S. is expecting a crowd of more than 70,000 in the Rose Bowl on Saturday to watch the Los Angeles Galaxy, now playing second fiddle in the city they once ruled, take on the defending league champion, L.A.F.C.The Philadelphia Union, which lost last season’s M.L.S. Cup championship game in an excruciating manner, will kick off against Columbus at home. And Atlanta United, which led the league in attendance again last season, expects another big crowd inside Mercedes-Benz Stadium for its opener against San Jose.Cory Burke and the Red Bulls will be hoping their 28th season delivers the elusive title their first 27 did not.Matthew Ashton/AMA, via Getty ImagesNew York City F.C. is expecting a breakout year from its 20-year-old Brazilian striker Talles Magno.Matthew Ashton/AMA, via Getty ImagesHow can I watch?M.L.S. is banking on its younger fan base’s familiarity with technology (and its aversion to traditional TV) as it moves the bulk of its games to Apple TV+ as part of a 10-year, $2.5 billion broadcast contract.For hard-core M.L.S. fans, that will mean a deluge of content: every game, including the playoffs and the Leagues Cup tournament with the Mexican league; English and Spanish broadcasts; a Red Zone-style whip-around show hitting the highlights of games as they happen; and no blackouts for out-of-market games.The cost is $79 a year with an Apple TV+ subscription and $99 without, but several games each week will be broadcast free throughout the season.As for traditional television, ESPN is out of the mix, as are all local broadcasts around the country. Fox and FS1 will broadcast roughly one game a week, part of a conscious effort to keep one foot in the traditional broadcasting world as the league dives headlong into something new. “We didn’t want to go cold turkey and shut it all down,” said Gary Stevenson, the league’s deputy commissioner.Who is going to win the M.L.S. Cup?The list of favorites has to start with L.A.F.C., which won the Supporters’ Shield with the best regular-season record last season and then added the M.L.S. Cup title, becoming the first team to pull off that double since Toronto F.C. in 2017. The Welsh star Gareth Bale, whose tenure was known for limited minutes and stunning goals, has retired, and the team’s top scorer, Cristian Arango, has moved to the Mexican league, so expect more of the load to fall on the club legend Carlos Vela, now 33.Philadelphia had the same number of points as L.A.F.C. last season and a much better goal difference (plus-46 to plus-28), but it lost the Shield because it had fewer wins and then the final in the most agonizing way possible.The Union are well equipped to find their way back. Andre Blake is the reigning goalkeeper of the year, Jakob Glesnes was last season’s defender of the year and Dániel Gazdag will again provide the goals.Nashville should rely on last season’s league most valuable player, Hany Mukhtar, who led M.L.S. with 23 goals. After a shaky first season, Austin took a huge step forward by reaching the Cup semifinal last season and now will look to improve even more. Inter Miami was a .500 team last season, but it has added Josef Martínez, who had 98 goals in six years with Atlanta United. If he can regain his past scoring form, he makes any team a title contender.Josef Martínez, who ran circles around defenders in six years at Atlanta United, now will try to do the same for Inter Miami.Matias J. Ocner/Miami Herald, via Associated PressThe playoffs changed again. How will they work?Expansion and playoff tinkering are two time-honored M.L.S. traditions, and this week the league announced yet another new postseason format. This season, 18 teams will make the playoffs, up from 14, and there will be a new play-in round for the lowest-ranked two in each conference. After four years of strictly one-and-done games, M.L.S. will introduce a best-of-three format for the round of 16. But the quarterfinals and beyond will revert to single-game eliminations. Confused? Here’s some supplemental reading with all the rules.What about side competitions?The Concacaf Champions League, the regional championship that was won by an M.L.S. team, the Seattle Sounders, for the first time in 22 years last season, begins in March with L.A.F.C., Philadelphia, Vancouver, Orlando and Austin participating. The two-legged final ends on June 4.League games will be halted from mid-July to mid-August for an expanded 77-game Leagues Cup that will include every team from M.L.S. and Mexico’s Liga MX. Those games all will be held in the United States and Canada.And the American M.L.S. teams will join the venerable U.S. Open Cup, which dates back to 1914, in April, with the final scheduled for Sept. 27. The defending champion is Orlando City F.C., but the safest of bets is that an M.L.S. team will win it again. The last non-M.L.S. team to win the Open Cup was the Rochester Raging Rhinos in 1999. More