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      Bristol City and the Soccer Streak That’s ‘Just Statistically Ridiculous’

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      Bristol City has gone 65 games since its last penalty kick, a drought that has baffled the team and its fans. It has to end eventually, right?LONDON — Maybe it’s bad luck. Maybe it’s unconscious bias. Maybe it’s subpar skill. Maybe it’s conscious bias. Maybe a new strategy is needed. Maybe it’s a far-reaching conspiracy. Maybe the fates are cruel and unknowable.The maddening streak currently playing out for Bristol City, a mainstay of English soccer’s second-tier league, the Championship, since 2015, has defied explanation for everyone involved, and the sense of grievance stacks higher with each passing game.It has left the team and its fans wondering: Will Bristol City ever earn a penalty kick again?Though every team and its supporters can point to injustices they believe referees should have corrected with the award of a penalty, that surest of soccer’s goal-scoring opportunities, Bristol City’s drought has long passed inexplicable and is nearing record-setting. It has been 65 games, or 461 days, since Nov. 6, 2021, the last time a Robins player lined up to take a penalty kick.Matches Since Last Penalty KickBristol City’s current penalty-kick drought is more than twice as long as any other team in England’s Championship (the league one tier below the Premier League):

      Source: Football referenceBy The New York TimesThe team’s mystified manager has complained to the board that oversees referees. Fans have assembled videos of questionable calls. Amateur statisticians have created charts to demonstrate how ludicrous the streak has become. For a team that has never been a member of the Premier League, hasn’t played in England’s top division since 1980, and which is currently 17th of 24 teams in the tightly packed Championship standings, the statistical anomaly has become, somehow, a new form of pain to endure.Championship teams are typically awarded a penalty kick about once every nine games, according to Rob Fernandes, a Bristol City fan who crunched the numbers on a website dedicated to tracking the drought. Even before the current streak, Bristol City had lousy penalty luck: The Robins had a 46-game streak immediately before the current one, meaning they have been awarded only one penalty kick in their last 111 games.Fernandes said that his research shows the team isn’t out of the ordinary on metrics that might be associated with penalty kicks — it is in the middle of the statistical pack in touches in the area and fouls awarded, for example — but for whatever reason, whistles have stayed silent when it most counts.“I still don’t believe there’s something untoward going on,” he said. “It’s just statistically ridiculous.”How statistically ridiculous?No official statistics are kept on the subject, but in 2018, The Guardian uncovered a 72-game streak by the Irish team Galway United. Since then, Port Vale, a team in England’s third tier, played 73 games without a penalty kick in 2021 and 2022.In October, the CIES Football Observatory, a research group in Switzerland, ranked Bristol City dead last among hundreds of teams in 31 European domestic leagues, averaging 1,834 minutes played per penalty kick since 2018.Marton Balazs, an instructor at the University of Bristol’s school of mathematics, approached the question as a matter of probability. If teams can expect a penalty in one out of every nine games, the odds of going 65 games without one are one in 2,113, he said.Now imagine you watched a soccer team’s first match, and you wondered how many games you would have to watch before seeing them play 65 games without a penalty kick. You would be waiting on average 19,009 games for the feat, he said.Bristol City fans have shared theories and statistics about their team’s unusual penalty drought.Steven Paston/PA Images, via Getty ImagesThe staggering numbers give credibility to the sense of bafflement from Bristol City supporters, but Balazs said the statistical event itself is not unexpected.“There are lots of clubs out there, and there are lots of games played every year,” he said. “The fact that somewhere in the world something like this happens is not that unlikely, because these games are going on all the time, everywhere.”That is likely to be little comfort at Bristol City, where fans are waiting impatiently for the big moment. The next chance comes Saturday, when Bristol City hosts Norwich City.Ryan Morgan, who runs the team’s social media accounts, said he has had the tweets for when the penalty finally arrives written and saved for months, with a few different possibilities, depending on the game situation.The team’s fans have been mostly lighthearted about the phenomenon, he said, but they are “very, very aware of it.”Paul Binning, a 45-year-old fan in Cardiff, said Bristol City fans already had plenty of reasons to feel aggrieved. A four-decade absence from the top tier of English soccer will do that: Being a Bristol City supporter, Binning admitted, requires a certain sense of gallows humor.“There’s an element of feeling that these things go against us, and these things just don’t happen to us for whatever reason,” he said.About 130 miles north of Bristol in Stoke-on-Trent, there’s a fan base that understands the feeling.Mark Porter, the chairman of the Port Vale Supporters Club, was in the stands on Oct. 8, 2022, when his seemingly cursed team ended its 73-game streak with not one, but two penalty kicks. Even though the team was successful during its penalty kick drought, earning a promotion to League One, “the longer it goes on, the worse it becomes,” he said.When the referee whistled for a penalty to end the streak, “the fans were overjoyed,” he said. But, deep down, everyone knew what was coming: The penalty kick sailed wide.So when the second penalty came in the second half, a lot of the fans couldn’t bear to watch, Porter said. Some dug their face in their hands, while others turned around completely.When Ellis Harrison put his shot in the back of the net, “you could see the relief” among the players, Porter said. Asked what advice he would give Bristol City fans as their excruciating wait goes on, he said they should do their best to stay calm, for the team’s sake.“Whatever will be will be, that’s it,” he said. “The more you worry about it, the more you stress about it, the more the players pick that up.” More

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      Harry Kane and the Power of Individual Achievement

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      Soccer prefers to recognize collective triumphs ahead of personal milestones as the true measure of success. But glory comes in many forms.The record had, it turned out, been playing on Harry Kane’s mind. Players always insist that they are oblivious to these things, that they regard them as little more than statistical ephemera. Ordinarily, it is only once the achievement is banked and the challenge met that they will admit to the blindingly obvious.Kane has spent a considerable portion of this bisected, staccato season waiting and wondering. He had the air of a player counting down, rather than up. Every goal he scored for Tottenham was not added to his tally for the campaign, but subtracted from a historical deficit.Nobody had ever scored more goals for Spurs than Jimmy Greaves, the slick, ruthless striker who was the star of the club’s golden team of the 1960s. His mark — a total of 266 — stood for more than half a century. Nobody, in recent years, had looked close to breaking it: not Vincent Janssen, not Steffen Iversen, not Chris Armstrong.And then along came Kane, a homegrown striker, a boyhood fan, an England captain. He started the season on 248 goals, a vast majority of them in the Premier League, 18 behind Greaves, 19 from sole possession of the record. The presumption was that Kane would break it, sooner rather than later. By the time everything ground to a halt for the World Cup, the gap was gossamer thin: five more to equal it, six to surpass it.Kane drew level on a Monday night, against Fulham, and then finally had his moment last Sunday. It was fitting, really: not, as he said, because he scored the goal that secured his place in history against Manchester City, “one of the best teams in the world,” but because he did so with an archetypal Kane goal — a sudden sliver of space, a single touch, an unerring finish.Kane’s goal against Manchester City on Sunday was his 267th for his boyhood club.Adrian Dennis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesSoccer does not, it has to be said, give these moments quite as much pomp as other sports. The N.B.A. not only had Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in attendance when LeBron James broke his scoring record this week, it allowed the game — between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Oklahoma City Thunder — to be paused for a brief ceremony. Kane merely got his name flashed up on Tottenham’s big screen. “Congratulations Harry,” it read.Still, that was enough for Kane. “It is surreal,” he said afterward. “There’s been so much talk about it, and I wanted to get it done as soon as possible. It’s a special feeling. I couldn’t have asked for more. Jimmy was one of the best strikers to ever play the game, so to even be mentioned in his company is amazing. To go above him is a dream come true.”The next record in Kane’s sights is, arguably, even more significant. That strike against City last Sunday made Kane only the third player in history to score 200 goals in the Premier League. He should, with a fair wind, rank as the second highest scorer the competition has seen by the time spring rolls around; Wayne Rooney is only a little ahead of him, now, on 208.He will have to wait a little longer to overtake the current scoreboard leader. Alan Shearer scored the last of his Premier League goals in April 2006, a penalty in an emphatic Newcastle win against Sunderland. He picked up an injury a few minutes later that ended up costing him the final few outings of his valedictory tour.Shearer has never regretted that he might have added to his tally; that he signed off by scoring against his team’s fiercest rivals has always struck him as the perfect conclusion. And besides, 260 goals — excluding the 23 he scored before the Premier League was branded into existence — was not a bad total, all in all.Oddly, for all that he achieved, it never really felt as if Rooney would catch Shearer. Kane, from this point, really should do it. He is still only 29. Convention would suggest that, as long as he avoids major injuries, he has another four years before he is considered an elder statesman. At his current clip, he may have reeled in Shearer by the end of the season after next.Paul Childs/Action Images, via ReutersIt may well be the case, then, that in Kane the Premier League is watching the greatest scorer in its history. Whether that matters or not, though, seems to depend on who you ask.There is a school of thought, one that has been given considerable voice over the past week, that Kane would trade in not only his status as Tottenham’s record goal-scorer but the chance to surpass Shearer for a single medal to place on his shelf at home: a Premier League title, a Champions League, an F.A. Cup, the other one.This is, of course, how soccer thinks. It is unabashedly, resolutely a collective sport, one that does not revere individual achievement as much as, say, baseball or football. There is a reason that it did not occur to anyone at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium last Sunday to do anything other than flash Kane’s name up on the screen, as if it were his birthday, just as there is a reason that many are uncomfortable with the idea of a player actively identifying winning a Ballon d’Or as an ambition.The trophies handed out at the end of the season, and the medals gathered by the end of a career, are seen as the only true gauge of attainment; what a player might achieve individually is always secondary to what success it produces, a means rather than an end. It is in the team that glory lies.It is an admirable philosophy, one to which all those actively involved in the game subscribe almost universally, but it is one that undersells the significance, the status, perhaps subconsciously afforded to the rarest, most precious individual watermarks. Glory, it is fair to say, comes in many forms.Shearer is an apposite example. He did, of course, win a Premier League title; just the one, with Blackburn Rovers in 1995. That is not, though, how he is remembered, as a “mere” English champion. Nobody much under the age of 35 would remember that Blackburn team; a whole generation has been born and raised since he scored that final goal against Sunderland.Instead, Shearer is revered now for his status as the Premier League’s leading goal-scorer. It is, after all, something only he can claim, the one thing that Shearer has that, for two decades, nobody else has possessed. It has carried his name through history in a way that winning the league could not. It is his glory, and it is his glory alone.That is what Kane has at his fingertips: not just a fleeting statistical quirk but a piece of history that is all his, something that will endure long after his career has finished. He would, doubtless, prefer it to be accompanied by something more tangible, a piece of silver and gold, something that can be mounted and framed and admired, a triumph shared with his teammates, with his family, with his fellow Tottenham fans.But to have scored more goals for Tottenham than anyone, to be the player with the most goals in the Premier League: These are no mere trifles. They ensure Kane’s name will echo, resonant and proud, long after he has slipped into the past. And that, in many ways, is the ultimate form of glory.Paul Childs/Action Images, via ReutersCheaper DetergentThink, for a minute, of all the work that went into convincing Cristiano Ronaldo to sign for Al Nassr, the Saudi club where the Portuguese forward is seeing out his (sporting) dotage. The flights. The meetings. The pitching. And all of that just to get in the room with the 38-year-old Ronaldo, to take yet more flights, to hold yet more meetings, to do yet more pitching.And all of that is without mentioning the cost: the salary that scrapes $213 million-a-season, according to some reports; the suite at the Four Seasons in Riyadh where he and his family have set up home; the invitation to Paris St.-Germain to play an unwieldy and vaguely nonsensical exhibition game.It was, of course, worth it in the end: Ronaldo has brought so much attention to Al Nassr, to the Saudi Pro League, to Saudi Arabian sports in general that all of those involved in making the deal happen doubtless regard it as a runaway success.Using sports as a tool of soft power, though, is a funny thing. This weekend, one of Al Nassr’s domestic rivals, Al Hilal, will become the first Saudi team (and only the third Asian team) to compete in the final of the Club World Cup, having beaten the South American champion, Flamengo, in the semifinal. Many of its players will be familiar; Al Hilal provided the bedrock of the Saudi team that beat Argentina in the World Cup a couple of months ago.Salem Aldawsari, whose goal led Saudi Arabia over Argentina at the World Cup, scored twice as his Saudi club, Al Hilal, stunned Brazil’s Flamengo, 3-2, on Tuesday. Al Hilal will face Real Madrid in Saturday’s final.Mosa’Ab Elshamy/Associated PressIn the space of three months, then, Salem Al-Dawsari, Saleh Al-Shehri and the rest have twice proved that the most effective way of using soccer to win hearts and minds, to exert influence, to enter the global consciousness is simply to be good at it.The victory over Argentina, for example, did far more to embed Saudi Arabia in the soccer world than buying Newcastle United or hosting the Italian Super Cup ever could, thanks to the traveling army of raucous Saudi fans. Likewise, the sight of Al Hilal facing off against Real Madrid will do more to promote the Saudi Pro League than a hundred clips of Ronaldo scoring penalties for Al Nassr.Both moments, after all, confer one thing on Saudi as a soccer — and perhaps a sporting — nation that none of those expensive purchases ever could: They grant the country’s players, teams and league legitimacy, authenticity, in front of a global audience. It must be galling, too, that it does not cost nearly as much to put together.Marsching On TogetherJesse Marsch, now the former coach of Leeds United and the future coach of … what exactly?Lee Smith/Action Images, via ReutersFarewell, then, to Jesse Marsch, the Wisconsin native who leaves after 11 months as Leeds United manager neither mourned nor missed. His dismissal, after a run of seven Premier League games without a win, felt unpleasant but unavoidable: That is, ultimately, just how soccer works.That, certainly, is how it felt to the club’s fans. They had not turned on Marsch because they had taken against him, particularly; there was a sense, broadly, that they could see what he was trying to do. It just had not worked. Marsch can take a sort of curious pride in the fact that there has been no great pleasure in his demise.Quite where Leeds goes from here is not clear: The club has failed in its pursuit of at least two possible replacements, Raúl González and Andoni Iraola, and faces a struggle to persuade a third, the Dutchman Arne Slot, to leave title-chasing Feyenoord in the middle of the season.Whoever takes the role will, at least, have a competitive squad to mold, not least in the American midfield — Tyler Adams and Weston McKennie — that Marsch had only just completed. This Leeds team is good enough to avoid relegation; that it is involved at all is testament to how competitive the middle and lower rungs of the Premier League are this season.For Marsch, the future seems a little more clear-cut. He has a résumé better than any American coach of his generation: experience in the Premier League and the Bundesliga with Leeds and RB Leipzig, a taste of the Champions League with Red Bull Salzburg. He would, in other words, be an ideal candidate for any high-profile national team jobs that happen to come available.It’s All in the TimingQuietly, without wishing to cause a stir, the Premier League uploaded a statement to its website Monday morning. It was nothing major, no cause for alarm, just the most popular soccer league on the planet accusing its serial champion, its great modern superpower, of spending more than a decade breaking the league’s financial rules. All of Manchester City’s success, the Premier League was suggesting, might one day require an asterisk.Three days later, a very different kind of story broke, one that was designed to be as loud and eye-catching as possible. A consortium of unnamed Qatari investors, it was reported, were close to submitting a bid for Manchester United, the club they regard as the “crown jewel” of global soccer.There was not, it has to be said, a great deal of detail beyond that. It is not clear who the potential owners are — other than that they are not, apparently, in any way linked to the Qatari state, in case you were wondering — or even how likely the prospective bid is to be accepted. United’s current owners have instructed Raine, the investment bank, to find a buyer. A mystery suitor from a nation thought to be awash with cash going vaguely public is, one would imagine, not a terrible thing for either.Manchester United’s Erik ten Hag, most definitely not making a shopping list for the summer.Phil Noble/ReutersGiven the timing, though, it was curious to read what the mystery group had planned for the club. They might sound like bromides — talking to fans about the redevelopment of Old Trafford, wanting their prospective takeover to be “for the good of the community,” intending to hand Erik ten Hag, United’s manager, a vast amount of money to play with in the transfer market — but they have, remember, been let slip by someone, somewhere along the line.Manchester United does not need an infusion of money to make splashy, expensive signings. It handed Ajax $100 million for Antony less than six months ago. What it has long required, if anything, is a more cogent internal structure and a more streamlined, more effective scouting department. (The club has, in fairness, made considerable progress on this recently.)But that is not exactly a compelling argument to get fans onside, and so those with designs on buying the club did what potential investors always do: promise to spend vast sums of money on new players, tell the fans what you presume they want to hear.There is no reason to believe, of course, that they would do that by taking the same approach as City is alleged to have taken. Given the proximity of the two events, though, it was hard not to wonder if soccer would be better off if spending money was not regarded as the calling card of a desirable owner, if it was not such a reflex, if it was not the first thing anyone promised. More

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      Soccer Player Christian Atsu Is Rescued From Turkey Earthquake

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      Christian Atsu, a professional soccer player who once played in England’s Premier League, was rescued from under the rubble in the earthquake that hit Turkey and Syria, the vice president of his current team, Turkey’s Hatayspor, said on Tuesday.“Christian Atsu was removed, injured,” the team’s vice president, Mustafa Ozat, said on Radyo Gol, a Turkish radio station. “We are coming toward the end of the most dangerous hours.” He said the club’s sporting director, Taner Savut, was still trapped.Mr. Atsu had been among the thousands of people missing after an earthquake struck Turkey and Syria on Monday, causing thousands of people to become stuck under collapsed buildings. Just hours before the earthquake hit, Mr. Atsu scored his team’s winning goal in its match against Kasimpasa, a team from Istanbul.The fate of other players for Hatayspor, which is based in Hatay, Turkey, about 60 miles west of Aleppo, Syria, was not immediately clear. More than 5,100 people in Turkey and Syria have died in the quake, and that toll is expected to rise. Rescuers worked through the night to pull people from the rubble, but freezing temperatures and snow impeded some rescue efforts.Vice President Fuat Oktay of Turkey said on Tuesday that more than 8,000 people had been rescued from underneath the wreckage. Earthquake rescues typically occur in the first three days, an expert said.Through tears, Volkan Demirel, the manager of Hatayspor, on Tuesday appealed on Instagram for assistance for others who still remained under rubble.“Please help, help,” said Mr. Demirel, the former goalkeeper of Fenerbahce, an Istanbul team. “I want you to send all the help you can. Not only for Hatay, but for surrounding cities too.”Mr. Atsu, a member of Ghana’s World Cup team in 2014, has spent the bulk of his career with European clubs, including Porto, Chelsea and Newcastle United. He joined Hatayspor last year. More

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      The Premier League’s Charges Against Manchester City, Explained

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      Could City really get tossed out of the Premier League? The rules are clear. The outcome of a complicated case is not.The Premier League has accused Manchester City of more than 100 violations of its financial regulations, a laundry list of rules breaches that it says began more than a decade ago and continue to present day.Manchester City says it has done nothing wrong and declared itself “surprised” at the airing of what it referred to as “alleged breaches.” The Premier League’s statement suggests its thick rule book views the case quite differently.The looming showdown over the charges promises to be a monumental fight, matching the Premier League, one of the world’s richest sporting competitions, against Manchester City, one of the dominant clubs of soccer’s modern era (and one with seemingly bottomless financial resources).But what are the accusations? What violations do they refer to specifically? And if they’re true, what potential punishment does City face?What is the case about?Broadly, the Premier League has accused Manchester City of repeatedly failing to provide accurate financial information “that gives a true and fair view of the club’s financial position, in particular with respect to its revenue (including sponsorship revenue), its related parties and its operating costs.”City also stands accused of not disclosing contractual payments to managers and players — presumably to hide the true costs of building one of the world’s best teams — and of failing, as required, to abide by the financial control mechanisms set by the league but also UEFA, European soccer’s governing body. It is also accused of not cooperating with Premier League investigators.What has all that money delivered?More than a decade of relentless success, to start. Manchester City had won two English top-division titles in its history — in 1937 and 1968 — before its Gulf owners arrived in 2008. In more than a decade since, the club has claimed six Premier League titles, two F.A. Cups, six league cups and a berth in the 2021 Champions League final. Over that period, City has been — in the most literal sense of the phrase — one of the best teams money could buy anywhere on earth.Manchester City’s most recent English title was its eighth overall, but the sixth since its Gulf owners took over in 2008. Peter Powell/EPA, via ShutterstockWhat kind of punishment is it facing?To be clear, City has only been accused of financial rules violations at this point.If the club is found to have breached the rules, however, the Premier League lays out sanctions that could include business penalties like reprimands and fines and — far more worrisome if you’re City — points deductions in the standings or even expulsion from the top division.That feels like a big deal.Expelling City from the Premier League would be a very big deal. Rewriting the league’s record books, and its title history, would be just as big. Manchester City has spent billions building a serial Premier League champion and annual Champions League contender. Losing any of it in the stroke of a pen would be astonishing.Explain the charges to me like I’m a child.The Premier League laid out its accusations against Manchester City in five points littered with legalese and references to rules like B.13, C.71, C.72 and C.75 (amended to C.79).Let’s simplify them:The first point contends that for every season from 2009-10 to 2017-18, Manchester City failed to abide by rules requiring member clubs to provide accurate financial information to the league, giving it “a true and fair view” of the club’s revenues (think sponsorships) and operating costs (think salaries).What does that mean? All Premier League clubs sign up to a code of compliance, promising to behave as good-faith actors and provide up-to-date and true versions of their accounts to be audited every year. City has long faced accusations that it has inflated the value of its sponsorship deals with entities linked to its Gulf owners, including with the United Arab Emirates’ national airline, Etihad, and the telecommunications company Etisalat.Another set of charges suggests that, in the Premier League’s view, Manchester City was not truthful in its reporting of contracts detailing the compensation of its manager and certain players in several seasons.What you might not know: City is accused of reducing the cost of player and coach salaries by paying portions of them through third parties or secret agreements, an allegation that first emerged when the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel reported that Manchester City’s former coach Roberto Mancini actually had signed two contracts when he joined the club in 2009. The first paid him £1.45 million (about $1.7 million) to coach Manchester City. The secondary agreement paid him slightly more to consult with a U.A.E.-based team, Al Jazira, for only four days a year. Manchester City’s chairman, Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al Nahyan, is also chairman of the company that owns Al Jazira.Manager Pep Guardiola has been among City’s most vocal defenders. But he once said he would quit if the club had lied to him. “I said to them: ‘If you lie to me, the day after, I am not here. I will be out, and I will not be your friend anymore,’” he said.Phil Noble/ReutersThe Premier League’s financial rules require that all member clubs comply not only with those regulations but also with the so-called financial fair play regulations of UEFA, the sport’s European governing body. For the seasons from 2013 to 2018, the Premier League contends, Manchester City was in violation of those requirements.We’ve been here before. In 2020, UEFA hit Manchester City with a two-season ban from European competition, a suspension that would have kept City from playing in the lucrative and hugely popular Champions League. City, however, had the judgment overturned on a technicality: It successfully argued at the Court of Arbitration for Sport that the most serious allegations — linked to its sponsorship agreements with Etisalat and Etihad — were outside UEFA’s statute of limitations. Essentially, the club argued (and won), it was too late to punish them.What about these references to Premier League rules on “profitability and sustainability”?A league wary of losses. After one of its teams, Portsmouth, fell into the equivalent of bankruptcy in 2010, the Premier League introduced stricter reporting rules on clubs that required them to provide details about how owners planned to cover losses, which were not allowed to exceed £105 million (or $126 million) across any three-year period. The Premier League contends City was in breach of these rules in multiple seasons.One of the more serious accusations against City is that it did not cooperate with the investigations into its actions, including providing documents and information. In the Premier League’s view, this lack of cooperation covers the entirety of its investigation, which is now in its fifth year, and extends to current day.To turn over, or not to turn over. City was perhaps most indignant about this set of charges in its response on Monday, “particularly given the extensive engagement and vast amount of detailed materials that the EPL has been provided with.” But the Premier League’s claim is one that was previously made by UEFA, and upheld by the Court of Arbitration for Sport, and evidence of the league’s struggles to get City to fully cooperate has already emerged. Several years ago, City sued the Premier League, asking a court to block efforts to force it to turn over crucial documents. City lost that case, as well as an attempt to block the publication of the judge’s findings in the case once it was over.What’s next?The Premier League said, in following its rules, it had referred the accusations against City to an independent commission. That body will take the case to a confidential hearing — read: private, no media (but expect leaks) — and then the Premier League will publish the commission’s final decision on its website. City and the Premier League can appeal the judgment, which would be heard by a similar panel convened by Murray Rosen, a lawyer who heads the Premier League’s judicial panel. News reports have said Rosen is a member at Arsenal, City’s closest rival for this season’s title. More

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      The Danger Lurking Behind the Premier League’s Wealth

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      Teams that can’t match England’s spending now face a choice: Accept that they can no longer compete for the best talent, or risk everything to try.The precise nature of the hierarchy is, in truth, a little confusing. The job titles are, in isolation, grand and impressive, but taken together, all of those capital letters become somehow vague and a little meaningless. There were, for a while, two Technical Directors, one Director of Global Talent and Transfers, and a Co-Director of Recruitment and Talent.Quite which of those is most senior is not entirely clear. Perhaps that is intentional. And it feels, certainly, like Co-Directors should come in pairs, at the very least, but in this case there may be just the one. An unkind eye might suggest it is all just a touch Schrutian.The expertise of the individuals who fulfill each of those positions, though, is beyond reproach. In the gap between the summer transfer window and the winter equivalent, Chelsea’s owners set about hiring some of the most well-regarded recruitment staff that global soccer has to offer.They picked up — in no particular order, because what order they are supposed to be in is not easily assessed — Christopher Vivell to be Technical Director, and Joe Shields as Co-Director of Recruitment and Talent. Then there was Laurence Stewart, brought on to act as a “technical director to focus on football globally,” and Paul Winstanley, the Blues’ Director of Global Talent and Transfers.Their résumés were flawless. Vivell and Stewart both had connections to the Red Bull network of clubs, long regarded as one of the finest hothouses of talent in global soccer. Stewart also had worked at Monaco, another team famed for its eye for potential. Shields had helped turn Manchester City’s academy into one of the best in Europe. Winstanley had been central to Brighton’s emergence as arguably the Premier League’s smartest club. In gathering them together, Chelsea had assembled an unmatched brain trust to help it conquer the transfer market.How useful any of that experience would have been on Tuesday is open to question. Under the guidance of Behdad Eghbali, one of Chelsea’s co-owners, the club concluded a deal to sign Enzo Fernández, the finest young player in a World Cup watched by more than a billion people.To get it over the line, Eghbali and his team of crack negotiators agreed to pay the release clause written into Fernández’s contract at Benfica, a figure that was roughly 10 times the amount the Portuguese club had shelled out for him only six months ago. It was a remarkable coup, akin to walking into a very expensive shop, paying the price on the label and exiting in triumph.Benfica’s Argentine midfielder Enzo Fernández was Chelsea’s prize winter signing.Carlos Costa/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThat is not, to be clear, to deride the qualifications of any of Chelsea’s appointments, or even to highlight the obvious disconnect between how they forged their reputations and what they will be required to do at Stamford Bridge.It is, instead, to stress the reality of the Premier League’s spending in general, and Chelsea’s in particular. For all of the armies of scouts that clubs employ, for all of the celebration of scouting gurus and technical directors with the magic touch, for all of the intellectual energy invested in the process of identifying and sifting talent, English soccer is now so impossibly wealthy that all of it is secondary, really. The clubs of the Premier League can see the players they want, the players everyone wants, and throw money at the problem until they get what they want.There have been two tones to the coverage of Chelsea’s January spending. One, perpetuated by television, the more breathless elements of the print media, the Premier League itself, and the many and varied financial firms for whom the staggering wealth of English soccer represents an opportunity, has been celebratory.In this view, the absurd figures that the club has spent are seen as a direct measure of power and status, and the club’s technique of spreading the accountancy cost of those deals over unusually long contracts has been presented as some ingenious mechanism, one that has brilliantly circumvented soccer’s halfhearted attempts to leash its clubs to the idea of sustainability.The other is not nearly so bombastic, so popular, so triumphalist. It feels a little like doom-mongering, like worrying about litter at Woodstock, or perhaps even somehow wonkish, like asking a Hells Angel about the fuel economy of a Harley. It uses terms like “competitive balance” and “inflation,” and it is generally met with accusations of base jealousy.And yet the latter is, sadly, correct. Chelsea’s spending in January has bordered on wanton, and the amount of money committed by the teams of the Premier League as a whole — as always — has been not only obscene but also dangerous, not only for the clubs themselves but also for English and European soccer as a whole.Chelsea’s new owners have spent lavishly to reshape a team that won the Champions League less than two years ago.Paul Childs/Action Images, via ReutersThe reasons for that are relatively well-covered ground. The higher Premier League clubs push prices, the greater the inflationary risk for everyone else. Chelsea might have the financial resources to pay more than $100 million for a player — Mykhailo Mudryk — who has played six games in the Champions League, and so might Arsenal. It may even have the backing to survive if it finds itself saddled with a cadre of underperforming players on long contracts. But most clubs do not.That leaves a vast majority of teams — even celebrated ones, even famous ones, even comparatively rich ones — facing a choice when the next Mudryk comes along: Either accept that level of talent is no longer available to you, or risk everything to try and compete. Barcelona has tried that. It led to ruin. Juventus, too. That led to disgrace. The only option, then, is submission.There are sporting effects, too. The disparity between the Premier League and the other major leagues — let alone everyone else — is now so vast that even executives at some of the greatest clubs on the continent admit that they are marooned in “feeder” competitions. In one recent example, A.C. Milan, the reigning Italian champion, could not match the financial package on offer to Nicolo Zaniolo, the Roma forward, by Bournemouth.That is not, as it happens, something that is in the Premier League’s long-term interests; England’s clubs need somewhere to offload their unwanted players in the future, after all. But it is more immediately devastating for soccer as a common endeavor across Europe and the world.As talent concentrates in one league, in one country, everything else fades and withers in the shadows, condemned to seeing its most precious flowers plucked by England as soon as they blossom. All of a sudden, the rationale behind a continental super league does not seem quite so brazenly venal.There is one aspect, though, that is not addressed enough. The people who emerge, for example, from the signing of Fernández with credit are not Chelsea’s team of negotiators, led by Eghbali himself, who managed to persuade Benfica to sell its best player for the fee it wanted in the first place.No, the credit goes entirely to Benfica, the club that took Fernández from Argentina and accelerated his development, and now gets a richly deserved (if bittersweet) profit from its work.Fernández and Gonçalo Ramos helped Benfica reach the Champions League round of 16 before star turns at the World Cup. Only the latter will be present when the team plays Club Brugge in two weeks.Pedro Nunes/ReutersA couple of days after the deal was finalized, Chelsea confirmed a small rearrangement of its star recruiters: Stewart and Winstanley would, now, be co-sporting directors (yes, both of them). But the truth is, it does not need their eye for talent, not really. It does not need to be smarter than everyone else, not when it can be richer. What it has done, what English soccer does habitually, requires no great expertise, and as a result it lacks glory, too.Recruitment is a valid part of soccer. A season is, perhaps, best thought of as a test of each club’s institutional strength: not just the talent of the players it puts on the field or the vision of the manager but the structures it has built to enable them to succeed. Scouts, like the medical staff or the marketing team, contribute toward every trophy.That, at least, is how it should work. The wealth of the Premier League distorts it. There is no sport in arbitrarily having more money than everyone else. Making wealth a precondition to success is effectively asking fans to cheer rich people’s ability to buy things.And yet that is exactly what the Premier League has become. There is no reason to expect fans to object to that; if that is the game, then their only concern is that their club plays it, too. There is no reason to expect the Premier League itself to take action, either. English soccer, you may have noticed, has no problem at all with its own direction.The league’s owners, perhaps, might be expected to exercise some self-control, what with being trapped in a spiral of conspicuous consumption that makes them vulnerable to the arrival of someone with even more money than them, but that may be a little too utopian.Instead, the only place to turn is to the game’s governing bodies, to UEFA and to FIFA and their dependent federations, and to ask what they intend to do about it, whether they are content to watch as the Premier League cannibalizes the sport as a whole, whether they are satisfied that the game is now determined as much in the frenzied capitalism of the transfer market as it is on the field.These organizations are not powerless. They do not have to stand by. They could institute transfer levies or luxury taxes or squad limits or homegrown quotas to try to staunch the spending, to reinstitute some sort of balance. Or they could sit and watch, as they have for so long, as soccer fractures and splinters and breaks under the weight of all that cold, hard cash.Germany Learns a New Word: TitelkampfThe perception that the Bundesliga has, in the course of the past 10 years, been little more than a procession toward glory for Bayern Munich is not quite true. In almost every season, there has been a moment in which a challenger seems to have a glimmer of a chance. It has mostly proved fleeting and it has always proved futile, but it has helped a little to stave off the sense of dread inevitability.In some senses, then, the Bundesliga table after 18 games of the current season is not especially unusual. Bayern is on top, of course, with just a narrow gap to its nearest challenger, the remarkable Union Berlin. What is different this time, is what is happening just below that. Union, in second, and Eintracht Frankfurt, in sixth, are separated by only four points. Bayern is not facing one usurper. It has to confront five of them.Thomas Müller and Bayern Munich are at the top of the table in Germany, but looking over their shoulder for a change.Christof Stache/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThat is significant. In a scenario in which one team is desperately clinging to Bayern’s coattails, all it takes is a single setback for everything to unravel. Bayern’s big red machine keeps winning. A lone defeat for its challenger transforms a small points deficit into an apparently insurmountable one.With five contenders — Union, RB Leipzig, Borussia Dortmund, Freiburg and Eintracht, in that order — the possibility of Bayern’s striding off into the distance is reduced. One or two challengers might lose ground one weekend, but they are unlikely to collapse all at the same time. Bayern will not be able to burn everyone off in the course of a few weeks.Instead, Julian Nagelsmann’s team, stuttering just a little itself, will have to get used to having company for a vast majority of the season, with all of the pressure that brings. In all likelihood, it will still finish the campaign as Germany’s champion. This time, though, it may well have to work for it.Rising TideManchester United, in the end, stood firm. In the closing days of the January transfer window, Arsenal tried on several occasions to persuade the club to part company with the England striker Alessia Russo. The final bid, by all accounts, would have broken the world record — paid by Barcelona to sign Keira Walsh last year — by some distance. United, though, said no.Much of this is a good news story for the Women’s Super League in particular and for women’s soccer in general. Arsenal, deprived of two of its finest players by long-term injury, is prepared to commit significant funds to sign a replacement. United is serious enough about its pursuit of the W.S.L. title that, even with Russo out of contract in the summer, it decided to refuse the potential six-figure windfall.Arsenal failed in its bid to pry Alessia Russo away from Manchester United.Ed Sykes/Action Images, via ReutersRising transfer fees are, in general, a sign of health, a marker that more money is coming into the women’s game, that clubs are pushing resources toward their women’s teams, that players are being accorded the sort of value that befits their status as elite athletes and evermore high-profile stars.The one note of caution is the same as in so many things where women’s soccer, a sport forging its path in the 21st century, seems wedded to ideas rooted in the 20th century conventions of the men’s game.Or, to put it more plainly: Are we really absolutely sure that transfer fees are a good idea? Is this definitely the best way to run the industry? If you were designing a sport from scratch, would that be the mechanism that allowed talent to move around and competition to flourish? Or would you be cognizant of the risks, aware of what the men’s game has become, and at least ask if there might, perhaps, be an alternative?CorrespondenceThe subject of whether American sports have enough swearing continues to prompt rather more conversation than Google’s algorithm might expect, with Dan Rosenbaum losing points for citing New York Rangers fans chanting “Potvin sucks” as an example of spite — that’s a bit P.G. for my tastes — but recovering admirably with an outstanding theory about the differing natures of crowds.“Most soccer fans see the opposition once a season,” he wrote. “Maybe two or three times, in various cup competitions. In baseball, we see a division rival around 10 times a year, in three different sets of games. The vitriol is therefore expended over time, rather than being focused. Except for Phillies fans, who seem to have boundless depths of bile.”The newsletter regular Shawn Donnelly, meanwhile, has a question. “Chelsea bought Enzo Fernández for a cool $130 million,” he wrote, correctly. “Do they pay Benfica this sum immediately? Or is that payment spread out over a number of years, the way I pay off my Subaru Impreza?”I’m not quite sure whether that last bit is boasting or a subtle message to Subaru, but regardless: Some Premier League teams, in particular, will put the full cash total down for a deal, often as a way of improving their chances of signing a player they really want. In most cases, though, payments are delivered in installments: perhaps two or three, front-loaded in the first couple of years of a contract.An inquiry from Brett Jenkins, too, a confessed “novice” fan who is seeking recommendations for “soccer books, fiction and nonfiction.” The first recommendation is, always: Do not read soccer fiction. Unless it is written by Steve Bruce.Nonfiction is richer territory. It pains me to do it, but Jonathan Wilson’s “Inverting the Pyramid” is probably the precise book you are seeking, but there is a whole canon worth exploring, most of it also written by Wilson, but with noble exceptions from David Winner, Sid Lowe, David Goldblatt, Joshua Robinson and Jon Clegg, and some idiot. I love all of James Montague’s work, too, but my favorite soccer book, by a whisker, is Robert Andrew Powell’s “This Love Is Not for Cowards.”The final query comes from Alex Converse, who I can only presume is the person who invented the sneakers. “I follow Tottenham and I wonder why, with five substitutes available, Antonio Conte doesn’t routinely put on fresh wingbacks at halftime,” he wrote. “Don’t you want someone with fresh legs, who can move fast, end to end?”This is a great point, and not only for Spurs. It feels to me as if coaches have yet to tap deep into the potential effects of having five substitutes. At the World Cup, they seemed to be used not so much to help coaches change their approach as to maintain energy levels. At club level, I’m not sure we’ve seen quite the same policy yet. We will, I think, in time. More

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      Chelsea’s Spending in Transfer Window Puzzles Its Rivals

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      The Premier League club’s American owners have splashed roughly $750 million on new players since last year. Puzzled rivals can’t see a strategy behind the spending.LONDON — As the last few hours of the January transfer window ticked by, and as a small group of Chelsea executives were painstakingly trying to piece together the $131 million deal that would make Enzo Fernández, the 21-year-old Argentine midfielder, the most expensive player ever signed by an English team, Todd Boehly, the most high-profile of Chelsea’s new owners, was on the phone, trying to sign someone else.Since arriving in the Premier League last May, Boehly has taken an unusually hands-on approach to the transfer market, regularly leading negotiations for prospective signings. In the summer, he appointed himself as Chelsea’s interim sporting director. He has since relinquished the title, but his appetite for involvement is undimmed.So as Behdad Eghbali, the founder of Chelsea’s biggest investor Clearlake Capital now seven months into his tenure as one of Chelsea’s co-owners, was fine-tuning the structure of the Fernández transfer with the Portuguese side Benfica, Boehly decided that he would personally follow up on an email a member of the club’s recruitment staff had sent to the Italian team Fiorentina. In addition to signing Fernández, Boehly told Fiorentina, Chelsea wanted to take Sofyan Amrabat — another midfield player who had starred in the World Cup — on loan.That, he was informed, would not be possible. The Italian club wanted to keep Amrabat, a Moroccan international, and even if it was interested in selling it would not consider letting its star player leave for anything other than a premium, and permanent, fee.Boehly declared Fiorentina’s eight-figure asking price unreasonable. An executive at the Italian team responded by asking how he would feel if some other club turned up on the final day of the transfer window and tried to poach one of Chelsea’s most valuable assets on the cheap. The call, and the negotiation, ended abruptly.Benfica’s Argentine midfielder Enzo Fernández was Chelsea’s prize winter signing.Carlos Costa/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAmrabat would, in the end, be a rare miss in what has been an eye-watering, gasp-inducing month of spending from Eghbali, Boehly and Chelsea. With only a few minutes to spare before the window closed, Chelsea filed the paperwork for Fernández, their eighth signing of the month, and at $131 million the most expensive. The club had agreed to pay Benfica roughly 10 times what the Portuguese side had paid for him only six months ago.That took Chelsea’s outlay in January alone to more than $370 million, the kind of spending that is criticized when done by oligarchs and nation states. It was the most any club has ever spent in a single window and more than every team in the French, Spanish, German and Italian top flights combined. Since Boehly and Eghbali took charge, Chelsea has now spent somewhere in the region of three quarters of a billion dollars overhauling a squad that won the Champions League less than two years ago.They have done so with a frequency, extravagance and single-mindedness that has, at times, surprised even some of European soccer’s most seasoned operators. Early last month, for example, Sergei Palkin — the president of the exiled Ukrainian club Shakhtar Donetsk — was sitting in the Cullinan Belek hotel in the Turkish resort of Antalya when he received a phone call from Eghbali.Chelsea had asked, several weeks earlier, to be kept appraised of any bids for Shakhtar’s explosive winger Mykhailo Mudryk, but now seemed to be lagging behind Arsenal in the pursuit of the player. Arsenal had been discussing the terms of a deal with Shakhtar for some time, and Mudryk had even seemed to welcome his imminent transfer on Instagram.Then Eghbali called. “He said, ‘I’m here,’” Palkin told The New York Times. “I said, ‘What do you mean “here”?’ He told me he’s in the hotel.” Eghbali had landed by private jet that morning. After swift talks, he boarded his plane again the same day, this time with Mudryk in tow and $108 million on its way to Shakhtar. Chelsea’s offer, Palkin said, had been more “concrete” than Arsenal’s: It had offered to pay the nine-figure fee for Mudryk over two years instead of the four Arsenal had proposed.Palkin left those talks with the distinct impression that Chelsea’s principal owners — while perhaps a little keener on taking their share of the limelight afforded by soccer’s frenzied player trading business than many of their peers — had serious, coherent plans for the club they had bought at auction from Roman Abramovich.Eghbali, he said, had outlined their vision for what Chelsea would become. “They want to invest in players, new infrastructure; they have plans to build a new stadium,” Palkin said. “At a minimum there will be an increase in the income at Chelsea. In three or four years, Chelsea will look very professional.”Ben Stansall/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesJason Cairnduff/Action Images, via ReutersNow vying for playing time at Chelsea: defender Benoit Badiashile ($42 million); David Datro Fofana ($13.1 million); and wing Mykhailo Mudryk ($108 million).Peter Powell/EPA, via ShutterstockThat view, it is fair to say, is not universally held. Under Abramovich, Chelsea had been losing a million dollars a week, losses covered only by regular capital injections from the Russian billionaire’s personal fortune. How Boehly, Eghbali and their group plan to balance the books — given the enormous scale of their investment on players so far — is not clear.Their preferred mechanism, it seems, has been to defer the official cost of the deals. Though clubs pay the vast majority of a transfer fee upfront — or in a handful of installments over a couple of years — the price of the acquisition is often spread out over the duration of the player’s contract, a process known as amortization. Doing so allows a team to spread out of the cost of an expensive purchase — or, in Chelsea’s case, half a dozen or so — over multiple years, and allow it to stay within the cost controls required by the Premier League and UEFA, European soccer’s governing body.In several of their most expensive deals, Chelsea have sought to use that accounting to their advantage. Wesley Fofana, a defender signed from Leicester City last summer, signed a seven-year deal. Mudryk’s runs for eight seasons. Fernández, the costliest of them all, is contracted to Stamford Bridge until 2031.That approach has not gone unnoticed. The issue was raised at a meeting of UEFA’s executive board last month, and several teams have since contacted Andrea Traverso, the organization’s head of licensing, to ask European soccer’s governing body what action it plans to take to close the loophole. (Starting this summer, UEFA will only allow teams to amortize contracts over a maximum of five years when it analyzes whether teams are in compliance of its fiscal rules.)Long contracts, though, are not the only concern. Among Chelsea’s peers and rivals, the reaction to the club’s spending spree on players has been one of puzzlement. In interviews with a dozen executives at teams both in the Premier League and across Europe, all of whom spoke with The New York Times anonymously because they did not wish to be seen commenting on another team’s business strategy, few could immediately discern the logic of Chelsea’s approach.Some suggested the sheer number of players Chelsea has acquired — more than a dozen since the summer — made it hard to discern any clear sporting plan beyond a simplistic desire to stockpile the world’s best young talent, regardless of the cost. Others wondered if it made sense for a team with one of the most prolific academies in Europe to render its work so obviously futile. Chelsea’s owners have done little, publicly, to explain the frenzy of acquisitions or the thinking behind them.In England, most believe the fees Chelsea has paid in the last few months will have an inflationary effect, though nobody was quite sure if that was deliberate or merely an inevitable side effect.In the rest of Europe, the fear is a little more material. Chelsea, one executive at a major continental club said, has “destroyed the market,” a sentiment supported by Javier Tebas, the president of La Liga, Spain’s top division. “The British market is doped,” he said. “It is a competition that loses billions of pounds in the last few years, financed with contributions from patrons, in this case American investors who finance at a loss.”While all of the executives immediately understood the purpose of Chelsea’s prolonged contracts, the majority were baffled as to whether the club was bravely exploiting an inefficiency in the market or mortgaging its future. After all, lengthening contracts might reduce the immediate financial impact on Chelsea’s accounts — and therefore help the club meet European soccer’s largely theoretical cost control mechanisms — but it does not represent the team’s actual cash flow.Chelsea still has to pay the transfer fees in the short term. It still has to commit to pay the players several million dollars more than it might have if they were on more standard-length contracts. It still has to rely on each of them fulfilling their undoubted potential. It still faces the risk of being encumbered with expensive, immovable assets in years to come if they do not.Selling players, certainly, has been a little more of a challenge for Chelsea. As Eghbali was negotiating for Fernández and Boehly was making his last-ditch bid for Amrabat, one of Chelsea’s current players, Hakim Ziyech, was sitting in the offices of Paris St.-Germain, waiting for confirmation of his departure.The deal had been in the works for a week or so. At one point, talks had been sufficiently relaxed that Boehly had suggested P.S.G.’s owner — the Qatar Investment Authority — might like to help Chelsea with its stadium project. As the minutes ticked down to the transfer deadline, though, P.S.G. officials became concerned at Chelsea’s lack of communication.Five minutes before the deadline — at 10:55 p.m. local time — Chelsea finally sent over a document. It was the wrong one. When that was pointed out, a second soon followed. It was not signed. By the time the new error was fixed, it was too late. The deadline had passed. P.S.G. could not register the signing.Ziyech, distraught, had to return to west London, where a raft of new teammates await him, including at least two who play his position. Chelsea has little need for him now. It has to pay his salary, though, for another six months. More

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      Saudi Sponsorship Catches Women’s World Cup Hosts by Surprise

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      Officials from Australia and New Zealand were blindsided by reports that FIFA would make Saudi Arabia’s tourism authority a partner for the tournament.MELBOURNE, Australia — Before their presence was first permitted by an easing of government restrictions in 2018, women in Saudi Arabia who slipped inside public stadiums to watch soccer games risked being arrested. So published news reports this week that the kingdom, via its Visit Saudi tourism brand, had reached a deal with world soccer’s governing body to become a prominent sponsor of this year’s Women’s World Cup were met on Wednesday with a sense of startled dismay.Players, fans and supporters of the tournament, the largest women’s sporting event ever held in Australia and New Zealand, scrambled to understand what to them appeared an uneasy corporate marriage between Saudi Arabia and FIFA, world soccer’s global governing body. And local World Cup organizers, blindsided by the news, were demanding an explanation.“We are very disappointed that Football Australia were not consulted on this matter prior to any decision being made,” a spokeswoman for Football Australia, the country’s governing body for soccer, said in a statement. Football Australia said its leaders, and those of its World Cup partner, New Zealand Football, “have jointly written to FIFA to urgently clarify the situation.”FIFA did not respond to messages seeking comment. A representative of the Saudi Tourism Authority did not immediately respond to a similar request.Others, particularly in Australia, saw little to clarify. They suggested a Visit Saudi sponsorship for a women’s championship was just the latest example of what critics have described as an effort by a government to use money to finance the kind of reputation-cleansing efforts derided as “sportswashing,” and of FIFA’s willingness to be an active partner.“Saudi Arabia sponsoring a global women’s sporting event is like Exxon sponsoring COP28 or McDonald’s a healthy eating or anti-obesity symposium,” said Craig Foster, a former captain of Australia’s men’s soccer team whose human rights advocacy has at times made him a vocal critic of FIFA. “It is perfectly in line with FIFA’s thirst for money at any cost and complete disregard for its human rights policy, let alone principles.”Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo during an exhibition match in Riyadh last month. Messi has a contract with Saudi Arabia’s tourism authority, and Ronaldo recently signed with a Saudi club.Franck Fife/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWhen it came to FIFA, Foster added, “concepts like gender equality are only as durable as the amount of money received from abusing companies or countries, and inevitably, money wins.”Others, however, said Saudi sponsorships in sports like soccer, golf, boxing and wrestling, along with its investments in business, entertainment and the arts and an expansion of opportunities for women across society, represent a broader push by the Saudi government to diversify its oil-dependent economy and boost its importance on the world stage.“It’s part of a far larger strategy, across various sports, irrespective of gender, which is designed to, as Saudi Arabia wants to do with everything, make it the regional center of gravity,” said James M. Dorsey, a scholar at the National University of Singapore’s Middle East Institute.“Yes, it is about image, but it’s about positioning the kingdom as a powerhouse,” he added.In the last five years, Saudi Arabia has emerged as a key power player in soccer, cultivating a close relationship with the FIFA president, Gianni Infantino, and investing billions in events, programs and partnerships (as well as in the acquisition of a Premier League soccer team). FIFA, meanwhile, has sought to increase investment in the women’s game, which despite its growth continues to receive a fraction of the financial support that underwrites the men’s game.At the same time, led by its powerful crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia has sought to burnish its reputation as the kind of country one might associate with major global sporting events, and where Lionel Messi might choose to vacation, rather than as a conservative monarchy that murders dissidents, according to United States intelligence, and imprisons citizens for their activity on social media.“There is an evident desire by the elite, very much driven by Mohammed bin Salman, to exact an enormous kind of cultural revolution in a really short time frame,” said David B. Roberts, a scholar of the region at King’s College London. “At the same time, you have qualitative changes that no one thought remotely plausible or possible, with the comparative or significant emancipation of women as independent economic actors in the kingdom.”Women were not allowed to attend soccer games in Saudi Arabia until 2018. But empowered by an easing of restrictions across public life, they attended World Cup matches in Qatar by the thousands.Luca Bruno/Associated PressWinning over women’s soccer players and fans, and Australians, may be more difficult. Sydney, which has had a surging demand for tickets to the World Cup, is home to some of the world’s largest L.G.B.T.Q. pride events, including a three-week Mardi Gras festival, and some of the tournament’s most prominent players, including Sam Kerr, the captain of Australia’s women’s team, and her girlfriend, the United States midfielder Kristie Mewis, are gay.L.G.B.T.Q. people in Saudi Arabia, as in many other parts of the Middle East, face discrimination and potentially arrest and prosecution.“If these reports are true, they are deeply perplexing,” said Moya Dodd, a former vice-captain of Australia’s team who was from 2013 to 2017 among the first women to appear in FIFA’s governing board. “If FIFA is planning to take money to tell L.G.B.T.Q.+ fans and players to ‘Visit Saudi,’ it’s hard to see how this could pass responsible business principles, let alone meet FIFA’s own human rights obligations and policies,” Dodd added. More

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      La Liga Must Register Barcelona’s Gavi, Spanish Court Rules

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      As rivals haggled over prices on the final day of the transfer window, Barcelona found a new way around the Spanish league’s financial rules.The frenetic last days of European soccer’s midseason player trading market — that whirlwind of spending and sales known as the January transfer window — are always full of drama. Rumors fly. Deals are made. For most clubs, the final hours, which arrived Tuesday, are spent engaged in last-minute haggling over the prices for new players.At F.C. Barcelona, the Spanish club trapped in a yearslong financial crisis, the close of this year’s window was even stranger than usual: While most of its rivals scoured the market for players, Barcelona went to court to keep hold of one of its own.The crisis was of the club’s own making. Having spent heavily on new talent last summer despite repeated warnings that its spending violated league cost controls, Barcelona was told by the Spanish league that it could not register any new players until it could find savings or new revenues. That did not stop the team from offering a new contract to Gavi, a prodigiously talented teenager who is one of the club’s most valuable assets.The new contract meant a new, higher salary and, crucially, a new registration with the league. The league balked, and refused to register Gavi. And so Barcelona turned to a hometown court, and on Tuesday it got the ruling it sought.In a statement, the club said it had persuaded a local commercial court to require Spanish league officials to register Gavi, an 18-year-old midfielder, before the trading window closed at midnight. The court had agreed with Barcelona’s argument, the club announced, that the league’s failure to register the player would have caused the club “serious, irreparable damage.”The Spanish league, known as La Liga, was not represented in the hearing. It said it would study the ruling before deciding the next steps, but it signaled that its battle with Barcelona over its financial controls was not over.“If the court tells us to register Gavi, we will,” a league spokesman said. “And if there are grounds for appeal, then we will appeal it.” Should there be a successful appeal, the league, the spokesman said, would deregister Gavi.The case of Gavi’s new contract highlights the dire financial straits Barcelona continues to find itself in, even after its president, Joan Laporta, swept back into office in 2021 on a promise to restore the club’s reputation and its finances after a fiscal collapse that had sent F.C. Barcelona spiraling toward bankruptcy.Laporta managed to raise money quickly. Lots of it, in fact, under a program in which Barcelona sold club assets — including years of commercial rights — to outside investors. But instead of using that influx of cash to balance the books, Laporta went on a mammoth shopping spree, bringing in a slew of new players. The acquisitions left the club’s fortunes reliant on sporting success, coupled with the need for even more new revenue sources.The results have been mixed. Barcelona sits atop the Spanish league with half the season remaining, but a humiliating — and financially disastrous — exit from the Champions League in the group stage has raised new doubts about its financial prospects.La Liga’s president, Javier Tebas, this week offered an explanation for why Barcelona could not register Gavi. In the league’s view, he said, the new deal would put Barcelona in violation of financial limits when it went into effect.“The issue of not registering Gavi comes as a consequence of the fact that it is a registration that takes effect next season and has no effect in the coming six months,” Tebas said in comments reported by the Spanish news media this week. He said Barcelona’s budget deficit next season would be more than 200 million euros — more than $217 million — based on current income projections, “so it does not seem appropriate to accept that registration.”With the Spanish league unequivocal in its refusal to bend regulations to allow Barcelona to register any more players, the club’s board took its plea to the local court.In its submission, made on Friday, the club said not being able to sign Gavi to his new contract — which he had agreed to in September — by the close of the January window “would imply the player’s free agency and therefore cause serious, irreparable damage to F.C. Barcelona.”If the ruling stands, La Liga’s decade-old fiscal regulations, which had been drawn up with the clubs’ input in an effort to reduce volatility, would be rendered unenforceable, with teams able to bypass the regulations by challenging them in civil courts. Barcelona has largely been an outlier in failing to stay within the designated spending cap, which is calculated as a percentage of each team’s earnings from its soccer operations.The league in recent months has moved to tighten those rules further by limiting the impact of the type of asset sales Barcelona has employed on teams’ salary and player cost caps. More