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      At Juventus, a Strange Season Takes Another Turn

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      A rough start to the season has been forgotten in Italy amid an unlikely title chase and a date with Napoli.The start of Juventus’s season was miserable. A raft of injuries ravaged the club’s squad. The team’s results, in those first few weeks, were flecked with disappointment. Barely a month into the campaign, Manager Massimiliano Allegri was having to smooth over the impact of an interview in which he had suggested “something was missing” from his side, alienating several of his players.Things did not improve. By early October, with Juventus seemingly adrift in the Serie A title race and on the brink of a humiliating elimination from the Champions League, Allegri received the public backing of Andrea Agnelli, the club’s president. That is rarely a good sign. When it is prefaced by an admission that the team should be “ashamed” of its performance, it is significantly worse.As it turned out, though, that was not the nadir. Far from it, in fact. At the end of November, Agnelli — together with the rest of the Juventus board — had resigned his position, seemingly as a consequence of an 18-month investigation by Italian prosecutors into financial irregularities related to the team’s activity in the transfer market. (The club denied wrongdoing.)The Juventus president, Andrea Agnelli, right, and the rest of the club’s board resigned en masse in November.Alessandro Di Marco/EPA, via ShutterstockThe next day, UEFA, European soccer’s governing body, announced that it was opening an investigation into whether it had been misled by the club, too, raising the specter of a possible sporting punishment being levied against one of Europe’s grandest teams on top of a possible judicial one.Then, a couple of weeks later, the European Court of Justice issued a nonbinding ruling that — essentially — declared UEFA’s role as an apparent monopoly did not breach European law. The decision effectively quashed the legal basis for a European Super League, the project that Juventus, which registered a loss of $273 million last year, had identified as its way out of financial crisis.In the space of four months, almost everything that could have gone wrong for Juventus, on and off the field, had gone wrong. The team was in disarray. The club had been shaken to its core. Its light, for so long the brightest in Italy, was blinking and fading, obscured by despair and disappointment.On Friday, Allegri’s team travels south to face Napoli, a side that looked at one point like it might run away with the Serie A title this season. Napoli was, until last week, the last unbeaten team in any of Europe’s major leagues. In Victor Osimhen and Khvicha Kvaratshkelia, it possesses arguably the most devastating attack in European soccer.But should Juventus win, it would cut Napoli’s lead at the top to only 4 points. It would be the ninth consecutive victory for Allegri’s team. In the previous eight, Juventus has not conceded a goal. Win in Naples, and the most miserable season Juventus could have imagined would, all of a sudden, glisten with anticipated glory.Massimiliano Allegri’s Juventus has posted eight straight wins, and eight straight shutouts, in Serie A.John Sibley/Action Images, via ReutersQuite how Allegri has effected that upswing is something of a mystery. Juventus has not suddenly started playing well; cautious and obdurate, it remains something of an anomaly in the modern Serie A, now probably the most attack-minded league in Europe.Of the eight wins that have swept Allegri’s team into Napoli’s slipstream, five have finished 1-0. Juventus required an injury-time goal to beat Cremonese last week; Danilo scored in the 86th minute to secure victory against Udinese on Saturday. Antonio Cassano, the firebrand former striker turned pundit, insisted that Juventus did not “deserve” to win that game.Nor has Allegri benefited from the sudden return to fitness of a phalanx of major stars. Ángel Di María, now a World Cup champion, has returned to the side, and Federico Chiesa is slowly recovering from long-term injury. But Paul Pogba, Leonardo Bonucci and Dusan Vlahovic are all still missing, and Juventus’s resources are hardly any deeper now than they were three months ago.In their absence, of course, Allegri has had to trust more in youth than he — like all Italian coaches — would ideally like. That has allowed the midfielder Fabio Miretti, still only 19 but now an Italian international, to blossom into the standard-bearer of the club’s next generation. The sense of freshness, as well as the injection of energy, has helped.Juventus has had a glimpse of its future in midfielder Fabio Miretti, 19.Pedro Nunes/ReutersIt is tempting, though, to wonder if there is something else at play. It is striking, in modern soccer, when players can count on millions of literal followers and managers are habitually presented as possessors of rare and precious gifts, quite to what extent everyone involved believes the world is aligned against them.Seeding and curating what is generally known as a siege mentality is almost every manager’s basic play, their immediate reflex. Pep Guardiola does it, at unfathomably wealthy Manchester City. Jürgen Klopp does it, after five years of gushing praise for his Liverpool teams. Both Real Madrid and Barcelona fervently believe they suffer so the other can thrive.But while the specific content is often laughable, the fact that so many managers — and players and executives and fans — adopt this mentality is significant. There must, in some fashion, be a power in convincing players that it is them against the world, that everyone is out to get them, that they are the underdog, fighting the good fight. They must believe it, at least in part because they want to believe it.And so, perhaps, Juventus’s many months of weakness have metamorphosed into a strength. All of the criticism, all of the crisis, has helped bond Allegri’s players to one another and to their coach. It has helped them buy into the reactive, gnarled way he wants them to play, to act, to be. It has helped them scrabble and claw their way out of misery and into the light. Things could not, really, have got any worse for Juventus. And it is at that point, perhaps, that you realize they are going to get better.A Modern GreatGareth Bale was quite good at getting the last word.Manu Fernandez/Associated PressA few years ago, at the height of Gareth Bale’s cold war with Real Madrid, someone with a connection to the club and an ax to grind suggested that the Welshman had never really tried to establish a bond with his teammates.The evidence, beyond an alleged unwillingness to improve his Spanish and the longstanding accusation that he spent all of his spare time on the golf course, was that he had — on more than one occasion — failed to attend a team-building dinner with the rest of the squad. To the rest of Madrid’s players, the story went, it had felt like a deliberate snub.There was, though, an alternative explanation, offered by another Real Madrid player who had made the same call as Bale (though, curiously, did not attract so much censure). The dinner in question, it turned out, had been scheduled on Spanish time: appetizers at 11 p.m., a main course arriving around midnight, thinking about a dessert after one in the morning, that sort of thing. A couple of the club’s northern European players, including Bale, had decided that was far too late for food, and so given the event a miss.Even now, it is not entirely clear quite why such sourness infused Bale’s last few years in Madrid. The disconnect between player and club always seemed somehow small and petty, as if the problem was not a difference of vision or ambition but, more than anything, a lack of communication and understanding.Its impact, though, is indisputable. Bale’s sudden retirement this week, six months before the expiration of his contract at Los Angeles F.C., brought a flood of tributes and testaments to what has been, by any measure, a gleaming career.At the club level, Bale has won five Champions League titles, three Liga championships, a Copa del Rey, and an M.L.S. Cup. His most meaningful legacy, though, may have been with Wales. More than anyone else, he ended the country’s long wait to compete in a major tournament (the 2016 European Championship) and its even longer wait to return to the World Cup.For all that, though, it has long felt as if Bale receded from the front rank of major stars some time ago. Some of that, of course, can be attributed to age and injury — his powers had waned, no question — but his rumbling ostracism from Real Madrid’s team played a part, too.Over the years, as we have grown used to Bale’s absence, we have internalized the idea that no true great could ever be so dispensable. The argument has been made, in recent days, that Bale never quite fulfilled his talent. But while the working is sound, the conclusion is wrong. Bale’s career stands up in comparison to (almost) anyone. It is not that he did not give enough to the game. It is that the game did not think enough of him.Money Can’t Buy HappinessJoão Félix has joined Chelsea on loan for the remainder of the season. He was red-carded an hour into his debut on Thursday.Alastair Grant/Associated PressBoth of these things are true: At the start of the summer, Chelsea had a squad that consisted largely of players who had — only a year earlier — been crowned champions of Europe. Since then, the club has spent something in the region of $380 million on reinforcements.And yet, glancing through its squad, it is hard not to have questions. Two questions, in particular. The first is: “On what?” The second is: “Really?”It is not that Chelsea has bought bad players. It has, of course, spent a little injudiciously at times: Kalidou Koulibaly may, it turns out, have been past his prime, and Wesley Fofana’s injury record might, harshly, have been seen as a red flag. And it has, occasionally, paid over market value, most notably for fullback Marc Cucurella.The problem is not just that Chelsea has bought players who are not significant upgrades on what it already had. It is that it has bought them with no apparent strategy beyond the idea that more is better. João Félix, a relatively low-risk loan deal completed this week, embodies the issue: a fine player, but one that does not address any particular shortfall.Getting the best out of him will entail inhibiting — either in time or space — Kai Havertz, or Raheem Sterling, or Mason Mount, or some combination of the three. Will Félix make Chelsea better? Possibly. Will he assuage the most pressing flaws in Graham Potter’s team? Probably not. And that, really, is the central question: How can a team go through so much (expensive) change, and yet seem to get absolutely nowhere?CorrespondenceWill Clark-Shim has, it could be said, been reading this newsletter for too long. “I believe we have reached that time of year when you muse on the F.A. Cup and whether it has outlived its day,” he noted, immediately forcing me to change what I was going to write about this week. “Isn’t the better question why there is still a second English and Welsh tournament cluttering the schedule?”This, of course, refers to the venerable Carabao Cup, English soccer’s long-lasting optional extra. There is, certainly, some merit to the idea of abolishing a tournament that was only invented (in the 1960s) so that clubs could make money from newfangled floodlights. The rebuttal, though, is no less valid.Dan Burn, left, and Newcastle are enjoying the Carabao Cup quite a bit. They will face Southampton in the semifinals.Lee Smith/Action Images, via ReutersIt has two central pillars: the valuable funds the tournament generates for the lower tiers of English domestic soccer, and the opportunity for glory it provides second-tier teams in the Premier League. This week, after all, Newcastle, Southampton and Nottingham Forest have all made the semifinals. At least one will be in the final. It hardly seems the time to diminish the competition’s significance.And we had a perfect New Year email from Ellen Johnson. “Since the Brooklyn Dodgers went westward, I’ve not been interested in sports,” she wrote. “That changed with the World Cup. At 82, I’m a believer now. So what’s next? Which teams are worth following?”Well, first of all: Welcome on board. I give it three weeks before you’re railing against the perceived iniquities of V.A.R. There should be plenty, over the next six months, to meet your needs, as Europe’s major domestic competitions wind their way to the finish and the Champions League — home of the biggest game in soccer outside of the World Cup final — coalesces into its annual mayhem.What’s worth following? Whether Arsenal, without a title in 18 years, can cling on in the Premier League, Freiburg’s unlikely bid for a top-four finish in Germany, and Paris St.-Germain’s star-studded assault on the Champions League.The best teams to watch, though, are not always the obvious ones. Brighton comes with a guarantee of entertainment in the Premier League. Benfica is a compelling outsider in the Champions League. And it is this newsletter’s avowed belief that the only event that could come close to the frenzy of the World Cup, the story that could yet define this season, would be Napoli winning its first Italian title in 34 years. More

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      Women’s Soccer Bans Ex-Coaches and Fines Teams After Misconduct Report

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      Findings released in December revealed a number of issues throughout the league, including several instances of sexual and emotional abuse.The National Women’s Soccer League on Monday permanently banned four former coaches, suspended other league officials, and fined several teams, following a report last month that detailed alleged abuse and misconduct across the league.Paul Riley, a former North Carolina Courage coach; Rory Dames, a former Chicago Red Stars coach; Richie Burke, a former Washington Spirit coach; and Christy Holly, a former Racing Louisville F.C. coach, were permanently banned from the league for alleged misconduct ranging from inappropriate comments to, in the case of Holly, groping a player.The Red Stars were fined $1.5 million, and Portland Thorns F.C. were fined $1 million for failure to properly act on allegations of misconduct.Craig Harrington, the former Utah Royal F.C. coach, and Alyse LaHue, the former general manager of Gotham F.C., each received two-year suspensions from the league. Harrington was found to have “made inappropriate sexual and objectifying comments,” and LaHue was found to have sent players inappropriate messages, the N.W.S.L. report said.The league said in a statement on Monday that the sweeping disciplinary actions were based on a 128-page report released in December. The report, a joint effort organized by the N.W.S.L. and its players’ union, revealed a number of disturbing problems throughout the league, including instances of sexual abuse, unwanted sexual advances, emotional abuse, racist remarks, and retaliation against players who complained about how they were treated.“Players from marginalized backgrounds, or with the least job security, were often targets of misconduct,” the report said. “At the same time, these players faced the greatest barriers to speaking out about or obtaining redress for what they experienced.”Jessica Berman, the league’s commissioner, said in a statement that the “corrective action” announced on Monday was “appropriate and necessary.”“The league will continue to prioritize implementing and enhancing the policies, programs and systems that put the health and safety of our players first,” Berman said. “These changes will require leadership, accountability, funding and a willingness to embrace this new way of conducting business.”Last month’s report is similar to another released in October, from an investigation led by Sally Q. Yates, a former deputy attorney general, that detailed “systemic” verbal abuse and sexual misconduct by women’s soccer coaches and found that officials in the United States Soccer Federation, the National Women’s Soccer League and throughout American soccer had failed to act over the years on complaints from players.Holly, while coaching Louisville, groped one of his players and sent her inappropriate text messages, according to the investigations. On one occasion, Holly invited a player to his home to watch video of a game, but instead masturbated in front of her and showed her pornography, the investigations found.The investigations also found that Riley, who was fired from the North Carolina Courage in 2021, used his position to try to coerce at least three players into sexual relationships. One player said Riley made sexual advances toward her on several occasions, according to the reports.Dames, who resigned from the Chicago Red Stars in 2021, was accused by the women’s soccer star Christen Press of “verbal and emotional abuse,” the N.W.S.L. report said. The investigation led by Yates also found that he had created a “sexualized team environment” at a Chicago youth club that “crossed the line to sexual relationships in multiple cases, though those relationships may have begun after the age of consent.”The N.W.S.L. report said that several players credibly reported that Burke “verbally and emotionally abused players,” and “used racial slurs, made racially insensitive and offensive jokes.”Riley, Dames, Burke, Holly, Harrington and the Portland Thorns did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Monday.Kelly Hoffman, a lawyer for LaHue, said in an email on Monday night that “Ms. LaHue continues to deny the allegations made against her. Notwithstanding the issues presented in her case, she supports the N.W.S.L. in its efforts towards corrective action.”A spokesman for the Chicago Red Stars said in an email on Monday night that the team was aware of the disciplinary action and that it was “working with the league in a cooperative manner to satisfy the fine.”The investigations led by the N.W.S.L. and Yates highlighted reports in 2021 by The Athletic and The Washington Post that described accusations of sexual and verbal abuse against coaches in the women’s league. Those reports led to public protests by players and the resignations or firings of league executives. Weeks after the reports of alleged sexual and verbal abuse, five coaches in the league were linked to the allegations.As part of Monday’s disciplinary actions, four others teams — OL Reign, Gotham F.C., Racing Louisville F.C. and North Carolina Courage — were fined amounts ranging from $50,000 to $200,000 for failure to act on allegations of misconduct.Six other league officials were told that any future employment with the league would depend on taking part in a training, “acknowledging wrongdoing and accepting personal responsibility for inappropriate conduct” and “demonstrating a sincere commitment to correcting behavior.”Two of the six officials were Vera Pauw, a former coach of the Houston Dash, and Farid Benstiti, a former coach of the OL Reign. The N.W.S.L. report said Pauw and Benstiti, “shamed players for their weight.”In a statement after the N.W.S.L. report was released in December, Pauw said she wanted to “refute every allegation” made against her in the report. Benstiti could not immediately be reached for comment on Monday night.April Rubin More

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      Opening the Post-World Cup Mailbag

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      Was Argentina-France the greatest final ever? Or a dull game with a great finish? Readers have their say, and our columnist holds his ground.For the better part of six weeks, the number has been ticking inexorably higher, the angry red of the icon on the corner of my inbox indicating the urgency of the situation. There was a flood of messages after the end of the World Cup, a steady flow as the holidays started, even a trickle on Christmas Eve, dashed off as gifts were being wrapped and stockings hung.Many of the notes were generous, touching messages of thanks and support, but others contained thoughts and ideas and comments and questions, and though they were all appreciated, they weighed heavy, too: all of those emails left unattended, unanswered, howling at me in their void.Well, New Year, New Me: at last, a chance to sit down and catch up on all of the passionate, intelligent, funny and occasionally downright outraged correspondence that has drifted into my inbox in the last few weeks. Thanks for every single one of them. Even the ones that are, as outlined below, wrong.Let’s start with the subject that seems to have animated more of you than any other: the assertion that December’s World Cup final might have been not just the greatest final of all time, but the greatest game.Perhaps, many of you suggested, that was written in the heat of the moment. It had been a long month in the dissembling unreality of Qatar’s, and FIFA’s, Snow Crash vision of the future. The lights had been so bright and the music so loud that it had, at times, been impossible to think clearly. Maybe that effect lingered?“Your judgment and perspective are usually spot on, but ‘Greatest World Cup final’? Really?” exclaimed Richard Fursland. Just as baffled was Greg Zlotnick: “The first 80 minutes were fairly dreary, and France barely made it into the Argentine half. Extra time was intense and exciting, but does the best game ever start with 80 of the first 90 minutes being lopsided and end in penalty kicks?”Lionel Messi, with the prize he chased for two decades.Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesStuart Forbes, on the other hand, was straight to the point. “You are drinking the FIFA Kool-Aid,” he suggested, inadvertently offering for free the sort of sponsorship suggestion FIFA would happily pay a consultant a six-figure fee to make.“It was very entertaining, but surely Argentina dominated the first 75 minutes against a distinctly off-color France? Was it really the greatest World Cup final ever? And was the move for Ángel Di María’s goal better than that for Carlos Alberto in 1970?”With the benefit of a couple of weeks of perspective, looking at all of this in the cold light of reality — and there is no colder light of reality than Yorkshire in December — I would say: yes, to both.As the novelist Christopher Priest has put it, there are three parts to a magic trick. The first is the Pledge: something fundamentally routine, unremarkable, such as the first 80 minutes of the final. The second is the Turn: Kylian Mbappé’s devastating two-minute intervention.But both of those are building to the Prestige, the denouement that brings the audience to its feet. What happened in those final 40 minutes at Lusail is not separate from, or in some way diminished by, the relative ordinariness of what preceded it. The slow burn and the sudden ignition are all part of the same trick.Indeed, only one thing might have improved this year’s final: the swift, ruthless judgment of penalties should not count against the majesty of the game, but either Randal Kolo Muani or Lautaro Martínez scoring in the final minute of injury time in extra time would, admittedly, have proved more satisfactory, somehow.Still, though, it is hard to think of a compelling way to answer Robert Lanza’s question. “What other finals would be contenders as the greatest?” he asked, before pitching Uruguay’s victory against Brazil in 1950 as perhaps the most convincing.That was not quite a final, though: The tournament was not a pure knockout then; Brazil would have won the World Cup simply by avoiding defeat. A case can be made for England’s extra-time win against Germany in 1966 — a last-minute equalizer to take the game to extra time, a controversial, match-defining goal — and Argentina’s win in Mexico in 1986.Is it even possible to compare iconic moments from different eras?Anne-Christine Poujoulat/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesJust as in 2022, both of those finals had overarching narratives: England’s quest to win its first World Cup in the former; Diego Maradona’s attempt to prove his status as the best player on the planet in the latter. Perhaps the answer is time, and age, and circumstance: The World Cup, after all, means different things to different people. Lionel Messi has been the player of my lifetime; his triumph, his glory, resonates in a way that Bobby Charlton’s or Maradona’s does not, for me.On the goal, there is less scope for mitigation and interpretation. Mary Loch may not even have regarded Di María’s strike as the best of the game — “I believe Mbappé’s second goal was the greatest goal of the final,” she wrote — but I’m inclined to go with the counterargument, as provided by Jurek Patoczka.“I would challenge anybody to show me a goal, anywhere, anytime, that was scored after a sequence of six one-touch passes,” he wrote. “And this was on the grandest stage possible.”Having relitigated all of that — and changed absolutely nobody’s minds in the process — we can move on, grumbling with discontent. Jacqueline Davis wanted to know if this would be the last time we see the World Cup take place in both the Arab world and the European winter.“I heard Saudi Arabia was being encouraged to throw its hat in the ring for 2030,” she wrote. “Would that not present many of the same difficulties as Qatar? Did the experience of 2022 improve the Arab world’s chances?”The answer, there, is unquestionably yes. If anything, Qatar has effectively provided a blueprint for what FIFA would like the World Cup to look like in the future. The nostalgic, romantic choice for 2030 is a South American bid that includes Uruguay, host of the first tournament a century earlier. The practical one, from FIFA’s point of view, is an impossibly wealthy autocracy that can provide the same sort of fantasyland as it enjoyed in Doha.Three men who got everything they wanted out of Qatar’s World Cup.Dan Mullan/Getty ImagesGunnar Birgisson is more concerned by the format of future tournaments. He worries that 32 teams is too few, but that 48 — as planned for 2026 and beyond — means teams that “don’t really have the quality to participate” will end up as seat-fillers and cannon fodder, rendering “qualification in North and South America largely meaningless.”His solution is both original and elegant. “Keep the 32-team format but create more playoffs between teams in different continents as a sort of pre-World Cup tournament,” he suggested. Continents would have a certain number of guaranteed slots, but an additional number of teams would participate in the playoffs, allowing a continent to earn additional spots.That is an idea FIFA has skirted, at times, as part of its ongoing Big Thoughts approach to growth, and it is one that has some merit: retaining the symmetry of the current set-up while allowing for some expansion. The downside, of course, is that it would take longer, and teams that have to go through the extra qualifiers would be at something of a disadvantage for the finals tournament itself.Given that FIFA has accepted that its original plan, for 16 groups of three teams, was as awful as everyone could see it would be as soon as it was mentioned, there is still room for these sorts of ideas to be adopted in time for 2026, though there is a different question occupying Jacob Myers.“What will it take for soccer fandom in America and Major League Soccer to take off following the 2026 World Cup?” he asked. “There has been this thought that the World Cup in the U.S. in 2026 will automatically launch the sport into new heights. There’s likely to be a boost, but this idea of soccer all of a sudden gaining a ton of popularity year-round is offered up without any interrogation of the logistics.”The problem with this question — and we ask a version of it on the other side of the Atlantic, too — is I’m never quite sure what the bar is supposed to be. Does the United States have a popular domestic league? Are attendances pretty strong? Is youth participation booming? Are your television schedules infused with endless soccer coverage that would have been unimaginable a decade ago?It’s very much a yes, to all of the above, right? Of course, M.L.S. can continue to grow in popularity. Viewing figures can go up. Things like the World Cup final will help to bring in new fans. But, from a few thousand miles away, it looks an awful lot like soccer is now embedded in the U.S. sporting consciousness. In such a competitive landscape, that is no mean feat. 2026 is not, in that sense, soccer breaking new ground; it is, if anything, its coming out party, a showcase of just how much it belongs.If that does not convince you, let’s finish on this, from Paul Bauer. “Living in a senior citizen condo complex in New Jersey, I am surrounded by neighbors whose understanding of soccer is that it exists,” he wrote. “This World Cup changed that. After the final, neighbors who never watch approached me and shared with me how much they enjoyed the game. I’m so glad that they now understand my passion for football. The rest will follow.”The Glaringly ObviousCody Gakpo should improve Liverpool’s attack. But attack isn’t Liverpool’s main problem.Oli Scarff/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesJürgen Klopp is, as a rule, right about soccer’s unhealthy obsession with transfers. He is right to be exasperated, and more than a little irritated, by not only the demand for constant churn but the veneration of it, by the deep-seated belief that every problem is a recruitment problem, by the ease with which fans spend their own teams’ money.He must know, by now, that trying to persuade people to his way of thinking and Liverpool’s way of working is — in his own words — like talking to a microwave. But there is something admirable in the fact that he continues doing it. “We signed an outstanding player like Cody Gakpo,” he said last week, “and then next thing you can read is: ‘Who next?’ It’s like we didn’t have a team.”The problem, in this instance, is that those voices telling Klopp to spend money — not just fans, but members of the Premier League’s grand constellation of talking heads — are not doing so because they are bored, or fickle, or because they are unreconstructed spendthrifts. They are doing so because Liverpool, very clearly, has a problem in midfield, one that the $50 million signing of Gakpo — a wide forward — does not address.There might, in time, be a recognized condition in soccer in which a manager’s desire for their advocated approach to be proved right begins to impact, negatively, on their ability to win games. It might be called Mourinho Syndrome, for the camera-shy Portuguese, or Wengeritis, for the noted FIFA apparatchik.Ordinarily, it affects the way a manager wants their team to play, manifesting in a refusal to adopt new methods or ideas, or to amend obvious shortcomings on the field. Klopp is too open-minded, too happy to delegate, to be at risk of that. It is possible, though, that he has reiterated so often that not every problem is to do with personnel that he is either no longer able or no longer willing to recognize when that is precisely the issue. More

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      US Soccer Investigating Gregg Berhalter After Report From Gio Reyna’s Mother

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      Gregg Berhalter, the coach, said a decades-old domestic incident had been reported to U.S. Soccer by someone looking to get him fired. It turned out to be the mother of winger Gio Reyna.Mere weeks after a World Cup performance viewed by many as a positive step forward for a promising group of players, the United States men’s soccer team has been enveloped in a soap opera story line involving its head coach, a popular former player, a current player (who happens to be the popular former player’s son) and an intricate web of friendly and familial ties.The drama — the fruit of a decades-old incident outside a college bar — has led to an investigation by the U.S. Soccer Federation, threatened the hold of the coach, Gregg Berhalter, on his post just as he is negotiating a new contract, and potentially damaged the reputation of the player, Gio Reyna, and of his parents, after his mother first reported the bar incident to Berhalter’s bosses.On Tuesday afternoon, Berhalter released a lengthy statement on Twitter, revealing that “an individual” (whom he did not name) had contacted the federation during the World Cup claiming to have information that might compel the team to terminate his employment.Berhalter came forward with the story instead, writing that he had kicked his current wife, Rosalind, in the legs during an alcohol-fueled fight in 1991, when he was 18 and the two had just begun dating as college students.“The lessons learned from that night over three decades ago became the foundation for a loving, devoted, and supportive relationship, which we honored and celebrated with our 25th wedding anniversary this past weekend,” he said in the statement.Minutes later, U.S. Soccer sent out its own, vague statement, saying that it had hired a law firm, Alston & Bird LLP, to investigate the allegations against Berhalter (which it did not specify) after learning of them on Dec. 11, a little over a week after the team was knocked out of the World Cup in Qatar.The plot only grew more bizarre on Wednesday afternoon, when the parents of Gio Reyna, a 20-year-old winger on the American team, admitted that they were the ones who had contacted the team’s sporting director, Earnie Stewart, on Dec. 11 with the information about the incident in Berhalter’s past.Reyna’s father, Claudio, is a former captain of the U.S. men’s team and widely considered one of the greatest players in its history. His mother, Danielle, played six times for the U.S. women’s national team in the early 1990s.The involvement of the Reynas, which was first reported on Wednesday by ESPN, was all the more intriguing because of the tight relationship of the families, who are known to be close friends. Berhalter and Claudio Reyna played soccer together as kids in New Jersey, playing for a club team coached by Claudio’s father and the high school team at St. Benedict’s in Newark. The two were teammates at the 2002 and 2006 World Cups, and Reyna even served as the best man at Berhalter’s wedding, according to his biography on the U.S. National Soccer Team Players Association website.Rosalind Berhalter and Danielle Reyna were roommates and soccer teammates at the University of North Carolina.In a statement on Wednesday, Danielle Reyna said she was the one who initially contacted Stewart about the bar incident, characterizing her actions as an effort to protect her son. She said she contacted Stewart on Dec. 11 out of frustration after Berhalter was quoted that day speaking at a leadership conference about a problematic player on the team who was nearly sent home during the World Cup for his poor attitude. Berhalter did not name the player, but it was widely, and correctly, assumed to be Reyna, who featured far less in the competition than expected.Reyna, one of the most promising players on the team, released a statement on Dec. 12 shortly after Berhalter’s comments were reported, admitting that he had reacted poorly to being told that he would receive limited playing time in Qatar and expressing disappointment that his coach had publicized the situation.In a statement on Wednesday, she said that Berhalter’s descriptions of the incident “significantly minimize the abuse on the night in question,” though she did not provide more detail.“Rosalind Berhalter was my roommate, teammate and best friend, and I supported her through the trauma that followed,” Danielle Reyna said in the statement. “It took a long time for me to forgive and accept Gregg afterward, but I worked hard to give him grace, and ultimately made both of them and their kids a huge part of my family’s life. I would have wanted and expected him to give the same grace to Gio. This is why the current situation is so very hurtful and hard.”Claudio Reyna, in a statement, admitted that he had separately expressed frustration during the tournament regarding his son’s playing time to Stewart and General Manager Brian McBride, whom he referred to as friends.“However, at no time did I ever threaten anyone, nor would I ever do so,” he said.The ultimate resolution of this situation has yet to be decided, but on Wednesday U.S. Soccer announced that Berhalter would not serve as head coach during the team’s annual training camp in January. Anthony Hudson would fill that role, the team said.Berhalter’s contract ended on Dec. 31. The team suggested that the awkward timing of the World Cup, coming in the fall instead of the summer, had not left the organization enough time to conduct a customary performance review following the tournament. That process is ongoing, the team said.The investigation, and the complex soap opera that emerged Wednesday, has only complicated matters. More

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      Pele’s 24-Hour Funeral Attracted More Than 200,000 Mourners

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      SANTOS, Brazil — The city, it appeared, was asleep. The streets were empty, the shops were closed and a dog howled in the distance. Then, a few blocks from the soccer stadium that put this port city on the map, there were signs of life. Lots of it.Popcorn vendors. Men grilling meat. A group hawking T-shirts. And a hair salon charging for its bathroom.It was 3 a.m., and thousands of people were queued in an orderly line stretching around two-thirds of a mile, waiting to see the body of one of history’s most magnificent athletes in its final moments before entombment. The soccer star Pelé’s 24-hour wake was in its 17th hour, and by the looks of the crowd, one day might not have been enough. The Santos soccer club estimated that 230,000 mourners had been through the stadium.“This is no sacrifice,” said Walter Henrique, 35, a tax analyst who traveled three hours to the wake and had to be at work in five hours, yet had another few hours before he would be through the line. “He gave us so much joy that it’s a pleasure to be here.”The predawn crowd in Santos had different reasons for arriving at such an hour. Mourners had clogged the roads from São Paulo, ensnaring many people in traffic. Some had gotten off work late, or they wanted to avoid the midday sun. And still others had believed that if they came while the city was sleeping, they would avoid the line.The Santos soccer club estimated that 230,000 mourners attended the 24-hour event.“It was not a good strategy,” said Vinícius Fortes, 58, a software engineer who arrived with his family at 1:15 a.m. local time and found a much longer queue than expected. “I was voting to not stay. I said, ‘Look, we’re going to wait for two hours to be near a box for 10 seconds.’”He was outvoted. Now his family had waited two hours, and it appeared they had another hour to go. “But every day you go home and sleep,” Fortes added. “This is a moment in your life you are going to remember forever.”Fortes’s 27-year-old son, Guilherme, was the only one who had to work in the morning, but he appeared unfazed, even when they read on the news that the line had been paused for 30 minutes because officials were changing the flowers. “I’ve made worse decisions in my life,” he said.The mood not exactly somber, but the crowd was sober. One street vendor, Ednalva Cruz da Silva, had a pile of booze on ice, including cans of Brahma beer and a bottle of Johnnie Walker whisky, but no one was partaking. Instead, she was selling waters and soda. “Usually it’s about 100 beers to every water,” she said. “That’s not the idea tonight.”Still, the line got a little louder as the stadium approached. One group in particular was leading the way with chants for the Santos soccer team — which included references to the time in 1967 when Pelé’s presence prompted a cease-fire in a civil war in Nigeria.The group had become something of an attraction at an event where everyone was looking for a distraction. The nine men had met in line, bonding over the previous three hours: a police officer, a supermarket clerk, three high schoolers, two chefs, a Rastafarian carpenter with a soccer ball and the owner of an industrial-automation company in an ankle-length robe and head scarf. He had worn the outfit to the World Cup in Qatar, but had sewn on a Santos patch hours earlier, and now had been posing for photos for hours.“I came alone because I’m the only Santos fan in my family,” said Pedro Camargo de Souza. “They thought I was crazy but what were they going to do?”“Pelé was the king,” said João de Souza. “He showed the Brazilian spirit to the whole world, showed that Brazil has guts.”“Pelé was the king,” said João de Souza, 58, the entrepreneur in the head scarf, wearing sunglasses at 3:30 a.m. “He showed the Brazilian spirit to the whole world, showed that Brazil has guts.”Pedro Camargo de Souza, 17, a high school junior in the group, said he had taken public transportation for three hours to arrive. “I came alone because I’m the only Santos fan in my family,” he said. “They thought I was crazy but what were they going to do?”As they neared the entrance, stadium employees ordered the group in a single-file line and ushered them along. “Good evening,” one usher said. “Or good morning.”At 3:40 a.m., they walked through the gate and onto the field. Silence fell over the crew. There was just the faint sound of Pelé singing a samba tune, “My Legacy,” a track that he released in 2006 and that played on repeat at the stadium as he lay in state.Many of the men held their phones aloft, filming the flowers; the banner that said, “Long live the king”; and the Jumbotron with an image of a crown.Then, just as they approached Pelé’s body at midfield — lying in a dark coffin, covered in flowers and draped in a veil — the silence erupted in a roar of more than 100 men. It was one of the Santos fan clubs, shouting a team chant, waving four enormous flags and lighting a flare in a before-dawn tribute alongside Pelé’s coffin.The nine men looked on in awe, but the line kept moving. Within three minutes, the group was back outside. “I cried,” said Camargo, the high schooler. “I would do it 10 more times, a thousand. I would do it as many times as Pelé scored.”They convened again next to a van selling grilled sandwiches. They exchanged contacts and recapped the moment. Some were headed home. Others would stay on the street or sleep in their car ahead of the funeral procession through the streets later that day, ending at the cemetery where Pelé’s coffin would be inserted into an aboveground tomb.“Now he rests in peace,” João de Souza said. “But his legacy, his reign, will be eternal.”Henrique Pontes, Gabriela Cortivo and Loara Cortivo rested outside the stadium after having attended Pelé’s 24-hour wake. More

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      Pelé Honored by Thousands of Brazilians at 24-Hour Funeral

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      Thousands of Brazilians came out to pay their respects to an athlete that put their nation on the world stage.At 6 a.m. on New Year’s Day, Antônio da Paz boarded a bus for the funeral of the soccer icon Pelé and rode the four hours to Santos, Brazil, where his idol was set to lie in state.When he arrived, he was a full day early — and the first in line. He had no chair, no blanket, no pillow. Just a homemade crown, a plastic World Cup trophy and a Brazilian-flag jumpsuit.“I slept with just my shirt and a hat so it wouldn’t hurt my head,” da Paz said Sunday, recalling his night on the concrete. “But it was worth it because he’s the king. A man who brought Brazil to the world — through him, through the ball.”The love, the adoration and the reverence for the man that Brazilians and many others call the king of soccer was on full display Monday in Santos, a port city that Pelé put on the map as the electrifying star of its soccer club for 18 years.Thousands of fans waited for hours outside to pay homage to Pelé.Dado Galdieri for The New York TimesSantos opened the doors to its 16,000-seat stadium at 10 a.m. Monday, and a steady stream of fans began filing past Pelé’s body, which is lying in a dark coffin at midfield, covered in flowers and draped in a veil. The stands around him were draped with banners of his likeness and a message: “Viva o rei,” or “Long live the king.”Outside the stadium, fans from across Brazil and beyond had lined up to pay their respects, with the line taking nearly two hours to reach the stadium by late morning. There were fathers with daughters, mothers with sons and vendors selling beer, fried snacks and roses in the shade of the colonial architecture. One man hurriedly handed out pizzeria menus to anyone who would accept one. The conversation everywhere was about one thing. “Above him, only God,” one man said to another while passing by.“The atmosphere here is a bit of sadness and a bit of joy — sadness because he died and joy because of the people who saw him play and are talking about his history,” said Marcelo Alves da Silva, 41, a risk-investment analyst who attended the event with his 4-year-old son, Mathias, on his shoulders. Da Silva had taken the day off, and he drove the two hours from São Paulo. “It was important to show my son,” he said.Renato Sousa do Santo, Rafael Sousa do Santo, Antônio da Paz and Marcolino Olímpio de Oliveira were together in line. The men had previously met when Pelé was hospitalized.Dado Galdieri for The New York TimesFans were allowed to walk by Pelé’s coffin in the stadium in which he starred for Santos in his brilliant 18-year career there.Dado Galdieri for The New York TimesBut not everyone was prepared to enter. Onofra Rovai, 91, has lived across from the entrance to the stadium for 50 years and said she had met Pelé various times over the years. From her second-floor perch on Monday, Rovai, a retired sewing teacher, watched the crowd snake into the stadium, but she said she would not be joining it. “I want to remember him alive, as he was before,” she said, dressed in a Santos jersey. “For me, he didn’t die.”Back toward the end of the line, da Paz was returning from a lunch of rice and beans — he hardly ate during his 24 hours in line — and was now on his way to get back in the queue.Then someone approached and slapped him on the back. It was Renato Sousa do Santo, a 68-year-old driver who met da Paz when they both began waiting outside Pelé’s hospital in São Paulo last week when news emerged that he was nearing death. They had hoped to enter to perhaps meet the soccer star, but instead they were stuck outside and started a friendship on the sidewalk.“They wouldn’t let us enter, so we just stood there, just like we are here,” Sousa said. “We put signs up on the wall, and all the reporters would come and talk to us.”Pelé’s coffin was open for mourners under the shade of a tent on the stadium’s field.Dado Galdieri for The New York TimesThen another voice shouted from the distance: “What’s up, gentlemen? Didn’t I say I would be here?”It was Marcolino Olímpio de Oliveira, 62, a painter from the São Paulo suburbs. He had also met da Paz and Sousa outside Pelé’s hospital, part of a small group that gathered in the final days of the star’s life. Now they were together again at his funeral.“Pelé was everything,” Olímpio said, carrying a large book about Pelé. “Everything he did, he did well, from playing, singing, acting.” He said he watched one of Pelé’s films recently. “I cried twice,” he said.The men got in line together. Two hours later, they were passing by Pelé’s coffin. As he walked across the field, da Paz shouted and held aloft a homemade sign that said, “Brazil lost the king, but your work will not be forgotten by the Brazilian people.”After he exited the stadium for the second time, da Paz’s plan was clear: “I come straight out and back in again.”Many fans of Pelé brought their families to the funeral to honor the national hero.Dado Galdieri for The New York TimesPhotos of Pelé were everywhere at the stadium.Dado Galdieri for The New York Times More

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      My Uncle Taught Pelé Guitar: The Mourning Is Deeper in One City

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      All around the world, fans have mourned the loss of Pelé, whose unrivaled mastery of the beautiful game catapulted him to a level of celebrity attained by few athletes.Yet in Santos, Brazil, where Pelé shot to stardom and spent much of his career, his death hit like nowhere else, the loss more personal and intimate.He arrived in the port city south of São Paulo as a scrawny teenager in the 1950s, and in some ways, he never left. For some, he was a neighbor or a friend who, even after rising to global celebrity, always stopped to chat near on the corner of Vila Belmiro, as the stadium for the Santos F.C. soccer team, where Pelé began his rise, is popularly known. For those who never met him, his soul seems to permeate the place, representing a unifying spirit in Brazil despite, or maybe because of, inequity.With his funeral set for Monday in Santos, fans flocked to sites around the city to remember Pelé’s legacy, on and off the field, and to bid farewell.Marcos MartinsAnita Pouchard Serra for The New York TimesMarcos Martins, 48, civil engineerI was born here — I’ve always been from Santos. My uncle was also a football player for Santos. He was Santos’s 10th top scorer, so he was on the team with Pelé, he played ball with Pelé.My uncle always told many stories about him. When Pelé arrived in Vila Belmiro, he was already 28 years old; Pelé was just 17.It practically raised the bar for football in Brazil. With the arrival of Pelé, everything changed.He turned Brazil, and also Santos, into a global football reference. Santos is a small city, but it had a football team that was equivalent to, if not better than, some European teams.And Pelé learned to play the guitar with my uncle. My uncle taught him. My uncle liked to play the guitar. And Pelé liked music, too.Fernando Perez Jr.Anita Pouchard Serra for The New York TimesFernando Perez Jr., 65, lawyerHold on, I need a minute. It’s really emotional. It’s really hard.I’ve seen him play here. I saw his farewell game in 1974. But I also saw him play in 1968, in 1970. I was about 13 or 14 years old when I used to watch him play.All my brothers were Corinthians (a rival team). I was born here, but they came from São Paulo. So my brothers and my father hated Pelé because he would always destroy their team. He would wipe them out. And I had to run away from home to listen to the games, to listen to Pelé play.Pelé raised the self-esteem of the Brazilian people. Brazil is a country that suffers a lot. And Pelé gave us that dignity. He made us feel like we can be big, too. And it went beyond football. It’s this sense of “I am, and I can be.”Manuel Messias dos SantosAnita Pouchard Serra for The New York TimesManuel Messias dos Santos, 83, retired dock workerI met Pelé when I was in the military, at the time when he was serving as a soldier. His team in the barracks used to win a lot.Then when I worked as a warehouse clerk in the Gonzaga neighborhood, where he hung out a lot, he was always on the sidewalk, talking to someone, talking to someone else. He was very much like us, he was a man of the people. He spoke to everyone. Everyone. With children, with old people, with whoever. He talked to everybody — he was a popular man.Teófilo de FreitasAnita Pouchard Serra for The New York TimesTeófilo de Freitas, 68, retired city hall workerHere at Santos, I’ve been a member since 1975. I’ve been rooting for the team since I was a kid. Inside the stadium, I even played ball with Pelé. It was during a Santos training session in 1972.All Brazilians like football, so Pelé is an idol for us. He is the idol of football. So for us, it’s heartbreaking — it’s very sad to see him go. Of course, we are all going to die one day. But this is a loss that brings deep sadness to Brazil.He was a one-of-a-kind person, he was an extraordinary player. Pelé made so many people happy. He was a football genius.Onofra Alves Costa RovaiAnita Pouchard Serra for The New York TimesOnofra Alves Costa Rovai, 91, retired seamstressI’ve been here since 1949. I came here from the countryside. I came to Santos. And right away, I came to live in front of the stadium. I’m a die-hard Santos fan!From my house, I could see the field. So we used to watch the games from my living room. When he played, the stadium was always packed. Everyone wanted to see him play.He had something different about him. When he got the ball, he ran and ran. He played football with his heart.I already met him. He used to stop by here all the time, to say hello. My mother adored him — he always talked to my mother here at the front door.Mario MazieriAnita Pouchard Serra for The New York TimesMario Mazieri, 66, retired bankerI came from the countryside. I moved here when I was 14 because of Santos.In the 1960s, when I still lived on the farm, my brothers and I would listen to the Santos game on the radio. There wasn’t any television then, just the radio. So we listened to the games, to the plays that Pelé made, to his goals.And I decided that I needed to see this with my own eyes. When I arrived in Vila Belmiro for the first time, I was shaking head to toe.I’m always in this bar here, it’s all “Santista” here. We used to see Pelé around here, too. One day, right over there, I got to shake his hand. It was 2012.Luiz Fernando Tomasinho, with children Luiz Gustavo and Valentina.Anita Pouchard Serra for The New York TimesLuiz Fernando Tomasinho, 31, air-conditioner mechanicSantos was always my team, and it was my dad’s team. I moved here two years ago because of Santos.Life was hard for many people when I was growing up. And watching Santos brought so much pleasure to the community.My first football shirt was Pelé, No. 10. I was 7 years old. And with my kids, it’s the same thing. They’re both 7. And I already got them their shirts.I took them to the stadium today, so they could pay their respects. It’s really sad — it’s heartbreaking.I never got to see Pelé play. I only saw the photos and the videos. He had this magic, he was different from everyone else.The kids these days, they do the same thing; they watch his plays on YouTube, and they fall in love with the sport. His legacy is huge.Lúcia BuenoAnita Pouchard Serra for The New York TimesLúcia Bueno, 25, project managerI’m from Vila Belmiro. Many of my memories of the neighborhood have to do with listening to the game and hearing the goal, before it appeared on TV. And it was always a time of getting the family together, to watch the games.I think he left a mark on many people because of his excellence as an athlete, but there is also the story of him coming from a very poor family.I’ve always been really involved in Black social movements. And I have come to understand what Pelé meant to people, as this really strong role model.He played this role in the lives of so many people, by setting an example. He was an extraordinary athlete, but he was also a Black person who was the best in the world.Gabriel Silva Paulino dos SantosAnita Pouchard Serra for The New York TimesGabriel Silva Paulino dos Santos, 20, app developerI personally have never seen him play. But my father used to watch his games and he would see Pelé walking down the street. As if he were just a normal person.Today it is already very difficult for poor people to turn into successful players. And in his time, I think it was even more difficult because there were more barriers and it was harder to play. Players fouled hard and didn’t get called for it. Those things were harder back then.So he dedicated himself a lot, he trained a lot. There’s the story that he trained here on the beach. He trained at the club and trained on the beach here afterward. He was very dedicated.Lalo de Almeida for The New York Times More

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      Pele’s Breakthrough Gave Soccer a Black Star

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      Pelé’s reign atop the most popular sport on earth began in an era defined by political struggles against colonialism and racial inequity around the world.Pelé’s graceful genius was just one part of what made him unforgettable.He was a dervish, a magician, an artist whose speedy precision, bullet drives and twirling bicycle kicks were brush strokes offering a challenge to the staid, stationary, and traditional standards of the game he came to dominate.The soccer field was his canvas, where he created masterpiece after masterpiece, starting at the very beginning of his career. In 1958, he was only 17 and just a few short years removed from learning soccer on the streets of an impoverished Brazilian favela that was his home. But at that year’s World Cup, he scored six goals, including three in the semifinals against France and two in a 5-2 win over Sweden, the home team, to clinch the championship.That’s the genius, precocious and pure.But the other part, what made Pelé the indelible gold standard of the global game, was timing. I do not mean the timing on the field that Pelé possessed — and did he ever. I mean how his rise lined up just right with changes in the world.After winning that 1958 World Cup, Pelé would quickly stride to the top of the most popular sport on earth and remain there for nearly 20 years, in an era defined by political struggles against colonialism and racial inequity around the world.The world changed in ways that lined up perfectly for Pelé, gilding his mystique, and TV was a prime mover.Think about when he emerged. He would solidify his status as the game’s greatest star, the first from the African diaspora to achieve such acclaim, in the 1960s, before topping off his career in the ’70s by pushing Brazil to a third World Cup title. He then attempted to capture the hearts of soccer-skeptical America by playing for the New York Cosmos. Television became ubiquitous, and so too did Pelé.Pelé drives past Antonio Girardo (6) of Napoli to score one of his two goals for Santos in an exhibition match on Randall’s Island in 1968.Larry C. Morris/The New York TimesGrace and genius and the luck of perfect timing. That’s Pelé.It was just a few short weeks ago, on Dec. 18, when we once again saw Pelé-style brilliance displayed at the World Cup. Argentina defeated the reigning champion, France, on the wind of penalty kicks. Lionel Messi and Kylian Mbappé conjured a final of such tension and quality that many called it the greatest World Cup game.It shredded nerves, brought tears of joy and pain in equal measure, and spawned a new round of arguments. Who is better — Messi or Mbappé? And more than that, with Messi finally fulfilling his World Cup dream, did he have a case as greatest soccer player of all time?Could the whirling Argentine be better than Pelé? Or had he not yet topped his countryman, Diego Maradona?That argument will not be solved here. It could go on until the end of time. But notice the throughline: Pelé is the ultimate measure.Only one player is held in such high regard that he is seen as the prime example of greatness by which all others should be compared. Sports evolve constantly, but evolution must begin somewhere.Pelé was soccer’s Big Bang. The great players of the present day, and of the future, will follow his lead.There is another, less talked about way that Pelé was unique. He was Black and he burst forward into the global consciousness when people of color around the world were clamoring anew against entrenched power. This cannot be overlooked.Nuance is needed here, for Pelé was famously — some would say infamously — agnostic regarding the great struggles of the day. He shared the same élan and mastery as another champion of the era, Muhammad Ali, yet he lacked Ali’s outspoken conviction.“Ultimately I don’t understand anything about politics,” he said in a 2021 documentary.Pelé shared the same élan and mastery as another champion of the era, Muhammad Ali, yet he lacked Ali’s outspoken conviction away from competition.Richard Drew/Associated PressOf course, he endured plenty of criticism for not standing up to the military dictatorship that ruled Brazil for roughly two decades, beginning in 1964 and lasting through Brazil’s victory in 1970.“A lot of people look less at what he did on the pitch, and more at what he did off of it,” said Paulo César Vasconcellos, a Brazilian journalist, in the documentary. “Off the pitch, he’s characterized by his political neutrality. At that moment in history, that worked against him.”But not every prominent athlete needs to be a firebrand. And it would be a mistake to cast judgment on Pelé while failing to recognize the deep history of Brazil and how its particular culture shaped and muted Black citizens for centuries.He was not Ali. Being Pelé was feat enough to push the world forward. A Black athlete who stirred a soul-deep passion in virtually every corner of the world. A Black athlete not just dominating, not just bringing a breathtaking aesthetic to the pitch, but becoming the mold by which all others are compared.Now we are on to the next.As fate would have it, in this year’s World Cup championship match defeat, France’s Mbappé netted a hat trick and won the Golden Boot award, recognizing him as the tournament’s top scorer. Black, lithe like Pelé, speedy like Pelé, possessing touch and alacrity and daring that feels oh-so-very-much like Pelé, Mbappé continues the evolution.In sports, greatness is transposed, and sometimes polished, player to player, era to era. And in soccer, each generational great, each Mbappé or Messi, each Marta or Abby Wambach, each Maradona or Cristiano Ronaldo, each graceful genius who will play the beautiful game of the future, comes created in the mold of Pelé, the one and only. More