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      The Premier League Is Back, With Quite an Act to Follow

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      The Premier League will play on Boxing Day because the Premier League always plays on Boxing Day. But the title race changed over the World Cup break.The Premier League was absolutely, resolutely clear. This was not a bluff. It was not a card to play or a chip to barter or a point to haggle. It was not, and this cannot be stressed enough, on the table. Whatever FIFA did with the World Cup, however the rest of Europe’s major leagues contorted themselves to make way for it, the Premier League would be playing matches on Boxing Day.That stance must, deep down, have seemed just a little absurd to the rest of the executives present at that summit in Doha in 2015, when the most powerful clubs and leagues in global soccer were informed that the World Cup was being shifted to the winter, like it or lump it. None of the leagues were happy, of course.But only the Premier League — the richest domestic competition in the world, the one that earns more from its domestic broadcast deals than FIFA turns over in a whole World Cup cycle — seemed so aghast at the very notion of its cherished traditions being imperiled that it drew a red line. The tournament had to be finished, it declared, in time for the fixtures that would be scheduled for the day after Christmas could go ahead.There were reasons for that stance beyond habit, obviously. What is described so often in England as the “busy festive period” that it really should be trademarked is a key pillar of those television rights sales from which all of the Premier League’s wealth and power flow: All those potential viewers sitting at home, their heads maybe just a little sore and their stomachs just a little full, gift vouchers from uncles they do not like burning holes in their pockets. Like most traditions, Boxing Day soccer is really about selling you stuff.And, of course, the Premier League is powerful enough to have received its wish. The World Cup, distilled into only 29 days, finished on Sunday. Most of Europe’s other major leagues have given their players a little more of a hiatus, a little more chance to rest and recover. Italy’s Serie A does not resume until the start of January, Germany at the end. Spain and France both have games scheduled this month, but the burden on teams, and on players, is much lighter.The Premier League, though, will play on Boxing Day because the Premier League always plays on Boxing Day. No, it must play on Boxing Day. It would not be Christmas without it.Raphael Varane, Hugo Lloris and Ibrahima Konaté will have a shorter break than most players: Their club seasons will resume only days after they played in the World Cup final.Julian Finney/Getty ImagesAt which point, the word hubris lingering ever so slightly at the back of the mind, all we can do is wish everyone involved the best of luck. Did you enjoy the greatest World Cup final in history? The one with what may well have been the best goal ever scored in a final — that sweeping, wondrous move capped by Ángel Di María — and the hat trick from Kylian Mbappé and Argentina winning it once, twice, three times and Lionel Messi, the finest player to have ever graced the game, at last fulfilling his dream and his destiny, as the world watched on with eyes wide?Well, next up we have Crystal Palace against Fulham. And it’s live.Before the World Cup, it was easy to wonder what physical impact the presence of the tournament in the middle of the season might have on Europe’s major leagues. (Which is why this newsletter did it, by my count, three times.) Would players return from Qatar exhausted or injured? Would there be a significant advantage for those teams who had fewer representatives at the World Cup? Would the second half of the season just be Erling Haaland, revived by a month of boredom, mowing down weary, disinterested defenses?At first glance, it would appear that the Premier League has no need to worry. England made the quarterfinals, of course, and those players who formed the core of Gareth Southgate’s team most likely will need a little time to rest and recover before being thrown back into the fray by their clubs. But there were surprisingly few Premier League stars who made it into the tournament’s final week.Nobody should be expecting to see Emiliano Martínez, Cristían Romero, Alexis Mac Allister or Julián Álvarez any time soon, since all were key members of Messi’s supporting cast. Only two players who started the final for France are currently employed in England — Raphael Varane and Hugo Lloris — and only one more came on as a substitute, the Liverpool defender Ibrahima Konaté.Likewise, while Chelsea’s Hakim Ziyech was a central figure for Morocco, it is fair to say Morocco’s Hakim Ziyech is not a central figure for Chelsea. Mateo Kovacic, his Croatian teammate at Stamford Bridge, is more of a loss, but a tolerable one.That is not to say that there is not an impactful injury legacy of the World Cup. Indeed, there is every chance that it was in Qatar that the fate of the Premier League title was decided: The medial ligament injury sustained by Arsenal forward Gabriel Jesus was precisely the sort of blow that England’s unlikely leader could not afford, particularly with Manchester City breathing down its neck.A knee injury sustained at the World Cup is expected to keep Gabriel Jesus out of Arsenal’s lineup for months.Abedin Taherkenareh/EPA, via ShutterstockIt will take time for the significance of that injury to become apparent. When Boxing Day rolls around, the Premier League may look as if it is at not far off full strength. That, though, was never likely to be the problem. There will be a physical impact on those players who were in Qatar, but it will not manifest until spring, once the miles in the legs have piled up. Even then, it will not take the form of mass absences, but greater vulnerability to minor aches and strains. Those looming concerns may not have much effect on the destiny of most of Europe’s domestic championships, but in the knockout rounds of the Champions League, where an ill-timed two-week absence can prove the difference between glory and disappointment, it may yet be decisive.The more immediate problem, though, is psychological. It is not just the Premier League’s wealth — and the quality of player and coach that can attract — which has made it soccer’s dominant domestic competition. Nor is it just the aesthetic appeal of its stadiums, or the fame and grandeur of its biggest names, or even the fact that it is all conducted in English. Part of its success is down to its ability to project just how much every single moment matters.Eight days after a World Cup, that is probably best described as a tricky sell. No other tournament, not even the Champions League, can offer quite the drama, quite the tension of the final rounds of the World Cup. Its secret is its scarcity; every game carries the sense that it is now or never, do or die, once in a lifetime. It is a competition of a different order, a blockbuster in a world of soaps, and one that offers something that most leagues are now far too stratified, far too hierarchical to provide on a regular basis. Every World Cup game has an air not just of jeopardy, but of balance, too. The gap between the strong and the (allegedly) weak is not quite such a chasm has it has been allowed to become in domestic soccer. The World Cup offers regular viewers a dash of something they do not get — but may secretly want — from their more ordinary diet.That is not to say, of course, that the Premier League, and the rest of Europe’s major competitions, will trudge reluctantly to a conclusion. The stadiums will be full on Boxing Day, because that is what lots of people do on Boxing Day. There are still plentiful stories to transfix fans around Europe: Arsenal and Napoli, genuine outsiders, competing for championships; the ongoing crisis at Barcelona; Liverpool and Manchester United trying to attract new investment, in the wake of the rise of Newcastle United; Chelsea’s attempts to buy every player in existence. In February, the Champions League will be back, too, which means we all have at least three remarkable Real Madrid comebacks to admire.To ask fans to pick up with those plot lines so soon, though, feels just a little like a misstep. It invites a contrast that, unusually, is not especially flattering for the Premier League, in particular, and risks casting the flaws in European domestic soccer in a rather sharper light than it might like. It will be eight days since what may well come to be regarded as the best soccer game of all time. It is asking a lot of Everton and Wolves to match that standard. Just because you always play on Boxing Day does not, in fact, mean you should.Up Next: A BreakAfter a World Cup that can, I think, be fairly described as intense, I’m going to allow myself a one-week break from the newsletter over the holiday period. Think of it as The Times taking the Serie A approach to life, and coming back, fully refreshed, in early January. We already have a month’s worth of correspondence that has gone unattended, but if you have any questions, or thoughts, or observations that you would like to throw into the mix, they’d be more than welcome: Send them along to askrory@nytimes.com.And if you don’t have any thoughts and would prefer to relax over the next few days, that’s fine, too. I will be endeavoring to have as few thoughts as possible. I hope that those of you who celebrate enjoy the time with family, or friends, or people you know from Twitter, and I hope that those of you who do not choose to celebrate have a wonderful time, too.All the best,Rory More

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      81 Minutes in, Two Big Goals and One Big Rewrite

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      The Times’s chief soccer correspondent hoped for a “boring” World Cup final. He didn’t get one.DOHA, Qatar — Everything was going swimmingly, right up to the point that my editor — sitting to my left in the cavernous bowl of Lusail Stadium, a soccer arena so vast that the sound from the stand opposite ours seemed to arrive on a satellite delay — turned to me and threw seven casual, careless words out into the universe. “We kind of need France to score.”It’s hard to overstate the scale of a World Cup final. Every one is four years in the making. Every one sends millions of people to the streets in celebration, and millions more back to their homes in sorrow and regret. It is one of the most-watched events on the planet. It is, by some distance, the biggest occasion sport has to offer.So, as a journalist enjoying the honor of covering the 2022 World Cup final in Qatar, at least part of you hopes that it is intensely boring. Not devoid of action. Not the angst-ridden anticlimax that happens more often than not, in which both teams retreat into their shells, the pain of losing far more concerning than the euphoria of winning.No, the perfect World Cup final — as the person who has to have several hundred cogent words, spelled correctly, bound by what might pass as some sort of thematic thread, ready to publish as soon as the final whistle blows — is one in which one team has the game all but won with a quarter of an hour to spare.Which is, as it happens, exactly what we had on Sunday. It was at roughly that point when my editor, Andy Das, decided that what Argentina and France had offered so far wasn’t quite entertaining enough for him. He wanted, apparently, a little drama.There is just one aspect of being a sportswriter that seems to make my wife, children and relatives accept my entreaties that it is a proper job, rather than, and this is a direct quote from my wife, “talking to your friends all day” — the part in which you have to compress everything that happens in a game, all of the content and the context and the consequences, into about a thousand words.Oh, and you have to do it late at night. And within a few minutes, or at most an hour, of the game ending.The truth is, though, that most of the time there is nothing nerve-racking about writing live. I spent a rather pleasant portion of this spring in Madrid, watching Real Madrid stage a series of ridiculous comebacks on its way to the Champions League title. Each one was just a little more absurd than the last. One night, Real Madrid scored in the 90th and the 91st minutes, going from what would have been elimination to the most remarkable success, all in the blink of an eye.No problem: The more cinematic a game feels, the less thinking there is to do as a journalist. That’s part of the glory of sport. There are plenty of times when the story tells itself; we’re just there to transcribe it.World Cup finals are different. You never know how many you will have the chance to cover. And there was only ever going to be one chance to write about this World Cup final, Lionel Messi’s last shot at the ultimate prize, his opportunity to do what Diego Maradona did in 1986 and deliver the World Cup to Argentina.That is one you want to get right, and it is much easier to get right if you have at least a little time to think.Messi had done all he could: Argentina had established a two-goal lead at halftime and looked impressively serene for much of the second half. France seemed resigned to its fate. The shapes were starting to fall into place in my head: a portrait of Messi in those final few minutes, a man whose dream is about to come true. That could work.And then, well, Andy’s hope came to pass: Kylian Mbappé exploded Argentina’s advantage in two minutes. France might have won it inside 90 minutes; Argentina seemed to have won it in extra time. Then Mbappé intervened again. Both teams had glorious, glaring chances to claim the trophy in the last few seconds before the penalty shootout. But of course, only one did: Argentina.It feels like hyperbole — and maybe it is — but the final 40 minutes of the 2022 World Cup final, between Mbappé’s first goal and Gonzalo Montiel’s game-winning penalty shot, might be not only the greatest final in history but the best 40 minutes of soccer, too, the pinnacle of a sport that has become a cultural phenomenon.The write-up would have been easier had the game ended at 2-0, as it looked like it would for so long. Less stressful for me, less mind-blowing. It would not, though, have been nearly so much fun. More

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      Shakhtar Donetsk Claims FIFA Rule Is Hurting Teams From Ukraine

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      A hearing will be held over a rule that allows overseas players to suspend their contracts with Ukrainian teams during the Russian invasion.LONDON — Fresh from the conclusion of the men’s World Cup, soccer’s governing body FIFA faces a legal challenge of its rule that allowed players to immediately leave Ukrainian club teams because of Russia’s invasion.On Thursday, sport’s top court will begin hearing a more than $40 million claim for damages brought against FIFA by a top Ukrainian soccer team.The hearing at the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne, Switzerland, centers on a temporary rule by FIFA that allowed overseas players on Ukrainian teams to suspend their contracts and sign for teams elsewhere. The Ukrainian league stopped play for about six months, then restarted in August.Shakhtar Donetsk, the club that is bringing the claim, has lost several of its top players without receiving a transfer fee under a regulation first implemented in March. The system is slated to run at least until June next year.Under FIFA’s emergency statute change, the suspension is only temporary, meaning that many players will eventually have to return to their host teams in Ukraine as their contracts continue to run. But with little sign of the war ending, many of those players may be out of contract by the time FIFA lifts the temporary order, which would enable them to leave as free agents.The State of the WarA Botched Invasion: Secret battle plans, intercepts and interviews with soldiers and Kremlin confidants offer new insight into the stunning failures of Russia’s military in Ukraine.A New Russian Offensive? A top adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukraine is bracing for the possibility that Russia will sharply escalate the war in a winter offensive that could include mass infantry attacks.Putin in Belarus: President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia made a rare visit to Belarus, raising concerns in Ukraine that Russian forces could aim again at Kyiv, which is near the Belarusian border.The War in the Skies: As Ukrainian officials warn of a new Russian ground offensive, waves of Russian missiles continue to batter Ukraine’s infrastructure. The attacks are leaving a trail of destruction and grief.“We want fairness and justice,” Sergei Palkin, Shakhtar’s chief executive, told The New York Times. “On one side FIFA protects players but it should also protect clubs.”FIFA did not respond to a message seeking comment.Shakhtar has seen millions of dollars’ worth of talent leave for nothing since the invasion started, losing a crucial source of revenue it requires to balance its books. Last summer, it could only watch as top players moved without fees to teams in England’s Premier League, historically a lucrative market for Shakhtar, and also to France’s top division.“Two days before FIFA made the announcement, we almost had a contract on the table: we were to sign the next day,” Palkin said of one high value sale that was scuttled. The club pulled out from the talks, he added, learning it could instead register the same player for free.To make matters worse, no special provisions have been put in place for Ukrainian teams whose finances have been crushed by the ongoing war. The league was initially suspended before restarting without fans, even as the war continues. Several matches have been suspended by air raid sirens, with players and officials forced to take cover in shelters.Shakhtar and the other Ukrainian teams are still required to pay money owed to teams outside the country, including for players that have been allowed to suspend their contracts.Palkin described an example of one situation in which the team agreed to sign a player from an Italian team just before the Russian invasion. The player never set foot in Ukraine and was allowed to move elsewhere, leaving Shakthar on the hook for about $9 million. It asked his former team to scrap the deal and to sell him elsewhere, but those talks floundered. Shakhtar has balked at the payment, Palkin said, and the club, which he declined to name, is asking FIFA to punish Shakhtar.Palkin said efforts to come to an arrangement with FIFA have largely been met with silence. Multiple Ukrainian teams have asked the governing body to suspend their obligations to other clubs until normal operations can be established. He also suggested FIFA, which announced it had made $7.5 billion from the World Cup in Qatar, could also establish “a reparation fund” for Ukrainian teams.Shakhtar, which is owned by the billionaire Rinat Akhmetov, has the highest payroll among Ukrainian teams. But it is also benefiting from playing in the Champions League, Europe’s top club competition. Its home games are played across the border in Poland and have provided a lucrative — and much needed — financial boost, as well as providing a platform for its domestically reared talent, which, unlike foreign players, are not able to suspend their contracts.That has allowed Palkin to try and negotiate player sales ahead of the opening of the midseason European player trading window next month. He attended meetings in London recently with English clubs interested in signing forward Mykhailo Mudryk, 21, who is considered to be one of European soccer’s biggest emerging talents.Palkin said he is conscious of teams looking to take advantage of his team’s situation and is unwilling to be forced to sell for a below-market price despite the ongoing hardship. That means Mudryk could remain with Shakhtar until next summer’s off-season, a time when the biggest trades are typically made. “It’s quite a long negotiation process,” he said.The Ukrainian league is currently on break for the winter and is scheduled to restart in March. By then, there should be a resolution in Shakhtar’s case against FIFA.“We want to sit together with all the stakeholders and work out a plan,” Palkin said. “And we want fairness and justice.” More

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      Qatar Got the World Cup It Wanted

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      DOHA, Qatar — In the end, Qatar got what it wanted.The tiny desert state, a thumb-shaped peninsula, craved nothing more than to be better known, to be a player on the world stage, when in 2009 it launched what seemed like an improbable bid to stage the men’s soccer World Cup, the most popular sporting event on earth. Hosting the tournament has cost more than anyone could have imagined — in treasure, in time, in lives.But on Sunday night, as the fireworks filled the sky above Lusail, as the Argentina fans sang and their star, Lionel Messi, beamed while clasping a trophy he had waited a lifetime to touch, everyone knew Qatar.The spectacular denouement — a dream final pitting Argentina against France; a first World Cup title for Messi, the world’s best player; a pulsating match settled after six goals and a penalty shootout — made sure of that. And as if to make sure, to put the nation’s final imprint on the first World Cup in the Middle East, Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, stopped a beaming Messi as he made his way to collect the biggest trophy in the sport and pulled him back. There was one more thing that needed to be done.He pulled out a golden fringed bisht, the black cloak worn in the Gulf for special occasions, and wrapped it around Messi’s shoulders before handing over the 18-karat gold trophy.The celebration ended a tumultuous decade for a tournament awarded in a bribery scandal; stained by claims of human rights abuses and the deaths and injuries suffered by the migrant workers hired to build Qatar’s $200 billion World Cup; and shadowed by controversial decisions on everything from alcohol to armbands.Fireworks went off at Lusail Stadium after Argentina was presented the World Cup trophy after its win.Robert Cianflone/Getty ImagesYet for one month Qatar has been the center of the world, pulling off a feat none of its neighbors in the Arab world had managed to achieve, one that at times had seemed unthinkable in the years since Sepp Blatter, the former FIFA president, made the stunning announcement inside a Zurich conference hall on Dec. 2, 2010, that Qatar would host the 2022 World Cup.It is improbable the sport will see such an unlikely host again soon. Qatar was perhaps among the most ill-suited hosts for a tournament of the scale of the World Cup, a country so lacking in stadiums and infrastructure and history that its bid was labeled “high risk” by FIFA’s own evaluators. But it took advantage of the one commodity it had in plentiful supply: money.Backed by seemingly bottomless financial resources to fuel its ambitions, Qatar embarked on a project that required nothing less than the building, or rebuilding, of its entire country in service to a monthlong soccer tournament. Those billions were spent within its borders — seven new stadiums were constructed and other major infrastructure projects were completed at enormous financial and human cost. But when that was not enough, it spent lavishly outside its boundaries, too, acquiring sports teams and sports rights worth billions of dollars, and hiring sports stars and celebrities to support its cause.And all that was on display Sunday. By the time the final game was played in the $1 billion Lusail Stadium, Qatar could not lose. The game was being shown across the Middle East on beIN Sports, a sports broadcasting behemoth set up in the aftermath of Qatar’s winning the World Cup hosting rights. It also could lay claim to the two best players on the field, Argentina’s Messi and the French star Kylian Mbappé, both of whom are under contract to the Qatar-owned French club Paris St.-Germain.Mbappé, who had scored the first hat trick in a final in over a half-century, finished the game sitting on the grass, consoled by President Emmanuel Macron of France, an invited guest of the emir, as Argentina’s players danced in celebration all around him.Despite scoring a hat trick in the final game, Kylian Mbappé of France finished the tournament dejected on his team’s bench.Carl Recine/ReutersThe competition delivered compelling — and sometimes troubling — story lines from the outset, with the intensely political opening at Al Bayt Stadium, an enormous venue designed to look like a Bedouin tent. That night, Qatar’s emir had sat side by side with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, less than three years after the latter had led a punishing blockade of Qatar.For a month, deals were discussed and alliances were made. Qatar’s team was not a factor in its World Cup debut; it lost all three of its games, exiting the competition with the worst performance of any host in the competition’s history.There would also be other challenges, some of Qatar’s own making, like a sudden prohibition on the sale of alcohol within the stadium perimeters only two days before that first game — a last-minute decision that left Budweiser, a longtime sponsor of soccer’s world governing body, FIFA, to fume on the sideline.On the tournament’s second day, FIFA crushed a campaign by a group of European teams to wear an armband to promote inclusivity, part of efforts promised to campaign groups and critics in their home countries, and then Qatar quashed efforts by Iranian fans to highlight ongoing protests in their country.But on the field, the competition delivered. There were great goals and great games, stunning upsets and an abundance of surprising score lines that created new heroes, most notably in the Arab world.First came Saudi Arabia, which can now lay claim to having beaten the World Cup champion in the group stage. Morocco, which had only once reached the knockout stage, became the first African team to advance to the semifinals, pulling off a succession of barely believable victories over European soccer heavyweights: Belgium, Spain and then Cristiano Ronaldo’s Portugal.Those results sparked celebration across the Arab world and in a handful of major European capitals, while also providing a platform for fans in Qatar to promote the Palestinian cause, the one intrusion of politics that Qatari officials did nothing to discourage.Morocco became the first African team to reach the semifinals of the World Cup in the tournament’s history.Kirill Kudryavtsev/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIn the stands, the backdrop was a curious one, with several games appearing short of supporters and then mysteriously filling up in the minutes after kickoff, when gates were opened to grant spectators — many of them the South Asian migrants — entry free of charge. The true number of paying spectators is unlikely to ever be known, their empty seats filled by thousands of the same laborers and migrants who had built the stadium and the country, and who kept it running during the World Cup.That group, largely drawn from countries like India, Bangladesh and Nepal, was the most visible face of Qatar to the estimated one million visitors who traveled to the tournament. They worked as volunteers at stadiums, served the food and manned the metro stations, buffed the marble floors and shined the hand rails and door knobs at the scores of newly built hotels and apartment complexes.By the end of the tournament, most of those fans had gone, leaving the Argentines — an estimated temporary population of 40,000 — to provide the sonic backdrop to the final game. Dressed in sky blue and white stripes, they converged on the Lusail Stadium, creating the type of authentic World Cup atmosphere — bouncing and singing throughout 120 minutes of play, and then long afterward — that no amount of Qatari wealth could buy.They had gotten exactly what they wanted from the World Cup. And so did Qatar.Lionel Messi was hoisted on his teammates’ shoulders after Argentina’s victory.Matthias Hangst/Getty Images More

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      Behind Argentina’s World Cup Magic, an Army of Witches

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      Magalí Martínez knew something was off: The seemingly invincible soccer star Lionel Messi was scuffling on the soccer pitch. To her, it looked like he was afflicted with a supernatural curse that has roots in different cultures across history, the “evil eye.”So Martínez, a self-proclaimed witch and part-time babysitter, got to work. She focused intensely on Messi, began repeating a prayer and drizzled a bit of oil into a bowl of water. If the oil remained dispersed, he was safe. If it collected in the middle, he was cursed.“It came together like a magnet,” she said. “I knew I wouldn’t be able to cure him alone.”She went to Twitter and called on her fellow witches across Argentina. “Evil-eye healing sisters, Messi is very affected,” she said. “I need your help.”A thousand people shared her tweet, with many saying they, too, were witches and would work to protect Argentina’s golden boy.Argentina has not lost since.The bookkeepers have set their odds, gamblers have placed their bets and the experts have made their picks for Sunday’s World Cup final between Argentina and France, but their analysis of the matchup — focused on just the 22 players on the field — might not be considering a wild card: Argentina’s army of witches.Witches in Argentina have formed groups to give their soccer team a magic boost ever since the team’s first loss in the World Cup.Anita Pouchard Serra for The New York TimesIn recent weeks, hundreds, if not thousands of Argentine women who call themselves “brujas,” or witches, have taken up arms — in the form of prayers, altars, candles, amulets and burning sage — to protect their nation’s beloved soccer team in its quest to secure a third World Cup title and its first in 36 years.“We think of ourselves as agents that, from love, can take care, protect and sow happiness,” said Rocío Cabral Menna, 27, a witch and high-school teacher in Messi’s hometown, Rosario, who burns a bay leaf inscribed with her predicted score in a ceremony before each match. The players are competing on the field, she said, and at home, “the witches are taking care of them.”The trend caught fire after Argentina’s shocking loss to Saudi Arabia in the opening match, causing Argentines to search for any way to help the team on which this nation of 47 million has pitted its hopes.After that match, several witches started a WhatsApp group to instruct other witches on how to help the national team. They called it the Argentine Association of Witches, or La Brujineta, a play on “bruja” and “La Scaloneta,” Argentina’s nickname for its national team.“I thought there were going to be 10 people at most,” said the group’s founder, Antonella Spadafora, 23, a witch who runs a convenience store in a city in northwest Argentina. Within days, more than 300 people had joined the group. Last week, there was so much demand that they started a Twitter account. It has gained 25,000 followers in seven days.“We got tired of being closet witches,” said Andrea Maciel, 28, a witch and graphic designer in Buenos Aires who now helps manage the group.The witches said their main focus is to use rituals to absorb negative energy from Argentina’s players and exchange it with good energy. That, however, leaves them exhausted.Rocío Cabral Menna is a witch, poet and literature professor in Rosario, Argentina, the hometown of Lionel Messi.Sebastián López Brach for The New York TimesCabral Menna works with tarot cards and candles to help Argentina’s team.Sebastián López Brach for The New York Times“Headaches, dizziness, vomiting, muscle pain,” Spadafora said. “We are absorbing all the bad vibes,” she added. “It wears you down a lot, because these are very public figures who have so much negative energy from other people.”So, to divide the burden, the group leaders now split the witches into groups before every match, each focused on protecting a certain player.While many of the witches said they are working to look after Messi and his teammates, others are attempting to cast spells on opposing players, particularly the goalkeepers. One ritual involves freezing a slip of paper with the name of a player on it, saying a curse and then burning the frozen paper just before the match.But the Brujineta group warned that trying to curse France could backfire, particularly because of the team’s star forward, Kylian Mbappé.“We do not recommend freezing France, as their players are protected by dark entities and the energy can bounce back!!” the group announced on Twitter on Wednesday. “We saw very dark things in the French team and especially in Mbappé. Please share!!!”The witches focused on the World Cup represent a wide variety of occult disciplines, more New Age than ancient and Indigenous. Practices include black magic, white magic, Wicca, Reiki, Tarot, astrology, and healers of the evil eye and other ailments.Some women said they were born with special abilities, while others said they developed their skills through study. Several said they began practicing witchcraft as part of a growing feminist movement in Argentina that began in 2018 with the fight for legal abortion.“I think we all have magic inside,” said Cabral Menna.But the witches are far from the only Argentines trying to help their team in the supernatural realm. On game days, many more Argentines have been practicing some sort of cábala, or superstition designed to avoid causing any bad luck to their team. The cábalas often involve people sticking to the exact same routine if the team is winning, including where they watch the game, with whom, in what clothes, at what volume and on which channel.Jesica Fernandez Bruera, an astrologer in Rosario.Sebastián López Brach for The New York TimesDuring Argentina’s matches, Fernandez performs several rituals, such as burning laurel leaves.Sebastián López Brach for The New York TimesThe practice is so mainstream that millions of Argentines likely practice some sort of cábala, a word that derives from kabbalah, a Jewish mystical tradition. Cábalas have been especially pronounced this year after Argentina’s loss in its opening match.Adrián Coria, Messi’s childhood coach in Rosario and later on the national team, said that he watched the first loss with his family in his living room. Then his wife and daughter sent him to a small cabin in the backyard for the second match. “Alone,” he said. He has since watched the rest of the World Cup there.Cabral Menna, the witch from Rosario, said she and her mother watched Argentina’s first victory in her mother’s bedroom. “It’s the only part of the house without air conditioning,” she said. “It’s very hot. But we’re not going to move.”And Sergio Duri, the owner of a restaurant in Rosario with Messi’s signature on the wall, said he now watches the matches in his kitchen with one dachshund, Omar, while his wife watches them in their bedroom with the other dachshund, Dulce. “If this comes out, everybody will know that we’re all completely crazy,” he said. “But these are cábalas, you know?”The players are also practicing cábalas. Alejandro Gómez, Leandro Paredes and Rodrigo de Paul, three midfielders, have taken to walking around the pitch an hour before kickoff while chewing candy, a tradition they started last year when Argentina won the Copa América, South America’s premier soccer tournament.During Argentina’s matches, Maia Morosano performs rituals to lead to a win, such as burning certain herbs.Sebastián López Brach for The New York TimesMorosano, who is from Rosario, is also a poet.Sebastián López Brach for The New York TimesMorosano casting spells for the national team.Sebastián López Brach for The New York TimesSo now the question for the witches is: What will happen on Sunday?“We don’t want to give information as if we have the absolute last word,” Spadafora said. “But obviously we have started working, and obviously we have checked with most of the means at our disposal — esoteric means, for example, pendulums, Tarot, all the divination methods — and it indicates that Argentina is going to win.”Azucena Agüero Blanch, a 72-year old professional fortune-teller once consulted by former President Carlos Menem, has also explained that she is working with magical stones to ensure an Argentina victory. “Many people who are pushing for Argentina to win have called on me to work on this,” she told an Argentine newspaper.On Friday night, Martínez was in her candlelit home in Buenos Aires wearing a robe covered in tigers and lighting candles at an altar that included burned sandalwood; Ganesha, the elephant-headed Hindu god; and a photo of Diego Maradona, the late Argentine soccer star who is something like a deity to many in this country.Martínez said she has a series of methods to protect the national team, including a practice that involves swinging a pendulum, or a wooden cylinder on a string, above a player’s jersey number and then burning cotton doused with a mistletoe tincture. She said she follows the news for updates about players’ ailments and then uses the pendulum to help alleviate them. “The pendulum is the most powerful tool I have,” she explained.She said she has also had psychic moments during matches. During Argentina’s match against Australia on Dec. 3, she said she had a vision of the Argentine forward Julián Álvarez celebrating a goal.At 5:13 p.m., she tweeted: “Julian Alvarez I want your goal 🕯👁🕯👁🕯.”Four minutes later, Álvarez scored.Tarot sets used by Violeta Parisi, a witch in Buenos Aires.Anita Pouchard Serra for The New York TimesParisi, 24, is one of the hundreds of witches across the country practicing magic to help their national team.Anita Pouchard Serra for The New York TimesAn altar in Parisi’s bedroom.Anita Pouchard Serra for The New York TimesNatalie Alcoba contributed reporting. More

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      Kylian Mbappé Is Ready to Make Messi’s Moment His Own

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      The France and Argentina stars are teammates at Qatar-owned Paris St.-Germain. But when they collide in the World Cup final, both have much to gain, and a lot to lose.DOHA, Qatar — In those early months of the season, before anything was decided, the superstars of Paris St.-Germain mostly talked about what they could win together.The French championship was surely viewed as a formality; P.S.G. these days always seems to win that title. The Champions League was seen as a bigger prize; the team, assembled with the outlay of vast quantities of Qatar’s considerable wealth, had never won it.But in the locker room at Paris St.-Germain’s training facility, the team’s three headliners — the star forwards Neymar of Brazil, Kylian Mbappé of France and Lionel Messi of Argentina — also had another trophy on their minds. As they exchanged gentle ribbing and regular banter inside the aging locker room at Camp des Loges, a former French military camp surrounded by forest on the outskirts of Paris, all of them knew the World Cup was coming, and all of them desperately wanted to win it.“Everybody defends his country,” Mbappé said, laughing as he described the exchanges during an interview at The New York Times’s Manhattan office this summer. “But we laugh a lot. We’re gonna say: ‘Yeah, my country’s gonna win. We’re gonna beat you. No, we are gonna beat you.’”Mbappé in October with his Paris St.-Germain teammates Lionel Messi and Neymar. Geoffroy Van Der Hasselt/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBut now what for months served as background chatter, a way for top athletes to blow off steam, has suddenly become very real.Neymar has already left the conversation, and the World Cup. But Mbappé and Messi are safely through to Sunday’s final at the stadium in Lusail. Messi, who has said he is playing his final World Cup, will be seeking to claim the only prize that has eluded him in a glittering career. Mbappé is after a different honor: He can become a double World Cup winner if France wins on Sunday, repeating a feat last achieved by the Brazil teams of Pelé in 1958 and ’62.Mbappé had already written his name alongside Pelé’s four years ago in Russia, when he joined the Brazilian as the only teenagers to score in a World Cup final. His stunning run of form then, not only the goals but the unshakable confidence he showed in helping to deliver France’s title, elevated his status to genuine superstar overnight.In Qatar, Mbappé could no longer have the comfort of being the coming man, someone who might emerge from the shadows. Excellence, he knew, would be expected.“It’s different because I’m a different player,” he said of his second World Cup. “When I arrived in my first World Cup, I was a young teenager. I was a young guy. Everybody in the world didn’t know me well. I was a big player of P.S.G. but not really famous around the world. Now it is different. Everybody knows me — the pressure is different.”So far, Mbappe appears to have handled that pressure.He and Messi are tied in the race to be the tournament’s top scorer, with five goals each. While he has not always been at his very best, including curiously quiet stretches against both England and Morocco in the knockout round, Mbappé has regularly shown glimpses of the pace and explosiveness that will leave little doubt that he carries on his shoulders France’s chances of conquering Argentina, and Messi.“For me it is the biggest thing in world football,” Mbappé said. “Because when you talk about football, you have the World Cup in your mind. Because this is the only competition that everybody watches. You don’t need to love football to watch the World Cup.”Franck Fife/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMbappé helped usher Argentina out of the 2018 World Cup, at top, and beat Australia at this one.Issei Kato/ReutersFrance saw off Raheem Sterling and England in the quarterfinals, and Morocco in a taut semifinal.Elsa/Getty ImagesThe mass appeal will only be heightened on Sunday. The final’s predominant story line — Messi’s final shot at the one trophy he craves more than any other — has in part cast Mbappé as a foil in the narrative, the key man who could keep Messi from getting his Hollywood ending.The two have been teammates for more than a year now, the young contender and the aging star, and it has sometimes felt like a bumpy accommodation. As if sharing a field, let alone one ball, might not be enough to assuage the collections of talent — and egos — assembled by P.S.G., Mbappe said the noise that sometimes surrounds those relationships is not always an accurate reflection of reality.After all, he said, like any other soccer-loving child, he would have dreamed of lining up alongside Messi and Neymar.“I think the problem comes from outside because everybody asks questions they don’t have answers for, so they put some problem between us,” Mbappé said in the summer, amid whispers he had demanded control as the price for his re-signing with P.S.G. News reports about discord, he said, were untrue. “We have a great relationship.”But it is hard not to see that relationship tested on Sunday. One of them will leave the field a champion, the other with his heart broken.Messi’s ability to alter games all by himself could be France’s biggest hurdle in Sunday’s final. Catherine Ivill/Getty ImagesMbappé said he knew what to expect. Able to study Messi’s game at such close quarters at his club for more than a year, he said that he has been in awe of the Argentine’s ability to pick the right move, to play the right pass, to measure the moments requiring his intervention with perfect timing, no matter the chaos around him.“He is calm, always calm,” Mbappé said of Messi. “Calm with the ball. Calm before he shoots. He always has control of everything he does.“It’s really impressive because sometimes there is big pressure with the game and with the fans, with the people. But he is always calm to make the right decision in the right moments.”Sunday, too, may be decided in one moment, by one moment of genius from Messi or, just maybe, a winning goal from Mbappé.Outside Al Bayt Stadium earlier this week, in the early hours as Wednesday turned into Thursday after France defeated Morocco in a semifinal match, there was a sense of relief as well as pressure in Mbappé’s camp. Fayza Lamari, his mother and a cornerstone of his relentless march to stardom from the earliest days, emerged from the arena near the V.I.P. entrance yelling, “We won! We won!” as she made her way toward the exit.She was not the only one smiling. Qatar, which has spent more than $200 billion on staging the World Cup, now has its dream final. In a few weeks it will welcome both Messi and Mbappé to P.S.G., reuniting its two biggest stars on the Qatari-owned club after they have squared off in a showcase final in Lusail.For Qatar, the question of Messi or Mbappé does not really matter. It has already won.Carl Recine/Reuters More

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      It’s the World Cup Souvenir Everyone Wants. Getting One Is the Hard Part.

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      A game-worn Lionel Messi jersey is the most coveted collectible in Qatar. Good luck getting hold of the one (or two) he wears in the World Cup final.DOHA, Qatar — There is something about the idea of obtaining one of Lionel Messi’s jerseys that makes even the most experienced, sober opponents revert to heartfelt, eager fandom. They pursue him at halftime, surround him at the final whistle. Teammates squabble among themselves for the right to claim a precious memento of their brush with greatness.Other than a World Cup winners’ medal, there will be no prize more sought-after when France meets Messi’s Argentina at Lusail Iconic Stadium on Sunday than the 35-year-old Messi’s jersey. It is, after all, likely to be the ultimate limited edition collectible, one of only four — at most — in existence: a jersey worn by the world’s finest player in the world’s biggest game.The bad news is that it is unlikely to be unavailable, to anyone.Quite how many genuine, match-worn Messi jerseys are in existence is difficult to pinpoint. Argentina’s win against Croatia in Tuesday’s semifinal was, officially, the 1,002nd appearance, for club and country, of Messi’s senior career. That does not mean, though, that there are 1,002 Messi jerseys. The true figure, in fact, is more likely to be closer to double that.Many players, after all, choose to use two jerseys during games, switching into a fresh number at halftime. Whether Messi does that in every match is not clear, but he has certainly done so on occasion. In 2012, for example, executives at the German team Bayer Leverkusen had to admonish two players for arguing over who would get Messi’s shirt at halftime.That there may be several thousand Messi jerseys in circulation that contain trace amounts of his sweat, though, does not mean they are any easier to obtain. Messi maintains a strict protocol on swapping jerseys. His first rule is: He never initiates the exchange. He has only ever made one exception. Early in his career, he approached Zinedine Zidane, then with Real Madrid, and asked if they might exchange jerseys. Other than that, he has said, “I don’t ask for shirts.”His second rule: He would rather swap with another Argentine. In 2017, he posted a photo to his Instagram account of the room in his Barcelona home that he had devoted to a display of all the jerseys he has collected over the years, each of them impeccably arranged, immaculately presented.Many of them bear the names of some of his era’s brightest stars: Thierry Henry, Luis Suárez, Philipp Lahm, Iker Casillas. A majority, though, belong to his countrymen: not just his peers and friends, the likes of Ángel Di María, Sergio Agüero and Pablo Aimar — the player that Messi himself has described as his hero — but lesser lights, too: Chori Domínguez, Oscar Ustari and Tomás De Vincenti, all beneficiaries of his Argentina-first policy.“I got quite a few over the years,” said Maxi Rodríguez, a friend and former international teammate of Messi’s. “I played against him quite a lot when I was in Spain, when I was with Espanyol and Atlético Madrid. We never arranged it beforehand or talked about it. It was just whenever we had chance.”Rodríguez said that he had several Messi jerseys in his own display cases, though he slightly sheepishly admitted that he does not maintain his collection as fastidiously as Messi. Still, he is doing rather better than some players who swapped jerseys with the Argentine earlier in his career, before he became Messi.A Brief Guide to the 2022 World CupCard 1 of 9What is the World Cup? More

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      When World Cup Reality Isn’t What It Seems

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      LUSAIL, Qatar — Fatih pulls the car over, letting the engine idle, and reaches for his phone. He hurriedly swipes away the various ride-sharing apps he has open and scrolls through his WhatsApp chats with a practiced finger. He is searching for a group called “Brazil Fans Qatar.” This, he says, will explain everything.Last month, as teams started to arrive in Qatar ahead of the World Cup, several found guards of honor waiting for them at their hotels and training bases: groups of a few dozen fans, clad in national-team jerseys, waving national flags, carrying homemade banners and beating drums.In most circumstances, that would not be especially noteworthy. Here, though, it was impossible not to wonder.There had long been doubts about how many fans would attend the first World Cup in the Middle East, thanks to both practical concerns — the cost of spending weeks in Doha, the relative scarcity of alcohol — and ethical ones, centered on Qatar’s treatment of the migrant workers who had built the tournament, and its criminalization of homosexuality.Qatar, it had already emerged, had recruited several hundred “fan leaders” from across the world, paying for their flights and accommodations in exchange for their enthusiastic, public support. The suspicion ran that the groups waiting to welcome the teams, apparently wholly composed of South Asian men, were another arm of the same program.No, no, no, Fatih said, suddenly stopping the car. He is ordinarily “an accountant and a sales executive,” he said, but for the duration of the tournament he has set up — with permission — as a taxi service, too. Like most foreign workers here, he preferred not to use his last name out of fear of drawing unwanted attention from the country’s authorities.Fireworks and a full house before the United States played Iran.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesAfter a minute or so, he finds what he wants: a video from Kerala, his home state in India. It had been shot that day but had already been forwarded many times. It showed two groups of men, some carrying sticks, brawling in the center of a village. Half of them are wearing bright yellow Brazil jerseys. The others are in the distinctive sky blue and white of Argentina.“This happens every FIFA World Cup,” Fatih said. There are other fans whose loyalties lie with Portugal, or England, or Spain, he explained, but mostly it is Brazil and Argentina. The affiliations run deep. Fatih might change his club team, he said, but Brazil was nonnegotiable.It was fans like these, like him, who had greeted the teams in Doha: Keralans who live and work in Qatar and had been sufficiently enthused by the prospect of seeing these usually remote, distant stars in the flesh that many of them paid hundreds of dollars for tickets to games. Fatih himself was going to see Brazil play Cameroon, he said. Any cost was worth it.A Brief Guide to the 2022 World CupCard 1 of 9What is the World Cup? More