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      Morocco Gave Everything in the World Cup Semifinal. It Needed a Little More Against France.

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      AL KHOR, Qatar — The drums kept on beating. The whistles kept on shrieking. Morocco’s players kept on coming, again and again, their legs burning and their lungs heaving, as they raged against the dying of the light. At the end, Morocco had run out of road. At no point, not for a second, did it run out of fight.The World Cup, then, will culminate in the sort of blockbuster final that both FIFA, its organizer, and Qatar, its host, have craved: Lionel Messi’s Argentina, seeking to deliver arguably the finest player of all time his crowning glory, against Kylian Mbappé, his heir apparent, and France, aiming to become the first nation in half a century to retain the most coveted prize in sports. Today, Gianni Infantino feels very smug indeed.Regardless of which team emerges triumphant on Sunday, though, which story line is reverse-engineered as destiny, on some level this will always be Morocco’s World Cup, the one that made it a trailblazer, a record-breaker, a watermark that will not fade. From this point on, a whole slew of achievements will all be the first since Morocco.It was here that Morocco became the first team from the Arab world to make a World Cup quarterfinal. Then, a few days later, it was here that it became the first African team to extend its run all the way to the semifinals.That it could go no further, beaten by France, 2-0, in a breathless, furious game at Al Bayt, neither erases nor diminishes those feats. It does not alter the fact that it was in Qatar where Morocco proved to a “whole generation” that it could produce “miracles,” as its redoubtable goalkeeper, Yassine Bounou, put it. It was in Qatar that Morocco, according to its coach, Walid Regragui, redefined the limits of “what was possible.”A Brief Guide to the 2022 World CupCard 1 of 9What is the World Cup? More

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      Argentina’s Most Sacred World Cup Watch Party: Maradona’s Former Home

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      A Buenos Aires businessman bought Diego Maradona’s old house and has been opening it up for Argentina’s World Cup matches, meat included.BUENOS AIRES — Argentina had just punched its ticket to the World Cup final with a 3-0 victory over Croatia on Tuesday, but most Argentines at the party simply wanted to poke around this stranger’s house.There was a retiree taking selfies in a mirrored corner bar. A house cleaner hung out the window of a bare bedroom. A tattoo artist checked out a backed-up toilet upstairs. And a hotel owner who had brought his mother-in-law was wandering around barefoot.“When I entered, I started crying,” said Osvaldo Bonacchi, 52, an air-conditioner repairman, who was starting to tear up again on the spiral staircase leading to the carpeted attic, where someone said there used to be a sauna. He had lived nearby for 15 years, and always wondered what it was like inside.“To be here is a dream,” he said.The battered, three-story brick chalet in a quiet Buenos Aires neighborhood once belonged to the Argentine soccer hero Diego Maradona, and in this World Cup, it has become one of the hottest places in Argentina to watch a match.A local entrepreneur bought the house last month and has opened the doors for the past several games, paying for drinks and more than 1,000 pounds of meat for hundreds of friends, neighbors and strangers crowded around Maradona’s backyard pool to cheer on the national team.The bar in Maradona’s former home.Ariel Fernando García, the new owner of the home, with his daughters on what was once Maradona’s balcony.“We started letting people in, and then they collapsed and started crying,” the house’s new owner, Ariel Fernando García, 47, said of the first party. “For me, he was an extraterrestrial,” he said of Maradona. “No man has given more joy to Argentines.”Maradona died of a heart attack in 2020 at age 60 but remains one of Argentina’s biggest figures. His story of a poor Buenos Aires boy rising to become one of history’s greatest soccer players and the leader of Argentina’s 1986 World Cup championship team has made him a sort of deity in this nation of 46 million.In fact, the Church of Maradona is a legally recognized religion in Argentina, now entering its 25th year, that claims tens of thousands of members with branches around the world. Some Google searches will return a little box of questions that other people searched, starting with: “Is Diego Maradona a God?”A Brief Guide to the 2022 World CupCard 1 of 9What is the World Cup? More

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      Théo Hernandez, France’s Goalscorer, Stepped Up After His Brother, Lucas, Fell

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      Most of the injuries that have befallen France, that sapped its team of world-class stars like N’Golo Kante and Paul Pogba, occurred before Les Bleus began playing in Qatar. But one, a torn knee ligament for Lucas Hernandez, came early in their first match against Australia.The man who replaced him at left-back just scored France’s first goal in its World Cup semifinal against Morocco. His name his Théo Hernandez, and he is Lucas’s younger brother.In the fifth minute, Théo Hernandez, who plays for A.C. Milan, corralled a loose ball near the goal post and showed tremendous poise and agility in getting on top of the ball with his left foot, sneaking it past the Moroccan goalkeeper, Bono.An absolute dream start for France 🇫🇷 pic.twitter.com/utpt5ysaTn— FOX Soccer (@FOXSoccer) December 14, 2022
      Théo Hernandez committed the foul Saturday late against England that led to what could have been a tying penalty; Harry Kane missed it. But today, he made up for that mistake with a goal that might lift France into its second consecutive final. More

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      Grant Wahl Died of a Burst Blood Vessel, His Family Says

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      An autopsy in New York showed that the journalist had a tear in the ascending aorta, a large vessel that carries blood from the heart.Grant Wahl, the celebrated soccer journalist who died suddenly last week at the World Cup in Qatar, had a rupture in a blood vessel leading from the heart, his family announced on Wednesday.His death resulted from a weakness in an artery wall called an aneurysm, which may balloon outward and then tear open. An autopsy conducted in New York revealed that Mr. Wahl, 49, experienced a catastrophic rupture in the ascending aorta, which carries oxygenated blood from the heart.The autopsy puts an end to rampant speculation that followed Mr. Wahl’s death. Posts on social media hinted at links to Covid vaccines or retaliation by the Qatari government for an article Mr. Wahl had written about immigrant deaths.Mr. Wahl’s wife, Dr. Celine Gounder, is a leading infectious disease physician who rose to prominence during the coronavirus pandemic and advised President Biden’s transition team on Covid-19. She and the rest of the family rejected, in particular, the speculation linking his death to vaccines, saying that it was especially insulting because of her work.He probably died instantly and did not feel pain, Dr. Gounder said in an interview on Tuesday. “I really do feel some relief in knowing what it was,” she said.Mr. Wahl had been sick with a cold for several days before collapsing, and had written in his newsletter and on Twitter that he felt his body was breaking down after weeks of poor sleep and long days covering the games.He had just turned 49 and was quite healthy, making his death even more of a shock to his friends, family and readers. The sniffles and other cold symptoms he had were most likely unrelated to the aneurysm, Dr. Gounder said.Until the autopsy, Dr. Gounder said, she had been worried that perhaps she could have prevented his death if they had talked more often while he was in Qatar or if she had been there with him.Mr. Wahl’s brother, Eric Wahl, initially said on social media that he suspected foul play and later suggested that his brother might have experienced a blood clot in his lungs. On Tuesday, Eric Wahl said that he no longer believed those were factors in his brother’s death.The autopsy found that Mr. Wahl had an ascending thoracic aortic aneurysm, a weakening of the blood vessel that often goes undetected. As the aneurysm grows, it may produce a cough, shortness of breath or chest pain, some of which the doctors consulted by Mr. Wahl in Qatar might have attributed to his cold and a possible case of bronchitis.In rare cases, the aneurysm can rupture and lead to death. Doctors are now exploring whether Mr. Wahl had Marfan syndrome, a risk factor for this type of aneurysm. He was tall and thin and had long arms, all of which can be signs of the genetic syndrome.Mr. Wahl joined Sports Illustrated in 1996 as a fact checker, a traditional entry route for young journalists, and wrote hundreds of articles on a variety of sports for the magazine over the next two decades.One early profile, a cover story on a teenage LeBron James in 2002, remained a touchstone for both writer and subject 20 years later. Mr. Wahl would occasionally reminisce about it to his 850,000 followers on Twitter, and Mr. James spoke about its meaning to him and his family while eulogizing the writer at a news conference and on social media over the weekend.But Mr. Wahl was best known for writing about soccer, which he began covering while he was a student reporter at Princeton University in the early 1990s. Through his books, tweets, podcasts and magazine articles, he became a guide of sorts for a generation of fans and readers just learning the game.He also used his profile and social-media megaphone to highlight the growth of women’s soccer, the breadth of corruption in soccer, human rights violations and gay rights.Mr. Wahl had worked at Sports Illustrated for more than 23 years when the magazine’s publisher abruptly fired him over a dispute about pandemic-related pay cuts. But he had a large following by then, and started an email newsletter and podcast that quickly became successful.In Qatar, Mr. Wahl was covering his eighth World Cup. He was in the press box in the closing minutes of the quarterfinal match between Argentina and the Netherlands when he collapsed.According to two New York Times journalists who were present, medical personnel tried to revive Mr. Wahl for about 20 minutes before he was transported to a hospital in Doha. He was pronounced dead at the hospital.Dr. Gounder’s relationships with the Biden administration and public health agencies, including the New York City health department, helped her bring the unembalmed body to the United States for the autopsy.Dr. Gounder said she wanted to ascertain the circumstances of her husband’s death in part to quell online speculation. “I wanted to make sure the conspiracy theories about his death were put to rest,” she said. More

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      What’s Powering Argentina at the World Cup? 1,100 Pounds of Yerba Mate.

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      The herbal drink is beloved by South American players, who have taken it with them around the world — including to Qatar.DOHA, Qatar — Yerba mate is not, to be fair, for everyone.A strong and often bitter herbal infusion brewed hot or cold from the leaves of a plant native to South America, yerba mate is popular in Paraguay, Uruguay, Brazil and Argentina. Some of the best soccer players in the world hail from that region and swear by it, and they have spread it around the world through their club teams. The World Cup in Qatar, though, raised some logistical and supply challenges, not least of which was: Where would devotees find yerba mate in the Gulf?So they came prepared. Brazil’s national team, which has a few mate drinkers, brought 26 pounds of it to Qatar, a team official said. Uruguay’s squad packed about 530 pounds. But it was Argentina, which will face Croatia in the semifinals on Tuesday fully expecting to extend its stay through Sunday’s final, that topped them all. To ensure that the roughly 75 members of its traveling party — players, coaches, trainers and the rest — would have a steady supply of a drink they consider essential, Argentina’s team hauled a whopping 1,100 pounds of yerba mate to Qatar.“It has caffeine,” Argentine midfielder Alexis Mac Allister said in Spanish while explaining why he consumed so much of the drink that some have likened to a stronger green tea. “But I drink it more than anything to bring us together.”A spokesman for Argentina’s national team, Nicolás Novello, said the team brought different types to suit everyone’s taste: yerba mate with stems (a milder taste), without stems (a stronger, more bitter taste) and with herbs (for other flavors). Observers said nearly everyone, including the team’s star, Lionel Messi, was drinking it; the team’s devotion to the drink was clear every time it unloaded its team bus, and after matches, a handful of players would carry out the traditional mate essentials: a cup made of a hollow gourd, its accompanying straw and a thermos of hot water.Drinking mate is so commonplace within the Argentine and Uruguayan teams, in particular, that the latter made the thermos, known as Botija in Spanish, its official mascot. A large blue mascot’s outfit even made it to Qatar, where it struggled to fit through the turnstiles of the metro system in Doha.Uruguay’s Botjia mascot had trouble making it through a turnstile in the metro subway system in Doha.Erin Schaff/The New York Times“When I played in Argentina, a nutritionist used to say mate hydrates you,” said Sebastián Driussi, a midfielder for Austin F.C. in Major League Soccer. Driussi represented Argentina at the youth level internationally and spent three years with the popular Argentine club River Plate. “I don’t know, but it’s like water for us. Before a game, in the locker room, everyone is drinking it all the time. There is no schedule or bad time to have mate. Us in Argentina, we say that mate makes friendships.”A Brief Guide to the 2022 World CupCard 1 of 9What is the World Cup? More

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      The Pundit Whisperer of Qatar’s beIN Sports World Cup Coverage

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      Qatar’s beIN Sports hired a host of retired soccer stars to bring authority to its World Cup coverage and a group of interpreters to render their words into Arabic. The toughest assignments go to one man.DOHA, Qatar — There is perhaps no one in the world who has paid closer attention to the diction and pronunciation of the former England soccer captain John Terry over the past month than Lassaad Tounakti, a 52-year-old Tunisian with a gift for languages, a passion for cologne and an accidental television career.For Tounakti, understanding the minute details of the way Terry speaks is no casual affair. His ability to understand Terry’s every utterance has been a vital part of one of the World Cup’s toughest, and least forgiving, man-to-man assignments: As the main interpreter for beIN Sports, Tounakti has since the start of the tournament served as the voice of Terry and other retired stars hired by BeIN as it has transmitted the tournament night after night to Arabic-speaking viewers across the Middle East and North Africa.It can seem, at times, like a Sisyphean task. BeIN Sports, the broadcaster based in Qatar, has devoted six channels to the World Cup, including two that are Arabic only. Each one is broadcasting tournament content for up to 18 hours a day. There are pregame shows, halftime chats and postgame panel discussions, but also sideline interviews, on-the-street cutaways and fan-zone appearances. Much of that programming is beamed out live to the world, and much of it involves a delicate live dance involving Arab hosts and guests and former soccer stars who do not speak a common language.Interpreting their words — quickly, precisely and live on the air — requires an extraordinary fluency in not only languages but soccer. For Tounakti, it means translating every word of Arabic into English in the ears of the former soccer stars before flicking a switch — literally and in his mind — and immediately rendering their thoughts, delivered in English, back into Arabic.Tounakti uses two buttons during broadcasts: E for English and A for Arabic.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesEvery voice is different. The English diction of Kaká, a World Cup-winning Brazilian, is different from that of the Dutch soccer great Ruud Gullit, and the nuances of their pronunciations are different from those of the former Germany captain Lothar Matthäus.Because of the sheer volume of coverage it is providing, beIN is employing four staff interpreters and supplementing them with freelancers for the World Cup. Most interpreters work in a rotation, but there are some accents, some ways of speaking, that require just a little bit more expert handling. Terry’s thick East London accent is one of those.“For the time being,” Tounakti said, “John Terry is mine.”Speaking to the WorldTounakti’s career as the Arabic voice of beIN’s imported experts was in many ways accidental. As a delegation from Qatar prepared to fly to Zurich in December 2010 to make its final pitch to host the 2022 World Cup, beIN realized it did not have an interpreter who spoke both French and English.Tounakti, a university professor with a doctorate in linguistics and experience interpreting for the country’s emir, was enlisted for the trip, which ended with his voice relaying the shocking news that Qatar had won the rights to bring the World Cup to the Middle East for the first time. “They say I am the guy that made 350 million people cry,” he said.In the decade since the vote, beIN, which is owned by the Qatari state, grew into one of the world’s biggest broadcasters, spending billions of dollars on sports rights every year and expanding into dozens of countries. Most of that expansion has been preparation for this moment: a month of televising the World Cup from Qatar.BeIN Sports has devoted six channels to the World Cup, including two that are Arabic only. Erin Schaff/The New York TimesWhile the 64 games have been a centerpiece of the coverage, a significant part of the network’s content has revolved around the high-profile guest commentators the company has hired at great expense to bring credibility, celebrity and commentary to its coverage.Last week, in the street separating two buildings in beIN’s complex in Doha, Peter Schmeichel, a former Denmark and Manchester United goalkeeper who is one of the company’s longtime analysts, arrived for an evening shift in the studio accompanied by Jermaine Jones, a German-born former U.S. midfielder.A Brief Guide to the 2022 World CupCard 1 of 9What is the World Cup? More

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      Croatia Is the World Cup Team That Refuses to Lose

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      Croatia, a nation of four million people, needs one more win to reach a second straight World Cup final. If it happens, it will probably come on penalties, and certainly after extra time.DOHA, Qatar — Zlatko Dalic knew that something had to change. Dalic, the coach of Croatia, was just not sure, at that precise moment, exactly what it was. Brazil was starting to ratchet up the pressure, its bright yellow jerseys pouring forward in waves. His Croatia team was scrabbling to repel the attacks. His players, he could see, were barely hanging on.His first instinct was that he needed new blood, fresh legs. In particular, his prized midfield — the timeless Luka Modric and his unflinching lieutenants, Marcelo Brozovic and Mateo Kovacic — seemed to have pushed itself beyond its limit. Perhaps, he and his staff wondered, an increase in energy might offset the unavoidable decrease in quality.In a break in play, Dalic summoned Modric, Croatia’s totemic captain, to the sideline. He was considering “replacing the midfield,” Dalic told him. What did he think? Dalic should have known the answer. Modric, at the age of 37, gave the idea the shortest shrift imaginable. Modric stayed on. He was there as Croatia held out for extra time. He was there as Bruno Petkovic scored a late equalizer to send the game to penalties. He was there to take, and score, the third spot-kick, the one that swept a country of fewer than four million people to the brink of a second successive World Cup semifinal.“This is Croats,” Dalic said. “They take it when it is most difficult.”Luka Modric and Croatia are one win from their second straight World Cup final.Gabriel Bouys/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThat indefatigability, that refusal to countenance defeat, has become Croatia’s calling card. On its run to the World Cup final in 2018 and to a semifinal against Argentina here, Croatia played five knockout games. All five went to extra time. Four of them went to penalties. Croatia won them all. It has become a team that does not so much beat its opponents as outlast them.“We know nobody likes to play against us,” defender Borna Sosa said as his teammates were still celebrating Friday’s victory against Brazil. “We have really good players and a really good mentality, and it is always really difficult to win against us. We are ready to go until the end.”A Brief Guide to the 2022 World CupCard 1 of 9What is the World Cup? More

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      These Soccer and World Cup Movies Have Big Goals

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      Soccer movies are often eclectic and at times unclassifiable, drawing from multiple continents and genres.Every four years, the World Cup offers something not unlike the movies: For a whole month, it stops time, enveloping its distant spectators in the electric-green glow of the screen.But there’s more to the “beautiful game” than balletic ball-moves and the cheek-gnawing suspense of gameplay characterized by low score count. Ladj Ly’s 2019 crime thriller, “Les Misérables,” set in the immigrant-populated underworld of the Parisian banlieues, paints it vividly: In the opening minutes, we’re plunged into the Champs-Élysées, where throngs of fans draped in red, white and blue celebrate France’s victory at the 2018 World Cup. The pulsing moment is one of communal exultation at odds with the film’s forthcoming depiction of a fractious multiethnic society.“The thing about football — the important thing about football — is that it is not just about football,” the English author Terry Pratchett wrote in the novel “Unseen Academicals.” This observation could very well apply to all sports built on mass followings and billion-dollar business deals, but soccer — a potent symbol of globalization heavy with historical baggage — is uniquely revealing: The game is a prism through which the ever-evolving world, and the interconnected fortunes of people from disparate parts of it, comes to light.No wonder soccer movies are often eclectic and at times unclassifiable, drawing from multiple continents and genres. Take John Huston’s World War II adventure drama “Escape to Victory.” Pelé, the legendary Brazilian striker, is joined by Sylvester Stallone, Michael Caine, and real-life professional footballers from across Europe and North and South America to play ball against Nazi rivals. And from Hong Kong, there’s Stephen Chow’s hit kung fu comedy “Shaolin Soccer,” a nod to the fast-growing popularity of soccer throughout Asia, released one year before the 2002 World Cup in Japan and South Korea. Not that soccer films are all about global cooperation and underdog badassery; other films poke fun at the game’s biggest icons. For this, see the brilliantly unhinged “Diamantino,” a surreal Portuguese spy movie spoof featuring a Cristiano Ronaldo look-alike who gets in the zone by imagining himself in a cotton-candy field surrounded by elephant-size Pomeranians.Stephen Chow in “Shaolin Soccer,” which he also directed.Miramax FilmsThe 2022 World Cup in Qatar, the first ever held in a Middle Eastern nation, has courted countless controversies, with the host country’s conservative traditions starkly at odds with the sport’s modern fandoms. FIFA and Qatar have been pelted with charges of corruption and bribery, but most harrowing, perhaps, are reports of the country’s exploitative use of migrant labor, resulting in the deaths of thousands of workers from primarily South Asian and African countries. The documentary “The Workers Cup” (2018) takes us to the labor camps erected on the outskirts of Doha, where we meet a handful of soccer-enthusiast workers who come to terms with the underpinnings of a brutal industry — the same one responsible for nurturing their own athletic dreams.Since the start of the tournament, fans and players have spoken out about the region’s thorny politics (including the criminalization of homosexuality) and religious practices. On this front, and on the matter of soccer’s ability to ease or exacerbate ethnic tensions, the documentary “Forever Pure” (2017) comes to mind. Directed by Maya Zinshtein, it traces one of the ugliest episodes in Israeli soccer, doubling as an exposé into what it sees as the country’s systemic racism. Consisting of interviews with the players, owners and fans of the Beitar Jerusalem Football Club, the documentary examines the reactions of these individuals against the addition of two Muslim players to the team — and the language of racial purity used to justify their opposition.Corneliu Porumboiu, right, in his documentary, “Infinite Football,” with Laurentiu Ginghina.Grasshopper FilmLess inflammatory but similarly illuminating are two documentaries that plumb political dimensions through intensely personal stories of soccer obsession — both by the Romanian auteur Corneliu Porumboiu. The first, “The Second Game,” features voice-over commentary from Porumboiu and his father as the two watch a 1988 match refereed by the elder Porumboiu between two of Romania’s leading squads. The game takes place one year before the revolution that toppled the country’s totalitarian leader, ‌Nicolae Ceausescu — a period in which Romanian soccer was openly a tool of political scheming; one team was associated with the military, the other with the secret police. At the same time, there’s the slightest hint of nostalgia as the two men look back on several players, considered part of Romania’s golden generation of soccer, who would eventually leave the country to play for more prestigious professional teams in Western Europe.The second film, “Infinite Football,” introduces us to a hobbling ex-footballer-turned-pencil-pusher with an elaborate plan to reinvent the rules of the game, to better prevent injuries like the one that ended his athletic career. It’s a parable for the fractured state of Romania itself through the lens of one man’s desperate attempt to fix what broke him.In the first week of this year’s tournament, members of the Iranian team refused to sing the national anthem before their game against England — a display of solidarity with an ongoing protest movement against Iran’s leadership, spurred by the killing of a young woman in police custody. The confluence of these events brings to mind one of the great soccer movies of the past twenty years, “Offside” (2007) by Jafar Panahi, the Iranian master currently imprisoned for his political beliefs. A pointed critique of the country’s misogynist strictures delivered at the pitch of a dark comedy, the film follows a group of women who have been caught disguising themselves as men to enter a Tehran stadium where a match will determine Iran’s qualification for the 2006 World Cup.Golnaz Farmani in “Offside.”Sony Pictures ClassicsLike “Offside,” several international films consider the way soccer fandom pits modernity against traditional ways of life, simply through the struggles of people attempting to watch a game. “The Cup” (2000) was the first film from Bhutan to be submitted for an Oscar, featuring real-life Tibetan monks swept up in the frenzy of the 1998 World Cup. A group of novices lead makeshift soccer games using a can of Coca-Cola as a ball, and at night sneak away from the monastery to watch the Cup in a nearby cottage. Granted permission to set up a television on monastery grounds for the final game between France and Brazil, the boys race to collect funds for a satellite dish and set up the device in time for kickoff.The same dynamic plays out across three different remote locations in Gerardo Olivares’s gentle mockumentary “The Great Match” (2006), which is also structured around the struggle to watch a World Cup final — the 2002 showdown between Brazil and Germany. The film follows the misadventures of three unrelated groups of soccer fans: Kazakh nomads from the Eastern Mongolian steppes, camel-mounted Berber tribespeople in the Sahara, and Indigenous Amazonians.Both films present the love of soccer as a universal bond, a bitter pill considering it might also be the only common ground between us viewers and these disappearing cultures — soccer, after all, is nothing if not a tool of cultural hegemony. At the same time, though the stakes aren’t a matter of life or death, the passion of these fans — the way they persist in their efforts to seize a small slice of pleasure in a world of tireless work, exile and material hardship — might say something about what soccer would have to offer were it stripped of its territorial fanatics and its billion-dollar pomp and ceremony.Where to Stream These Soccer MoviesStream “Les Misérables” on Amazon Prime Video.Rent “Escape to Victory” on multiple digital platforms.Stream “Shaolin Soccer” on Paramount+ or the Criterion Channel.Stream “Diamantino” on major digital platforms.Stream “The Workers Cup” on multiple digital platforms.Rent “Forever Pure” on Apple TV.Stream “The Second Game” on the Criterion Channel or Mubi.Stream “Infinite Football” on the Criterion Channel or Kanopy.Stream “Offside” on the Criterion Channel.Stream “The Cup” on the Criterion Channel.Stream “The Great Match” on Tubi or Film Movement Plus. More