Soccer

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares119 Views

      in Soccer

      Paris F.C. Set Tickets To $0. Should Others Do the Same?

      by

      When Paris F.C. made its tickets free, it began an experiment into the connection between fans and teams, and posed a question about the value of big crowds to televised sports.Neither Paris F.C. nor St.-Étienne will have much reason to remember the game fondly. There was, really, precious little to remember at all: no goals, few shots, little drama — a drab, rain-sodden stalemate between the French capital’s third-most successful soccer team and the country’s sleepiest giant.That was on the field. Off it, the 17,000 or so fans in attendance can consider themselves part of a philosophical exercise that might play a role in shaping the future of the world’s most popular sport.Last November, Paris F.C. became home to an unlikely revolution by announcing that it was doing away with ticket prices for the rest of the season. There were a couple of exceptions: a nominal fee for fans supporting the visiting team, and market rates for those using hospitality suites.Everyone else, however, could come to the Stade Charléty — the compact stadium that Paris F.C. rents from the city government — free.In doing so, the club began what amounts to a live-action experiment examining some of the most profound issues affecting sports in the digital age: the relationship between cost and value; the connection between fans and their local teams; and, most important, what it is to attend an event at a time when sports are just another arm of the entertainment industry.When Paris F.C. made its tickets free in November, it did so with a few exceptions: fans supporting the visiting team and those using hospitality suites still have to pay.Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 113 Shares189 Views

      in Soccer

      How European Soccer Made Peace With Fasting During Ramadan

      by

      In competitions like the Premier League, Muslim pros who once faced pressure to avoid daily fasts during the monthlong holiday now benefit from custom diets and in-game breaks.Youseff Chippo had a secret.A few months into his life as a soccer pro in Europe, Chippo, a Moroccan midfielder, was pushing to prove himself and didn’t want to do anything that might hurt his chances of success. That included revealing he was fasting for Ramadan, a normal practice for the world’s billion Muslims but not in the locker room of Portugal’s F.C. Porto in the winter of 1997.The team’s double practice sessions — morning and afternoon — were arduous. Taking part while going without food and water from sunup to sundown made things harder. Eventually, after enduring days of dizziness and headaches in silence, Chippo came clean, and the club quickly put together a plan to preserve his energy and his health.For decades, though, other Muslim players found teams to be less accommodating, at least officially. So in a sport where continuous play and a lack of substitutions offer little opportunity for a mid-game trip to the bench, those players have long relied instead on resourcefulness and improvised solutions to break their fasts: teammates who faked or embellished injuries just after sundown to buy a moment for their Muslim colleagues to rush to the sideline; a few dates or a sugary drink slipped into a hand by a staff member at the appointed hour; trainers rushing out to attend to an injured knee carrying a kit curiously well-stocked with bananas.But more recently, soccer, which once saw fasting by Muslim players as something to be discouraged or criticized, is actively changing its ways. In a shift that reflects both the increasing prevalence and the soaring value of soccer’s Muslim stars, some of the world’s richest leagues and teams — with one notable exception — have moved to fully embrace Ramadan fasts.In Europe, that means many Muslim players now benefit from bespoke nutrition plans before and during the monthlong holiday; fast-friendly practice schedules; and even league-approved stoppages in play that let them break their fasts on the field during matches.Tunisia players eating dates during a match against Turkey in 2018. The team’s coach at the time, Nabil Maâloul, center, said he had asked his goalkeeper to simulate an injury to pause the game.Fabrice Coffrini/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 88 Shares149 Views

      in Soccer

      Where’s the Next Generation of Great Coaches?

      by

      Twenty years, it would appear, is a very long time indeed. This week, a brief video montage fluttered through the flotsam and jetsam that clog my (and your) social media feeds — the engagement-farming banalities, the craven attention-seekers, the willfully deranged Kate Middleton theories — to celebrate the glorious madness of 2004.That was the year, after all, when Greece won the European Championship, a triumph so unexpected that at least one squad member had to rearrange his wedding around the team’s progress. The Greek triumph came a few weeks after Porto, led by a charismatic young coach with hair more pepper than salt, lifted the Champions League trophy.That was after Werder Bremen finished the season as champion of Germany and Valencia secured its second Spanish title in three years. Whoever compiled the video did not even need to mention the victory by a Colombian minnow, Once Caldas, in the Copa Libertadores to declare that 2004 had been a year for the underdog.The compilation clip could, at a push, be used as a sort of generational Rorschach test. It might inspire, in older viewers, that bittersweet pang of nostalgia, the ghost of a memory that this is how things used — and therefore ought — to be. Werder Bremen should be able to win the Bundesliga. Porto should be contenders to be champion of Europe. You might not want to watch Greece win the Euros again, but it was nice that it happened.Younger fans, though, may well interpret it differently. They have grown up in an era of dominance and dynasty, in which the sport’s major teams have established unprecedented primacy over their rivals, and stasis has become the truest marker of excellence. The sight of all of these unfamiliar teams lifting trophies might reinforce their suspicion that soccer is rather better now than it was then.There are two things worth pointing out in rebuttal. The first is that 2004 was an outlier even by the standards of the time. The previous six editions of the Champions League, for example, had been won by Manchester United, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich and A.C. Milan. And the second — albeit obvious only with the benefit of hindsight — is that it was a liminal year.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Soccer

      Liverpool-Manchester City: Rodri Is the Premier League’s Best Player

      by

      Rodri’s genius is not in making things happen. He is employed by Manchester City, at least in part, to make sure they do not.Pep Guardiola would, in an unguarded moment, probably concede that he has a slight tendency toward hyperbole. With eyes wide and voice breathless, he will sing the praises of some hopelessly overmatched opponent his Manchester City team has just beaten by 6-1, his players’ jerseys untainted by sweat. “Guys,” he will say, “guys, they are so good. So, so good.”Where this reflex comes from is a matter of interpretation. The likeliest explanation is that it is just who Guardiola is: passionate and intense and deeply enthusiastic, still, about his sport. There might be just a dash of noblesse oblige in there, too, a little well-intentioned clemency from soccer’s great conqueror. And it is easy to wonder if Guardiola resents how much of his — and City’s — success is presented as an economic inevitability, and so feels the need to get his rebuttal in first.Whatever the truth, the effect is the same: At times, it can be difficult to be absolutely certain when Guardiola is being sincere and when he is indulging in some light lily-gilding.In the immediate aftermath of Sunday’s Manchester derby, for example, he suggested that Phil Foden might be the “best” player in the Premier League. It is by no means an outrageous claim. Foden, 24, has been outstanding for City this season, the finest campaign of his young career. He has sparkled in a suite of roles, and deserves a considerable portion of the credit for the fact that City did not particularly seem to miss Kevin De Bruyne while he was injured.But at the same time, there is a good chance that Guardiola was exaggerating, just a touch. Not because he does not appreciate Foden’s brilliance, but because he — more than anyone — should be aware that Foden is not even the best player on his team. The best player at Manchester City, and the best player in the Premier League, is Rodri.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares149 Views

      in Soccer

      Bohemians: The Irish Team Selling Soccer With a Side of Activism

      by

      The Dublin club Bohemians has made support for social causes a crucial part of its identity. Critics say the hipsters have taken over, but the approach has attracted fans around the world.In the back room of the threadbare offices of the Irish soccer team Bohemians, the printer clunks and chugs and whirs incessantly, spitting out a cascade of shipping labels. Some of the addresses bear the names of nearby Dublin streets. Others are from farther afield: across Ireland, across the Irish Sea, across the Atlantic.Each label will be affixed to a package containing a Bohemians jersey. And these days, the club sells a lot of jerseys.The appeal is not rooted in any of the traditional drivers of soccer’s merchandise market: success, glamour, a beloved star player. Daniel Lambert, the club’s chief operating officer, loves both Bohemians and the League of Ireland, the competition in which it plays, but he is under no illusions about the reality of either. “We’re a small team in a poor league,” he said.Instead, fans are drawn to Bohemians by the jerseys themselves; or, rather, what the jerseys say, both about the team and the customer.Some recent editions have drawn on the cultural iconography of Dublin: the Poolbeg cooling towers; the pattern from the city’s bus seats; the face of Phil Lynott, former frontman of the band Thin Lizzy. Others send a more explicit message: One of this season’s efforts has been designed in the colors of the Palestinian flag. A couple of years ago, another bore the slogan “Refugees Welcome.”In a studiously apolitical sport, where most teams avoid staking out positions except on the safest of ground — and at a time when Ireland is trying to douse the sparks of a flickering culture war — that makes Bohemians an enthusiastic, unabashed outlier: a rare example of a soccer club willing to wear its values on its sleeve, its torso and any other surface it can find.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 75 Shares159 Views

      in Soccer

      Premier League Cuts Everton’s Points Deduction

      by

      The decision means the club will lose six points in the standings, not 10, potentially helping it to stay in the division and to remain financially viable.Everton, a storied English soccer club trying to weather a serious financial storm, secured a modest victory on Monday when a record penalty that had sent it to the bottom of the Premier League standings was reduced on appeal.Everton’s original penalty, a 10-point deduction for financial rules violations, was reduced to six points, lifting its chances of staying in the division — and of retaining access to the tens of millions of dollars in annual revenues that a place in the Premier League brings.The successful appeal immediately lifted Everton to 15th place in the standings and eased the club’s fears of relegation and potential financial ruin. The reprieve, however, might be short-lived.The Premier League in January announced that Everton and Nottingham Forest, another club at risk of relegation, faced additional charges of breaching cost-control regulations. If the teams are found guilty, the new case will almost certainly lead to another points deduction.Everton, a founding member of the Premier League, has in recent years become a symbol for poor management and financial risk-taking. Crippled by expensive contracts and the cost of constructing a new stadium, the club faces debts of about $1 billion and continues to require regular infusions of millions of dollars in external financing to keep its operations running.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 188 Shares99 Views

      in Soccer

      Want to Lose a Lot of Money, Fast? Buy a Small Soccer Team in England.

      by

      The country’s lower leagues offer a tempting entry to ownership. But the sport’s economics mean even multimillionaires can struggle to compete.Geoff Thompson knows there are plenty of people who want to buy what he has to sell. The phone calls and emails over the last few weeks have left no doubt. And really, that is no surprise. Few industries are quite as appealing or as prestigious as English soccer, and Mr. Thompson has a piece of it.It is, admittedly, a comparatively small piece: South Shields F.C., the team he has owned for almost a decade, operates in English soccer’s sixth tier, several levels below, and a number of worlds away, from the dazzling light and international allure of the Premier League. But while his team might be small, Mr. Thompson is of the view that it is, at least, as perfectly formed as any minor-league English soccer club could hope to be.South Shields has earned four promotions to higher leagues in his nine years as chairman. The team owns its stadium. Mr. Thompson has spent considerable sums of money modernizing the bathrooms, the club shop and the private boxes. There is a thriving youth academy and an active charitable foundation. “We have done most of the hard yards,” Mr. Thompson said.After a cancer scare last year led him to reassess his priorities, Mr. Thompson has, reluctantly, decided that he has to “hand the baton” to someone else.That is where things becomes complicated. There are plenty of very wealthy people who want to buy their way into English soccer. It is, as Mr. Thompson said, “fun.” Owning a team offers the chance to “be a hero” to a place. It is a pitch sufficiently compelling that, in a matter of weeks, at least four suitors — two British, two American — have inquired about taking South Shields off his hands.That is the upside. The downside is that — as the Premier League has become a playground for private equity firms and sovereign wealth funds, and as the “Welcome to Wrexham” success has focused Hollywood’s searchlight on the romance of the game’s backwaters — England’s minor leagues have become a place where even the very rich can feel poor.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 150 Shares99 Views

      in Soccer

      Spring Training at Coachella: Can the M.L.S. Cash In on Its Preseason?

      by

      AEG, the entertainment giant, is trying to organize large-scale training camps marketed to fans, as other sports have done. Will it work?On a recent Wednesday afternoon, Dan Perkin and Scott Bissmeyer, work buddies on vacation, sat on metal bleachers watching the Portland Timbers play the San Jose Earthquakes in the first of four preseason Major League Soccer games that day.They had spent $125 each on V.I.P. day passes, which included food, drink and access to tents to keep cool. Self-described “M.L.S. road trippers,” they have visited numerous M.L.S. stadiums, and have watched teams in Tucson, Ariz., where as many as 11 clubs came together for preseason training in the past.But this year, with 12 M.L.S. teams — along with two from the United Soccer League and four from the National Women’s Soccer League — gathered at a 1,000-acre property outside Palm Springs, Calif., for preseason training, Mr. Perkin and Mr. Bissmeyer decided to check it out.“Compared to Tucson, they put on a nice operation here,” Mr. Perkin said of the site, the Empire Polo Club, best known as the annual site of the Coachella Music Festival. “If you’re going to drive six hours, we might as well treat ourselves.”Attendance was expected to grow about 40 percent this year.Dan Perkin and Scott Bissmeyer are self-described “M.L.S. road trippers.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More