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      England Gets a Look at Itself, and Isn’t Sure It Likes What It Sees

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      Coach Gareth Southgate was unruffled by a scoreless draw against the United States. But it revealed concerns lurking just below the surface.AL KHOR, Qatar — For four fleeting, glorious days, all was right and all was well in England’s world. Gareth Southgate’s team had cut Iran to ribbons in its first game at the World Cup, a glistening generation of talent dancing and weaving and sparkling on the grandest stage of them all.He should have known it would not last. That was Monday. By Friday, England was being loudly and roundly — and just a little unfairly — booed from the field by its own fans, the players and particularly the coach informed in no uncertain terms that the fans had not traveled all this way to watch their team be held to a scoreless draw by the United States. There are some indignities, after all, that a Bud Zero cannot heal.On an entirely practical level, the significance of the result is minimal for England — nothing more than a bad day at the office, the sort of thing that can be swiftly shaken off and may, in a few weeks’ time, be relegated to a mere footnote.Should England beat Wales in its final group game on Tuesday, it will qualify for the tournament’s next stage at the top of its group, earning (in theory) a kinder draw in the first knockout round. Even a tie against Wales would, at the very least, be enough to ensure progress. It will be an irritation that Southgate cannot rest players for that game, that he cannot manage minutes and reduce burden, but he is hardly short on options. It is nothing terminal.Emotionally, though, in terms of all those airy intangibles that coalesce during a tournament into something real and physical, it is different. England came into the World Cup on the back of a dispiriting year. Southgate’s popularity, once sufficiently high to give the waistcoat an unexpected and thankfully brief comeback, had plummeted.A Brief Guide to the 2022 World CupCard 1 of 9What is the World Cup? More

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      Mexico’s World Cup History: An Unlucky Seven

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      El Tri has advanced out of the group stage in seven straight World Cups. It is only then that the problems start.DOHA, Qatar — Of all the soccer playing countries in the world — and there are many — only two can boast of advancing out of the group stage at the last seven World Cups. One of the teams is Brazil. The other may be a tad surprising: Mexico.After their initial success, the two teams’ fortunes have diverged. Having made its way into the knockout round of every World Cup since 1994, Brazil has won two World Cup finals and played in a third.Mexico? Each time it reached the round of 16, it promptly lost the next game and went home.That legacy of fourth-game failure by El Tri, as the national team is known, has created immense pressure and criticism in Mexico, and at times a toxic relationship between the team and the national news media. If any three words haunt Mexican players and fans alike, they are el quinto partido: the fifth game.“There is always that pressure of people always talking about ‘that fifth game, that fifth game,’ and it gets stuck in your head,” Carlos Vela, a forward who represented Mexico at the 2010 and 2018 World Cups, said in Spanish in an interview earlier this year.On the field, Vela said, he didn’t think about that hex. But before World Cup matches, especially leading into the knockout round, he said he would hear comments about “the game we can never get past.”“In everyone’s mind and conversations, it’s always there,” he continued. “I don’t know if it affects us or not, but it’s there and talked about. You go to an interview and it’s always asked.”Mexico’s Hirving Lozano, right, competing against Poland on Tuesday, said winning a knockout stage game is always on his mind.Glyn Kirk/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMexico will hear those familiar rumblings again soon enough in Qatar. It tied its first game, against Poland, but its group is wide open after unheralded Saudi Arabia stunned Argentina on Tuesday. Hopes are high that this year, at last, will be different.“We have everything,” said Raúl Jiménez, a forward who is appearing in his third straight World Cup. He mentioned the Mexican national team coach, Gerardo Martino, known as Tata, who, like every leader of the squad during this span, has come under stinging criticism from outside the team during his tenure.“We’ve been with Tata for four years,” said Jiménez, 31, who plays his club soccer with the Wolverhampton Wanderers in England. “We know him well, his style of play and what he wants from us. All we have to do is put it to work on the field and win the fourth game.”A Brief Guide to the 2022 World CupCard 1 of 9What is the World Cup? More

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      Neymar, Brazil’s Star Player, Out With an Injury

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      Neymar, the Brazilian soccer star, will not be playing in the team’s next World Cup match after he was injured on Thursday while playing against Serbia.Neymar injured a lateral ligament on his right ankle and has small bone swelling, said Rodrigo Lasmar, the team’s doctor, in a written statement on Neymar’s website. Another player, Danilo, injured his left ankle and also will not play in the next game, which will be on Monday against Switzerland, the statement said.“I can say in advance that we will not have both players for the next match, but they remain in treatment with the objective of trying to recover them in time for this competition,” Lasmar said.Both players received treatment after the match and were re-evaluated on Friday morning, with scheduled daily follow-ups planned. Neymar’s ankle was visibly swollen as he walked off the field on Thursday.Brazil beat Serbia 2-0 in its first match of the 2022 World Cup. After Switzerland, the team will play Cameroon on Friday.“Tough game, but it was important to win,” Neymar said on Twitter on Thursday. “Congratulations team, first step taken.”Thursday’s injury was one of the hardest moments of his career, Neymar said on his Facebook page. In the 2014 World Cup, he broke a vertebra after being kneed in the back and was sidelined for the rest of the tournament.“Yes, I’m injured, it’s frustrating, it’s going to hurt,” he said in the Facebook post. “But I’m sure that I will have a chance to return because I will do whatever possible to help my country, my teammates and myself.” More

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      A Migrant’s Desperate Day Chasing Work at the World Cup

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      Qatar’s preparations for soccer’s biggest championship created years of jobs for foreign migrants. But now that’s it is here, the work has dried up.DOHA, Qatar — Standing at the center of the Msheireb metro station, the man in the pressed burgundy shirt took in his surroundings inside the cavernous terminal, the hub of a multibillion-dollar system built by Qatar ahead of the 2022 World Cup. He had lived in the country for six years but had never before set foot on one of its subway cars.He was also lost. Nazmul, a man in his mid-30s from Bangladesh, had never really had a need to use the metro station. But today was a special day: He had been told to head to a building on the other side of Doha, Qatar’s capital, to collect credentials for the World Cup.Nazmul was excited, not because the credential would allow him to watch some of the world’s greatest soccer players take the field, but because it would mean he could work.Thousands of the migrant workers who took part in the vast nation-building program that prepared Qatar for the World Cup have been sent home in recent months, as the country suspended its major projects until after the end of the monthlong soccer tournament. But thousands more like Nazmul remain, hustling for work that not so long ago was easy to find. He agreed to allow a New York Times reporter to accompany him on his job search but asked that his last name be withheld to safeguard his ability to work in Qatar.Nazmul had already handed his work permit and application papers to a recruitment agent who claimed to have an in with a person responsible for cleaning contracts at the World Cup. The agent had handed out passes to some of the applicants, but told others, like Nazmul, to head to the FIFA worker center at the edge of Doha and present themselves at the cavernous worker accreditation center.Finally getting his bearings, Nazmul headed for the metro’s red line, one of three that have been built to ferry commuters and soccer fans across the capital of Qatar, a thumb-shaped peninsula jutting out into the Persian Gulf.On the short train ride to Al Qassar, Nazmul’s anxiety was palpable, his foot shaking throughout the journey. At each stop, he asked commuters nearby if he has arrived at his destination. The $30 a day he would earn to clean up after fans at the World Cup would be three times more than Qatar’s minimum wage. He had few better options. There were few jobs around. “About 50 percent of the people here aren’t working at the moment,” Nazmul said. “Everything is stopped.”A Brief Guide to the 2022 World CupCard 1 of 9What is the World Cup? More

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      Who Will Win the World Cup?

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      Who’s going to win the World Cup? To get an answer, you could seek the opinion of coaches, players, pundits or fans.Or you could ask the people who have a great financial stake in the outcome: bookmakers.With every team having played one game, the most likely team to win the World Cup this year is, as almost every year, Brazil, according to oddsmakers around the world. But it is far from a sure thing. The team’s odds are roughly 3-1, meaning at best it has about a 25 percent chance of lifting the trophy at this point.Also considered strong contenders are France (6-1) and England and Spain (both 7-1). The next leading contender is, somewhat surprisingly, Argentina at 8-1, even though it lost its opening game to Saudi Arabia. The consensus seems to be that it will bounce back against Mexico and Poland and make it to the knockout rounds. On the other hand, Argentina was originally the second favorite at 5-1, so it certainly has slipped.As you might have noticed, the favorites are the usual suspects.The truth is, long shots just don’t win the World Cup very often. Oh, they sometimes make a surprise run to the semifinals (South Korea in 2002) or even the final (Croatia in 2018) but they just don’t win it.So if you truly believe in, say, the United States (150-1) or even Costa Rica (as much as 3,000-1 after losing to Spain, 7-0), you could be richly rewarded if they defy the odds come the final on Dec. 18.There are odds available on the individual awards as well, giving a clue as to who bettors and bookies think will perform well the rest of the way at the tournament.Before the World Cup began, who else but Lionel Messi (7-1) was the favorite for the Golden Ball as player of the tournament, an award he won eight years ago. But after Argentina’s stutter, he has slipped behind Kylian Mbappé of France (6-1).That prize almost always goes to a player on a successful team, but not necessarily the winning one. The last two Golden Balls went to players on the runner-up (Luka Modrić of Croatia and Messi), and the winner before that, Diego Forlán of Uruguay, made only the semifinal.The final game on Thursday significantly shook up the betting for the Golden Boot for the top goal-scorer of the tournament. Richarlíson of Brazil had been a 25-1 shot before the tournament started, but his two goals against Serbia has made him a favorite at 8-1. The other top contenders are Mbappé (9-1, with one goal so far), Olivier Giroud of France (11-1, two goals) and Messi (13-1, one goal).The other players with two goals so far aren’t attracting as much interest from bettors: Ferran Torres of Spain (20-1), Bukayo Saka of England (20-1), Enner Valencia of Ecuador (50-1) and Mehdi Taremi of Iran (such a long shot that few bookies have even posted a price on him yet).Fancy an American to get a bootload of goals? Timothy Weah, who had the Americans’ only goal in their first game, is 300-1 or more to finish as the tournament’s top scorer. More

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      Richarlíson, Brazil and, maybe, the start of something special.

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      LUSAIL, Qatar — Not all goals sound the same. Sometimes, the noise they generate is one of joy, giddy and delighted. Sometimes, it is more guttural, not so much a celebration as a growl of defiance. At others, it is a sough of grateful relief. And very occasionally, it is something different: not an exhalation but a drawing of the breath. Sometimes, it is the sound of wonder.For a little more than an hour, Brazil had toiled to overcome Serbia. The last of the heavyweights to start this tournament, Brazil had entered it with a head of steam: beaten only once in three years, untouchable for 18 months, expected to sweep aside anything standing that stood in the way of its long-awaited sixth World Cup.Here it was, though, in front of a partisan and expectant crowd, grinding its way to an uninspiring win against an obdurate, but limited, opponent. It had the lead, thanks to the sort of gnarled, forgettable goal the game had merited, but it was hardly the sort of emphatic statement that had been anticipated.Everything changed in a single instant. Vinicíus Junior burst down the left wing. With the outside of his right boot, he fizzed a low cross toward Richarlíson, the scorer of the first goal. As it traveled, the ball clipped an outstretched Serbian leg; only a little, but enough to change its trajectory.Richarlíson did his best to readjust. The ball skipped off his foot and spun into the air. And then, instinct taking over, he leaped from the ground, twisting and contorting his body in a pirouette, and as the ball reached its apex he met it with a full, pure volley. It flashed past the outstretched arm of Vanja Milinkovic-Savic, Serbia’s helpless goalkeeper. The Lusail stadium, as one, pursed its lips and inhaled. Brazil, ever so slightly belatedly, had arrived.There is a distinct possibility that moment will be seen, in a little less than a month, as the moment that Brazil’s campaign in Qatar caught light. Richarlíson is, to some extent, the most disposable member of Tite’s glittering forward line, not so much because of any shortcoming on his part but because of the vaguely obscene options available ahead of him.Neymar, of course, is the star of the Brazil’s show, the player that plenty of those flooding into the Lusail had come to see — his name, when the teams were read out before the game, was greeted by a cheer roughly twice as loud as anyone else — but he is, unlike in the previous iterations of the Seleçao that have dotted his career, not alone.

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Dalsh/ReutersAndrej Isakovic/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMoises Castillo/Associated Press

      On one side, he has Vinicíus Junior, the gleaming future of Real Madrid, already the scorer of the winning goal in a Champions League final, and on the other Raphinha, a man valuable enough that Barcelona mortgaged a good portion of its future to sign him last summer. The alternatives on the bench include a player who cost Manchester United $100 million, and is not even the first reserve for his country.It is that supercharged armory, of course, that has made Brazil favorite for this tournament, regardless of the striking impressions made over the first round of games in Qatar by France, Spain and England. Its underpinnings, though, are no less significant: the poise and command of Casemiro in midfield; the experience and authority of Thiago Silva and Marquinhos in defense; the presence, as an option of last resort, of the best goalkeeper on the planet.In those final 20 minutes, as the stadium recovered from its swoon, all of that fell into the sharpest relief possible. Richarlíson’s athleticism, his invention, seemed to have unlocked something in his teammates, to have reminded Brazil that it is the biggest and brightest show in town, that it was time to dust this tournament with its unique, compelling glamour.And so, all of a sudden, the game reached the stage where Casemiro, the sole defensive midfielder, the only adult in the room, was breezily curling shots off the crossbar from 30 yards. Tite, as if keen to remind everyone else of what, precisely, they were dealing with, spent the final stages throwing on as many absurdly gifted attackers as he was permitted under the rules. Here was Rodrygo, and Antony, and Gabriel Jésus; and if you liked them, wait until you see Gabriel Martinelli.That level of resource should, of course, provide some solace to the only sour note of the evening: the sight of Neymar hobbling from the field, his right ankle visibly swollen after suffering a heavy tackle. Though Alex Sandro, the left back, assured the news media after the game that Neymar was “fine,” just in a little bit of pain and in need of some ice, it did little to cool Brazil’s collective fever.The early suggestions had it that the Paris St.-Germain forward had suffered a sprain; a nation found itself on tenterhooks. No matter how glistening the alternatives, no matter how enviable Brazil’s strength in depth, this remains a team constructed around and on behalf of Neymar. It is on his shoulders that the country’s hopes of the crown lie.That is what Brazil expects, after all. It has been 20 years since it last conquered the world, since it last occupied what it regards as its rightful throne. It has waited long enough. In Qatar, nothing less than victory will do.This is supposed to be a month that those Brazilian fans who have made the journey to the Gulf, and the nation as a whole, will never forget, four weeks of flashbulb moments and sculpted memories, a tournament in which Tite’s team leaves the rest of the world gasping for air.Thanks to Richarlíson, Brazil has the first of those moments. The assumption, from all of those inside Lusail, once they had caught their breath, was that it will not be the last. Brazil, at last, has arrived. More

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      Brenden Aaronson Won Over Leeds. Can He Win at the World Cup?

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      Christian Pulisic might be the standard-bearer for the United States World Cup team, but it is Brenden Aaronson who has captured hearts in England.LEEDS, England — The stadium was already half-empty, and the steadfast few who remained inside Elland Road were in an unforgiving mood. Leeds United had just been beaten, again, this time by Fulham. A fourth defeat in a row, a seventh game without a win, and the specter of the Premier League’s relegation zone were starting to exert a dreaded, inevitable gravity.As the team made a perfunctory tour of the field, thanking the fans for their forbearance, they were met — mostly — with silence. When Jesse Marsch, the team’s American coach, followed a few seconds later, even that veneer of cordiality disappeared. He had been taunted by the crowd during the game. Now, he was being booed.At that point, Brenden Aaronson would have been forgiven for deciding to slip away to the dressing room. Few would have noticed that Aaronson, a 22-year-old American, had not been part of the players’ gloomy procession.Aaronson, though, did not take the easy way out. Instead, he walked slowly, deliberately around the field in Marsch’s wake. In front of all four grandstands, he held his hands up, open-palmed, as if begging for forgiveness. And, as he did so, the mood changed. By the time Aaronson left the field, his self-imposed ordeal over, the silence — if not quite the gloom — had lifted. Even in defeat, Aaronson had brought the fans to their feet.Whether accidentally or by design, Leeds United has spent much of the last three years as English soccer’s great thought experiment, a laboratory for challenging deeply held assumptions.The first hypothesis it tested was whether the outré methods of the Argentine coach Marcelo Bielsa, the sport’s most unapologetic ideologue, could work in the Premier League. The supposition had long been that no, they could not. Leeds gave Bielsa the chance to disprove it.He led the team to a ninth-place finish in his first season after winning promotion from the Championship and then plunged it into danger of relegation the next, but the adoration he earned from a fan base that tends toward cynicism was enough to overturn the established logic: At least one other English club is now toying with the idea of employing Bielsa.Leeds’s next challenge was, if anything, even more fraught. Leeds replaced Bielsa, in February, with Marsch, who became only the second American coach to take charge of a Premier League team. A few months later, he was joined not only by Aaronson — a native of Medford, N.J. — but by Tyler Adams, acquired from RB Leipzig but raised in upstate New York. Fair or not, how Leeds fared would be pitched as a referendum on English soccer’s attitude toward Americans.The results, thus far, have been mixed. Adams has been a steady, subtle success: a diligent, astute defensive midfielder, sufficiently well liked for a vast portrait of him to be hung from the imposing, cantilevered roof of Elland Road’s Jack Charlton Stand. “I didn’t realize it was quite so big,” Adams said after seeing it for the first time. “It’s pretty cool.”Aaronson has not been a starter for the U.S., but his game-changing cameos are a valuable tool for Coach Gregg Berhalter.Patrick T. Fallon/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe verdict on Marsch has been more contested. He earned some credit for steering the team clear of relegation last season, and an early season win against Chelsea in August, But that was followed by a string of disappointments in which Marsch’s team kept, as he put it, “finding ways to lose,” and a recurring theme emerged in the critiques of him: Leeds’ executives, and Marsch himself, noted that his nationality always seemed much more relevant after defeats than in the glow of victory.There has been no such ambivalence about Aaronson. He might have been a relative unknown when he arrived at the start of the summer from Marsch’s former team Red Bull Salzburg as a vaguely underwhelming replacement for Raphinha, the Brazilian wing who was then on his way to Barcelona.Aaronson may not have a regular starting role in Coach Gregg Berhalter’s United States team at the World Cup. In just three months, though, he has established himself as the great American success story of this Premier League season — ahead of even Christian Pulisic, now consigned to the ranks of replacements at Chelsea — and erased every last shred of skepticism that accompanied his arrival.Unlike Marsch, Aaronson’s Americanness does not appear to be a problem. He had already earned a song in his honor within a few weeks of arriving at the club, a reworked version of Estelle’s “American Boy.” “The Square Ball,” an ironic and occasionally acerbic Leeds fanzine and podcast, has taken to referring to him — affectionately — as the “Yank Badger.”The sobriquet hints at the source of his popularity. Under first Bielsa and now Marsch, Leeds has grown used to a style of play that borders on the physically exhausting. Both coaches demand that their players run. The fans have come to expect it, too. And even in a team marked by its (occasionally inefficient) industry and (occasionally counterproductive) intensity, Aaronson’s work ethic, his endless scurrying and snuffling, stands out.Aaronson came on as a substitute his team’s World Cup opener against Wales.Pedro Nunes/ReutersIn a victory at Liverpool in October that most likely saved his manager’s job, for example, Leeds not only ran more than any team had in any Premier League game this season, but Aaronson ran more than anyone else. He registered 8.2 miles, more than any player has run in any league game this year.“Brenden Aaronson loves grass,” Daniel Chapman wrote earlier this season in “The Square Ball.” “Green grass. Yellow grass. Part synthetic grass. All the grass, he loves all the grass, loves running in it, rolling in it, being on it, dancing across it, eating it up metaphorically with his running feet and perhaps literally with his hungry mouth.”Marsch regards that characterization, while not incorrect, as a touch reductive. “He has more quality than people think,” the coach said. “He’s a good finisher, he’s really clever with how to put passes together in tight spaces. It’s so much just about his ability to make final plays, and slow himself down a little bit in the final third.”Even Marsch, though, could not quite resist the lure of making a horticultural analogy. “He’s like a weed,” Marsch, a former M.L.S. coach with the Red Bulls, told MLSsoccer.com’s “Extratime” podcast earlier this season. “You almost see him grow before your eyes.”That is what has endeared him, so quickly, even to Leeds’s most hard-bitten, weather-beaten fans: not just his effort, but his intent. It is what has filled American fans with optimism about his contributions heading into Monday’s World Cup opener against Wales.That day against Fulham, Aaronson had no reason to apologize. The defeat, most certainly, had not been his fault. He had been Leeds’s best, and most effective, player. Still, though, he made his way around the field, still moving, even after the final whistle, still believing he could have done more. More