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M.L.S. Cup and the Joy of the Open Field
A final in Los Angeles offers a welcome clash of styles, while a Copa Libertadores crown shows Brazilian teams may have cracked the code in that competition.For the neutral, there is almost no choice to make. The plotline of this weekend’s M.L.S. Cup final is so simple and familiar that the marketing spiel, presumably, writes itself. On one side, there stands Goliath, the empire, the rich and the glamorous and the powerful. On the other, lies David, the plucky rebels, the homespun and the threadbare and the unassuming.It is rare, in these situations, for anyone not diverted by a vested interest and in possession of something approaching a functioning soul not to know, on some primal, instinctive level that the correct course of action is to plump for the plucky rebels, every time.The Philadelphia Union fulfill that role almost too perfectly, an underdog straight from central casting. This is a club, after all, that runs on one of the lowest operating budgets in the league but has managed, over three seasons, to pick up the Supporters’ Shield — given to the team with the best regular-season record — miss out on a conference title thanks, in part, to an outbreak of Covid, and then come back to make its first final.More significantly, the Union are a team without obvious, standout stars, one that has resisted the lure of easy fixes and fading glamour. It has favored, instead, a smart, data-driven approach to recruitment underpinned by a thriving youth academy. Its story stands as proof that anyone can win, if only they have enough patience, and conviction, and imagination. The Union are as close to the Mighty Ducks as possible without employing actual children.Its opponent, Los Angeles F.C., is not far-off its diametrical opposite. L.A.F.C.’s budget is twice the size of Philadelphia’s. It was earmarked as a heavy favorite to win M.L.S. Cup even before it added Giorgio Chiellini and Gareth Bale to its ranks in June.L.A.F.C., like the Union, has in the past dominated the regular season only to fall short in the playoffs.John Mccoy/Associated PressIt boasts not only Carlos Vela, one of the league’s standout players for the past five years, but also Cristian Arango, one of its finest forwards; Maxime Crepeau, one of its most experienced goalkeepers; and a clutch of Ecuadorean internationals. L.A.F.C. may be in its first M.L.S. Cup final — and its coach, Steve Cherundolo, may be a rookie — but in this context, it makes for a convincing hegemon.The contrast between the two is so stark, in fact, that it is tempting to read into their meeting on Saturday some deeper meaning, to pitch their encounter as a confrontation between competing visions of what M.L.S. is, or what it should be.Philadelphia and L.A.F.C. are, after all, the two best teams in the league this season, and it is the first time in almost two decades that the dominant forces from each conference have made the final. More significant than their geography, though, is that each seems to represent a particular cultural caucus, too.A Union victory could be interpreted as an indication that M.L.S.’s future lies in fostering young, hungry teams, ones that are not stocked with household names but are more cogent, more compelling for it. An L.A.F.C. triumph would seem to herald a return to a previous era of the league, during which ambitious teams in rich markets could guarantee success (or at least a bit of attention) simply by signing a couple of fading European stars.The problem, of course, is that not everything has a deeper meaning. In the past five years, five different teams have won the M.L.S. Cup, from Toronto to Atlanta, Seattle to Columbus and, last season, New York City F.C. The Union or L.A.F.C., debutants both, will make it six in six.The budget-conscious Union have better togetherness and young talent.Vincent Carchietta/USA Today Sports, via ReutersIt is not easy to identify a pattern in those victories. Yes, for a while, it was possible to claim with some authority that North American soccer’s power base had shifted north: Between 2015 and 2021, at least one of Toronto, Seattle and the Portland Timbers were present for seven straight M.L.S. Cup finals, winning four of them.But the routes that they took were starkly different. Toronto’s 2017 victory, built on Michael Bradley, Sebastian Giovinco and Jozy Altidore, bore little resemblance to Seattle’s triumph a couple of years later, inspired by Nicolás Lodeiro and Raúl Ruidíaz, much less the success of New York City F.C. last year. Atlanta won in 2018 thanks to a deliberate policy of investing heavily in young Latin American talent. Columbus constructed its 2020 championship team on the fly.L.A.F.C. can draw on European veterans such as Gareth Bale and Giorgio Chiellini.Ringo H.W. Chiu/Associated PressRegardless of which team makes that final step this weekend, they will do little to bring any clarity to the broader picture. L.A.F.C. could, in certain lights, be cast as an updated version of Toronto. Columbus, one could argue, had the same underdog quality as Philadelphia. The parallels, though, are imperfect and just a little forced.That is something to be celebrated. It is far less important to know that one approach, one style, one system does work than it is to know that any of them — executed well, implemented effectively, introduced judiciously — can work.What this edition of the M.L.S. Cup, like most of the previous editions, proves is that there is not one single method that teams must adopt in order to succeed, but that there are many routes to triumph. The outcome of a single game, one that can rest on a slip or a moment of wonder, does not change that. The rebels have a chance, and so does the empire.An Unwanted CrownRangers: second in Scotland, last in the Champions League.Lee Smith/Action Images, via ReutersIn the end, and by a single goal, Rangers secured their own little sliver of history. Plenty of teams have departed the Champions League group stage with a record of six games played and six games lost. Thanks to an 89th-minute goal from Ajax’s Francisco Conceição on Tuesday, though, Rangers can now say that nobody has ever done it quite as spectacularly as they did.The bar had been set more than a decade ago by a Dinamo Zagreb team featuring Mateo Kovacic, Domagoj Vida, Sime Vrsaljko and Milan Badelj — all of whom, as it happens, would be on the Croatian squad for the 2018 World Cup final. That side had been drawn into a group with Real Madrid, Ajax and Lyon. It had scored three goals, and conceded 22.Going into the final round of group games this season, both Rangers and the Czech champion, Viktoria Plzen, had a chance of bettering — which is almost definitely not the right term — that record. If Rangers lost by two goals, or Plzen by three, either one could end Dinamo’s ignominy.Plzen stirred itself sufficiently to avoid that particular stigma, losing, 4-2, to Barcelona and ending its campaign with the dubious solace of only equaling Dinamo’s low-water mark. That should have been Rangers’ fate, too. In the 89th minute at Ibrox, Ajax was ahead by a single goal. Humiliation had been averted. The Scottish team only had to play out the clock. It was at that point that Conceição, a late substitute, found himself charging into the penalty area. His goal meant Rangers ended the group phase with a goal difference of -20.If there is a solace to Rangers — beyond the millions of dollars of prize money it will have earned just by showing up — it is that it will most likely not bear the stigma for quite as long as Dinamo. The same evening, Bayern Munich beat Inter Milan. The German champion has now won all six games in the group phase in three of the last four years. It has not lost a group game since September 2017.These two statistical quirks are related. The strength of the Champions League’s elite, those teams that are ever-present in the competition, is inversely proportional to the hope of those sides, based outside Europe’s major leagues, who might appear only every few years. It is a tournament, as Elon Musk might put it, of “lords and peasants,” of superpowers and makeweights. There is only one edition left of the traditional group phase before the Champions League enters its new era. That may yet be long enough for someone else to claim Rangers’ unwanted crown.Old Boys’ ClubFlamengo’s Gabriel Barbosa, with a Copa Libertadores that has become a purely Brazilian prize in recent years.Rodrigo Buendia/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe future of Brazilian soccer appears to be in its past. Last weekend, on Ecuador’s Pacific Coast, Flamengo beat Athletico Paranaense by a single goal — scored, in first-half stoppage time, by Gabriel Barbosa — to lift a second Copa Libertadores in four years. With its victory, Flamengo secured a fourth-straight Brazilian victory in the world’s second-most glamorous club competition.Even that, though, does not quite illustrate the scale of Brazil’s dominance of the tournament. The past three finals have all been contested by Brazilian teams. This year, as was the case in 2021, only one team from outside Brazil made the semifinals, a consequence of the vast economic disparity between that country’s elite teams and everyone else.What Flamengo’s victory illustrated more specifically, though, was how that wealth is being invested. At 26, Barbosa — commonly known as Gabigol — was one of the younger players on the field in Guayaquil. The defense was marshaled by David Luiz. He had Filipe Luís at left back and Thiago Maia in midfield. Arturo Vidal came off the bench, where he had been sitting with Erick Pulgar, Diego Alves, Everton and Diego.These are all, of course, players who have returned from Europe, either after long and distinguished careers there (David Luiz, Filipe Luís, Vidal, Alves) or after brief, somewhat unsatisfying stays (Maia, Everton, Diego). This is the new model of Brazilian soccer: not teams full of young hopefuls, ready for the leap to Europe, but of stars returning home for a valedictory tour.CorrespondenceThanks to Meredith Rose for a world-class — and, sincerely, educational — piece of what politeness determines we should not refer to as pedantry. Last week’s newsletter mentioned, you will absolutely not remember, that Aleksandar Mitrovic lay both “prone” and “on his back.” That, it turns out, is impossible. “If he is prone, he must be facing downward,” Meredith points out. “If he’s on his back, he’s supine.” A failing even my favorite linguistic arbiter did not notice. I stand corrected. On my feet.“Why do professional soccer players tolerate the exhausting playing schedule that puts their health at significant risk?” asks Richard Brown. “Owners and leagues seem to have a voice in deciding priorities and goals, but the players seem silent.”There are organizations, mostly the global players’ union FIFPRO, that have been outspoken on this subject, Richard, but I would agree that the players — for all their wealth and fame — have struggled to speak with a collective voice. It’s noteworthy, too, that anyone who does bring it up tends to be accused of making excuses for poor performances.Quite why that is, I suspect, may be rooted in history: There is no tradition of, for example, collective-bargaining agreements (or their equivalent) in European soccer. I suspect the open nature of the market mitigates against it, though that is just a theory.And great work from Iain Dunlop, drawing together two recent features of the newsletter: the dearth of mud in the modern game and the gradual demise of the long goal kick.“I’d say one of the main reasons for this ploy was to bypass 50 yards of muddy morass that masqueraded as a field during the winter months,” he wrote, though I have translated some of his terms into American. “If my fading memory serves, I do seem to remember many discussions around this time about why the ‘continental game’ was technically superior to ours. The conclusion inevitably reached was that better weather and pitches led to superior skills in both playing and management.”This is a pet subject of mine: the role played by local climates in determining how soccer is (traditionally) played around the world. The long-ball game, without question, took root in northern Europe because it rains a lot. The tempo is generally slower in Spain and Italy, say, because it is substantially hotter there. This feels like an obvious truth that, for some reason, we choose to ignore.If you would like to hear that theory expounded in about 1,500 words, get in touch at askrory@nytimes.com, or on Twitter. And remember: This newsletter will go on hiatus during the World Cup (next week’s, I think, will be the last regular service for a while), but you will receive a daily — that’s right! Daily! By me! Every day! — missive, instead, to keep you up-to-date with events in Qatar.Have a great weekend,Rory More
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Qatar Offered Fans Free World Cup Trips. But There Was a Catch.
Organizers are providing travel and tickets to hundreds of fans of the participating teams. But only if they promise not to criticize Qatar, and to report people who do.It is an offer good enough to make any soccer fan stop and listen. Free flights to the World Cup. Free tickets to matches. Free housing during the tournament and even a bit of spending money.But the offer comes with a catch.The handpicked fans who accept this trip of a lifetime — financed by Qatar, the host nation of this year’s World Cup — will be required to abide by contracts that will require them to sing what they’re told to sing, to watch what they say and, most controversially, to report social media posts made by other fans critical of Qatar.Yet despite those rules, hundreds of supporters have signed up.The invitations went out in late September, and targeted some of the most well-connected and well-known fan leaders backing the 32 teams headed to the World Cup. A Dutch fan told the broadcaster NOS that he had agreed to vet other supporters from the Netherlands. A board member from the American Outlaws, the biggest U.S. supporters group, agreed to take part, and then helped sign up fellow members and others.Fans from all of FIFA’s confederations have accepted the offer; dozens have already traveled to Qatar at least once for luxurious pre-World Cup visits. Those, too, were paid for by tournament organizers.Other fans, though, have declined. The conditions attached to the offer, one French fan told Le Parisien, felt like a step too far. “Despite the appetizing side of the dish, I preferred to stay true to my values,” said Joseph Delage, a member of a prominent French supporters group. More
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Mana Shim Will Lead US Soccer Task Force on Abuse Reforms
Mana Shim’s revelations of sexual abuse by her coach helped drive a reckoning in women’s soccer. Her new job at U.S. Soccer should position her to direct change from inside the federation.Mana Shim hesitates to describe her new position as her dream job, she said, because working to root out abuse in soccer is “not something that anyone hopes there needs to be a position for.”But when U.S. Soccer’s president approached her in October about joining the federation as the leader of a new player safety committee, a job that will give her a leading role in shaping new policies to protect people from the kind of abuse she had endured as a player, Shim said she couldn’t help but feel as though she had found her calling.“I feel like this is my life’s work,” Shim said in an interview on Monday morning, just after she announced her new role on social media.I have a new job: I’m going to work at U.S. Soccer as the chair of its new Participant Safety Taskforce. We still have so much work to do! LFG.Here’s my full statement: pic.twitter.com/wtj2BrMr8f— Mana Shim (@meleanashim) October 31, 2022
Shim will join U.S. Soccer as the chair of what the federation is calling its participant safety task force. The committee will report directly to the federation’s most senior leaders and is part of its continuing effort to digest the revelations and implement the recommendations detailed in a report into what was described by its lead investigator, Sally Q. Yates, as the “systemic” abuse of women and girls in American soccer.Among the details in the Yates report were the repeated efforts of players, including Shim, to raise concerns about abuse at the hands of coaches and the persistent failures of organizations like U.S. Soccer, the governing body for the sport in America, and the National Women’s Soccer League, in which Shim once played, to do enough to prevent it.In her new role, Shim, 31, will direct a committee of 25 to 30 people including not only players and coaches but also psychologists, trainers and team doctors. The hope, Shim said, is that such a diversity of experiences will ensure that all viewpoints are taken into account as U.S. Soccer creates pathways, educational programs and reporting systems to eradicate abuse in the sport.Shim admitted on Monday that the work would not be easy, or fast. But she also said she had decided the position was a natural fit for the skills she “intentionally acquired” in the years since she ended her career as a professional player: a law degree from the University of Hawaii; work on sexual abuse cases as a member of the public defender’s office in Honolulu; communications strategies as she worked to get her story out, and that of other players; and even time as an assistant coach at San Jose State, where she gained a new understanding of the power coaches can have over young players.All of her experiences, including her own painful and personal ones, had given her a holistic view of abuse, its forms, its victims and even its perpetrators.“Just as far as what I can offer, and what I care about,” Shim said of the new role, “it really feels like the perfect fit for where I am in my life and how I want to contribute in the world.”Still, she acknowledged that the idea of going to work for a federation that had failed her as a player was not a decision she had made lightly. Shim said she weighed those concerns, and the perceptions others might have of her choice, before agreeing to join. She will report directly to U.S. Soccer’s president, Cindy Parlow Cone, and its new chief executive, JT Batson.“It wasn’t a question of, ‘Is this a good idea?’” Shim said. “Because I do feel like it’s pretty obvious that U.S. Soccer has the power to make meaningful change in the sport. And if that’s my goal, then there’s no better place to be.“There’s always that worry, and apprehension, when it comes to stepping inside, because then you lose the power to question and criticize, and that was obviously something I was thinking about. But I do feel like because of the way I was approached, I feel like I will really be supported in this work in the way I do it.”Molly Levinson, who worked with Shim and others when they went public with their stories of abuse, said it was U.S. Soccer’s responsibility to ensure that the recommendations of the Yates report were enacted. Among the recommendations were the creation of a public list of individuals suspended or barred by U.S. Soccer, better vetting of coaches in the federation’s licensing process, mandatory investigations into accusations of abuse, and clear policies and rules about acceptable behavior and conduct.“When it comes down to it,” Levinson said, “the U.S. Soccer board of directors and the sponsors of the organization have the final say in what the organization does moving forward to make change. And the hope is they are committed to do that.”Shim acknowledged that she expected her education — legal, administrative and otherwise — to continue. But on Monday, she was just eager to get started, because “I know this is happening to other people.” She still hears new stories every week, from former teammates, from opponents she had never met, from strangers.“It’s not just my story,” Shim said. “Talking to other people, professional players as well as youth players and college players and — it’s just something I can’t get away from. And not in a bad way but in a way that inspires me.”“I’ve already experienced that rewarding feeling” of helping others, she added. “I feel like more needs to be done, obviously, which is why I’m here.” More - in Soccer
Portland Thorns Win NWSL Championship to End Turbulent Season
Portland won its third championship in the league’s 10th season, in a year of upheaval amid an abuse scandal in the sport.WASHINGTON — To end a tumultuous season played under the dark cloud of an abuse scandal, the Portland Thorns beat the Kansas City Current to win the National Women’s Soccer League championship Saturday night, showing resilience as a franchise that has seen so much — and has weathered so much.On a cold, clear night at Audi Field in front of more than 17,000 fans, the Thorns won, 2-0, to clinch their third N.W.S.L. title in the league’s 10th season, dominating the game from the start. Forward Sophia Smith scored the Thorns’ first goal just four minutes in. Portland’s victory ended the championships hopes of the Current, an expansion team that was having a phenomenal year after finishing 2021 in last place.Throughout the years, the Thorns — one of the league’s original teams — have been there to see the league grow in popularity and visibility. This year’s playoff games have had record attendance and Saturday’s championship game was the first one shown on prime-time television.Yet the league still struggles with sponsorship. So much so that league officials used halftime to make a pitch on the broadcast for more support, tying the N.W.S.L.’s efforts to move past the abuse scandal to the pursuit of growing women’s sports.“We know there is a lot of work left to have a safe and sustainable league,” N.W.S.L. Commissioner Jessica Berman said. “As we celebrate this historic moment, we will make our league a better place for players.”Meghann Burke, the executive director of the N.W.S.L. players’ association, added: “We need sponsors and supporters to help make change happen.”Amid the constant tumult within the league, the Thorns have in some ways been an example of what women’s soccer can be, with packed games and loyal fans, only to be at the center of the scandal that has rocked all levels of the women’s game. Their former coach’s sexual misconduct helped spark a leaguewide investigation into systematic abuse.The investigation showed that girls and women get used to being yelled at, demeaned and sexualized at some point in their careers and often stay silent out of fear of getting benched or kicked off a team. That includes women playing at the top levels of the game, and also youth players.Amid everything, the Thorns players brought Portland yet another N.W.S.L. championship, leaping on each other with screams and hugs when the game was done.The team’s owner, Merritt Paulson, was not on hand to celebrate with them. Even if he were at the field, he would have not been invited to join them. In the wake of the sexual abuse report, he stepped down as chief executive of the Thorns, and players have since asked him to sell the team. More
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U.S. Curling Chief Resigns in Furor Over Handling of Past Abuse Complaints
Jeff Plush, the chief executive of curling’s national federation, stepped down after athletes complained about his role in failing to address abuse in women’s soccer when he worked there.Jeff Plush, the chief executive of U.S.A. Curling, resigned on Friday, weeks after athletes and clubs in his sport began calling for him to step down because they no longer trusted him to keep athletes safe.Earlier this month, it was made public that Plush, who had been the chief executive of the National Women’s Soccer League from 2015 to 2017, did not cooperate with an investigation into widespread abuse within that league. An investigative report said that Plush mishandled abuse accusations while he was head of the soccer league, allowing coaches to keep their jobs or transfer teams, though they had been accused of sexual and verbal harassment, and sexual coercion.“Inaction and not speaking out against abuse has no place in our sport, and we hope Jeff realizes the damage that he has done to our community,” JayCee Cooper, a member of U.S.A. Curling’s diversity task force, said in a video call this week. “We have to get to a place where we can trust our leaders again.”Still, even after the release the report, Plush had the support of U.S.A. Curling’s board of directors, prompting dozens of athletes and clubs to speak out on social media against him. On Friday, the board in a statement said it had unanimously accepted Plush’s resignation.“We see you. We hear you. We care about you,” the board said in the statement. “Our priority is to rebuild trust. To start that process, today we lead with action.”Dean Gemmell, a former national champion who is based in New Jersey, was named interim chief executive.“I’m convinced curling can be a force for good, and when the people in this sport work together we can make great things happen,” he said in a statement.The resignation came hours before the women’s soccer league’s national championship game on Saturday, pitting the Portland Thorns against the Kansas City Current. The Thorns, one of the most successful teams in the league, was a focus of the report, which found the club had shielded a coach accused of abuse and sought to thwart investigators in the inquiry, led by Sally Q. Yates, a former high-ranking Justice Department official.Merritt Paulson, the owner of the Thorns, agreed to step down as chief executive of the club, while not indicating whether he would sell the team, as many players called on him to do. The team said in a statement he would not attend the championship game. More
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World Cup Dreams, Gone in an Instant
For hundreds of the world’s best players, injury is the fear shadowing every step, every turn, every tackle as the World Cup looms.LEEDS, England — For a second, Aleksandar Mitrovic looked panicked. He slumped onto his back on the Elland Road turf, his face a grimace, his hands covering his eyes. It was not immediately apparent what had happened: Perhaps his ankle had jarred, or his knee twisted, or a hamstring popped.Fulham’s medical team rushed onto the field. Marco Silva, the club’s coach, has been “managing” his striker’s fitness for weeks, ever since Mitrovic picked up an injury while away on international duty with Serbia. He was taken off early in a defeat against Newcastle. He missed a game with Bournemouth altogether. He has admitted to playing in “a lot of pain.”Now Mitrovic lay prone for no more than a minute, patiently acquiescing, as the doctors rotated his foot and gingerly stretched his knee. Cautiously, he stood up, doing all he could to put as little weight as possible on his left leg. Watch enough soccer and, after a while, it becomes easier to tell when a player is exaggerating for effect. Mitrovic’s eyes, fretful and wide, made it clear that he was sincere.He would not, it is fair to say, just have been worrying about missing the rest of Fulham’s victory over Leeds, or the frustration of the possibility of a couple of weeks on the sidelines.His thoughts would, instead, have rushed — unbidden and irresistible — to the worst-case scenario. The opening game of the World Cup is barely three weeks away. Coaches will start to name squads, even preliminary ones, in the next two weeks. Any setback now, any pull or strain or tear or crack, might cost a player their place.Mitrovic, like a few hundred others, would have wondered immediately if this was the moment he lost his World Cup.Aleksandar Mitrovic got an injury scare at Leeds. Others have experienced the worst.Craig Brough/ReutersIn the end, there was no reason to worry. The 28-year-old Mitrovic — who will, all being well, act as the spearhead of Serbia’s attack in Qatar — took a little while to satisfy himself that he was not taking any risks, and then threw himself back into the fray. Late on, conscious of the striker’s value, Silva withdrew him, just in case.Others have not been so fortunate. Qatar 2022’s absentee list is already a substantial one. France will not be able to call on N’Golo Kanté. Lucas Hernández, Paul Pogba and Raphaël Varane may yet miss out, too. Argentina will be without Paulo Dybala. Portugal will not have Diogo Jota in its ranks. Uruguay will have to cope without Ronald Aráujo.There are doubts, too, over many more: Marcelo Brozovic and Ángel Di María and so many English right backs that Trent Alexander-Arnold, the Liverpool ingénue so inexperienced that he has apparently yet to learn crucial skills like “tackling,” might even get to play.There is nothing unusual about that, of course. True, the World Cup has never before happened in the middle of the European season; FIFA, in a rare example of what might, in another organization, be called wisdom, has never previously thought to ask players to go straight from the blood and thunder of the domestic schedule into an era-defining international tournament with only six days to acclimatize.A thigh injury has made Leroy Sané a fitness concern for Germany.Christof Stache/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBut playing the World Cup in its traditional July slot did not make players immune from injury; the three-week firewall between the end of the European season and the start of the tournament did not possess any curative power. In World Cup years, those players aspiring to represent their nations have always had to weigh the risks and rewards as the club campaign reached its climax. Few previous tournaments, if any, have been played with a full contingent of stars.There are, though, a couple of differences this year. The most obvious is the sheer number of games. Ordinarily, by April and May, most teams are only playing once a week; it is only the select few, competing not only in their domestic tournaments but in the late stages of European competitions, that face the prospect of matches every three days.Read More on the 2022 World CupLavish Spending: No expense has been spared in putting on a show in Qatar. But the tournament is a feeling that money can’t buy, our soccer correspondent writes.United States: The American men’s soccer team has cycled through strikers during the qualifying period. It needs to settle on one before heading to Qatar.Brazil: As the team begins its quest for a sixth World Cup, it appears to have the resources needed to succeed — though Neymar still shoulders much of the load.Sticker Shock: In Argentina, the prospect of Lionel Messi’s last World Cup has helped feed a white-hot market for a beloved collectible, featuring long lines, surging prices and, briefly, government intervention.This time around, because of the squeeze on the calendar created by the looming hulk of Qatar, everyone appears to be playing constantly. That means players not only have more chances to get injured, but find themselves more susceptible to it. There is no time to rest, to recuperate, to rehabilitate. Sinews are permanently strained, bodies forever on the edge.Manchester United defender Raphaël Varane is one of a handful of France players who will, or could, miss the World Cup through an untimely injury.Daniel Hambury/EPA, via ShutterstockThe second difference is a little less easily quantified. Few players would admit that, as the season reaches its conclusion, they dial back their intensity just a little, conserving their energies for a tournament still a couple of months away. That, after all, sounds troublingly close to confessing to coasting.And yet it seems impossible that the majority — those not competing for trophies or jostling for European positions or to avoid relegation — would not do just that. It is too easy to overestimate the margins in elite soccer, to assume that everything can be measured in substantial, chunky percentage blocks.In reality, of course, the differences are so slender as to be barely perceptible. A player with the World Cup at the back of their mind does not run at half-speed, or refuse to tackle; they simply do not burn further into the red when their body is at the limit. They do not shirk a tackle, but they may not go in with quite as much force, or to quite the same extent. They shave the edges.That is not quite so easily done when the season is still taking shape, and ambition remains more potent than reality. Fulham sits seventh in the Premier League, after all, and is in the tick of the battle for a place in the Europa League. The consequences of not making that sprint, of not going for that tackle, could yet be considerable. This is a time when taking risks still comes with a reward.Paulo Dybala could miss the World Cup after he was injured in a game for Roma.Fabio Frustaci/EPA, via ShutterstockThat may not be how everyone sees it, of course. This season is developing to be a reasonably curious one, to say the least. It is not just that Fulham sits seventh in the Premier League. It is that Liverpool appears to be playing while mired in treacle, and Tottenham seems underpowered, and Chelsea and Manchester United have both come across as somehow inhibited at various times.It is that Union Berlin is top of the Bundesliga, with even mighty Bayern Munich trailing in its wake, and with Borussia Dortmund nowhere to be seen. It is that Juventus and Inter Milan have fallen by the wayside in Italy already, cast aside by a rampant Napoli. It is that Barcelona and Atlético Madrid are already out of the Champions League, Spain left with just one representative in a tournament it has dominated for a decade.All of this might just be the curiosities that always come with a new campaign, the vicissitudes of fate, the changing of the seasons. Each of those stories, after all, has its own, deep roots. Perhaps it is all just noise.Or it might be that, on some level, nobody wants to be Kanté, or Jota, or Dybala. They do not even, if they can help it, want to be Mitrovic. And so the typical strangeness of the new season has become more pronounced.It might be that, for the last couple of months, what has unfurled has been to some extent a phony war, contested by combatants with a different conflict in mind.The Best Player to Watch in EuropeThe season’s breakout hit: Khvicha Kvaratskhelia.Alberto Lingria/ReutersAndrés Carrasco came to closer summing up the experience of watching Khvicha Kvaratskhelia than anyone else. The head of Dinamo Tbilisi’s youth academy was contemplating whether there are any shared characteristics among Georgian attacking players, whether there is a defined national style, when he hit upon the word.Yes, he said, there is something. They tend, to his Barcelona-trained mind, to be just a little bit “anarchic.”Kvaratskhelia has, in his first few weeks at Napoli, become a sensation in both Serie A and the Champions League, not so much for what he does — though his goal return is more than respectable, particularly in a league that prides itself on its parsimony — but for how he does it.At any given moment, Kvaratskhelia does not do what you expect him to do. He makes strange, faintly unsettling choices. He plows on when he should turn back. He shoots when he should pass. He dances through defenders when the road is very clearly closed. And it is that which makes him so refreshing.European soccer is a deeply ordered world. Even those teams who seem to play with a reckless abandon, who appear so freewheeling, so maverick, tend to be playing according to set patterns. Those combinations, those movements that come so easily are in most cases the product of hours of work on the training ground. They are learned by rote, not conjured from the imagination.Kvaratskhelia — for now, at least — stands in opposition to that. He is raw, unfiltered, untamed. Defenders, at first glance, appear to be completely flummoxed by him, as if he is not playing by the established conventions. For much the same reason, many of those who have watched him frequently in Italy are thrilled by him. He is a little dose of anarchy, and European soccer is all the better for it.CorrespondenceIt’s been a while since we’ve had a confession in this section, but Dan Andersen provides the prompt for a fairly major one. It is possible that, despite my job title as chief soccer correspondent, I no longer know what offside is any more.“If Harry Kane is offside,” Dan wrote, referring to the remarkable denouement to Tottenham’s game with Sporting Lisbon on Wednesday, “video technology makes that decision in a nanosecond,” before wondering why, exactly, it took three minutes for someone to work that out.That is a question that I cannot answer, but far more troubling is that — as far as I can tell — Kane was not offside: sure, he was ahead of the last defender, but he was behind the teammate who headed the ball to him. If the ball travels backward, I was taught, there is no offside. I’m in good company, too: Eric Dier evidently learned the same thing.We may, as it turns out, both have been misled. Apparently the trajectory of the ball is irrelevant, and always has been irrelevant. This may, of course, be true: Eric and I may have been laboring under a misapprehension for years. Or it may only be true now, another tweak to a law that has been reshaped to the point of vacuousness in recent years, further evidence for my long-held belief that we all need to sit down and come up with the rules again from scratch.Onside? Offside? Who even knows anymore?Ian Walton/Associated PressJames Waller, meanwhile, wants to take our nostalgia for mud and add to it. “Given drainage systems, the ludicrously waterlogged pitch is largely a disappointing thing of the past,” he wrote. “It may have turned events into a mad lottery but it was undeniably entertaining at times.” Extra points to James for finding that footage on “Bing Video,” rather than YouTube.And finally, David Moulton is seeking clarity, which is something that can be said for all of us, really. “I am confounded by the long downfield kick by goalkeepers,” he wrote. “It is agony to watch, knowing that at best there is a 50 percent chance of success. I mean, why not pass it directly to your own player, with the expectation that they will control the ball at least somewhere past midfield?”The most straightforward answer here is tradition: goalkeepers take long goal kicks because goalkeepers have always taken long goal kicks. It is not, primarily, an attacking move, of course. The long goal kick is manifest fear. The logic behind it is that it is much better, all told, for the ball to be a long way from your goal and as close as possible to the opposition’s.I am, though, intrigued by goal kicks. It is an avowed belief that you can see all of modern soccer in its brilliance and its mania at a goal kick: half of the players clustered around the penalty area, ready to start or resist the press; half a dozen or so more deep inside the other half of the field, awaiting the counter attack; and a great, gaping green space in between, because the one place nobody ever puts a goal kick now is midfield.That’s all for this week. We have good news and bad news for you. This newsletter will, once the World Cup rolls around, be going on hiatus for a month or so. It will, though, be replaced by a daily — that’s right folks, daily — newsletter during the tournament, hopefully guiding you through all of the stories, the games and our coverage of Qatar 2022. You can decide which one is good news and which one is bad for yourselves. More
