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      U.S. Curling Chief Resigns in Furor Over Handling of Past Abuse Complaints

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      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

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      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

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      Brazil’s Neymar No Longer Facing Prison After Spain Drops Fraud Charges

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      The Brazilian star, his parents and two former Barcelona presidents had faced the prospect of prison after being accused of corruption and fraud.Neymar, Brazil’s star forward, no longer faces the possibility of being sent to prison after Spanish prosecutors on Friday dropped their charges of fraud and corruption against the soccer player, his parents and several top soccer executives involved in his 2013 transfer to Barcelona.The resolution of Neymar’s case came after two weeks of testimony in a fraud trial in which prosecutors had initially sought a two-year prison term for Neymar, who will lead Brazil’s attack at the World Cup in Qatar next month, and longer sentences for his parents.Just as the two-week trial was coming to a close, however, a prosecutor told the judge hearing the case in Barcelona that in view of the information presented to the court there was not enough evidence that a crime had been committed.The state’s withdrawal, though, may not be the end of the legal drama: The prosecutor suggested that DIS, a Brazilian sports investment company that jointly brought the case, could continue to pursue its claim for millions of dollars in damages in civil court.Neymar’s move to Barcelona from the Brazilian club Santos nearly a decade ago remains one of the most notorious transfers in soccer history. It was only after the transfer was completed when it emerged that his family had reached a secret agreement with the Spanish club months earlier that guaranteed Neymar and his parents 40 million euros (more than $50 million at the time) in a private arrangement.Read More on the 2022 World CupIs Qatar Ready?: As fans prepare to flood the tiny Gulf nation, cranes and loaders are still running hard — as is criticism of Qatar’s human rights record and exploitation of workers.A Free Trip With a Catch: Organizers are providing travel and tickets to hundreds of fans. But only if they promised not to criticize Qatar, and to report people who do.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.DIS, owned by the founders of a supermarket chain, at the time held a 40 percent stake in Neymar’s transfer rights, a share that saw the firm receive 6.8 million euros of the official fee Barcelona eventually agreed to pay Santos. That payday, DIS’s lawyers contend, would have been far higher had Neymar and Barcelona not signed the secret precontract.The trial, which opened only weeks before Brazil’s opening game at the World Cup, brought unwanted attention to Neymar ahead of what could be his last chance to win soccer’s biggest prize. Brazil’s team is among the favorites going into the tournament in Qatar, and his representatives have described the case as a needless distraction. Neymar’s legal team had argued for months that the Spanish case was without merit because private corruption is not a crime in Brazil, where the transfer had taken place.Neymar told the court this month that he had done nothing illegal, and that he had only signed documents presented to him by his father, who manages his career.“My father has always been in charge,” Neymar said in court. “I sign what he tells me to.”Even after all these years Neymar’s move to Barcelona remains a dark chapter in soccer’s frequently opaque $7 billion player trading industry. The details that have emerged in the years since it took place have shed light on how an international cast of investors, agents and other intermediaries profits from the biggest deals, but also how secret side deals — often designed to deliver returns to investors or hide millions of dollars from the tax authorities — have become commonplace.The case’s denouement this week came after the prosecutor told the court, according to Spanish news media reports, that although no violations of Spain’s penal code had been proved, there were indications that other rules, including Brazil’s civil code and FIFA regulations, may have been breached. The prosecutors said, though, that the proper forum for the claims made by DIS was civil court.Lawyers for the defendants, which as well as Neymar and his family include the former Barcelona presidents Sandro Rosell and Josep Maria Bartomeu, are now expected to seek damages and costs from DIS, which will continue pursuing its own damages claim. More

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      NYU vs. Chicago Men’s Soccer: A Match Between Two Women Coaches

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      An array of major college sporting events will kick off this weekend, many with huge audiences, on TV and in person. But perhaps the most significant game will take place at little Gaelic Park in the Riverdale section of the Bronx on Friday, when two men’s soccer teams coached by women will square off in a game that could help define a new standard.Kim Wyant is the head coach of New York University, which will host powerhouse University of Chicago, coached by Julianne Sitch. It is believed to be the first N.C.A.A. men’s soccer game in which both coaches are women.“This is definitely historic,” said Nicole LaVoi, a senior lecturer at the University of Minnesota, who compiles annual data on the number of women coaching in college sports. “It’s a landmark occurrence.”A small number of women are coaching men in various roles at both the professional and college levels. Becky Hammon, now a head coach in the W.N.B.A., was hired as a full-time assistant for the N.B.A.’s San Antonio Spurs in 2014 and that league has had several women hired in assistant roles in the years since. A handful of women are coaches in the N.F.L. and in Major League Baseball. Rachel Balkovec just finished her first season as the manager for the Yankees’ Class A affiliate in Tampa, Fla.But the instances remain rare, particularly in college sports, where male coaches far outnumber women, even in women’s sports. Data published by the U.S. Department of Education shows that only about 5 percent of all men’s college teams are coached by women, and the majority of those are in low-revenue, combined-gender sports like skiing, swimming and track and field.The data also showed there are no women in head coaching positions in Division I football, baseball, men’s basketball and men’s soccer, and only about 26 percent of Division I women’s soccer coaches are women.Wyant broke the barrier in 2015, when she was hired by N.Y.U., a Division III school. The first goalie to play an international game for the United States women’s national team, she has led the Violets to five postseason appearances and has become the standard-bearer for women coaching a men’s team in a college team sport.She has also been a role model for many aspiring players and coaches, including Sitch, who until April was an assistant coach for the Chicago women’s team — just as Wyant had been an assistant for the N.Y.U. women’s team. When the Chicago men’s job opened up last winter, Sitch called Wyant and they spoke for about a half-hour. Sitch hung up inspired, feeling there was no reason she could not follow Wyant’s lead.“Prior to her, there wasn’t any other women coaching and leading men’s teams,” Sitch said. “She was obviously a positive influence and role model.”Kim Wyant became N.Y.U.’s head men’s soccer coach in 2015.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesJulianne Sitch is in her first season as the University of Chicago head coach.Anjali Pinto for The New York TimesNow, they are facing one another in a highly anticipated game that holds important social meaning, but also significance within the University Athletic Association, the teams’ conference. Sitch took over a team that went 16-6-1 last year, and this year the Maroons are 14-0 and ranked No. 1 in a Division III coaches’ poll.“It’s a really solid group of young men,” Sitch said. “It’s a tribute to the alums and former staff and the legacy that has been built here. It has been very positive and very inviting, across the board.”In the few months she has been recruiting high school athletes as a head coach, Sitch said she never sensed the slightest resistance from players and families about her gender. Wyant had told her on the phone that she had the same experience.“Players just want to know, ‘Can I get better?’” Wyant said at a recent N.Y.U. practice at Pier 40 in Manhattan. “They are looking for a leader who is invested in the team. Do we feel respected? Whether male or female, if you can deliver all of those things, you can succeed.”Five years ago, Wyant was on a recruiting trip in San Diego, visiting with the family of a player named Jet Trask. Also at the table that day was Trask’s younger brother, Ben, then a high school freshman. Jet Trask opted for Sacramento State, a Division I program, but Wyant made such an impression on young Ben that four years later he wanted to play for her.“Her experience and credentials were never in doubt,” Ben Trask, a sophomore midfielder, said. “I knew if I came here, I would be playing for a great coach. If I had it to do again, I would come here again.”Ben Trask, and Nicholas Suter, a senior co-captain, both said that most of their friends and high school teammates ask them what it is like to play for a woman coach, and both said they tell them there is no difference from playing for a man.“It’s amazing to play for her,” said Suter, who is from Long Island. “It was one of the perks of coming here.”Suter said Wyant has a unique ability to communicate with the players and get the most out of them. He recalled a dramatic first-round game in last year’s N.C.A.A. tournament, against St. Joseph’s College of Maine in New London, Conn. With N.Y.U. trailing, 2-1, and only 15 minutes remaining, the game was suspended because of lightning. The Violets trudged back to their hotel while organizers looked for a new field with lights.Wyant has led the Violets to five postseason appearances and has been a role model for many aspiring players and coaches, including Sitch.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesHiroko Masuike/The New York TimesOver a team dinner, while they waited three hours for a new field with a different playing surface, Wyant told the players that they were prepared for the situation. As a team in an urban setting, N.Y.U. often shuttles between various sites around New York for practices and games, and Wyant stressed that they were better suited to adapt to the uncertainties of the moment. Inspired, they went to the new field, where Suter scored the equalizer and N.Y.U. won, 3-2, in extra time.They may need similar magic to handle Chicago, which has rolled through its schedule under Sitch and produced a record that helps validate the decision to hire her.“We had the student-athletes be a part of the search and it was really important to see how they would react,” said Angie Torain, the Chicago athletic director. “They were just so positive, it was ridiculous. It’s because of her soccer knowledge and what she brings for them.”But according to Teresa Gould, the deputy commissioner of the Pac-12 Conference, one of the Power 5 leagues in Division I, far too few university administrators are making similar decisions. Gould is also the president of the board of WeCOACH, an organization dedicated to the development, support and retention of women in coaching at all levels. She says the numbers are troubling, especially 50 years after Title IX was adopted to promote equal participation and access to sports.But Title IX does not govern coaching hires. Gould points to LaVoi’s yearly data, compiled at the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport, which reveals that only 42.7 percent of the coaches of women’s collegiate teams are women. In 1971, about 90 percent of coaches of women’s college teams were women.Sitch took over a team that went 16-6-1 last year, and this year the Maroons are 14-0.Anjali Pinto for The New York TimesGould said there has been a general exodus away from coaching as the pressures and demands of the jobs multiply under the weight of win-now approaches, financial imperatives and the exhausting influence of social media. She says coaching is a lifestyle commitment more than just a career, and it often hampers women more than men because of things like child care and travel.“It has become harder for women, who may still be the primary general managers of their households, to do both,” Gould said.That is why she is so excited about Friday’s game, hoping it will raise awareness and provide proof to girls, young women and especially college administrators, that coaching is a viable career path for women, regardless of the players’ gender.But the game, and the examples set by Wyant and Sitch, also provide strong female role models for boys and men, too.“It’s immensely important,” LaVoi said, “because we know from the data that when young men are exposed to female leaders in a context they care about, like sports, they have more egalitarian perceptions and beliefs about gender and leadership. Then they are more likely, as they graduate from college, to treat women as equals in the workplace and perhaps in their personal relationships.”For the N.Y.U. players, going through their paces at Pier 40 under Wyant’s watchful eye, their immediate concern is beating Chicago, a talented team that has only improved under Sitch’s leadership.“It will be historic, it will be special,” Wyant said. “I think it’s so appropriate that N.Y.U. is hosting it, because N.Y.U. is a major reason this is happening. They put me in this role and had the courage to make this decision. But our main focus right here is on trying to beat a really good team on Friday.” More

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      The Instant Legend of Napoli’s Khvicha Kvaratskhelia

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      BATUMI, Georgia — They used to worry that the Adjarabet Arena, with its sinuous arches and illuminated exterior, would turn into something of a white elephant. Batumi, after all, is a quaint resort town; it had little need for a 20,000-capacity stadium. Dinamo, the soccer team that was to call it home, generally required seating for only half that number.And then, at the start of April, Khvicha Kvaratskhelia arrived.“The city lived from one match to the next,” Tariel Varshanidze, a prominent voice in Dinamo’s fan scene, said. “The atmosphere changed radically.” Matches in the Erovnuli Liga, Georgia’s top division, suddenly had the same air as “top Champions League games,” he said. “It was fantastic.”In the three months Kvaratskhelia spent in Batumi, every seat was taken. Tourists who flocked to the beaches of the Black Sea added a game to their itineraries. Friends, relatives, neighbors, colleagues and acquaintances all started to ask regular attendees for spare tickets, whether they supported Dinamo, someone else, or nobody at all.During games, Varshanidze said, the whole stadium cheered Kvaratskhelia’s every touch, even those fans who had theoretically come along to support the opposition. And it was not just in Batumi. “We had full stadiums in almost every city,” George Geguchadze, Dinamo’s coach, said. All of Georgia wanted a glimpse. Even games in the country’s backwaters, at stadiums that in normal times might attract only a few hundred spectators, were sold out.That was hardly a shock. Kvaratskhelia (pronounced kuh-varats-kell-eeya) had arrived in Batumi as an established national icon. He had blossomed as a 16-year-old sensation at Dinamo Tbilisi, Georgia’s biggest club. By the time he made his debut for his country, barely two years later, he had outgrown the Georgian league, moving to Russia to join Lokomotiv Moscow and then Rubin Kazan. The brief, unexpected chance to see him in the flesh again — after he was freed to void his contract after Russia invaded Ukraine — was too good an opportunity to miss.Kvaratskhelia’s coach at Napoli, Luciano Spalletti, has described him as “stratospheric.” Arrigo Sacchi, the former Italy and A.C. Milan manager, prefers the word “devastating.”Alessandro Garofalo/LaPresse, via Associated PressWhat few could have anticipated was how fast, and how far, that mania would spread. Scarcely six months later, the 21-year-old winger’s fame has spread far from Georgia. In a matter of weeks, he has enthralled Italian soccer and emerged as the breakout star of the Champions League.“Georgian fans expected him to play at a high level,” Geguchadze said. “But nobody could have imagined he would have such good results in such a short period of time.”Those fans who flooded to the 11 games he played in Batumi’s colors, it turned out, were getting a sneak preview. The man who filled the Adjarabet Arena was about to become the best player to watch in Europe.The Rarity of AnarchyThe raw numbers are these: Since joining Napoli for around $10 million this summer, Kvaratskhelia has scored five goals in the Italian league, where his team has established a two-point lead at the top, and two more in the Champions League, helping Napoli qualify with ease from an intimidating group featuring Liverpool and Ajax. The totals are good, no doubt. But they do not even begin to explain the phenomenon.His coach at Napoli, Luciano Spalletti, has described Kvaratskhelia as “stratospheric.” Arrigo Sacchi, the former Italy and A.C. Milan coach, prefers the word “devastating.” A World Cup winner, Alessandro Del Piero, who is not unqualified to gauge the quality of attacking players, suggested he looked like he was “made to play in Europe.”Napoli’s fans granted him their highest honor, nicknaming him Kvaradona, after the most beloved playmaker in the club’s history.Alberto Pizzoli/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesPerhaps the most telling testimony, though, belonged to Fabrizio Ravanelli, the former Juventus striker. After Napoli beat Milan last month, Ravanelli admitted he had been captivated by Kvaratskhelia and Milan’s Rafael Leão. “In the world,” he said, “there are fewer and fewer players like them.”That sense of rarity is the root of Kvaratskhelia’s appeal. He is the sort of player that modern soccer — with its industrialized youth systems and stylistic templates — does not produce anymore: mercurial and intuitive, faintly maverick, somehow untamed.Willy Sagnol, the Georgia national team coach, has suggested that his closest parallel is a young Franck Ribéry, the former Bayern Munich wing, but it is not an exact match.Kvaratskhelia is taller, more languid, less easily categorized. Ribéry was a player of menace and purpose who wanted, much of the time, to cut inside. Kvaratskhelia might do that. Or he might not. He might play as a No. 10 for a few minutes.Or he might, as he did in a game against Lazio a few weeks ago, ignore three safe passes, pirouette amid three defenders and then arrow a shot against the post from 30 yards.His strength, to Levan Kobiashvili, the president of the Georgian soccer federation, is his “unpredictability.”“There are a lot of wingers who are technically gifted and very quick,” Kobiashvili said. “But Khvicha offers something completely different. I don’t think we have seen many players who have such a relentless attacking style, who do everything at such speed, not only in Georgia but in Europe. Everything is through his instincts. That is what makes him so exciting.”Kobiashvili demurs at the idea that Kvaratskhelia is the “continuation of any process.” Georgia might have a rich history of producing virtuosic attacking players — most notably the former Manchester City and Ajax winger Georgi Kinkladze — but Kvaratskhelia, he said, is a product only of his own talent.Others are not quite so sure. “He has some aspects that are very Georgian,” said Andrés Carrasco, the Spanish head of youth development at Dinamo Tbilisi, the club that unearthed Kvaratskhelia. “He tends not to worry if something does not work. He does not think about the negative consequences. That is true of a lot of attacking players here. They are daring. They’re bold. They’re a little bit anarchic.”And there are, Carrasco said, more to come.Kvaratskhelia and a group of other young stars have lifted the fortunes of Georgia’s national team alongside their own stock.Vano Shlamov/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe BoomIn Batumi, as in Georgia as a whole, soccer fans have followed Kvaratskhelia’s starburst as avidly as they did when he was briefly a player at Dinamo Batumi, living in a hotel not far from the stadium. Now it is Napoli’s games that grind the country to a halt. “Everyone is gathered around televisions,” said Kobiashvili, himself one of the most decorated players in Georgian history. “I can’t remember anything like it.”But he, like Carrasco, is keen to emphasize that Kvaratskhelia is not alone. Georgian soccer is on the rise. When Kobiashvili took up his post as Georgian soccer federation president in 2015, the country was languishing “around 150th in FIFA’s rankings,” he said. It currently stands 78th.Even more impressive, though, have been its performances in the Nations League. Georgia has been promoted twice — initially from the competition’s lowest tier to its third and then, this summer, to the second division — meaning that in the next edition of the tournament, it will play at the same level as England.“We have numerous talented players, and they are contributing collectively to this euphoria,” Kobiashvili said. He pointed, in particular, to Giorgi Mamardashvili, an imposing goalkeeper now shining at the Spanish club Valencia, but he could have named Zuriko Davitashvili, too, a teammate of Kvaratskhelia’s at Batumi who now plays for the French team Bordeaux.Their emergence has not gone unnoticed. But Kvaratskhelia did not spring from the ether: There are no secrets in European soccer, and a host of major teams across the continent had been aware of his gifts while he was in Russia, if not before. Juventus and Tottenham had watched him. Napoli had been tracking him for two years.Kvaratskhelia with his teammates at the Dinamo Tblisi academy. He may be Georgia’s brightest young star, but he is not the only one.Dinamo Tbilisi“A few years ago, kids in Georgia aspired to be the next Lionel Messi, the next Cristiano Ronaldo,” one official said. “Now it is Khvicha.”Dinamo Tbilisi“He was a little bit of a victim, in a way,” Oleg Yarovinski, Rubin Kazan’s general manager, said. “They liked him, but maybe they did not need him.” Rubin Kazan, he said, never received a single offer.When he hit the open market in March, after FIFA granted all foreign players in Russian soccer the right to cancel their contracts unilaterally, Sagnol, the Georgia national team coach, began working his network of contacts to try to get him a move to western Europe. He said he was met largely with skepticism.“All I heard was that he was a player who was tired after the 70th minute,” Sagnol told the French radio station RMC Sport. “They said: ‘You know, Willy, he’s just a Georgian, he’s not Brazilian. It’s less glamorous’.” So Kvaratskhelia decided to return home, to Batumi, to bide his time.His successors are not likely to have the same problem. Next year, Luka Parkadze, a 17-year-old winger who came through the Dinamo Tbilisi academy, will join Bayern Munich, after being sent there for a successful trial earlier this year. “We do not get a lot of scouts in Georgia,” Carrasco said. “So we have to make the effort to help them know our players.”Carrasco describes Parkadze as “very attacking, unafraid, who understands individual play, he appears in big games.” It sounds familiar.“Only a few years ago, kids in Georgia aspired to be the next Lionel Messi, the next Cristiano Ronaldo,” Kobiashvili said. “Now it is Khvicha and Mamardashvili. They have transformed the whole soccer culture in Georgia.”Nowhere is that truer than in Batumi. When Kvaratskhelia eventually moved on, leaving the Adjarabet Arena behind for the grandest stages in Europe, Dinamo Batumi found itself with a problem. Attendance at the stadium reverted to normal. Many of the tourists and the sudden converts disappeared.The club’s academy, though, was overwhelmed. It had received 10 times the usual number of applications. It now has 800 players.“We have to build two new pitches, find new coaches,” Varshanidze, the Dinamo Batumi fan, said. For years to come it will be living with, and benefiting from, those three gilded months when it was home to the most exciting player in Europe. More

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      Cristiano Ronaldo and the Long Walk

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      Soccer’s biggest stars used to have places to wind down their careers with dignity. The sport’s economics now require their humiliations be public.MANCHESTER, England — Manchester United’s starting team appeared first, walking out at Old Trafford shoulder-to-shoulder with its opponent for the evening, Tottenham Hotspur. Then came the substitutes, clutching fluorescent training bibs and bottles of water, followed by two small armies of coaches, assistant coaches and assistants to the coaches.Only then, once the players had lined up, the replacements had taken their seats and the respective coaching staffs had claimed their territory, did Cristiano Ronaldo emerge, strolling a couple of yards behind midfielder Scott McTominay. It may have been by instinct or it may have been by design, but for that moment, the camera was drawn, inexorably, to him.Not, of course, that it needs much excuse. Four minutes later, as the game was settling into its pattern, there was Ronaldo again, in situ on the substitutes’ bench, in the center of the screen. It has become a familiar role for him for much of this season: one of the finest players in the game’s history, reduced to the most important spectator in the stadium.Cristiano Ronaldo’s new position: left out.Laurence Griffiths/Getty ImagesStrictly speaking, this should not be worthy of note. For much of last season, the first of his second spell at Old Trafford, Ronaldo was the inspiration for and subject of what was — initially, anyway — a moderately compelling debate about the balance between individual attainment and collective success.He scored goals, and plenty of them — 18 in 30 games in the Premier League alone, the most prolific at the club by some distance — but his presence, at times, seemed to inhibit the attempts of first Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and then Ralf Rangnick to imbue the team with a more modern, dynamic sensibility. How, then, should his contribution be assessed? Were the goals justification for Ronaldo’s inclusion, or was the cause being confused with the cure?It has been abundantly clear for months where Erik ten Hag, United’s current manager, stands on that particular conundrum. He has been unstinting in his praise for Ronaldo in public — both in terms of his lasting legacy on the game and his ongoing usefulness — but his words have been rather drowned out by his actions.Ronaldo has started only two Premier League games this season. The first involved being 4-0 down at halftime against Brentford. The second ended in a stalemate against Newcastle. He has, instead, spent most of his time facing Omonia Nicosia, Sheriff Tiraspol and Real Sociedad in the Europa League. Few have questioned the wisdom of it.United’s win against Spurs on Wednesday night, the product of probably the finest performance yet in ten Hag’s nascent reign, provided a compelling illustration as to why. Without Ronaldo, United is stirring. There is an energy, a zest, in its performance, a sense of disparate parts gradually binding into a distinct unit, the early, emergent signs of a genuine style of play.And yet such is Ronaldo’s fame, his draw, his magnetism that even now his absence defines things as surely as his presence. His exclusion from the field is a talking point. The camera pans to him, seeking to discern his mood, his state of mind, as soon as the opportunity arises. The fans, mindful of what he was, unconcerned by what he might be, sing his name as he trots down the touchline to stretch his muscles, to shake off the gathering rust.Ronaldo has twice as many starts in the Europa League (four) as he does in the Premier League (two) this season.Ian Hodgson/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIt is not, of course, quite the coda to his glittering career Ronaldo might have anticipated. It is not, in truth, the coda his achievements warrant. There is scant reason to offer sympathy for that: His predicament, after all, comes with the not-irrelevant consolation of being the best-paid player at one of the world’s richest clubs.But it is true, too, that Ronaldo is trapped by a function of modern soccer’s economics. Few players, if any, have done as much as Ronaldo, 37, to turn the game into the financial monster it has become; he has, for years, been one of the twin spearheads (and prime beneficiaries) of its relentless drive for global growth.Now, though, he finds itself at the mercy of his own creation. All players, even the very best, reach an end. Their legs weary or their bodies creaking, they look for a slightly more comfortable place to spend their twilight years, somewhere the scrutiny is less glaring or the demands not quite as exacting or the task a touch less mountainous than at the game’s absolute peaks.At times, whole leagues have served as an escape valve. European fans tend to sneer when players choose to move to Turkey or M.L.S. or (in former times) Russia and (briefly, brightly) China, but it is worth considering that it is not so long since the game’s great retirement home — the one that drew Ruud Gullit and Jürgen Klinsmann and all the rest of them with a promise of fat paychecks and supine opponents — was the Premier League of the 1990s.More frequently, though, there were a whole cast of clubs who were willing to play that role. For the original Ronaldo and Ronaldinho, it was a waning A.C. Milan. For their Brazilian teammate Rivaldo, it was Olympiacos. Even Diego Maradona, after not one but two drug scandals, could find a safe landing spot for a time at Sevilla.For some, those routes still exist. The lure of stardust took Gonzalo Higuaín to Inter Miami and brought Giorgio Chiellini and Gareth Bale to Los Angeles F.C. More telling, though, is the presence of Ángel Di María at Juventus and Alexis Sánchez at Marseille. Players associated with the Champions League, increasingly, are either not permitted or not prepared to escape it, their autumn days directly compared with the heat of their summers. Sinecures are not what they used to be.It is easy — and not wholly inaccurate — to accuse Cristiano Ronaldo of not only greed but hubris, too, to point out that he would find countless willing suitors if only he would accept a substantial pay cut and a demotion in status. He would be adored at Valencia, or Lazio, or Galatasaray. After all, his forebears as the world’s best players were prepared to accept the ticking of the clock.The problem, of course, is that he does not need to do so. That he was slowly displaying signs of his own mortality was clear when he left Juventus, a little more than a year ago, and yet Manchester United — a club that regards itself as the biggest in the world — was still willing to sign him, not just for the romance of it but for the brand impact, the exposure, the Instagram followers. There is no reason to believe, when he leaves United, it would be different for his next club.Ronaldo and Coach Erik ten Hag in a rare moment when both wanted the same thing.Phil Noble/ReutersRonaldo is, put simply, too valuable, too famous, too much of a draw to be allowed to drift into the sunset. (It goes without saying, of course, that Lionel Messi — the impending recipient of contract offers from both Paris St.-Germain and Barcelona — is exactly the same.) Someone, somewhere, will offer him a colossal sum of money to score the occasional goal in the Champions League, or to aid their pursuit of it.And so this is his lot, as one of the most glorious careers ever does not draw gracefully to a close but is drained of every last drop of glamour, every last ounce of energy, every last lingering camera shot, forced to watch on as the game he once dominated and the stages he once owned move on without him.A minute or so before the final whistle on Wednesday night, with United’s victory secure, Ronaldo lifted himself from his seat, strolled along the side of the field and disappeared into the Old Trafford tunnel. There were still four minutes to play.By the time they had elapsed, he had left the stadium, and disappeared off into the night, leaving in his wake only rancor and resentment. The next day, ten Hag decreed that Ronaldo would be banished from training with his teammates for the rest of the week as punishment. He may have played his final game for Manchester United.That will not be the end of it, though. There will be another club, another team, one with ambitions of gracing the Champions League or perhaps even designs on winning it, that cannot quite resist his draw, his power, that will not be able to look away from a star grown too big to fall.Kylian Mbappé Says Everyone Got It WrongFranck Fife/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesKylian Mbappé was, he would like you to know, napping. He was napping when the first reports emerged, last week, that he felt “betrayed” by Paris St.-Germain and wanted to leave the club at the first available opportunity.He was napping while pretty much every news organization ran with those reports, and he was still napping when he, as well as the variety of family members, friends and business associates who constitute his entourage, failed for several days to rebut any of them. Say what you like about Kylian Mbappé, but he is a sound sleeper.No wonder, because as it turns out, he is actually very happy at P.S.G. You can tell, because he said so. “I am very happy,” he said. The very notion that he might not be is “completely wrong.”“I never asked for my departure in January,” he said, after helping his team beat Marseille last week, which is a lot less reassuring as a sentence the more you think about it. “The information that came out, I didn’t understand. I was as shocked as everyone else.”Still, at least all of that is cleared up now. There is absolutely no need to wonder where, exactly, the suggestions of his disaffection came from in the first place. It was not Mbappé — he was tucked up in bed — and it was not, he said, any member of his entourage. “They were at my little brother’s game,” he said. Presumably it took place in some sort of mountain lair, where there is no cell service. Or perhaps it was some sort of dream. If you would just take Mbappé’s word for it, that would suit him just fine.CorrespondencePaul Ellis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe mere mention of mud in last week’s column brought an avalanche — well, not an avalanche; maybe a slow ooze — of mud-related nostalgia. Mud, it turns out, is something people miss.“Elite soccer would be better with more mud, right?” asked Joey Klonowski. “Every game would obviously be too much. I’m asking for like one percent of games. For variety.”Good news, then, from Ben Cohn. “The third round of the F.A. Cup was still a place to see mud quite recently,” he pointed out. “I have a vague image in my mind of Jürgen Klopp talking to an old-school tea lady before a really muddy fixture.”While I think we can agree that soccer is improved by being played in a range of climatic conditions, I have to take issue with Jeff Geer. Jeff has been watching a lot of Brentford, and has been left wondering: “Why do people like Bryan Mbeumo? What I see: not extremely fast; cannot target corners of the goal; weak passer in the penalty area; can’t take advantage of the counterattack.”This is slightly unfortunate for Jeff because I found myself thinking this week what a good player Mbeumo is: industrious, intelligent, always in the right place to offer a teammate an option. Perhaps that is his problem. Perhaps he is good enough to be given many chances to prove his limitations.And a final one from a regular correspondent. Shawn Donnelly would like to know whether Premier League ball boys get paid. “And why aren’t there more ball girls?” The answers to these are related: Most ball boys are players from the home team’s academy. It does feel like perhaps it is an honor that could be shared between both the boys’ and girls’ schools, though. More

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      M.L.S. Playoff Preview: An L.A. Derby and More Questions Answered

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      Major League Soccer’s playoffs have reached the conference semifinals as the league sprints to finish before the World Cup.Major League Soccer is in a hurry to crown its champion this season, with its final set for Nov. 5 — just over two weeks before the World Cup opens in Qatar. The final sprint, which begins with four quarterfinals this week, includes some marquee matches that will offer some players a final opportunity (or two or three) to impress national team coaches before the final rosters for the World Cup are due in mid-November.This year’s playoffs feature two previous M.L.S. Cup champions (the Los Angeles Galaxy and New York City F.C.) and two teams (Austin F.C. and F.C. Cincinnati) that are making their first appearance in the postseason. But the postseason also has tracked closely with regular-season results: The top four teams in the Western Conference are still alive, as are four of the top five from the East.Philadelphia and Los Angeles F.C., which earned first-round byes by finishing first in their conferences, will enter the postseason at last on Thursday: Philadelphia faces F.C. Cincinnati, and L.A.F.C. hosts its crosstown rival, the Los Angeles Galaxy.On Sunday, New York City F.C., the league’s defending champion, will play C.F. Montreal, and F.C. Dallas will meet Austin F.C. in an all-Texas affair.The conference semifinals, which are single-game elimination matches, start on Thursday and will wrap up on Sunday. The conference finals are scheduled for Oct. 30, and the M.L.S. Cup final is set for Nov. 5 — the earliest date for the game in league history. The final will be played at the home of the finalist with the best regular season record.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.Here’s a quick catch-up of where things stand.The Battle of Los AngelesL.A.F.C., which won the Supporter’s Shield for posting the league’s best regular-season, will begin what it hopes is a home-field run to M.L.S. Cup on Thursday night, when its hosts the crosstown Los Angeles Galaxy at Banc of California Stadium. The venue has been a formidable challenge for visitors this season: L.A.F.C. went 13-2-2 there this season.L.A.F.C.’s first playoff test, though, like all games in the teams’ nascent rivalry, brings the potential for fireworks. The last time the two Los Angeles teams played against each other in a playoff game was in 2019, when L.A.F.C. won, 5-3, in one of the highest-scoring playoff games in M.L.S. history.Gabriel Pereira and New York City F.C. will be playing away from Yankee Stadium for as long as the Yankees remain in baseball’s playoffs.Mark Smith/USA Today Sports, via ReutersRoad Team F.C.New York City F.C. is trying to become the first team to win consecutive M.L.S. Cups since the Galaxy did it in 2011 and 2012. But unlike L.A.F.C., its path to the final — for now — looks to be a road trip.As long as the Yankees remain alive in Major League Baseball’s playoffs, N.Y.C.F.C. will be unable to play on its regular home field at Yankee Stadium. That proved to be little trouble in the first round, when the team beat Inter Miami, 3-0, at Citi Field in Queens. On Sunday, New York City F.C. will head to Montreal for a conference semifinal.In the quest for another title, N.Y.C.F.C. will count on their pair of Brazilians, Gabriel Pereira and Héber, who each scored eight goals in the regular season, and the potential of a return from injury of Talles Magno. Those three, and midfielder Santiago Rodríguez, have helped fill the offensive hole left by the midseason departure of last season’s leading scorer, the Argentine striker Valentín Castellanos, who joined the Spanish side Girona F.C. on a loan in July.N.Y.C.F.C. has been led since June by an interim coach, Nick Cushing, who took over after Ronny Deila left to join Standard Liège in Belgium. The team wobbled badly after the change, losing seven of nine games in August and September, but it closed the season with three straight wins.Montreal, meanwhile, might be the hottest team in the league: It has lost only once since July.Jesus Ferreira of F.C. Dallas was named this season’s M.L.S. young player of the year. The playoffs can serve as an audition for him to play for the United States in the World Cup.Jerome Miron/USA Today Sports, via ReutersFinal World Cup AuditionsFor some players, the playoffs offer more than just a shot at the M.L.S. Cup title. A number of players also are playing knowing that national team coaches will be watching.One player looking to lock down his spot — and some playing time — ahead of the World Cup is the 21-year-old forward Jesus Ferreira of F.C. Dallas. Ferreira, who was just named this season’s M.L.S. young player of the year, led Dallas with 18 goals in 33 games. He is in contention for a striker role for the United States, but a poor showing in a friendly against Japan in September didn’t help his case. A good run of playoff form, however, might help restore his confidence, and his place in U.S. Coach Gregg Berhalter’s plans.Another American hopeful is N.Y.C.F.C.’s goalkeeper Sean Johnson, who posted 14 shutouts during the regular season and started every game for New York. Johnson has an outside shot at making the roster and going to Qatar, even if he is not likely to be starter.Ismaël Koné, a 20-year-old midfielder for Montreal, is looking to earn a spot on Canada’s national team, which will be returning to the World Cup for the first time since 1986. Koné scored two goals and had five assists for Montreal during the regular season, and he scored a key goal in Montreal’s 2-0 victory over Orlando City in the first round of the playoffs. More

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      Real Madrid’s Karim Benzema Wins Ballon d’Or

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      The Real Madrid forward won the voting after a season when Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo were nowhere in sight. Barcelona’s Alexia Putellas repeated as the women’s winner.At last, the eternal understudy has taken center stage. Karim Benzema spent much of his career as a glittering supporting act for Kaká and Cristiano Ronaldo and, more recently, Kylian Mbappé. Now, two months short of his 35th birthday, he has the trinket that marks him as a star in his own right: a Ballon d’Or.Benzema, for months regarded as the overwhelming favorite to win the 2022 edition of the award given to the world’s best soccer player, collected his prize on Monday at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris. Sadio Mané, who led Senegal to victory in the Africa Cup of Nations, finished second, with Manchester City’s Kevin De Bruyne third. Benzema had described winning one as his “dream since childhood”; he has had to wait a little longer than he might have anticipated to see it come true.Here is the image you’ve all been waiting for! Karim Benzema! #ballondor with @adidasFR pic.twitter.com/TJze0Km1s6— Ballon d’Or #ballondor (@francefootball) October 17, 2022
      France Football, the magazine that has awarded the Ballon d’Or, the most illustrious individual prize in soccer since 1956, had announced that the voting for this year’s edition would be subject to what Pascal Ferré, the publication’s editor, referred to as a “little makeover” in order to retain its relevance and burnish its accuracy.Rather than offering 176 journalists from around the world a vote on the final winners, only those from the top 100 nations in FIFA’s global rankings would decide the men’s award, and the top 50 the women’s prize. (Ferré, more than a little disparagingly, said this new “elite” panel represented the “real connoisseurs” of the game.)Perhaps most significantly, the voting criteria were clarified: The magazine instructed its jurors that individual attainment over the previous season should outweigh team success, and that a player’s broader career should not be relevant at all. Ferré hoped that measure — clearly directed at what might be regarded as legacy voters for Messi and Ronaldo — would make the Ballon d’Or an “open competition, rather than a preserve.”At first glance, of course, it is possible to believe that those changes made a difference in determining the outcome. It is, after all, only the second time since 2008 that a player other than Messi or Ronaldo has been anointed as the best on the planet. (Benzema’s Real Madrid teammate Luka Modric was the other exception, in 2018.) It is the first time since 2006 that neither man has at least been on the podium. Ronaldo, after a disappointing year at Manchester United, finished 10th. Messi, last year’s winner, did not even make the shortlist.Lionel Messi after winning a record sixth Ballon d’Or award in 2019. He added a seventh last year.Christian Hartmann/ReutersAnd yet that assessment risks not only turning Benzema’s triumph into a subplot in a story of Messi and Ronaldo’s fall, but also ignoring the context for his victory. Whatever changes France Football had announced, whatever criteria it had emphasized, so remarkable was Benzema’s season that it is hard to imagine a way in which he might not have won.The blunt measures, of course, are the trophies — his fifth Champions League, another Spanish title — and the goals: 27 in La Liga, 15 in just a dozen games in Europe. Even those numbers do not, though, capture his impact. Benzema may not have been the decisive player in the Champions League final, an honor that fell to his teammate Vinícius Júnior, but he had unquestionably been the defining figure in Real’s journey to the final in Paris.It was Benzema who scored a quick-fire hat trick in the competition’s round of 16 to send Real Madrid through at the expense of Paris St.-Germain, and it was Benzema who scored another in the first leg of the quarterfinal with Chelsea. When that advantage seemed to have been wasted in the return fixture, it was Benzema who lifted Real Madrid once more, scoring the extra-time goal that sealed its place in the semifinal.Benzema won his fifth Champions League title with Real Madrid this year. Next month, he will try to help France retain the World Cup.Thomas Coex/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThere, he not only scored twice in a dizzying first encounter with Manchester City, but nervelessly converted the penalty that completed yet another extraordinary Real comeback at the Santiago Bernabéu. Benzema did not win the Ballon d’Or because Messi and Ronaldo finally fell to earth. He did so because, over the last year or so, he has reached their celestial level.Even with Ferré’s changes, the Ballon d’Or remains an inherently curious phenomenon, most clearly illustrated by the absence of the best player in the summer’s women’s European Championship, England’s Keira Walsh, even from the shortlist for the women’s award, won instead by Barcelona’s injured star Alexia Putellas for the second year in a row.But Benzema’s victory is warranted, and perhaps overdue, recognition for a player who gave much of his peak career in the service of an even brighter star.Benzema joined Real Madrid in the same summer as Ronaldo, though to rather less fanfare. In his first decade at the club, the Frenchman’s role was essentially subordinate to the Portuguese; he was present in order to furnish Ronaldo with the space, and the ammunition, he required to maintain his staggering effectiveness.It was only when Ronaldo left, in the summer of 2018, that Benzema was finally able to take center stage, blossoming into the headline act that his talent had always suggested he would become. That he has had to wait so long to flourish on his own accord is a measure of the height of the bar set by Messi and Ronaldo, and of the challenge of thriving in an era marked by twin greats.Benzema’s victory, coupled with the absence from the top three of the two players who have traded this award between them for more than a decade, suggests that era is now over, although an unexpected World Cup win for either might allow them one last hurrah.It does not, though, herald the dawn of a new age. Benzema will be 35 in December. His has been a glorious autumn, but it is an autumn nonetheless. The future lies with the other names on the list, with Erling Haaland and Mbappé and Phil Foden and Vinicíus. Their time will come, and soon. For now, though, today belongs, at last, to Benzema. More