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      Uwe Seeler, One of Germany’s Greatest Soccer Players, Dies at 85

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      He led West Germany to the 1966 World Cup, but his teams never won a title. Pele included him on his list of the world’s premier living players.Uwe Seeler, who led West Germany to the 1966 World Cup final as captain of the national team, has died. He was 85.Christian Pletz, a spokesman for Hamburger SV, the club Seeler played for from 1953 to 1972, said on Thursday that Seeler’s family had confirmed the death. The cause was not given. A local newspaper in Norderstedt, north of Hamburg, said he died at his home in that city.Regarded as one of the best German players of all time, Seeler was famous for his overhead kicks and his ability to score goals from the unlikeliest of angles.He was also known for his humility and fairness, and respected for his unwavering loyalty to his hometown club. He received offers from clubs in Spain and Italy, most notably a huge offer from Inter Milan in 1961, but he opted to stay with Hamburg.Seeler scored 445 goals in 519 appearances for Hamburg in the Oberliga and Bundesliga leagues. He remains the team’s all-time high scorer in the Bundesliga, the top league in Germany, with 137 goals.Hamburg, which had been the only remaining team to have played every season in the Bundesliga since the league’s formation in 1963, was relegated to the second division in 2018.Seeler scored 43 goals in 72 games for West Germany, which was the runner-up to England in the 1966 World Cup and won a third-place medal four years later in Mexico. He was a member of the German team for 16 years.“While I was at four World Cups, I’d have liked to have won the title once,” he said. “I didn’t have the luck.”“Still,” he added, “everything was wonderful. I regret nothing.”He was voted German soccer player of the year in 1960, 1964 and 1970.Pele, the Brazilian soccer great, included Seeler in his list of the world’s greatest living players in 2004.“His handling of the ball was perfect, his shot precise, and what really amazed me was his ability to head the ball,” Pele said.In a special supplement to celebrate Seeler’s 80th birthday in 2016, the Hamburg club wrote: “If Uwe Seeler laced up his boots, then the opposing goalkeeper could dress up warmly and preferably put on a second pair of gloves, because Seeler scored from everywhere and in every possible way. Whether overhead kicks, flying headers, shots from distance, volleys, lobs, opportunist strikes — he always found a way to get the ball over the line.”Seeler won the German championship in 1960 and the German Cup in 1963 with Hamburg, but he also endured heartbreak with near misses in the European Cup and the European Cup Winners’ Cup. Hamburg lost to Barcelona in the European Cup semifinals in 1961 and to Milan in the Cup Winners’ Cup final in 1968.Seeler, who was born in Hamburg on Nov. 5, 1936, suffered repeated health setbacks in recent years. In May 2020 he underwent an operation to repair a broken hip after a bad fall at home. He lost his hearing in his right ear and had problems with balance after a car accident in 2010. He also had a pacemaker fitted and had to have a tumor removed from his shoulder, the news agency DPA reported.Seeler and his wife, Ilka, were married for more than 60 years. They had three daughters. His grandson Levin Öztunali plays for the Bundesliga club Union Berlin. Seeler’s older brother, Dieter, also played for Hamburg. His father, Erwin, worked on a barge in Hamburg’s port and was also known for playing soccer in that city.Complete information on survivors was not immediately available. More

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      The Problem in Coaching Style Without Substance

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      England’s 8-0 thrashing of Norway was a stunning triumph. But it also exposed a failure of leadership.As the changing room door closed behind them, England’s players could not help but laugh. They were halfway through what was, in theory, the most arduous challenge awaiting them in the group stage of Euro 2022. They were facing a Norway team sprinkled with representatives of Lyon and Barcelona, Chelsea and Manchester City, the powerhouses of the women’s game.And they had, in the space of a single half, scored six goals.It was not a cruel laughter, or a mocking one. It was, instead, a disbelieving laughter, a giddy laughter. The entire experience seemed somewhat surreal to many of the players, as if there had been some sort of glitch in the code. Once they had regained some measure of composure, the first question many asked was simple:What had just happened?Routs happen, of course. It has not been long since Sarina Wiegman’s England scored 20 goals in a single game against Latvia. It has been only three years since the United States did its bit for the talking-point business by beating Thailand, 13-0, at the World Cup, giving rise to at least a week of discussion on the relative ethical merits of celebrating goals in a blowout.Routs happen both in men’s and women’s soccer, and in both cases they generally prompt further interrogation about the health of the sport. In the men’s game, as a rule, that focuses on the yawning financial chasm that has spirited the elite club sides away from their opponents. In the women’s, it is more likely to emphasize the difference in resources that separate richer nations and poorer ones.Beth Mead, England’s hat-trick heroine.Adrian Dennis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesEngland’s drubbing of Norway, though, did not fit that pattern. Norway does not, of course, boast a handful of impossibly wealthy clubs pouring money into their women’s sides. It is not home to one of the strongest leagues in the world, staffed now by some of the best players on the planet. It does not, on a very basic level, possess as many human beings as England. Its talent pool, as a result, is naturally smaller.But Norway is not Latvia, and it is not Thailand. Its developmental structures have been good enough to produce Ada Hegerberg, gradually reasserting her claim to being one of the world’s best players; and Caroline Graham Hansen, a vital cog in Barcelona’s attack; and Chelsea’s Guro Reiten; and Julie Blakstad, a star in the making; and Maren Mjelde and Maria Thorisdottir, two of the elite players who have been tempted to England by the booming Women’s Super League.This was not a humiliation that could be cleanly attributed to structural inequality, a defeat that could be dressed up as a learning experience, the inevitable denouement of vastly superior firepower. It was not inevitable at all, in fact. It was, in many ways, self-inflicted.What was most striking, during that surreal first half in which England’s delight metamorphosed first into euphoria and then a dizzying, incredulous frenzy, was the precision of Wiegman’s team’s ruthlessness. It would not be quite right to suggest that England scored the same goal eight times. But it would not be entirely wrong, either.The plan was simple. Ellen White, the central striker, would drop deep, drawing with her one of Norway’s two central defenders, neither of whom is blessed with what might be termed searing pace. Beth Mead, helped by the relative inexperience of Blakstad, her direct opponent, would fill the deserted channel. With a single pass, either from midfield or from Lucy Bronze, the right back, Norway’s penalty area unfurled in front of her.Maria Thorisdottir got an up-close look at several of England’s goals.Adrian Dennis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMartin Sjogren, Norway’s coach, would later suggest that it was England’s first goal, a rather soft penalty, that had unsettled his team. “We began to crack a little and made some poor decisions,” he said. There is some truth in that. Thorisdottir, having conceded the penalty, seemed to freeze, unsure of her every touch, her every move, as if haunted by her error.Sjogren’s claim is not, though, the whole truth. To attribute Norway’s collapse exclusively to individual mistakes is, at heart, to confuse symptom with cause. The problem, the one that caused Sjogren’s side to bend and break so spectacularly, was not an isolated series of unrelated incidents but a systemic shortcoming. England showed its hand, and its opponent failed miserably to adapt.Part of the responsibility for that lies with the players, of course. Mjelde and Thorisdottir, certainly, are experienced enough to have identified their team’s weak point and reacted accordingly: sitting just a little deeper, perhaps, or refusing to be coaxed out of their line by White’s movement, or drawing Blakstad in closer for greater protection.But a vast majority of it falls on the shoulders of Sjogren himself. A sequence of individual errors could be evidence of some great psychological failing, but it is distinctly more likely to be proof of a flaw in a team’s strategy. High-caliber players make consistently poor choices only when they are faced with limited options. And that, ultimately, is down to the coach.The caliber of player in women’s soccer, particularly in Europe, has risen steeply in recent years. The slick, technical style that has proliferated at this summer’s European Championship has offered ample proof of that. It is hard to make the argument, though, that the quality of coach has tracked quite the same trajectory.Or, perhaps better, the type of coach. There has long been an emphasis on player development in the women’s game, for wholly obvious, entirely understandable and broadly admirable reasons. It is that focus that has allowed the game to foster a whole galaxy of emergent stars — Vivianne Miedema and Delphine Cascarino and Lauren Hemp — and help them flourish.Ellen White scored two of England’s eight goals on Monday.Damien Meyer/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBut development coaching is a different skill, a different art, from what might be termed results coaching: The first is concerned with process, after all, and the second with outcome. It is hard not to wonder if a coach more focused on the latter might have acted more swiftly to staunch Norway’s bleeding, or even to shut the game down entirely, accepting a 3-0 defeat as the price to pay to avoid embarrassment.It is that which may prove the decisive factor at the Euros over the next two weeks. Most of the genuine contenders for the trophy — England, France, the Netherlands, Sweden, Germany and, at the outside, Spain — have an abundance of attacking talent. Generating players who can decide games is where women’s soccer, like men’s, now pumps most of its resources.It is possible, of course, that the tournament’s eventual champion will simply be the team with the greatest weight of sheer, glimmering ability, the one most capable of expressing its own brilliance, the one that shines brightest. It is more likely, though, that the team left standing will be the one that is best prepared and most willing to make everyone else look dull.Not as Old as They LookKalidou Koulibaly is trading Napoli blue for Chelsea blue.Massimo Pinca/ReutersReceived wisdom would have it that Chelsea’s decision to spend $40 million on Kalidou Koulibaly is a bad idea. He is already 31, and by the time his contract at Stamford Bridge comes to an end, he will be 34. Even if he has proved a wise investment, there is precious little prospect of the club’s being able to recover any of its costs.The general rule of thumb, when it comes to accepted best practice in soccer, is that well-run teams buy young and, with a degree of cold-eyed dispassion, cull the old. Chelsea’s decision to commit so much money to a veteran central defender like Koulibaly, by those standards, suggests that the club’s new owner and sporting director, Todd Boehly, has not quite internalized the game’s abiding logic.That logic, though, feels somewhat outdated. The idea that players are old — and therefore worthless — as soon as they hit their early 30s dates to an era before the sport took things like nutrition seriously, when players did not have personal osteopaths, when their every move, from their early teens, was not governed by the diktats of sports science.It may well be, in fact, that being 31 today has very little in common with being 31 in 2010, or being 31 in 2000. Koulibaly — his quality perhaps slightly underestimated by the fact that he has spent the last eight years of his career in Italy — could yet have six or seven years of elite performance in him.It should be noted that Thiago Silva, the player with whom he will partner at Stamford Bridge, arrived at Chelsea a couple of years ago, at age 35, for what many assumed was a swan song. It has gone rather better than that. Perhaps, for elite players, the clock ticks a little more slowly now.An Update on BarcelonaLast week, you may remember, Barcelona was busily trying to persuade Frenkie de Jong — a player who does not appear to be in any desperate rush to leave Camp Nou — that the only way that he might be allowed to stay is by agreeing to a new, reduced contract.This week, you will be delighted to know, the very same Barcelona has spent somewhere in the region of $65 million to acquire Raphinha from Leeds United, and then granted Ousmane Dembélé — a player who excels in exactly the same position as the Brazilian — a new two-year contract.Joan Laporta and Ousmane Dembélé signing away just a little more of Barcelona’s future.Enric Fontcuberta/EPA, via ShutterstockThese two Barcelonas — the one that needs its current squad to take pay cuts to stay and the one that can lavish a vast sum on new contracts — can exist because the club’s president, Joan Laporta, has hit upon the brilliant strategy of selling tomorrow to pay for today. Barcelona’s parlous finances mean it needs to raise $3 for every $1 it spends. Laporta has accomplished this by selling a portion of its future broadcast income. It may yet cash in some of its future revenue from hosting major events, too.Of the many and varied problems with this approach, perhaps the most galling is that Barcelona is risking its long-term health for players that it does not really need. This is a club, after all, whose very identity is rooted in its ability to nurture homegrown talent.For all its troubles, it continues to do just that. In Gavi and Pedri — a cheap signing, rather than an academy product, admittedly — it is already in possession of a midfield that will last a decade. Ansu Fati, should his injury issues abate, is as bright an attacking prospect as there is in world soccer.And yet still, Barcelona remains addicted to short-term fixes, to stocking its bloated wage bill with players who are, if far from mediocre, hardly the sort worth risking everything. Andreas Christensen, Franck Kessié and Raphinha are all fine players. They all make Barcelona stronger. But are they worth gambling with tomorrow? Come to that, is anyone? Is the idea of a couple of trophy-less years nurturing a new generation so unpalatable to the club’s board and its fans that it is compelled to spend money it does not have?That’s all for this week. As ever, all thoughts, questions, ideas or responses are welcome at askrory@nytimes.com, and some of them are welcome on Twitter, too. And remember: If you’re in the general vicinity of Britain, you are four days away from the last ever Set Piece Menu*, so feel free to come along and wave us off/make sure we’re finishing.Have a great weekend,Rory*Unless we all get fired More

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      Science and Data Change Soccer’s Definition of Old

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      Top clubs have long looked to shed players once they hit age 30. But those presumptions rely on outdated logic, statistics show.LONDON — The exact location of the threshold has always been contested. At Manchester United, for a time, it lurked close enough to 30 for that to serve as a natural watershed. Once players hit their 30s, Alex Ferguson, the club’s manager at the time, tended to grant them an extra day’s rest after a game, in the hope that the break might soothe their creaking bodies.Arsenal’s Arsène Wenger was a little more nuanced. He had a formula. Once midfielders and forwards reached the grand old age of 32, he was prepared to offer them only one-year contract extensions. “That is the rule here,” he once said. “After 32, you go from year to year.” He made an exception for central defenders; they could sign contracts that carried them to age 34.But while the precise cutoff has always been subjective, the broad and longstanding consensus within soccer is that it lies in there somewhere. At some point early in their 30s, players cross the boundary that distinguishes summer from fall, present from past. And as soon as they do, they can officially be regarded as old.Manchester City spent big, and got younger, in acquiring striker Erling Haaland.Dave Thompson/Associated PressThat delineation has long informed both the player-recruitment and the player-retention strategies of teams across Europe. A vast majority of clubs have, as a rule, adhered for years to a simple principle: buy young and sell old.Tottenham’s acquisition last month of the 33-year-old Croatia midfielder Ivan Perisic, for example, was the first time that the club has signed an outfield player in his 30s since 2017. Liverpool has not done so since 2016. Manchester City has not paid a fee for an outfield player over age 30 for almost a decade. Goalkeepers, widely held to boast greater longevity, are the only players granted an exception.Instead, players approaching the twilight of their careers are generally seen as burdens to be shifted. This summer has been a case in point: Bayern Munich has managed to alienate the almost-34-year-old Robert Lewandowski by (unsuccessfully) trying to anoint Erling Haaland, a decade his junior, as his heir.Liverpool, meanwhile, has started the work of breaking up its vaunted attacking trident by replacing the 30-year-old Sadio Mané with Luis Díaz, 25, and adding the 23-year-old Darwin Nuñez to succeed Roberto Firmino, who turns 31 in October. As it seeks to overhaul its squad, Manchester United released a suite of players — Nemanja Matic, Juan Mata and Edínson Cavani among them — into a market already saturated with veterans, including Gareth Bale and Ángel Di María.The reasoning behind this, of course, is straightforward. “The demands of the game are changing,” said Robin Thorpe, a performance scientist who spent a decade at Manchester United and now works with the Red Bull network of teams. “There is much more emphasis on high-intensity sprinting, acceleration, deceleration.” Younger players are deemed better equipped to handle that load than their elders.Just as important, though, recruiting younger players promises “more return on investment when you’re looking to move them on,” according to Tony Strudwick, a former colleague of Thorpe’s at United who also has worked at Arsenal. Clubs can earn back their outlay — perhaps even make a profit — on a player acquired in his early 20s. Those a decade or so older are, in a strictly economic sense, seen as a rapidly depreciating asset.Those two ideas are, of course, related, and so it is significant that at least one of them may be rooted in outdated logic.Liverpool gave Mo Salah a three-year deal a few weeks after his 30th birthday.Athit Perawongmetha/ReutersAccording to data from the consultancy firm Twenty First Group, players over age 32 are consistently playing more minutes in the Champions League every year. Last season, players over age 34 — practically ancient, by soccer’s traditional thinking — accounted for more minutes in Europe’s big five leagues than in any previous season for which data was available.More significantly, that has not been at any notable cost to their performance.“Age has its pros and cons,” the former Barcelona right back Dani Alves, now 39 and determined to continue his career, told The Guardian this month. “I have an experience today that I didn’t have 20 years ago. When there’s a big game, 20-year-olds get nervous and worried. I don’t.”Twenty First Group’s data bears Alves out. Though players in their 20s do press more than those in their 30s do — 14.5 pressing actions per 90 minutes, as opposed to 12.8 — that reduction is offset in other ways.In both the Champions League and Europe’s major domestic competitions, older players win more aerial duels, complete more dribbles, pass with greater accuracy — if they are central midfielders — and score more goals. More than twice as many players over age 30 now rank in Twenty First Group’s modeling of the best 150 players in the world than appeared in the same list a decade ago.The data suggests, very clearly, that 30 is not as old as it used to be.Luka Modric, who will turn 37 in September, joked recently that he might play until he’s 50.Frank Augstein/Associated PressFrom a sports-science perspective, that is hardly surprising. The idea of 30 as an immutable aging threshold predates soccer’s interest in conditioning: The current generation of players in their 30s, Strudwick pointed out, may be the first to “have been exposed to hard-core sports science from the start of their careers.”There is no reason to assume they would age at the same rate, or the same time, as their forebears. “Look at the condition that players are in when they retire,” Strudwick said. “They haven’t let their bodies go. They might need to be pushed a little less in preseason, and their recovery may take longer, but from a physical and a performance point of view, there is no reason they can’t add value into their late 30s.”That longevity can only be increased, Thorpe said, by improvements in nutrition and recovery techniques.When he was at Manchester United, he said, “the rule of thumb was always that players over the age of 30 got a second day’s rest after games. It felt intuitively like the right thing to do.” The truth, though, was that it wasn’t always the older players who needed the break.“When we researched it, when we looked at the data,” Thorpe said, “we found that it was way more individual. Some of the older players could train, and some of the younger players needed more rest.”As those sorts of insights have become more embedded in the sport, he argued, it follows that “more players should be able to do more later on in their careers.” Luka Modric might have been joking when he told an interviewer, before the Champions League final in May, that he intended to play on “until 50, like that Japanese guy, [Kazuyoshi] Miura,” but it is no longer quite as absurd as it might have once sounded.That the clubs do not appear to have noticed — that players over age 30, with rare exceptions, still seem to be regarded as a burden rather than a blessing — is, as far as Strudwick can see, now almost exclusively an economic issue.“A player’s life cycle is an inverted U shape,” he said. “But salary expectations are linear.”A more scientific approach might have flattened the downward curve of a player’s performance graph, or even delayed its onset, but it cannot eliminate it completely. At some point a player will enter what Strudwick called the “roll-down phase.” The one thing that no club wants — that no club can afford — is to be paying a player a premium salary when that moment arrives. That is what motivates clubs, still, to believe that a threshold arrives at 30: not what players can contribute, but what they cost. More

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      Bad Planning and Errors Led to Champions League Chaos, Report Says

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      A French Senate inquiry faulted the authorities for blaming large crowds of supporters instead of owning up to their failures, after violence and confusion marred a final near Paris. PARIS — Faulty coordination, bad planning and multiple errors by French authorities were responsible for the chaos that marred this year’s Champions League soccer final just outside Paris, according to a parliamentary report published on Wednesday that criticized officials for blaming English fans instead of acknowledging their own failings.The scenes of confusion and violence at the May 28 final between Real Madrid and Liverpool were described as a “fiasco,” and with Paris scheduled to host the Summer Olympics in two years, the report urged French officials to dispel doubts over the country’s ability to host large-scale sporting events. The report found that the authorities were unprepared for the tens of thousands of Liverpool supporters who converged on the Stade de France, and in no uncertain terms, it rejected the French government’s initial insistence that the dangerous crush of fans had been caused on that evening by the presence of fans who had fake tickets, or none at all.“To us, it is clear that it isn’t because Liverpool supporters were accompanying their team that things went badly,” Laurent Lafon, a lawmaker who presides over one of the two Senate committees that ran the investigation, said at a news conference on Wednesday.Supporters were also mugged after the game by groups of petty criminals who took advantage of the chaos to try to enter the stadium and to harass fans. Few police officers were stationed to prevent crime, because most were focused on potential hooliganism or terrorist threats, the report noted. The poor planning meant that serious problems were nearly inevitable, the report said. “A series of dysfunctions” occurred “at every stage,” Mr. Lafon said, because soccer officials, the police and the transportation authorities were “in their own lane without any real coordination” — failing to anticipate that a large number of supporters would come and reacting sluggishly when crowds started to build up.Chaotic scenes of fans scaling stadium fencing and of families being sprayed with tear gas at the game — the biggest match in club soccer, watched by hundreds of millions around the world — seriously dented France’s credibility to hold similar high-profile events, like the 2023 Rugby World Cup and the Olympics.Liverpool fans lining up to enter the stadium. The planning for the match has raised questions about France’s ability to host big sporting events.Matthias Hangst/Getty ImagesThe senators urged President Emmanuel Macron’s government to recognize the mistakes, to tweak policing tactics, and to improve France’s strategy for securing large-scale sporting events.“We mustn’t let spread the idea that we can’t organize big sports events,” said François-Noël Buffet, another senator who led the inquiry, on Wednesday. “If the truth had been told right away, we wouldn’t be here two months afterward.”Gérald Darmanin, Mr. Macron’s tough-talking interior minister, had quickly blamed the chaos on 30,000 to 40,000 Liverpool supporters with fake tickets or no tickets at all — in the end, only about 2,500 forged tickets were scanned, the report said.Mr. Darmanin, who belatedly apologized for the organizational failures on that evening, said on Wednesday that the government would follow the report’s recommendations. Those ideas include improving real-time communication between the authorities for large-scale events, systematically planning alternative overflow routes to prevent crowd buildups, and to reduce bottlenecks by finding ways to encourage fans to arrive earlier.“Not only were there dysfunctions, but also errors of preparation,” Mr. Darmanin told lawmakers on Wednesday, adding that authorities would “draw all consequences” in preparing for future events.The report faulted the French authorities for their “dated perception of British fans, reminiscent of the hooligans of the 1980s,” that led them to overstate the threat of violent supporters and to underestimate the threat of petty criminality.“The political will to suggest that the presence of British fans was the sole cause of the chaotic situation at the Stade de France, perhaps in order to hide the poor organizational choices that were made, is in any case unacceptable,” the French senators wrote in a summary of their report.Video surveillance footage from the stadium was automatically deleted seven days after the game, per usual practice, because authorities failed to request copies — a decision that showed poor judgment and prevented them from accurately determining the number of ticketless fans, the senators said. Spirit of Shankly, one of the main Liverpool fan groups, welcomed the report, calling it a “clear message of support” for Liverpool supporters who attended the match. Many had accused the French police of using aggressive tactics, including tear gas, on the night of the game, and were outraged when French officials pinned the blame on them.Riot police took up positions in front of the Liverpool fans during the match. The report faulted French authorities for their “dated perception of British fans, reminiscent of the hooligans of the 1980s.” Matthias Hangst/Getty Images“Spirit of Shankly would like to thank the Senate both for welcoming the testimonies of fans and consequently vindicating them from any responsibility,” the group said in a statement on Wednesday, although it added that it still expected “a full apology from the French government.”The report, which was written after public hearings with government officials, local authorities and fan groups, acknowledged that several factors complicated crowd control that night, including a strike on one of the main commuter trains leading to the stadium, and larger-than-expected crowds of English supporters converging on the stadium.But the senators said the French authorities did not have adequate contingency plans in place and failed to adapt when the situation started to spiral out of control.Stadium employees were insufficiently trained to handle disgruntled or distressed fans, the report said, and the police and transportation authorities reacted far too slowly to redirect the flow of fans and avoid bottlenecks that were created when a pre-filtering system meant to prevent terror attacks was also used by stewards to check tickets.There were not enough signs and staffers in place to guide supporters, the report added, and there was no system in place to update supporters on what was going on — including on the fact that the game had been delayed, “which would have avoided stampedes to get inside.”A report commissioned by the government came to similar conclusions last month, and UEFA, European soccer’s governing body, is carrying out its own review. The French senators blamed UEFA for its ticketing policy, arguing in their report that it should make “unforgeable,” paperless tickets mandatory for major events like the Champions League final.Tariq Panja More

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      Bad Planning and Errors, Not Fans, Led to Champions League Chaos, Report Says

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      A French Senate inquiry faulted the authorities for blaming large crowds of supporters instead of owning up to their failures, after violence and confusion marred the match near Paris. PARIS — Faulty coordination, bad planning and multiple errors by French authorities were responsible for the chaos that marred this year’s Champions League soccer final just outside Paris, according to a parliamentary report published on Wednesday that criticized officials for blaming English fans instead of acknowledging their own failings.The scenes of confusion and violence at the May 28 final between Real Madrid and Liverpool were described as a “fiasco,” and with Paris scheduled to host the Summer Olympics in two years, the report urged French officials to dispel doubts over the country’s ability to host large-scale sporting events. The report found that the authorities were unprepared for the tens of thousands of Liverpool supporters who converged on the Stade de France, and in no uncertain terms, it rejected the French government’s initial insistence that the dangerous crush of fans had been caused on that evening by the presence of fans who had fake tickets, or none at all.“To us, it is clear that it isn’t because Liverpool supporters were accompanying their team that things went badly,” Laurent Lafon, a lawmaker who presides over one of the two Senate committees that ran the investigation, said at a news conference on Wednesday.Supporters were also mugged after the game by groups of petty criminals who took advantage of the chaos to try to enter the stadium and to harass fans. Few police officers were stationed to prevent crime, because most were focused on potential hooliganism or terrorist threats, the report noted. The poor planning meant that serious problems were nearly inevitable, the report said. “A series of dysfunctions” occurred “at every stage,” Mr. Lafon said, because soccer officials, the police and the transportation authorities were “in their own lane without any real coordination” — failing to anticipate that a large number of supporters would come and reacting sluggishly when crowds started to build up.Chaotic scenes of fans scaling stadium fencing and of families being sprayed with tear gas at the game — the biggest match in club soccer, watched by hundreds of millions around the world — seriously dented France’s credibility to hold similar high-profile events, like the 2023 Rugby World Cup and the Olympics.Liverpool fans lining up to enter the stadium. The planning for the match has raised questions about France’s ability to host big sporting events.Matthias Hangst/Getty ImagesThe senators urged President Emmanuel Macron’s government to recognize the mistakes, to tweak policing tactics, and to improve France’s strategy for securing large-scale sporting events.“We mustn’t let spread the idea that we can’t organize big sports events,” said François-Noël Buffet, another senator who led the inquiry, on Wednesday. “If the truth had been told right away, we wouldn’t be here two months afterward.”Gérald Darmanin, Mr. Macron’s tough-talking interior minister, had quickly blamed the chaos on 30,000 to 40,000 Liverpool supporters with fake tickets or no tickets at all — in the end, only about 2,500 forged tickets were scanned, the report said.Mr. Darmanin, who belatedly apologized for the organizational failures on that evening, said on Wednesday that the government would follow the report’s recommendations. Those ideas include improving real-time communication between the authorities for large-scale events, systematically planning alternative overflow routes to prevent crowd buildups, and to reduce bottlenecks by finding ways to encourage fans to arrive earlier.“Not only were there dysfunctions, but also errors of preparation,” Mr. Darmanin told lawmakers on Wednesday, adding that authorities would “draw all consequences” in preparing for future events.The report faulted the French authorities for their “dated perception of British fans, reminiscent of the hooligans of the 1980s,” that led them to overstate the threat of violent supporters and to underestimate the threat of petty criminality.“The political will to suggest that the presence of British fans was the sole cause of the chaotic situation at the Stade de France, perhaps in order to hide the poor organizational choices that were made, is in any case unacceptable,” the French senators wrote in a summary of their report.Video surveillance footage from the stadium was automatically deleted seven days after the game, per usual practice, because authorities failed to request copies — a decision that showed poor judgment and prevented them from accurately determining the number of ticketless fans, the senators said. Spirit of Shankly, one of the main Liverpool fan groups, welcomed the report, calling it a “clear message of support” for Liverpool supporters who attended the match. Many had accused the French police of using aggressive tactics, including tear gas, on the night of the game, and were outraged when French officials pinned the blame on them.Riot police took up positions in front of the Liverpool fans during the match. The report faulted French authorities for their “dated perception of British fans, reminiscent of the hooligans of the 1980s.” Matthias Hangst/Getty Images“Spirit of Shankly would like to thank the Senate both for welcoming the testimonies of fans and consequently vindicating them from any responsibility,” the group said in a statement on Wednesday, although it added that it still expected “a full apology from the French government.”The report, which was written after public hearings with government officials, local authorities and fan groups, acknowledged that several factors complicated crowd control that night, including a strike on one of the main commuter trains leading to the stadium, and larger-than-expected crowds of English supporters converging on the stadium.But the senators said the French authorities did not have adequate contingency plans in place and failed to adapt when the situation started to spiral out of control.Stadium employees were insufficiently trained to handle disgruntled or distressed fans, the report said, and the police and transportation authorities reacted far too slowly to redirect the flow of fans and avoid bottlenecks that were created when a pre-filtering system meant to prevent terror attacks was also used by stewards to check tickets.There were not enough signs and staffers in place to guide supporters, the report added, and there was no system in place to update supporters on what was going on — including on the fact that the game had been delayed, “which would have avoided stampedes to get inside.”A report commissioned by the government came to similar conclusions last month, and UEFA, European soccer’s governing body, is carrying out its own review. The French senators blamed UEFA for its ticketing policy, arguing in their report that it should make “unforgeable,” paperless tickets mandatory for major events like the Champions League final.Tariq Panja More

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      Two Chances, Two Goals and Two Wins for Germany

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      Spain had more of the ball and did more with it. But Germany, the standard of excellence at the Euros, did enough to reach the quarterfinals.LONDON — It was the ruthlessness that caught the eye in those few vital moments, the cold and clinical efficiency of it all.Spain looked, in many regards, to be a better team than Germany at the European women’s soccer championships on Tuesday night. It had more of the ball and did more with it, and it offered more style and more industry and, at times, even a bit more bite. And in a showdown that was widely seen as a meeting of a continent’s soccer past — Germany has won this tournament a record eight times — and its soccer present, it was Spain that, for frequent stretches, offered a glimpse at European soccer’s future.The problem for Spain, though, was that it gave up two golden chances, Germany pounced on both of them, and that was that. The Germans won, 2-0, to claim a place in next week’s quarterfinals, and the Spanish were left to wonder if this tournament would really be their coming-out party after all.“There were two big mistakes that we paid for,” Spain Coach Jorge Vilda said, “but we know that’s how it is against Germany.”These are already looking like the Euros of What Could Have Been for Spain: if the veteran Jenni Hermoso hadn’t sprained a knee ligament a month before the tournament; if the world player of the year, Alexia Putellas, hadn’t torn a knee ligament only days before the opener; if this cross had delivered a little more bend and that shot had arrived with a bit more curl.Center backs Marina Hegering, left, and Kathrin Hendrich helped Germany post its second shutout at the Euros.John Sibley/ReutersGermany has had nothing of those concerns. Its deep and talented team merely went about its work again on Tuesday: clearing the shots that needed clearing, saving the ones that sneaked through, winning the battles that needed winning. Style points hardly mattered when the final whistle blew. Germany, which has scored six goals and surrendered none since arriving in England, had what it had come to take.In some ways, oddly, Spain’s second game at the Euros was an improvement over its first. In its opener, it had conceded a goal in less than a minute. On Tuesday, it took nearly three to do the same.The goal had come seemingly out of nothing: Spain was calmly working the ball around the back, maneuvering out of some pressure, when goalkeeper Sandra Paños collected it in her goalmouth and fired a clearing ball directly into Germany forward Klara Bühl’s midsection. Bühl settled the ball, sidestepped a defender and coolly slotted it under Paños and into the side netting.Goalkeeper Sandra Paños and Spain surrendered an early goal for the second game in a row.Dylan Martinez/ReutersStunned by an early goal for the second game in a row, Spain dusted itself off and went back to work. In its opening game against Finland, it atoned for its early mistake by scoring four goals. On Tuesday, it went searching for them again, controlling possession by more than two to one, completing several hundred more passes than the Germans, stroking the ball around the grass in a soothing geometry of neat zigzags and diamonds and triangles.But the goals never came. And then, about a half-hour after the first goal, Germany won a corner, fired it toward the forehead of striker Alexandra Popp and watched her nod it past Paños. Spain led nearly all the statistics by then, including oohs and ahs, but trailed in the only one that truly mattered.Germany’s victory was more than symbolic: By winning and taking control of Group B, Germany most likely will avoid a quarterfinal meeting against England, which thrashed Norway on Monday night, 8-0, in Group A — even if that collision arrives eventually.“In Europe, we have the best teams in the world,” defender Marina Hegering said. “If you want to reach the final, you have to beat everyone.”On the other side, the defeat came on what was already a grim day for Spanish women’s soccer. Hours earlier, F.C. Barcelona, Putellas’s club team, had confirmed that her knee had been repaired by a surgeon, but that she would most likely miss as much as a year while she recovered. Her injury already has affected Spain’s prospects at these Euros. Now it might bleed into its hopes at next summer’s World Cup.But that is a tomorrow problem for Spain, which will look to bounce back against Denmark on Saturday, and hopefully again after that in what is now a looming quarterfinal against England.Germany, meanwhile, marched methodically ahead with its second straight shutout, looking like soccer’s past still has quite a bit more time to go. More

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      Its Rivals Filled the Nets. England Showed It Can, Too.

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      A meeting of equally regarded teams ended with an 8-0 England victory and arguably the most surprising result of the women’s Euros.BRIGHTON, England — As the goals rained in, first two in the first 15 minutes, then two more in quick succession, then two more on top of those, all before halftime, it was hard not to think England was sending a message.Its opening victory at this summer’s European women’s soccer championship had been satisfying enough, a solid if unspectacular first step toward a major prize it has never won. But while the Lionesses had mustered only a single goal, England’s top rivals for the title were filling nets, and raising the stakes.Norway scored four goals in its first match. Spain and Germany quickly did the same. After France fired five past Italy on Sunday, maybe, just maybe, the tournament’s host country felt it needed to show it was capable of the same.So England scored eight.In a tournament boasting contenders but little clarity less than a week in, England’s 8-0 thrashing of Norway on Monday night — delivered on a warm night in front of a delighted crowd in a resort town on the country’s southern coast — might have been the most surprising result yet.Ellen White, right, had two of England’s six first-half goals.Adrian Dennis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWomen’s soccer is changing quickly in Europe, but the meetings of its best teams remain so infrequent that it can sometimes be hard to judge just which teams are pulling ahead of the pack. A great player does not make a great team. A great team does not necessarily need a great player. And with collisions of the top powers few and far between — the last Euros was in 2017, an eternity in the ongoing evolution of women’s soccer on the continent — data is still hard to come by. One can learn only so much from a lopsided win, after all. A 20-0 victory reveals even less.Spain arrived at this tournament as one of the favorites, but quickly saw its hopes shaken by the loss of Alexia Putellas, the world player of the year, to a knee injury. France left two of its best players at home. Germany brought depth but not brand-name stars.England vs. Norway was supposed to be something else altogether: a true test of powerful teams, a rare meeting of equals. And then it wasn’t.“Of course everyone feels devastated about the way we looked tonight,” Norway Coach Martin Sjogren told reporters after the game. “I really, really feel terrible for the players’ sake, to be out there and to be beaten by England, 8-0, in a game we had been looking forward to for quite some time.“We had a good feeling before the game. We thought we had a good plan, and we opened up the game according to plan. I think we played well the first 10 minutes. But then after that, the last 80, 85 minutes, was more or less horrible to be honest.”Georgia Stanway opened the scoring in the 12th minute, converting a penalty after Ellen White was pulled down in the 18-yard box. Three minutes later, Lauren Hemp made it two, turning in a cross from Beth Mead. The goals were a blur after that. White, after stripping a defender, strolled in alone for her first. Mead got her first, in the 34th minute, on a header, and her second, in the 38th, with some neat footwork in close quarters.White had the crowd, and her teammates, holding their heads in their hands when she delivered her second, and England’s sixth, with a sliding finish at the back post in the 41st minute. But England wasn’t done: Alessia Russo replaced White in the 57th minute and nine minutes later she was on the score sheet, too.Norway went to a back five after that, but it hardly mattered. By the time England got No. 8, with Mead completing her hat trick off a rebound, the Norwegians had called it a night: Ada Hegerberg, a dominant striker who never got a sniff of the goal, and the playmaker Caroline Graham Hansen had already been withdrawn, pulled to live to fight another day. Guro Reiten, a crafty wing, left soon afterward.“We made it a little bit too easy for them,” Sjogren said, “losing the ball in dangerous places. We made some very, very bad mistakes.”It was hardly the result either team had expected. Both had opened the tournament just as they wanted: England kicking off with a win over Austria in front of nearly 69,000 fans, the largest crowd ever to see a women’s Euros match, and Norway debuting a day later with a 4-1 romp over Northern Ireland. Like England’s one-goal win, Norway’s wider margin somehow failed to convey just how dominant the victors had been.The matchup offered a rarity in this tournament: a meeting of equally regarded sides, teams that had traded wins in recent meetings, that seemed a good match.England has eliminated Norway from the past two World Cups, including a 3-0 victory in the 2019 quarterfinals in France. But that was a very different Norway: talented, yes, but missing the predatory Hegerberg, who left her national team for several years to protest what she considered second-class treatment by the country’s soccer federation.A long layoff from a knee injury produced a change of heart earlier this year, and her return has brought a change in expectations both for her and her country.Those remain, battered as they are. But Monday was England’s night, from start to finish after finish after finish. More

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      USWNT Qualifies for 2023 Women’s World Cup

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      A lopsided victory over Jamaica in a regional championship ensured that the Americans would get to defend their World Cup title next summer.A United States women’s national team that arrived in Mexico this week with two objectives has already achieved the first: After a lopsided victory over Jamaica on Thursday night, the United States clinched a place in the 2023 Women’s World Cup.The 5-0 victory came in the Americans’ second game at the Concacaf women’s championship, which is serving as both a regional championship and also as the qualifying tournament for the Women’s World Cup and the 2024 Paris Olympics. The United States beat Haiti, 3-0, in its opening game on Monday.Step One: ☑️WE’VE QUALIFIED FOR THE 2023 @FIFAWWC!!!! pic.twitter.com/jUSgovQcrx— USWNT – Concacaf Champs 🏆 (@USWNT) July 8, 2022
      Under the format of the revamped eight-team regional tournament, officially branded the Concacaf W Championship, the top two finishers in each four-team group qualify automatically for the Women’s World Cup, where the United States is the two-time defending champion.The United States ensured it would be one of the top finishers with a dominant performance against Jamaica: Sophia Smith scored twice in the first eight minutes, and Rose Lavelle, Kristie Mewis and Trinity Rodman added goals in the second half as the outclassed Jamaicans faded under an onslaught of U.S. depth and scoring chances.The Americans’ place in the World Cup was only ensured a few hours later, though, when Haiti beat host Mexico in the night’s second game. That result guaranteed the United States a top-two finish in its first-round group, and a place in the expanded 32-team World Cup in Australia and New Zealand next summer.The United States became the 12th nation to qualify, joining the co-hosts, along with South Korea, Japan, China, the Philippines and Vietnam from Asia; and Sweden, France, Denmark and Spain from Europe.Canada, the defending Olympic women’s champion and the Americans’ biggest regional rival, joined that group on Friday, when it defeated Panama, 1-0, in its second match in the tournament. Costa Rica did the same with its second victory, by 4-0 over Trinidad and Tobago.But the biggest story of the tournament could be Haiti: Its 3-0 victory over Mexico means it needs only a draw against Jamaica in its final group game to earn its first trip to the World Cup.The next goal for the United States, meanwhile, will be securing a place in the Paris Olympics. Only the winner of the Concacaf tournament will earn a direct place in that tournament, though there will be a lifeline for the runner-up and third-place nations through a Concacaf Olympic playoff in September 2023.U.S. Coach Vlatko Andonovski is managing a team in transition as he navigates the path to both tournaments. The squad he brought to Mexico is a blend of World Cup veterans like Lavelle, Lindsey Horan and Becky Sauerbrunn and new faces like Smith, whose two goals gave her seven this year, the most for a U.S. player; defender Naomi Girma, who assisted on Smith’s first goal in only her third game for the U.S.; and Rodman, the daughter of the former N.B.A. star Dennis Rodman.That diversity of options has made the team a glimpse of the future of a championship squad that, for the moment, still includes veterans like Megan Rapinoe and Alex Morgan. For Andonovski, the hardest decisions about who goes to the World Cup next year will come later. At the moment, he has every reason to like what he sees in the pipeline: Thirteen members of his squad are competing in their first World Cup or Olympic qualifying tournament for the team, and eight entered the tournament with fewer than 10 international appearances.Smith showed a hint of the promise at her team’s disposal in the opening minutes. On her first goal, she took a long pass on the right, lifted the ball over a defender’s head on the run to cut back and then flicked it with her right foot past the Jamaican goalkeeper.Her second came a few minutes later, and after a similar leading ball down the right, and was finished just as deftly: with a first-touch flip over the goalkeeper that was confirmed after a brief video review.“To be a start on the best team in the world — it’s not easy, it comes with a lot of weight,” Andonovski said of the 21-year-old Smith, adding, “She does have the potential to be one of the best players in the world.”Two more goals in the first half — by Ashley Hatch in the 11th minute and Mallory Pugh in the 27th — were erased by video review, which is being used in the women’s championship for the first time this year.The result, though, was never in doubt. An unmarked Lavelle scored at the back post in the 59th minute to make it 3-0; Kristie Mewis converted a penalty after Midge Purce was bowled over in the area in the 82nd minute; and Rodman turned in a cross from Pugh four minutes later for her second international goal. More