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      Robert Lewandowski, Bayern Munich and the Bitter End

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      A star striker is eager to move to Barcelona, and his club doesn’t seem to realize it might be its own fault that he wants to go.Robert Lewandowski does not, in his own words, like to make “too much show.” He is, and always has been, a touch more impassive than the average superstar. He does not greet his goals, the ones that have come for so long in such improbable quantities, with a roar, or a leap, or a scream. Instead, he grins. For the really good ones, he might go so far as a beam.He is the same off the field. Lewandowski is warm, smart, immediately likable, but his charisma is more subtle, more steady than that possessed by his peers, the finest players of his generation. He does not have the bombastic streak of Zlatan Ibrahimovic. He does not relish the spotlight quite like Cristiano Ronaldo.His Instagram account encapsulates it. There are, of course, occasional glimpses of yachts and supercars and picture-postcard tropical vacations — he is still a millionaire soccer player, and it is still Instagram — but they are interspersed with images of Robert Lewandowski, the purest striker of the modern era, pushing a child’s stroller at Legoland, and Robert Lewandowski, serial German champion, tickling a small dog.The impression he has cultivated, over the years, is of a player who regards all of the attention, all of the glamour, all of the noise not as an unavoidable consequence of his work, or even as an unwelcome distraction. Instead, he has always treated it as an active hindrance. Lewandowski’s job is to score goals. He is good at it, and he is good at it because he takes it extremely seriously.All of which has made the last two weeks something of an outlier. For perhaps the first time in his career, at the age of 34, Lewandowski has suddenly gone rogue.It started last month, not long after the ticker-tape that accompanied Bayern Munich’s 10th straight Bundesliga had been cleared away, when he declared — publicly — that he wanted to leave the club where he has spent eight seasons, the peak of his glittering career, immediately. “What is certain at the moment is that my career at Bayern is over,” he said.Friedemann Vogel/EPA, via ShutterstockThat was unexpected enough, the silent, reluctant superstar suddenly leveraging all of his renown, all of his influence, all of his clout to make as much noise as possible. But it did not end there. Instead, Lewandowski has doubled down, again and again. He has insisted that he does not want to “force” his way out of Bayern. As ever with Lewandowski, his actions speak for themselves.In a series of interviews — at almost any given opportunity — he has chastised Bayern for its lack of “respect” and “loyalty,” its apparent refusal to find a “mutually agreeable solution,” its failure to “listen to me until the very end.” He said that “something inside of me died, and it is impossible to get over that.”Perhaps most seriously, he intimated that his treatment might make other players reluctant to join the club. “What kind of player will want to go to Bayern knowing that something like this could happen to them?” he asked. Of all the sideswipes, all the jabs, that felt the most damaging, the most irretrievable. “I want to leave Bayern,” he has said, in various formats, over and over. “That is clear.”From the outside, it is not immediately apparent why that should be, why Lewandowski — with a year left on his Bayern contract — would have taken such a provocative path in order to secure his release.After all he has achieved in Germany — eight league championships in a row at Bayern, to go with two he won at Borussia Dortmund, a Champions League title, sundry domestic cups, and more than 40 goals across all competitions in each of the last seven seasons — he would be forgiven for wanting a change of scenery, a different challenge, to end his career at Barcelona, say. His approach, though, suggests something deeper is at play.Lewandowski has led the Bundesliga in goals in each of the past five seasons.Kai Pfaffenbach/ReutersAs is traditional, soccer has tried to answer that question by imbuing trivial details with tremendous narrative power. A few weeks ago, a report in the German outlet TZ revealed, Lewandowski had exchanged angry words with Julian Nagelsmann, Bayern’s young coach, when it was suggested that the latter might like to change his striker’s positioning when competing to win headers.Lewandowski, not unreasonably, pointed out that his career statistics rather suggested that he knew what he was doing. Yet when the inevitable meta-analysis of the incident was conducted, it was concluded that not only did Lewandowski not respect Nagelsmann — whose playing career extended no further than his teens — most likely the rest of the Bayern squad did not, either.It is not with Nagelsmann, though, that Lewandowski’s relationship has collapsed. Such encounters are not exactly rare. Nagelsmann is, by all accounts, broadly popular with Bayern’s players, who admire his verve and his ideas, even if they remain slightly skeptical about his effectiveness after his first season.Instead, the problem has its roots elsewhere in Bayern’s hierarchy. Amid the blizzard of words produced first by and then about Lewandowski, the most incisive came from his agent, the not-exactly-wildly-popular Pini Zahavi. “He hasn’t felt respected by the people in charge for months,” Zahavi told the German outlet Bild. “Bayern didn’t lose the player Lewandowski. They lost the person, Robert.”The source of that tension can be found in Bayern’s ill-concealed, and ultimately futile, pursuit of Erling Haaland. Hasan Salihamidzic, a decorated player in Munich at the turn of the century now installed as the club’s sporting director, had earmarked Haaland as Lewandowski’s eventual replacement. When it became clear to Lewandowski that the club was contemplating his demise even as he closed in yet another record-breaking season, he felt an unspoken covenant had been broken.Bayern’s sporting director, Hasan Salihamidzic.Andreas Gebert/ReutersIt may not soothe Lewandowski’s ego, but it would be remiss of Bayern not to be considering who will, at some point, step into his shoes; no matter what order you eat your meals in, at some point time comes for us all. Where Salihamidzic erred was in allowing his vision to become public; or, more accurately, in allowing it to become public and then not succeeding in signing Haaland. All of a sudden, Bayern had a disaffected superstar and no replacement.That may have ramifications beyond Lewandowski’s immediate future: As he has made abundantly clear, barring an unlikely change of heart, that will now lie elsewhere. “Breakups are part of football,” he said.For Bayern, though, that may only be the first issue. For a club that has spent the last decade collecting trophies so serenely that it has become possible to imagine a world in which it wins the Bundesliga in perpetuity, this is a delicate time. Not in terms of its domestic primacy — that, sadly, is now hard-wired into the system — but most certainly in its attempts to compete in Europe.Bayern has been able to ride out the rise of the petro-clubs, Manchester City and Paris St.-Germain, better than the likes of Juventus, Barcelona and to some extent Real Madrid not only because of its commercial potency, its operational expertise and its corporate appeal, but because it functions essentially as a Bundesliga Select XI.Every year, Bayern has cherry-picked the best talent from the rest of Germany — often using the lure of guaranteed trophies and an inevitable place in the latter stages of the Champions League as leverage to pay a lower price — to fill out its roster. This has a twin benefit: It weakens domestic competition, and enables Bayern to match, and occasionally to overcome, the arriviste elite elsewhere.Lewandowski collected his eighth Bundesliga title with Bayern this season.Ronald Wittek/EPA, via ShutterstockLewandowski, plucked on a free transfer from Dortmund, stood as a symbol of that approach when he arrived; at the moment of his departure, he may well signal the need for its abandonment. The Bundesliga’s clubs, after all, have never wanted to sell to Bayern, and now, given that Germany is the cash-soaked Premier League’s bazaar of choice, they do not have to. English teams pay more, and they do not insist on beating you twice a season afterward.Bayern will, instead, have to plot another course. It may have to start to offer more lucrative salaries — its approach for Liverpool’s Sadio Mané suggests that realization has arrived — and it may even need to identify other markets, other demographics, from which to source its recruits.It will have to do that at a time when its institutional knowledge is in the hands of Oliver Kahn, an intelligent, imposing figure but still relatively inexperienced in his role, and Salihamidzic, whose record in the transfer market was mixed even before his part in the impending loss of Lewandowski.Bayern has weathered the changes in soccer’s ecosystem by sticking, unabashedly, to an approach that produced results, and by entrusting its fate to a grizzled, respected set of executives. For a decade, it has worked. Without much fuss, without too much show, Bayern Munich has constructed the most successful period in its history. The public, toxic departure of Lewandowski is the first hint of rust at the heart of the big red machine.Endless, ShamelessQuick question, Karim: Would you rather have two weeks off, or four more games?Franck Fife/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesYou may not have noticed — you may, in fact, have taken very deliberate steps to avoid it — but, even deep into June, soccer refuses to be stopped. As well as a raft of exhibition games and qualifying matches for the next African Cup of Nations, there have, at the time of writing, already been two rounds of Nations League games in Europe.And the good news is, if you missed them, there are two more to come: After a long, arduous season that came on the back of another long, arduous season and a sprawling European Championship, Europe’s elite men’s players will finally get a vacation starting on June 15.All of this was deemed necessary, of course, because someone decided to squeeze a World Cup into the middle of the traditional European season. They did it for entirely honorable reasons, though, so that’s all fine. Likewise, it is hard to begrudge the coaches of the planet’s various national teams for feeling that they might like to have at least a bit of time working with their players before they decide who will, and who will not, be part of their plans for Qatar in November.The decision to plow on with the Nations League, though, feels counterproductive. The tournament is UEFA’s nascent pride and joy — at least at the international level — and, when the season’s schedule was being mapped out, it made clear that it was not prepared to place it on hiatus in order to afford the players a rest. Doing so, the organization worried, would stifle all the momentum the event had built.Sadly, the alternative may be even worse. The Nations League is being played out to a backdrop of complete indifference from fans and barely-concealed irritation from the players; Kevin De Bruyne, for one, has made it clear he thinks it is a complete waste of his, and everyone else’s, time. All of a sudden, the Nations League has become exactly what it was meant to replace: a series of meaningless games that are met with apathy or resentment.CorrespondenceA French soccer federation official, Erwan Le Provost, said this week that closed-circuit video footage of events outside the Champions League final had been automatically deleted, as required by law, because judicial officials did not request the footage within seven days.Anne-Christine Poujoulat/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIt seems that there is a broad range of views among the On Soccer Newsletter community about the fiasco that marred last month’s Champions League final, and I’ll do my best to represent them.Let’s start with Christopher Smith. “At the African Cup of Nations, there was a stampede at the Olembé Stadium in which eight people died,” he wrote. “I don’t recall seeing anything like the indictment of France and UEFA being leveled at Cameroon and C.A.F. In fact, at least in your newsletter, this event doesn’t seem to have merited a mention at all.”These are valid points. I would suggest that there was plenty of condemnation of both Cameroon and African soccer’s authorities, but I would agree that UEFA attracted more. This is not an easy sentiment to express, but I suspect that is simply because the Champions League final is a far more high-profile event. That doesn’t make it right, of course, but it is (most likely) the determining factor.That the Olembé tragedy did not appear in this newsletter was an oversight, but I would at least direct you to the coverage of both the disaster and the tournament elsewhere in The Times.Others focused, instead, on the tension between the French authorities’ version of events near Paris and the experiences of the fans themselves. “My only thought is how close we came to another Hillsborough,” wrote Alicia Lorvo. “The fans were traumatized at what was supposed to be a happy, fun event. The people who were there with real tickets must be compensated. France must be forced to hold an independent inquiry. The situation is intolerable.”Teresa Olson, sadly, was not surprised. “It was not the fans, but the utter indifference to accommodating the sellout crowd effectively,” she wrote. “We had the same experience during the Women’s World Cup in 2019. Gates were not opened until there was physically no way they could process everyone, and there was complete indifference as to whether the fans could get to their seats in time for the games.”It is important to remember that, I think: The way the Champions League final was policed is not unusual in France. The authorities followed their playbook, with one slight twist, explained by Javier Cortés. “With all due respect, most of us still think that English fans are (for the most part) unbearably arrogant who tend to violence once they have a few beers in their bellies,” he wrote. “English fans are generally not well-liked outside their islands.”Or inside them, as it happens. Nobody enjoys criticizing the English more than the English, Javier, and there is no question that the behavior of some English fans on foreign trips can be abominable. That clearly played into the thinking of the French authorities.The Euro 2020 final was not England’s finest hour (and a half).Andy Rain/EPA, via ShutterstockThe counterargument would run that Liverpool has been to two other Champions League finals in recent years, in Kyiv and Madrid, with no trouble at all. Problems do not trail in its fans’ wake. More important, that line of argument prompts the question as to whether funneling all of these risk factors into one place, and then locking them outside of a stadium, is really the best way to allay your worst fears. I’d suggest that it is not.Larry Machacek saw the situation along similar lines. “I conjure up images of drunk and cocaine-fueled young men, particularly the one with a flare lodged in a personal space, and the stories of Italian fans kicked in the head,” he wrote. “A few bad apples can and do tarnish the lot. France has successfully hosted many major sporting events and will continue to do so. How about advising readers of the outcomes of last year’s Euro 2020 fiasco at Wembley? Are there any profound learnings from the U.K. you would recommend?”My instinct on the first point is similar to my response to Javier: I’m not sure there is any evidence of gaggles of Liverpool fans engaging in the sort of mayhem we saw in London, and I’m not convinced that it is fair to decree them guilty until they have arrived. Doing so belies an ignorance of the differences between fans’ following a club and (a minority of) fans who follow England. They aren’t the same people, and they don’t behave in the same way.On the second, it is indisputable that what happened at Wembley last year was no more or less appalling than what happened in Paris. The problem, in both cases, was with the manner of response: Where the French were too heavy-handed, the English were too laissez-faire. There was no attempt to control the crowd whatsoever until it was too late.The lesson, then, is that neither of those approaches work, and that UEFA needs to recognize that. It should have a sense of best practices for how these occasions are managed, and central to it should be the principle that fans, wherever they are from, are welcome guests to be treated with respect, rather than a problem to be faced. More

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      Chile pierde en su intento de sustituir a Ecuador en el Mundial

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      La federación chilena de fútbol argumentaba que Ecuador debía ser expulsado del torneo por utilizar un jugador no elegible durante la fase de clasificación. La FIFA no estuvo de acuerdo.El intento de Chile de expulsar a su rival sudamericano, Ecuador, de la Copa del Mundo fracasó el viernes, cuando un panel disciplinario del organismo rector del fútbol mundial rechazó un reclamo de que Ecuador había alineado a un jugador no elegible en varios partidos de clasificación.El caso giraba en torno al defensa Byron Castillo, que según Chile no solo había nacido en Colombia, sino que tenía tres años más de los que figuraban en los documentos que lo identificaban como ecuatoriano. La federación de fútbol chilena presentó documentos de registro, incluyendo certificados de nacimiento, que, según dijo, respaldaban su reclamación.De acuerdo con las normas de la FIFA, la alineación de un jugador no elegible puede dar lugar a la pérdida de cualquier partido en el que participe dicho futbolista.Ecuador quedó en cuarto lugar en las eliminatorias del continente, con lo que obtuvo una de las cuatro plazas de pase automático asignadas a Sudamérica para el Mundial. Pero Chile había exigido que Ecuador perdiera los ocho partidos de clasificación en los que participó Castillo, y que sus rivales en esos encuentros recibieran tres puntos por partido. Los funcionarios chilenos habían calculado que esa fórmula cambiaría los resultados de la clasificación en Sudamérica y llevaría a Chile al Mundial de Fútbol a expensas de Ecuador.La FIFA dijo que sus funcionarios habían analizado las presentaciones de todas las partes involucradas en el caso —que también involucró a Perú, país que competirá en una clasificatoria internacional el lunes por un pase a Catar— antes de concluir que Ecuador no tenía ningún caso que responder.Chile dijo que apelaría el fallo.“Estamos consternados con la decisión”, dijo Eduardo Carlezzo, abogado que representa a la federación chilena. “Es una enorme cantidad de pruebas, tanto de Colombia como de Ecuador, lo que demuestra sin ninguna duda que el jugador nació en Colombia. Por lo tanto, apelaremos y esperamos que esas evidencias sean consideradas en su totalidad”.La federación ecuatoriana de fútbol emitió un comunicado después de que Chile presentara su demanda en mayo, en el que rechazaba lo que calificaba de “infundados rumores” sobre Castillo, de quien dijo que era ciudadano ecuatoriano en el sentido jurídico y deportivo.“Rechazamos categóricamente cualquier intento de quienes pretenden evitar su participación en el Mundial de Fútbol de Catar 2022, la cual fue obtenida legítimamente en la cancha”, dijo entonces la federación.Los antecedentes de Castillo han sido cuestionados durante varios años, después de que una investigación más amplia sobre las inscripciones de jugadores en Ecuador analizó cientos de casos y dio lugar a sanciones para al menos 75 jugadores juveniles que se descubrió que habían falsificado sus documentos. Temerosos de un error que pudiera poner en peligro las esperanzas de Ecuador en la Copa del Mundo de este año, los responsables de su federación nacional de fútbol habían aplazado la incorporación de Castillo a la selección de mayores hasta este año.Hace dos años, de hecho, el presidente de una comisión especial de investigación convocada por la federación pareció sugerir que Castillo era colombiano, algo que los funcionarios chilenos argumentaron que habían corroborado. More

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      Chile Loses Bid to Replace Ecuador at World Cup in Byron Castillo Case

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      Chile’s soccer federation had argued Ecuador should be ejected from the tournament for using an ineligible player in qualifying. FIFA disagreed.Chile’s bid to have its South American rival Ecuador thrown out of soccer’s World Cup failed on Friday when a disciplinary panel at soccer’s global governing body rejected a claim that Ecuador had fielded an ineligible player in several qualification matches.The case involved the defender Byron Castillo, who Chile contended was not only born in Colombia but also three years older than is stated on the documents used to identify him as Ecuadorean. Chile’s soccer federation produced registry documents, including birth certificates, that it said supported its claim.Under the rules of the governing body, FIFA, fielding an ineligible player could result in a forfeit of any match in which an ineligible player took part.Ecuador finished fourth in the continent’s qualifying competition, claiming one of South America’s four automatic places in the World Cup. But Chile had demanded that Ecuador forfeit the eight qualification games in which Castillo appeared, and that its opponents in those matches be granted three points per game. That outcome, Chilean officials had calculated, would rearrange the qualifying results in South America and lift Chile into the World Cup at Ecuador’s expense.FIFA said its officials had analyzed submissions from all the parties involved in the case — which also involved Peru, which will compete in an intercontinental playoff next week for its own place in Qatar — before concluding that Ecuador had no case to answer.Chile said it would appeal the ruling.“We are dismayed with the decision,” said Eduardo Carlezzo, a lawyer representing the Chilean federation. “The amount of evidence is huge, both from Colombia and Ecuador, proving without any reasonable doubt that the player was born in Colombia. Therefore, we will appeal and we hope that those evidences shall be full considered.”Ecuador’s soccer federation released a statement after Chile filed its claim in May in which it rejected what it called “false rumors” about Castillo, who it said was an Ecuadorean citizen in a legal and sporting sense.“We categorically reject any attempt by those who seek to avoid our participation in the World Cup in Qatar, which was legitimately obtained on the field,” the federation said at the time.Castillo’s background has been shrouded in questions for several years after a wider investigation into player registrations in Ecuador looked into hundreds of cases and resulted in punishments for at least 75 youth players found to have falsified records. Wary of a mistake that might jeopardize Ecuador’s World Cup hopes this year, officials from its national soccer federation had held off selecting Castillo for the senior national team until this year.Two years ago, in fact, the president of a special investigation commission convened by the federation appeared to suggest Castillo was Colombian, something that Chilean officials continued to argue they had substantiated. More

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      US Men’s National Team Draws With Uruguay in a Friendly

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      The young American team came away with a scoreless draw against the 13th-ranked team in the world as it continues to tinker with its roster and tactics ahead of the World Cup.KANSAS CITY, Kan. — For the United States men’s national soccer team, a string of four games this month against a diverse set of opponents presents any number of productive opportunities.There are moments to workshop collective tactics, moments to evaluate individual players, moments to strengthen the interpersonal bonds that make up the group’s general character.And then there are moments like Sunday, when the team could face an elite opponent, pull out a measuring stick and plainly take stock of its own quality in the middle of its monthslong preparations for this year’s World Cup.Providing the test was Uruguay, the 13th-ranked team in the world, and the Americans were reasonably satisfied with the result: a hard fought, 0-0 draw in an exhibition played before a crowd of 19,569 fans in Kansas City, Kan.Gregg Berhalter, the U.S. coach, said he had told his players to embrace the challenge and enjoy the game. “It’s not often you get to play against guys of that quality,” Berhalter said after the match, sounding upbeat about the outcome and praising his players for an “A-plus effort.”The testing and inquisition and self-reflection will continue in the months to come, though before the game, there did emerge at least one bit of certainty: Wales will be the United States’ first opponent at the World Cup in Qatar after beating Ukraine, 1-0, in a scintillating play-in game earlier in the day in Cardiff, Wales.The inclusion of Wales completed Group B, which along with the United States includes England and Iran. “Now we finally know our opponents, and we can finally set our sights on that group, and how we get out of it,” said Walker Zimmerman, who along with his teammates tried to follow the play-in match as they sat in meetings and ate lunch before their game. Also before the start of the game, the team announced it would be sending a letter to Congress calling for stronger gun laws in the wake of a spate of high-profile mass shootings in the country this spring. The players on Sunday also wore orange arm bands in support of Wear Orange, a movement to raise awareness about gun violence in America. “People can say it’s not the guns, it’s the people, but we have to start somewhere,” forward Christian Pulisic said about the letter. By Sunday evening, the players’ attention was fully on Uruguay. In Kansas City, Diego Alonso, the Uruguay coach, rotated his lineup somewhat from the team’s previous game against Mexico. Big names like Federico Valverde and Edinson Cavani (who misfired on an open net in the waning moments of the game), for instance, played only the final 30 minutes or so. But La Celeste, as the team is known, still presented a stern, star-studded task for the U.S.In its traditional sky blue shirt, Uruguay controlled play early, dissecting the American defense with purposeful passing, resulting in a number of nervy, narrow misses. But the U.S. gradually gained a foothold after withstanding that early pressure, threatening Uruguay with a sequence of chances, with right winger Tim Weah in particular providing repeated spurts of danger and creativity in the first half.“A lot of us are young, and we’re still getting that experience against these high-level teams,” Weah said before the game. “So I feel like playing a team like Uruguay that has a lot of stars is amazing.”Berhalter afterward singled out a number of players for praise, including the reserve defender Joe Scally, who he said persisted gamely despite a couple of early mistakes; goalkeeper Sean Johnson, who made a crucial second-half save to preserve the draw; and midfielder Tyler Adams, who Berhalter said “had an extra gear, and extra spark, and was all over the place.” The 15th-ranked United States began its training camp this month with a game against Morocco, ranked 24th. And the team’s next two games this month represent a bit of a drop-off in overall quality: Grenada (170th) on Friday in Austin, Texas, and El Salvador (74th) on the road on June 14.So the match on Sunday and the Americans’ solid performance — that they emerged from a sparring session with a top team mostly unscathed — will represent an optimistic development for a young team trying to mold itself into a contender.“The idea is to play quality teams,” Berhalter said, “and the reason why is because you want to go into the World Cup with confidence you can beat anyone on any given day.” More

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      How to Watch the Ukraine-Wales World Cup Playoff Game

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      A European playoff on Sunday is a winner-take-all affair for Ukraine, a nation at war, and Wales, which hasn’t been the tournament since 1958.For months after Russia invaded their country in February, the members of Ukraine’s national soccer team were unable to hold so much as a practice together, let alone play a game.On Sunday, they will play for a place in the World Cup.That game, once unthinkable for Ukraine’s team, and by far the least of its concerns, will be against Wales at Cardiff City Stadium, a modest arena about 1,500 miles from Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, and a world away from the horrors and traumas and worries of war.Here’s what you need to know.How can I watch?The game is being broadcast in the United States by ESPN and streamed on its ESPN Plus service. (Warning: You may see listings saying the match is on ESPN2; it was, until Friday, when the network reassessed the interest in the game and moved it to ESPN.)Broadcast coverage on ESPN begins at 11:30 a.m. Eastern. The game kicks off at noon.What’s at stake?Sunday’s match is, in the strictest sense, a winner-take-all affair. The victor on Sunday will claim one of the final three places in the World Cup in Qatar when it kicks off in November. The loser can try again in four years.Ukraine hasn’t qualified for the World Cup since 2006, its only previous trip to the tournament.But Wales has waited even longer: Its last — and only — World Cup appearance was in 1958, and the team is eager to end that drought, even if it means ending Ukraine’s dreams at the same time.“It’s still missing,” said the Wales captain, Gareth Bale, who has five Champions League titles on his résumé but not a single minute in the World Cup. “We have a game tomorrow to put that to bed and qualify. Everyone wants to play at a World Cup. It’s no different for me.”Gareth Bale, the Wales captain, at training on Saturday.Mike Egerton/Press Association, via Associated PressHow did the teams get here?Sunday’s game is the final match of a four-team playoff — two semifinals and a final — that didn’t go as anyone expected. The games were originally scheduled for March, but Ukraine’s semifinal against Scotland was postponed soon after Russia’s invasion, even as Wales went ahead with a game against Austria, winning by 2-1.In April, FIFA, soccer’s global governing body and the organizer of the World Cup, announced the Ukraine-Scotland match had been rescheduled for June 1, with the final — already set for Wales — to be held a few days later.Read More on the World CupAmbitious Goals: FIFA has given up on a plan to hold the World Cup every two years. But its president’s plans for the future are bold.Female Referees: Following the selection of three women among the World Cup’s 36 referees, the event in Qatar may be the first edition of the men’s tournament in which a game is refereed by a woman.Golden Sunset: This year’s World Cup will likely be the last for stars like Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo — and a profound watershed for soccer.Senegalese Pride: Aliou Cissé, one of the best soccer coaches in Africa, has given Senegal a new sense of patriotism. Next up: the World Cup.On Wednesday, Ukraine beat Scotland, 3-1, in a game charged with emotion at Hampden Park in Glasgow. It was the Ukrainians’ first official game since November.Was Ukraine expected to be here?Until the Scotland game, it was hard to know what to expect from Ukraine. Rescheduling its World Cup playoff was one thing. Preparing for the game was another matter.Like most of Europe’s national teams, Ukraine has players who are scattered across the continent: Oleksandr Zinchenko just won a Premier League title with Manchester City, and Andriy Yarmolenko (West Ham), Ruslan Malinovskyi (Atalanta) and Roman Yaremchuk (Benfica) all play for big European clubs. That meant the core of the team was getting regular training and games, even if their minds were constantly distracted by the war back home.But the Ukrainian league shut down as soon as Russia invaded, leaving the bulk of Ukraine’s players with no place to play. The top clubs Shakhtar Donetsk and Dynamo Kyiv managed to get their players out of the country and set up camps abroad and a series of exhibition matches so their players could train.At the same time, Ukraine’s coach, Oleksandr Petrakov, set up a training camp in Slovenia for his team, and cycled in members of the squad as they became available. All the while, messages poured in from Ukraine: from soldiers, from family members, from friends fighting to defend Ukraine’s sovereignty from Russian troops.“They make only one demand,” the veteran midfielder Taras Stepanenko told The Guardian of the messages he and his teammates receive. “‘Please do everything you can to go to the World Cup.’”What are they saying?Ukraine Coach Oleksandr Petrakov: “We have a very difficult situation in the country. Not everyone watches football. We have grief, people are dying …”“We don’t think about it. We are thinking about how to make our fans happy, our armed forces, and focused on the game.”Wales captain Gareth Bale: “We’ll be the most popular team in the stadium, that’s the main thing. We understand the awful things going on in Ukraine. Our hearts go out to the kids, families and people of Ukraine. We’ve all felt awful during this time and not been able to do too much. But come tomorrow, it’s a game of football. We want to win.”Ukraine defender Oleksandr Karavayev: “We understand that the most important game in our lives is ahead.”What’s next for the winner?Since the World Cup draw took place in the window between the original dates of the playoff in March and Sunday’s playoff final, the winner of the game in Cardiff will know its World Cup path immediately.It will land in a group with England, Iran and the United States and open the World Cup on its first day, Nov. 21, against the Americans. More

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      At Champions League Final, the Fans Weren’t the Danger

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      Preconceptions about Liverpool supporters and policing decisions that didn’t prioritize their safety led to the chaos at the Champions League final. That’s dangerous for every fan.It can be hard, at times like these, to know exactly who to believe. On one side, there are the thousands of witness accounts, the contemporaneous reports from much of the world’s news media, the countless videos and an apparently bottomless reserve of high resolution photographs, all telling one story about last Saturday’s Champions League final.And on the other side, there are the claims of the politicians and administrators and law enforcement officials who were responsible for the staging of European soccer’s showpiece event and who would, ultimately, be held accountable if it was found that they had overseen a complete and colossal organizational failure. It is just so hard to know which side is more likely to be telling the truth.Not that it matters, of course, because the damage is done. Around 20 minutes before the game was scheduled to start, UEFA, European soccer’s governing body, announced to the Stade de France and to the watching world that the game would have to be delayed because of the “late arrival” of fans to the stadium.It was not relevant, it seemed, that images had been floating around online for more than two hours of huge lines not only at the stadium’s gates, but at its perimeter, too, or that it had been blindingly obvious for some time that there were impossible bottlenecks to get close to the ground, or that several journalists had informed UEFA of the problems.Thomas Coex/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesNo, all of that was put to one side, and UEFA blamed the fans. It did so either without full knowledge of the situation at its own event — an unforgivable ignorance — or knowing that its statement was at best misleading or, at worst, an outright and pernicious lie.And that was all it took. As soon as UEFA decided that the real problem with this sporting event was all the people who wanted to watch it, the — let’s keep the lawyers happy — misinformation spread and disseminated and infected everything it touched. From that point on, Liverpool’s fans were presumed guilty until proven innocent, not least by considerable portions of the people who should, really, have been their allies: other soccer fans.Still, UEFA can take some solace from the fact that — even with that head start — it has not been the worst actor in the sorry story that has played out over the last week or so, a time that should have been dedicated to celebrating the marvel that is this ageless Real Madrid team.No, that dubious honor goes to various elements of the French state. Not just the body-armor-clad riot police — who sprayed tear gas at fans waiting patiently to attend a sporting event, who tried to funnel thousands of people through two narrow gaps under a highway overpass, who shuttered entry points without explanation for hours as the crowd gathered and swelled, and who then locked down the stadium during the game to pen fans inside — but their champions: the country’s interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, and to his counterpart for sports, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra.For almost a week now, Darmanin and Oudéa-Castéra have blamed Liverpool’s fans on Twitter, in comments to the news media and in front of a rapidly-convened Senate hearing.France’s sports minister, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, and the country’s interior minister, Gérald Darmanin.Thomas Coex/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThey have blamed Liverpool fans despite all of those pictures of large, patient crowds. They have blamed Liverpool fans despite seeing videos of children being lifted from the ground to prevent them from being crushed. They have blamed Liverpool fans despite seeing footage of their own police officers squirting pepper spray and firing tear gas at people trying, quietly, to scan tickets.They have continued to blame Liverpool fans even as their own story keeps changing, even as the number of “fake tickets” presented at the Stade de France that evening has diminished from “30,000 to 40,000” to a fraction of that. They have stuck with their line even when it veered into baseless slurs, when it involved Oudéa-Castéra saying that Liverpool fans — maybe just English fans — posed a “very specific risk” to public safety.They have done so even though it does not take into account the problems that Real Madrid’s fans faced, or the footage and photographs of local residents forcing their way in, or the corroborated accounts of large-scale gang activity both before and after the game.They have done so even when it leaves more questions than answers: Where, precisely, did the 40,000 bearers of pretend tickets go, and why were they not captured wandering the streets of Saint-Denis? Were they ghosts? Other excuses have drifted into the realm of dystopian fantasy: Darmanin, at one point, claimed the police had to act because of the risk of a “pitch invasion.”This might all have the ring of a cover-up — and not even an especially good one, given how often the French authorities have had to contradict themselves — but there exists the possibility that it is not. Maybe it is not a series of outrageous and egregious lies. Maybe they have not seen all of those images, heard all of that testimony. Maybe it is just two politicians relying in good faith on poor, premature information. Maybe.It is hard, though, not to read into the persistence with which Darmanin and Oudéa-Castéra have peddled their accusations a certain calculation.Despite the fact that their interpretation of last Saturday evening is demonstrably, provably untrue, they have stood by it because the alternative is unpalatable: Admitting that the French security services got this one wrong would mean admitting that they have also got their approach to policing French domestic soccer wrong and that they are probably going to get next year’s Rugby World Cup and the 2024 Paris Olympics wrong, too.Most of all, they have stood by it because, deep down, they know it will work. They know, at least, that it might create the illusion of an alternative set of facts. They know, too, that much of the heavy lifting will be done by prejudice, by those who would point out, archly, that this does seem to happen to Liverpool fans or England fans or just soccer fans as a whole an awful lot.They know that while social media allowed all of those images and videos and firsthand accounts to be surfaced and to be spread, citizen journalism is a much less potent force online than deep-rooted partisanship. They know that the latter will overpower the former at some point, at least enough to muddy the waters, to obscure not only this specific truth but also the idea of truth, to ensure that some blame is apportioned elsewhere.Plenty, certainly, have seized on the opportunity to assume that Liverpool fans, or English fans, or even a certain stripe of soccer fans as a whole must be at fault. Plenty have decided that this must be the first time that anyone has ever tried to gain access to an event by using a fake ticket, without wondering whether perhaps some of those people were victims, rather than perpetrators, of a crime, without asking if perhaps that is the sort of thing the authorities should be prepared to encounter.And yet the temptation to side with the authorities, in the aftermath of an event like this, rather than those who are different from you only in terms of the team they support is a dangerous one.Thomas Coex/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWhat was proved at the Stade de France on Saturday evening was that soccer — in France, at least — is still an industry content with having tear gas fired on its customers, on families and on children. That it finds it acceptable to put them in a position where they have reason to fear for their lives, to risk them being crushed to death, to assume all of them are equally guilty and then, rather than to ask how this might have been avoided, to have the temerity, in the face of all available evidence, to blame them for it.And that has ramifications for everyone. For any soccer fan, for any sports fan, for any participant in French democracy. The Stade de France is not the first time a UEFA final has descended into chaos. Last summer’s European Championship final, in London, prompted a governmental review. Last month’s Europa League final, in Seville, drew a letter of complaint from both clubs about the way their fans were treated.Increasingly, it appears that UEFA is no longer capable of staging these games. More troublingly, in France in particular, it would seem that nobody in any position of power is interested in discovering how to police events of this scale to make sure they are not only safe and secure but enjoyable, too. Nobody wants to accept responsibility. Nobody wants to learn lessons.What happened at the Stade de France, and the smear campaign unleashed in its aftermath, has ramifications far beyond the reputation of Liverpool’s fans. Allowing the allegations of Darmanin and Oudéa-Castéra to take root is to allow this to happen again, to guarantee that there is a repeat, that another set of fans will be funneled and kettled and trapped and gassed and told — by those in power, by those responsible, by those who are supposed to have them in their care — that it is their fault.At times like this, it should not be hard to choose which side to believe, to know who is very obviously telling the truth.That Didn’t Work. Let’s Do It Again.Hold you applause for Barcelona, please.Dan Himbrechts/EPA, via ShutterstockThere was a time, a little while ago, when it was possible to feel quite encouraged by Barcelona. Xavi Hernández had made a bright start as manager, steering the club back into the Champions League. In Gavi and Pedri and Ansu Fati and Ronald Áraujo, the young and gifted core of a new team was starting to emerge.Even the club’s transfer activity seemed quite smart. Ferran Torres and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang had given the team a lift in January. Franck Kessié, the Ivorian midfielder at A.C. Milan, had been secured on a free transfer for the summer, giving the team a dynamism it has missed for some time.True, the debts are still enormous, but the club seemed to have acquiesced to cold reality. It was cutting its cloth, balancing its books, adapting to its new strictures. It was even trying to rehabilitate its relationship with Ousmane Dembélé, an admirable but somewhat quixotic attempt to recognize that salvaging a distressed asset is cheaper than acquiring a new one.And then it emerged that it might be considering the idea of selling Frenkie De Jong to Manchester United. Now, on the surface, that felt like an unfortunate necessity: At 25, De Jong is the sort of player who might generate a fee with which to rebuild a team. Sometimes, those kinds of difficult decisions have to be made.But then it turned out that Barcelona was planning on using at least a portion of the money it might receive — most likely from Manchester United — for De Jong to buy Marcos Alonso and César Azpilicueta.Both are fine players, of course. Azpilicueta, certainly, would be an asset both on and off the field to Barcelona. But they are hardly spring chickens: Alonso is 31 and Azpilicueta 32. Alonso excels in a position, wing back, that Barcelona does not even use. This is not the work of a club that has learned its lessons. Not in the slightest.You Cannot All Be LeBronAll will be revealed, then, on June 17. In less than two weeks, humanity will finally discover the answer to the most burning question of the age: Which team will get to have endless, heated discussions about whether Paul Pogba is playing sufficiently well next season? And it will do so in the most apposite medium imaginable: through watching his own, personal documentary.Just a little of the sting from The Pogmentary — no, really — was drawn earlier this week, when Manchester United confirmed that Pogba would be leaving the club, six years on from his $100 million arrival, at the end of his contract. The “huge decision” that sits at the center of much of the promotional spiel of the documentary, it turns out, was not entirely his.Oli Scarff/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesPogba is not the first player to go down this road, of course. His French teammate, Antoine Griezmann, announced his move to Barcelona in the form of what might as well broadly be called a documentary, too. That Griezmann, like Pogba, is a devoted N.B.A. fan is probably not irrelevant here. These are both transparent homages to The Decision, LeBron James’s great gift to the documentarian’s art.The problem, of course, is that LeBron James is one of the greatest players ever to grace a basketball court, a status that is probably just a little beyond both Pogba and Griezmann. If James’s announcement was full of hubris and self-importance — the phrase “I’ll be taking my talents” should always, always be laced with irony — then it is easy to feel there is something just a little more tawdry about soccer’s ersatz versions, something slightly, well, desperate.To the players, though, that is a price worth paying. Pogba’s time at Manchester United has, by almost any measure, been anti-climactic. The peak years of his career, at least at club level, have been spent seeing his status slowly fade, leaving a player once regarded as one of the finest midfielders in the world now widely regarded as an expensive luxury.The bombast and the faint pomposity of a glossy documentary, an announcement about his future — spoiler alert: He will probably return to Juventus — is, at its heart, a way of asserting that he is still a star, that he can still command attention, that he can still dictate his own terms. It is a message tailored, in part, to whichever club (again: Juventus) he joins. More than that, though, it has the air of a message to himself.CorrespondenceA couple of thoughts from readers on the final day of the Premier League season, which as far as I can tell happened several years ago. “Seeing how Serie A settles a points tie by looking at a comparable win/loss, why can’t the Premier League do something similar?” asked Erich Almasy. “Watching Manchester City run up the scores to get a higher goal difference is embarrassing and clearly hurts clubs fighting relegation.”(A brief translation for readers unfamiliar with league table math: Serie A separates teams that are level on points by head-to-head record. The Premier League does it on goal difference.)I will confess to being slightly torn on this one. Head-to-head seems slightly fairer to me — though not in this Premier League season, when it would have been no use at all if Liverpool and Manchester City had finished level on points, given both games between the two of them ended 2-2 — and I do believe that seeing teams run up the score is not especially compelling sporting entertainment.But what is the alternative? That City (and Liverpool) just take the last 30 minutes of games off? Goal difference is also, to my eye, more dramatic. A.C. Milan’s better head-to-head record against Inter Milan this year meant it effectively had an extra point; in England, there is at least the possibility of a team overturning a disadvantage in goal difference on the final day.Pep Guardiola left the final day as he entered it: confident Manchester City would bring him the Premier League title.Hannah Mckay/ReutersI am more inclined to agree with Chuck Massoud-Tastor. “How does the Premier League defend the idea of starting all games simultaneously on the final day? Would they not garner more viewership and excitement with staggered starts? Am I just being a provincial American?”Yes, Chuck, you are, but that doesn’t mean you’re not right. It would be possible to stagger at least some of the games on the final day, at least in some scenarios, as long as all of the games pertaining to relegation or Europe or the title happened simultaneously.I’m not sure any drama would be lost. In a way, it might even serve to allow each story line a little time to breathe. That said, the issue is in the logistics. You do not know which games will be significant for which prize until relatively late, and rearranging games on short notice would only inconvenience fans. More

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      Nigeria Adds Up the Costs of Missing the World Cup

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      Failure to qualify for Qatar has condemned Nigeria to a humbling summer instead of months of World Cup hype. Then there’s the fate of its famous jersey.In those initial moments of agony in March after Nigeria was eliminated from qualification for this year’s World Cup, the most immediate thoughts of Amaju Pinnick, the president of Nigeria’s soccer federation, were of the disappointment being felt by his 200 million countrymen in Africa’s most populous nation.He needed only to look down on the scenes unfolding inside Moshood Abiola National Stadium in Abuja, Nigeria, to see what it meant. Thousands of angry supporters had poured onto the field after the final whistle to vent their anger, knocking over the advertising boards, chasing the players from the field and clashing with security officers. “My first thought,” Pinnick said, “was to resign immediately.”But his mind quickly drifted elsewhere, too. In those first days after Nigeria’s elimination in a home-and-home playoff against Ghana, Pinnick said he would wake up in the middle of the night thinking about another group feeling the sting of the team’s failure.“Oh what have we done,” he said, “to Nike.”For any country accustomed to attending the World Cup, the consequences of missing the tournament are substantial. The United States Soccer Federation stumbled through just such a soccer catastrophe in 2017, and Italy has now done it in two World Cup cycles in a row.For Nigeria, a leading light of African soccer that until this year had failed to qualify for the World Cup only once since 1994, the emotional and financial cost of elimination may be best told through the demise of a single deal: the carefully calibrated plan, worth millions of dollars and priceless publicity, linked to the release of a new national team jersey made by Nike.Nigeria’s jersey for the 2018 World Cup had been a breakout star, creating a frenzy and the type of buzz more expected from an appearance by one of the game’s star players than the arrival of a piece of apparel. Brightly colored and featuring a design that set it apart from the more staid, conservative offerings of most of the other teams at the tournament in Russia, Nigeria’s jersey became a must-have that summer, selling out almost immediately.Nigeria national soccer gear in London in 2018. It didn’t stay in stores for long.Frank Augstein/Associated PressNike received at least three million orders for the $90 shirt even before it went on sale. Lines formed at the company’s flagship stores in London and other cities on the day of its release. When it was finally made available online, it sold out in three minutes.Four years later, Nike and Nigeria — whose federation officials have sought to take full advantage of their brand through their relationship with the company — were hoping to build on that success with a new design this summer.“Nike has been very religious about us,” Pinnick said. “I feel very, very bad — I feel like crying when you mention Nike. They went all the way to bringing out what would have been the best jersey again in this tournament.”The World Cup is a major sales moment for Nike, which outfits some of the tournament’s most prominent teams, including the current champion, France, but also the United States, England and Brazil, which has won more titles than any other nation.Designing and manufacturing World Cup jerseys is not a short process, either; it typically takes about two years before the products appear in stores. Pinnick’s reaction, then, was understandable: Nigeria’s failure to qualify will mean a colossal loss in what the soccer federation could have expected to reap from its share of sales, he said. (Fans of the shirt will still get a chance to own one: The shirt will be released, presumably amid much less excitement, in September.)Pinnick estimated that as many as five million jerseys might have been sold after qualification, though it is unclear how many jerseys Nike was planning to produce; the company declined multiple requests to comment for this article.Joe Aribo and Nigeria lost to Ecuador, 1-0, in a friendly on Thursday in New Jersey. It was the team’s second defeat in a week on its United States tour.Tim Nwachukwu/Getty ImagesThrough its contract with Nike, Nigeria was entitled to a royalty of about 8 percent of each sale, Pinnick suggested. It would also have received a further $1 million in bonus fees from the company for making the World Cup. Those payouts, as well as additional eight-figure paydays from FIFA just for playing in the tournament, most likely would have meant a doubling of the Nigerian federation’s annual revenues of $20 million — a figure that was less than a tenth of what the biggest national soccer associations in South America and Europe generate.Shehu Dikko, the vice president of the federation, said a significant amount of the money earned through qualification would have been allocated before the tournament, on items like player bonuses, tuneup matches and training camps. (The team is currently in North America: It lost to Mexico on Saturday in Texas and again to Ecuador at Red Bull Arena in New Jersey on Thursday night.) “It is a huge financial blow for us,” he said, “and we have to recover.”There is another element of Nigeria’s failure, though, that is much harder to quantify. Over the decades, the Nigeria men’s soccer team, particularly when it is performing at major tournaments, has become a rallying point like no other for a population cleaved by social, ethnic and religious differences.“Football in Nigeria is life — it’s more than anybody can explain with words,” Dikko said. “You have to feel it. Nigeria has over 500 tribes, so many traditions, but football is the only activity that breaks through all of our fault lines. Once there is a football, everybody is a Nigerian. Nobody cares who you are, what you do or what language you speak. So football is more than just a game for us. It’s what binds this country together.”“Football is more than just a game for us,” one Nigerian official said of the sport and the national team. “It’s what binds this country together.”Afolabi Sotunde/ReutersThat level of interest and passion, though, means there also is a sharper focus on the performance of the federation.Under Pinnick, who assumed the role in 2014 and is the longest-serving soccer president in Nigeria’s history and who is also a member of FIFA’s governing council, Nigeria has had a mixed record. While he claims credit for modernizing the federation and attracting new sponsors, his tenure has failed to yield any major titles. A round of 16 elimination in the most recent edition of the Africa Cup of Nations — months before the team’s World Cup ouster — was its worst performance in that event since 1984. That came after a third-place finish in the previous edition and two consecutive catastrophic qualification campaigns in which Nigeria missed the competition in 2015 and 2017.Despite his initial impulse to resign in March, Pinnick now says he will stay on through the end of his term later this year. Not everyone supports the decision.Days after its World Cup exit, with Pinnick at his lowest, dozens of placard-holding protesters gathered outside the Nigerian headquarters in Abuja, calling for his ouster. Pinnick said the protest was not what it seemed; he suggested the crowd had been assembled — and paid — by opponents who have been trying to stymie his efforts since the day he first stepped into office.“They are professional placard carriers — you employ them, you rent them,” Pinnick said of the group that called for his ouster. “If you ask the guy why they are carrying the placards, they say they don’t know. They rent them for as low as 10 cents, 20 cents. People are hungry.”A few days later, there was another demonstration, more placards. This time the messages were different. They called on Pinnick to stay on. More

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      40,000 Fake Tickets at the Champions League Final? Actually, It Was 2,589.

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      The French authorities blamed tens of thousands of counterfeit tickets for the chaos before Saturday’s Champions League final. The official count was far lower.One of the main claims pushed by French officials to explain the chaotic crowd scenes that created a dangerous crush of fans outside last weekend’s Champions League final near Paris has been that tens of thousands of people arrived at the match bearing fake tickets.France’s interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, has claimed as many as 70 percent of tickets presented at the Stade de France in St.-Denis were fake. He told a news conference Monday that the “root cause” of the chaos was roughly 30,000 to 40,000 English fans bearing counterfeit tickets — or no tickets — who jammed the entrances.But according to official numbers reviewed by The New York Times, the exact number of fake tickets intercepted by stewards manning the entrance gates was far lower: 2,589, to be exact.That figure is almost three times the usual number of forgeries at the Champions League final, a game widely considered to be European soccer’s equivalent of the Super Bowl, but significantly lower than the figure used by Darmanin, who had as of Wednesday not provided details of the source of his estimate.Darmanin and France’s sports minister, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, who has made similar claims about fake tickets, have faced growing criticism over the handling of the game. France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, on Wednesday called for “full transparency” in an investigation of the match-day scenes and their causes. At an appearance in front of a committee of the French senate later Wednesday, Darmanin admitted, “Clearly things could have been organized better.”“It is evident,” he added, “that this celebration of sport was ruined.”France’s interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, faced testy questioning from lawmakers on Wednesday.Geoffroy Van Der Hasselt/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIn what became a testy appearance in front of the committee, Darmanin and Oudéa-Castéra came under sustained pressure over the organizational failures. In response, they largely repeated the language that has enraged Liverpool, its fans and members of the British government.At one point, Oudéa-Castéra told lawmakers that Liverpool supporters carried a “very specific risk” in the view of the French authorities, without elaborating what she meant.Darmanin, meanwhile, insisted the counterfeit ticket numbers were of an unprecedented scale, claiming at one point there were so many that stadium security guards thought their tools to validate them were faulty.The hearing lasted longer than an hour, ending with little clarity and a doubling down by the officials on their previous claims, again without evidence to support their conclusions.That prompted one lawmaker to ask: “Since Saturday, we have blamed Liverpool fans and the club, striking workers and locals for the chaos. What allows you to make these declarations without a thorough investigation?”Not all attendees had the same experience at the final. While most of Real Madrid’s fans arrived with electronic tickets, Liverpool requested paper ones for its official allocation of 23,000 tickets. Those tickets came embedded with two main security features: one that needed to be confirmed with a chemical pen and a second that was a laser engraving of the Champions League trophy.Those holding tickets without the two security features were to be denied access by stewards at an initial checkpoint far from the stadium’s bar code readers. But that system collapsed under a deluge of fans: To relieve the growing crush of people, officials abandoned those first checks and allowed the crowds to move closer to the stadium.The debacle has led to chorus of criticism of the security at the match, in which Real Madrid defeated Liverpool, 1-0, to claim its record 14th European title. Liverpool police who attended in supporting roles labeled the situation outside the gates “shocking.” The club, its fans and a European supporters group all called for investigations even as the game was underway. And in the days since, British government officials have demanded answers from their French counterparts and European soccer’s governing body, UEFA, for the treatment of thousands of Liverpool supporters.Thousands of fans were trapped for hours in tight crowds before the final, causing a delay to the match’s kickoff. Thomas Coex/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesSupporters faced multiple issues, including dangerous crushes, after being corralled into narrow spaces, and the final was delayed more than 30 minutes as the French riot police used tear gas and pepper spray on fans after appearing to lose control of the situation. At the same time, hundreds of local youths tried to force their way into the stadium, either through the turnstiles or by climbing over security fences. Officials estimated as many as 4,000 ticketless people may have succeeded.Part of the explanation into why Liverpool supporters found themselves trapped in such a small space has now turned to transportation problems on the day of the game, including a strike by workers that affected one of the major rail links to the stadium.UEFA and local officials have compared travel data from Saturday’s game to figures from the French Cup final held at the Stade de France on May 7. They found that one of the stations closest to the Stade de France had four times as many fans travel through its gates Saturday than had used the station during the French Cup final. That, they believe, contributed to the dangerous bottleneck of supporters.It may be months before a complete picture of what occurred at the stadium emerges. On Tuesday, UEFA, reeling from chaotic scenes at last year’s European Championship final in London as well as the recent Europa League final in Seville, Spain, appointed a former education minister of Portugal, Tiago Brandão Rodrigues, to lead an independent inquiry into the failures around the Champions League final.The claims made by the French government’s representatives, though, continue to infuriate Liverpool and its ownership. The club’s chairman, Tom Werner, said as much in a caustic letter to Oudéa-Castéra, the French sports minister.He wrote, he said, “out of utter disbelief that a minister of the French government, a position of enormous responsibility and influence, could make a series of unproven pronouncements on a matter of such significance before a proper, formal, independent investigation process has even taken place.”He decried the “loose data and unverified assertions” presented to reporters Monday before an investigation had taken place.“The fact that your public position went against this objective is a concern in itself,” he added. “That you did so without any recourse to ourselves or our supporters is an even greater one. All voices should count in this process, and they should count equally and fairly.”As well as assailing Oudéa-Castéra for her claims, Werner also demanded a public apology. By late Tuesday, Oudéa-Castéra’s tone — though not her claims about fake tickets — had changed.“The issue of the false tickets does not change this: Liverpool is one of the greatest clubs ever,” she wrote on Twitter. “And on Saturday there were supporters with valid tickets that spent a terrible evening or were not able to watch the game. We are sorry for that.”Liverpool continues to be inundated with video evidence shot on cellphones by its supporters. The images, many of which have also been uploaded to social media, are sometimes harrowing, showing children and older fans dealing with the effects of tear gas fired — sometimes indiscriminately — by the riot police.Fans of Real Madrid faced similar problems on their side of the stadium. Since the final, several supporters have come forward to say they were attacked or robbed on their way in and out of the stadium.Amando Sánchez, 51, who traveled to Paris in a group of 14, mainly family members, said his 87-year-old father and an older brother missed the game as a result of chaos at the entry gates. Another brother, Sánchez said, fought off an effort to steal his ticket as he prepared to present it at a stadium turnstile.“Really no one was in charge,” Sánchez said in an interview Wednesday. More