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      Luis Díaz Is the Liverpool Star Who Never Should Have Made It

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      Follow live updates of the UEFA Champions League final.LIVERPOOL, England — Luis Díaz bares his forearm and places a finger on his wrist, as if taking his own pulse. He does it without breaking eye contact, without pausing for breath. He does not seem to notice he is doing it. It is a reflexive, unconscious motion, the best way to demonstrate what he means.Díaz does not, he says, speak Wayúu, the language of the Indigenous community in Colombia to which he can trace his roots. Nor does he wear traditional clothing, or maintain every custom. Life has carried him far from La Guajira, a spit of land fringed by the Caribbean Sea on one side and Venezuela on the other, the Wayúu homeland.It is at that point that he traces his veins with his finger, feels the beat of his heart. “I feel Wayúu,” he says. He may not — by his own estimation — be “pure” Wayúu, but that does not matter. “That is my background, my origins,” he said. “It is who I am.”As Díaz has risen to stardom over the last five years or so — breaking through at Atlético Junior, one of Colombia’s grandest teams; earning a move to Europe with F.C. Porto; igniting Liverpool’s journey to the Champions League final after joining in January — his story has been told and retold so often that even Díaz, now, admits that he would welcome the chance to “clarify” a few of the details.Luis Díaz joined Liverpool in January, and helped fire its run to Saturday’s Champions League final.Paul Ellis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesSome of those have been muddied and distorted by what Juan Pablo Gutierrez, a human-rights activist who first met Díaz when he was 18, describes as the desire to “take a romantic story and make it more romantic still.” The great Colombian midfielder Carlos Valderrama, for example, is often credited with “discovering” Díaz. “That’s just not true,” Gutierrez said.And then there is the tendency toward what Gutierrez labels “opportunism.” Countless former coaches and teammates and acquaintances have been wheeled out by the news media — initially in Colombia, then through Latin America, and finally across Europe — to offer their memories of the 25-year-old forward. “There are a lot of people, who maybe met him for a few days years ago, who bask in the light that he casts,” Gutierrez said.Still, the broad arc of his journey is familiar, in both senses. Díaz had an underprivileged upbringing in Colombia’s most deprived area. He had to leave home as a teenager and travel for six hours, by bus, to train with a professional team. He was so slender at the time that John Jairo Diaz, one of his early coaches, nicknamed him “noodle.” His first club, believing he was suffering from malnutrition, placed him on a special diet to help him gain weight.Though its contours are, perhaps, a little more extreme, that story is not all that dissimilar to the experiences of many of Díaz’s peers, an overwhelming majority of whom faced hardship and made remarkable sacrifices on their way to the top.What makes Díaz’s story different, though, and what makes it especially significant, is where it started. Díaz does not know of any other Wayúu players. “Not at the moment, anyway, not ones who are professional,” he said.There is a reason for that. Scouts do not often make their way to La Guajira to look for players. Colombia’s clubs do not, as a rule, commit resources to finding future stars among the country’s Indigenous communities. It is that which lends Díaz’s story its power. It is not just a story about how he made it. It is also a story about why so many others do not.Paul Ellis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesDaniel BolívarAs far as Gutierrez could tell, Luis Díaz was not only not the best player in the tournament, he was not even the best player on his team. That honor fell, instead, to Diaz’s friend Daniel Bolívar, an inventive, shimmering playmaker. “Luis was more pragmatic,” Gutierrez said. “Daniel was fantasy.”In 2014, the organization Gutierrez works for, O.N.I.C. — the official representative group of Colombia’s Indigenous populations — had set up a nationwide soccer tournament, designed to bring together the country’s various ethnic groups.“We had seen that the one thing they all had in common, from the Amazon basin to the Andes, was that they spent their free time playing soccer,” Gutierrez said. “Some played with boots and some played barefoot. Some played with a real ball and some played with a ball made from rags. But they all played.”The event was the first of its kind, an unwieldy and complex logistical affair — the travel alone could take days — that unspooled over the course of a year. Its aim, Gutierrez said, was to “demonstrate the talent that these communities have, to show that all they lack is opportunity.”The message was intended to resonate beyond sport. “It was a social and political thing, too,” Gutierrez said. “The word ‘Indian’ is an insult in Colombia. The Indigenous groups are called primitive, dirty, savage. There is a long legacy of colonialism, a deep-seated prejudice. The tournament was a way to show that they are more than folklore, more than the ‘exotic’, more than headdresses and paint.”Daniel Munoz/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIt is a long way from the dusty fields of Diaz’s Colombian hometown, Barrancas, to the manicured pitches and bright lights of the Champions League.Daniel Munoz/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesSome teams, like F.C. La Guajira, now train on artificial turf fields, but that is no guarantee that scouts from the country’s biggest clubs will ever see them play.Daniel Munoz/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBy the time the finals — held in the capital, Bogotá — came around, Gutierrez was involved in another project. In 2015, with Chile scheduled to host the Copa América, a parallel championship was arranged to celebrate the continent’s Indigenous groups. Colombia’s squad would be drawn from the best players in its national tournament.The team from La Guajira, representing the Wayúu community and featuring Díaz and Bolívar, had made the finals, and its two standout players were selected for inclusion in the national team. It would be coached by John Jairo Diaz, with Valderrama — referred to throughout Colombia exclusively as El Pibe — included as technical director.Valderrama’s involvement meant a lot to Luis Díaz. “That he saw me play and liked me is a beautiful thing,” he said. “I didn’t know him at all, but I admired him a lot. He’s a reference point for all of Colombian football. It was a huge source of pride that Pibe Valderrama might choose me for a team.”Valderrama was not, though, quite as hands-on as has often been presented (a misconception he does not appear eager to correct). “He was an ambassador,” Gutierrez said. “We knew that where the Pibe goes, 50,000 cameras follow. It was a way of making sure our message was heard.”Díaz shone at the tournament, performing well enough that Gutierrez received at least one approach, from a club in Peru, to try to sign him. It would prove a watershed. There were, Díaz believes, plenty of good players in that team. “The problem was that some of them were a little older, so it was difficult to become professional,” he said. He would prove to be the exception.Valderrama’s seal of approval, as well as the news media coverage the tournament generated, led to a move to Barranquilla F.C., a farm team for Junior — the first step on the road to the elite, to Europe, to Liverpool. It was the start of Diaz’s story.And yet, as Gutierrez points out, laughing, Díaz was not exceptional. “He was not the best player in that tournament,” he said. “He wasn’t even the best player on his team.” By common consensus, that was Bolívar.Daniel Bolívar was a former teammate of Díaz’s. Those who watched them say he was a better player.Daniel Munoz/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBolívar’s story is not as well-known as that of Díaz. It does not have the stirring ending, after all: Bolívar now works at Cerrejón, the largest open-pit coal mine in South America, back in La Guajira.But his story is far more typical of Colombia’s Indigenous communities: not of a gift discovered and nurtured, but of talent lost. “There is no reason he could not be playing for Real Madrid,” Gutierrez said of Bolívar. “He did not lack ability. He lacked opportunity.”The Lucky OneFor all the challenges he faced, the obstacles he had to overcome, Díaz knows he was one of the lucky ones. His father, Luis Manuel, had been a gifted amateur player in Barrancas, the family’s hometown; Díaz still grins at the memory of how good his father had been. “Really good,” runs his assessment.By the time Díaz was a child, his father was running a soccer school — La Escuelita, everyone called it — and in a position to give his son the benefits of a more structured sporting education than he had received. “You could see that he was a little more professional, even then,” Gutierrez said. “He was a bit more advanced, and the credit for that goes to his father.”His father’s dedication to his career is what made the difference, what turned Díaz into a unicorn: He not only helped him train, but his decision to run the soccer school meant his son had competitions to play in. Those enabled him to win a place in the Wayúu team for the Indigenous championship as a 17-year-old, which positioned him to win his spot in the national team a year later, which led to his move into the professional game.Díaz’s first drew notice at an Indigenous tournament in Colombia. That led to a move to bigger teams and, eventually, to Porto.Manuel Fernando Araujo/EPA, via ShutterstockNot everyone, of course, can benefit from that constellation of factors. “In these regions, there is not the support in place,” Díaz said. “There are a lot of good players there, but it is hard for people to leave, to take that step and follow their dream. They can’t leave for reasons of money, or for family reasons. And that means that we are losing a lot of players with a lot of talent.”Gutierrez hopes that Díaz can be an antidote to that pattern. “For a long time, the view has always been that Indigenous peoples do not exist,” he said. “That is the legacy of colonialism: that they are not seen, or they are only seen as something exotic, something from folklore.”Díaz’s presence on soccer’s grandest stage — he could, on Saturday, become the first Colombian to play in and win the Champions League final — is a way to “deconstruct” that image, Gutierrez said. “This is a community at immediate risk of extinction,” he said. “And now, because of Lucho, it is in the light of the world’s cameras. He is sending a message that his community cannot send.”There is no doubt in Díaz’s mind about where he comes from, of whom he represents. He does not speak the language, but it is the blood in his veins, the beat of his heart. Díaz is the exception, the talent that was found while all the others were lost. His hope, Gutierrez’s hope, is that he will not be alone for long.Daniel Munoz/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images More

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      Champions League Final Preview: Liverpool vs. Real Madrid

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      Real Madrid and Liverpool will square off on Saturday in Paris. The game is a rematch of the 2018 final.PARIS — As collisions of star power, pedigree and history go — and provided you don’t support one of their rivals — it would be hard to conjure a better Champions League final this season than Liverpool vs. Real Madrid.The teams meet Saturday in Paris to crown Europe’s club champion. Real Madrid, which won the Spanish league this year, is chasing a record 14th Champions League title after narrowly dodging elimination in the semifinals. Liverpool, the runner-up in the Premier League but holder of two cups already this spring, will be hoping to lift the Champions League trophy for the seventh time.Here’s what you should know.Paul Ellis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesHow can I watch the game?Saturday’s final will be broadcast by CBS (English) and TUDN (Spanish) in the United States, and streamed on Paramount Plus. Coverage begins at 1:30 p.m. Eastern time but — and this is critically important — the game will not start for another 90 minutes. Plan your day accordingly.Not in the United States? You can find your local viewing options — from Canal+ to Canal Dos to the wonderfully named Silknet and Wowow — on this list of UEFA’s television partners.What time is the final?The ball will roll off the spot at 9 p.m. in Paris, which is 3 p.m. Eastern. It will almost certainly travel backward, though that hasn’t been required by the rules for eight years now.Federico Valverde may start on Saturday. His son is not expected to play.Kirsty Wigglesworth/Associated PressWhat’s the vibe in Paris?Our correspondent Tariq Panja was on the streets on Friday, where he reports that it was oddly quiet compared with previous finals. His dispatch:France is the center for world sports this weekend, with the Champions League final at the Stade de France in the northern suburb of Saint-Denis, the French Open across town at Roland Garros and Formula One’s Monaco Grand Prix on the south coast, if you prefer your sporting twists and turns in the literal sense.Paris was easily able to absorb the influx of fans, though in its usual tourist hot spots there was little sign that soccer’s biggest game was in town. That might have been owed to a warning issued to supporters of both teams that they risked fines of 135 euros (almost $150) if they turned up wearing club colors in places like the Eiffel Tower or the Champs Élysées, the grand avenue that is typically flooded with visitors.Instead, the tournament organizer, UEFA, and city officials hosted fans of the rival teams in separate venues closer to the city limits. That could be normal caution, fears of the coronavirus or the fact that France may not be entirely thrilled to have the game: It only got the hosting rights in February, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine made it untenable to go to the original host city, St. Petersburg.Still, the final — the first to be played in front of a full stadium since Liverpool last won the tournament in 2019 — did attract the well-heeled and well-connected, with UEFA’s luxury hotel a magnet for former players, high-ranking officials, politicians, agents and assorted extras.About a mile away, Real Madrid’s leadership, led by the club president, Florentino Pérez, gathered before heading in a convoy of buses to watch the team train at the Stade de France. Perez traveled to Paris with a security detail amid concerns his presence might be seen as provocative only a week after he failed in his efforts to lure Kylian Mbappé, the star player on France’s biggest team, Paris St. Germain, to Madrid.The final also was the first time that Pérez and the UEFA president, Aleksander Ceferin, met in person since a Pérez-led effort to create a European Super League failed spectacularly just over a year ago. Pérez, who is still suing UEFA over the Super League’s demise, and Ceferin, who called some of the plotters behind it “snakes” and “liars,” sat alongside one another at an official dinner at the Louvre on Friday night.Let’s hope the meal didn’t require sharp knives at each place setting.What kind of game can we expect?Luis Díaz, second from left, and his Liverpool teammates kept the mood light at their final training session on Friday. Frank Augstein/Associated PressOur soccer columnist Rory Smith offered a quick preview in his newsletter this week (sign up here):Paris St.-Germain almost looked as if it were waiting for the wave to crash. Chelsea seemed determined to resist, right up until the moment that the storm hit. Only then did Thomas Tuchel’s team realize its powerlessness. Manchester City, meanwhile, had almost made it to shore. Once it felt the tide change, though, it could do nothing but succumb.It is difficult, on the eve of the Champions League final, to avoid the suspicion that this Real Madrid story cannot possibly end in a dispiriting 2-1 defeat to Liverpool in Paris. There has been too much drama, too much magic, in the last two months for it to conclude in any way other than smoke and fire and white ticker tape drifting down from the sky.Indeed, the test for Liverpool on Saturday — more than technical or tactical or systemic — is psychological. Real Madrid has been able to snatch victory from defeat against three of the best-equipped opponents in Europe because its players believe in the club’s almost mystical refusal to wilt.But Madrid has been helped by the fact that the opposition are inclined to believe it, too. Particularly in the Bernabéu, there is a distinct, almost palpable edge to otherwise accomplished teams, a discernible awareness that at some point — almost entirely unannounced — Real Madrid is going to do something elemental and unfathomable, and nobody will be able to stop it.To win its seventh European Cup on Saturday, Liverpool will have to break that sequence. Its manager, Jürgen Klopp, said this week that he finds it more helpful to focus on preventing Real Madrid from getting into a position to wreak its particular brand of havoc — easier said than done, of course — than simply to watch the highlights of those two frenzied minutes against Manchester City, over and over again. “There are another 88 minutes in the game,” he said.In that sense, Liverpool is probably the toughest test Madrid could have faced in the final. Not necessarily because it is a better team than Manchester City — the Premier League table, indeed, rather suggests it is not — but because it will see in this Madrid an echo of its former self.Don’t worry: Marcelo is fine. Manu Fernandez/Associated PressThe Madrid players at Carlo Ancelotti’s disposal are of a higher quality, of course, and the experience of his squad — many of his stars are going for a fifth Champions League crown in nine years — is incomparable. But the nature of the way the team plays, conjuring those irresistible surges, is not.It was that sort of style, after all, that carried Liverpool to the final in 2018, the one it lost to Real Madrid in Kyiv: the ability to “finish” a game, as Klopp put it, in no more than a couple of 10- or 15-minute stretches. The roles have reversed completely now. Liverpool will seek to control events in Paris, while Madrid waits for its storm to gather from a cloudless sky. It will come. Liverpool will know that. The challenge is what you do when it breaks.Haven’t we seen this movie before?Liverpool and Real Madrid met in the 2018 final in Kyiv.Lluis Gene/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesYes, in a way. Both teams have been regulars in the latter stages of the Champions League, and regular visitors to the final, over the last decade.Liverpool is playing for the trophy for the third time in five years, a stretch of some of the most thrilling — and most beautiful soccer — in its proud history. Real Madrid is in the final for the fifth time since 2014; in each of its previous four visits since 2014, its fans will quickly point out, it has left with the trophy.But despite their storied histories, Liverpool and Real Madrid have met in the final only twice.Liverpool beat Real Madrid, 1-0, in 1981, when the tournament was still known as the European Cup, and when it was Liverpool that was in the midst of a string of recent titles.Real Madrid won the rematch by 3-1 in 2018, continuing its own string of recent titles.That final still stings for Liverpool, which endured two horrible mistakes by goalkeeper Loris Karius that sealed its fate and lost forward Mohamed Salah to an ugly tackle from Real Madrid supervillain/legend (descriptions may vary) Sergio Ramos in the first half.Salah was forced from the game with a shoulder injury after the tackle, in which it appeared Ramos had hooked his arm as they fell. Ramos no longer plays for Madrid, but Salah does not appear to have forgotten.“We have a score to settle,” he said this week.Any injury concerns?It doesn’t look like it. Liverpool’s Thiago, who has been the precision-passing engine of its midfield, and Fabinho, who does a lot of the hard work behind him, were both back in training this week, Coach Jürgen Klopp said.I haven’t prepared. Tell me something I can say to sound smart.“The matchup between Vinícius Junior and Trent Alexander-Arnold on the wing should be fascinating, given how involved Alexander-Arnold usually is in Liverpool’s attack despite playing right back. If he gets caught forward too often, Vinícius can punish him.”My friends say I should skip the final because soccer is boring.Get better friends. More

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      The True Cost of Kylian Mbappé’s New Deal

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      It is easy to be dazzled by money in soccer, especially as the figures blur into incomprehension. But the numbers matter because of what comes next.It was not, Kylian Mbappé would like you to know, about the money. True, it might look — to the childlike, the innocent, the uninformed — as if he has spent the last year or so playing Real Madrid and Paris St.-Germain off one another in order to drive up his value and elicit the most lucrative contract possible. But that, rest assured, is just an illusion.Money, in fact, barely came into the negotiations, certainly with P.S.G. In Mbappé’s telling, that particular subject appeared only at the end: There were a “few minutes” of discussions about how much he would be paid, he said, but there were many months picking over the precise nature of P.S.G.’s “sporting project.”Quite what shape that project takes is not yet clear, of course. Mbappé has denied that the three-year deal he signed last week includes a set of clauses that guarantee he has a veto, in effect, over various appointments at the club, ranging from managers to sporting directors to players.Whether the clauses are written down hardly matters. It is inconceivable that any club would make the sort of financial commitment P.S.G. has made to the 23-year-old Mbappé and not run crucial decisions past him. Lionel Messi enjoyed similar influence in his later years at Barcelona. That is the privilege afforded to the world’s best players.Mbappé and the P.S.G. president Nasser al-Khelaifi both declared themselves thrilled with the player’s new contract.Michel Spingler/Associated PressIt does not, though, indicate that there has been quite so much of a shift in P.S.G.’s “sporting project” as Mbappé might want to believe. For the past 10 years, P.S.G.’s policy has been to hire extravagantly gifted superstars at eye-watering costs and cater to their whims. There are countless stories about Neymar’s occasionally laissez-faire approach to training. At least one coach found that his squad did not, deep down, agree with him that it might need to press its opponents.P.S.G. has fostered an indulgent, individualistic ethos, with little or no thought for structure or system, and that has, ultimately, prevented the club realizing its greatest ambition: winning the Champions League. To break with that, P.S.G.’s plan appears to be to retain an extravagantly gifted superstar at an eye-watering cost and cater to his whims.And the cost is eye-watering. Mbappé will pick up at least $75 million in salary over the course of his contract, after taxes. There is a $125 million golden handshake to sign on. Factor in the roughly $200 million P.S.G. turned down from Real Madrid last summer, and the deal has cost P.S.G. $400 million or so.It is easy, now, to be dazzled by money in soccer, to feel inoculated against the sport’s excess. There are after all just so many zeros. After a while, the numbers cease to offend, creeping higher and higher until it seems arbitrary to draw a line — why is $25 million-a-year too much, but $15 million-a-year acceptable? — and the figures start to blur into incomprehension.But they do matter in the end, and they matter because of what follows in their wake. Money in soccer is not really about money. The players do not genuinely believe that they require those extra few hundred thousand dollars because otherwise they will be bereft. Yes, they generally (and understandably) want to maximize their earnings from a brief career, but their motivations are often more rooted in power, and status, and worth.P.S.G.’s star power may be unmatched. But does it have a plan?Michel Spingler/Associated PressThe parable about Ashley Cole, the former Arsenal defender, nearly swerving off the road because his club had offered him $63,000-a-week, rather than the $69,000-a-week he believed he was due, is not about a man appalled by the prospect of looming penury. There is almost nothing, after all, that $3.5 million-a-year can buy you that $3.2 million-a-year cannot.No, what upset Cole was the sense that Arsenal did not value him as much as his teammates or — worse — his peers. Other players of his quality were earning far more than him, he knew, and if Arsenal was not prepared to offer the going rate, then perhaps the club did not value his contributions quite as much as he thought it should.That is the problem with the Mbappé deal. Every time the salaries of the superstars rise, they slowly but surely drag everyone else’s with them, pulling the sport’s Overton window further and further into the stratosphere.P.S.G. will be able to cope with that, of course, when Mbappé’s teammates appear asking for improved terms in light of the new normal. Even $400 million is not a figure that will rattle the nation state of Qatar. And perhaps its peers among Europe’s elite will be fine, too, when Mohamed Salah or Kevin De Bruyne or Vinícius Junior or Pedri start their next set of negotiations by using Mbappé as a starting point.But further down the food chain, there will be a problem. Some clubs will swallow the extra cost of retaining talent, with all the risk that entails. Others will choose to cash in and sell on, further entrenching the divide between the aristocrats and everyone else.The statement released in the aftermath of Mbappé’s decision by Javier Tebas, the outspoken president of La Liga, was a strange one, fermented almost entirely from sour grapes. His central tenet — that the best way to protect everyone from competitive imbalance was to introduce more of it to the competition he runs — fell somewhere between craven and hypocritical.And yet, under all of that, Tebas has a point. It is dangerous for salaries to be artificially inflated by clubs with no constraints whatsoever on their finances. It does pose a threat to the health of soccer as a whole. It is, in certain lights, not entirely dissimilar to the basic problem of the Super League.The issue, of course, is that there is nobody, nobody at all, who is prepared to do anything about it. Tebas was not the only executive to be provoked by Mbappé’s signing into making a slightly odd statement. His Ligue 1 counterpart, Vincent Labrune, responded to Tebas by reminding everyone that both Real Madrid and Barcelona have been found to have benefited from illegal state aid.Al-Khelaifi himself took the unusual stance of suggesting Tebas was concerned that Ligue 1 might catch La Liga, simultaneously misunderstanding that worrying about that sort of thing is the essence of Tebas’s job, and apparently denigrating the league that both his club and his broadcast network, beIN Sports, have done so much to subsidize in recent years.(None of this was quite so strange as Emmanuel Macron, the French president, intervening to persuade Mbappé to stay in Paris: Macron is a sincere and passionate Marseille fan, and should presumably love nothing more than to see Mbappé disappear to Spain, along with most of his teammates.)That all of them could see no further than their own agendas was neither surprising nor outrageous. Tebas’s role is to promote and protect La Liga, just as al-Khelaifi’s role — or one of them, at any rate — is to act in the best interests of P.S.G. And it is, without question, in the best interests of P.S.G. not only to hoard as much talent as possible, but to make it incrementally more difficult for all of its rivals to keep up.What is more disappointing is that there is nobody, anywhere, who appears willing or able to confront these issues, not from the perspective of an individual club or a specific league but with the interests of the sport — the industry — in mind. What is good for P.S.G. or Real Madrid is not necessarily in the best interests of the game as a whole; soccer is crying out for someone in a position of influence to say that, but they remain conspicuous by their absence.La Liga’s president, Javier Tebas, criticized the deal that kept Mbappé in France but not the offer that might have brought him to Madrid.Pierre-Philippe Marcou/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe most obvious candidate, UEFA, has recused itself of its responsibilities, confounded by its twin role as weighty ultimate authority and callow competition organizer. It is UEFA that has allowed the self-interest to fester and the venal to prosper. It is UEFA that has forgotten that for soccer to function in good health, it has to be treated as a collective endeavor.If it is not, it risks being fractured beyond repair, the golden goose trussed and quartered, sold off to the highest bidder in a market contorted beyond all reason by a handful of teams — and that description fits both Real Madrid and P.S.G. — and, now, by a single deal, one act of vanity and bravado by a club that refuses to allow anything to stand in its way, whose vision for the future is that everywhere should be Paris, for whom it really is not about the money. Because when you have enough of it, money is meaningless, and there are so many zeros that it loses all sense at all.CorrespondenceChelsea: champions of England six times, but never Europe.Matthew Childs/Action Images Via ReutersWilliam Ireland, clearly, has been picking through this column with a fine-toothed comb. “I have seen it said that England’s Women’s Super League is the strongest in the world and I don’t understand why,” he wrote.“Chelsea has been humbled in the Champions League in the last two years. Arsenal looked well off the pace this year. When teams from Europe have played teams from the N.W.S.L., Lyon and Barcelona Femení have been matched. The W.S.L. has been getting more publicity and more fans, and that’s great, but right now it seems it’s not the best in Europe, much less the world.”This is a great point, and there are a few factors that go into it. First, of course, is your general English exceptionalism. Second, soccer’s innate Eurocentrism. Third, a degree of hyperbole that is linked, deep down, to the W.S.L.’s rapid rise.But most interesting is the fourth, something noted by at least a couple of Barcelona players: television. A lot of soccer from the Spanish women’s top flight, for example, is not broadcast. That makes it hard for people to know how high the standard is; much of what we see is Barcelona winning games, 8-0, and it is natural, to some extent, to assume that many of its opponents are substandard.Domestic dominance can make it hard to take the measure of Lyon and Barcelona. Marco Bertorello/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe view of Barcelona’s Norwegian wing Caroline Graham Hansen, certainly, is that it is not the case; she argues that the ease with which Barcelona wins games is testament to its ability, rather than an indictment of its opponents. Until fans can judge that with their own eyes, though, the tendency will be to assume that the league we see most — the W.S.L., say, or the N.W.S.L. — is the strongest.Bob Honig, meanwhile, wonders whether the presence of the (men’s) World Cup in the middle of next season might “make club teams that are not so reliant on national team players more competitive?”This is a logical conclusion, of course. Those teams whose players are given a rest halfway through next season should benefit from that break; the skill gap should, to some extent, be closed by a greater degree of freshness. I think we can all hope that is the case, but let’s not forget the golden rule of modern soccer: Whatever happens, the big teams win. More

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      Real Madrid’s Florentino Pérez Is More Powerful Than Ever

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      A year after the Super League debacle, Florentino Pérez is back in the Champions League final, having turned a club owned by its members into his personal kingdom.MADRID — Florentino Pérez strode onto the television set looking somber. Though he knew his questioner would be a little more informal — open-necked shirt, blazer — the Real Madrid president had chosen a straightforward black suit for the occasion. He even wore a tie. This was business, not pleasure, serious, not trivial, and Pérez wanted to project that.On the screens behind him, a lurid orange logo depicted a cartoon soccer ball with flames jetting out of its rotating crown.In England, in Italy and particularly in the United States, an assortment of financiers, tycoons and magnates of various stripes — all of them, like Pérez, among the dozen founding members of what would come to be known as the Super League — watched along in horror.The 12 clubs had struggled, in the weeks before going public, to find someone to act as the frontman for their idea. It was a complex, delicate project, one that needed careful presentation. But while none of the American owners of England’s most illustrious teams wanted to take center stage, nor did they believe Pérez, the architect of much of the idea, would come across as authoritative, weighty, persuasive.Pérez was an imperfect spokesman for the Super League, even though he was largely responsible for its creation.Rodrigo Jimenez/EPA, via ShutterstockPérez might occupy an almost unrivaled position of power at home — president of Real Madrid, chairman of one of the world’s largest construction firms, his box at the Santiago Bernabéu a magnet for the great and the good — but abroad he was often seen as bombastic, hubristic, faintly ridiculous. His appearance on “El Chiringuito” — a late-night, low-rent talk show — seemed to confirm his partners’ fears.Within days, the entire project collapsed. And then, only a little more than 12 months later, it all happened again.For four years, Pérez had been trumpeting the idea that Real Madrid would sign Kylian Mbappé, doing everything he could to court the French striker, a boyhood Real fan. The club had squirreled away a considerable portion of its transfer income for Mbappé’s signing-on fee and his salary, and as recently as March, Pérez was making not especially cryptic remarks to the news media suggesting an agreement was imminent.Then, late last week, Mbappé messaged Pérez to thank him for his offer, and inform him that he had chosen to stay at Paris St.-Germain. Pérez had just enough time to alert his team to Mbappé’s change of heart before the 23-year-old Frenchman appeared on the field at the Parc des Princes to celebrate his new three-year contract.Ordinarily, at a club as proud and demanding as Real Madrid, those twin embarrassments would be enough to spark some sense of mutiny. Pérez, though, remains as powerful, as unassailable as ever.Madrid’s fans are accustomed to a certain level of success. David Ramos/Getty ImagesIn part, of course, that can be attributed to the one aspect of the club not under his direct control. Pérez, ultimately, stands or falls on the fortunes of the team. Despite only cosmetic changes to the squad last summer — the additions of Eduardo Camavinga, a young midfielder; the versatile David Alaba; and the reinstatement of Carlo Ancelotti as coach — this has proved, a touch unexpectedly, to be a vintage season for Real Madrid.A team beaten to the Spanish title last season by its in-city rival, Atlético, has been restored — with ease — to its domestic perch. A team that had been knocked out of the Champions League with little fuss by Ajax, Manchester City and Chelsea in the last three years has returned, imperiously, to the final. Only Liverpool, on Saturday in Paris, stands between Real Madrid and a record 14th European Cup.In Karim Benzema, the last man standing from that first wave of signings that heralded Pérez’s return to the Real Madrid presidency in 2009, the club may possess the world’s standout player. In the likes of Vinicius Junior, Camavinga and Rodrygo, there are the green shoots of a new generation starting to sprout. Pérez has overseen it all while reconstructing the Bernabéu, turning it into a slick, state-of-the-art venue, complete with extensive corporate areas and a retractable turf field.Real Madrid beat Liverpool, its opponent on Saturday, in the 2018 Champions League final.Lluis Gene/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBut Pérez, 75, is not as vulnerable to the vicissitudes of form and fate as might be expected of a democratically elected president. Real Madrid is owned by its members, after all, but increasingly it feels like Pérez’s personal kingdom.Last summer, one of the few figures at the club who served as a counterweight to Pérez, the Galáctico player turned Galáctico coach Zinedine Zidane, resigned, claiming the club was “no longer giving me the trust I need.” On his way out the door, Zidane suggested he had not been “valued” as a “human being.”At much the same time, the club captain, Sergio Ramos, was leaving, too. Ramos broke down in tears at the news conference held to confirm his departure, revealing that the club had reneged on the promise of a one-year contract extension. “They never communicated to me that the offer had an expiry date,” Ramos said. “Maybe I misunderstood it.”They are not the only defining figures in Madrid’s modern incarnation to feel a little alienated by Pérez. His relationships with the earlier-era stars Iker Casillas and Raúl Gonzalez, too, have been strained at times (though both have since returned to the club).Pérez, though, is no longer troubled by the risks of crossing revered former players, not now that his dominion over Real Madrid is essentially unassailable, both officially and conceptually.In 2012, he changed the club’s statutes to decree that any candidate for the presidency must have been a member for at least 20 years, and possess a personal fortune equivalent to 15 percent of the team’s revenue.Pérez is the center of attention in his box at the Bernabéu alongside friends, politicians and business associates.Javier Barbancho/ReutersHe claimed, at the time, that it was a necessary measure to prevent Real Madrid from being sold to an overseas investor, but the joke has run, ever since, that candidates for the presidency also must work in construction, have three children and wear size nine shoes. Pérez has contested three presidential elections since. No rival has been able to meet the statutory criteria.More significant, though, he has quashed almost any outlet for criticism. It has been instructive, for example, to read the accounts in much of Madrid’s news media of the Mbappé deal. Rather than a defeat for Madrid, Mbappé’s decision has been cast as that of a mercenary and a traitor, a turncoat who gave his word to Pérez and then betrayed him.Mbappé’s family has been so distressed by that depiction that his mother moved to correct it publicly, asserting on Twitter that her son had never “given his word” to Real Madrid.That he chose “El Chiringuito” for his first appearance to discuss the Super League was not an accident, either. The show regularly features prominent Madrid-supporting journalists who have been known to break down in tears over the club’s successes, or rail against those — Gareth Bale, Eden Hazard — who are deemed to have dishonored the club.The show is not, in that, an outlier. Pérez oversees a vast network of pliant news media, dependent not only on his grace and favor for information and access but cowed, too, by the sheer scale and heft of his business interests. Pérez has always claimed that he is powerful only because he is president of Real Madrid, but that is not quite true. He is powerful in many other ways, too.That has allowed him to run Real Madrid as he sees fit. Despite its size, the club’s hierarchy is relatively tightknit, with many recruitment decisions overseen by Pérez; his chief executive, José Ángel Sanchez; and his chief scout, Juni Calafat. Real Madrid is, in that sense, something of an outlier, almost a throwback, in an era when most of its peers have diversified and deepened their staffs.Pérez would argue, of course, that it works: five Champions League finals in nine years is all the evidence he needs. That, perhaps, is his greatest gift. No matter what he does, no matter how unlikely it seems, Pérez has a remarkable ability to emerge triumphant.This might have been the year that destabilized the kingdom he has so painstakingly built. It may, instead, prove to be the year that cemented it for good. More

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      Inside the Chelsea Sale: Deep Pockets, Private Promises and Side Deals

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      Britain’s government has cleared the sale of the Premier League soccer team. But to win approval, the new owners had to agree to a set of unusual conditions.LONDON — The British government on Wednesday gave its blessing to the purchase of Chelsea F.C., one of European soccer’s blue-ribbon teams, by an American-led investment group after deciding it had sufficient assurances that none of the proceeds from the record sale price — $3.1 billion — would flow to the club’s Russian owner.The government’s approval signaled the end of not only the most expensive deal in sports history but possibly the most fraught, cryptic and political, too.In the three months since the Russian oligarch who owns Chelsea, Roman Abramovich, hurriedly put his team on the market, the club’s fate has played out not only on the fields of some of world soccer’s richest competitions but in the corridors of power at Westminster and the soaring towers of Wall Street. And all of it is against the backdrop of crippling financial sanctions imposed after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.“We are now satisfied that the full proceeds of the sale will not benefit Roman Abramovich or any other sanctioned individual,” the government said in a statement. The path to a deal has entangled a scarcely probable cast of characters — private equity funds and anonymous offshore trusts; lawmakers in Britain and Portugal; an octogenarian Swiss billionaire and the American tennis star Serena Williams; an enigmatic Russian oligarch and a little known Portuguese rabbi — and featured a contested passport, wartime peace talks and even reports of an attempted poisoning.Its end leaves as many questions as answers. All that can be said for certain is that a group led by the Los Angeles Dodgers co-owner Todd Boehly and largely financed by the private equity firm Clearlake will now control Chelsea, a six-time English and two-time European champion, and Abramovich will not.The American investor Todd Boehly leads a group that is now set to complete its purchase of Chelsea.Adrian Dennis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAbramovich first indicated his intention to sell Chelsea — the most high-profile of his assets by some distance — almost as soon as the Russian army crossed into Ukraine in late February, and only a week before Britain and the European Union identified him as a key ally of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and froze his assets.Completing a deal, though, has proved fiendishly convoluted. The final obstacle to a sale was resolved only this week, when lawmakers in Britain were sufficiently satisfied that a $2 billion loan owed to an offshore trust, believed to be controlled by Abramovich, had been cleared. British government officials then tried to reassure their counterparts in Portugal, which had controversially granted Abramovich a Portuguese passport with a rabbi’s help in 2018, and the European Union, which had imposed its own sanctions on Abramovich in March. Both must also approve the sale because of his Portuguese citizenship.But the loan was not the only complication faced by Raine, the New York-based investment bank recruited by Abramovich to handle the sale. The agreement with Boehly’s group came with a web of conditions, some set by the British government, some by Raine and some by Abramovich himself, all of them striking in the context of the sale of a sports team.Better Understand the Russia-Ukraine WarHistory and Background: Here’s what to know about Russia and Ukraine’s relationship and the causes of the conflict.How the Battle Is Unfolding: Russian and Ukrainian forces are using a bevy of weapons as a deadly war of attrition grinds on in eastern Ukraine.Outside Pressures: Governments, sports organizations and businesses are taking steps to punish Russia. Here are some of the sanctions adopted so far and a list of companies that have pulled out of the country.Stay Updated: To receive the latest updates on the war in your inbox, sign up here. The Times has also launched a Telegram channel to make its journalism more accessible around the world.All four prospective suitors identified by Raine as serious contenders — Boehly’s group; one headed by the British businessman Martin Broughton that included Williams and the Formula 1 driver Lewis Hamilton among its partners; another financed by Steve Pagliuca, the owner of the N.B.A.’s Boston Celtics; and one from the Ricketts family, who control baseball’s Chicago Cubs — were asked not only to pay a jaw-dropping price for the team but also to commit to a number of pledges, including as much as $2 billion more in investments in Chelsea.The club’s suitors were told, for instance, that they cannot sell their stake within the first decade of ownership and that they must earmark $125 million for the club’s women’s team; invest millions more in the club’s academy and training facilities; and commit to rebuilding Stamford Bridge, Chelsea’s aging West London stadium.Chelsea’s new owners agreed to several conditions, including sizable investments in the club’s decorated women’s team.Michael Regan/Getty ImagesAt the same time, Abramovich insisted that all the proceeds from the sale would go toward a new charity to benefit the victims of the war in Ukraine. To ensure he does not gain control of that money, the British government will require it first be placed in a frozen bank account that it controls. Only then will it vet all the plans for the fund being drawn up by Mike Penrose, a former head of a branch of the United Nations children’s charity UNICEF, and issue a special license that will allow the charity to take control of the funds.“We will now begin the process of ensuring the proceeds of the sale are used for humanitarian causes in Ukraine, supporting victims of the war,” the government said in its statement.The charity was just one of the peculiarities of the deal arranged by Joe Ravitch, the Raine co-founder who directed the sale.The new owners also will not be permitted to take dividends or management fees or load the team with debt — terms that bankers related to the sale have described as “anti-Glazer clauses,” a reference to the unpopular owners of Manchester United who took control of the club in a leveraged buyout in 2005.Several people close to the process said Boehly’s bid was eventually selected from the group of wealthy suitors because of its willingness to abide by the clauses. (At least one of those people, who worked on the bid backed by Pagliuca, said their group withdrew from the running because of the nature of the conditions.)The Premier League has already signed off on the Chelsea sale, announcing Tuesday that it had vetted and approved the new owners “subject to the government issuing the required sale license and the satisfactory completion of final stages of the transaction.”It is not clear, though, quite what will happen if Boehly and his partners choose to renege on any of the conditions once they have control of the club. Any oversight role will fall on the charity, the only outside entity still inextricably linked to both Chelsea and Abramovich, or the continued influence of two key Abramovich lieutenants who hope to remain in their posts under the new owners.Both of those executives — the club chairman Bruce Buck and Marina Granovskaia, a Russian-born businesswoman who rose from being Abramovich’s personal assistant to the most senior official response for soccer trades at Chelsea — will earn at least $12.5 million for their work on the sale. The commissions to management, totaling as much as $50 million, and the fee to Ravitch, believed to be between 0.5 and 1 percent of the deal’s value, will be paid from the club’s balance sheet and not from the sale funds, according to a person familiar with the structure of the deal.Abramovich on a banner at Stamford Bridge. Beloved by fans for his spending on the team, he is barred from receiving any money from its sale. Clive Rose/Getty ImagesBritish government officials had clashed with Chelsea executives and financiers about creating a legally binding resolution to prevent Abramovich from getting access to the money he so publicly said he was willing to waive.At issue was a company called Camberley International Investments, run by a Cypriot trustee on behalf of what British officials believe was Abramovich and his children. Camberley lent $2 billion to Fordstam, the company through which Abramovich controlled Chelsea, to finance its spending and operations. Camberley’s claim against Fordstam has now been resolved, and its trustee has recently resigned.It was only at that point, with a May 31 deadline for the completion of the sale looming, that Britain’s government moved to approve the deal.For Chelsea’s fans, the sale draws an end to a season that at times blurred into absurdity. The sanctions imposed on Abramovich — and by extension Chelsea — affected everything from the team’s travel to the printing and sale of game programs. Thousands of empty seats dotted Stamford Bridge during games over the final months of the season after a ban on new ticket sales, and roster turmoil loomed because of a moratorium on the signing and sale of players.That will now be lifted, with Chelsea’s players and Manager Thomas Tuchel said to be urgently seeking clarity from Boehly and his group on their plans. At least two key defenders are slated to leave Chelsea this summer, and at least two more players — including the club captain, Cesar Azpilicueta — are expected to follow.Defender Antonio Rüdiger, unable to negotiate a new contract, announced he would leave Chelsea for Real Madrid. Other key players may depart this summer, too.Alastair Grant/Associated PressBoehly, a regular presence at Chelsea games since his takeover was announced on May 6, has broadly said he would like to maintain Chelsea as a major force in soccer. It is unlikely, though, that a group largely backed by a private equity firm will prove quite so indulgent as Abramovich was as an owner.In almost two decades at Chelsea, Abramovich was a familiar but all but silent presence at Stamford Bridge, happy to let his money do the talking. Under his leadership, Chelsea was transformed into a true European superpower, winning five Premier League titles and two Champions League crowns by employing a succession of A-list managers and investing billions of dollars in players.His largess changed Chelsea but also soccer as a whole, ushering in an era of unfettered spending that saw transfer fees and player salaries rise to levels unthinkable only a few years earlier. It also came at a price that Chelsea’s income, no matter how much it grew in those years of plenty, could not match. Throughout his tenure, Abramovich used his vast personal fortune to subsidize losses that ran as high as $1 million a week.Yet just as Abramovich’s arrival in 2003 opened the door to a new era for English soccer, his departure serves as a bookmark, too.While scarcity may explain part of the rush to pay a premium for Chelsea — soccer’s biggest teams are rarely up for sale, after all — it is not clear when, or how, a group of private equity investors who navigated such treacherous, confounding waters to get control of the club can start to realize a return on their investment. More

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      Man City, Liverpool, Tottenham, Arsenal: Premier League Season Hangs on Final Day

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      As City and Liverpool take aim at the title and Arsenal and Spurs settle the last Champions League place, Leeds is playing for its Premier League life.From the vantage point of its end, there is something strange and distant — almost alien — about the start of a season. It is only 10 months ago, after all, barely the blink of an eye, and yet beliefs and convictions and truths from back then now seem as archaic as the idea that we once believed you could see the future in the entrails of a goat, or that people carried pagers.It is, for example, not yet a year since Nuno Espirito Santo was chosen as the Premier League’s manager of the month for the start he had made to life in charge of Tottenham Hotspur. Likewise, the idea that Romelu Lukaku “completed” Chelsea’s team, or that Ole Gunnar Solskjaer could deliver a title for Manchester United, or that running a repressive autocracy should prevent you from owning a Premier League team might as well belong to a different world.It may not seem like it, but all of that occurred in the same Premier League season that concludes on Sunday. And while those matters have been settled, countless others have not. As far as we have come, as much as we have learned, very little has yet been decided. There is still no champion crowned, no complete list of teams that have qualified for Europe, no conclusion to the relegation battle. A season can feel like it lasts a lifetime. This time around, it all comes down to one game.

      The TitlePep Guardiola gave Phil Foden and the rest of his team two days off this week.Peter Powell/ReutersPep Guardiola, above all, wants his players to be relaxed. In the aftermath of Manchester City’s draw at West Ham last weekend — the one that effectively guaranteed the identity of the Premier League champion would be decided on the season’s final day — he did not, as might have been expected, haul his squad in for extra work.Instead, with the club’s season now hanging on a single game, he gave them some extra down time. The whole squad was granted two days’ break, a chance to rest and recuperate and escape the pressure. Ilkay Gundogan went off to get married.Guardiola is right, of course, to identify that the test awaiting City is primarily psychological. In ordinary circumstances, it would easily dispatch Aston Villa on home territory: a couple of quick, early goals, a brutal display of superiority, an imperious saunter over the line. The challenge, this weekend, is to make the circumstances appear as ordinary as possible.City does not, as it turns out, have any margin for error. The 14-point advantage over Liverpool it held in January has been whittled to just one. City has had several chances to settle the matter in recent weeks — Riyad Mahrez might have beaten Liverpool in early April; he might have beaten West Ham, too — but it has failed to take them. Now, if Guardiola’s team stumbles again, and Liverpool beats Wolves, the title will go to Anfield.The teams have been in this position before, of course: In 2019, they went into the final day separated by a single point, too.At Anfield that day, a great roar went up when news filtered through that Brighton had taken a first-half lead over visiting City. On the sideline, Jürgen Klopp knew it was “too early.” City duly struck back, emphatically — winning the game by 4-1 and claiming its second successive title. The “intense pride” Klopp felt was tempered only by the knowledge that his team had picked up 97 points and it had still not been enough.Things are a little different this time. Liverpool has already won two trophies this season, sweeping both the F.A. Cup and the Carabao Cup. Just as in 2019, it has a Champions League final on the horizon as solace, too.Liverpool has won two trophies this season and will play for a third in next weekend’s Champions League final.Tolga Akmen/EPA, via ShutterstockMore important, perhaps, its yearning for a domestic title is no longer quite as desperate. It ended its three-decade wait for a championship in the eerie silence of pandemic soccer in 2020. Klopp and his players are more circumspect than they could be in 2019.City’s task is complicated not so much by the nature of its opponent, but by the identity of Guardiola’s counterpart. It is doubtless just a coincidence that it should be Steven Gerrard who should have the final chance to push Liverpool over the line, but soccer does not really do coincidence. Villa has two former Liverpool players — Danny Ings and, in particular, Philippe Coutinho — in its ranks, too. There has been a lot of talk of narrative determinism on Merseyside over the last week.It is City’s great strength, of course, that it rarely succumbs to such superstition. It is more than good enough to swat Villa aside, regardless of Gerrard’s intentions and motivations. Guardiola is well aware, though, that his team will have to be relaxed to do it. No matter how good this City side is, if the outcome is in the balance with 10 or 20 or 30 minutes to go on Sunday, the nerves will start to shred.The Champions LeagueHarry Kane and Tottenham hold the slightest of leads over Arsenal entering the season’s final day,Glyn Kirk/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesOf all the issues yet to be resolved, the battle for Champions League places next season is perhaps the most straightforward. In theory, anyway, the identity of the fourth English team to qualify for next season’s Champions League was settled 10 days ago, when Tottenham beat its bitter rival, Arsenal, in the North London derby.That win — followed by a win over Burnley three days later and Arsenal’s defeat at Newcastle on Monday — allowed Spurs to leapfrog Mikel Arteta’s team. It also means Tottenham goes into the final day with a two-point advantage, and a vastly superior goal difference. Simply avoiding defeat in its final game would be enough to ensure its safe passage back into Europe’s elite, and condemn Arsenal to another year on the outside.That should not be too much of an ask: Antonio Conte’s Tottenham faces Norwich City, long since relegated and the proud owner of precisely one league win since January. The outcome of Arsenal’s curtain call, at home to Everton, should be irrelevant. (The squabble over the last slot in the Europa League is almost a mirror image: West Ham will snatch that from Manchester United if it overcomes Brighton and United fails to beat Crystal Palace.)For both Arsenal and Spurs, the immediate future hinges on which side of that divide they finish. Once a mainstay of the Champions League, Arsenal has not featured in the competition since 2017. The club intends to offer Arteta considerable financial support in the transfer market this summer regardless of where the team finishes, but the options it will have for how to spend that money will be defined by whether it is in the Champions League or not.Spurs’ absence is significantly shorter — a finalist in 2019, it has missed only two years — but its return is no less meaningful. A place in the Champions League may be enough to convince its restive coach, Conte, to stay on, not least because it would allow him greater freedom in bolstering his resources. It might also stave off another summer dominated by doubts over where, precisely, Harry Kane sees his future.The DamnedEverton’s win on Thursday meant it was out of the relegation fight.Oli Scarff/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThere is a photo of Dominic Calvert-Lewin, shirtless and smiling beatifically, that just about sums it up. He is standing on the field at Goodison Park, surrounded by fans and by police officers, wisps of smoke passing above his head. His eyes stare into the camera. It is an image of outright salvation.At halftime on Thursday, Everton looked doomed. It was losing at home to Crystal Palace, and the possibility of the club’s first relegation in close to a century was hovering ever nearer. And then, in 45 minutes, Frank Lampard’s team performed a pulse-quickening rescue act. One goal. Another. Then with five minutes to go, Calvert-Lewin launched his body at a cross and headed home a winning goal. Everton had taken it right to the last moment, but it had survived.As fans flooded onto the field at Goodison Park, swarming their heroes and, in at least one incident, using their moment of euphoria to needlessly antagonize Patrick Vieira, the Palace coach, the relegation battle was reduced to two. Watford and Norwich are gone to the Championship next season. One of Leeds United and Burnley will join them.The probability is that it will be Leeds. It travels to Brentford, a place it has not won since the end of rationing in the 1950s. Leeds must, realistically, win and hope that Burnley loses at home to a Newcastle team that has long since fulfilled its ambition for the season.Jesse Marsch and Leeds are almost out of time.Lee Smith/Action Images Via ReutersThe reason for that is significant. Leeds’s form has turned around, just a little, since Jesse Marsch was installed as its coach — replacing the beloved Marcelo Bielsa — at the end of February. Marsch has won three and drawn three of his 11 games, and three of the five defeats he has suffered have come against teams in the top six. The other two came in his first two games.It is the nature of soccer, though, that it will be deemed Marsch’s fault if Leeds slips back to the Championship after two years in England’s top flight, if the return to the elite that the club spent 16 years dreaming of turns out to be nothing but a fleeting visit. That is the nature of management; the ruthlessness of it explains the salary.And yet, if Leeds is demoted, the defining factor will not have been its form under Marsch but its permeability in the last days of Bielsa’s regime. Bielsa lost his last four games by an aggregate score of 15-0. In the space of four days in December, Leeds conceded 11 goals. Its vulnerability, ever since then, has been its goal difference. That is why it is effectively a point behind Burnley even as they are level on points. That, more than anything, is what leaves Leeds United on the brink of the abyss once again, relying on nothing more than hope for salvation. More

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      Kylian Mbappé Will Stay at P.S.G., Rejecting Real Madrid

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      The battle to sign the world’s best young player produced dueling offers worth more than $200 million. Mbappé picked the one that will keep him in Paris.Paris St.-Germain has persuaded Kylian Mbappé to sign a new contract, one of the richest in soccer history, that will keep the French striker at the club for the next three years while he pursues a second consecutive World Cup with France and attempts to end the club’s string of failures in the Champions League.His decision, announced by the club Saturday, ended Real Madrid’s hopes of luring Mbappé, arguably the best young player in the world, to the most successful team in European soccer.Real Madrid, a 13-time European champion, had given Mbappé a contract offer that would have made the 23-year-old forward the highest paid player in its history. Its offer included a signing bonus of almost $140 million, a net salary of more than $26 million every season and complete control over his image rights.But P.S.G., the perennial French champion that is bankrolled by gas-rich Qatar, prevented him from leaving as a free agent by offering even better terms. P.S.G. offered a similar fee but a far higher base salary (also after taxes), keeping him on a team that already includes the Argentine star Lionel Messi and the Brazilian forward Neymar, who was acquired by P.S.G. for a world-record fee of $263 million in 2017.The saga surrounding Mbappé’s future had gripped France, and was considered a matter of such national importance that last month the French president, Emmanuel Macron, told a news conference he would do whatever he could to keep Mbappé, considered a national treasure, in the country.P.S.G.’s success in persuading Mbappé to stay is the latest sign that the dominance of global soccer that once rested in the hands of legacy clubs like Real Madrid, Barcelona and Manchester United has now shifted to a few deep-pocketed, Gulf-backed teams.The Spanish league La Liga in a statement called the deal “scandalous,” given P.S.G. had reported large financial losses last season, and said it would file a complaint with European soccer’s governing body, UEFA, as well as other authorities, including the European Union.P.S.G.’s confirmation that it had retained Mbappé came just over a week after Manchester City, owned by the brother of the ruler of the United Arab Emirates, confirmed that it had acquired Erling Haaland — a prolific Norwegian goal-scorer whose signature was considered by many an acquisition as highly sought-after as Mbappé’s.But unlike Haaland, whose contract had to be acquired by Manchester City for an eight-figure transfer fee, Mbappé’s expiring contract in Paris made him a free agent, effectively able to choose from among the highest bidders for his prodigious talents. The unusually brief length of his new contract at P.S.G. — three years — suggests he could already be planning his move, and his next payday.Amid an economic downturn caused by the coronavirus pandemic, few teams but the wealthiest elite have been able to make the type of marquee signings that were once a staple of every soccer off-season. But Mbappé had made no secret of his desire to move to Real Madrid from P.S.G., and the Spanish powerhouse went all out to recruit him. His expiring contract in Paris also meant he was a free agent, available without a multimillion-dollar transfer fee.In addition to the nine-figure signing bonus and the stunning annual salary — a huge offer even by Real Madrid’s standards — the club also was said to have offered Mbappé complete control over his image rights, a lucrative revenue stream that Real Madrid typically shares with its roster of stars.But P.S.G. and its Qatari owners managed to offer an even better deal in a transfer soap opera that has dragged on for more than a year, ever since Real Madrid first tried to extract Mbappé from Paris with the offer of a record transfer fee.Last summer, Real Madrid and its president, Florentino Pérez, were so intent in making Mbappé the centerpiece of the club’s efforts to return to the top of domestic and European soccer that they committed to pay more than $212 million for the forward, even though he would have been available as a free agent again this summer.For P.S.G., retaining Mbappé provides a welcome highlight in a season that has been played against a backdrop of uncertainty after yet another failure in the Champions League. The club was eliminated early in the knockout stages — ironically by Real Madrid, which will face Liverpool for the trophy in the final next Saturday — even though it had added several A-list talents in the preseason, including Messi, who joined from Barcelona on a rich contract of his own.P.S.G.’s strategy of bringing the most exciting talents, whatever the cost, has had mixed results. The team continued its dominance of the French league, the weakest of the five major European competitions, with yet another title this season, but success on the continental stage has continued to elude it, raising questions about the team’s durability in the toughest games.It remains unclear if anything more than an enormous salary increase convinced Mbappé to remain in Paris. He was reported to have been frustrated when P.S.G. rejected Real Madrid’s offers last season, with the P.S.G. sporting director Leonardo saying at the time that Mbappé wanted out.Mbappe has continued to flourish this season, however, leading the French league in goals (25) and assists (17). All the while, Real Madrid had continued to court him, and until late this week the Spanish club was convinced it had finally managed to persuade a player coveted by its president, Florentino Pérez. News media reports in Spain at the start of the week even suggested a deal was done.In recent days, though, that confidence began to evaporate as Mbappé delayed on putting pen to paper. Then, on Friday, Mbappe’s mother, who has been involved in the negotiations, said her son was weighing two offers. Real Madrid’s worst fears were confirmed on Saturday, when Pérez, in Belgrade to follow Real Madrid’s basketball team in a European final, received a message telling him Mbappé had decided to stay at P.S.G.For Mbappé, the deal comes amid major efforts to build his brand away from the field. The striker has spent months in talks with the United States-based talent agency Endeavor to create his own media company that will be modeled on one similar to a business built by the basketball star LeBron James. That new company could lift Mbappé profile, and his wealth, into the same ranks as Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, superstars whose global stardom now outstrips the sport they play.With both Messi and Ronaldo now in their 30s, it is players like Mbappé and Haaland who will look to dominate soccer’s biggest prizes, including individual honors like the Ballon D’Or, awarded to the world’s best player, and competitions like the Champions League, a trophy both P.S.G. and Manchester City covet, but which neither has won. More

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      As A.C. Milan and Inter Return to Top, San Siro May Be Coming Down

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      As he watched the soccer game playing out on television, the Milanese writer and actor Gianfelice Facchetti felt an emotional tug that he thought might be leading him toward his next book.It was during Italy’s first coronavirus lockdown, and Facchetti’s favorite team, Inter Milan, had been forced to play its matches behind closed doors. The decision left its longtime home, the 80,000-seat Giuseppe Meazza Stadium, more commonly known as the San Siro, devoid of atmosphere, and amid the silence Facchetti’s mind began to drift.He thought back not only to fond memories and tense moments in the arena where his father, Giacinto, had represented Inter and Italy but also to news stories that had been circulating for months describing plans by the teams that share the nearly century-old stadium, Inter and A.C. Milan, to abandon the stadium or, worse, demolish it.The San Siro’s contrast of cylindrical towers and long red trusses has admirers among fans and architects alike.Camilla Ferrari for The New York Times“I was thinking, when I started to write: If you want to destroy this place, this special place, it would be helpful to know the history,” Facchetti said.The book that sprang from that first impulse, “Once Upon a Time in San Siro,” was part history and part coping mechanism, Facchetti admits. He and many Inter fans, like those who support Milan, are still coming to terms with the fact that their “seconda casa,” or “second home,” could one day be no more.On the list of sins that stir the emotions of soccer fans, assaults on tradition surely rank near the top, particularly when maximizing revenue is seen as the motivation. Even minor changes, such as a new shirt design or an alteration of a club crest, can be like grabbing soccer’s third rail. For the same reasons, stadiums hold a special place in the minds of many supporters, serving as a physical embodiment of a lifetime of sporting experiences. A club’s decision to replace one, then, can bring not only monumental costs but also howls of protest.Yet replace them they do.From 2010 to 2020, 153 new stadiums were built across Europe, at a reported cost of more than $20 billion. Madrid got one. So did Stockholm and St. Petersburg. London opened two.Only 1 percent of this investment was made in Italy, though. Most professional teams’ stadiums in the country are both antiquated and publicly owned — only two have opened this century. And a new generation of deep-pocketed foreign owners with American tech, finance and retail fortunes are eager to create new revenue streams that they feel their clubs need to compete with richer rivals in England and elsewhere.Luciano owns a truck selling Inter and A.C. Milan merchandise. The latter held off its city rival to claim the Serie A title on Sunday.Camilla Ferrari for The New York TimesChange, though, is not as simple as drawing up plans and digging a stadium-size hole. When Milan and Inter announced their intention to build a new stadium more than three years ago, the subtext was that the San Siro — one of the largest stadiums in Europe and the site of four European Cup finals and matches in two World Cups — was no longer fit for its job in an age of luxury suites and corporate hospitality. Ever since, a debate about the arena’s future has split not only the teams’ wealthy owners and longtime fans but also politicians, preservationists and architects.“Italy is like an open-air museum: We have a lot of heritage,” said Massimo Roj, a Milanese architect and Inter fan who put forward one of the proposed designs for a new stadium in Milan. “We have to think that the San Siro is an old building. Your memory now is there, but, in 10 years time, we’ll be in another stadium, called San Siro again.”The first iteration of the San Siro opened in 1926 and was revolutionary for Italy because it was English in design, featuring four independent stands that sat square to the playing surface and no running track. It was expanded after the 1934 World Cup and again in the 1950s after Inter became a co-tenant.The most recent alteration came before Italy hosted the 1990 World Cup, when the architects Giancarlo Ragazzi and Enrico Hoffer and the engineer Leo Finzi added what became the stadium’s trademark: 11 cylindrical towers with helical ramps that allowed spectators to reach a new third tier. A roof made of red trusses was placed on top, its lines an angular — and to devotees, iconic — contrast to the circular forms that supported them.Yet in the decades after, the need for further refurbishments became increasingly apparent, fans said, as the Italian industrialists who once bankrolled the Milanese clubs sold their teams and Russian billionaires and Persian Gulf petrodollars rewrote the economics of elite European soccer.Many clubs in Serie A, arguably the world’s richest and most attractive league in the 1990s, now face growing debts and unsustainable budgets. Inter, for example, had to break up last season’s title-winning side just to meet its payroll.“In terms of revenues, we have, both Milan and Inter, revenues of around 35 to 40 million euros a year” — roughly $37 million to $42 million — “from the stadium, while our competitors are about €100 million,” the chairman of Milan, Paolo Scaroni, said in an interview. The San Siro reflected in the window of a tram that stops outside. Plans for a new San Siro nearby, and the destruction of the current one, have divided Milan.Camilla Ferrari for The New York TimesThe teams say they initially considered changes to the current San Siro but quickly concluded logistical issues and delays would be too much to overcome. What they have proposed instead is a 60,000-seat arena to be built next door. Once it is constructed, the current San Siro will come down and make way for public space that may include elements of its iconic towers and ramps, according to the designs by Populous, the American architecture firm whose proposal was chosen.“I think these buildings are containers, and therefore the old buildings have such emotion attached to them that the idea that some of it can remain, if it can be there as a marker of history of what was before, is quite a nice idea,” said Chris Lee, a managing director of Populous. “One has to be careful about trying to transfer too much of that, literally, into new buildings, where it can easily tip into the pastiche of trying to recreate a building.”Opposition is to be expected, Lee said. In Milan, it has emerged in various forms.Milan’s mayor, Beppe Sala, while generally supportive of the project, has warned both clubs that the city-owned San Siro would remain until at least 2026, when it is expected to host the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics.A different group, the Si Meazza committee, has taken a hard-line approach, challenging the mere idea of the demolition of the San Siro, which its most prominent voices — lawyers, concert promoters and former politicians — described as a symbol of Milan known around the world, a stage on which Diego Maradona, Bob Dylan and Beyoncé have performed. Other critics pointed to the ecological impact of tearing down a stadium and highlighted renderings that they argued proved the job could be done for half the cost while saving the original arena.Some fear, though, the die may have been cast: A future without the San Siro received the tacit approval of Italy’s heritage authority in 2020 when it raised no objections to the stadium’s demolition. In November, the project was declared in the public interest (with certain conditions) by city officials.A month later, the clubs chose the Populous design: It features a stadium enveloped by a steel-and-glass galleria, reminiscent of the famed luxury-shopping district in the center of Milan, as the centerpiece of an expansive park on the site.But the legal fight over building any of it may not be over.The stadium has hosted two World Cup and four European Cup finals. Camilla Ferrari for The New York TimesThe next steps for the clubs will be to put their proposals to the public; that is expected to happen this summer. Municipality decisions can be appealed, and other bureaucratic hurdles can take months to resolve, said Scaroni, the Milan chairman. Aware of those potential delays, the clubs have said that they are also considering a Plan B: a site elsewhere in Milan.“More than three years, we are still debating about our master plan,” said Alessandro Antonello, the Inter chief executive. “Unfortunately, yes, we started with a very exciting energy three years ago, and now, after three years, we are still waiting for some answers from the municipality. So, now, for us, the main priority is to build a new stadium, whatever the location.”For opponents like Facchetti, though, the delays are just one more hopeful sign their beloved San Siro might yet be saved. Another good omen, he said, came this spring: His publisher has approved a second printing of his book.“It’s a sign,” Facchetti said. “People still want to speak about the San Siro and its destiny.” More