Soccer

Subterms

    More stories

    • 100 Shares179 Views

      in Soccer

      The Numbers Tell Only Part of the Story

      by

      Statistics have come to favor Thiago, and they did again in Liverpool’s win over Villarreal in the Champions League. But his passing is best measured in how it swung the complexion of the game.LIVERPOOL, England — With no more daring option immediately apparent, Diogo Jota decided to turn around and start again. There were about a dozen minutes remaining, and Liverpool had long ago entered energy-conservation mode. Jürgen Klopp’s team had, in the blink of an eye, established a two-goal lead over Villarreal in the first leg of their Champions League semifinal, and it had no intention of surrendering it.So Jota, as he picked up the ball on the left wing and saw his path was blocked by two defenders, took the safety-first choice. He slipped a pass back across the halfway line. Virgil van Dijk took possession, and play moved off toward the other side of the field. At that point, Thiago Alcantara decided to offer his teammate some instant feedback on his decision.He explained — or, at least, seemed to be explaining — to Jota that while van Dijk was a fine selection, he had been open and available, too, and technically, if he was being picky, in a better position. The correct choice, in that situation, would have been passing to Thiago. This is because the correct choice, in pretty much every situation, is passing to Thiago.It is hard to be certain what, exactly, lies at the root of soccer’s relatively recent but now all-consuming obsession with yield. The game has, in the last decade or so, developed an apparently devout belief that if something cannot be measured that it cannot matter; a player’s worth can be accurately gauged by boiling down their output into something concrete, something definite, some number or percentage that offers the illusion of proof.The temptation is, of course, to connect that tendency to the sport’s growing interest in and reliance on analytics — this is soccer, as the nerds wanted it — or even to the game’s continuing infiltration by people who can only be described as Americans. That may, though, offer only a partial explanation.Just as relevant, perhaps, is the game’s talking-point culture, its entrenched tribalism and endless squabbling for supremacy, its thirst for virality, attention and clout. Cold, hard numbers carry more weight in 280 characters, after all, than such outdated concepts as metaphor, or allusion.Whatever the cause, few have been boiled down to a succession of numbers quite so much as Thiago. In his first season and a half in England, it was generally a convenient stick with which to beat him: His goal and assist tallies, after all, hardly indicated that he was a valuable component of Liverpool, let alone an outstanding performer.Belatedly, in the last few weeks, the dynamic has changed. Thiago had a pass completion rate of 92 percent in the F.A. Cup semifinal victory against Manchester City. He played 129 passes in the most recent humbling of Manchester United, and 123 of them found their intended target.A few days ago, he made more successful passes against Everton than all of his opponents combined. And then, against Villarreal, he turned in 119 touches, 103 passes played, 99 passes completed, 100 percent of tackles won, five interceptions, nine long balls completed and one earnest feedback session with a slightly unwilling Diogo Jota.The problem, of course, is that none of those metrics capture what makes Thiago such an integral part of this version of Klopp’s Liverpool. It is not just that they do not take into account his habit of urging the crowd to maintain its energy, or the way he walks his teammates through a game, or his ability to change something as ethereal and intangible as the feel of an occasion with something as simple as a tackle.Sadio Mane, right, gave Liverpool a 2-0 advantage in the tie entering the second leg.Peter Powell/EPA, via ShutterstockIt is that they do not tell you what any of those passes did. They do not distinguish between the ones played with the inside of his foot and the ones curled from the outside, the ones that keep things ticking over and the ones that slice through a defensive line, the ones that sweep and boom over vast distances, landing unerringly on some grateful recipient’s foot, and the ones that fizz low, at unexpected speed, suddenly launching Liverpool into another attack.They do not advertise which ones start with that quick shimmy of the hips, the one that begins with Thiago facing one direction and ends with him scampering in the other, at least two defenders trailing in his wake, still processing what has happened. They do not capture how unfazed he is by even the most intense pressure, or how flawless his technique is, and they do not begin to touch on the art with which he accomplishes his craft.Nor, of course, do they tell the story of how Thiago has come to encapsulate the growth and the maturation of Klopp’s Liverpool. The first team that Klopp took to the Champions League final, the one that suffered that heart-aching defeat to Real Madrid in 2018, was one that embraced chaos; it had still not, quite, cast off that misleading cliché about its manager and his percussive, heavy metal soccer.The second, the one that returned to the final the following year and left with substantially happier memories, did so by harnessing that chaos; a team of crest and surge, it could pick and choose its moments, unleashing the power and energy that it had once allowed to run uncontrolled in deliberate, irresistible bursts.This iteration should become the third Liverpool team in five years to reach the Champions League final — all it has to do, after all, is not lose by two goals next week — but it is conceptually distinct from both its predecessors. This Liverpool is defined more by control than by chaos, more by patience than percussion.It needed those virtues against Villarreal, a team whose romantic adventure to this stage should not, by any means, be confused with a desire to make friends now that it is here. Liverpool had to wait. It had to think. It had to adapt. It had to get a fortuitous deflection on a Jordan Henderson cross to break the dam, and then it had to strike again, almost instantaneously, before Unai Emery had a chance to repair the leak.There are few midfielders in Europe better suited to that task than Thiago. Every single one of those passes did something: They changed the angle of attack or relieved the pressure or switched gear or altered speed. To reduce them to mere numbers is to miss their point. They are better read, instead, as brushstrokes on a canvas, each one making the image a little clearer, each one signed by a master at work. More

    • 125 Shares179 Views

      in Soccer

      How Villarreal’s Eye for Value Cracked the Champions League Code

      by

      A Spanish team’s run to a semifinal against Liverpool offers a template for how European teams can turn the impatience of the continent’s richest clubs against them.A great way to understand how it is that Villarreal — a soccer team from a town of only 50,000 souls, playing in a stadium that can hold a little less than half of them — finds itself in the semifinals of the Champions League is to consider the cleaning products aisle of Spain’s leading supermarket.The supermarket, Mercadona, and the soccer club are corporate cousins. Fernando Roig, Villarreal’s president and benefactor, has a minority stake in Mercadona, Spain’s largest retail chain, but it is his brother, Juan, the majority shareholder, who is credited with turning the latter into a staple case study for business schools around the world.Central to that approach is the idea that the customers are ultimately in charge. They are the ones, after all, who determine what their stores should stock. To ensure the company is meeting their needs, Mercadona, every so often, invites a selection of its most reliable customers to take part in a testing laboratory.These are held at 10 stores around Spain, and each is devoted to a particular strand of the business: pet care, for example, or snacks or personal hygiene. Customers are asked not only to offer feedback on various products — the packaging, the pricing, the taste, the smell — but to advise Mercadona’s staff on how they use them.That was how Mercadona discovered that while a lot of people were buying white wine vinegar as a condiment, they were also using it as a stain remover. “So they created a cleaning product made with vinegar,” Miguel Blanco, a business economics professor at King Juan Carlos University, once told a business journal from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Mercadona, like Villarreal, understands that the appeal of a product depends on how it is used.Villarreal does not, at first glance, follow the blueprint laid down by the handful of teams from outside the exclusive cabal of fabulously wealthy clubs who have gate-crashed the Champions League semifinals in recent years.Francis Coquelin and Villarreal, who will face Liverpool twice over the next week, are 180 minutes from the Champions League final.David Ramos/Getty ImagesMonaco in 2017 and Ajax in 2019 felt a little like glimpses into soccer’s near future. It was in Monaco’s run past Manchester City and Borussia Dortmund that Kylian Mbappé, Bernardo Silva and Fabinho first pierced the sport’s broader consciousness. Ajax’s defeats of Real Madrid and Juventus on its way to the semifinals two years later helped turn Frenkie de Jong and Matthijs de Ligt into stars.RB Leipzig, which made the final four in that strange, ghostly pandemic tournament in 2020, seemed like a team from the cutting edge, too. It featured the likes of Dayot Upamecano and Christopher Nkunku, and was guided by Julian Nagelsmann, the standard-bearer for coaching’s first post-Pep Guardiola generation.Villarreal, on the other hand, does not feel like a vision of what is to come. The core of Unai Emery’s team is homegrown, with the rise of Gerard Moreno, Yeremi Pino, Alfonso Pedraza and, in particular, Pau Torres testament to the outstanding work of the club’s widely admired academy.Apart from Pino, 19, though, none are especially young, not in soccer terms. Even Torres, the club’s locally sourced jewel, is 25, meaning he is unlikely to inspire the sort of feeding frenzy among the transfer market’s apex predators that de Ligt generated in 2019.Instead, around that cadre of graduates, Villarreal gives the impression of being something of a Premier League vintage store, its team stocked with faces vaguely familiar to cursory followers of English soccer. There is Vicente Iborra, a 34-year-old midfielder who struggled to make an impact at Leicester City, and Pervis Estupiñán, the young Ecuadorean left back who noodled around the great Watford loan factory for a while.Like many of his players, Manager Unai Emery has a stint in England on his résumé.Lukas Barth/ReutersÉtienne Capoue, 33, spent six years at Vicarage Road, establishing himself as a rare constant on a Watford team defined by permanent change. Alberto Moreno was released on a free transfer by Liverpool. Francis Coquelin first emerged at Arsenal. Dani Parejo had a short spell at Queens Park Rangers. Arnaut Danjuma had flickered and sputtered at Bournemouth.And then there is the Tottenham contingent: Juan Foyth, a defender who had lost his way; Serge Aurier, ditto; and Giovani Lo Celso, an extravagantly gifted midfielder who found himself out in the cold upon Antonio Conte’s arrival as manager at Spurs late last year.Even Emery, of course, returned to Spain after being given the somewhat daunting task of replacing Arsène Wenger at Arsenal. His team at Villarreal, the one that eliminated Bayern Munich in the quarterfinals, the one that blocks Liverpool’s path to a third Champions League final in five years, has been constructed on the Premier League’s waifs and strays.Those familiar with Villarreal’s strategy say that is not a deliberate policy. Miguel Ángel Tena, the club’s sporting director, and Fernando Roig Negueroles, its chief executive — and the son of the president — have not set out to sift through those cast aside by the Premier League’s wanton, wasteful consumerism.Villarreal’s finances pale in comparison to its Champions League rivals.Biel Alino/EPA, via ShutterstockThere has, instead, been a degree of opportunism. When, halfway through last season, Emery needed a physically imposing, technically adroit central midfielder, he remembered being impressed by Capoue while he was in England. Capoue, who has admitted that he does not watch soccer, did not even know where Villarreal was when the offer came; he was just touched by Emery’s faith in him.Danjuma was another signing recommended by the manager: Villarreal’s analysts had never watched him when Emery suggested, in the aftermath of Villarreal’s winning the Europa League last season, that the team should pay $20 million or so for a player who had just been relegated with Bournemouth. The club, though, paid the fee. Villarreal now believes Danjuma, its breakout star, could one day fetch $100 million.Others have benefited from the club’s eidetic memory. Villarreal has long nurtured connections in South America in general and in Argentina in particular: When it last reached a Champions League semifinal, in 2006, it was with a team stocked with Boca Juniors alumni. Its scouting network picked out Foyth and Lo Celso long ago.Villarreal could not compete with the money on offer from England — or Paris St.-Germain, in Lo Celso’s case — when they first came to Europe, but the club knows well enough that soccer can always bring a second chance, particularly given how quickly English clubs, in particular, discard players.It is that insight that has allowed Emery not only to deliver the first major honor in Villarreal’s history — last year’s Europa League — but to sweep the team to within 180 minutes of the biggest game of them all: the knowledge that a product can have an alternative purpose, a more significant role, than the one stated on the packaging.Villarreal scooped up Arnaut Danjuma when Bournemouth was relegated from the Premier League.Alessandro Di Marco/EPA, via ShutterstockGiovani Lo Celso is one of three former Tottenham players on Emery’s team.Christof Stache/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAnd it is that approach that, while it may not make Villarreal as compelling or as exciting as Monaco or Ajax, perhaps it makes its story a little more imitable, a little more inspiring in an age dominated both by the superclubs and increasingly by the financial might of the Premier League.Monaco’s success was built, in large part, on the unparalleled eye for talent of its chief scout, Luis Campos. Ajax’s was a tribute to the club’s unmatched gift for nurturing and fostering promise. But both contained trace elements of lightning strikes, too: difficult — if not impossible — to repeat or replicate.Villarreal, though, offers a template that might be followed, a vision for how clubs without the finances of the Premier League or the weight of the giants of continental Europe might be able to thrive. It demonstrates that it is possible to grow strong on the scraps from the feast, to thrive in soccer’s increasingly Anglocentric ecosystem, by remembering that the appeal of a product depends on its use. More

    • 113 Shares199 Views

      in Soccer

      Manchester City Beats Real Madrid in Champions League Semifinal

      by

      Manchester City had its way with Real Madrid — sort of. In the game’s aftermath, it was hard to shake the feeling that things had gone the other way.MANCHESTER, England — First thing Wednesday morning, Pep Guardiola’s staff will deliver to the Manchester City manager a meticulously annotated report of his team’s Champions League semifinal against Real Madrid. At roughly the same time, Carlo Ancelotti, his counterpart in the Spanish capital, will receive something very similar.Those dossiers will contain brief snatches of video, each highlighting some key tactical detail. There will be photos, too, offering a snapshot of a scarcely perceptible flaw in a player’s positioning or an expanse of the field left exposed or a darting run left unconsummated. There will, perhaps, be giant arrows in some lurid shade. There will certainly be reams of statistics.Guardiola and Ancelotti will settle down and comb through them, panning for whatever seam of wisdom they might find, mining deep into the detail in the hope of finding some kernel, some insight that might prove the difference when they play again next week. And as they do it, they will know, deep down, that it is all absolutely, fundamentally, unavoidably pointless.There is no hidden explanation, buried deep in a screed of numbers or encoded in high resolution pixels, for how Manchester City managed to beat Real Madrid yet ended the evening feeling like it had lost. Or for how it finished with four goals and the sensation that it should have had half a dozen more, or how it landed a succession of knockout blows only to find its opponent still standing there, smiling, complaining only of the mildest headache.Pep Guardiola had plenty of reason for concern during a win in which his team failed to capitalize on several opportunities.Catherine Ivill/Getty ImagesThe raw numbers of the game are not a magic eye puzzle; they are barely even a Rorschach test. No matter how long and hard you stare at them, they will not suddenly become an image, clear and sharp, of something that bears analysis and interpretation.They will not tell Guardiola how his team could be so obviously, so vastly superior by every available metric and in every conceivable way — slicker in possession and more inventive and creative and youthful and dynamic — and yet wholly incapable of shaking Madrid from its tail.And they will not enlighten Ancelotti as to how his team, somehow, remains alive and fighting in this semifinal, with a chance over 90 minutes in front of its own fans, baying and roaring, to defy all human logic and make the Champions League final. They will certainly not tell him how Real Madrid manages to keep doing this, over and over again, seeming to draw strength as it comes ever closer to the edge, continually finding the will and the wit to conjure its curious, self-perpetuating magic.Guardiola himself had acknowledged that before the game, half in jest, suggesting that there was not a vast amount of point in conducting the usual, instinctive analysis of Real Madrid because Ancelotti’s team is, by its very nature, so chimerical. He meant it, most likely, as a reflection on the virtuosity of Karim Benzema and Luka Modric, the ability of some of the finest players of their generation to bend a game to their will, but it sounded just a little like he was saying Real Madrid does not make sense.At times it felt like things could be far worse for Thibaut Courtois and Real Madrid, but several close calls ended up missing.Paul Ellis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesHe is, of course, too respectful — even of Real Madrid, the club that stood as his archenemy for the first four decades of his career — to say that out loud, but his experience at the Etihad would not have contradicted him.Real was beaten within 10 minutes: two goals down, ruthlessly exposed, looking suddenly like the expensive collection of gifted but ill-matched individuals that all right-thinking people dismissed them as about four Champions League titles ago. David Alaba, his entire career spent among the elite, appeared to have been replaced by some callow ingénue. Toni Kroos appeared to age several decades with every passing minute.And then, from nowhere, Ferland Mendy slung in a cross, the sort that comes more in hope than expectation, and Benzema planted his foot and shifted his weight and scored, even though it was not immediately clear whether both the human body and the laws of physics are designed to work like that.No matter. City was still slicing Madrid apart at will. Riyad Mahrez hit the post. Phil Foden had one cleared off the line. A beat later, Foden converted an artful, clipped cross to restore City’s cushion, to relieve the tension swaddling the Etihad.The ball had come from the foot of Fernandinho, a creaking central midfielder reborn for the evening — in extenuating circumstances — as a marauding fullback. His rejuvenation lasted two minutes. Guardiola was still celebrating when Vinicius slipped past his makeshift opponent, sprinted half the length of the field, and slipped the ball past Éderson.Bernardo Silva and City had their moments to celebrate on Tuesday, but there were fewer of them than there could have been.Lee Smith/Action Images Via ReutersCity came again, Bernardo Silva dispensing with all nuance and intricacy and simply kicking the ball, as hard as he could, his shot flashing past Thibaut Courtois. Benzema turned away, grinning ruefully, as though he could not quite believe the holes from which he has to retrieve his teammates.On anyone else, it might have looked like an admission of defeat, a final acquiescence to fate. But it is Real Madrid, and it is Benzema, and it is the Champions League, so obviously what happened was that Aymeric Laporte inadvertently — but inarguably — handled the ball in his own penalty area, and Benzema stood up and chipped a shot, languidly and confidently, straight down the middle of Éderson’s goal.Guardiola sat on an icebox in the technical area, his fingers steepling against his forehead, in horrified awe, as if trying to impose some reason on it all. It is a thankless task. This game did not make sense. Its outcome, the one that meant Real Madrid left Manchester with something more concrete than hope, with 90 minutes in front of a baying, willing Bernabeu between Ancelotti’s players and another Champions League final, did not make sense.There is no data point, no vignette, no piece of analysis that will adequately explain how Manchester City could beat Ancelotti’s team so comprehensively and yet leave with the tie poised so delicately. Real Madrid does not make sense, not in the Champions League, and all you can do is allow yourself to be washed away by it. More

    • 125 Shares139 Views

      in Soccer

      With 10 Straight Titles, Has Bayern Munich Broken the Bundesliga?

      by

      As Germany’s perennial champion extended its decade of dominance, even its own fans were starting to worry that its success is getting a little boring.The first time Gregor Weinreich saw Bayern Munich crowned champion of Germany, he celebrated until sunrise. That was 1994. Three years later, when it happened again, he was so euphoric that he ran onto the field at the club’s old Olympic Stadium, a flare burning and sputtering in his hand. He was not alone. Many hundreds more did the same.Those memories remain sharp and clear and warm a quarter of a century later. His recollections of much more recent triumphs, by contrast, are already faded, fuzzy, indistinct. Weinreich knows Bayern won the title in 2014, and 2015, and 2016, and 2017, but he cannot tell them apart. “If you ask me about those championships, I have almost no memories,” he said.It is not hard to see why Bayern’s success has blurred into a single shapeless mass. On Saturday, the club beat second-place Borussia Dortmund — the last team to deprive it of the championship, back in 2012 — to win the Bundesliga title for the 10th year in a row.Weinreich did not plan to stay awake until dawn to exult in that achievement, to revel in the perpetuation of the sort of uncontested primacy that most fans, in theory, crave. His loyalty to Bayern Munich might be unswerving — he is a former chairman of Club Number 12, a Bayern fans’ group — but he does not particularly see yet another championship as a cause for celebration.He is not alone in that sentiment, either. “More and more Bayern fans are concerned about the lack of competition,” he said. “I don’t know if it is a majority yet. But of course more and more fans doubt the value of a competition that produces the same winner for 10 years.”Bayern Munich had claimed the Bundesliga trophy nine years running. On Saturday, it made it 10 in a row.Kerstin Joensson/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIn certain lights, this has been a compelling season for German soccer. Just over a week ago, Eintracht Frankfurt took so many fans to Barcelona for a Europa League game that the Spanish team had to launch an internal investigation into how quite so many of them acquired tickets.Eintracht won that night, booking its place in the semifinals of the Europa League. It might face another Bundesliga representative, RB Leipzig, in the competition’s final next month. S.C. Freiburg, a modest club from the picturesque fringes of the Black Forest, meanwhile, not only remains in unlikely contention to qualify for next season’s Champions League, but has reached the German cup final for the first time in its history.“All of the other fights have been pretty interesting,” said Christian Streich, the Freiburg coach who has come to be seen, in recent years, as a sort of voice of reason in German soccer. “Relegation has been interesting. There are teams going for the Europa League who have not qualified before. It is just that the Bundesliga title race has, unfortunately, not been too exciting.”That is hardly atypical. Bayern has finished each of the last two seasons 13 points ahead of its nearest challengers. Only once in the last decade — in 2019, when Dortmund limited the gap to two points — has Germany witnessed a genuine title race rather than a stately procession. That year apart, no team has finished within 10 points of Bayern since 2012.Dortmund, Bayern’s opponent on Saturday, was the last club to win the title other than Bayern. Wolfgang Rattay/ReutersThat success is, of course, to Bayern’s great credit. It has long been Germany’s biggest, richest, most glamorous team, but for years was held back by its supernova streak. Its combustible blend of powerful players, superstar managers and squabbling executives would self-destruct so reliably that the club became known as F.C. Hollywood. Consumed by infighting, it would every so often allow one of its rivals — Dortmund or Werder Bremen or VfB Stuttgart — to sneak in and claim a championship.Bayern’s relentlessness in the last 10 years has come to be explained, then, by its ability to control its taste for self-immolation. Bayern hire the right coaches, sign the right players, smartly appoint alumni to illustrious positions behind the scenes. It has, as Fernando Carro, the chief executive of Bayer Leverkusen, said, “done excellent work over the years.” Bayern is what happens when big teams are run well.And that, German soccer’s power brokers have long insisted, is a good thing. Executives at the Deutsche Fussball Liga, the Bundesliga’s governing body, have long presented Bayern’s dominance as an advantage for the league. Bayern’s virtue, the theory goes, not only serves as an advertisement for German soccer, but it exerts a pull on the competition itself, helping to drag everyone else along in its wake.Dario Minden, the vice chairman of Unsere Kurve, an umbrella group representing the interests of game-day fans across Germany, does not go along with that analysis. “It’s not that they don’t make mistakes,” he said. “They do. They make big mistakes. It is just that they have such an advantage that they can afford to make mistakes.”In his eyes, there is no great mystery as to why Bayern keeps winning. “The core of the problem is that Bayern’s annual budget is $380 million and Dortmund, the second-richest team, has a budget of $270 million,” Minden said. “Then there are small teams, like Greuther Fürth, operating on $19 million.”That financial advantage means Bayern exists in a different reality from its putative peers. “The simple fact is they don’t need to sell their players,” said Carro, the Leverkusen chief executive. “That means Bayern can keep the core of their team together for years.”Bayern’s wealth means it never has to sell stars like Thomas Müller, above, or Robert Lewandowski, the Bundesliga goals leader in seven of the past nine years.Andreas Gebert/ReutersTo Carro, that is not an insurmountable obstacle. Leverkusen, he said, starts every season believing it can end Bayern’s dominance. “If you don’t go in with that approach, you might as well not compete at all,” he said. “The margins can be incredibly slim. There have been chances for contenders to step in at times, and there will be new ones in the future. Yes, you need to perform on your highest level for a long time, but I am convinced it can be done.”To others, though, the situation is far more perilous. There are many, in Germany, who believe the Bundesliga now stands as a warning to every other major league in Europe about the dangers of what happens when, as Minden put it, the principle of “competitive balance is broken” on some fundamental level.“The Bundesliga is boring,” he said. “That is just common sense.”His opinion is not a niche position within German soccer. There is, indeed, a groundswell of support for the idea that something has to change. The issue is that nobody can quite agree on what that something might be.Weinreich, for example, argues that the status quo is effectively ossified by the fact that, every year, the same teams — led by Bayern — receive vast windfalls for competing in the Champions League, creating what is, in effect, an unbreakable virtuous circle. “The way the money is distributed was designed in such a way that a club that already has a dominant position in its country benefits,” he said.Last year, fans of both Bayern and Dortmund — the two most regular beneficiaries of the current system — suggested a change to the way that money is allocated, so that more of it flows to teams further down the food chain. “As far as I know, this was the first time that fans had demanded their own clubs receive less money,” Weinreich said.Others would go further still. Minden was part of a task force convened by Germany’s soccer authorities that recommended not only far more stringent financial regulations — largely designed to stop teams like Leipzig, Leverkusen and Wolfsburg, who are underwritten by corporate backers — but also a luxury tax, modeled on the sort seen in sports in the United States.Carro, meanwhile, suggested that the only quick fix to Bayern’s hegemony would be to abolish the 50+1 rule that means Germany’s clubs must — with a handful of exceptions — be controlled by their fans. That would, in theory, allow for the sort of outside investment that reshaped the landscape of England’s Premier League, though it is one that has precious little popular support within German soccer. “The league should not strive to improve at any price or by any means,” Streich said.Even Bayern’s most senior executives have expressed an openness to changes that might weaken its grip on the Bundesliga title.Filip Singer/EPA, via ShutterstockMinden went further, suggesting he would find it “disgusting” — a form of “moral bankruptcy” — for German teams to be owned and operated by some of the investors who have bought Premier League teams. “I could not celebrate a goal that had been bought and paid for by a dictator who dismembers journalists,” he said.Besides, to his eyes, abandoning the 50+1 system would exacerbate the problem, rather than solve it. “It would cause huge damage,” he said. “It would still be the big clubs that attracted investment. The only global brand in Germany is Bayern Munich. The money would still come to them, and we would lose our democracy, and our culture.”Even the ultimate beneficiary of the current power balance has not proved entirely resistant to the idea of change. Earlier this year, the D.F.L. revealed that it was discussing — among a suite of options — the merits of appending playoffs to the end of the Bundesliga season.Most of its constituent clubs came out fiercely against the concept. The one that did not was Bayern Munich. “Of course, the league would be more attractive if it had more competition at the top,” said Oliver Kahn, the club’s chief executive. “There are no sacred cows for me. If playoffs help us, then we’ll talk about playoffs. A mode in the Bundesliga with semifinals and finals would mean excitement for the fans.”It would also, of course, diminish Bayern’s advantage, make it more prey to random chance, to a bounce of the ball, to the rub of the green. Perhaps that is what it would take, though, for the club — or at least some of its fans — to feel something again.It just won’t be this year. On Saturday, Bayern won its 10th consecutive championship. “And unless very improbable things happen, maybe there will be 15, or 20,” Weinreich said. Winning a championship is supposed to be unforgettable. The problem comes when you cannot remember one from another. More

    • 125 Shares129 Views

      in Soccer

      Aliou Cissé Has Senegal Ready to Shine in World Cup

      by

      Aliou Cissé, one of the best of a new generation of African coaches, has reinvented Senegal’s national team and given the country a new sense of patriotism. His next goal: the World Cup.DIAMNIADIO, Senegal — Standing on the sidelines of Senegal’s brand-new national stadium, Aliou Cissé, the biggest fan of his own team, waved his arms at 50,000 fans, exhorting them to cheer even louder, his signature dreadlocks bouncing on his shoulders.Fans roared back, clapping and blowing their vuvuzelas at a more deafening pitch. Minutes later, Senegal defeated its fiercest rival, Egypt, earning a qualification for soccer’s World Cup, which begins this November in Qatar.“When we are together, Senegal wins,” a grinning Mr. Cissé, 46, said at a postgame news conference. Or, as he likes to repeat in Wolof, one of the country’s national languages, “Mboloo Mooy gagner” — “Unity brings victory.”If Senegal feels proud and patriotic these days, it’s thanks in large part to its national team — and to Mr. Cissé, a former professional player who has reinvented Senegalese soccer and built what is currently the best team in Africa.“The barometer of the Senegalese society today is soccer,” Mr. Cissé said in a recent interview with The New York Times in Diamniadio, a newly built city on the outskirts of Dakar where the new stadium sits. “People watch us play and they’re proud to be Senegalese, proud to be African.”Mr. Cissé led the squad that won the Africa Cup of Nations earlier this year, the country’s first soccer title. In doing so, he proved to the Senegalese people that one of their own could succeed where no one else had.Mr. Cissé speaking to the players during a World Cup playoff match between Senegal and Egypt in Dakar last month.Stefan Kleinowitz/Associated PressEuropean managers have long coached many African national teams, including Senegal’s, but that is changing, a shift embodied by Mr. Cissé.From Algeria to Zimbabwe, Sudan to Burkina Faso, a rising generation of African managers are building a new coaching culture on the continent. Sixteen teams now have local coaches, and the three sub-Saharan African teams going to Qatar later this year — Cameroon, Ghana and Senegal — all have former national players as managers.“More and more professional players on the continent want to be coaches,” said Ferdinand Coly, a former teammate of Mr. Cissé’s. “Local expertise is gaining ground.”A Guide to the 2022 World CupThe 32-team tournament kicks off in Qatar on Nov. 21.F.A.Q.: When will the games take place? Who are the favorites? Will Lionel Messi be there? Our primer answers your questions.The Matchups: The group assignments are set. Here’s a breakdown of the draw and a look at how each country qualified.The Host: After a decade of scrutiny and criticism, there is a sense that Qatar will at last get the payoff it expected for hosting the World Cup.Traveling to Qatar: Thinking about attending the tournament? Here is what you should know.Although Mr. Cissé maintains that European coaches have done a lot for African teams, that era is fading.Born in the southern Senegalese region of Casamance in 1976, Mr. Cissé moved to France when he was 9 and grew up in the suburbs of Paris, one of the world’s best pools of soccer talent.His trajectory is similar to many African players who were raised in Europe or joined youth academies there. “When I was out, I was French, but at home I was truly Senegalese,” Mr. Cissé said about speaking Wolof and following the family’s customs while in France.A picture of the Senegalese national team decorating the front of a building in Dakar.Carmen Abd Ali for The New York TimesMr. Cissé joined the youth academy of Lille, in northern France, at 14, and played in French and English clubs in the 1990s and 2000s, including the French powerhouse Paris St.-Germain, Portsmouth and Birmingham City, which competed in England’s top league.At the 2002 World Cup, he captained a Senegalese squad participating in its first World Cup — one that stunned France, the world champions at the time, in a surprise victory that many still refer to with warm nostalgia. Senegal reached the quarterfinals, the team’s biggest achievement to date in the competition.As a coach, Mr. Cissé now appeals to both Senegalese players raised in their native country, and to those who moved to France in their youth like him, building a bridge between the squad’s “locals” and its “binationals,” as they are referred to among the team’s staff.It has been a long road to success. When Mr. Cissé took over the team in 2015, Senegal had been performing poorly at the Africa Cup of Nations and had failed to qualify for the last three World Cup editions. Mr. Cissé’s predecessors were fired one after another.Seven years later, Mr. Cissé, nicknamed “El Tactico,” for his efficient but restrained approach to the game, will bring Senegal to its third World Cup and his second one as a coach. The era when African teams were “observing,” is over, he says, and one will win the coveted trophy one day.“Why not us?” he said.Régis Bogaert, a former French youth coach of Mr. Cissé’s at Lille and now his deputy on the Senegalese team, said Mr. Cissé had conveyed a sense of mission to his players. “He is making many people want to be the next Aliou Cissé in Senegal and in Africa,” Mr. Bogaert said.Soccer players training on the beach of Cambérène, in Dakar, this month.Carmen Abd Ali for The New York TimesSoccer, a national passion, is everywhere in Senegal, whether in the youth academies nurturing future talents, or on Dakar’s beaches, empty construction sites and pitches dotting the city’s corniche along the Atlantic Ocean.“To be the coach of the national team today is to be a politician,” said Mr. Cissé, who often repeats that he lives in Senegal and feels the country’s pressure on a daily basis, unlike his players or the foreign coaches who live abroad. “It’s about knowing the economy, the culture, the education and history of your country.”His sense of humor and fashion tastes have also helped with his popularity: Mr. Cissé often wears shiny white sneakers and thick black square glasses, and he keeps his dreadlocks under a New York Yankees or Team Senegal cap, giving him the air of a cool father. He has five children, whom he makes sound as challenging to manage as the national team.Mr. Cissé.Carmen Abd Ali for The New York TimesIf Mr. Cissé has shared Senegal’s biggest successes, he has also experienced some of the country’s worst traumas. In 2002, he lost 11 relatives in a shipwreck that killed more than 1,800 passengers off the coasts of Senegal and Gambia.Senegal’s victory at the Africa Cup of Nations earlier this year came 20 years after Mr. Cissé missed a penalty in the final of the same tournament, depriving the team of its first trophy back then — a memory that long haunted his nights, he said.Since then, Senegal has been having happier days on the pitch, and the national pride surrounding the team was on full display last month when Senegal defeated Egypt in a penalty shootout in its first game in Diamniadio’s stadium.Some fans said they had slept outside the stadium the night before to make sure they got the best seats. Hours before kickoff, thousands more lined up to enter, the sounds of whistles and drums filling the air.“It’s a great day for Senegal,” said Sally Diassy, a French-Senegalese 30-year-old who lives in France and said she was visiting Senegal to support her favorite team.Senegal’s Sadio Mane, left, celebrates after scoring a penalty during the World Cup playoff match between Senegal and Egypt.Stefan Kleinowitz/Associated PressThe jubilation on display after the win echoed the triumphant return of the Senegalese players after they won the Africa Cup of Nations in February. Tens of thousands of fans greeted them as they paraded in the streets of Dakar. President Macky Sall rewarded the team and Mr. Cissé’s staff with some land in the capital and in Diamniadio, along with about $83,000, an exorbitant sum that set off some minor protests in a country where nearly half of the population lives under the poverty line.But some players have also given back: Sadio Mané, the team’s star, has built a hospital in his native village. Kalidou Koulibaly, the captain, bought ambulances for his father’s village.“Players want to be role models in their own country,” said Salif Diallo, a veteran soccer journalist who has followed Mr. Cissé’s career as a player and a coach. “This team is changing the perception that Senegalese have of themselves.”Those who know Mr. Cissé say that once he is done with the national team, he will want to play a greater role for his country.“I’ve tried to set an example,” Mr. Cissé said of his career as both player and coach. “If a Senegalese player moves to Birmingham or Montpelier or wherever I’ve played tomorrow, I hope he will be welcomed because they will remember that Aliou Cissé was a good guy.”Supporters cheering as Mr. Cissé raises a trophy during celebrations in Dakar in February for Senegal winning the Africa Cup of Nations.John Wessels/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images More

    • 88 Shares129 Views

      in Soccer

      Erik Ten Hag Appointed by Manchester United

      by

      The Dutchman is the latest coach tasked with resurrecting Manchester United, English soccer’s fallen giant that is enduring a near decade-long slump.Manchester United has turned to the Dutchman Erik ten Hag as the latest coach to help revive its fortunes after a near decade-long slump toward mediocrity. The decline has led to United’s falling away from contention for the Premier League championship, a title that once had seemed a divine right to fans of one of the world’s most celebrated sporting franchises.United’s sudden and now protracted run of poor form followed two decades of dominance under the legendary manager Alex Ferguson. Ferguson retired after United’s 20th and last championship in 2013, and a succession of high-profile coaches have been unable to replicate that success as United has fallen further and further behind its bitter rivals Manchester City and Liverpool.United, owned by the Glazer family, based in the United States, hope ten Hag will be able to replicate the success he has achieved with the Netherlands’ biggest club, Ajax, which he will continue to lead until moving to England at the end of the season. Under ten Hag, Ajax has regularly punched above its weight against wealthier European rivals, playing a swashbuckling attacking style, with homegrown talent, something that was once a signature of Manchester United teams built by Ferguson.United said that it had signed ten Hag to a contract through June 2025 and that it had the option to extend the agreement for a further year. United will pay Ajax about $2 million to release ten Hag.Under ten Hag, Ajax’s talented young squad has won a glut of domestic honors. But his highest profile success came in 2019 when he almost, and improbably, led the team to the final of the Champions League, falling just short after conceding a goal in the final seconds of the semifinal.“It will be difficult to leave Ajax after these incredible years, and I can assure our fans of my complete commitment and focus on bringing this season to a successful conclusion before I move to Manchester United,” ten Hag said.The task at United could not be more difficult. As United spent more money than at any other point in its history, its performances have only grown worse, leading to a succession of managerial exits and fan unrest against the Glazers.Ten Hag will be expected to oversee an overhaul of the club’s poorly balanced and costly roster, but also the culture of the club, where tales of locker room disharmony have frequently found their way into the public domain. News media reports said he would have as much $260 million to spend on new players during the off season.“It is a great honor to be appointed manager of Manchester United, and I am hugely excited by the challenge ahead,” ten Hag said. “I know the history of this great club and the passion of the fans, and I am absolutely determined to develop a team capable of delivering the success they deserve.”He will follow the German coach Ralf Rangnick, who was hired on a temporary basis to replace Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, a popular former player with United who was appointed with little high-profile coaching experience and struggled to come to terms with the scale of the task of managing United, a team with a global fan base and expectations of success. He was not the only one to fail to meet those lofty expectations.United has stumbled from coach to coach with varying formulas — high-profile figures like Louis van Gaal and Jose Mourinho as well as the Scotsman David Moyes, Ferguson’s handpicked successor — without ever looking likely to come close to putting down foundations that could put the team back on course for regular success.Ten Hag’s appointment comes two days after United was humbled, 4-0, at Liverpool, which is currently engaged in a high octane, neck-and-neck race with City for the Premier League title. United has drifted to sixth place, 23 points behind the leader, City, and is at risk of failing to qualify for next season’s Champions League.The appointment is not unexpected. United had long targeted ten Hag as a possible new coach and had spoken with him on numerous occasions as it looked to plan for the future. United had alighted on ten Hag, 52, along with the Argentine Mauricio Pochettino, the Paris St. Germain coach, who drew admirers for his team-building work at Tottenham Hotspur. In the end it is ten Hag who has been entrusted with the opportunity to revive the fallen giant.“In our conversations with Erik leading up to this appointment, we were deeply impressed with his long-term vision for returning Manchester United to the level we want to be competing at, and his drive and determination to achieve that,” John Murtough, United’s football director, said.United’s slide has been so profound that it may be years before ten Hag can be expected to make United challengers for the biggest titles. The current coach, Rangnick, said as much after the miserable performance against Liverpool, during which many United fans left the stadium well before the referee brought an end to the humiliation.“It is embarrassing, it is disappointing, maybe even humiliating,” a chastened but cleareyed Rangnick said on Tuesday. “We have to accept they are six years ahead of us now. When Jurgen Klopp came they changed at the club and lifted not just the team but the club and city to a new level. That is what needs to happen with us in the next transfer windows.” More

    • 100 Shares189 Views

      in Soccer

      The Female Soccer Players Challenging France’s Hijab Ban

      by

      SARCELLES, France — Every time Mama Diakité heads to soccer game, her stomach is in knots.It happened again on a recent Saturday afternoon in Sarcelles, a northern suburb of Paris. Her amateur team had come to face the local club, and Diakité, a 23-year-old Muslim midfielder, feared she would not be allowed to play in her hijab.This time, the referee let her in. “It worked,” she said at the end of the game, leaning against the fence bordering the field, her smiling face wrapped in a black Nike head scarf.But Diakité had only fallen through the cracks.For years, France’s soccer federation has banned players participating in competitions from wearing conspicuous religious symbols such as hijabs, a rule it contends is in keeping with the organization’s strict secular values. Although the ban is loosely enforced at the amateur level, it has hung over Muslim women’s players for years, shattering their hopes of professional careers and driving some away from the game altogether.Les Hijabeuses is an informal group of hijab-wearing women who play soccer together in an effort to draw attention to a French policy they say drives Muslim women out of the game.In an ever more multicultural France, where women’s soccer is booming, the ban has also sparked a growing backlash. At the forefront of the fight is Les Hijabeuses, a group of young hijab-wearing soccer players from different teams who have joined forces to campaign against what they describe as a discriminatory rule that excludes Muslim women from sports.Their activism has touched a nerve in France, reviving heated debates on the integration of Muslims in a country with a tortured relationship with Islam, and highlighting the struggle of French sports authorities to reconcile their defense of strict secular values with growing calls for greater representation on the field.“What we want is to be accepted as we are, to implement these grand slogans of diversity, inclusiveness,” said Founé Diawara, the president of Les Hijabeuses, which has 80 members. “Our only desire is to play soccer.”The Hijabeuses collective was created in 2020 with the help of researchers and community organizers in an attempt to solve a paradox: Although French laws and FIFA, world soccer’s governing body, allow sportswomen to play in hijabs, France’s soccer federation prohibits it, arguing that it would break with the principle of religious neutrality on the field.Supporters of the ban say hijabs portend an Islamist radicalization taking over sports. But the personal stories of Hijabeuses members emphasize how soccer has been synonymous with emancipation — and how the ban continues to feel like a step backward.Founé Diawara, the president of Les Hijabeuses.Diakité began playing soccer at age 12, initially hiding it from her parents, who saw soccer as a boys’ sport. “I wanted to be a professional soccer player,” she said, calling it “a dream.”Jean-Claude Njehoya, her current coach, said that “when she was younger, she had a lot of skills” that could have propelled her to the highest level. But “from the moment” she understood the hijab ban would impact her, he said, “she didn’t really push herself further.”Diakité said she decided on her own to wear the hijab in 2018 — and to give up her dream. She now plays for a third-division club and plans to open a driving school. “No regret,” she said. “Either I’m accepted as I am, or I’m not. And that’s it.”Karthoum Dembele, a 19-year-old midfielder who wears a nose ring, also said she had to confront her mother to be allowed to play. She quickly joined a sports-intensive program in middle school and participated in club tryouts. But it wasn’t until she learned about the ban, four years ago, that she realized she may no longer be allowed to compete.“I had managed to make my mother give in and I’m told the federation won’t let me play,” Dembele said. “I told myself: What a joke!”Other members of the group recalled episodes when referees barred them from the field, prompting some, feeling humiliated, to quit soccer and turn to sports where hijabs are allowed or tolerated, like handball or futsal.Mama Diakité, who plays for Jeanne D’Arc Drancy, after a match in Sarcelles, a suburb north of Paris. Technically, Diakité is not allowed to play in a hijab, but referees often look the other way.Throughout last year, Les Hijabeuses lobbied the French soccer federation to overturn the ban. They sent letters, met with officials and even staged a protest at the federation’s headquarters — to no avail. The federation declined to comment for this article.Paradoxically, it was Les Hijabeuses’ staunchest opponents who finally put them in the spotlight.In January, a group of conservative senators tried to enshrine the soccer federation’s hijab ban in law, arguing that hijabs threatened to spread radical Islam in sports clubs. The move reflected a lingering malaise in France regarding the Muslim veil, which regularly stirs controversy. In 2019, a French store dropped a plan to sell a hijab designed for runners after a barrage of criticism.Energized by the senators’ efforts, Les Hijabeuses waged an intense lobbying campaign against the amendment. Making the most of their strong social media presence — the group has nearly 30,000 followers on Instagram — they launched a petition that gathered more than 70,000 signatures; rallied dozens of sport celebrities to their cause; and organized games before the Senate building and with professional athletes.Vikash Dhorasoo, a former France midfielder who attended a game, said the ban left him dumbfounded. “I just don’t get it,” he said. “It’s the Muslims who are targeted here.”Members of Les Hijabeuses meet regularly with Diawara (in pink sweater and black hijab) and supporters like the sociologist Haifa Tlili, left, who have offered help in their fight against France’s soccer federation. Stéphane Piednoir, the senator behind the amendment, denied the accusation that the legislation was aimed at Muslims specifically, saying its focus was all conspicuous religious signs. But he acknowledged that the amendment had been motivated by the wearing of the Muslim veil, which he called “a propaganda vehicle” for political Islam and a form of “visual proselytizing.” (Piednoir also has condemned the display of the Catholic tattoos of the P.S.G. star Neymar as “unfortunate” and wondered if the religious ban should extend to them.)The amendment was eventually rejected by the government’s majority in parliament, although not without frictions. The Paris police banned a protest organized by Les Hijabeuses, and the French sports minister, who said the law allows hijab-wearing women to play, clashed with government colleagues opposing the head scarf.The Hijabeuses’ fight may not be a popular one in France, where six in 10 people support banning hijabs in the street, according to a recent survey by the polling firm CSA. Marine Le Pen, the far-right presidential candidate who will face President Emmanuel Macron in a runoff vote on April 24 — with a shot at a final victory — has said that if elected, she will ban the Muslim veil in public spaces.But, on the soccer field, everyone seems to agree that hijabs should be allowed.“Nobody minds if they play with it,” said Rana Kenar, 17, a Sarcelles player who had come to watch her team face Diakité’s club on a bitterly cold February evening.Kenar was sitting in the bleachers with about 20 fellow players. All said they saw the ban as a form of discrimination, noting that, at the amateur level, the ban was loosely enforced.Even the referee of the game in Sarcelles, who had let Diakité play, seemed at odds with the ban. “I looked the other away,” he said, declining to give his name for fear of repercussions.Les Hijabeuses held a celebrity game in February that drew athletes, actors and other supporters who oppose the hijab ban.Pierre Samsonoff, the former deputy head of the soccer federation’s amateur branch, said the issue would inevitably come up again in the coming years, with the development of women’s soccer and the hosting of the 2024 Olympics in Paris, which will feature veiled athletes from Muslim countries.Samsonoff, who initially defended banning the hijab, said he had since softened his stance, acknowledging the policy could end up ostracizing Muslim players. “The issue is whether we are not creating worse consequences by deciding to ban it on the fields than by deciding to allow it,” he said.Piednoir, the senator, said the players were ostracizing themselves. But he acknowledged never having spoken with any hijab-wearing athletes to hear their motivations, comparing the situation to “firefighters” being asked to go “listen to pyromaniacs.”Dembele, who manages the Hijabeuses’ social media accounts, said she was often struck by the violence of online comments and the fierce political opposition.“We hold on,” she said. “It’s not just for us, it’s also for the young girls who tomorrow will be able to dream of playing for France, for P.S.G.”Monique Jaques More

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in Soccer

      Liverpool Edges City in Game of Early Goals and Managed Risks

      by

      Liverpool advanced to the F.A. Cup final by beating its Champions League rival at Wembley. But for both teams, every choice matters now.LONDON — In the single corner of Wembley bathed by bright sunshine, Kevin De Bruyne dutifully shuttled up and down. He stretched out his hamstrings and his calves. He made sure his ankles were nice and loose, and, with great time and care, made sure his laces were tight. He wanted everything to feel just right when the call came.It never did. With Manchester City trailing Liverpool by two goals, with its place in the F.A. Cup final and its aspirations of completing a domestic and European treble slipping from its grasp, City’s manager, Pep Guardiola, did not summon De Bruyne, his outstanding playmaker. The Belgian spent a few minutes in the sunshine, his gaze alternating between the game unfolding in front of him and Guardiola, and then he returned to his seat in the shade.Whether De Bruyne knew it or not, Guardiola had never considered anything else. He would, of course, have preferred to throw De Bruyne into the fray — or, indeed, to have him on the field from the start — but he felt, sincerely, that he could not.De Bruyne had sustained a four-inch gash on his foot in City’s Champions League clash against Atlético Madrid, in Spain, on Wednesday. It had been stitched closed before he returned to England, and he had been prescribed a course of antibiotics to stave off an infection. It was starting to heal. Introducing him into a game three days later, though, would risk reopening the wound. “Then we would lose him for more games,” Guardiola said. “At the end, I didn’t want to take that risk.”It was hardly surprising that Guardiola was a little coy on why, exactly, De Bruyne was dispatched to the touchline to warm up, given that he evidently had no intention of allowing him into the game.Perhaps it was a psychological ploy for the benefit of his teammates, a little boost as they sought to build on Jack Grealish’s second-half goal and further reduce the three-goal lead Liverpool had established in a dominant first half. Or maybe it was a little ruse to unnerve Guardiola’s Liverpool counterpart, Jürgen Klopp, to force him to contemplate what he might do if De Bruyne, arguably the most creative player in English soccer, suddenly entered the fray.Either way, the fact that De Bruyne was reduced to playing the role of theoretical threat encapsulated the greatest challenge facing these teams over the next six weeks.Both have been swept to the cusp of not just glory but some multiple of it — City hopeful, still, of winning both the Premier League and Champions League, Liverpool now in contention to complete a sweep of four available trophies — by the prowess of their players and the brilliance of their coaches, by virtue of being not only the most gifted teams but also the most intense, the most intelligent and the most industrious.What unfolds between now and the end of the season, though, will hinge as much on endurance as on ability. The line between absolute success and relative failure is as much a war of attrition as a battle of wits. What will define who wins the Premier League and, possibly, the Champions League will not be which team can soar highest but which can run deepest.Manchester City’s Fernandinho, left, and John Stones at the end of a long week.Tony Obrien/Action Images Via ReutersThat is particularly true for teams that find themselves competing on multiple fronts. Guardiola and Klopp both take great pains to stress that looking too far ahead can lead only to ruin, that allowing thoughts to drift to the hypothetical can serve only to distract from the concrete and the tangible.But every lineup choice, for both coaches, between now and the end of the season, must take into account not just the task at hand but also the challenges to come.Guardiola, at Wembley, named De Bruyne as a substitute despite knowing that he would not play. He was joined on that list by Ilkay Gundogan and Aymeric Laporte, both of whom were in De Bruyne’s boat, omitted from this game with hopes that they would be available for the next, against Brighton, in the Premier League, or so that they would not reduce their chances of playing in the Champions League semifinal against Real Madrid in 10 days.Strange as it seems to say it, for a team that has spent a decade or so building one of the two most expensive squads of all time — a team that includes among its alternates the most expensive player in British history — City’s list of available players is not particularly “long,” as Guardiola put it.“It is OK when everyone is fit,” he said. The subtext, of course, was that it would not be when injury and fatigue set in. Though Guardiola prefers a concentrated, high-caliber squad, for a club of City’s long-term vision — not to mention its unrivaled resources — that is more than a little surprising; it is hard to imagine that the situation will not be amended during the summer transfer window.Sadio Mané scored twice for Liverpool. But more — and bigger — games loom.Tony Obrien/Action Images Via ReutersKlopp has taken the opposite approach. Liverpool’s squad, bolstered by the arrival of Luis Díaz in January and somewhat untroubled by injury in recent months, is sufficiently well-equipped these days that he was able to rest some of his key figures against Benfica in the Champions League last week — a privilege Guardiola, facing a pitched battle with Atlético Madrid, was denied — and still advance. That, in turn, allowed him to name a full-strength side at Wembley on Saturday, a fact that likely proved the decisive factor.The catch, of course, is that Mohamed Salah, Sadio Mané and the rest of the team have only 72 hours before they face Manchester United in the Premier League, with a Merseyside derby against Everton lingering on the horizon. Their legs will be just a little more weary for those games because of their exertions against City.Klopp, in that sense, took as much risk as Guardiola; sticking is no less of a gamble than is twisting, after all. That is the position in which both coaches, and both teams, find themselves: weighing risk and reward, hoping they call it right, knowing that everything is on the line. More