Soccer

Subterms

    More stories

    • 88 Shares179 Views

      in Soccer

      Karim Benzema Carries Real Madrid Over Chelsea

      by

      Three goals confirm what should have been obvious long ago: Benzema is Real Madrid’s brain, and its heart.LONDON — Luka Modric has, by this stage, seen pretty much all there is to see. He has won four Champions League titles. He has played in a World Cup final. He has spent a decade at Real Madrid, embedded among some of the finest players of his generation. He is one of the finest players of his generation. He is, most likely, neither easily impressed nor easily surprised.A little more than 20 minutes into the first leg of Real Madrid’s Champions League quarterfinal against Chelsea on Wednesday, Modric saw something that did both. He was standing on the edge of Chelsea’s penalty area, admiring the flight of the cross he had just delivered. He would have been pleased with it: a deft, clipped number, swirling away from Edouard Mendy’s goal, and toward his teammate Karim Benzema.An eye as keen as Modric’s, though, would have recognized that the trajectory of the ball and the position of the player were not quite in sync. Benzema was a little too far forward, or the cross was a little too far back. It was out by only an inch or so, but few players treasure precision more than Modric; these things matter.Still, all was not lost. Benzema had options. The most obvious one was to try to steer the ball low to Mendy’s right. Or, perhaps, he could try to replicate the header that had opened the scoring a couple of minutes earlier, one of such force that it had flashed past Mendy before he had chance to recognize it. In a pinch, Benzema might even have time to bring the ball down, and play from there.What Modric could not have anticipated was what followed. Benzema, leaning ever so slightly backward, nodded the ball gently, almost softly, back across Mendy’s goal. It hung in the air for what seemed like an age, drifting toward the far post. There was a moment of silence as Mendy, Modric and everyone else inside Stamford Bridge waited to see where it would land.It nestled, at last, inside the post. As Benzema turned away, his smile broad and his palms open, to race toward Real Madrid’s fans, Modric still seemed to be frozen. He waited a beat, maybe two, before jumping, just a little, into the air, his arms aloft, a grin of disbelief on his face. Just occasionally, it turns out, Karim Benzema can even surprise Luka Modric.Mike Hewitt/Getty ImagesPeter Cziborra/Action Images Via ReutersBenzema’s header for Madrid’s second goal looped over and then out of reach of Chelsea’s goalkeeper, Edouard Mendy.Glyn Kirk/Agence France-Presse, via Ikimages/Afp Via Getty ImagesIn that, at least, he is not alone. The arc of Benzema’s career is, in truth, a little misunderstood. It is not quite right to present him as a late bloomer, a flickering talent who waited until the final few years of his career to deliver on his longstanding promise, to learn how to make the most of his gifts.Benzema has always been obviously, lavishly, absurdly talented; he was, after all, only 19 years old when Jean-Pierre Papin — no mean striker himself, in his day — declared that Benzema possessed the dynamism of (the Brazilian) Ronaldo, the imagination of Ronaldinho, the elegance of Thierry Henry and the ruthlessness of David Trézéguet.By the time he was 21, Benzema had come close to signing for Barcelona, and completed a move to Real Madrid. He would spend the first decade of his career in Spain scoring — on average — a goal every couple of games, the traditional watermark for elite strikers, and creating many more. Zinedine Zidane, his coach for a considerable portion of that time, variously described him as “the best” and a “total footballer.”That he was not the star of the show, of course, takes no great explanation: He was playing only a few yards from one of the greatest strikers of all time, a forward who made scoring one in every two look quaint and old-fashioned and actually, when you thought about it, something of a letdown.Benzema was perfectly happy about that. He willingly sacrificed his own strengths, his own ambitions, to help his teammate maximize his. In doing so, he ensured that no player, arguably, more than him suffered quite so much from the redefinition of the possible that marked the era of Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi.The golden autumn that Benzema has enjoyed, then, since Ronaldo’s departure in 2018, is best thought of as a form of optical illusion: It is not that he shines any brighter than before, but that the blazing torch that for so long drowned every other point of light has departed. It is only now that it is possible to see Benzema in high definition.What has emerged is an uncanny impression of the player that Papin described all those years ago. Benzema has become — has always been, most likely — a complete center forward, an entire attack made flesh, and yet even that undersells him. He is the player who makes this Real Madrid, aging and somewhat patchwork, a complete team.The proof of that is simple. A couple of weeks ago, in his absence, Carlo Ancelotti’s Madrid was overwhelmed on home soil by a resurgent Barcelona. That night, as it suffered a 4-0 defeat and the Bernabeu jeered and whistled its heroes, Real Madrid looked like what it was supposed to be: a team in the grip of an awkward and uneasy transition from one era to the next, half comprising a team that had had its day and half comprising a side awaiting its chance.On either side of that disappointment, with Benzema in the team, Real Madrid has overpowered an admittedly complicit Paris St.-Germain and now — more impressively, given the French team’s penchant for self-immolation — beaten Chelsea, the reigning European champion, on its own turf. On both occasions, Benzema has not just scored all three goals, he has been Madrid’s brain and its heart, its focal point and its cutting edge.He is, almost single-handedly, a guarantee of Real Madrid’s continued European relevance. Ancelotti will, now, be confident of helping his team to a second straight semifinal in the Spanish capital next week — though he would doubtless disagree with the assessment of his Chelsea counterpart, Thomas Tuchel, that the tie was over — so long as Benzema is present. He is the one who makes it all work. Maybe that should not be a surprise. Maybe he has always been the one who makes it all work. It is just that we have only started to notice it now. More

    • 88 Shares99 Views

      in Soccer

      Manchester City Finds Breakthrough Against Atlético Madrid

      by

      Atlético Madrid hunkered down and defended in its Champions League quarterfinal at Manchester City. But a single goal might be enough to send it packing.MANCHESTER, England — After a while, feeling bored, cold and wet, Éderson decided to go for a walk. The Manchester City goalkeeper had spent 20 minutes dutifully guarding his penalty area. He had checked all four corners for danger. He found nothing. He had stared, squinting, into the distance, scanning for some threat on the horizon. Nothing there, either.And so, idly, he wandered forward. He was entirely alone. There was nobody else in his half of the field. Manchester City’s central defenders, the players employed as his doughty sentries, were now stationed deep in Atlético Madrid territory, in the sorts of positions more habitually occupied by elfin attacking midfielders.As he approached the halfway line, Éderson slowed his pace just a little. He had the air of a man who had been walking with no particular destination in mind: He did not really know what he planned to do when he got there. He bounced on his heels. He stretched down and touched his toes. He loitered for a few seconds, reveling in the sensation of what it must be like to be involved in a soccer match, and then, slowly made his way back, ruefully retaking his lonely post.The Brazilian’s ennui could not — as it often can, during the course of both the domestic and the European seasons — be traced to Manchester City’s overwhelming superiority over its opposition, to its vast financial power, to its supercharged strength. Or, rather, it cannot solely be traced to that. To some extent, Éderson was bored because Atlético Madrid was content for him to be bored.Diego Simeone has made his career with teams that give away nothing. Now, facing a 1-0 deficit after the first leg, his squad needs to find something extra.Phil Noble/ReutersPerhaps the best indication of how Diego Simeone, Atlético’s coach, intended to approach Tuesday’s UEFA Champions League quarterfinal came in its first second. Manchester City had the kickoff, and at that instant, every single Atlético player seemed to take a step back, each man moving a little farther into his own half.Or maybe it was that brief, fleeting and possibly accidental moment when the redoubtable Geoffrey Kondogbia burst into City’s half, looked up, and saw nothing in front of him except a couple of light blue jerseys and a broad swath of green. His teammates had not so much as flickered. They were all locked in their holding pattern, under orders to stand their ground.That is exactly how Simeone wants it, of course. The Argentine is in many ways the polar opposite to Pep Guardiola, his City counterpart. That is a cliché, now, the sort of glib judgment that feels too easy, but it holds true.Guardiola’s vision of soccer is based on making space appear out of nowhere. Simeone’s is focused, laser sharp, on finding ways to make it evaporate. Guardiola has built his legend on making things happen. Simeone has constructed his on making sure they do not.Guardiola has said, previously, that his ideal goal would involve every single player touching the ball, possibly more than once, before someone — it does not matter who — strokes it into an unguarded goal.On Tuesday, Simeone seemed to be trying something different: chasing some mad dream in which an entire game went by without any of his players doing something as effete as actually touching the ball, so consumed were they by the important business of shutting down passing lanes and closing off angles of attack.Bernardo Silva, seeking out the spaces that didn’t exist.Phil Noble/ReutersThe style is, when it works, difficult to love but easy to admire. And it has worked, and worked spectacularly, for some time. That doggedness, that resolve, that defiance has become the cornerstone of Atlético’s modern European identity, the core value that has turned a perpetual underdog into a true European power: a winner of two Spanish titles and two Europa Leagues, twice a Champions League finalist, now safely ensconced in its own spectacular and vaguely soulless suburban superdome.And it almost worked here, too, against Guardiola’s latest masterpiece, a team that remains all but untouchable in the Premier League, a team that most likely ranks as the best in the world. Atlético stifled Manchester City almost entirely for the first half, and for vast tracts of the second, too, in the sort of vintage Simeone display that has earned Atlético its status as the standard-bearers of soccer’s counterculture, its final resistance to the prevailing wind of pressing and possession.The almost is significant, though. Not simply because City did, eventually, pick its way through, Phil Foden carving a path past Atlético’s massed ranks, creating just enough space for Kevin de Bruyne to win the game. That will not detain Simeone unnecessarily. He would, privately, be pleased simply to have escaped from the Etihad with his side still in the tie.Kevin De Bruyne delivered the only goal Manchester City needed on Tuesday night.Phil Noble/ReutersNo, far more important is what happened at the other end. There is one form of defense that Atlético, this Atlético, has not mastered, one aspect of its chosen art that continues to prove elusive: the attack.The best defensive performances necessarily include moments of menace, after all. It is in those moments, those rare forays upfield, when an overworked defense has time to recover, to reorganize, to regroup. And it is in those moments, too, that doubt is sowed in the mind of the opposition, when even a team as fine as Manchester City starts to second-guess itself, when it begins to wonder if it should be committing quite so many players forward.Simeone’s best Atlético teams had that: the pace of Antoine Griezmann, the guile of an autumnal David Villa, the taurine bellicosity of Diego Costa. This Atlético team does not. It did not muster a shot on goal in the first half. It had one, possibly, in the second, though there is a very good chance that it was meant as a cross.That, ultimately, is the flaw in the plan, the problem with finding contentment in nothingness. The defense did not hold, not quite, and now Atlético must win in Madrid next week, and to do that it must open spaces, not close them. It must create, rather than destroy. Simeone was quite happy, it seemed, for Éderson to be bored. He was not nearly as happy, though, as Guardiola. More

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in Soccer

      A Biennial World Cup Is Dead, but FIFA’s Fight Isn’t Over

      by

      FIFA has quietly given up on a plan to hold the World Cup every two years. But surrender may not mean peace for its president, Gianni Infantino.DOHA, Qatar — Gianni Infantino strode into the bright lights of a packed convention center alongside the emir of Qatar on Friday and declared that he expected this year’s World Cup to be the best ever. It was not an unusual boast; Infantino has made it before, in Russia in 2018, and he will surely make it again when the tournament heads to North America in 2026. But behind his beaming smile, and his bombastic words, the trip to the desert had been the setting for the FIFA president’s latest disappointment.It was here where yet another of Infantino’s hopes for revolutionary change, the kind of bold but ultimately failed plan that has marked his presidency of soccer’s global governing body, finally came to an end. The divisive efforts to double the frequency of the men’s World Cup, to milk FIFA’s multibillion-dollar cash cow every two years instead of every four, are over.While Infantino reminded FIFA’s members, gathered together in person for the first time in three years, that the idea of a biennial World Cup had not been his — a claim that was technically accurate — he had spent a significant amount of financial and political capital to try to engineer what would have amounted to one of the most significant changes in soccer history. Polls were commissioned to showcase support. Experts were enlisted to push back against critics. But the concept’s opponents never wavered: By last fall, European and South American soccer leaders were already threatening a boycott if it came to fruition.In Doha, Infantino finally raised the white flag.The reversal, yet another capitulation on yet another of his grand ideas, followed earlier blunders that have led to damaging rifts with important constituencies. In 2018, Infantino tried to force through a $25 billion deal with the Japanese conglomerate SoftBank to sell some of FIFA’s top assets and create new club and national team competitions, provoking a fight so bitter that he and the leader of European soccer did not speak for a year.In 2019, FIFA used back-channel efforts to try to expand this year’s World Cup to 48 teams from its planned 32. The proposal was abandoned because it would have required the host, Qatar, to share games with its neighbors, including a group that was then engaged in a prolonged economic blockade of the tiny Gulf nation.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.U.S. Returns: Five years after a calamitous night cost the U.S. a World Cup bid, a new generation claimed a berth in the 2022 tournament.The Host: After a decade of scrutiny and criticism, there is a sense that Qatar will at last get the payoff it always expected for hosting the World Cup.Last week, Infantino, 52, could not quite bring himself to say explicitly that the biennial World Cup, the source of so much acrimony over the past year, was not going to happen. Instead, he allowed only that it was now time to “find agreements and compromises.”Infantino, with the emir of Qatar on Friday, predicted this year’s World Cup would be the best edition of the event ever.Kai Pfaffenbach/ReutersFIFA, he told delegates, needed new competitions, the kind that would produces the type of revenues needed to fulfill the promises FIFA has made to its 211 member federations. No FIFA president has been generous as Infantino, and for him follow-through is suddenly vital: He announced on Thursday that he would stand for re-election next year.Plans for future events are already taking shape. Annual competitions for boys and girls are planned, with a 48-team youth event for boys and 24-team girls competition unlikely to face any opposition. And opposition to an expanded Club World Cup to be played every four years — another Infantino priority — is now surprisingly muted. A 24-team Club World Cup had been awarded to China for 2021 but was scrapped because of the coronavirus pandemic and then sidelined altogether as Infantino focused his energies on the biennial World Cup.Now, with even once-reticent European officials engaging in positive talks, the Club World Cup — potentially expanded even more, to 32 teams — is likely to be agreed upon in the next few months. The new event could begin as soon as 2025. Or it could be delayed until 2027 should FIFA, in the face of resilient European opposition, find an alternative national team competition to the biennial World Cup. Some regional bodies, including Concacaf, the group responsible for soccer in North and Central America, are still pushing for a major new national-team competition.“I think the appetite is there for change, and I think the rest of the world really wants change,” said the Concacaf president, Victor Montagliani.Montagliani suggested a revived and expanded version of the mothballed Confederations Cup, a largely unpopular tournament held in World Cup host countries as a test event, might be an option, as could a global Nations League that could feed into a new quadrennial event for its regional winners — an idea some Europeans ridiculed as a biennial World Cup “by the back door.”At the heart of much of the tension, though, remains a bigger fight: the battle for supremacy between European soccer and FIFA. European officials have been angered by what they perceive as efforts by Infantino, a former UEFA general secretary, to diminish Europe in an effort to bolster his popularity around the world, and signs of their rift were clear in Qatar last week. Several members of UEFA’s delegation, for example, including its president, Aleksander Ceferin, were notable by their absence at Friday’s World Cup draw, an event that took place only a day after they had taken part in the FIFA Congress.Infantino has talked openly about breaking Europe’s stranglehold on success — FIFA last year appeared to encourage efforts to found a breakaway European Super League before walking away from the project as it collapsed — and he retains important allies who share his concerns about its dominance.“What are the rest of us supposed to do? Just twiddle our thumbs and send players and capital over to Europe?” said Montagliani, a Canadian. “That can’t happen. I’m sorry. The reality is, they have as much of a fiduciary duty in terms of the rest of the world, and I think it is time that we all get around the table and figure that out.”The now-doomed biennial World Cup campaign saw Infantino bring other allies into the fight, including leveraging popular former players and coaches to press the issue on his behalf. The efforts were led by Arsène Wenger, the former Arsenal coach, who toured the world espousing the benefits of the competition, and members of the FIFA Legends program, a FIFA-funded group of former international stars, who also offered glowing reviews. (Current players were by and large opposed to the idea.)At the same time, opinion polls and surveys and public relations consultants were tasked with changing minds of a skeptical news media and wary fan groups. In the end, though, the effort produced only disruption and discord. And it does not appear to have been cheap: FIFA last week reported a spike in its communications costs in its latest financial disclosure. They rose by almost $10 million — 62 percent — compared with the previous year.Now, as he pushes ahead and makes promises for his re-election, some are waiting for, even expecting, Infantino’s next big idea, one that could deliver cash to his constituents and also the legacy as a change-maker that he craves. More

    • 150 Shares119 Views

      in Soccer

      Can Liverpool and City Win When the Bar Is Set Too High?

      by

      The Premier League leaders will compete for three high-profile trophies this spring. But does failing to win them all turn a great season into a bad one?Manchester City had everything ready. A few days before the 2019 F.A. Cup final, the club’s executives had already mapped out the route for the victory parade. They had booked the open-top bus. They had arranged a whole day of festivities. They were well aware it was tempting fate, but they had no choice: These things, after all, take time and planning.Besides, whatever happened against Watford at Wembley, there would be plenty to celebrate. Pep Guardiola’s team had won the Carabao Cup, the first and the least of England’s domestic priorities, a couple months earlier. The previous week, it had seen off the spirited challenge of Liverpool to retain the Premier League title. The F.A. Cup would complete the set.The only thing left to decide was how to brand the achievement. Everything needs a name these days. Everything needs a hashtag. The previous year, it had been easy. Then, City had become the first team in English history to claim 100 points in a single season; the players who had done it were crowned not just champions, but Centurions, too.They were now on the cusp of following that with an even more impressive feat: becoming the first side in English history to win a domestic treble, a clean sweep of the league title and both cup competitions.Inside the club, though, there were qualms about using that word — treble — too loudly. Some executives feared it was too closely associated with Manchester United’s 1999 team, the one that won the league, the F.A. Cup and the Champions League. Needing to qualify City’s treble as “domestic” might, they worried, cheapen it somehow.Ferran Soriano, City’s domineering chief executive, felt there was another problem. City, he was adamant, would have four trophies to parade. It had, back in August, won the Community Shield, too. That the traditional curtain-raiser for the English season is, in effect, a preseason friendly with some fireworks at the end of it did not deter him. It was a trophy, Soriano said. City should celebrate it. He even had the nomenclature ready: the Fourmidables.Peter Powell/EPA, via ShutterstockThere was more than a little unease at the suggestion. Several City executives cautioned that including the Community Shield would expose the club to accusations of résumé padding that were, in the circumstances, entirely unnecessary. Soriano, though, would not be swayed. Crucially, he had Guardiola’s support, too. A couple of days later, after City won the final, its bus picked its way through the streets of Manchester, the word “Fourmidables” plastered on its side.That Soriano was willing to ignore the concerns of his colleagues and subordinates, and withstand the allegations of hubris from rival fans, is instructive. Whatever else he might be — visionary, maverick, the sort of person one can imagine self-identifying as a “disrupter” — Soriano has an instinctive understanding of modern soccer. And in modern soccer, he knows, glory is measured in bulk.In the month or so since Liverpool lifted this season’s Carabao Cup, Jürgen Klopp has fielded questions about whether his team can win a “quadruple” — all of England’s domestic competitions, plus the Champions League — on an almost weekly basis. He has dismissed them equally frequently. “We are not even close to thinking about crazy stuff like that,” he said last month.Guardiola will know the feeling. He, too, has been peppered with questions — certainly since the turn of the year, if not before — about whether this edition of Manchester City can claim another treble this season, one that does not require the geographical qualifier. He, too, has done what he can to minimize expectations. “I try to say to the club ‘enjoy these moments during the season’,” he said. “Don’t wait to win the Premier League, the Champions League or the F.A. Cup to be happy. Enjoy the day. Enjoy the moment.”Once you’ve won the league, does the Carabao Cup measure up?Andy Rain/EPA, via ShutterstockIt is not hard to trace the roots of this obsession with doubles and trebles and, now, quadruples: In several leagues across Europe, the superclub era of the last decade or so has rendered winning a single league title essentially meaningless for the likes of Paris St.-Germain, Bayern Munich and — until its self-inflicted implosion — Juventus.Their domestic leagues are so hopelessly unbalanced that the destiny of the championship is rarely in any real doubt. With that trophy essentially preordained, they are left to find other targets. That may be a streak — picking up nine or 10 titles in a row — or it may be supplementing it with a glut of other prizes. Failure to do so can, with increasing frequency, cost a manager their job.That has, slowly, turned this into soccer’s age of the multiplicative. When Manchester United won its treble in 1999, it was the only team in any of what we now think of as Europe’s top five leagues to have done so (though Celtic, Ajax and PSV Eindhoven had all pulled it off previously). Since 2010, it has happened five times. Barcelona and Bayern have both done it twice.Domestic doubles — winning the league and the (main) domestic cup in the same season — are now so commonplace that they pass almost without notice: five for Bayern and four for Juventus and P.S.G. in the last 10 years, as well as three for Barcelona.The landscape in England, of course, is different. Competition between the country’s Big Six means City is the only team to have done the double since 2010. But its superclubs are not immune to the broader trend. For them, too, the currency of greatness is no longer primacy, but dominance.Liverpool and Manchester City will meet in the Premier League and the F.A. Cup in April, and could square off in the Champions League after that.Andrew Yates/EPA, via ShutterstockThat approach, though, carries with it an attendant danger, the risk that great teams — teams that have enjoyed remarkable success, that rank among the strongest the Premier League has ever seen — will somehow find themselves cast as failures: not for not winning, but for not winning enough.The final eight weeks or so of the Premier League season has long been set up as a battle between Liverpool, pursuing a quadruple, and Manchester City, chasing a treble. As they are already set to meet directly in two of those competitions over the coming weeks, both of them, by definition, cannot succeed. The likelihood, even at this late stage, remains that neither of them will.That raises the prospect of two teams, each with trophies to display and achievements to celebrate, being told to look back on their seasons with regret. If Manchester City wins only the Premier League, would that represent disappointment? It should not, of course, but in an era defined by a gluttony for glory, it might be presented — or even feel — like an anticlimax.What if Liverpool emerges from this campaign with only two domestic cups? Is that enough? Klopp’s team would have missed out on the two trophies that it most covets, of course, but that is not quite the same thing as falling short. If the only true victory is one that is total, all-conquering, absolute, then it suggests the bar has been set a little too high, that we have somehow concocted a world in which even success can be dressed up as failure.The Ignorance of IsolationQatar is expected to be Lionel Messi’s last World Cup.Franklin Jacome/Pool Via ReutersBy the time Argentina next takes to the field — at Wembley, for a meeting with the reigning European champion, Italy — it will be nearing three years since it last lost a game. Since succumbing to Brazil in the 2019 Copa América, Lionel Scaloni’s side’s only defeat has come against Sao Paulo’s health authorities. Other than that, it is played 31, won 20, drawn 11.It is, without doubt, the sort of record that should stir Argentine souls ahead of a World Cup that has particular resonance: 2022 will, after all, likely prove to be Lionel Messi’s final bow in an Argentina jersey, his last chance to emulate Diego Maradona and carry his country to the greatest prize of all.But it must still come with a caveat. That meeting with Italy — the so-called Finalissima — will be the first time Argentina has faced a European opponent since drawing with Germany in October 2019. Its run, these past few years, has been a distinctly local affair, built and made in South America.Brazil, as it happens, is in much the same boat. Since losing to Belgium in the 2018 World Cup quarterfinals, Tite’s side has faced only one European team — the Czech Republic — and that, too, was three years ago. Brazil is currently rated as the favorite to win the World Cup, a status that is based almost exclusively on its ability to beat the same South American teams over and over again.Brazil breezed through World Cup qualifying. But the World Cup may end differently.Silvia Izquierdo/Associated PressThat sudden isolation, of course, is partly linked to the coronavirus pandemic, but it is also connected to the rise of the Nations League in Europe and the exigencies of South America’s endless round of World Cup qualifying and Copas América. There has, since 2019, been very little chance to play friendlies.But as the World Cup draws closer, that absence of varied competition leads to a sense of ignorance. We can be sure that Argentina (which drew Mexico, Poland and Saudi Arabia on Friday) and Brazil (which will play Switzerland, Serbia and Cameroon in Qatar) are competitive in South America. We can have no idea at all how they will hold up against the European teams that both must overcome to emerge triumphant in Qatar.Three Euro-Centric World Cup PredictionsBelgium sits right behind Brazil in the world rankings.Alessandro Di Marco/EPA, via ShutterstockThere is no question that soccer’s approach to draws is, deep down, extremely ludicrous. All of the pomp and the ceremony, the droning speeches and the self-importance, the window dressing and the time-wasting, all for the very simple act of some men in the warm embrace of middle age pulling pieces of paper from a bag.At the same time, though, Friday’s World Cup draw is extremely important in a way that we do not, perhaps, acknowledge as much as we should. The order in which names are flourished by a selection of soccer’s great and easily booked will not, perhaps, determine who wins the World Cup. But it will go a long way to deciding the fates of a whole clutch of teams.A kind group, for example, might make the difference between Senegal’s making the quarterfinals, or exiting after the first 10 days. A difficult one might cost Gregg Berhalter his job. It might turn Ecuador into the story of the tournament, or the Netherlands into a laughingstock. Random chance matters.It also, of course, makes it very difficult to guess at what might happen in Qatar this winter. Still, there is no harm in trying.1. A European team will win the tournament. It is now 20 years since a South American side (Brazil) won the World Cup, and only one team from the continent — Argentina — has made the final since. The balance of power has shifted in favor of the industrialized youth development systems of western Europe, and it is, sadly, hard to see that changing.Kylian Mbappé and France are chasing a second straight world title.Kimmo Brandt/EPA, via Shutterstock2. The surprise packages will not be much of a surprise at all: They will, instead, be the teams with the greatest concentration of players drawn from Europe’s major leagues. Those sides drawn from domestic competitions — Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Qatar — will struggle to make an impact.3. For the (relative) minnows and the makeweights, firepower will be the difference. Outside of the traditional elite, very few teams can call on high-caliber forwards. Those that can, like Morocco and Iran, will have an invaluable edge.CorrespondenceWorkers inside Qatar’s 80,000-seat Lusail stadium. It will host the World Cup final in December.David Ramos/Getty ImagesA note from Alan Goldhammer, whose surname remains the single greatest thing about this correspondence section, on an issue that we will confront over the next eight months. “I will not watch matches played in stadiums built largely by ‘slave’ labor,” he wrote. “It might be a minority view, but it was a decision that I arrived at 18 months ago and it did not require a great deal of thinking. I am sure the World Cup will have a giant viewership. That viewership will be diminished by one and I would hope many more.”If that applies to you, too, I would be interested in hearing from you. It is something we all have to be conscious of, whether we engage with the World Cup as fans, as journalists, or even as players: To what extent is that interaction a form of complicity?Paul Rosenberg, meanwhile, wants to know if there is “any shock comparable to Italy’s loss against North Macedonia?” In World Cup finals, the answer to that is yes: France’s losing to Senegal in 2002 and North Korea’s win over Italy in 1966, among several others. For qualifying, it is a little trickier, but I would suggest Ireland’s beating the Dutch to reach the 2002 World Cup might be up there.And, of course, there had to be someone who would leap to the defense of deep-dish pizza. (This was genuinely the first email that appeared in my inbox after last week’s newsletter; it obviously cut deep.) That someone was Rich Johnson. “I must express my deep disappointment at your recent pejorative characterization of deep dish pizza,” he wrote. “As a Chicago native, I can tell you that the only thing better than deep dish pizza is stuffed pizza, which is perhaps the perfect meal.”It may or may not be the perfect meal, but a stuffed pizza — like a deep-dish pizza — is not actually a pizza. More

    • 138 Shares179 Views

      in Soccer

      World Cup Draw Analysis: First the Picks. Now the Hard Part.

      by

      Louis van Gaal said it all with just the hint of a playful smile. The Netherlands’ draw for the World Cup was not easy, he said, with his characteristic bluntness, and nor was it lucky. It was, instead, “colorful.” That was a better word. Ecuador’s sunshine yellow, Qatar’s rich maroon, Senegal’s deep green and that blazing Dutch orange: colorful.He tried, as best he could, to hide his delight. He knew, after all, that the dice had fallen for him, and for his team, just as he had predicted — in graphic and not entirely serious terms — that it would. Everyone wanted to draw Qatar, the host and by a gulf the gentlest prospect of the top seeds. Only his team had been chosen.The #FIFAWorldCup groups are set 🤩 We can’t wait! 🏆#FinalDraw pic.twitter.com/uaDfdIvbaZ— FIFA World Cup (@FIFAWorldCup) April 1, 2022
      But van Gaal is too long in the tooth to be fooled. He knows, too, that World Cup draws are not just bombastic and saccharine and filled with time-wasting and content-filling and Idris Elba; they are chimerical, too. They have an oracular quality. Often, they do not mean what they seem to mean at first reading.Consider Spain and Germany, for example, drawn together early on in Group E. Their encounter will mark the end of the tournament’s first week; it is the only time two of the anticipated contenders to win the competition, to be crowned world champion, will meet in the opening phase. Both seemed to have drawn the short straw.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.U.S. Returns: Five years after a calamitous night cost the U.S. a World Cup bid, a new generation claimed a berth in the 2022 tournament.The Host: After a decade of scrutiny and criticism, there is a sense that Qatar will at last get the payoff it always expected for hosting the World Cup.And then the balls kept on rolling and the names kept on coming and it turned out that both had, in fact, landed on their feet. Japan will be no pushover, and whichever of Costa Rica or New Zealand fills out the group will hardly be content to go quietly. But none have the resources or the quality or the pedigree of Spain and Germany, and both will be confident of making it through.Or look at England, which managed to make the semifinals in 2018 — and the final of last summer’s European Championship — by virtue of winning knockout games, in regulation time, against Sweden, a pale Germany and Ukraine.Its good fortune seemed to have held, drawn with Iran, the United States and one of Scotland, Wales and Ukraine, a group far richer in geopolitical intrigue than it is in elite quality.“I prefer putting balls in the net than flowers,” said Dragan Skocic, Iran’s Serbian coach, when asked about meeting the Americans, a reference to the two nations’ exchanging bouquets when they met at the 1998 tournament. “Football transcends the political stuff,” said his American counterpart, Gregg Berhalter.Spain Coach Luis Enrique with his Germany counterpart Hansi Flick. Their teams were drawn into the same group.Kai Pfaffenbach/ReutersBut the group stage draw is not really a draw just for the group stage: It is a road map for the entire tournament, too. If England is to win — as it believes it can, this time, with rather more logic than that of the stopped clock — the incline grows immediately steeper once the knockout stage starts. Senegal, the most complete team Africa has sent to a tournament for more than a decade, may lie in wait in the last 16. Then it could be France, the reigning champion, in the quarterfinals. Whatever lies beyond that may not be immediately relevant.There will, of course, be some teams who are pleased with their fates: France, certainly, should have little trouble with Denmark and Tunisia and one of Peru, Australia and the United Arab Emirates. The two South American contenders, Brazil and Argentina, will be confident, too.Even the United States should not be too displeased. “We have the youngest squad at the World Cup,” Berhalter said. “For us, that’s a benefit. The guys are fearless.” England might be comfortable favorites to win their group, but there is no reason to believe the United States — returning after an eight-year absence — cannot finish second.And there will, of course, be teams who are left to rue their lot. Canada, for example, gracing this stage for the first time since 1986, has a group without a true heavyweight but somehow harder for it: Croatia and Belgium finished second and third four years ago, while Morocco sailed through the arduous process of African qualifying.Ultimately, though, Van Gaal was right: There is no way of knowing, eight months in advance, who has been lucky and who has not, of which is the smooth draw and which the rough. After all the pomp and the circumstance, the video montages and the marketing spiel dressed up as mission statements, all you can say with any certainty is that it will, when it comes, be colorful. More

    • 100 Shares189 Views

      in Soccer

      The U.S. World Cup Match Schedule Is Set

      by

      After all that waiting, the United States finally learned its World Cup schedule at the World Cup draw on Friday, and it won’t have to wait long to play once the tournament begins.The Americans will open the tournament on its first day, Nov. 21, with a match against the winner of a June European playoff: either Scotland, Wales or Ukraine. Each of the teams would arrive with its own World Cup story: Scotland hasn’t played in soccer’s biggest championship since 1998; Wales hasn’t qualified since 1958; and Ukraine, should it qualify for its second World Cup, and first since 2006, would be playing only months after Russia invaded its territory.A day-after-Thanksgiving matchup against England comes next, on Nov. 25, and the United States will close the group stage against Iran four days after that, on Nov. 29.The U.S. team has previous World Cup experience against its two known opponents. It last met England in the tournament in 2010, when the teams played a 1-1 group-stage draw in Rustenburg, South Africa. England had taken an early lead that day before goalkeeper Rob Green surrendered one of the softest goals in England’s World Cup history on a long-distance shot by Clint Dempsey.The Americans’ last meeting against Iran in the World Cup — in 1998 in France — was also the teams’ first meeting on a soccer field. Iran won that day, 2-1, eliminating the Americans from a tournament in which they eventually finished last.And while both teams made a show of promoting peace after years of bitter political fights between their countries, not everyone got in the spirit of it. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, released a statement broadcast by state television after the game, congratulating Iran’s players.“Tonight again the strong and arrogant opponents felt the bitter taste of defeat at your hands,” he said. More

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in Soccer

      European Playoff Will Determine Third U.S. Opponent in Group B

      by

      Friday’s World Cup draw assigned groups to the 29 teams that have qualified for the tournament in Qatar in November. But the moment the draw ended, fans — especially those of teams with a big “to be determined” in their groups — started asking: What about those three playoff spots?We won’t know who has won them until June.One spot — the European team that will land in the group that holds England, the United States and Iran — will come from the war-delayed European playoff: Ukraine must play Scotland, and then the winner will face Wales for Europe’s final place.Let’s do this. 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/hTU7SNRDq0— USMNT: Qualified. (@USMNT) April 1, 2022
      The other two spots will come from so-called intercontinental playoff matches, which are effectively second-chance games for teams that didn’t qualify directly out of their regions. Those matches will be played as elimination games set to be held in Qatar (where, it should be noted, it will be blistering hot in June).In one, Costa Rica, the fourth-place finisher in Concacaf, will meet New Zealand, the Oceania champion, for the right to play Spain, Germany and Japan in Group E.In the other game, Peru, which came in fifth in South America, will play the last Asian survivor: either Australia or the United Arab Emirates. The winner’s prize there? Games against France, Denmark and Tunisia in Group D. More

    • 88 Shares159 Views

      in Soccer

      World Cup 2022 Group Assignments Full List

      by

      Regional and historic rivalries were renewed on Friday as the draw for the 2022 World Cup set out the paths for 32 teams hoping to claim soccer’s biggest championship. The tournament won’t start until November, but for a few teams it might have already been lost: There is only so much luck of the draw to go around, after all.The United States, back in the field after missing Russia 2018, landed in a group with England, a finalist at last summer’s European Championship; Iran, a geopolitical (and soccer) rival; and a European team still to be determined. That will happen in June, when the final European place will be decided by games involving Ukraine, Scotland or Wales.Each team plays the other three countries in its group once, and the top two finishers from each group advance to the knockout stages.The #FIFAWorldCup groups are set 🤩 We can’t wait! 🏆#FinalDraw pic.twitter.com/uaDfdIvbaZ— FIFA World Cup (@FIFAWorldCup) April 1, 2022
      Here is the full list of groups:Group A: Qatar, Ecuador, Senegal, NetherlandsGroup B: England, Iran, United States, (Wales or Scotland or Ukraine)Group C: Argentina, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, PolandGroup D: France, (U.A.E. or Australia or Peru), Denmark, TunisiaGroup E: Spain, (Costa Rica or New Zealand), Germany, JapanGroup F: Belgium, Canada, Morocco, CroatiaGroup G: Brazil, Serbia, Switzerland, CameroonGroup H: Portugal, Ghana, Uruguay, South Korea More