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      North Korea’s Han Kwang-song Returns to International Soccer

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      Han Kwang-song’s recent appearances in World Cup qualifiers were his first ones overseas since 2020, when U.N. sanctions led to an involuntary career break.When the North Korean men’s soccer team took the field for two 2026 World Cup qualifying matches this month, close observers noticed an important roster change.Han Kwang-song, a high-profile striker, was back, more than three years after vanishing from public view for reasons beyond his control: United Nations-imposed sanctions on North Korean nationals over Pyongyang’s nuclear program.Mr. Han’s story is a rare case of North Korea sanctions reverberating through professional soccer. It also shows how enforcement of U.N. sanctions against individuals varies by country.The government in Italy did not deport Mr. Han, now 25, while he was playing professional soccer there. But once he moved to Qatar, the Qatari government did.“The basic story makes sense; the surprising part is that Qatar complied with the U.N. resolutions,” said Marcus Noland, an expert on North Korean sanctions and executive vice president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington.A prodigy with ‘superhero’ statusMr. Han’s early success was partly a product of North Korea’s push to cultivate soccer talent. After attending a prestigious soccer school founded by the country’s leader, Kim Jong-un, Mr. Han trained in Spain before turning pro in Italy.He quickly made an impression in Europe as a speedy forward with an eye for goal. Back home, North Korea’s official news agency praised him after a 2019 Asian Cup qualifier as “the player that experts and enthusiasts paid the most attention to.”“In North Korea, he’s a superhero,” said Kim Heung-Tae, a professor of sports science at Daejin University in South Korea who follows the North’s soccer program.But in 2017, as punishment for the North’s sixth nuclear weapons test, the United Nations Security Council ordered all North Korean nationals working abroad to be repatriated by December 2019 — a strategy for preventing financing of the North’s military.Mr. Han, one of several North Koreans playing overseas in professional soccer leagues at the time, was among the targets.Sanctions meet realityBut the Italian authorities did not repatriate Mr. Han by the 2019 deadline, United Nations Security Council reports show. Instead, Juventus, the Italian club where he had been earning more than half a million euros a year, struck a deal in early 2020 to send him to Al-Duhail, a soccer team in Qatar, on a five-year contract worth about 4.3 million euros, about $4.7 million.Though a Security Council panel of experts on North Korea contacted Italy and Qatar immediately after that transfer, it was not canceled, and Juventus accepted a transfer fee from the Qatari club, according to the U.N. The panel said in a report that it later “reiterated to Qatar the relevant resolutions concerning the case.”That summer, Mr. Han stopped appearing for Al-Duhail. In January 2021, Qatar’s mission to the United Nations said in a letter to the U.N. panel that Mr. Han had left Qatar after having his contract “terminated” by the club — and that Qatar’s actions reflected its commitments to Security Council resolutions about North Korean nationals who earn income abroad.At the time, the coronavirus pandemic was raging, and North Korea’s borders were sealed. Qatar said in its letter, a copy of which was included in a U.N. report, that Mr. Han had left the country on Qatar Airways Flight 131 — a nonstop flight to Rome.‘He’s probably been training all along’Details of Mr. Han’s movements since leaving Qatar, including the timing and circumstances of his return to North Korea, remain scarce. According to Transfermarkt, a website that tracks soccer players and their contracts, he has not played for a professional club since July 2021.Also unclear is whether any of Mr. Han’s earnings ever made it back to the North Korean government.Mr. Han signed an agreement in 2020 with a Qatari bank, where he had an account at the time, pledging not to transfer any money to his home country, according to a U.N. report. Still, Professor Kim said, North Korean agents had most likely accompanied him everywhere he went overseas and restricted how he spent his earnings.Neither FIFA, the governing body of soccer; nor the Italian or Qatari Foreign Ministries; nor North Korea’s soccer association or the Asian Football Confederation immediately responded to requests for comment. Nor did Al-Duhail, Juventus or Cagliari, another team that Mr. Han played for in Italy.Mr. Han’s return to competition this month was reported earlier by CNN and the website NK News, among other outlets.Professor Kim said that the pandemic had probably curtailed many athletic events in North Korea, where the long-lasting border closing crippled the nation’s economy. But soccer is the country’s most popular sport, and Professor Kim said that domestic competitions had probably been held regularly in recent months.As for Mr. Han, Professor Kim said, “he’s probably been training all along.”Rather than joining another professional league abroad, Mr. Han is likely to focus on preparing for the 2026 World Cup, Professor Kim said. He added that North Korea was competitive in its region and had a good chance of qualifying, in part because FIFA has nearly doubled the number of slots for Asian countries at that tournament, which will be held in the United States, Canada and Mexico.Max Canzi, who coached Mr. Han in Italy for Cagliari’s under-19 team, told CNN that he was “very happy” that the striker had returned to international competition for the World Cup qualifying match against Syria in Saudi Arabia on Nov. 16.As Mr. Han resumes his career, Mr. Canzi added that he was “very curious about the level of his performance after being out for so much time.”Mr. Han was substituted at halftime in the Saudi Arabia match, which North Korea lost, 1-0. But five days later in Yangon, Myanmar, he contributed to a 6-1 win over the home country with a signature headed goal. More

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      Messi Surcharge: Red Bulls, Other M.L.S. Teams to Charge More for Miami Games

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      A Red Bulls promotion has some fine print: If Inter Miami is the opponent, you get a different game.A holiday deal offered by the Red Bulls soccer team includes some merchandise, like a travel mug, as well as tickets to two games, including its first home game.But there is some fine print. The Major League Soccer schedule will not be announced until the end of the year, and if it turns out that the home opener is against Inter Miami, fans who buy the package will get tickets for the second home game instead.The reason is Lionel Messi.Miami is the team of Messi, the global superstar, and a chance to see him is a lot more appealing than a random game against, say, Toronto F.C. Any time he comes to town will be an event, and teams don’t want to just throw such a golden ticket into a package deal.Some Red Bulls fans who noticed the fine print were annoyed and expressed that on social media — words like “gouge” were common. But at least a few others shrugged it off as a smart business move. “It’s purely naïve to expect the league not to try to capitalize on this at all costs,” said Dan Rodriguez, a Red Bulls fan from Westchester County, N.Y.The Red Bulls did not respond to a question about the ticket offer. Even if fans lose the Messi game, the deal still includes a game against the team’s regional rival, N.Y.C.F.C. And because there are 29 M.L.S. teams, the chance that the first game will actually be against Miami and Messi is slim.Around the league, though, teams are seeing a gold mine in Messi. Not every team has set its full pricing yet, especially since the schedule has not been announced. But the Columbus Crew is charging at least $382 for its home game against Miami and $421 and $679 for better seats. In contrast, tickets for ordinary Crew games this year could be had for as little as $40, or less as part of a season ticket package.Dynamic pricing is not unusual in M.L.S. or other sports. A big game against a rival might cost slightly more, but not several hundred dollars more.Miami itself is charging between 46 percent and 82 percent more for standard season tickets than it did this year, when Messi joined midseason. Less expensive packages are now about $800 for 17 games, and other season tickets are $4,000, $7,000 or even $10,000 for seats with club access.That puts Miami as one of the priciest season tickets in the world. The most expensive season ticket to Tottenham, in the English Premier League, costs $2,498, and it is $1,021 for Barcelona, World Soccer Talk reported.Messi signed for Miami in July, when many tickets were already sold. That meant fans already in possession of tickets to his games were able to cash in on a resale, while no extra money flowed to the teams. For next year, teams have time to plan and get some of that markup for themselves.Buying a season ticket to see another team that is scheduled to play Miami is one way to see Messi. Fans who do so will enjoy seeing Messi when he comes to town, or flip their tickets on the secondary market for a big payday.Of course that’s assuming Messi plays. He will turn 37 during the M.L.S. season and missed some games this year with a scar tissue ailment. When he did not play, many fans, some of whom had forked over top dollar, grumbled.After he missed a game in Chicago in October, for which 61,000 tickets had been sold, the Chicago Fire offered $250 credit for season ticket holders and $50 to single-game buyers as recompense.M.L.S. teams around the country will have visions of full houses of fans in expensive seats, and not of refunds, for 2024. More

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      Swedish Soccer Prioritized Fans Over Finances. Now, Business Is Booming.

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      While most of Europe’s leagues engage in a Sisyphean quest to source as much money as possible, Sweden has chosen a different model. But its rewards come with risk.The warning sounded over and over, first in Swedish and then in English. A fire had been detected. Please evacuate the stadium. The players left the field. Outside, fire crews were arriving. But in the stands, as a thick cloud of smoke wreathed and coiled in the floodlights, nobody moved. The fans were going to make the game happen by sheer force of will.It was a game they had been anticipating for some time. The top two teams in the Allsvenskan, Sweden’s elite league, had gone into the final day of the season separated by just three points. A quirk of scheduling fate meant that their last game was with each other. Malmo, the host, had to win to claim the championship. Elfsborg, the visitor, needed only to avoid defeat. It had been billed as a guldfinal: a gold-medal match.The idea of a single game that decides the destiny of a league title is vanishingly rare in modern soccer, where championships are won over the course of a season rather than in a winner-take-all final. It has not happened in England since 1989, and Italy has not produced such a denouement in more than half a century.Fans of Malmo, left, and Elfsborg. The teams met to decide the Swedish league title on the final day of the season.Betina Garcia for The New York Times“It might not be the best league in Europe,” the league’s chief executive said, “but the atmosphere in the stands is.”Betina Garcia for The New York TimesIt is also increasingly unusual for a title even to be in play as the season draws to a close. Over the last 30 years, soccer has become so financially stratified that many domestic tournaments are little more than monthslong processions for the wealthiest teams. Sweden, though, is different, a solitary beacon of competitive balance. In four of the last six editions of the Allsvenskan, the championship has gone to the wire.How it has produced that is a story of rejecting orthodoxy, of asking why sports exist and whom they exist for. But it is also a story of how hard it is to stand alone, and how fragile even the most heartening success can be.A Different PathThe walls of Malmo’s Eleda Stadium are full of mementos of the glory days, the era when Swedish teams could compete with Europe’s giants and, occasionally, beat them.In 1979, Malmo, fielding a team of amateurs, made it all the way to the European Cup final. It is still the only Scandinavian team to feature in the game and its successor, the Champions League final. In the 1980s, IFK Gothenburg twice won (lesser) continental trophies. As late as 1994, IFK beat Manchester United and Barcelona in the Champions League.Those victories proved a last stand. The game’s dynamic changed drastically as money rushed into soccer in the 1990s, first from broadcasters, then private investors, and finally oligarchs, corporations and nation states. The riches created a new class of unassailable domestic powerhouses.“Big money fed the biggest clubs,” enabling them to construct squads full of superstars, said Mats Enquist, who served as general secretary of Svenskelitfotboll, or SEF, the body that runs Sweden’s professional leagues, from 2012 until early this year. For Sweden, as for many countries outside Europe’s major television markets, he said, it was “impossible to keep up.”Malmo, in blue, had to win the game to claim its third title in four years. Elfsborg needed only to avoid defeat.Betina Garcia for The New York TimesInstead of grasping at shadows, Sweden’s response was — effectively — to opt out. In 1999, the country enshrined in law a rule that 51 percent of its sports teams had to be owned by their members: the fans. In 2007, when that rule was challenged, the fans fought fiercely to protect it.“That was the moment that the fans first realized the power they had,” said Noa Bachner, the author of a book that examines Sweden’s rejection of soccer’s economic orthodoxy.Yet they wielded it over a bleak landscape.“Crowds were going down, the standard of play was not good, the league had a lot of problems with hooliganism,” Mr. Enquist said. A survey that he commissioned as one of his first acts found that only 11 percent of fans regarded the Allsvenskan as their favorite competition, far behind England’s Premier League and the Champions League. “It was not a good place to be,” he said.Mr. Enquist was an outsider to soccer when he took a leading role in it: a software entrepreneur by trade, and a volleyball and golf fan by inclination. It was his job, though, to sort it out.His solution set Sweden on an almost heretical path in modern soccer. Unable to turn to rich investors, the SEF harnessed the country’s most obvious strength, the fans. In the face of considerable skepticism, the authorities “touched hands” with the supporters, Mr. Enquist said, and set about designing a league they wanted to watch, and watch live.They negotiated limits on behavior, designating invading the field and throwing missiles as red lines but allowing a tacit leeway on pyrotechnics in service to spectacle. They persuaded the police to adopt a more conciliatory approach rather than “treating all fans as potential hooligans,” as Lars-Christer Olsson, the league’s president until this year, said.Flares and clashes with the police marred the season’s final day. Betina Garcia for The New York TimesA decade later, the transformation has been staggering. Almost alone among Europe’s mid-tier league, Swedish soccer is a picture of health. It has had 11 different champions in 20 years. Attendances have doubled in the last decade; this year brought record crowds. The league’s revenues have tripled in the same period. Now, more than 40 percent of Swedish fans identify the Allsvenskan as their priority.The game of the year between Malmo and Elfsborg should have been the perfect distillation of all that work, an illustration of what makes Sweden a standard-bearer for a different version of soccer. Instead, it highlighted how fine the line is between empowering fans and losing control of them.The start of the second half was delayed by 30 minutes as Elfsborg’s fans confronted a line of riot police officers, and then by another half-hour when Malmo’s ultras, the team’s most hard-core supporters, set off so many smuggled-in pyrotechnics that they triggered the fire alarm. When Malmo’s victory was secured, thousands of fans rushed the field. A handful raced toward their Elfsborg counterparts and hurled lit flares into their packed sections.“There is a thin margin,” said Pontus Jansson, a veteran defender who returned to Malmo this year after a decade abroad to draw the curtain on his career. “They stepped over it.”For Fans, By FansThe moment when Malmo’s players and staff claimed their title — two hours later, once all the smoke had cleared — was a homespun sort of occasion. They walked out in small groups to collect their medals, in velveteen presentation boxes, from a collapsible table. There were no glitter cannon or smoke machines at their backs.Instead, the photo that will one day grace the walls alongside all the other mementos of triumphs past captured the two elements that make up the club: the players and, massed on the field behind them, the fans.Defender Pontus Jansson with his title-winning teammates on a platform and the club’s fans behind a barrier on the pitch.Betina Garcia for The New York TimesEverything Swedish soccer has become has been constructed by, and for, the people who go to watch it in stadiums. Mr. Bachner, the author, reels off the start of a long list of examples: the absence of corporations, sovereign wealth funds and “multiclub projects” from the ranks of club owners; sustained investment in women’s teams; an unofficial ban on holding training camps in authoritarian states; a rule stating that the league has to give at least two months’ notice before moving games for television.The clearest illustration, though, is that Sweden — alone among Europe’s major nations — has resisted the introduction of video assistant referees. The clubs, at the behest of their members, have consistently voted against the technology, a source of controversy elsewhere because of its not-infrequent errors and interminable delays.“I think the fans have the feeling it disturbs the ambience in the stadium,” Mr. Olsson said.There are things that Sweden’s democratic tradition cannot vote out of existence. Malmo’s championship, for example, means another potential infusion of Champions League income that might be enough to give the club — already Sweden’s richest — an insurmountable competitive advantage.The issue of the ultras, too, poses a problem. “It feels as though there are two games taking place,” Mr. Bachner said. “One on the field, and one in the stands, where these groups are seeing how they can display their power, and they don’t mind if 20,000 other people have to wait around while they do it.”Malmo fans storming the field after the match.Betina Garcia for The New York TimesSweden is not the only country facing that challenge, but Mr. Bachner acknowledged concern that the chaos on the season’s showcase day would lead to calls for more aggressive policing, which could threaten the delicate alliance between the authorities and the fans.To many, that would be a step back. “It might not be the best league in Europe,” said Johan Lindvall, the league’s chief executive, “but the atmosphere in the stands is.” Matchdays are both the cornerstone on which all the success has been built, and the proof of how far it has come.“After we scored the goal, the noise was crazy,” Mr. Jansson said. His presence alone is a case in point. He had spent the past seven years becoming part of English soccer’s furniture. Just 32, he could perhaps still be playing there, amid the superstars of the Premier League. Instead, in April, he chose to come home to experience what Swedish soccer had become.“That atmosphere,” he said. “That’s what brought me back.”A Malmo player on the pitch as smoke filled the air.Betina Garcia for The New York Times More

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      Xabi Alonso Isn’t Coming to Save Your Team. Not Yet.

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      The patience of Alonso, the Bayer Leverkusen manager, says a lot about him, and just as much about a sport perpetually chasing the next big thing.Xabi Alonso has always done things at his own speed. As a player, it was his coolness, his control, his capacity to wait until precisely the right moment that made him one of the finest midfielders of his generation. As he contemplated the idea of becoming a coach, he saw no reason to change. He would continue to treat patience as a virtue.He did not start out on the second phase of his career with a five-year or a 10-year plan in mind. All he knew was that he was not in a rush. “I had an idea that I did not want to go too quickly,” he said. “But I had not really mapped anything out.”There were plenty of people who were more than happy to do it for him. Everything about Alonso seemed to indicate not only that he would go into management when his playing days drew to a close, but almost that he should. He had, after all, had the perfect education. He was as near to a sure thing as it was possible to imagine.He had played for some of the most garlanded clubs in Europe. He was one of the most decorated players of his generation, having won the Champions League with Liverpool and Real Madrid, domestic titles with Madrid and Bayern Munich, the World Cup and a couple of European Championships with Spain.He had learned at the knee of pretty much every member of modern coaching’s pantheon: Rafael Benítez at Liverpool; José Mourinho, Carlo Ancelotti and Zinedine Zidane at Real Madrid; Pep Guardiola and Ancelotti again at Bayern Munich. (Even then, he admitted that there is one notable absence from that list: Alonso would have “loved” to have been coached by Jürgen Klopp.)And, just as important, he had been a keen and gifted student. It was only in the last few years of his career, in Madrid and Munich, that Alonso actively sought to learn what it took to be a manager: He made a point of peppering Ancelotti’s and Guardiola’s staff members with questions, trying to arm himself with as much knowledge as possible. “I tried to be curious about the manager’s work,” he said.He had, though, always been more cerebral than most of his peers, an avid reader off the field and an expert interpreter of the game on it, blessed with such foresight that it sometimes appeared as if he was playing in real time and everyone else was on satellite delay. His coaches, modern soccer’s most revered minds, regarded him as their brains on the field.From the moment he retired, then, Alonso could probably have walked into any job he wanted. He could have fast-tracked his coaching qualifications, started doing a bit of judicious punditry work, called in a few favors, and been in charge of an underperforming Champions League team almost before the year was out. That, though, is not Alonso’s style.And so, instead, he took a sabbatical, and then set about earning his spurs. He spent three years back home in San Sebastián, working in the youth academy at Real Sociedad, his first club, the one he supported, the place where his father had worked. He did not conduct a series of regular interviews to ensure people knew about all of his achievements. As far as it is possible for someone of his renown, Alonso stepped into the shadows.Reasonably frequently, someone would try to coax him into the light: from Spain, from Germany, from England. “I had other possibilities,” he said, diplomatically, in an interview this week. “But I didn’t see them that clearly. I didn’t want to go somewhere I was not convinced.” He wanted to wait for just the right time, just the right place. A year ago, when Bayer Leverkusen approached him, he had a sense that it might have arrived.“I had the feeling that I had taken the right steps,” he said. It felt like a risk, of course, but he was ready. “It was the moment that either I tried, or I stayed at home. Maybe that would have been an easier life. It would have been more relaxed than right now.”Alonso’s quick success as Leverkusen manager already has bigger clubs circling.Ronald Wittek/EPA, via ShutterstockLeverkusen seemed a good match, though, the sort of club where expectations are high, but not unrealistic, and the pressure intense, rather than overbearing. It was a team with a good squad with ample room for improvement, a clear structure, a coherent vision of itself. “I had the feeling that everyone was pushing in the same direction,” he said. “That’s helpful. I had the feeling it was the right time and the right place.” He took the job.It was at that point that Alonso’s plan to take things slowly started to fall apart. Leverkusen had been toiling at the foot of the Bundesliga when he arrived. But by the end of his first season, he had managed to steer the club back into the Europa League.The job would soon get harder. Over the summer, Leverkusen sold Mousa Diaby, an electric French winger who had become the team’s most coveted asset. And yet, after 11 games of the new Bundesliga season, Alonso’s team has not lost a game. Leverkusen is top of the table in Germany, two points ahead of Bayern Munich. It has scored 34 goals. The only game it has not won was a 2-2 draw away at Bayern.All of which means the 41-year-old Alonso has overseen the best start to a Bundesliga season any team has ever made, outstripping even the imperious, Guardiola-era Bayern side in which he was a central figure.He now has to spend rather more time than he might like offering deadpan answers to questions about whether his team can lift the championship. (Predictably, he thinks it is too early to contemplate such a prospect; ask him again in April, he said).Alonso, it turns out, seems to be exactly as good at management as everyone assumed he would be. That does not mean he has changed his approach. He is still not in a rush. The problem is that the same cannot be said of the sport. Alonso always stood out because of his patience, because he possessed what the industry lacked.Barely a year into his senior management career, Alonso is already the favorite to replace Ancelotti at Real Madrid, and a contender to fill any vacancy that might arise at both Bayern Munich and Liverpool. “Maybe I could do all three,” Alonso said. “With Zoom.”He was joking, of course. He has been around long enough to know that he had to clarify that his “mind is 100 percent” at Leverkusen. It is much too soon, as far as he is concerned, to discuss where he might go next. According to his timeline, he is just starting out. “I don’t like to talk about my coaching with a lot of authority,” he said. “I don’t feel I have that authority. I’m so early.”He is young enough that he still joins in games in training — he smiled just a touch awkwardly and briefly blushed when asked if he is the best passer of the ball at the club, a physical reaction that translates roughly as “yes” — and he still cannot quite resist the lure of continually rolling a ball under his feet, caressing it, during training sessions.The withdrawal pangs from his playing days remain. “Playing is better,” he said. “Playing is much better. I shouldn’t say it but I do miss it.” As he is watching games unfold, he said, he catches himself quite often contemplating how much more fun it would be out on the field, putting a plan into action, rather than instructing others to do it.Not far removed from his playing days, Alonso might still be Leverkusen’s best passer.Federico Gambarini/DPA, via Associated PressThat is not to say he does not find management satisfying. Given his influences — in particular that great, all-conquering Spanish team and Guardiola, whom he considers a friend as much as a former manager — it is no surprise he has a clear “idea” of how he wants his team to play: a fusion of Spanish control and German intensity, all percolated through the “intuition” of his players.“They are the most important guys,” he said. When identifying potential recruits this summer, the key characteristic was not familiarity with a particular style but “intelligence,” the ability to shift between them, to make their own decisions, solve their own problems.“It is not about being robots,” Alonso said. “They have the knowledge to know what might happen, and then decide what is good with their qualities.”But management, he has discovered, is built not on grand ideas but of small gestures, too, less a matter of philosophy than personal relationships. He has had to learn “how to be a leader in certain circumstances: when to push, when to be a little softer, when not to let them relax.”Ancelotti, in particular, provided him with a clear example of how to do that, but Alonso knows he is not there yet. He is still forging into uncharted territory, for him. He needs to persuade his players to be more consistent, he said, not to drop the level they have set, not to allow their bright start to flicker and fade.He has never done that before. He is still learning, after all. He knows that will take time. He knows, too, that he has it. Soccer might be hard-wired to ask, almost immediately, what comes next. Alonso’s start has been quicker than even he might have imagined. That has brought opportunity, but it has also brought a challenge, too. He has to figure out how he can continue to take things slow.Simpler TimesAmong the many unique and heartening features of Sweden’s elite league, the Allsvenskan — and I will have much more to say on the competition and its thrilling final title race in the coming days — it is also the only major league in Europe happy to discover what happens if you just decide not to have video assistant referees.At the behest of its empowered fans, Sweden, and Sweden alone, has elected not to introduce V.A.R. Given the system’s performance elsewhere in Europe this year, it looks increasingly like a wise decision.In Sweden, the referee still has the final word.Betina Garcia for The New York TimesFor someone now accustomed to relying on remote confirmation of any and every incident on the field, though, it makes watching a game a slightly disorientating experience. The game on Sunday was settled by a penalty, the sort that might have been pored over for several minutes in the Premier League. Instead, the referee awarded it, the crowd cheered, and Isaac Kiese Thelin stepped up to take it.There was no second-guessing. There was no interminable delay. The decision was made, and it stood. It was the same when Elfsborg made two (from a distance, not impossible) claims for a handball in the dying moments, just before Malmo’s victory secured its latest Swedish championship. The referee waved both away, decisively; nobody had to hold their breath, to wait for V.A.R. to have its say.It was curious to note, too, that the protests from the aggrieved players were significantly less intense than they have become in the Premier League. Some objected, of course, and some pleaded their cases, but there was a recognizable absence of the sort of rage that can only ever be rooted in impotence. It is almost as if, by granting referees absolute agency rather than robbing it from them, Sweden has increased their authority, not diminished their status.CorrespondenceThis newsletter — particularly this section of this newsletter — is never afraid to duck the big issues of the day. I feel like we proved that beyond doubt with our discourse on where you can find the best ice cream, and the subsequent conversation around whether a soccer newsletter should concern itself with where you can find the best ice cream.Liz Honore’s question, then, might look fiendishly complex — a labyrinth of obstacles and booby-traps — but with clear eyes and a strong heart, it can be confronted head on. “Do you think, given Emma Hayes’s no-nonsense coaching style,” Liz asked, “she would have kept Megan Rapinoe on her World Cup squad, given her increased focus on nonsoccer-related issues?”In one sense, the answer to this is quite easy. Hayes does have a no-nonsense coaching style, that is true. But she has also worked with any number of players who have, admirably, taken it on themselves to bring issues close to their hearts into the public domain. So, no, I don’t think she would have disapproved of Rapinoe’s interests away from the game.The controversial bit is this addendum, which I may regret. I do not believe Rapinoe’s form dipped because of her advocacy work. I do, though, believe that Rapinoe’s form dipped, and I believe it is possible she was included in the squad to some extent because she was, in effect, too famous to omit. Whether Hayes would have done the same in that situation, I don’t know.Megan Rapinoe: too big to fail?Orlando Ramirez/Usa Today Sports, via Reuters ConJoel Dvoskin follows that up with a series of questions related to the Jim Harbaugh scandal, which I will admit right now is the sort of cheating that does not really seem like cheating to Europeans. Why wouldn’t he steal other people’s signs? Why would you have a rule about watching your opponents in advance?Joel’s two best queries — “Is cheating only a sin if it works?” and, “If everybody is breaking a rule, why is it still a rule?” — are worth bearing in mind as we discuss the parallel he drew with soccer.“People cheat in soccer all the time, but it seems to happen in a the context of a tacit agreement about the guard rails,” Joel wrote, correctly. “Eventually, the Premier League will find itself in as dicey a situation as faces the Big Ten today. In a sport with such intense competition, it is only a matter of time before someone decides to take ‘rules were made to be broken’ and ‘if you’re not cheating, you’re not trying’ to a previously unimaginable extreme.”It is entirely possible that soccer has already arrived at this moment. This week, Chelsea was accused of historic financial chicanery, and Manchester City, still facing 115 charges of similar offenses from the Premier League, announced eye-watering record revenues.Both would rather suggest that cheating is only a sin if it doesn’t work. More important, if the Premier League is unwilling or unable to punish both Chelsea and City appropriately — and the only logical sporting punishment is retrospective points deductions for the seasons in which the offenses were committed — then the league will have no choice but to ask if there is any point in having rules on spending at all. More

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      Everton Stripped of 10 Points in Premier League, Deepening Team’s Crisis

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      A team operating under a mountain of debt and a proposed sale now faces a sporting penalty for violating financial rules. It vowed to appeal.Everton, a founding member of England’s Premier League that has fallen into financial crisis, faced yet more pain on Friday after it was given a 10-point penalty for breaching the league’s economic rules. The punishment sent Everton to the bottom of the league standings and left it facing the threat of relegation from England’s top division at the end of the season.The announcement of a points penalty was not a surprise, since the Premier League had come under pressure to act by rival teams angered by Everton’s rule breaches. But the decision will deepen the crisis that has engulfed Everton, one of English soccer’s oldest teams, at a time when its very future has been placed under a cloud by hundreds of millions of dollars in debt.An independent league commission hearing the case against Everton for breaching the league’s profit and sustainability rules announced the punishment. It said the penalty — the biggest in the Premier League’s history — must be applied immediately, a result that plunged the Blues to 19th place from their relatively safer position in 14th and on the same points total, 4, as last-place Burnley.At the end of each season, the bottom three teams in the Premier League table are relegated out of the division and into the second-tier Championship.Everton said it was “shocked and disappointed” by the scale of the penalty, and immediately announced its intent to appeal.“The club believes that the Commission has imposed a wholly disproportionate and unjust sporting sanction,” Everton said in a statement on its website. “The club has already communicated its intention to appeal the decision to the Premier League.”The team’s perilous financial state has required regular cash infusions from external sources to allow the club to continue operating. The most recent loan came from 777 Partners, an American group that in September agreed to acquire the storied club. That deal has not yet been approved by the Premier League and the Financial Conduct Authority, a regulator, amid questions about 777 Partners’ own finances.The Premier League referred Everton to an independent commission in March after Everton posted financial losses for the fifth straight year. Under the league’s regulations, teams are allowed to lose no more than 105 million pounds, or $130 million, over a three-year period. Everton acknowledged being in breach of those rules for the financial year through 2022.The panel, according to a 41-page written judgment, agreed with the Premier League’s assessment that Everton had breached the allowed amount of losses by £19.5 million (almost $25 million).The scale of Everton’s penalty raises the prospect of a far larger punishment that could await the league’s dominant team, Manchester City. The club has been charged with 115 rule breaches related to its financial declarations. That case, now in its fifth year, has yet to reach a conclusion; it is being heard by a similar panel to the one that decided the Everton case.While the points loss severely increases the chances of Everton’s suffering a costly demotion to the second tier for the first time in its history, the low point totals obtained so far by some of its relegation rivals may yet allow it to escape. Even with its 10-point penalty, Everton is only 2 points behind Luton Town, the team occupying 17th place — the final position offering safety, and a place in the league, for next season.A spokesman for 777 Partners said the company had no comment on the punishment or any effect it would have on its proposed acquisition, because that process remains ongoing. Its proposed deal contains contingencies for points deductions and even a possible relegation.Part of the reason Everton’s punishment was as harsh as it was, the panel said, was related to a claim, upheld by the panel, that the team had failed to engage with the league in good faith, a claim the team continues to reject.“Both the harshness and severity of the sanction imposed by the Commission are neither a fair nor a reasonable reflection of the evidence submitted,” Everton said. More

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      How FIFA Handed Saudi Arabia the 2034 World Cup

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      FIFA’s president, Gianni Infantino, cheered a plan to take soccer’s richest event to the kingdom. He has said little about his years of work to make that happen.As the world reeled from the coronavirus crisis in the fall of 2020, the president of soccer’s global governing body, Gianni Infantino, headed to Rome for an audience with Italy’s prime minister.Wearing masks and bumping elbows, Mr. Infantino, the president of FIFA, and the prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, greeted each other in front of journalists before disappearing with the president of the Italian soccer federation into one of the ornate state rooms of the 16th-century Palazzo Chigi, the Italian leader’s official residence.Mr. Infantino explained afterward that they had talked about soccer’s path to recovery from pandemic shutdowns. He made no mention of the other pressing topic he had come to discuss.Away from the television cameras, Mr. Infantino surprised the Italians by revealing himself to be a pitchman for an effort by Saudi Arabia to stage soccer’s biggest championship, the World Cup. Saudi Arabia had already secured the backing of Egypt, the FIFA president told the Italian officials, and now was looking for a European partner for what would be a unique tournament staged on three continents in 2030. Italy, he said, could be that partner.Mr. Conte listened politely but would have known that such a partnership was politically impossible: Italy had strained relations with Egypt over the brutal killing of a young Italian journalist in Cairo in 2016, and there was continuing discomfort across Europe about the Saudi role in the 2018 murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a columnist for The Washington Post.The Italian reaction to Mr. Infantino’s suggestion was at first “prudent and within a few hours negative,” said Pietro Benassi, who was the prime minister’s most senior diplomatic adviser. The country said no.Three years later, Saudi Arabia would get its prize anyway. On Oct. 31, after an expedited process that caught its own members by surprise, FIFA confirmed Saudi Arabia was the sole bidder for the 2034 World Cup. Within hours, Mr. Infantino implied in a social media post that its status as host was a done deal and other Gulf rulers hailed it an “Arab victory” — even though the official vote was nearly a year away.To many in soccer, Mr. Infantino’s advocacy for Saudi Arabia was nothing new. In the years since his visit to Rome, he had also pitched the Saudis’ co-hosting idea to Greece; championed multimillion-dollar Saudi investments in soccer; and helped shepherd rules changes that all but assured the kingdom would wind up with the World Cup.His efforts were hardly clandestine. But they have left many in soccer concerned about Mr. Infantino’s motivations, and questioning if he is using his position to prioritize FIFA’s interests or those of a friendly partner that has been leveraging its wealth to wield influence in the sport.“How can we control that growing the game, and the values of the game, are leading the way, and not personal relationships?” said Lise Klaveness, the Norwegian soccer federation president and a critic of FIFA governance.Saudi Arabia made its on-field case to host the World Cup with a series of strong performances in Qatar in 2022.Molly Darlington/ReutersFIFA, through a spokesman, responded to questions about Mr. Infantino’s actions on the president’s behalf, and said nothing improper had been done to ensure that the World Cup went to a preferred candidate. “The selection of venues for the FIFA World Cup takes place through an open and transparent bidding process,” the spokesman said, adding that Mr. Infantino had not “triggered or initiated” discussions about Saudi Arabia’s bid with potential partners.Still, the swiftness and secrecy with which FIFA handled the hosting rights for the 2030 and 2034 tournaments has brought new criticism of the way soccer is governed, and how the organization’s most consequential decisions are now made by a small group of top executives, led by Mr. Infantino, and then rubber-stamped by a pliant governing council.“What is incredible is this is the new FIFA,” said Miguel Maduro, the first governance head appointed by Mr. Infantino amid promises of transparency and ethical reforms. “Yet they basically go back to the same old way of awarding World Cups.”Saudi Arabia never hid its desire to host one. Under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi state has given sports a prominent role in efforts to project a new image of the country: vibrant, modern, open. Billions have been spent on boxing matches, Formula 1 auto races, the LIV Golf tour and, most recently, to lure some of the worst’s most famous soccer stars to Saudi Arabia’s domestic league.Saudi Arabia has used its immense wealth to lure soccer stars like Cristiano Ronaldo to its domestic soccer league.Fayez Nureldine/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe biggest prize, however, was always the World Cup. And in Mr. Infantino, Saudi Arabia found an enthusiastic ally. In many ways, the kingdom’s ambitions dovetailed with his own as he sought to create new legacy-defining events and projects, all of which would require major infusions of new capital.In 2018, for instance, Mr. Infantino stunned members of FIFA’s board by demanding permission to close a deal for new competitions with investors whose identity he refused to reveal. (After the deal collapsed, it emerged that the group behind the offer, SoftBank, counted Saudi Arabia among its biggest backers.) Three years later, Mr. Infantino infuriated many in soccer by saying FIFA would study a proposal — offered by Saudi Arabia’s federation — to hold the World Cup every two years. (The unpopular concept was shelved after a furious response.)Despite those failures, the relationship between Mr. Infantino and Saudi Arabia only grew closer. He has frequently promoted its events on social media, and in 2021 he starred in a video released by its ministry of sports. In August 2022, he and Prince Mohammed shared a suite at a boxing match in Jeddah. Months later, the FIFA president repaid the favor at the opening game of the World Cup in Qatar. Only last month, the men were photographed sitting side by side at yet another event in Riyadh.“It is intended to send a message,” said Minky Worden, the director of global initiatives at Human Rights Watch, an advocacy group. “It’s like a visual symbol of putting your thumb on the scale.”Prince Mohammed, second from left, with Mr. Infantino, second from right, at a heavyweight boxing match in Jeddah last year.Giuseppe Cacace/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAt the same time, Mr. Infantino was also engaging in private diplomacy that benefited Saudi Arabia’s World Cup ambitions.After Italy passed on partnering on a World Cup bid, Saudi Arabia approached Greece with the offer, and Mr. Infantino discussed the idea with the Greek prime minister on the sidelines of a U.N. meeting in September 2021. But that idea was withdrawn after Morocco joined forces with Spain and Portugal in a potentially unbeatable bid for the 2030 World Cup.Instead, Saudi Arabia shifted its focus. Realizing the Spain-Portugal-Morocco proposal would probably succeed over an unlikely four-nation offer from South America, the Saudis realized they could benefit from FIFA rules that would bar countries from Europe and Africa from challenging for the 2034 tournament when that bidding process began.Then FIFA made two more curious moves.An alliance between Portugal, Morocco and Spain most likely won those countries the rights to the 2030 World Cup, and cleared the path for Saudi Arabia to host in 2034. Jalal Morchidi/EPA, via ShutterstockThe first three games of the 2030 World Cup, it suddenly announced, would be played in Uruguay, Argentina and Paraguay as a celebration of the World Cup’s centenary. (The first World Cup was played in Uruguay in 1930.) That brought South America into the Portugal-Spain-Morocco bid — and eliminated yet another continent from the eligible bidders for 2034.But with the 2030 hosts sorted, FIFA unexpectedly said that it was bringing forward the bid process for the 2034 tournament by at least three years, limiting the countries who could bid for it in ways that favored the Saudi bid, and planning to complete it in what for most countries represented an impossible timeline: Interested nations were given only 25 days to express their intent, and only a few weeks more to submit official bids, which typically require significant government backing.Mr. Infantino claimed there had been “widespread consultation” on the decision. But Ms. Klaveness, the president of the Norway federation, said she only learned of it when the official news release went out, and Australian soccer’s chief executive said the changes “did catch us a little bit by surprise.”Among those not surprised? Saudi Arabia. Within minutes, it released a statement, attributed to Prince Mohammed, that it would bid for 2034. A few hours later, the head of Asian soccer declared the Saudi effort would have the full support of his entire membership.FIFA’s Infantino at the draw for the 2023 Club World Cup in September.EPA, via ShutterstockDays later, Mr. Infantino left little doubt about the outcome he favored. At a summit of Asian soccer officials in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and again during an online meeting of many of the same leaders a week later, the FIFA president urged the Asian confederation — which includes Australia — “to be united for the 2034 World Cup.” The message was not explicit. But it was received.Indonesia, which only a week earlier had talked of bidding, dropped its plan. Australia, the only potential bidder left, pulled out hours before the deadline. Its top official, James Johnson, later said his country had concluded any that proposal stood no chance against a rival with such powerful public support. “The numbers,” he said, “are stacked against us.” More

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      Gotham F.C. Achieves Its Captain’s Dream of Victory

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      Ali Krieger played her last soccer game on Saturday. That was also the day when her team won the championship.Good morning. It’s Tuesday. Today we’ll find out how Gotham F.C. became the one New York area team to win a championship this year. We’ll also get details on what Donald Trump Jr. said in his second appearance in the civil fraud trial against his family and the Trump Organization.Ali Krieger celebrated with teammates after winning the N.W.S.L. Championship match on Saturday. Caroline Brehman/EPA, via ShutterstockOver the weekend Gotham F.C. became the one New York area team to win a championship this year. The team’s new president, Mary Wittenberg, said last month that it was already a big win to make the playoffs. I asked my colleague Claire Fahy, who has kept up with Gotham F.C. all year, to explain how the team accomplished what it did. Here’s what she said:Last year, Gotham F.C. finished 12th out of 12 teams in the National Women’s Soccer League. Last month, the team barely clinched the final spot in the playoffs on a chaotic “decision day,” when almost every team still had a chance at the playoffs and the decisive final games kicked off at the same time.But Gotham became comfortable in its role as spoiler, and the players seemed to believe that anything was possible. Their motivation was powerful: A loss at any stage of the playoffs would end the career of the team’s captain, Ali Krieger, 39, who had announced she would retire when the season was over. “It’s not Ali Krieger’s last game!” became the team’s rallying cry.Win or lose, Saturday’s match finally was Krieger’s last game. And in a storybook ending, Gotham F.C. beat Seattle’s O.L. Reign, 2-1.“You always dream of it that way, right?” Krieger said in an interview on Monday. “You always dream of envisioning yourself on a podium, with the trophy and with the confetti falling.”For Krieger, it was the end of a long road that wound through Germany and Sweden before bringing her back to the United States to help start the N.W.S.L., a career that reflected the struggle to establish a competitive American women’s soccer league. Along the way, she expanded the representation of L.G.B.T.Q. people in professional sports and fought for equal pay alongside her teammates on the U.S. women’s national squad.Gotham F.C. embodies how the N.W.S.L. has changed over the years. In 2018, the team, then called Sky Blue, became notorious for its poor training conditions, which included a lack of showers in the locker rooms, rotating practice fields with uneven grass and bunk beds in team-provided accommodations.Since then, the team has rebranded itself, improved its facilities and made hiring changes, including bringing in a new head coach, Juan Carlos Amorós, who was named N.W.S.L. Coach of the Year last week.And also last week, Carolyn Tisch Blodgett, a member of the family that co-owns the New York Giants, announced that she would join Gotham as a minority owner. The team’s ownership includes Gov. Philip Murphy of New Jersey and his wife, Tammy Murphy, who together owned Sky Blue in 2018. In addition to Tisch Blodgett, the minority owners now include the W.N.B.A. legend Sue Bird, the former N.F.L. quarterback Eli Manning and the N.B.A. star Kevin Durant.The team will now be looking to build on the momentum of a winning season. Gotham’s average attendance — 6,300 people per game, up 42 percent this season from last — still lags behind league leaders like the San Diego Wave and Angel City F.C., which draw an average of 20,000 fans at each game.“This is going to be such a fun city for an organization to really thrive and start building a legacy in,” Krieger said.And now, she’s done something she had never done before — win an N.W.S.L. championship — while playing some of her best soccer. On Saturday, she stepped onto the podium and hoisted the trophy as confetti poured down, just as she had dreamed.“My career has been a gift,” she said, “and to really wrap it up with a bow at the end was just so phenomenal for me.”WeatherA mostly sunny day with temperatures reaching the low 50s. The evening will remain mostly clear, with temperatures in the mid-30s.ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKINGIn effect until Nov. 23 (Thanksgiving Day).The latest New York newsMark Makela for The New York TimesAmtrak service suspended: Amtrak train service on the line between New York City and Albany was again disrupted on Monday morning because of structural issues in a parking garage above the tracks in Midtown Manhattan.High school opt-out: New York could soon stop requiring many high school students to take Regents exams to earn a diploma, a major step in a sweeping overhaul of the state’s graduation system.Leaving Congress early: Representative Brian Higgins, who has spent 19 years in the House from a district that includes Buffalo and Niagara Falls, announced that he would step down in February, before his term ends. He called the Republican leadership of the House “the poster child for dysfunction right now.”Maryanne Trump Barry dies: The former federal judge was an older sister of Donald Trump and served as both his protector and his critic throughout their lives. She was 86.Donald Trump Jr., back on the witness standErin Schaff/The New York TimesDonald Trump Jr., the former president’s eldest son, made a return appearance to testify in the civil fraud case against his father and the family business.He talked in bursts of hyperbole and platitudes. He described his father as a “visionary” and “an artist with real estate” who “creates things that other people would never envision.” He praised amenities including the Central Park views from Trump Tower and the vaults inside the company’s 40 Wall Street building.His testimony was intended to illustrate a key defense claim: The Trump holdings are extremely valuable, and the company’s annual financial statements, if anything, underrate them.New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, has accused the former president and other defendants, including Donald Jr. and his brother Eric, of fraudulently inflating the value of assets to obtain favorable loans and insurance deals. Donald Jr., in his first appearance on Nov. 1, testified that he had no direct involvement in the annual financial statements that Justice Arthur Engoron has already ruled were fraudulent.At times during the trial, Engoron has been impatient with the Trumps and their lawyers, particularly over responses he deemed rambling or indirect. But when lawyers from James’s team raised objections during Donald Jr.’s testimony on Monday, Engoron waved them aside. “Let him go ahead and talk about how great the Trump Organization is,” Engoron said at one point.Later in the day the judge told Donald Jr. to speak more slowly. “We like the enthusiasm, but try to eliminate the speed,” Engoron said.Donald Jr., who led off the family’s rebuttal to James’s accusations, was shown dozens of images of luxury properties — a deliberate contrast to the spreadsheets and emails that James’s team presented as it laid out its case.Trump talked about how the company had turned around moribund assets, including the Wollman Rink in Central Park and 40 Wall Street in Lower Manhattan. In each case, Trump said the properties had fallen into disrepair and that no one had seen their potential — no one but his father.The company, however, no longer manages the ice rink. New York City moved to cut ties with the former president after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. The Trumps also recently sold their lease on a public golf course in the Bronx, which did not stop the defense from playing a tourism video for the property during on Monday.As for 40 Wall Street, James says that the Trumps artificially inflated the value of the property, a 927-foot neo-Gothic tower, in part by claiming to have signed tenants who had yet to commit. METROPOLITAN diaryQuite a rideDear Diary:We were running late to meet friends for dinner at a restaurant in the West 50s.There were no taxis in sight, and the closest subway station was several blocks away. So we hopped into a pedicab and wove off through the early evening theater-district traffic.Eleven hair-raising minutes later, we arrived at the restaurant, almost on time.I tried to pay the driver with a credit card, but his card reader malfunctioned and couldn’t process the transaction. I gave him cash instead.A short time later, as we finished our pre-dinner cocktails, the hostess approached our table and asked if we had arrived in a pedicab. The driver, she said, was there and wanted to talk to me.He was waiting when I got to the front door. He said his card reader had started working again and that it had somehow processed my payment.He was there to give me my cash back.— Tom LippmanIllustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.Geordon Wollner and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com.Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. More

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      Megan Rapinoe, Emma Hayes and a Women’s Soccer Crossroads

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      Rapinoe, who helped define U.S. soccer for a decade, is retiring after this week’s N.W.S.L. final. Hayes, the Chelsea coach, will try to put her stamp on it next.Emma Hayes first met Megan Rapinoe before she was Megan Rapinoe. Or, rather, just as she was becoming Megan Rapinoe. She was not yet a winner of two World Cups, not yet an Olympic champion, not yet captain of her country, not yet a powerful and urgent voice away from the field. Rapinoe was not even a professional soccer player back then, not quite.Hayes’s job was to change that. In 2008, she had been appointed head coach and director of soccer operations of the Chicago Red Stars, one of the inaugural franchises in the start-up league Women’s Professional Soccer. Hayes had a blank slate to fill, a team to construct from scratch. Rapinoe was her first call.That, perhaps, is the best measure of how brightly Rapinoe’s talent shone. When coach and player first met, Rapinoe was just a 23-year-old straight out of the University of Portland, but the power dynamic already lay in her favor. She did not need to convince Hayes. Instead, Hayes had to sell her on the team, on the project, on the city.And so she showed Rapinoe, born and raised in California, around Chicago, hoping to persuade her that the move to the banks of Lake Michigan would suit her. It worked. The Red Stars drafted Rapinoe second overall ahead of the league’s first season.The W.P.S. did not last. It survived for just three seasons. By the time it closed down, Hayes had long since departed the Red Stars. Rapinoe, though, was just getting started.Rapinoe will be looking to add a first N.W.S.L. title to her packed trophy case.Robyn Beck/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAs much as Hayes was convinced of Rapinoe’s promise, even she would not pretend to have known just how far she would go. This weekend, Rapinoe — 38 now — will finally call time on her career. Her plan is for her exit to be framed by ticker-tape and fireworks: with one last triumph, helping OL Reign to claim victory against Gotham F.C. in the N.W.S.L final, a suitably glorious coda to a glittering career.It is no exaggeration to say that, for more than a decade, Rapinoe has been the defining player in women’s soccer. It is not simply that she was a key part in the United States’ victory in the 2015 World Cup, and the driving force behind its repeat triumph four years later. It is that her activism, her unwillingness to shut up and play, turned the U.S. women’s team into something that transcended sports. As a consequence, she helped set the tone for women’s soccer as a whole.It is fitting that Rapinoe’s curtain call should come just as Hayes, the woman who did so much to launch her career, should return to the United States. Not officially, of course; at this stage, the fact that Hayes will be the next coach of the U.S. women’s team is merely an open secret, a fait accompli that must — for now — remain swaddled by a warm blanket of euphemism.Anonymous sources will go only as far as saying Hayes and U.S. Soccer have been “in talks.” Chelsea, the club Hayes has coached for the last decade to considerable success, will only say that the 47-year-old coach will depart at the end of the current season in order to “pursue a new opportunity” outside of England’s Women’s Super League and the club game. Quite what that opportunity might be is not revealed. Sure, maybe she’ll coach the U.S. Or maybe she wants to be a firefighter. It’s anyone’s guess.Emma Hayes is expected to leave Chelsea next year to coach the United States women’s team.John Sibley/Action Images, via ReutersThere is just one established fact, even if it is by some distance the most salient one. Hayes, winner of six W.S.L. titles and five F.A. Cups and easily the most prominent manager in the women’s game in England, has quit her job. She has told Chelsea she is going. That, more than anything, reveals exactly how far those mysterious talks have progressed.It is not hard to see why the prospect of coaching the United States appeals to Hayes. So rich is the team’s history that it remains the most prestigious job in women’s soccer. Given that she will be given salary parity with Gregg Berhalter, the coach of the U.S. men’s team, it will also be the most lucrative.Hayes will, though, have to earn that money. The last time she took a job in the United States, her task was to help kick-start an era. A decade and a half later, that is in the job description once again. The context, though, is starkly different. This time, before the start, Hayes has to oversee an end.It might be vaguely possible to spin Hayes’s appointment as a return — her early career résumé also includes spells at the Long Island Lady Riders (which we can all agree is not a great name for a team), the Washington Freedom and the Western New York Flash — but she has not been hired because of her familiarity with American soccer’s modern landscape. She has been appointed precisely because she is an outsider to it.Hayes in May, after leading Chelsea to its fourth straight league title.John Sibley/Action Images, via ReutersIt is not simply that Hayes represents a considerable break with tradition. Almost all of her predecessors as national team coach have come from positions on the side of the Atlantic that has been slow to embrace contactless technology. The U.S. job was, in some senses, the reward for success in American soccer.That made perfect sense. For decades, the United States was the driving force of the women’s game. Its professional league, in whatever guise, was the gold standard of the sport. Players from across the world, where domestic competitions were often professional only in name, flocked there. The national team was the pinnacle of that program, and therefore the zenith of the game.This summer, though, made it abundantly clear that had changed. The United States exited the World Cup in the round of 16. Its impact on the tournament was minimal. What happened in Australia and New Zealand illustrated a power shift that had been coming for some time. Two European teams contested the final. Five of the eight quarterfinalists were European.Those nations, including the U.S., who drew large portions of their squads from the N.W.S.L. tended to fall early. It was something that Hayes herself spotted. “There is still a huge amount of talent in this U.S. team,” she wrote in a column for The Daily Telegraph during the World Cup. “But with so many of the squad playing solely in the N.W.S.L., it doesn’t offer enough diversity to their squad in terms of playing against different styles.”She would, she wrote, be “shocked” if young players continued to migrate to the U.S. to play in the college system when professional teams were recruiting — and paying so well — in Europe. In the future, she predicted, it would be “very, very difficult” for the U.S. to regain its primacy without “the right conversations around their model.”This year’s World Cup was a major disappointment for the United States and its stars.Asanka Brendon Ratnayake/ReutersThat it will be Hayes leading those conversations is, of course, a tacit acknowledgment that her assertion was correct. By appointing someone who has built their career and reputation in Europe to overturn the reality that it has fallen behind, U.S. Soccer is effectively accepting the truth of it. One era is at an end, and it is time for another to begin.Perhaps, then, this weekend’s N.W.S.L. final is best thought of as the moment of transition. Rapinoe has never won an N.W.S.L. title. This is her final chance to end her wait, to complete her set, to place a golden bow on her career and all that she has accomplished and represented.That she would have that moment playing for OL Reign — a team controlled, ultimately, by owners in France — would feel appropriate, too, a nod not just to where the game has been, but to where it is going.CorrespondenceLast-place Sheffield United had to wait until November for its first Premier League victory.Marc Atkins/Getty ImagesWe were all too busy learning about the demographic transformation of Spain in the 20th century last week for Ben Coles to make the correspondence cut, but I wanted to return to his note this week, largely because the subject he raised is one I have been contemplating for a while. In a way. From the opposite perspective, in fact.“Is every team from Everton on up in the current Premier League table allowed a little room for complacency this season?” Ben asked, in direct contravention of the mantra that everything is necessarily the best in the best of all possible leagues. “Not because they’ve cracked the code of survival, but because Sheffield United, Burnley, Luton and Bournemouth are so poor? It almost feels like a noncompetition.”It is fair, I think, to suggest that the dimensions of the relegation battle seem to have been drawn unusually early in the Premier League this season. Sheffield United had to be rebuilt on the fly. Burnley and Bournemouth have both gone very — some might say excessively — heavy on young and unproven talent. Luton made no attempt to disguise the fact it was not intending to blow all of the money it made on promotion to the Premier League on the Sisyphean task of trying to stay there.That is not to say relegation for any of them is a foregone conclusion. Things change, and change quickly, in the early part of the season. It is hardly inconceivable that, in a few weeks, Fulham or Everton or Crystal Palace have hit a slump, or that one of those teams that currently looks doomed to a season of struggle has found some form. Luton, in particular, appears to be coming to grips with the exigencies of Premier League soccer at considerable speed, as last week’s (more than merited) draw with Liverpool illustrated.But there is one element working against those four clubs, and that is the quality at the other end of the Premier League table this season. Even allowing for the fact that Manchester City will, in all likelihood, streak to a fourth successive championship, the pool of teams immediately below them is unusually deep.There are eight clubs — Tottenham, Arsenal, Liverpool, Aston Villa, Newcastle, Brighton, Manchester United and Chelsea — that will harbor justifiable ambitions of qualifying not just for Europe but for the Champions League, given that England is likely to have five emissaries in the revamped competition next season.Anthony Gordon and Newcastle are sixth in the Premier League, but only seven points out of first.Peter Powell/EPA, via ShutterstockThe overall quality of the league may well, in fact, be higher than it has ever been. That assertion will, of course, be dismissed as recency bias, or willful exaggeration, or simply deeply ahistoric; such is the power of nostalgia that governs our relationship with sports.There is a potent tendency to assume that what went before was somehow better: We are inclined, after all, simultaneously to remember the good parts of the past (look at that Thierry Henry goal!) and to see only the flaws (Manchester City 6, Bournemouth 1) of the present.But it feels, increasingly, as if the Premier League is starting not only to fulfill the bombast of its own marketing material but its foundational premise: For the first time, a majority of its clubs have found a way to use the great piles of money at their disposal to become genuinely quite good at soccer. That is good for the clubs, and good for the fans, and good for the competition. It is less good for those teams thrown into it with precious little preparation. More