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      Is Fluminense the Team of the Future?

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      A soccer revolution started with a text message, but the broader game wants proof. A win in the Copa Libertadores final on Saturday might provide it.The story starts with a message. Everything that has followed and everything that might yet — the glory and the acclaim, the opportunity and the revolution — has unspooled from a simple text. Everyone involved can agree on that. What is not entirely clear, though, is precisely which message was the one that counted.The official version runs like this. One night in April last year, the soccer coach Fernando Diniz sent a message to Mario Bittencourt, the president of Fluminense, one of the traditional giants of Brazilian soccer. It was not the usual modus operandi for Diniz: In more than a decade as a manager, he had tended to wait for clubs to come to him. It was a point of professional pride.In this case, though, he was prepared to make an exception. Fluminense had just fired its coach. Diniz had both played for and managed the team already, and he had fond memories of his time working with Bittencourt, a 45-year-old lawyer. In his heart, he said, he felt that “the time was right to return.”His message — one full of “shyness, reflection and a very pure feeling,” as Diniz put it, which is the vibe of most of my WhatsApps, too — found a receptive audience. “He was the one I wanted, but we hadn’t spoken yet,” Bittencourt told the Brazilian news outlet Globo. He put the coincidence down to an “exchange of energy,” one that was too portentous to ignore. Diniz got the job.Pedro Diniz, soccer’s man of the moment.Ricardo Moraes/ReutersThere is, though, another version of the story, based on another message. “It’s funny, because my wife and I hardly discuss work at all,” Bittencourt said. Not just his legal practice, “but Fluminense, too, and she is a passionate fan.” That evening, though, she had sent him a message, too. It read, simply: “Diniz, Diniz, Diniz.”Given what has happened since, it is easy to see why Bittencourt prefers to believe his decision was defined by some ineffable universal force. In April this year, Diniz led Fluminense to the Rio de Janeiro state championship — ahead of its fierce rival, Flamengo — to claim the first title of his coaching career.On Saturday, he can cast that into shadow. Fluminense faces Boca Juniors, the Argentine behemoth, in the final of the Copa Libertadores, South America’s most prestigious club championship. Ten Brazilian teams have conquered the continent at one point or another over the last 60 years. Fluminense is not among them. Not yet.Despite the fact that more than 100,000 Argentines are expected in Rio de Janeiro for the fixture — Boca fans travel in such numbers that “everywhere we go feels like home,” as the club’s midfielder Valentín Barco put it — Fluminense has home-field advantage: the final will be played at the Maracana. Everything is aligned for Diniz to become the man to end the wait.His impact, though, may yet extend far beyond the power dynamics of Brazilian domestic soccer. Just as significant as what Fluminense has achieved under his aegis is the way that it has done it, playing a sort of soccer that has come to be seen — both in South America and further afield — as a vision of the future.Ganso, right, and André, two fixtures in Fluminense’s shape-shifting lineup.Ricardo Moraes/ReutersAs is inevitable, a rich vocabulary has been used to describe the style of play pioneered by Diniz’s team. It varies in usefulness from the merely unwieldy to the actively unhelpful: there is “relationism” and “anti-positional” and, sufficiently evocative to warrant italicization rather than quotation marks, Dinizismo.What it is all trying to express is this: In the schools of thought that dominate elite soccer, the abiding principle is that the field is defined and dominated by positions. Players occupy specific spaces, both when their team and does not have the ball, in order to manipulate the field of play, stretching and contracting it as suits their interests.“Diniz sees soccer in a different way,” as Rodrygo, the Real Madrid and Brazil forward, has put it. Rather than players being hidebound by notional placements, over the last 18 months, his Fluminense team has been marked by its fluidity.Players blend into whatever role the moment demands. Instead of placing the emphasis on a tightly-defined structure, the framework is much looser. Individuals are encouraged to solve problems as they see them, to invent solutions, to cluster around the ball as tightly as possible, even if that runs the risk of leaving other areas of the field undermanned.It is, according to the Brazil forward Matheus Cunha, a style that it would be “impossible” to see in European soccer. To Diniz, it is an approach that is particularly suited to Brazilian players, who are raised not just on the improvisational style of street soccer but also futsal, the small-sided game that offers many of them their first experiences in the sport. Dinizismo is jogo bonito in the age of analytics.The reason both Cunha and Rodrygo have opinions on this is testament to the impression Diniz has made. Fluminense finished a creditable third in Brazil’s top flight last season — scoring 63 goals, a total surpassed only by the champion, Palmeiras — and has lagged only a little this year, doubtless distracted just a touch by the prospect of winning the Copa Libertadores.Brazil’s players pushed for Diniz to coach the national team, but his ideas did not translate immediately.Matilde Campodonico/Associated PressBut Diniz has won so many hearts and minds that earlier this year, he was placed in temporary control of the Brazilian national team, at least in part because the players had lobbied on his behalf. (As early as July last year, Neymar, no less, had anointed Diniz one of the best coaches in the world on Instagram, the official platform for informed debate.)Initial results, with Brazil, have been mixed: Diniz oversaw a simple win against Bolivia, a narrow one against Peru, a draw at home to Venezuela and a comprehensive loss to Uruguay. A number of players have confessed that, in the brief, hurried intervals that constitute international soccer, it is not especially easy to internalize a whole new concept of how to play soccer.For Brazil — as noted in this newsletter two weeks ago — the repercussions of those teething troubles are insignificant: It will qualify for the next World Cup anyway. For Diniz, or more particularly for his ideas, they are of rather more consequence.Soccer will only indulge new ideas for so long before demanding what is, in effect, proof of concept. For something to catch on, to inspire mimicry, it requires evidence that it works. If Diniz is to be considered a pioneer, the father of a school of thought, the author of a revolution, he needs something tangible, something concrete.That might be the revival of the Brazilian national team. Or, more likely, it might be the first Copa Libertadores trophy in Fluminense’s history. For the club, that would represent the glorious climax to a story. But for the idea that has brought it there, it might just be a gleaming, shimmering start.Here We Go AgainDave Thompson/Associated PressThere are few subjects in human history that have been covered in quite so much detail as the ongoing malaise of Manchester United, 2013-present.There are people with no interest in soccer who know full well that the club is wilting under the feckless ownership of the Glazer family. There are hermits in far-flung caves who could tell you that the club’s recruitment policy has been haphazard and ill-considered.It is possible that, deep below the ocean waves, there are colossal squid using the independent neurons in their tentacles to tell each other that, yes, United has really been held back by the absence of an effective sporting structure.What is increasingly fascinating about United, though, is the way those problems seem to pass from one generation of players, coaches and executives to the next, a form of toxic cultural transmission that no overhaul of squad or staff can stop. Those players who are signed seem inevitably to succumb to it. Those coaches who are appointed to remedy it find themselves afflicted.The path from here is a well-trodden one. Perhaps United will fire its current coach, Erik ten Hag. (“We know how it ends,” the former United defender Gary Neville tweeted after another humiliating defeat on Wednesday.) Perhaps it will have to go and spend many hundreds of millions more dollars on players in January, and next summer, and on and on.United has been here before, too. It has tried all of that, more than once. No style of manager — disciplinarian or entertainer, veteran or fresh face — has worked. It does not appear to be a problem that can be solved with money.It is something more complex, more deep-rooted than that. Club and team are not synonyms. One can be changed relatively easily, one player substituted in for another. The institution they represent, though, has an ineffable but defining character. That is altered only at glacial pace, and cannot be traded out over the course of a couple of summers. That is what United needs to change. If the last 10 years are any guide, it does not yet know how.CorrespondenceThis newsletter has always seen itself as a two-way street: It is, like all the best content these days, designed not to be so much a series of pronouncements as a rolling conversation, broken up only by one or two abrupt changes of subject and the occasional targeted advertisement (often for watches, don’t know why).The benefit of this, naturally, is that I am able to benefit/profit from your collective wisdom, as amply demonstrated by Ryan Guilmartin. Last week’s edition included an idle aside noting that many of Barcelona’s academy products end up playing for at least a portion of their career at Real Betis. And now, thanks to Ryan, I know why.Part of it, he said, is the stylistic fit — Betis traditionally plays a similar sort of soccer to the one preached in the hallowed halls of Barcelona’s La Masia academy — but another part is to do with the sheer number of self-described Beticos in Catalunya. “During the Franco years, there was a great northern migration from Andalucía,” he wrote.Real Betis has tactical and traditional links to Barcelona.Raul Caro/EPA, via Shutterstock“Franco’s goal was to wipe out Catalan and Basque identities, so he had those regions industrialized and encouraged migration from poorer and more ‘Spanish’ regions like Andalucía. If you know any Betis fans, you know how fiercely loyal to the club they are, so even though they moved to Barcelona, they kept and passed down their love for Real Betis.“As kids of these migrants ended up at La Masia, if they couldn’t quite make the cut at Barca, they were drawn to Betis. Hector Bellerín is a prime example. His father is Betico, and the player himself has said that this was a reason he went to Betis originally.”In exchange for enlightening me on that subject, I will pass the favor along to Jason Bogdan. Sort of.“Jude Bellingham is clearly the best player on the planet at the moment,” Jason wrote, in the naïve belief that there is something akin to consensus in soccer. “Has there ever been a time when the head and shoulders above everyone else best player was only 20 years old? Messi and Ronaldo cancel each other out. I am not old enough to have witnessed it myself but perhaps Pelé?”Just to get this out of the way: This stance is debatable at best, Jason, owing to the existence of Kylian Mbappé and Erling Haaland, among others. But it is an interesting point: Looking back, you might assume that Pelé was regarded — certainly between 1958 and 1970, his peak years — as quite clearly the best player in the world.But I’m not sure that’s true, partly because of Garrincha, Alfredo di Stéfano, Eusébio, Franz Beckenbauer, George Best and Bobby Charlton, and partly because comparing players was infinitely harder. Pelé appeared on most people’s television screens only once every four years. Brazilian domestic soccer was not broadcast outside Brazil. The many, many tour games he played were dismissed as meaningless exhibitions.At the time, I’m not sure it would have been universally agreed he was the best player on the planet. More to the point, if anyone had thought about it, I’m not sure if there was an especially convincing way to establish precisely who was. More

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      Saudi Arabia Is Set to Be Sole Bidder for 2034 World Cup

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      Australia announced it would not bid for the tournament, clearing the way for the Saudis to bring soccer’s biggest championship back to the Gulf.Saudi Arabia emerged as the likely winner in the abbreviated race to host soccer’s World Cup in 2034 on Tuesday after Australia’s soccer federation announced that it would not bid for the tournament. The decision most likely removed the only hurdle in the way of Saudi Arabia’s plan to bring the world’s most-watched sporting event back to the Gulf.Australia announced its decision hours before a deadline set by soccer’s governing body, FIFA, for nations to express an interest in hosting the World Cup. Saudi Arabia made clear its intent to bid weeks ago, and FIFA’s rules — and powerful allies — have all but assured it will prevail.In a sudden and surprising move earlier this month, FIFA announced a truncated bidding timeline for the tournament, telling interested nations that they had only 25 days to formally express their interest and provide extensive declarations of government backing for a 48-team, multicity event that usually requires billions of dollars and years of planning.The decision to shorten that timeline to only a matter of weeks was announced on the same day FIFA formally announced that its 2030 World Cup would be shared by countries in Europe, Africa and South America.FIFA’s move to speed up the bidding for 2034 surprised many, coming 11 years before the scheduled start of the tournament and a full three years before the 2034 host was supposed to be decided. FIFA also said only bidders from Asia and Oceania, two of soccer’s six regional confederations, could be considered for selection.Saudi Arabia, which had for years been public about its desire to host the World Cup, particularly after its neighbor Qatar won the rights to the 2022 championship, moved fast to secure the tournament after FIFA set the rules this month. Its de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, declared the kingdom’s intent to bid within minutes of FIFA’s announcement of the official timeline, and within hours the Saudis had received the backing of Asian soccer leaders.Australia, widely considered an outsider, had said that after successfully staging this year’s Women’s World Cup it would explore the idea of push for the men’s tournament. But on Tuesday it announced that it had decided not to mount an official bid, saying it would instead concentrate on staging other events.“We wish FIFA and the eventual hosts of the FIFA World Cup 2034 the greatest success for the good of the game and for everyone who loves our sport,” the Australian federation said in a statement on its website.Australian officials may have concluded that they would have been overmatched if they challenged Saudi Arabia to secure the votes of the majority of FIFA’s 211 federations. Saudi Arabia has in the past year signed agreements with scores of FIFA’s member nations, and it also had locked up the crucial backing of the Asian soccer confederation, of which Australia is also a member.Almost as soon as Saudi Arabia declared its intention to bid, the president of the Asian confederation, Sheikh Salman bin Ibrahim al Khalifa of Bahrain, announced that “the entire Asian football family will stand united in support” of the Saudi bid. More

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      Lionel Messi Wins Eighth Ballon D’Or as Soccer’s Best Player

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      Messi is the first M.L.S. player to win the award. Aitana Bonmatí of Spain won the women’s prize.The Ballon d’Or, the most prestigious individual soccer award of the year, rewards the best player over a 12-month period. But Lionel Messi essentially won it in just about a month late last year.Messi, 36, was awarded the prize on Monday for the eighth time, and the first time since he signed with Inter Miami of Major League Soccer in July. Aitana Bonmatí of Barcelona and the World Cup-winning Spanish national team won the women’s award for the first time.Messi’s exploits in Miami, as good as they were, did not earn him the award. Rather it was his performance in helping carry Argentina last December to its first World Cup since 1986. Just when it seemed that he would finish his career without lifting the cup, he helped his nation win the title with seven goals, including two in the final against France. He won the tournament’s most valuable player award as well.That performance more or less locked up the Ballon d’Or 11 months before it was handed to him. In the meantime, he left Paris St.-Germain for a contract with Miami that pays him more than $50 million a year, according to reports.When M.L.S. began play in 1996, the hope, frankly, was merely to survive in a football, baseball and basketball-obsessed country. Surely few thought that the world’s best player would be plying his trade in the United States by 2023.Messi earned the Ballon d’Or for his exploits at the World Cup in Qatar, not the Leagues Cup in Miami. Still, the award was a coup for M.L.S., which has already gained international exposure by signing him. Sales of Messi’s pink Inter jersey have skyrocketed worldwide, putting the league on the map in places it had been little noticed before.Messi’s first six Ballons d’Or came when he was playing for Barcelona, the club team he had represented since he was 13. When that club ran into financial problems, he tearfully left for the Qatar-financed P.S.G. Though he won one more Ballon d’Or there, his time was mostly unhappy, and it ended in a bitter divorce.Then it was on to Miami, where he hardly looked like a late-30-something playing out the string. He guided Inter to victory in the Leagues Cup, for Mexican and M.L.S. teams, with a tournament-leading 10 goals. But the team, which had been terrible before his arrival, was buried too deeply in the standings to make the M.L.S. Cup playoffs.Messi has pronounced himself happy in Miami, though “one never completely adapts to this climate,” he said in August.The pre-award debate centered on whether Messi’s amazing month at the World Cup should trump the fine yearlong play of the Norwegian striker Erling Haaland, who won just about every club trophy available with mighty Manchester City. Voters thought it did.Messi’s eighth Ballon d’Or is another positive tally in his long-running battle for best player of his generation with the Portuguese forward Cristiano Ronaldo, who is second on the all-time list with five of the awards, which date to 1956. Ronaldo, 38, now seems unlikely to win any more, especially after signing a big-money contract with Al-Nassr in the unheralded Saudi league at the end of last year.Aitana Bonmatí scored three goals for Spain in the World Cup this year and won the tournament’s M.V.P. award.Jose Breton/Associated PressThis year’s Ballon d’Or awards, announced at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, cover performances from August 2022 to July 2023.Bonmatí, 25, a midfielder, won the women’s Ballon d’Or, after helping her club team, Barcelona, win Europe’s biggest tournament, the Champions League.She topped that with her performance in the World Cup, which technically took place outside the window for which players were judged, scoring three goals and winning the tournament’s M.V.P. award as Spain defeated England, 1-0, in the final in Sydney in August.Bonmatí has developed a reputation as a player who tirelessly seeks improvement, studying performance data, reading and working with her own fitness coach, nutritionist and psychologist. “I try to understand everything,” Bonmatí, the daughter of two lecturers in Catalan literature, told The New York Times in June. “I am a very curious person.”Her Spain and Barcelona teammate Alexia Putellas, winner of the last two Ballons d’Or, was injured for most of the year. More

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      FIFA Bans Luis Rubiales, Former Soccer Chief in Spain, for 3 Years

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      Luis Rubiales, who led the country’s soccer federation, departed in disgrace after he forcibly kissed a player after the Women’s World Cup final.Soccer’s global governing body on Monday barred Luis Rubiales, the former president of Spain’s soccer federation, from the sport for three years over his forcible kiss of a player after the Women’s World Cup final in August.Mr. Rubiales kissed the player, Jennifer Hermoso, during the medals ceremony after the Women’s World Cup final on Aug. 20, a televised action that cast a pall over the Spanish team’s celebrations, drawing attention away from a proud national moment and toward a legacy of sexism in Spanish soccer. It also led to accusations in the days that followed that Mr. Rubiales and others at the federation had pressured the player to say the kiss was consensual.Ms. Hermoso instead filed a criminal complaint of sexual assault, and Mr. Rubiales — who initially resisted calls to resign — was placed under a provisional 90-day suspension while FIFA, soccer’s governing body, investigated the episode. He quit as the head of Spain’s soccer federation less than a month after the final, under pressure from players who were refusing to take the field for the women’s national team.On Monday, FIFA’s Disciplinary Committee said that Mr. Rubiales would be banned from “all football-related activities at the national and international levels for three years” for breaching the organization’s disciplinary code by his actions after the final on Aug. 20. It did not provide further details on the findings but said that Mr. Rubiales could request them, at which point a so-called reasoned decision would be made public.Mr. Rubiales could then appeal the case multiple times, first with a FIFA panel and then at the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Switzerland.In a statement on X, the social media network formerly known as Twitter, Mr. Rubiales rejected FIFA’s decision and declared, “I’m going to fight.”“I will go to the end so that justice is done and truth shines,” he added. “Despite much effort by politicians, the media and institutions, the disproportion and the injustice committed is becoming increasingly clearer.”There was no immediate comment from Ms. Hermoso or Spain’s women’s team.Mr. Rubiales has insisted that he did nothing wrong at the medals ceremony, describing the kiss as a consensual “peck,” and in an unrepentant address at a federation meeting he argued that he was a victim of “social assassination” and “false feminism.”Ms. Hermoso and her teammates pushed back just as forcefully, describing years of sexism and mistreatment at the hands of the country’s soccer federation, and rejecting any suggestion that the kiss — which took place only feet from Queen Letizia of Spain, who was also participating in the medals ceremony — had been consensual.After Spain’s federation released a statement to that effect in Ms. Hermoso’s name, she responded with one of her own. “I want to clarify that, as seen in the images, at no time did I consent to the kiss he gave me,” Ms. Hermoso wrote. “I do not tolerate my word being questioned, much less that it be made-up words that I haven’t said.”Ms. Hermoso has said that she “felt vulnerable and the victim of an impulse-driven, sexist, out-of-place act without any consent on my part” — and that she had initially faced pressure to downplay Mr. Rubiales’s actions.In September, a court in Spain issued a restraining order that prohibits Mr. Rubiales from coming within 200 meters of Ms. Hermoso while the sexual assault investigation continues. More

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      Colombia Troops Search for Liverpool Star Luis Diaz’s Kidnapped Father

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      The parents of Luis Díaz, a Colombian star of the English club, were both kidnapped on Saturday. His mother was rescued hours later, but his father remains missing.The authorities in Colombia have mobilized the national police and the military to look for the father of the soccer star Luis Díaz, a Colombian standout for the English club Liverpool whose parents were kidnapped in his hometown on Saturday. Given soccer’s popularity here, the incident captured the South American country’s attention, but it also stoked fears of increasing insecurity in a nation where such kidnappings were becoming less common until a surge in recent years.Mr. Díaz’s mother, Cilenis Marulanda, was rescued hours after she was abducted, President Gustavo Petro of Colombia said on Saturday night. The Colombian national police, the military and a unit that specializes in kidnapping dispatched officers, soldiers, cars and aircraft to find his father, Luis Manuel Díaz.The parents of Mr. Díaz, who is known as Lucho, had been in a car at a gas station in Barrancas — a town in La Guajira, a region of northern Colombia along the Caribbean Sea and bordering Venezuela — when they were kidnapped by armed men on Saturday afternoon, according to local reports and the authorities.The Colombian authorities on Sunday morning announced a reward of 200 million pesos (roughly $48,000) for any information that would help locate the elder Mr. Díaz.They said they were in a rush to find him because they feared that he might be taken to neighboring Venezuela, a country marred by years of political, economic and social unrest. Luis Fernando Velasco, the Colombian minister of the interior, told reporters on Sunday that the authorities were trying to block the suspects’ path to Venezuela because their traveling there was “one hypothesis” they were operating under.“It’s not the only one, to cover all sides,” he continued. “But we’re doing a gigantic operation, and I ask all people in La Guajira that might be in the area to help us and turn in all the information that they can. What they’ve done with Lucho Díaz is not just to Lucho Díaz but to all of Colombia, and all of Colombia needs to react.”While details of Ms. Marulanda’s rescue were not immediately known, she was safe as of Saturday night, William René Salamanca, the head of the Colombian national police, said. In a video posted on Saturday night on X, formerly known as Twitter, Mr. Salamanca spoke briefly on the phone with Ms. Marulanda.Diogo Jota, a Liverpool player, held up Luis Díaz’s jersey as he celebrated scoring a goal during a home match against Nottingham Forest at the club’s stadium on Sunday.Scott Heppell/ReutersIn another video, posted by Mr. Salamanca on Sunday morning, he spoke on the phone with the younger Mr. Díaz via the Colombian ambassador to the United Kingdom, Roy Barreras. Mr. Salamanca told Mr. Díaz, 26, that the Colombian authorities were sparing no effort in trying to find his father and that the situation had moved the country. He also told Mr. Díaz that he was already in La Guajira and was headed to his hometown soon to help lead the operation.Mr. Díaz is reportedly earning more than $3 million a year, and thus may have been a target for extortion, said Sergio Guzmán, the director of Colombia Risk Analysis, a political risk consultancy, based in the Colombian capital, Bogotá.“I’m presuming it’s an extortion kidnapping, which wouldn’t necessarily be out of the norm, because Luis Díaz is not politically connected or an important player politically, and neither are his parents,” Mr. Guzmán said. “But his notoriety, his rise to fame and perceived wealth could be more for that kind of hostage taking.”Although kidnappings have dropped dramatically since Colombia’s peace treaty with rebels in 2016, Mr. Guzmán said the practice had surged over the past two years. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, used extortion kidnapping to fund their operations. But in recent years, Mr. Guzmán said, other criminal groups have been battling for territory previously held by the demobilized FARC, and thus more extortions, kidnappings and ransoms have been happening.“I think it feeds into the existing pessimism about the country’s security situation,” Mr. Guzmán said of the kidnapping of Mr. Díaz’s parents. He also noted that Colombians were voting on Sunday in regional elections. “If you look at the latest polls, the majority of Colombians feel dissatisfied with the overall direction of the country, but also citizens feel less safe than they have previously,” he said.Mr. Díaz rose from playing for his local Indigenous team to larger clubs in Colombia before eventually landing in Europe and then last year at Liverpool.Daniel Munoz/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesSoccer is the most popular sport in the country of nearly 52 million, and Mr. Díaz has shined for his country’s national team, winning the Golden Boot award, alongside the Argentine superstar Lionel Messi, for being the top scorer during the 2021 Copa América tournament.Mr. Díaz’s father was a gifted amateur player in Barrancas and trained his son. Mr. Díaz, who is of Wayúu descent and comes from an area often overlooked for soccer talent, rose from playing for his local Indigenous team to larger clubs in Colombia before eventually landing in Europe and then last year at Liverpool, one of the biggest clubs in the world, in the Premier League in England.Mr. Díaz, who has scored twice in nine appearances for Liverpool this season, was not in the lineup on Sunday against Nottingham Forest after a last-minute change by Liverpool’s manager, Jürgen Klopp. Mr. Klopp told reporters on Sunday that what was happening to Mr. Díaz and his family was “a worrying situation for all of us and it was a pretty tough night.”After the Liverpool player Diogo Jota scored during Sunday’s 3-0 win, he ran to the sideline and held up Mr. Díaz’s jersey.“It is our fervent hope that the matter is resolved safely and at the earliest possible opportunity,” Liverpool said in a statement on Sunday morning. “In the meantime, the player’s welfare will continue to be our immediate priority.” More

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      At Barcelona, Timing Is Everything

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      The Barcelona team that faces Real Madrid in Saturday’s Clásico will be marked by youth, mostly because the club’s dire straits meant it had to be.As he rose through the ranks at Barcelona, Gerard Deulofeu seemed to have everything. Above all, he was fast, possessed of that urgent, quicksilver sort of speed that carries with it an air of permanent menace. But he had composure, too, a coolness on the ball, that stood out even at La Masia, Barcelona’s revered academy.His coaches knew, of course, that no player is a sure thing, but as far as they could tell, Deulofeu stood as good a chance as anyone. He scored buckets of goals for Barcelona’s reserve team, competing in the second tier of Spanish soccer. Luis Enrique, his manager, regarded him as his “standout.” He was fast-tracked into the senior side at the age of just 17.Deulofeu, though, never quite made it at Barcelona, not really. He spent a year on loan at Everton, to toughen him up, and then another season at Sevilla. He felt Luis Enrique, previously such an ardent advocate, did not “trust” him now that he was in charge of the senior team. There was scrutiny of Deulofeu’s industry, his attentiveness, his work ethic.Those criticisms were doubtless legitimate, but the real issue Deulofeu faced was less what he was, and more who he was not. In front of Deulofeu in Barcelona’s attacking queue, over the course of those years, were (in no particular order): Lionel Messi, Neymar, Luis Suárez, Cesc Fàbregas, Alexis Sánchez and Pedro. Andrés Iniesta could always fill a gap, too. Deulofeu played six times for Barcelona, and was sold.He was not alone in suffering that fate. In the club’s years of plenty, an apparently endless supply of prodigies rattled off the Barcelona production line. There was Cristian Tello and Isaac Cuenca and Adama Traoré and, because they were not all wingers, Marc Bartra and Rafinha and Martín Montoya.Like Deulofeu — now an alumnus of A.C. Milan, Udinese and Watford — they have mostly gone on to build respectable careers in Europe’s elite leagues. Tello played for Porto and Fiorentina. Bartra had a spell at Borussia Dortmund. Montoya spent two seasons at Valencia. For reasons that are not entirely clear, many of them seem to have joined Real Betis at one point or another.Gerard Deulofeu, once a sure thing at Barcelona, now plays for Udinese in Italy.Riccardo Antimiani/EPA, via ShutterstockMarc Bartra, now at Real Betis, has played in Germany and Turkey since leaving Barcelona.Robert Perry/EPA, via ShutterstockNo matter their early promise, though, none of them proved quite good enough for Barcelona. That, certainly, is how they are remembered, perhaps even how they will remember themselves, in time: that they fell just short, were in some way lacking. But that does not mean it is precisely what happened.Last week, Marc Guiu made his debut for Barcelona. He is 17, just as Deulofeu was when he was first summoned to the field for his boyhood team. Almost immediately, he picked up a pass from Joao Félix. He brought it under control with his left foot, and then swept a shot past Unai Simon, the Athletic Bilbao goalkeeper, with his right. He had been on the field for 23 seconds.Guiu’s case is, obviously, extraordinary — he is both the youngest and the fastest debutante to score a league goal for Barcelona. But it also felt, somehow, fitting. The Barcelona team that will host Real Madrid in the first Clásico of the season on Saturday is one filled with youth. Alejandro Baldé, 20, is now the default left back for both his club and Spain. The midfield has been constructed around Gavi (19) and Pedri (20). Fermín López, another 20-year-old, scored in this week’s 2-1 win against Shakhtar Donetsk in the Champions League.And then, of course, there is Lamine Yamal, the 16-year-old who has spent the last six months making it almost comically easy to remember who holds basically every age-related record in Spanish soccer.Yamal is now the youngest player to play for Barcelona in La Liga, the youngest player to start for Barcelona in La Liga, the youngest player to create a goal in La Liga, the youngest player to score in La Liga, and the youngest player to start a game in the Champions League. An unhelpful comparison: At the same age, Messi was still trundling about with Barcelona’s third team.The 16-year-old forward Lamine Yamal might appear in his first Clásico on Saturday.Joan Monfort/Associated PressSoccer is, of course, a results-oriented business. It is inclined to wait for an outcome before it reverse-engineers an explanation. By that logic, the difference between these two clutches of players is obvious. Yamal and his cohort are simply more talented than the generation that emerged from Barcelona’s youth ranks a decade or so ago; it follows, then, that La Masia must have rediscovered its magic touch.It should be remembered, though, that talent is only one of the ingredients that goes into the whether any given player makes it or not. Attitude, coaches will tell you, is just as important. Nobody is in any doubt that luck — particularly the good fortune to avoid serious injury — plays a role, too.But none of them are relevant without opportunity, and opportunity, in this context, tends to arise from crisis. The Barcelona team that Deulofeu and his peers were trying to break into contained some of the finest players of their generation. It won the Champions League three times in seven years, and probably should have won more. It is, rightly, remembered as one of the finest club teams in history. Its golden age spanned a decade, perhaps more. It was not a place, in other words, where young players could cut their teeth.The Barcelona of today, by contrast, the one that has granted opportunity to Yamal and the others, is a force diminished. Its parlous finances have forced all but a handful of its greatest generation to leave. Its plan — mortgaging its future for immediate success — might kindly be described as a moderate success, but it left the club with little choice but to turn to youth to fill the gaps.Young stars and old men: Barcelona will wear jerseys with the Rolling Stones logo in the Clásico as part of a marketing deal.F.C. Barcelona, via EPA, via ShutterstockIt is heartening to believe that a player like Yamal — and certainly the likes of Gavi and Pedri — would have come through at any time, in any context. So shimmering is their ability, they stand as proof that talent always wins out, that there is such a thing as a player who is destined to break through.But it is hard to believe that López, say, or Guiu, would have been given the chance had it not been for the circumstances in which Barcelona has found itself, that they would have been able to establish themselves if they had Iniesta or Suárez or any of the others standing in their way.The same could be said of La Masia’s most famous graduates, of course: They, too, emerged just at the moment when Barcelona needed them most. That is not a coincidence. Opportunity tends to have its roots in crisis. Deulofeu and his generation did not lack talent, not necessarily. They just had their timing all wrong.Judging the JudgesThe Ballon d’Or favorite at rest.Juan Mabromata/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesLet’s go through this quickly, one more time, just in case anyone is not quite clear on the principle. It will not be disgraceful if — when — Lionel Messi wins an eighth Ballon d’Or in Paris on Monday. It will not be an outrageous slander committed against Erling Haaland’s person and dignity.It will not be proof that the jury that hands out the most prestigious individual prize in soccer has not been paying attention, or does not give sufficient weight to England’s domestic cup, or is biased against either Manchester City or granite-hewn manifestations of the god Odin.Yes, there is a compelling case that Haaland was last season’s outstanding player, his 52 goals in 53 games crucial in Manchester City’s conquest of the Premier League, the F.A. Cup and the Champions League. But those trophies are not a sort of labyrinthine qualifying process for the Ballon d’Or. The prize for winning the treble is winning the treble.And besides, there is also a compelling case that Messi’s achievement — steering Argentina to its third World Cup title, and his first — was the more complex, the more startling, the more emotive. Yes, the prize for winning the World Cup is winning the World Cup, but the manner and the context of Messi’s triumph are not irrelevant. Qatar, after all, was his last shot, his final act, and by sheer force of will, he transformed it into his crowning glory.Rather than getting riled about that, it would be a far better use of everyone’s time to keep a very close eye on the women’s award. There is something of a tendency for individual prizes in women’s soccer to go either to a legacy candidate — Carli Lloyd or Marta, say — or to the most familiar name on the ballot sheet.This year, though in some ways it would be appropriate for Jenni Hermoso to win, it is hard to believe anyone has a better claim than Aitana Bonmatí. She does, after all, have a Spanish title, a Champions League and a World Cup to her name. Her candidacy is, to some extent, a test of how much the judges have been paying attention.Aitana Bonmatí is already the European player of the year. Next up? The world.Daniel Cole/Associated Press More

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      How Lionel Messi Made a Pink Jersey Soccer’s Must-Have Item

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      In the span of three months, the soccer superstar has made Inter Miami’s eye-catching jersey the hottest piece of sports merchandise on the planet.All of a sudden, after a single summer, the pink jersey is everywhere. It has become almost impossible to acquire, yet there it is, paradoxically, on the backs of thousands of fans thronging American stadiums, hanging from market stalls in Buenos Aires and Bangkok, a vivid flash on almost every field where children gather to play soccer in England.That the jersey has become, apparently overnight, the hottest piece of sports merchandise on the planet is a simple, capitalist equation: the result of an irresistible combination of one of the most recognizable and beloved athletes of his generation; a distinctive, exotic color; and the ruthless efficiency of textile factories in Southeast Asia.Somehow, though, few people saw it coming. Tor Southard was better placed than most, but even he was caught unaware. As Adidas’s senior director for soccer in North America, he had been receiving emails from colleagues for nearly a year asking if the company’s biggest star, Lionel Messi, would be joining Inter Miami, also a client of Adidas.As far as he knew, it was just a rumor. Like the rest of the planet, Southard learned it was true only on June 7, the day Messi announced his intentions in a rare interview with two Spanish news outlets.For many, the immediate question was the soccer one. Six months after winning the World Cup with Argentina, why was Messi, the finest player of his generation and arguably the best of all time, leaving the elite clubs and competitions of Europe to join a team that ranked among the worst in the comparative backwater of America’s top league, Major League Soccer?For Southard, and for Adidas, there was a rather more pressing matter. Within a couple of days of Messi’s announcement, the company had received almost 500,000 requests from stores and suppliers for jerseys in Miami’s soft, electric pink. It is a specific fabric and a specific shade: Pantone 1895C. “It’s not like it was white, and we had inventory we could repurpose,” Southard said.Even if they could not foresee quite what a phenomenon the jersey would become, and quite how many people would clamor to get their hands on one, Southard and his colleagues had some sense of what was about to happen.Adidas was going to need more of that fabric. A lot more.‘No. 1 priority’The Adidas flagship store in Manhattan. John Taggart for The New York TimesOn the day Messi announced he would sign for Inter Miami, Adidas had a stock of Inter Miami jerseys in stores and storage facilities around the United States. It did not last. The shirts sold out so quickly that Southard said it seemed the inventory simply “evaporated.”Getting the fabric to make more — and fast — was just the first step. Although Adidas would not start selling official Messi jerseys until his contract was formally signed on July 15, it placed orders for vast rolls of the pink fabric needed to make them within 24 hours of his interview on Spanish television in the first week of June.The risk, of course, was that the deal could still collapse. “It’s a trade-off you make for speed,” Southard said.In ordinary circumstances, retailers order jerseys as many as nine months in advance. Major sportswear brands, like Adidas and Nike, generally prefer to produce large batches of team gear, rather than manufacturing to meet demand, as fast fashion chains tend to do.Given the number of what the industry terms “chase buys” — a sudden influx of orders in unanticipated volumes — for Messi’s Inter Miami jersey, Adidas knew its usual playbook would not work.A lone Messi shirt left in a soccer shop outside Tokyo.Kosuke Okahara for The New York TimesIt had learned that from experience. In 2021, when Cristiano Ronaldo returned to Manchester United, one of the handful of retailers Adidas works with, Fanatics, asked for a million more jerseys. A year later, after Messi helped Argentina win the World Cup, Adidas had to produce and ship an extra 400,000 Argentine national team shirts in the span of three months.Getting pink jerseys bearing Messi’s name and No. 10 into the market, Southard said, immediately became Adidas’s “No. 1 priority, globally.”Frisco, Texas.Logan Riely/Getty ImagesTo streamline the process, the company sourced the pink, recycled polyester fabric for the jerseys as close as possible to the factories in Southeast Asia that would make them. Orders for other details like logos and crests were expedited at other facilities, sometimes leapfrogging the production of apparel for other Adidas teams. To cut down on shipping times, the first batches of the Messi jerseys were sent out in small shipments, almost as soon as they came off the production line.The frantic production effort worked. Initially, Adidas had told its retailers to begin selling jerseys with a promise of delivery by Oct. 15. But the first editions arrived in the United States by July 18. They were sent straight to Miami, where demand was highest.They sold out almost instantly.‘Everyone has a hookup’La Paz, Bolivia.Leonardo Fernandez/Getty ImagesOn a street corner in Miami’s wealthy Brickell neighborhood one evening last month, two young men had set up a pop-up Messi store, their racks groaning with Inter Miami jerseys in pink and an alternate version — black with pink trim — that the team wears on the road. This was the work of the imaginatively titled Messi Miami Shop.The name sounds official. The online store looks it, too. It sells two versions of the Messi jersey, as most sportswear manufacturers now do: a “player version” made with high-quality material and an athletic cut, and a “replica” designed for fans whose bodies might not have the precise dimensions of an elite athlete.The Messi Miami Shop is not, though, affiliated in any way with Messi, Inter Miami or Adidas. (It is, though, a shop.) Its jerseys had come, instead, from a contact in Thailand, purchased for $10 apiece. “This is Miami,” one of the sellers said. “Everyone has a hookup.” And a markup: The stall was selling the jerseys at $25 for a children’s edition and as much as $65 for an “authentic” inauthentic adult version of the team’s black jersey.The sellers, who declined to give their names for reasons that should be obvious, had sold around 30 in a couple of hours, they said. But they are not the only ones hustling.A few nights earlier, outside Exploria Stadium in Orlando, Fla., a different group of hawkers were doing their own brisk business in Messi jerseys. Messi was not playing that night — he missed several weeks of the season because of an injury — but Inter Miami was in town, and plenty of fans were prepared to pay $40 for a pink jersey bearing his name, even if it had shoddy stitching and was plucked from a backpack.Despite all of Adidas’s attempts to get its official Messi jerseys into stores as quickly as possible, the clamor for them — any version of them — has proved so great that counterfeits have flooded the global market to meet the shortfall.Though the company says it has now largely caught up with the backlog of orders, it has found that it is still selling jerseys far faster than it can produce them, and not just in the United States.Rio de Janeiro.Dado Galdieri for The New York TimesIn Buenos Aires, where Messi’s status as a national treasure was sealed by victory in the World Cup, there are pink jerseys for sale in store after store and kiosk after kiosk along Calle Florida, one of the Argentine capital’s teeming shopping streets, and in the stalls of the bustling San Telmo Market. At some vendors, the fakes go for about $50.In Europe, where tribal affiliations to local clubs run deep, Miami jerseys are suddenly commonplace. At a training session for elementary school children last month in Manchester, England, the usual concentration of Manchester United, Manchester City and Liverpool gear was flecked with a half dozen pink Inter Miami jerseys, each bearing Messi’s name.It is difficult to overstate the scale of demand. Official sales have surpassed every benchmark Adidas could have imagined, Southard said: more than the frenzy that accompanied David Beckham’s move to the Los Angeles Galaxy in 2007; beyond the rush prompted by Ronaldo’s return to Manchester United in 2021; beyond the clamor for Messi’s Argentina shirt in the aftermath of Qatar 2022.Inter Miami is now the best-selling Adidas soccer jersey in North America, ahead of all five of the storied European clubs that the brand traditionally regards as the crown jewels of its portfolio: Manchester United, Real Madrid, Juventus, Bayern Munich and Arsenal.Since July, Fanatics, which dominates sports apparel in the United States, has sold more Messi jerseys than for any other soccer player, and any athlete at all except the Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts. No player, in any sport, has ever sold more jerseys on the site in the first 24 hours after switching teams than Messi did in July.The Adidas store in Manhattan.John Taggart for The New York TimesHis cinematic arrival in M.L.S. — with a late game-winning goal in his debut on July 22 — came too late to salvage Inter Miami’s season. The club will miss the playoffs, which start on Wednesday. Messi will not play in pink again until next year.But that has done little to quell his impact. Inter Miami’s games drew record crowds from the moment he arrived. The team’s ticket prices for next season have soared. Adidas is confident that it has enough of the next edition of Messi’s jersey — due out in February — in production to meet demand.For many fans and retailers, it cannot come a moment too soon. The jersey has become so coveted, so scarce, that even Beckham himself — one of the most famous soccer players of his generation, a worldwide celebrity and, as part-owner of Inter Miami, Messi’s boss — has found it hard to get hold of one.More than once, he has wanted to send a pink Messi jersey to a friend or an associate as a gift, only to be told that he will have to wait, just like everyone else.Alan Blinder More

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      Bobby Charlton, an England Soccer World Cup and Manchester United Icon, Dies at 86

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      A mainstay of Manchester United and one of the game’s best-loved figures, he won the World Cup in 1966 and the European Cup in 1968. Bobby Charlton, one of soccer’s greatest players, who won the World Cup with England in 1966 in a dazzling career that was tinged by the tragedy of losing eight of his Manchester United teammates in a plane crash at the start of his playing days, died on Saturday. He was 86.His death was confirmed in a statement from Manchester United, which called him one of the club’s “greatest and most beloved players.” The statement did not say where he died or cite a cause. It was revealed in November 2020 that Charlton had dementia.Charlton was famed for his bullet shot and his relentless goal scoring, even though he did not play as a traditional striker. He was England’s top scorer, with 49 goals, for 45 years until Wayne Rooney beat the mark in September 2015. Charlton was also Manchester United’s top scorer for decades, with 249 goals in 758 appearances over 17 years, until Rooney surpassed that figure, too, in January 2017. In addition to his scoring feats, Charlton’s career was indelibly marked by a plane crash in 1958, shortly after he had become a professional player. Following a European Cup match against Red Star Belgrade, the plane on which the Manchester United team was traveling crashed in heavy snow during a refueling stop in Munich. Of the 23 who died, eight were players. Charlton, who was dragged from the wreckage by a teammate, was 21 years old at the time.Barely three weeks later, with the United manager, Matt Busby, still in a hospital in Germany, Charlton was back on the field. Because of his dignity in leading the Manchester United team through that dark period, his sportsmanship, and his central role in United’s revival and in his country’s sole success on the international stage, several commentators referred to him as the first gentleman of soccer.Charlton became a director and ambassador of Manchester United in 1984. A statue of Charlton, alongside his fabled teammates George Best and Denis Law — known as the United Trinity — was erected outside Manchester United’s stadium, Old Trafford, in 2008, and in 2016 the club renamed the south stand of the stadium in his honor. Charlton is also credited with giving Old Trafford its nickname, the Theater of Dreams.Robert Charlton was born on Oct. 11, 1937, in Ashington, Northumberland, in the north of England, to Robert and Elizabeth (Milburn) Charlton. His father was a miner, but the family had soccer in its genes. Four of his uncles were professional players, and his mother’s cousin Jackie Milburn was a legendary striker for Newcastle United; Bobby’s brother Jack became a professional player with Leeds and also represented England.“There was nothing else in life, it didn’t appear to me, except football,” Bobby Charlton said in a 2010 Sky Sports documentary.Charlton turned professional in 1954 and made his first appearance for Manchester United on Oct. 6, 1956, at age 18. When called up to the first team by Busby, he had to hide the fact that he had an injury.“I actually had a sprained ankle, but I wasn’t going to admit to it,” Charlton said in a 2011 BBC documentary. He scored twice in his debut.Manchester United won the league title in the 1956-57 season, with Charlton becoming a central player. The team was known as the Busby Babes after the manager, who had combed the playing fields of England to find the best young talent to fit his vision of soccer played with panache, pace and quick passing.Its league success earned Manchester United a place in the European Cup, the forerunner of the Champions League, the next season. After a 3-3 draw with Red Star secured a spot in the semifinals, the plane carrying the team home stopped to refuel in Munich. Amid terrible weather conditions, two attempts to take off were aborted. On the third, the plane crashed.Crawling to safety through a hole in the fuselage, the team’s goalkeeper, Harry Gregg, dragged Charlton and another teammate, Dennis Viollet, clear. “I left them there dead,” Gregg told the BBC in 2011. “The biggest shock I had was when I turned and there was Bobby Charlton and Dennis Viollet staring at the rest of the plane exploding in the petrol dump. Just staring.”Charlton was 21 years old in 1958 when the plane carrying the Manchester United team crashed in a heavy snowfall. The crash killed 23, people including eight of his teammates.Allsport/Hulton ArchiveCharlton returned home to recover from his injuries, which were relatively minor. He also faced the psychological trauma of trying to return to the field of play without his lost teammates.But after watching a scratch United team featuring several youth-team players and loanees overcome Sheffield Wednesday in an F.A. Cup fixture soon after the accident, Charlton told the acting manager, Jimmy Murphy, that he would return. Many saw Charlton’s stoicism and refusal to give up as a ray of hope amid the tragedy.United rebuilt around Charlton. Busby recovered from his injuries, and through the course of the 1960s he set about creating a new team. By the middle of the decade, Charlton was a Manchester United mainstay and a linchpin of the England side as the country prepared to host the 1966 World Cup.England started the tournament slowly, but in the second game, against Mexico, Charlton provided the inspiration with a trademark goal. Advancing across the halfway line, he bore down on the opposition penalty area as the defender retreated, and he thumped a shot into the top corner of the net with such languid violence that the ball almost tore the goal posts out of the ground.“I hit it, and it was sweet as a nut,” Charlton said in 2011. “I thought, people will remember that, because I’ll remember it for a long time.”In the semifinal against Portugal, Charlton scored two more goals to put his team into the final against West Germany, thus setting up one of the most memorable games in World Cup history.Charlton was told by the England coach, Alf Ramsey, to shadow Germany’s best player, Franz Beckenbauer. Unknown to the English, Beckenbauer had been given the same instructions in reverse by his own coach.“He was so fit,” Beckenbauer later recalled. “He was running like a horse. It was very, very difficult to stop him. It was almost impossible.”Beckenbauer and Charlton largely canceled each other out, but the pulsating game went to extra time, when England took the lead, 3-2, with a disputed goal by Geoff Hurst. The shot hit the crossbar and bounced down, and the Russian linesman, Tofiq Bahramov, flagged for a goal. Whether the ball crossed the line is still a subject of dispute. Buoyed by the lead, England scored a fourth, with Hurst hitting his third of the match in the dying seconds. As Hurst lined up his shot and fired into the net, the BBC commentator Kenneth Wolstenholme uttered perhaps the most famous lines in English football: “Some people are on the pitch, they think it’s all over. It is now! It’s four!”Charlton and his wife, Norma, were applauded after a stand was named in his honor in 2016 at the Old Trafford stadium in Manchester.Nigel Roddis/European Pressphoto AgencyWith the trophy won, Charlton and his teammates were feted as heroes. But the Charlton fairy tale had not yet turned the final page.Busby had added Law, a predatory Scottish striker, and Best, a willowy, mercurial genius from Northern Ireland, to his retooled Manchester United team, which still had Charlton as its fulcrum. In the 1967-68 season, a decade after the Munich disaster, Manchester United again qualified for the European Cup.The team overcame Real Madrid, then a six-time champion, in the semifinal, and went on to meet Benfica of Portugal in the final at Wembley Stadium in London. Flushed with the memories of the players lost a decade before, the occasion dripped with poignancy.“The most important thing leading right up to it was that we were going to win the match,” Charlton said. “There was no alternative. We had to win that match.”Charlton opened the scoring with a headed goal, but the match went to extra time. Drooping with exhaustion but fired with the determination to finally win the trophy that had cost the club so much, United’s players dug deep. Best put the team ahead, Brian Kidd scored a third, and Charlton added the coup de grâce with a fourth.“We’d done it,” Charlton recalled in 2011. “When the final whistle went, everybody dashed to Sir Matt. They were his players that got lost in Munich. They were his lads, his team, and everybody in the whole crowd, maybe even in the whole country, thought a little bit about Matt Busby’s feelings that night.”Charlton is survived by his wife, Norma, whom he married in 1961; two daughters, Suzanne and Andrea; and grandchildren.Charlton finished his career in 1973 with a playing record that bears comparison with the world’s greatest. In his later role as a Manchester United director, he provided an important link between the era of the Busby Babes and a new period of dominance forged by another Scottish manager, Alex Ferguson.“Unquestionably the best player of all time,” Ferguson said of Charlton in 2011. “He could float across the ground just like a piece of silver paper.”Beloved by Manchester United fans, Charlton was also lionized by supporters of all teams, not only at home but also throughout the world. He became the embodiment of the fabled, perhaps mythical, nobility of English soccer.Hurst, his England teammate, said that when talking to people who didn’t speak English, Charlton’s reach became clear. “There’s only one piece of English they can say,” Hurst explained. “And that’s ‘Bobby Charlton.’” More