Soccer

Subterms

    More stories

    • 113 Shares149 Views

      in Soccer

      How FIFA Handed Saudi Arabia the 2034 World Cup

      by

      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

    • 100 Shares149 Views

      in Soccer

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

      by

      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

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Soccer

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

      by

      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

    • 88 Shares169 Views

      in Soccer

      Is Fluminense the Team of the Future?

      by

      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

    • 150 Shares119 Views

      in Soccer

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

      by

      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

    • 125 Shares149 Views

      in Soccer

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

      by

      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

    • 150 Shares179 Views

      in Soccer

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

      by

      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

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in Soccer

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

      by

      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