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      In Newcastle, Songs Drown Out the Hard Questions

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      As long-suffering fans cheered the arrival of Saudi riches at their club, talk of the new owners’ plans and the current team’s flaws took the day off.NEWCASTLE, England — In the shadow of St. James’s Park, a man in a flowing white thobe was standing on a chair outside Shearer’s bar, conducting a swaying choir. It cycled through all the newest numbers in Newcastle United’s songbook: the one about being richer than Manchester City, the one questioning the identity of Paris St.-Germain, the one that just goes: “Saudi Mags.”As their voices resounded along Strawberry Place, gathering strength as more picked up the tune, a group of men in kaffiyehs approached. One had a Saudi flag draped over his shoulders. Another was carrying two portraits: one of King Salman, the head of the Saudi royal family, and one of Mohammed bin Salman, the country’s crown prince and de facto ruler.Instantly, the songs blended tunelessly into a cheer: It was assumed — though never actually established — that the man with the portrait was an actual Saudi, rather than a local, cosplay version. Members of the chorus wanted a handshake, a photograph. Some mimed bowing down in thanks. And then, plastic pints of lager in hand, they resumed the singing, louder and more jubilant than before.This was, in one sense, the day it all became real. Newcastle’s takeover by a consortium dominated by the Public Investment Fund — the sovereign wealth fund of the Saudi state, of which Mohammed bin Salman is chairman — is more than a week old, but, until Sunday, it remained something that existed only in the abstract.It was a news release. It was a stage-managed video of the financier Amanda Staveley and her husband, Mehrdad Ghodoussi, two minority partners in the deal who had been appointed — or appointed themselves — as its public faces, awkwardly meeting the players at the club’s training facility. It was something that had happened on paper and in the papers, but not yet in the flesh.Only with the first game of the new era could that change. Not because Newcastle, suddenly, would be a particularly good team: The players would still be limited, the squad fragile, the manager still unpopular, the standings still more than a little ominous after a 3-2 defeat to Tottenham. It would change because Staveley, Ghodoussi and, in particular, Yasir al-Rumayyan, the governor of the P.I.F. and Newcastle’s new chairman, would be in attendance at St. James’s Park. Only then would this new future, the one that the club’s fans have been awaiting for more than a decade, slip from the realm of the theoretical into something tangible.Callum Wilson got Newcastle off to a flying start by scoring in the second minute.Scott Heppell/ReutersNewcastle’s new Saudi chairman, Yasir al-Rumayyan, lower left, sat with the minority owner Amanda Staveley, right.Peter Powell/EPA, via ShutterstockBuoyant before the match, they and the crowd were soon watching Tottenham attackers slice through their team.Peter Powell/EPA, via ShutterstockThat is soccer’s great skill, of course, its ability to bend and twist and adjust to any new reality. There is no story line too outlandish to be folded into its sweeping, infinite script, no limit to the willing suspension of disbelief, no line in the sand, no beyond the pale.The biggest club in the world imploding because of its own hubris? Write it up. A yearslong plot to change the face of the sport that is destroyed in 48 hours? Just a regular Tuesday. One of the world’s largest investment funds buying a club that employs Joelinton so as to burnish the image of a repressive autocracy? Fine, why not?There is an adaptability that comes with having no moral compass. Not only can soccer tolerate almost any twist, no matter how improbable, it can also do so in a matter of hours, turning what might once have been unthinkable into the way things have always been in the space of a 90-minute game. How else could nation states use the Premier League as a proxy stage for their geopolitical strategies.And yet at St. James’s Park on Sunday afternoon, even as reality bit, it was impossible to escape the strangeness of the whole scene. There were the children, outside, with their homemade headdresses. There were the teenagers with the Saudi flag cast across their shoulders. There were the men in robes, adulation for their new owners in the form of cultural appropriation.Then, strangest of all, as Newcastle’s longest-standing and longest-suffering fans in the Gallowgate End unfurled a banner of defiance — quoting the local singer Jimmy Nail and his description of this city as a “mighty town” — the stadium’s public-address system cut in and asked the stadium to give a “warm Geordie welcome” to al-Rumayyan.As one, the fans rose and turned to face the directors’ box, cheering and applauding for 20, 30 seconds. Newcastle has always romanticized its heroes, perhaps more than most: It is a club that carries the memories of Jackie Milburn and Kevin Keegan and Alan Shearer on its lips at all times.There is a banner, slung from a railing in the stadium’s East Stand, that features a quotation from and an image of another of those heroes: Bobby Robson, a beloved former manager. A club, it runs, “is the noise, it’s the passion, the feeling of belonging.”That is exactly what Saudi Arabia has bought with Newcastle. It is exactly why it has bought Newcastle: so that its emissary might get the sort of reception Shearer or Keegan might get barely a week into his association with the club.There was, in the end, only one element that remained reassuringly familiar: the game itself. Newcastle took the lead after not quite two minutes, St. James’s Park melting into outright mayhem, before slowly, surely, fading from view.Tottenham took control of the match, and silenced the crowd, with three first-half goals.Peter Powell/EPA, via ShutterstockTottenham Hotspur, supposed to be here as nothing but guests at its host’s party, scored three times in a first half delayed after a fan collapsed in the stadium’s East Stand. The players had to summon assistance from Newcastle’s medical staff when it became clear the situation was serious. The fan was transferred to a hospital, it was announced.There was little mood for jubilation after that. The stadium fell quiet, almost contemplative, rousing itself only to demand the manager, Steve Bruce, be fired immediately. There are limits, it would appear, even to Newcastle’s sentimentality. This was Bruce’s 1,000th game as a manager. He is from Newcastle, and supported the team as a child.On Sunday, his Magpies were jeered off the field. That has happened a lot around here, over the last few years. It is that which the fans are hoping to escape; it is the new ownership group’s ability to deliver a different sort of future that persuaded some to don fancy dress, and many more to choose to turn a blind eye to why, exactly, Saudi Arabia might want to buy a Premier League soccer team. They are happy to be Saudi Mags, now, to tolerate any amount of strangeness in the hope of a richer, better reality. More

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      Soccer’s Problem With Silver Medals

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      It was notable when Spain’s players kept their runner-up awards after losing a final. It shouldn’t be.In all the photographs, there is one constant. In some of the images, Spain’s players stare at the ground, disconsolate, chewing over their loss to France in the final of the Nations League. In others, they give interviews, lead-faced and faintly forlorn. In one, Luis Enrique, their coach, offers respectful applause for his team’s conquerors.But in all of them, Spain’s players have thin, navy blue ribbons draped around their necks. Each of the players had walked to the raised platform hastily constructed on the field after Sunday’s final at San Siro in Milan. Each of them had taken the medal offered to him. And each of them had carefully placed it around his neck.That should not, of course, be especially noteworthy. In most sports, the athlete or the team that finishes second sees its silver medal as a source of pride. Occasionally, it might be with eyes glazed with tears. Sometimes, it is through gritted teeth. Often, it is with a lingering air of regret, a sense of what might have been. And it always takes the pain a little while to subside. Second — close, but no cigar — can hurt most of all.Ferran Torres and Spain lost to France in Milan, 2-1.Franck Fife/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBut only in soccer are silver medals treated as if they burn. Players and coaches frequently give the impression that they would rather not touch them at all. Last summer, the majority of England’s players made a point of refusing to wear the medals they had earned for finishing second in the European Championship.A few weeks earlier, most of their counterparts at both Manchester City and Manchester United had conspicuously refused to don the tokens they had received after losing the Champions League and Europa League finals. José Mourinho has made a habit of disposing of any reminder he might have that he ever lost a major final.This is, at a rough guess, a phenomenon that manifests very rarely outside soccer. The beaten finalist at a tennis major does not make a point, in front of the watching world, of handing whatever prize he or she has been awarded to a fan. Olympians do not regularly refuse to stand on the podium without their silver or bronze medals around their necks, nor do they hurl them into the crowd on their way out of the stadium/pool/velodrome/whatever the place where the horse disco takes place is called.In fact, the scorn for silver medals is not even a feature of all soccer. In 2019, the Netherlands players who had just lost the Women’s World Cup final to the United States kept their medals. Many emerged from their locker room to speak to the news media, eyes still a little raw, with the bittersweet spoils of their wondrous, uplifting summer draped around their necks.Even for teams used to winning it all, bronze can feel better than nothing.Andre Penner/Associated PressMen’s soccer, though, seems to have embraced the idea that second is just first last and turned it into a dogma. Perhaps that is because of the message it sends: The act itself is, without question, somewhat performative, a little piece of theater, a flourish for the fans to demonstrate that nothing less than total victory will do.Or perhaps it is because of the absolutism that drives so many of the defining characters in the men’s game. Plenty of the sport’s most successful managers have made a point of telling their players that they should not savor even their winners’ medals. Alex Ferguson, like Brian Clough and Bill Shankly before him, used to tell his squads that they should forget winning a league or a cup almost immediately, that it was to serve only as a springboard for further success. Soccer has long been consumed by a desire for dominion so intense that it is, when looked at in the cold light of day, just a little deranged.And as much as Mourinho is too often, too easily blamed for all of modern soccer’s ills, it would not be desperately difficult to trace a line from some of his more public rejections of anything short of gold to a wider embrace of the practice, to believe that once he had made it clear that silver was not acceptable to him, it made it almost inevitable that others would follow. A coach who cherished second, after all, would seem somehow callow in comparison.For José Mourinho, only finishing first will do.Peter Powell/EPA, via ShutterstockWhy it came about, though, is perhaps less significant than what it implies.It is curious how unrelated strands of loose narrative can coalesce. Last week, there was a minor commotion over Norwich City, the team rooted to the foot of the Premier League. A former player had wondered if Norwich added a vast amount to the league, what with the club’s insistence on being stable and sensible and cautious, all traits that act as synonyms for “boring” in the hyperbolic soap opera of England’s top flight. A couple of days later, Newcastle was bought by Saudi Arabia. Oh, no, sorry: by the sovereign investment fund of Saudi Arabia. The two are not linked. No, really.Newcastle’s fans greeted the club’s new owners as its saviors. Their appeal lay not only in detaching Mike Ashley, the hated former proprietor, from the club, but in the promise of what the new owners might do: Lavish money on the team, propel it toward the summit of the Premier League, fulfill all of the ambitions and the dreams of the long-suffering — for a given value of suffering — fan base.The juxtaposition of the two was curious. It was Newcastle, a team now owned for nonsporting purposes by what is most definitely not the financial arm of a nation state, that was portrayed as living some sort of fantasy. It was Norwich, a team which is run with a long-term plan, a clear vision and no little affection, that was having to justify its existence in the Premier League.These are, of course, the wrong way around. Norwich should be held up as the aspirational model — in conception, if not in results — rather than Newcastle. But then this is a sport that disdains silver medals. It is not an industry, an ecosystem, that is adept at gauging comparative success, at understanding that there is not only one winner, and lots and lots of losers, but that lots of teams can win or lose depending on their own horizons. It is not a place that fully grasps the idea that the journey matters — give or take — as much as the destination.It may well have been easier for Spain to take some small pleasure in the mementos the team was handed in Milan because of the circumstances in which they had been attained: in the final of the Nations League, a tournament that is just a step above an exhibition tournament. All athletes are competitive, but it is unlikely that Luis Enrique and his squad were experiencing the same sort of sorrow as England’s players at Wembley this summer.But even so, perhaps it hints at a subtle shift in the landscape, away from the brutal, zero-sum belief that victory can take only one form and that everything else is therefore necessarily failure, abject and shameful. Sometimes, coming in second is an achievement in itself. Grasping that, you sense, might make the sport just a little healthier, just a little happier, as a whole.Memory Plays Tricks on YouLionel Messi was, perhaps, trying to save his friend’s feelings. He has known Sergio Agüero for years, and so, when Agüero asked why he had never won a Ballon d’Or, Messi picked his path delicately. He did not, for example, say, “You have not won it because I exist, and so does Cristiano Ronaldo.” Instead, he was a little more diplomatic. You win the Ballon d’Or if you win the Champions League, Messi told Agüero, according to the latter. His failure was linked to that of his team.By Messi’s logic — and Messi knows a thing or two about winning the Ballon d’Or — that leaves only one winner this year. Four members of last season’s Chelsea team have been nominated, but only one of them won the European Championship, too. This should, by extension, be Jorginho’s year. (The women’s honor could go to any of the five nominees from the all-conquering Barcelona team that won the Champions League, but Alexia Putellas, as captain, seems the consensus pick.)It is interesting to consider how that will look in hindsight. A particular rabbit hole opened up on Twitter this week in which fans debated the merits of the 2003 winner of the award: Juventus midfielder Pavel Nedved. (Quite what spawns these hellmouths of unreason, and quite what draws you in, remains a mystery to me, but no matter.) Nedved was, it was decreed, undeserving, particularly in a year in which Thierry Henry had scored 32 goals in 56 games for Arsenal.Pavel Nedved, in his prime, was a worthy winner.Carlo Ferraro/European Pressphoto AgencyThat parallel is irrelevant, of course — Nedved was a midfielder, not a forward, so was not really employed to match Henry’s numbers — and it leaves out the context: Nedved pulled Juventus to the Champions League final and won Serie A. That season, Henry’s brilliance did not earn Arsenal a trophy.It was not a shock, at the time, that Henry had not won it; if there was any player who had a greater claim than Nedved — regarded as one of the finest players of his generation — it was Andriy Shevchenko, the A.C. Milan striker who scored the winning penalty to claim the Champions League.That it seems unusual now is, of course, testament to the cultural primacy of the Premier League; to Henry’s more enduring greatness, in comparison to Nedved’s; and, perhaps, to the nature of how we remember. Assessing individual contributions to team sports can be difficult — where Messi and Ronaldo are not involved, certainly — and so what lasts, as time passes and memories fade, are the numbers. And yet the numbers, as Agüero and Henry can testify, do not tell the whole story.Long Road, Short JourneyThe picture, now, is starting to drift into focus. We have the first two confirmed qualifiers for next year’s World Cup; predictable but sincere congratulations to Germany, which always qualifies easily, and a respectful raise of the eyebrow to a Denmark team that, it would appear, is now invincible. The rest of the field, meanwhile, is starting to take shape.In Asia, it is hard to imagine that Saudi Arabia — four games, four wins — will not qualify. In South America, Brazil and Argentina can almost be taken as a given, but the identity of the two countries that will join them as direct qualifiers is much more intriguing. In North America, just a glimmer of a gap has opened up between Mexico, the United States and Canada and everyone else.In Europe, there is a confected air to the fretting over whether France, Belgium and England will not qualify — they all will; stop worrying — but several of the other favorites face moderately stressful Novembers: Portugal, Spain, Italy and the Netherlands are by no means guaranteed automatic slots.That leaves Africa — where the structure of qualifying makes the whole process unsatisfactorily arbitrary, but undeniably dramatic — and Oceania, where barely more than a year out from the tournament, qualifying has not even started.It has already been pushed back twice because of the logistical challenges presented by the coronavirus pandemic; the latest plan is to stage a qualifying tournament in Qatar next spring, though what format that will take — and whether clubs will release players to compete in it — has yet to be settled.New Zealand, the regional heavyweight, had not played a game in almost two years before a pair of friendly victories against Bahrain and Curaçao in this international window. Quite how Danny Hay, the country’s coach, is supposed to forge a team capable not only of seeing off the rest of Oceania but then winning a playoff against a team from another confederation, scheduled for June next year, is not entirely clear. Hay has not lost hope. The last window’s friendlies, he said, were the “start of the road to the World Cup” for his team. Given the circumstances, it is hard to believe that is a road that will end in Qatar.CorrespondenceThe traditional mix of the serious and the trivial in the emails this week, as this newsletter is careful to curate its shades of light and dark. We had dozens of communiqués regarding Newcastle United’s new ownership, including one from Bob Lovinger, who wondered if “England is worse than other countries when it comes to the characters bankrolling its sports teams?”Worse — as it applies to the moral worth of ownership groups — is a value judgment, and not one that it would be fair to make. But in one sense, the word most definitely applies to England: The Premier League, in particular, has always made it clear that it is “ownership neutral,” and has taken great pride in it.The league basically does not care who invests in its clubs, as long as they haven’t committed any particularly obvious recent crimes and have pockets bulging with money. That does not strike me as the best policy if you are even vaguely concerned about safeguarding what are — and what we are told are — precious social institutions.In Newcastle, any new owner was good enough. A deep-pocketed one was better.Oli Scarff/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesK.L. enticed me, meanwhile, with an articulate and perceptive opening statement on the “vital idea that sport is less about actually winning than creating an infrastructure that allows hope to flourish, no matter how improbable silverware might be. You may be creating a fiction, but if it is a fiction your fans can believe in, you’ve done your job.”But K.L. lost me, just a touch, with the assertion that followed, regarding Newcastle’s abrogation of ambition under Mike Ashley. “Finishing 15th in the Premier League is objectively more important than winning England’s domestic cups, if the alternative to not finishing 15th is getting relegated.”That is indisputable, of course, and it was very much the logic adopted by Ashley, but it has always struck me as a false parallel. There is no conclusive proof, as far as I am aware, of teams that take the domestic cups seriously being relegated more frequently. There is not even a compelling body of proof that it necessarily makes the difference between finishing 15th and 16th.And an intriguing point from Paul Bauer: “I suspect the Premier League was going to find a way around the controversy of Saudi ownership, thinking if they did not allow it, the Saudis would likely go to other leagues with their money.”This idea has been raised elsewhere, not least by one of the lawyers involved with the takeover, but I’m not sure it is reflective of how the Premier League thinks. The major leagues in the United States seem — at least from the outside — to think strategically and collectively much more naturally, and much more frequently, than the major soccer leagues of Europe. Plenty of the Premier League’s members have an unfortunate tendency to conflate the best interests of the league and their own best interests.That was the serious stuff; the trivial comes in the form of the many enquiries as to the correct pronunciation of my name. It’s Roar-Ee — spelling it that way might actually be better — but just get as close as you can.There were a couple of suggestions that perhaps this was not the best parallel — my name is apparently reasonably common, though I’m not sure children in Leeds in the 1980s saw it that way — and that using it was indicative of my own privilege. First off: It wasn’t necessarily a serious example. But, having thought about it, I’m not sure I buy the idea of privilege on this one.Some names are hard for some people to say. That is universal; it cuts across creed and color and nationality and everything else. And I would have thought that accepting that is also universal. We should all make an effort, of course; I take great pride in putting my accents in the right places. But we should also make an effort to understand if people sometimes fall short.The final word, this week, goes to Joe Bellavance. “I was prepared to fall out of my chair, laughing, when you signed off as ‘Greg,’” he wrote, reminding us all of another universal truth: that the best jokes are the ones you forget to make. More

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      The Hidden Gem of Sports Travel: USMNT Away

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      One of the essential, and unsung, experiences in American sports fandom requires you to leave American soil altogether.Every four years, the United States men’s soccer team embarks on a monthslong journey to qualify for the World Cup, bouncing around North and Central America and the Caribbean for an excruciatingly tense series of high-stakes matches against regional rivals. That these games need to be experienced in person to be truly understood has become a well-worn trope for the team’s players, who often struggle at first to adapt to the surroundings.Fans, it turns out, have been saying the same among themselves for years. These traveling supporters — a small group of American fans afflicted at once with a borderline irrational sense of team loyalty and an insatiable wanderlust — are the road warriors of Concacaf, the regional confederation that includes the United States and its hemispheric neighbors. They are, in some way, a breed apart as fans: reveling in the opportunities for international exchange, seeing beauty in cultural and competitive differences, brushing aside warnings (warranted or not) about personal safety and absorbing the often considerable expense associated with following their national team.“Soccer is the catalyst to get us to visit these places, but we dive into the full experience, and we leave with a better understanding of a country, and often an affinity for it,” said Donald Wine, 38, of Washington, who is one of the half dozen or so fans planning to attend all 14 games in the final round of the 2022 World Cup qualification cycle: seven in the U.S., and seven outside it.The quest, though, has taken on a new level of urgency in the current qualifying cycle because the beloved rite, in its current form, has an expiration date. Qualifying for the World Cup will look vastly different heading into the 2026 tournament, when the field expands to 48 teams from 32, and the United States is expected to qualify automatically as a host. After that, the Concacaf region will receive about twice as many berths in the tournament as it does now: Given its comparative strength against its regional rivals, that could grant the United States a relatively suspense-free path through qualifying for generations.Ray Noriega, top left, has been hit with a battery in Costa Rica and a coin in Mexico. Donald Wine plans to attend 14 road qualifiers in this cycle. On Thursday, he and thousands of U.S. fans were in Texas to see the United States beat Jamaica. The return match is in Kingston next month.That means the journey — for the players and the fans — will never be the same.“I’ve told everybody going into this qualifying cycle, ‘If you weren’t able to do the other ones, do this one, because this is the last time we’re going to feel this pressure,’” said Ray Noriega, of Tustin, Calif., who attended every game of the U.S. team’s past three World Cup qualifying cycles and plans to do the same this time around. “It does feel like the last hurrah.”It is that pressure, fans say, that gives everything else meaning, that has for years inflated the underlying tension and the atmosphere at stadiums. Each game, each trip to another country, offers another chance to be surprised. It happened last month, for instance, when the team began its qualifying campaign in El Salvador.Only a couple of dozen Americans made the trip. Before kickoff, they were corralled at the stadium by the local police and shepherded to their seats against a wall behind one goal. To the Americans’ surprise, as they took their seats, the local fans around them began to clap. People in the next section over noticed and began to applaud, too. Soon, much of the packed stadium rose to their feet to give the visiting spectators a loud standing ovation. The Americans were dumbfounded.“I’ve never seen that before,” said Dale Houdek, 49, of Phoenix, who has attended more than 100 U.S. national team games (both men’s and women’s), “and I don’t know if I’ll ever see that again.”The warmth can be a pleasant surprise because, inside the stadiums at least, there is always potential for hostility.“I’ve been hit with a battery in Costa Rica,” Noriega said. “I’ve been hit with a coin in Mexico. I’ve been hit with a baseball in Panama — I guess they say they’re a baseball country.”But the frequent travelers insist such incidents are rare. The huge majority of people they meet, they said, are more interested in taking pictures, trading stories, swapping shirts and scarves, and offering advice on local attractions.Given some of the complexities of travel for these games, particularly now amid a global pandemic, the traveling fans coordinate with the team before most trips. A security specialist who works for the United States Soccer Federation connects with the American Outlaws, the team’s largest organized fan group, to help orchestrate movements on match day, arranging police escorts (if necessary), finding secure lodging and choreographing their entrances and exits from the stands.Attending matches with organized groups in the U.S. offers the familiarity of friendly crowds. For Dale Houdek and Kelly Johnson, top left, years of trips abroad yielded a different kind of close encounter with one American player.“We’re always a phone call away if they need anything,” said Neil Buethe, the federation’s chief spokesman.The fans who travel around Concacaf have come to feel like a subculture within a subculture — one with a certain level of disposable income and flexibility with work and family. Travel and expenses for a typical three-game window can run a few thousand dollars.“My dad says this is my Grateful Dead,” Max Croes, 37, of Helena, Mont., said of following the team around the world. A handful are so devoted to the cause that they plan to fly next month to Kingston, Jamaica, for a game that seems likely to take place behind closed doors, without fans, on the off chance the rules change at the last minute and they can attend.“And if not, it’s Jamaica — there are worse places to not see a soccer game,” said Jeremiah Brown of Austin, Texas, who is trying to see the full set of qualifiers this cycle with his wife, April Green.For the pure magnitude of the occasion, though, one destination stands apart from the rest.“Mexico,” said Ivan Licon, of Austin, “is its own beast.”Games at Mexico City’s enormous Estadio Azteca — where visiting fans are caged in fencing, ostensibly for their own protection — can inspire fans to break out a multiplication table to describe its appeal:“It’s college football times 10,” said Licon, a die-hard Texas A&M fan who plans to attend every road qualifier this cycle.“It’s the Red Sox and Yankees times 20,” said Boris Tapia, of Edison, N.J.More Americans are getting the memo. Before the 2014 World Cup, a few hundred fans attended the Americans’ qualifier in Mexico. Before the 2018 tournament, the U.S. contingent, the fans estimate, was closer to 1,000. The teams will renew their rivalry at the Azteca in March, when the teams are in the final stretches of qualification.Soccer, though, is just part of the appeal of these trips. Fans happily listed side quests that had made the travel extra special: surfing at dawn in Costa Rica; hiking in the mountains in Honduras; witnessing one of the world’s largest Easter celebrations in Guatemala; spontaneously carrying baby turtles to the sea in Trinidad; adopting a donkey on the island of Antigua.“His name is Stevie,” Wine said. “We still get updates on him.”Devotion to the U.S. team can take unique forms. The explosion of joy in seeing it score, though, is more of a shared experience.The smaller countries, and the more modest venues, have their own appeal. At the Estadio Olimpico in Honduras last month, about two dozen American fans were tucked into one corner of the packed stadium, a freckle of red in a sea of blue. Honduran fans offered them bags of plantain chips doused in hot sauce. When the American team mounted a comeback, the Honduran fans, in a surprise development, began pelting their own players with bags of drinking water that were being sold outside the stadium.There was not a single digital screen in the stadium, not another source of light in the surrounding sky, giving the night a timeless quality.“The experience is so pure,” Houdek said.The lower-profile trips also have a way of breaking the fourth wall that typically separates fans from the team.Kelly Johnson, 44, of Phoenix, recalled getting to know the former national team defender Geoff Cameron after she and Houdek, who is her boyfriend, kept crossing paths with him in hotels and airports over the years.A few years ago, Johnson messaged Cameron on Facebook as she and Houdek prepared for a vacation in England, where Cameron was playing professionally. She didn’t expect a response, but Cameron surprised her not only by getting them tickets to a game, but also inviting them to his home and taking them out for lunch.That, she said, symbolized the serendipity of national team travel.“Random things happen,” she said. More

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      In China's Super League, Everyone Seems to Be Losing

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      Chinese teams once embraced ambition and overspending in a bold attempt to reshape their sport. Now they don’t even play games.The emails and letters complaining about unpaid salaries have been stacking up for months.Some claim losses in the thousands of dollars. Others seek to recover quite a bit more. But a few of the pleas arriving at the Zurich offices of FIFA, soccer’s global governing body, like those involving a handful of well-known South American players, are in the millions.What the FIFA officials collecting the claims have noticed, though, is that a surprising number are coming from one place: players and coaches at clubs in China. And they fear the flow is about to get worse.China’s top soccer league — not so long ago heralded as the sport’s new frontier thanks to a half-decade of powerful support, ambitious owners and an era of untrammeled spending that lured top players with outsized salaries — is having an existential crisis. Companies that once spent tens of millions to acquire players now cannot pay their bills. China’s president, who once championed the sport, now faces far more serious priorities. And the country’s top division, the Super League, hasn’t played a game in months.“For sure, some issues like this have happened before,” said David Wu, a sports lawyer in Shanghai. “But not this size.”The shuttered training center at Jiangsu F.C., where acres of pristine fields now sit empty. Jia Shiqing/VCG via Getty ImagesMissing MoneyThe bad news trickled out in waves. In February, China’s defending champion, Jiangsu Suning F.C., was abruptly shuttered by the electronics retailer that owned it, less than four months after the team won the Super League championship.In the time it took to issue a news release, one of the country’s biggest clubs vaporized, leaving its players unpaid and bringing unwelcome attention to a project that had been one of the cornerstones of President Xi Jinping’s effort to transform China from a soccer backwater into one of its superpowers.The collapse at Jiangsu now appears to have been a harbinger of further trouble. The league season has been repeatedly interrupted to accommodate the World Cup qualifying schedule of China’s national team, and now will not resume until December. Until then, clubs will have little or no access to their best players.More recently, doubts have been raised about the continued viability of China’s most successful team, Guangzhou F.C. A cash crunch at its parent company, the real estate conglomerate Evergrande, is so severe that it poses a serious threat to the broader economy.Last week, the team agreed to part company with its coach, the Italian Fabio Cannavaro, one of the highest-paid managers in world soccer. Officials and players on other teams have also agreed to terminate long-term contracts with the understanding that they will be paid for salaries due.Fernando Martins and Renato Augusto, two Brazilian stars on the growing list of players who have filed complaints with FIFA, agreed to such a deal, with millions of dollars at stake. Each was released from his contract by their former club, Beijing Guoan, and they expected their first payments in August.The players say the money never arrived.Officials at FIFA’s dispute resolution chamber say they are analyzing the facts. They have the power to suspend clubs in any country from registering new signings until they have resolved unpaid salary debts. Some Chinese teams appear to be subject to such bans already: A recent report in China said Wuhan F.C., which is owned by another property group, Wuhan Zall Development Holding Co., has been suspended from acquiring new players.Guangzhou F.C. started construction on a 100,000-seat stadium last year. Now, with the club’s owner in financial meltdown, it’s unclear if the team has the money to finish it.Thomas Suen/ReutersThe Brazilian defender Miranda returned to São Paulo when his Chinese club, Jiangsu Suning, suddenly shut down in February.Alexandre Loureiro/ReutersThe Italian coach Fabio Cannavaro led Guangzhou to the Super League title in 2019. Last month, he and the club quietly parted ways.Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesYet penalties and transfer bans may not be enough to help others claw back what they are owed. The Brazilian defender Miranda was owed more than $10 million when Jiangsu Suning was closed down. His lawyers face the daunting task of navigating China’s complex legal system in their effort to recover the lost income.At least Miranda, 37, has been able to continue his career: He quickly landed a spot — and a rich new contract — at São Paulo, a team that plays in Brazil’s top division. Such an outcome is unlikely for the dozens of Chinese nationals who have gone unpaid or been cast off by their clubs in recent months.Understand China’s New EconomyCard 1 of 6An economic reshaping. More

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      Panama 1, U.S. 0: First Loss for U.S. in World Cup Qualifying

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      A listless performance by a shuffled lineup in a defeat at Panama cost the Americans some valuable momentum.Continuing the good vibes from one performance to the next can be tough, it turns out, when you switch out all of your top performers.That was one of the harsh lessons learned by the U.S. men’s soccer team on Sunday as it fell limply to host Panama, 1-0, in its fifth qualifying match for the 2022 World Cup.Things had looked so different on Thursday, when the Americans stomped to a 2-0 win against Jamaica in Austin, Texas. But with a quick turnaround between matches — and a third game to play on Wednesday night in Columbus, Ohio — U.S. Coach Gregg Berhalter made seven changes to his lineup.The result of cycling in all those different faces was an utterly unrecognizable showing from the Americans, who struggled to connect on passes or mount attacks as they absorbed their first defeat in qualifying and fell to 2-1-2 in the final round standings.“We know we’re playing in extreme heat, extreme humidity, and we know we traveled four and a half hours, and we know we have another game on Wednesday, and we wanted to rotate players,” Berhalter said. “If it didn’t work, then it’s on me, and it’s my responsibility.”To be fair, Panama offered a stiffer challenge than Jamaica had on Thursday. It had allowed only two goals in its first four games, and a loss last week in El Salvador left the Panamanians eager to regain their footing in front of their home fans.The loss, in Berhalter’s 40th game as the team’s coach, ended its unbeaten streak at 13 games. The United States plays its third and final match of the month against Costa Rica on Wednesday night in Columbus.Such an aggressive rotation of lineups from game to game during qualifying has become a preferred option for many coaches — and especially those who believe they have deep pools of talent — after FIFA tweaked its scheduling rules to allow confederations to hold as many as three games in each international window. Many coaches, Berhalter included, have been hesitant (with a few exceptions) to ask players to start three games in the course of a single week.That meant the 18-year-old striker Ricardo Pepi, who scored two goals against Jamaica on Thursday, started Sunday’s game on the bench. So did Tyler Adams, one of the team’s leaders and midfield linchpins, and Brenden Aaronson, one of Berhalter’s best playmakers over the past two months.Weston McKennie, another regular, stayed in the United States to rest a sore leg. And Antonee Robinson and Zack Steffen, who play professionally in England and would have faced a lengthy quarantine upon their return if they had traveled to Panama, did not make the trip, either.(Other top American players, like Christian Pulisic and Giovanni Reyna, never joined the team for this camp while dealing with their own injuries. Pulisic, for example, spent Sunday watching an N.F.L. game in London.)Striker Ricardo Pepi, who scored in the past two U.S. qualifiers, started Sunday’s game on the bench.Arnulfo Franco/Associated PressThe United States, so sharp and aggressive against Jamaica, looked stagnant from the start against Panama. Clunky touches and wayward passes kept the Americans from establishing any sort of continuity or assembling anything close to a threatening attack; they managed only five shots, but none of them were on target.Panama was clearly the aggressor. In the 14th minute, Rolando Blackburn found himself open in front of the goal, with a teammate’s cross hurtling toward his feet, but he shanked the point-blank shot wide of the right post, squandering the best chance of the first half for either team.The American goalkeeper Matt Turner, who seems to have established himself ahead of Steffen as the team’s starter with a string of assured performances this fall, was tested throughout the night, watching attacks swirl before his eyes, rising to intercept several dangerous crosses and making numerous nervy saves.He was beaten, finally, in the 54th minute, after Panama won a corner kick. Left back Eric Davis swerved the kick sharply toward the near post, where multiple players jumped to meet it. It was unclear at first who got the pivotal touch — U.S. striker Gyasi Zardes was there, as was Anibal Godoy of Panama — but the result was clear: The ball ricocheted inside the left post. Godoy, Panama’s captain, was more than happy to claim it, sprinting to the sideline with his hand in the air before being mobbed by his teammates.“You don’t normally expect to give up a goal on a ball like that,” Berhalter said.Berhalter exhausted his substitutions soon after the halftime break, hoping to alter the trajectory of the game. Adams and Aaronson came in to start the second half, with hopes they might provide a spark. And about 20 minutes later — and with the United States now trailing — they were followed by Pepi, DeAndre Yedlin and Cristian Roldan.But the jolt of energy never came, and the Americans missed a chance to build on the positivity that seemed to be bubbling within their group.“I think the way to look at it — and this is how I looked at it, and now it obviously doesn’t look like the best choice — but I think we need to wait till Thursday,” Berhalter said. “If we would have played the same players in this game, I’m not sure we would have positioned ourselves in the best way to win again on Wednesday.” More

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      USMNT 2, Jamaica 0: Ricardo Pepi Scores Twice

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      The teenage forward Ricardo Pepi scored two goals to power the United States to its second straight win in World Cup qualifying.AUSTIN, Texas — Ricardo Pepi jogged off the field as the volume in the stadium began to swell. With two masterful touches of the ball, he had done his job for the night, and he was being substituted out of the game with more than 20 minutes remaining.Before reaching the bench, Pepi, an 18-year-old Mexican-American striker from Texas, put his head down, touched the grass and crossed himself. All the while, a chant built up in the stands:“Pepi! Pepi! Pepi!”Youth is a complicated thing.When things are going wrong, as they did for much of last month for the United States men’s soccer team, youth can feel like a glaring liability. When things are going right, as they did Thursday night in Austin, it can give you all the hope in the world.Pepi, for a night, presented a vision of a glimmering future for the Americans and the 20,500 fans in attendance, scoring two second-half goals to lead the United States to a 2-0 victory over Jamaica in its fourth World Cup qualifying match.The victory moved the United States, for the moment at least, into first place in its regional qualifying group. The Americans, with eight points through four games, lead on goal difference over Mexico, which was held to a 1-1 tie by visiting Canada on Thursday night.In relying on such a young group, with so many key players in their teens and early 20s, U.S. Coach Gregg Berhalter has set up a race against time of sorts: corralling a stable of young, relatively unaccomplished talents, and hoping they will blossom in time to punch the country’s ticket to the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.“I don’t even think we think of ourselves as young guys anymore,” Brenden Aaronson, a 20-year-old wing from New Jersey, said. “We’re put in a situation where the whole country is looking at us, and we need to perform.”So was this a display of dramatic maturation in one month’s time, or a walkover victory against a team suffering its own period of disarray? A little of both, perhaps, but the United States team and its fans will not care either way. What matters these days is stockpiling points, as many as possible, before next March.That mission had gotten off to a stuttering start last month, when the Americans’ first three games had functioned as a hazing ritual of sorts for the young group of players. Sixteen of them made their World Cup qualifying debuts, a number frequently invoked in the matches’ aftermath by the team’s public relations staff to highlight its youth, its profuse room to grow.“Coming into the last camp, maybe we were just a little bit naïve and didn’t know what to expect and that’s why we had to use the first three games as a learning process,” the team’s 22-year-old captain, Tyler Adams, said this week.Weston McKennie returned to the United States lineup after he was sent home from the last set of qualifiers for violating team rules.Chuck Burton/USA Today Sports, via ReutersTheir problems over those three games, which yielded two disappointing ties and one come-from-behind win, were most vividly clear on offense. The Americans passed ponderously, stifling any forward momentum they could hope to build. Opposing teams sat comfortably in their own end, and the U.S. failed to find ways through.Amid those growing pains, one of the fastest learners was Pepi, who scored and set up two goals in the team’s third game last month in Honduras, helping the team return home with a needed win and a surge of good feeling.On Thursday night, he was one of several American players storming into the box in the 49th minute as Yunus Musah — like Pepi, only 18 years old — made a dangerous dribbling run through the heart of the Jamaican defense. Musah slipped the ball to Sergiño Dest, who curled the ball toward the mouth of goal, where Pepi curled into a crouch and let it glance off his forehead and inside the left post.The same, direct approach 13 minutes later produced the team’s second goal: Another surging run — this time down the left side, by Aaronson — coaxed Pepi into a full sprint into the box. When the ball arrived at his feet, he splayed his legs for a clean tap-in that sent drinks flying in celebration in the stands behind the goal.“It’s amazing,” Berhalter said. “An 18-year-old gets an opportunity, and he takes advantage of it.”Thursday’s game brought the return of Weston McKennie, who was banished from the team last month after a gratuitous violation of its coronavirus protocols. At 23, he is seen as an indispensable player, even as his immaturity often peeks through.The team was captained again by Adams, a sage veteran at 22. Dest, 20, was dangerous and Musah, 18, indispensable.All these young players, for a night, took their blank slate and produced a hopeful picture.Youth can be a beautifully complicated thing. More

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      U.S. Soccer's Top Women's League Faces Down Abusers, Uncertainty

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      The players in the National Women’s Soccer League, tired of abuse and harassment, are speaking up and seizing power. But the way forward for the troubled league isn’t clear.In the top professional soccer league for women in North America, everyone understood that the power primarily rested with men: the team owners, executives and coaches who controlled the athletes and their careers.While the National Women’s Soccer League is home to celebrities like Megan Rapinoe and Alex Morgan from the World Cup-winning U.S. national team, the backbone of the labor comes from unheralded players who earn meager wages and, until now, were reluctant to speak out and disrupt a league that is likely their only shot at playing professional sports in the United States.Yet a wave of allegations in recent months — that coaches sexually abused or harassed players as executives looked the other way — has highlighted a power dynamic that threatened the safety of women, allowing misconduct to go unchecked and abusers to find new jobs around the league.And while there has been a burst of outrage, and top leaders — again, mostly male — have promised reform, many players fear that the basic power imbalance will remain even as they continue to speak out in a way that evokes the #MeToo movement in Hollywood and other industries.“If this isn’t a shut-up-and-listen-to-these-players moment, I don’t really know what is,” Kaylyn Kyle, a former player for the Orlando Pride, said while providing commentary on the broadcast of a game Thursday. “Devastated, disgusted, but I’m not shocked, and that’s the problem. I mean, I played in this league where this was normalized. That’s not OK.”When several games were played on Wednesday night, players stopped their matches at the six-minute mark to stand together in silent protest. The sixth minute represented the six years it took for a coach accused of sexual harassment and sexual coercion to be ousted from the league.The fallout is widespread. At least four coaches have been fired, including one for allegedly coercing a player to have sex with him and sexually harassing other players, and another after allegations of verbal abuse, which included ridiculing players. The league’s commissioner, Lisa Baird, has resigned under pressure after the league mishandled the abuse case of a coach who left one team amid serious accusations of sexual misconduct, only to land with another team and be celebrated for leading that franchise to championships.Front office executives have been forced out. Games were postponed at the players’ insistence. At least five investigations have been promised and no one can be sure what they will reveal.“Right now, as we look across the soccer landscape, packed with painful stories of sexual abuse, emotional abuse and team mismanagement, we, along with our peers, are suffering,” players from the Washington Spirit said in a statement earlier this week. Their former coach, Richie Burke, was fired last month after players accused him of verbal harassment.A Lack of ConsensusFans at a match between the Portland Thorns and the Houston Dash in Portland on Wednesday.Soobum Im/USA Today Sports, via ReutersThe path forward for the league remains muddled at best.While the N.W.S.L. will resume a full schedule this weekend, it has been nearly paralyzed by the abuse scandal, with a glaring lack of trust among the players, owners and the league, according to interviews with more than a dozen people directly involved. Everyone wants someone to blame, and there is little apparent consensus about how to fix the N.W.S.L. and its problems.“People think of athletes as superhuman beings, particularly professional athletes, when actually they are incredibly vulnerable,” said Mary V. Harvey, an Olympic gold medalist, World Cup winner and former goalkeeper on the U.S. women’s national team who is now the chief executive of the Centre for Sport and Human Rights. “You don’t want to complain and be the reason the league folds. There’s a massive power imbalance, and when you have power imbalance, that’s where these human rights violations happen.”Teams and the players’ union have publicly detailed their demands. The union this week tweeted that it wanted a mandatory suspension of anyone in a position of power who was being investigated for abuse. It also asked for more transparency in the investigations and a say in who is hired as the next commissioner.It’s a moment of reckoning for a sport that bounded into America’s consciousness when Mia Hamm, Brandi Chastain and their teammates on the U.S. women’s national team won the 1999 World Cup in front of a Rose Bowl packed with about 90,000 fans.Val Ackerman, commissioner of the Big East Conference and the former president of the W.N.B.A., said sports organizations should pay close attention to what is unfolding in women’s soccer.She called the N.W.S.L. situation “a wake-up call for our business,” and said it should prompt every sports entity to re-evaluate its policies and infrastructure. Sports leaders need to be especially mindful of safeguarding their employees, she said, in light of the continued gender imbalance in sports, with men often coaching and running women’s teams.At the start of this season, only one of the N.W.S.L.’s 10 teams was coached by a woman, and a majority of the owners and investors were men.“What’s sobering is that we are looking at the 50th anniversary of Title IX next year and 50 years later, we are still fighting for the equitable treatment of female athletes and a safe, respectful competition environment for female athletes,” Ackerman said, referring to the federal law that mandates gender equity in federally funded educational institutions. “It makes you wonder how far we’ve really come on the basics.”The current professional league is hardly a picture of strength or equity. Few N.W.S.L. teams are profitable. The minimum player salary is about $20,000, while it is at least three times that in Major League Soccer, the men’s professional league in the United States.Investigations have been promised by U.S. Soccer, the governing body of soccer in the United States; FIFA, the global governing body of the sport; the N.W.S.L. and the players’ union.Those inquiries will seek to answer how coaches accused of abuse were hired and were allowed to remain in the league and change teams without repercussions.Nadia Nadim, an Afghan-Danish player on Racing Louisville FC, said in a tweet last month that players should be ready to spark an uprising and follow through with it to force change because the sport’s officials have failed miserably at their jobs.“This league can be great, as we have the best players in the world,” she wrote. “We just need to get the idiots out, gain power and make this league as great as it CAN be.”A ‘Very Well Respected’ CoachPaul Riley won two league championships as coach of the North Carolina Courage after he left the Portland Thorns amid allegations of misconduct.Anne M. Peterson/Associated PressPaul Riley, the coach at the center of the minute-long protests at matches this week, rose from a youth soccer coach to become one of the highest-profile coaches in the women’s game, winning two championships in the N.W.S.L., with the North Carolina Courage.In 2015, three years before winning his first championship, Riley left the Portland Thorns N.W.S.L. team. The Thorns now say he was fired for cause, though the club made no such announcement at the time. Riley showed up months later coaching another N.W.S.L. team, the Western New York Flash. When the Flash, which eventually moved to North Carolina, announced the hiring, an executive of the team praised Riley for being “very well respected around the globe.”Last week, in a report in The Athletic, two former players said Riley abused players at will and that they had reported it to team management and the league. Riley denied most of the allegations to The Athletic, and did not respond to messages seeking comment.Sinead Farrelly, who played for Riley with the Philadelphia Independence in 2011 and then again with the Portland Thorns in 2014 and 2015, said Riley used his power as her coach to coerce her to have sex with him. Meleana Shim, who also played for the Thorns, said that after a night of drinking Riley pressured her and Farrelly to kiss each other. If they did so, the team would not have to run sprints the next day. Other players have accused Riley of making inappropriate comments.In September 2015, Shim emailed the owner of the Thorns, Merritt Paulson, as well as other team executives, about the kissing incident. She also emailed Jeff Plush, then the commissioner of the N.W.S.L.The next week, the Thorns announced that Riley would not coach the team the next season, thanking him for his service and making no mention of any misbehavior. In a statement this week, Steve Malik, the owner of the Courage, wrote that upon hiring Riley, he “assured that he was in good standing.”Riley, who was fired from the Courage last week, is now under investigation by the U.S. Center for SafeSport, which oversees abuse in Olympic sports.After that firing, Baird, the commissioner of the N.W.S.L. and the former chief marketing officer of the United States Olympic Committee, resigned less than two years at the post. Under her leadership, the league implemented its first anti-discrimination and anti-harassment policy. But her efforts to protect players were seen by many of them as insufficient and, at times, negligent.“The league must accept responsibility for a process that failed to protect its own players from this abuse,” Morgan said in a Twitter post.The ongoing investigations are likely to scrutinize several coaches who recently have been removed from their posts.Burke, the former Washington Spirit coach, stepped down in August for “health reasons” just before a Washington Post report detailed accusations that he verbally abused players and was racially insensitive. He remained in the team’s front office until a league inquiry prompted his firing. Burke did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Two other coaches — Christy Holly of Racing Louisville FC and Craig Harrington of the Utah Royals — also were ousted from their jobs in the last year amid whispers of toxic workplace cultures. Holly was fired in August “for cause,” as his team said, but it did not provide details. Holly did not return requests for comment.Harrington, who was fired by the Royals last year after being put on leave during an unspecified investigation, was soon hired to coach women’s soccer in Mexico. Harrington did not respond to an emailed request for comment.Yael Averbuch, a former N.W.S.L. player and the current interim general manager of Gotham FC, said abuse cases in the league existed and are ongoing partly because players don’t have a safe, confidential way to report abuse or harassment. So cases go unreported, or are reported but aren’t properly handled, she said, and players are afraid to make the accusations public because they want to keep their jobs.“As a player I don’t know if I ever had an H.R. department to go to,” Averbuch said. “These are small businesses, and this league was for a while very new.”Harvey, the former national team player, said firing abusive coaches just one step toward making the league a safer place. Abuse, to her dismay, is ingrained in the culture of women’s sports — and has been for as long as she can remember. A sea change is necessary, and that might take some time.“It starts with the culture,” she said. “If you have a culture that engenders respect toward women and women athletes, then things look entirely different.” More

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      Saudi-Led Group Completes Purchase of Newcastle United

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      The sale of the Premier League team to Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund was met by joy in the streets and criticism from human rights groups and others.A group led by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign investment fund completed its purchase of the Premier League soccer team Newcastle United on Thursday, moving swiftly to overcome objections to its yearslong pursuit of a place as an owner in one of the world’s most prominent sporting competitions.The sale instantly transformed Newcastle, an underachieving club whose home in the north of England is far from the power centers of European soccer, into theoretically one of the richest teams in the world, backed by the wealth of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, a vehicle that controls assets worth $500 billion.But it also raised new questions about the economics and morality of allowing a nation state, and particularly one accused of serious human rights abuses, into the elite club of Premier League owners.The announcement that the Saudi-led group had acquired full control of the club from its previous owner, the retail tycoon Mike Ashley, came days after Saudi Arabia resolved the obstacle that had blocked a similar agreement last year.Since 2017, Saudi Arabia has not only blocked the Qatari sports network beIN Sports — one of the Premier League’s most lucrative broadcast partners — from operating within its territory, as part of a broader dispute between the two nations, but it has also been accused of both hosting and running a rogue network that pirated beIN’s content.Last year, as the Saudi-led bid to take charge of Newcastle appeared to gather momentum, beIN Sports demanded the Premier League refuse to approve the takeover. Eventually, the Saudi consortium withdrew its offer before the Premier League had to make a definitive decision.But while it emerged on Wednesday that Saudi Arabia had lifted its ban on beIN, the Premier League insisted that the resolution of the piracy issue was not the decisive factor in its permitting the takeover to go through.Instead, the league said in a statement on Thursday that it could allow the deal to happen because it had received “legally binding assurances” that the Saudi state would not be in control of one of its member clubs.The league’s statement suggested it is now apparently satisfied that the P.I.F. — chaired by Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia — is entirely separate from the Saudi state, where Salman is deputy prime minister, minister of defense and widely regarded as the country’s de facto ruler.Yasir al-Rumayyan, the governor of the P.I.F., will serve as Newcastle’s nonexecutive chairman, with Amanda Staveley, a British businesswoman, and Jamie Reuben, a billionaire property investor, also sitting on the club’s newly constituted board.All directors of Premier League clubs are subjected to a background check, designed to make sure they are suitable custodians of what are often beloved civic institutions. A number of human rights organizations have made their objections to the deal plain, with Amnesty International calling on the Premier League to change the rules of its owners and directors’ test to ensure that those accused of human rights violations cannot take charge of soccer teams.“Ever since this deal was first talked about we said it represented a clear attempt by the Saudi authorities to sportswash their appalling human rights record with the glamour of top-flight football,” said Sacha Deshmukh, the organization’s chief executive in Britain.“Under Mohammed bin Salman, the human rights situation in Saudi Arabia remains dire — with government critics, women’s rights campaigners, Shia activists and human defenders still being harassed and jailed, often after blatantly unfair trials.”In Newcastle, however, fans weary of Ashley’s ownership and the team’s middling performances during his tenure celebrated the sale outside the club’s stadium. Supporters of the club have for months taken to social media to champion the sale, and some even filed legal action against the Premier League to push the takeover forward. More