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      Cherish the Feel-Good Stories. They Won’t Last.

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      Enjoy the underdogs now, because money will restore Europe’s usual order soon enough.By Wednesday night, the humiliation was complete. In the space of 24 hours, the two teams that had for so long regarded themselves as the pinnacle of modern soccer — the greatest clubs in the world, the inevitable destinations of the game’s best and brightest, the rightful possessors of its biggest trophies — had been humbled, one after the other.First, Real Madrid had not only lost at home, it had lost at home to a team making its first appearance in the group stages of the Champions League, a team from the poorest country in Europe, a team from a place that does not, in many ways, actually exist. Carlo Ancelotti’s team now sits second in its group, three points behind Sheriff Tiraspol.They might have laughed at that in Barcelona, welcoming the chance to take a little respite from their own troubles by delighting in the demise of their rival. The schadenfreude would not have lasted long.The next night, Ronald Koeman’s team fell behind within three minutes against Benfica — the sort of team that Barcelona, in the days of its pomp and glory, would have swatted aside without appearing to break sweat — and went on to lose, 3-0. Barcelona’s record in the Champions League, a competition the club traditionally hopes to win, now reads played two, lost two, scored none, conceded six.This is as low as Real Madrid and Barcelona, the twin, repelling poles of the clásico, have been in a generation. Between them, they have won 7 of the last 13 editions of the Champions League. Now, there is a growing possibility that at least one of them will not even survive to the knockout stages of the tournament in the spring.Koeman’s job hangs by a thread. La Liga has, in effect, placed Barcelona in financial handcuffs. Real Madrid’s debts are colossal, too, a thunderstorm rolling in from the horizon. Both clubs have lost touch already with the teams they once regarded as subordinates — the Premier League’s elite, Bayern Munich, Paris St.-Germain — disappearing into the distance. Their auras have been shattered and their ambitions winnowed. Their era, by almost every available metric, should be over.Yet Real Madrid is currently top of La Liga. And Barcelona, diminished and dispirited, buffeted by crisis at every turn, has a game in hand. If it wins it, it will be only two points behind its old rival. The team that has twice been embarrassed in Europe has not lost a domestic game this season.The early weeks of a campaign are the time for the willing suspension of disbelief. The conditions, after all, are right. The sample size is still small. The vagaries of the schedule wield an outsize influence. Injury and fatigue have not yet started to have an impact on resources. It is in the opening bars of autumn that the game’s chorus line gets its chance to shine.Neil Maupay and Brighton narrowly missed a chance to move into first place in the Premier League.Matt Dunham/Associated PressThere are, at first glance, plenty of those stories around Europe at the moment. Last Monday, before thoughts turned to the week’s Champions League engagements, Brighton had the opportunity to go top of England’s top flight for the first time in the club’s history. It missed out, but a 95th-minute equalizer from its striker, Neal Maupay, meant that Graham Potter’s team has taken 13 points from its opening six games, as many as Chelsea, Manchester City and Manchester United.An unheralded Lens, improbably, lies second in the nascent table in France. Real Sociedad is second in Spain, and has not lost a game since the opening day of the season. Mainz and Freiburg are (for now) in contention for European spots in the Bundesliga; so is F.C. Köln, usually little more than a synonym for chaos.In Scotland, both Edinburgh teams, Hibernian and newly-promoted Hearts, are keeping pace with a stuttering Rangers at the top of the table. Celtic is struggling so badly that it is below even Dundee United. In the Netherlands, Willem II, from the provincial city of Tilburg, beat PSV Eindhoven last weekend to move into second place.In the Women’s Super League, both Tottenham and Aston Villa have started encouragingly. In Spain, Real Sociedad’s women have matched Atlético Madrid and Barcelona point for point so far.Tottenham’s women are, for the moment, above more pedigreed rivals in the Women’s Super League table.Andrew Boyers/Action Images Via ReutersNone of these dreams will last, of course. As the season wears on, the decisive factor is — more often than not — the depth of a team’s resources rather than the heights of its ability. In the year that Leicester City won the Premier League, the great exception that proves the rule, it was notable how little Claudio Ranieri, the coach, needed to change his lineup.Most weeks, almost uniformly, the core of his team was available. A story that, in hindsight, looks like destiny might have had a very different ending had Jamie Vardy pulled a hamstring, or N’Golo Kanté been the unfortunate victim of a mistimed tackle.Most teams, of course, have to endure those injuries, and when they do so, their ambitions suddenly shrink. It is the elite, the teams made fat by years of Champions League revenues and lavish commercial sponsorships, that can afford to carry squads capable of absorbing those blows without any noticeable dip in performance. As winter sets in, cold economic reality bites.That moment seems to come earlier every season. All of the uplifting stories of unexpected, early success warrant a second look. Willem II, for example, might be second in the Eredivisie, but it is probably significant that the team at the summit, Ajax, has scored 30 goals and conceded one in its first seven games. Willem II is second, but it is second by quite a long way.Real Sociedad’s men’s and women’s teams are both punching above their weight so far.Vincent West/ReutersThe same is true in France, where P.S.G. already has a healthy lead over Lens — nine points after eight games, and that after two months in which Lionel Messi has barely featured domestically — and in Germany, where Bayern has scored almost three times as many goals as third-place Wolfsburg. Barcelona’s women’s team, the reigning European champion, has scored 26 goals in four games. It has conceded none.The top four spots in the Premier League, too, have been occupied almost since the start of the campaign by the four teams expected to finish there in May. Juventus started the Serie A season abysmally, failing to win any of its first four games; Napoli, by contrast, has clicked almost immediately.And yet the most compelling parallel has not been last season, when Juventus limped to fourth, but a few campaigns prior, when the club started almost as poorly, and then won 26 out of 28 games to collect yet another title convincingly.Most troubling of all, of course, is Spain, where Real Madrid and Barcelona have diminished at startling, alarming speed, and yet remain out of the reach of all but two — Atlético Madrid and, at a pinch, Sevilla — of their supposed peers.There is a reason for that. Even with its finances ravaged, Barcelona can afford to maintain a squad that few others could countenance, the upshot of decades of unequal distribution of the country’s television revenue. This is the ultimate vindication of a risible, self-interested approach: between them, Barcelona and Real Madrid have stifled La Liga of competitive integrity so effectively that their floor is still above almost everyone else’s ceiling.Barcelona may have its problems, but it also has players like Ansu Fati.Lluis Gene/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe same is true of P.S.G. and the Premier League’s Big Four and Bayern Munich, and it is true of Ajax in the Netherlands and Club Brugge in Belgium and countless other teams in countless other leagues. Only in the rarest circumstances would any of the unexpected contenders, currently sitting in positions of unaccustomed prominence, actually be able to turn their early heat into genuine light. But that is not the point.Whether Real Sociedad, in the end, wins the league this season is secondary to the idea that Real Sociedad — and by extension every other team outside the established elite — can believe that, in certain circumstances, it could win the league.That hope, naïve and unrequited as it might be, is crucial, particularly in an era of such yawning financial disparity. It is vital that teams believe in possibility, in the chance that the elite might stumble, that they might be able to profit, that the stars might align. That it is no longer possible, not really, to sustain that delusion suggests something important has been lost, and it may not come back.Courage and CowardiceSinead Farrelly came forward twice, at least. In 2015, she reported the inappropriate behavior — and that, given the scale and the nature of the allegations, is putting it lightly — of her coach, Paul Riley, to her team, the Portland Thorns. Earlier this year, an email chain made public by Alex Morgan on Thursday made clear, she made the same complaint direct to the National Women’s Soccer League’s leadership.And twice, nobody seemed particularly interested in hearing what Farrelly had to say.That this week she then came forward again, along with a former teammate, Mana Shim, demonstrated her conviction, her perseverance, her fury. That she did so publicly underlines her courage.That she had no other choice but to do so, though, reflects appallingly on the cowardice of the authorities whose job it is to the protect the players who stock their teams, who grace their league, who generate their product.Riley left the Thorns after that initial investigation, but had another job in the N.W.S.L. a few months later. Thanks to Morgan, we know that Lisa Baird, the league’s commissioner, effectively dismissed Farrelly’s second complaint, made in April, without indicating she would be investigating further.Only when the league’s hand was forced, when Farrelly and Shim had held it to account by telling their stories to The Athletic, was any action taken. Within hours, Riley was fired from his post coaching the North Carolina Courage. It was the second such dismissal in the N.W.S.L. in a matter of days, and the third for misconduct in a matter of weeks.There are two stories here. One is, although rooted in darkness, inherently uplifting: that the bravery of these women might make the N.W.S.L. a safer place for their colleagues and successors.The other has a very different moral: that the league itself, so conscious of its own fragility — perhaps overly — chose to sweep all those red flags under the carpet rather than look after its players’ well-being.“They say we should keep quiet because there might not be a league,” Thorns defender Meghan Klingenberg wrote after the allegations surfaced Thursday. “We should take low pay, otherwise there’s no league. Don’t talk about the crappy hotels, the bus fires, the unsafe fields, the substandard medical care.”The players of the N.W.S.L. — as all professional athletes do — make considerable sacrifices to play the sport they love. Doubtless, they make more than most, in order to help the women’s game to grow, and to thrive. But these sacrifices, let alone what Farrelly and Shim endured, are too high a price to pay. Talking about these issues is not what places the league in jeopardy. The danger lies in permitting them to exist in the first place.Sorry, Not SorryBruno Fernandes apologized for missing a penalty. But did he need to be sorry?Peter Powell/EPA, via ShutterstockBruno Fernandes’s penalty was, it goes without saying, really quite a bad one. Impressively bad, almost, particularly for a player who has always seemed so unruffled by the stress and the strain of taking a penalty.For once, though, it appeared to get to him. Perhaps it was the circumstance — a chance to avert a chastening home defeat to Aston Villa — or perhaps it was the context: The presence of Cristiano Ronaldo at Manchester United these days means Fernandes has no room for error. As soon as he missed one penalty, he would have known he would not get the next one.Whatever the reason, though, and however bad the penalty, there was absolutely no reason for him to feel compelled to issue a lengthy apology to his fans and teammates a few hours later, just as there had been no reason whatsoever for Jesse Lingard to plead for clemency in public after his error condemned United to defeat against Young Boys of Bern a couple of weeks ago.Players do not have to apologize for making mistakes. They do not even have to apologize for playing badly. That is not the covenant between fan and athlete. All we can rightfully expect is that they try, that they commit, that they do their best. We have no right to demand that they succeed. It is the point of sport that sometimes, effort goes unrewarded.The question that arises from the fact that both Lingard and Fernandes felt compelled to do so is not — as it was represented, in some quarters — whether players have become too reliant on agencies to run their social media accounts. It is, instead, why those advisers might suggest a pre-emptive apology is necessary.The answer to that, of course, is the same as the explanation for why players engage agencies to handle Twitter and Instagram in the first place: Fernandes and Lingard, and the people curating their online presences, will have known that their missteps would be a vector for untold, untrammeled abuse. They apologized to try to staunch the flow. The problem there is not the apology itself, it is the abuse that necessitates it. That is the issue soccer has to address: not that players are apologizing, but that they feel the need to do so.CorrespondenceIniquities or inequities? Sometimes it’s hard to say.Paul Ratje/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesEagle-eyed as ever, there were several of you — not least Thomas Alpert and Brendan Greer — who wondered whether the mention of modern soccer’s “iniquities” was a typo; perhaps, those of little faith asked, I meant “inequities,” instead?It’s healthy for us all to admit to mistakes, sometimes. Was it a typo? No. I meant to type iniquities. Did I realize iniquities and inequities were different words? Also no. Still, now that I have been educated, I can say with some confidence that they both probably apply to 21st century soccer.Alex McMillan noted another lapse: “You did seem to get sidetracked in answering the question about whether any country, other than the U.K., fields multiple national teams.” Fortunately, Alex is a little more focused. As well as the People’s Republic of China, two of the country’s Special Administrative Regions — Hong Kong and Macau — field teams, as does the Republic of China, better known as Taiwan, but competing under the name Chinese Taipei.“Practically speaking,” Alex wrote, “in this case you have one country with four identities in and of itself.”Aaron Stern and Darren Wood, meanwhile, queried the decision to focus last week’s column on Marcos Alonso. “The admissions about Alonso’s conduct made it difficult to return to the piece about his technical ability and role at Chelsea with the same amount of interest,” Darren wrote.“What I found odd, unsettling, was the way your piece made concessions to conduct that some might judge as sufficient to exclude Alonso from analysis, then returned to its prior analysis of his sporting ability. Is the premise that players’ conduct and character might not exclude them from the efforts and attentions of both writer and reader, if their athletic skill merits it? How egregious must their conduct and character become before we exclude them from any type of analysis?”This is not a question that has a simple answer, and it would be an insult to your intelligence to present one. All I can do, I think, is to walk you through my thought process, while making no claim that my thought process is objectively correct, or that there is such a thing, in these instances, as objectively correct.The logic of last week’s column was that Alonso is an interesting case study as a player: not just a curiously exact specialist, but a player whose fortunes have ebbed and flowed quite dramatically, depending on the identity and the attitude of his coach. Given that Chelsea’s meeting with Manchester City was the most significant game of last weekend, it felt a fitting time to explore the nuances of his situation.It would, I agree, be irresponsible not to mention the broader context, both in light of his conviction in 2011 and his more recent decision not to take the knee. Doing that while maintaining a coherent thread is a difficult balancing act — and it is entirely possible that I did not pull it off — but I would hope, at least, that it made clear the piece was not attempting to cast Alonso as a straightforward, sympathetic hero.The broader issue, of course, is whether Alonso should be considered worthy of coverage at all. That is a judgment call — and as such, you are free to disagree with it — but my conclusion was that, as long as a distinct line is drawn between the individual and the athlete, objective coverage is both possible and reasonable. Singling Alonso out for praise on some sort of moral level would be one thing; assessing him as a player is another. That may not be the right answer — there may not be a right answer — but I hope it, at least, answers the question. More

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      FIFA Considers Moving Its Commercial Business to U.S.

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      Soccer’s global governing body is giving serious thought to relocating its multibillion-dollar commercial business to the United States.Looking to expand its global footprint beyond its cloistered headquarters next to a zoo on the outskirts of Zurich, soccer’s governing body, FIFA, is studying the feasibility of moving its financial engine, the commercial operation that produces billions of dollars in revenues for the organization, to the United States.The possible move will be determined by technical factors including the suitability of locations on both coasts, the ease of acquiring work visas for overseas staff members and tax rules, according to an official with direct knowledge of the discussions who declined to speak publicly because a final determination had yet to be made. The operations involved represent a vital part of FIFA’s business: They oversee FIFA’s sale of sponsorships and broadcasting rights, which represent some of the most lucrative properties in global sports.Since the election of Gianni Infantino as its president in 2016, FIFA been looking at extending its footprint beyond its glass-and-steel headquarters on the east side of Zurich. It has already opened an office in Paris, where most of its staff involved in development and relations with its 211 member associations will eventually based.Officials are hopeful that relocating its commercial business to a major American city would help FIFA attract and retain key staff members, amid concerns that its current home is proving a hurdle in attracting talent. Local regulations require FIFA to employ a fixed number of Swiss staff members.FIFA officials toured the United States in September, visiting possible host cities for the 2026 World Cup.Mark Humphrey/Associated PressFIFA’s interest in decoupling itself from Zurich is also — in part — an effort to improve its reputation and loosen its ties with its troubled recent past in Switzerland, the country that has been its home since 1932.Several members of FIFA’s executive board were arrested in Zurich in 2015 as part of a sprawling United States Department of Justice investigation that revealed corrupt practices dating back at least two decades. That scandal led to the downfall of FIFA’s longtime president, Sepp Blatter, and most of the organization’s top leadership.A move to the United States would have been unthinkable for FIFA in the immediate aftermath of the arrests, since it might have put the organization’s officials, operations and financial accounts within the reach of the U.S. authorities. (Some former FIFA executives, possibly fearing arrest, have not set foot in North America since the scandal.) But now staying in Switzerland comes with its own issues.Infantino, who replaced Blatter as FIFA president a year after the raids, has faced a yearslong investigation into his relationship with Michael Lauber, Switzerland’s former attorney general. Lauber, who was forced out after revelations that he held private meetings with Infantino, was responsible for Swiss investigations stemming from the 2015 American indictment. Those inquiries have yielded few charges.The failure of the Swiss authorities to act in the corruption case has frustrated elements of FIFA’s current leadership, who have privately expressed incredulity at the inaction given the amount of evidence obtained in searches of FIFA’s headquarters. At the same time, the investigation into Infantino led to a furious response, with FIFA’s assistant secretary general branding it “a little grotesque and unfair.”FIFA’s effort to move parts of its operations away from Zurich are seen by insiders as necessary measures for an organization looking to move beyond working methods dating back several decades. The decision to relocate to Paris, for example, has offered officials in its development and member association departments easier access to Africa, a region over which FIFA has largely assumed complete control after a separate corruption scandal involving the president of the regional governing body on the continent.“Our aim of making football truly global also means that FIFA itself needs to have a more balanced and global organizational set up,” Infantino said when the Paris office opened in June.FIFA was established in Paris in 1904 but moved to Zurich in 1932 because of Switzerland’s location in the center of Europe, its political neutrality and because “it was accessible by train,” according to a timeline on FIFA’s website. In 2007, FIFA moved into its current headquarters building on a hill overlooking Zurich. The building, known as FIFA House, cost more than $200 million and has several subterranean levels, including the marble-floored, soundproof room where its governing council holds its meetings.Officials at FIFA remain undecided about how much of a presence the organization would keep in Switzerland, which — thanks to light-touch government oversight and friendly tax arrangements — has grown into the location of choice for international sporting federations. Lausanne, the home of the International Olympic Committee, actively recruits such organizations and has labeled itself “the Silicon Valley of sports.”Pushing for such significant changes is emblematic of FIFA under Infantino. A Swiss national, he has tried to institute major changes to the way both FIFA and soccer operate, with mixed results. He has enlarged the World Cup, an event responsible for more than 90 percent of FIFA’s revenues, to 48 teams from the current 32-nation format. But his efforts to force through other innovations and increase FIFA’s influence in club soccer have often fallen flat, and his current push to shift the World Cup from a quadrennial event to one staged every two years threatens a major fight with European soccer officials and even the International Olympic Committee.Moving to the United States would offer FIFA the chance to build out its commercial operation in a country that its officials feel has yet to embrace soccer at a level matching the sport’s place in other parts of the world. The timing would also allow FIFA to exert greater control over preparations for the 2026 World Cup, the first edition of the expanded tournament; that tournament will be co-hosted by the United States, Mexico and Canada.But being closer to Wall Street and major American companies, some top FIFA officials contend, would also offer the chance to significantly increase revenues as well as find partners to finance new events and invest in the growing popularity of women’s soccer.As well as tapping into the potential commercial opportunities available in the world’s largest economy, being based in the United States also would offer FIFA another chance to show that it has moved on from its scandal-ridden past.FIFA has in recent years tried to mend its relationship with the U.S. government, and officials have been in regular contact with the Department of Justice, which has continued its probe into corruption in world soccer. Some of the fruits of those improved ties were made clear last month when FIFA and its two regional confederations most implicated in the 2015 scandal were cleared to receive more than $200 million recovered from companies and individuals. The Justice Department said the money would have to be administered through FIFA. More

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      N.W.S.L. Faces Accusations of Abuse and Toxic Workplaces

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      The players’ union for the National Women’s Soccer League demanded immediate action amid accusations that multiple coaches had abused or preyed on athletes.One soccer player said she was coerced into a sexual relationship with her coach, and later collapsed during a game because of a panic attack. Another said her coach pressured her into kissing a teammate for his enjoyment. A third recently left her team altogether, she said, after being bullied and belittled so much that she lost her love for the game.All three women played for teams in the National Women’s Soccer League, the top professional league in the United States, or its predecessors. Their stories and accusations — recounted in a series of recently published reports — are a seismic shock to a nine-year-old league still struggling to find its footing, and a troubling reminder of the dynamics that can put women in vulnerable positions even as their power and prominence grow in professional sports.In a blistering statement Thursday, the players’ union for the National Women’s Soccer League demanded immediate action from the league after a series of accusations that coaches, owners and team executives had abused or preyed on athletes in recent years, and that the league had no effective system in place to investigate or stop misbehavior.“The N.W.S.L. has failed us,” the union said, announcing that it was making counseling available to any player seeking help and setting up a pathway for N.W.S.L. players to report abuse.The players’ union also called for an immediate investigation into accusations against one of the league’s most high-profile coaches; suspensions for any employees accused of violating the league’s anti-harassment policy or not reporting such abuse; and explanations for how some previous accusations were handled.The N.W.S.L., which has collective bargaining sessions scheduled with the players’ union this week, did not respond to requests for comment on Thursday.The call came in the wake of multiple published reports that coaches in the league had abused their players verbally and sexually — sometimes for years, and even after players had reported the abuse to team and league officials.This season alone, a prominent team executive and a top coach working for different teams were fired after league investigations into their workplace conduct. And several prominent N.W.S.L. players have gone public with their complaints, and their anger, about league anti-harassment policies that they say do nothing to protect athletes.The biggest revelation came Thursday morning, when The Athletic published an article that included allegations that Paul Riley, who coached the North Carolina Courage to consecutive N.W.S.L. titles in 2018 and 2019, coerced a player into having sex with him; forced two players to kiss and then sent them unsolicited sexual pictures; and yelled at and belittled players.The Athletic also reported that Riley was let go from his head coaching job with the Portland Thorns in 2015 in part because of violations of team policy. Riley denied most of the allegations to The Athletic, and he and the Courage did not respond to a request for comment from The New York Times.In its statement on Thursday, the N.W.S.L. players’ union also demanded to know how Riley was twice hired by N.W.S.L. teams — the Courage and the Western New York Flash — even after one of his previous employers, the Thorns, had been made aware of accusations against him.Earlier this week, the N.W.S.L. concluded an investigation into another one of its teams, the Washington Spirit. The league did not share findings from the investigation, but announced that the Spirit’s coach, Richie Burke, had been fired for cause and would no longer be allowed to work in the N.W.S.L., and that the Spirit’s owners would be barred from participating in leaguewide governance matters. “The N.W.S.L.’s board of governors has determined that the Spirit and its ownership have failed to act in the best interests of the league,” the N.W.S.L. said in the statement.The investigation was prompted by reporting in The Washington Post that Burke would regularly “unleash a torrent of threats, criticism and personal insults” on his players. One player, Kaiya McCullough, said she had left the team over the abuse she said she endured.The accusations had precedent: Two years ago, youth players accused Burke of using abusive language in a previous job. The Spirit stood behind him at the time.Across many of the stories of abuse from women’s players, a few consistent themes emerged. One was the players’ feelings of powerlessness, or of a responsibility to accept inappropriate behavior rather than report it for fear of causing public problems for nascent pro leagues that often exist on precarious financial foundations. While many members of the World Cup champion United States women’s national team are household names and earn hundreds of thousands of dollars annually, about three-quarters of the players in the N.W.S.L. earn $31,000 or less each season, according to its players’ union.“This isn’t just something that has happened at one club,” Meghan Klingenberg, a longtime member of the Thorns and a World Cup winner, wrote on Twitter last month after earlier reports of a coach who had been accused of abusing his players verbally and emotionally. “This is systemic and we need accountability.”On Friday morning, Nadia Nadim, an Afghan-Danish striker who plays for Racing Louisville, wrote that she had not been harassed, but that the league had done nothing “when a certain club forged my signature to fake an extended option, to gain benefits from a trade.” She added: “N.W.S.L. is such a joke.”While issues of abuse and corporate governance in women’s soccer have intensified in recent months, they fit a longstanding pattern. The predecessor league to the N.W.S.L., Women’s Professional Soccer, folded in 2012 in part because of a legal fight between the league and the owner of the magicJack team, Dan Borislow, after players accused Borislow of bullying and threatening players.Last year, Major League Soccer forced Dell Loy Hansen, who owns Real Salt Lake and who also owned the Utah Royals in N.W.S.L., to sell his teams after former players and employees detailed his history of racist and sexist comments. And earlier this season, the N.W.S.L.’s New York-area club, Gotham F.C., fired its general manager, Alyssa LaHue, for what it said were unspecified violations of league policy. More

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      In One Moment, Messi and P.S.G. Make It All Work

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      The Lionel Messi goal that completed a Champions League win over Manchester City offered a flash of his past, and a glimpse of his new club’s future.PARIS — Lionel Messi picked the ball up in that spot, the one that has served as the starting point for so many of his finest moments, the one that he knows so well that it might as well be his spot. It has, for 15 years, been his base camp, his happy place: a few yards inside from the right touchline, a few yards from halfway.He was standing still as he controlled it. He had been standing still for some time, by that stage. Paris St.-Germain had taken an early lead, through Idrissa Gueye, and had spent most of the rest of the game desperately trying to fend off Manchester City’s unrelenting attacks.It had maintained its advantage a little through judgment — the industry of Gueye and Ander Herrera, the obduracy of Marquinhos, the sheer, indomitable size and improbable elasticity of Gianluigi Donnarumma — and a little through luck. City cut through, again and again, only for P.S.G. to repel the incursions at the last possible moment.As City, the Premier League champion, turned the screw, the forward line that acts as P.S.G.’s crown jewel seemed to lose interest. At first, both Neymar and Kylian Mbappé had lent a hand, dutifully following their runners, doggedly helping out their fullbacks. Even Messi, in the first half-hour or so, had made a point of hurrying and harrying his opponents.The longer the game wore on, though, the more sporadic those efforts became. That has always been the question with this iteration of P.S.G., of course: For all its formidable talent, how can a team built around three superstars — three players who, on most sides, would have other players to do the dirty work for them — thrive against the well-oiled machines that, for the most part, dominate modern soccer?In one sense, City and P.S.G. are mirror images. Both have been designed almost from scratch. Both are fueled by the bottomless wealth of Gulf States. Both stand for projects that see soccer as a means in some greater game, not as an end in itself. And both have been constructed as platforms for and monuments to individuals.The only differences, really, are that the individuals at the heart of the P.S.G. project run around on the field while City’s issues instructions from the side, and that City’s approach dovetails more neatly with the exigencies of the elite game: The system crafted by Pep Guardiola is king, and his billion-dollar squad must submit to it. At P.S.G., the system is secondary to the stars.As Tuesday’s game wore on, it felt as if that would be the lesson to be drawn. City had the ball. P.S.G. chased shadows. Or, rather, most of P.S.G.’s players did. Gueye and Herrera and the indefatigable Marco Verratti closed down spaces and put out fires. Increasingly, Messi and Neymar and Mbappé ambled around, no longer willing to chase back. A tenet of modern soccer said that the host’s luck could not last.Then Messi got the ball. He has to work through the gears just a little these days, so he gathered speed as he approached City’s penalty area, drifting just a touch more to the center with every step, as if drawn to the edge of the box by the gravity of the goal itself.It is here that Messi has always come to life. He was at full speed, but there was no sense of haste; it seemed he was waiting for all of the other moving parts of the scene to be just so before he played his hand. He saw Achraf Hakimi bursting down the right, unbalancing City’s shape. He saw Mbappé burst across the box at an angle. He waited.For much of the match, Messi had failed to play his usual role as the center of attention.Alain Jocard/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWhen Messi signed with P.S.G., it was the prospect of seeing him play alongside Neymar — for so long his heir apparent — and Mbappé, the player most likely to inherit his crown as the best player in the world, that made the whole thing palatable.He did not, after all, want to leave Barcelona: He made that perfectly clear. The greatest player of his, or perhaps any, generation had been forced to leave only because of the suicidal economics of the modern game. When it emerged that Barcelona could no longer pay him, he had little choice but to sign for one of two clubs.Only P.S.G. and City, the two teams for whom money is no object, the two teams who have done so much to distort soccer’s economics, the two teams backed by nation states using the world’s most popular sport as a geopolitical pawn, could afford him. There was no romance here; it was cold, heartless business, nothing more.The chemistry has not been immediate. Mbappé and Neymar, occasionally, seem to butt heads, one complaining that the other does not share the ball quite as much as he might. Messi’s start had been slow, too, as he recovered from a delayed preseason. Even the Harlem Globetrotters, after all, have to practice their tricks.For much of this game, too, the P.S.G. trio seemed to be getting to know one another. They combined fitfully, in bursts, flickering to life and then subsiding again. It was possible to wonder if this grand experiment, this faintly pubescent attempt to bring FIFA Ultimate Team to life might be doomed to failure.On the edge of the box, Messi finally released the ball. There is a clairvoyant streak to Messi’s genius: It is not just that he seems to see the field from on high, a shifting geometric pattern playing out beneath him, but that he gives the impression he can see into the future, too. So when he finally released the ball, it came with instructions. He did not so much pass it to Mbappé as loan it to him. His teammate had little choice but to give it back.Messi did not, perhaps, know quite how Mbappé would do it — the slick back-heel that wrong-footed City’s defenders was a virtuoso testament to the French striker’s own brilliance — but he knew that, if Mbappé did return the ball, it would roll to his other favorite spot: on the arc just outside the box.With Aymeric Laporte snapping at his heels, the ball arrived just as Messi did. There was no time to take a touch, but Messi has never needed time, not here. He swept his left foot through the ball, a motion every bit as smooth and apparently effortless as a Roger Federer forehand.In City’s goal, Éderson set his feet and readied himself to jump. On the replays, the moment when he realized the futility of it was almost visible: the slight sinking look in his eyes as he saw the dip, the fade, the swerve on Messi’s shot.Messi was running for the corner before the ball hit the net, before the crowd had computed the physics, before it was possible, really, to understand that he had done it. The whole thing had taken no more than six or seven seconds, from standstill to bedlam, but that was more than long enough.It remains to be seen if this P.S.G. team, a 2-0 victor on the day, can work well enough to win the Champions League. It will take years to parse what this era of teams backed by unimaginable wealth means to the game, to fully comprehend the change that it has wrought. But for a moment, just a moment, the questions and the concerns did not matter.All there was, just then, was Messi, his arms outstretched, full of joy, and a stadium, with arms aloft, full of awe, marveling at what he had done, at what he can do.Ian Langsdon/EPA, via Shutterstock More

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      Marcos Alonso, Chelsea and the Genius of Thomas Tuchel

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      There is no such thing as a good or a bad player, only one in the right (or wrong) system.Things got so bad, at one point, that even Marcos Alonso’s father was telling him to go. His fallout with his coach at Chelsea, Frank Lampard, had been spectacular and it had been total. Alonso had been substituted at halftime during a game at West Bromwich Albion, but instead of dutifully filing out to support his teammates, he had instead skulked off to wait on the team bus, stewing at the injustice of it all.When Lampard found out, he was furious. First, he rebuked Alonso for his disloyalty, his petulance, in front of his teammates, a public shaming that often functions as soccer’s nuclear option, and then he ostracized him entirely from his team. For four months, Alonso did not play so much as a minute of soccer.His father — also Marcos Alonso — had been a professional, too, playing for Atlético Madrid and Barcelona. His grandfather — you can probably guess his name — spent eight years at Real Madrid. Both, Alonso’s father told him, would have been tempted to “tell the manager where to go,” and then demand the club’s owner allow them to leave.It was not the first time that Alonso’s Chelsea career seemed to be stalling. He had thrived under Antonio Conte — the coach who signed him, for $32 million, in 2016 — for two seasons, and started well under his replacement, Maurizio Sarri. But then, as the club’s form dipped, by his own admission, so did Alonso’s. Sarri had asked him for “something different,” and he had found it hard to adapt. After a spell struggling with injury, he found it hard to regain his place in the team.Alonso had persevered through that, though, and he determined to ignore his father’s advice and do the same after the collapse of his relationship with Lampard. It paid off: In January, Lampard was fired. Alonso was restored to the substitutes’ bench for Thomas Tuchel’s first game as his successor. He returned to the field a few days later, scoring Chelsea’s second goal in a win against Burnley.It was only at the start of the current season, though, that he has re-emerged as a regular presence. Ben Chilwell, his rival for the left-sided role in Tuchel’s team, returned late from his summer exertions with England; it is only in the last week or so that he has been considered fit enough for selection.Tuchel has figured out that Alonso is not a left back, nor is he a left wing. As a left wing-back, though, with cover behind him and options ahead, he is perfect.Hannah Mckay/ReutersA year or so after it seemed his Chelsea career was over, Alonso has thrived in Chilwell’s absence. He was, arguably, Chelsea’s best player in its victory against Tottenham last week. At the start of the month, he had stood out as Tuchel’s side neutralized Liverpool — despite playing the entire second half at a disadvantage — at Anfield.His skill set seems uniquely suited to the exigencies of Tuchel’s system. His height bolsters Chelsea’s back line in defense; his diesel stamina allows him to cover huge tracts of turf over considerable periods of time; his attacking instincts make him a valuable offensive outlet; and his pinpoint delivery makes him a key supply line for Romelu Lukaku.For all his ability, though, Alonso is not an easy player to admire. In 2011, he was at the wheel of a car which crashed into a wall in Madrid while traveling at more than twice the speed limit in wet conditions; a young woman was killed. Alonso’s blood alcohol level was over the legal limit. Five years later, he was told that he would not be sentenced to prison for involuntary manslaughter, but fined $71,000 and banned from driving for three years, all of which had already been served.This week, he revealed that he had decided that he would stop kneeling in protest of discrimination, preferring instead to point to the officially sanctioned “No Room For Racism” badge that adorns every Premier League jersey.That is his right, of course, and Alonso has made it plain that he is “fully against racism” and has no desire to make a political statement. But still, it is not what you might call a great look: a white player’s deciding that taking the knee is “losing a bit of strength,” and taking unilateral action without consulting any of his Black teammates, several of whom have been the victims of racist abuse.It is worth considering Alonso’s case, though, purely as a sporting phenomenon. He is a relative rarity in modern soccer, in that he is a highly tuned positional specialist in an era when versatility — for the vast majority — is a professional necessity. It is not just that Alonso plays in one position, it is that he appears to succeed only in one interpretation of one position.He is not especially effective as a traditional left back — to an outsider’s eye, he lacks the acceleration to recover — and he is not quite creative enough to play as a left wing. As a left wing-back, though, a blending of the two roles, with cover behind him and options ahead, he is perfect.Alonso’s attacking instincts make him a valuable offensive outlet, and his pinpoint delivery makes him a key supply line for Romelu Lukaku.David Klein/ReutersMore than that, he is a compelling example of a truth that bears repeating: Whether he looks a key cog in Chelsea’s success or a spare part depends not on his basic level of ability — which, within reason, we can assume to have remained essentially consistent — but on the identity and nature of his coach. Under Conte and Tuchel, he has thrived. Under Sarri and Lampard, he drifted. There is, as ever, no such thing as a good or a bad player, only one in the right or wrong system.But most of all, he stands as testament to the work Tuchel has done at Chelsea. It is startling to think that it is only eight months since Alonso was in purdah under Lampard and Chelsea was running the risk of missing out on qualifying for the Champions League.Tuchel has transformed the team at a speed that should not, really, be possible, a speed that even he might have thought was a little too ambitious. When he arrived, he spoke of closing the gap on Manchester City and Liverpool within a season. He did it, instead, almost instantaneously: Chelsea goes into Saturday’s meeting with Pep Guardiola’s team as champion of Europe and City’s apparent equal, if not superior, in the Premier League, too.What makes it all the more impressive is that Tuchel has done it without any great overhaul of his squad. Chelsea added Lukaku and Saúl Ñiguez to its ranks this summer, of course, but mostly Tuchel has simply repurposed the tools he has inherited, even the peculiar, esoteric ones, like Alonso.His is not so much a triumph of making square pegs fit in round holes, but of changing the location of the holes so that the dodecahedrons can work, too, taking all of the raw materials he was handled — all of the players who might have thought their time was up, who might have been written off, who might have gone another way — and turned them into a purring, smooth-running machine.The criteria a player and a manager are subject to are not the same; more than that, they are diametrically opposed. A player can only thrive in a system suited to their abilities. The truest test of a manager, though, is to find that system, regardless of the players.If You Build It, They Will Come. Sometimes.The crowd wasn’t particularly thin for Manchester City’s draw with Southampton last week, but it was empty enough to bother Pep Guardiola. Andrew Yates/EPA, via ShutterstockThere was, as there was always going to be, just a little mirth at the end of Manchester City’s goal-less draw with Southampton last week. Only a few days earlier, Pep Guardiola had been busy scolding the club’s fans for not coming in sufficient numbers to City’s Champions League game with RB Leipzig; this was not, as the scoffing went, the best way to persuade them to heed his call.There is not a vast amount to be gained from lingering on the details of that curious little spat — Guardiola seemed to complain that the stadium wasn’t full; a representative of City’s fans suggested that maybe not everyone can afford to pay eye-watering ticket prices to watch soccer once a week; Guardiola said he had not complained, so did not have to apologize — but there is a lesson at the heart of it that soccer as a whole will, soon, need to address.It is easy to understand why Guardiola is frustrated that the team he has built — the best in City’s history, one of the finest England has ever seen, a side that not only essentially guarantees victory every week, but does so with a style that it is impossible not to admire — might not sell out for a game against a (recently-established) European power.And yet that is not quite the whole story. Guardiola was at pains to tell the club’s fans that his team “needs” them, but that does not quite have the ring of truth. City, more than anyone else, does not really need an external, emotional impetus. It is a smooth, slick, unrelenting machine, regardless of its surroundings. That is no criticism; it is testament to both the club’s investment and his coaching. It is what makes City so successful.But a guarantee of victory, and of victory obtained through dominance, is not necessarily the sort of thing that attracts fans. It reduces the urgency of attending: Why go and see this win, when another win is around the corner? Why spend that money on a low-stakes game — a Champions League group-stage opener — against a team that is not especially familiar when you could save it for one that means much more?It is not certainty that attracts fans, that generates atmosphere. It is, instead, the thing that Guardiola has done his very best to extract from every facet of City’s existence: jeopardy. It seems an obvious point to make, but it holds: a 3-2 win is far more memorable than a 5-0 win, particularly if you have had a series of 5-0 wins in the last few weeks and months and years.Deep down, fans thrive on nothing quite so much as drama and risk and doubt. It is that which makes victories taste all the sweeter. The idea of an endless series of processions is appealing, but only to a certain point; after a while, it loses its edge. Fans like to feel needed, as if they are making some difference to the end result, whether that is true or not.At City, that is often not the case. That has always been true of all of the elite teams — Chelsea and Liverpool and Paris St.-Germain and Real Madrid and all the rest — and is becoming more and more true as the iniquities in the game grow more stark. Certain clubs have always expected victory. Worse, they now get it, almost every week. On the surface, a goal-less draw with Southampton may have been the last thing Guardiola wanted. In reality, it may have been exactly what he needed: a little reminder, to City’s fans, that nothing is entirely guaranteed.Preziosi MemoriesEnrico Preziosi appears to have sold a controlling interest in Genoa. But we have been here before. Simone Arveda/EPA, via ShutterstockThis time, it seems as if it is for real. Enrico Preziosi has come close to selling Genoa, the famed Serie A team he has run like a medieval fief since 2003, a couple of times in the last few years. There was a memorandum of understanding with at least one American finance house. There was a dalliance with a consortium with links to Qatar.It is worth treating reports that he has sold a majority stake in the club to 777 Partners, an investment firm based in Miami, with just a pinch of skepticism: Preziosi would not, after all, be the first old-school Italian owner to sell up and then change his mind. Both Silvio Berlusconi and Maurizio Zamparini, men cut from similar cloth to Preziosi, managed to reappear after apparently divesting themselves from their teams.Most Genoa fans will hope, of course, that this is the last they see of the 73-year-old toy magnate. He has not, after all, been what you would call a model owner. Under what might, in a kind light, be called his stewardship, the club has recruited and fired managers. He has been found guilty of match-fixing. He has proved profoundly incapable of taking the club, well, anywhere.Though the record of Serie A’s other North American owners — there are now seven teams with U.S. or Canadian ownership — is mixed, it would not take much for 777 Partners to be an upgrade: a little stability, and some thinking only a touch more strategic than “appoint the same guy over and over again at the first sign of trouble,” would just about do it.More and more teams in Italy are starting to think that way; as much as Preziosi’s departure means the league is just a little less colorful, just a little less chaotic, it is a sign that things are changing. If this is, indeed, his exit from Serie A, it is part of a marked shift away from the way things used to be, and slowly, gradually, toward how they ought to be.CorrespondenceBen Cohn starts off with a good, precise question on international soccer — “Is my impression that players participate out of love, and the quest for glory, without really getting paid right?” but then follows it up with the sort of question that screams “trap” to any self-respecting newsletter writer: “Does any country other than the U.K. field multiple teams?”Let’s do the one that is not a political land mine first. In the men’s game, generally, players are paid an appearance fee for playing for their country: an amount that is, to elite professionals, basically a nominal sum and is, in quite a few cases, often donated to charity, rather than being spent on watches or supercars or herds of goats or whatever it is players spend money on.As for your second question, which has a very Ted Lasso vibe about it: England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are all different countries. The U.K. is best thought of as a house that four individuals, all with very different needs and interests and wants, happen to share, sometimes happily and sometimes begrudgingly, and occasionally one or other of them threatens to leave, because they feel that their grandparents were forced to sign a cotenancy agreem… no, I’m stretching it. It’s simple: They are separate countries in soccer, rugby, health care and policing; they are the U.K. at the Olympics and in foreign policy; and they are all called England in cricket.On to simpler matters. “I’m no expert, not at all, but is Ole Gunnar Solskjaer not trying to impose a Manchester City-style possession system at Manchester United?” Tom Karsay asks. “Sure looks that way to me. Last year they were a counterattack side, like everybody else.”I’m no expert, either, Tom, but would say it’s quite hard to discern precisely what Solskjaer wants Manchester United to be. The problem, as it goes, may be that he’s not an expert, either. More

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      Jimmy Greaves, English Soccer Star, Is Dead at 81

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      He was the first player to lead scoring in England’s top league for three straight seasons, but he may be best known for one game he missed: the 1966 World Cup final.Jimmy Greaves, one of the greatest goal scorers in English soccer, has died. He was 81.Tottenham Hotspur, where he played for nine years, announced his death on Sunday but did not say where he died or cite the cause.Greaves suffered a minor stroke in 2012. His family thought he had made a full recovery, but he had a more severe stroke in 2015.An all-around striker as adept with his head as he was with either foot, Greaves scored 44 goals in just 57 matches for England.But even though he was the first player to lead scoring in England’s top league for three straight seasons, he may be best known for one game he missed: the World Cup final.Greaves was England’s star striker going into the 1966 tournament on home soil. But he was injured in a first-round match against France and surrendered his place in the lineup to Geoff Hurst.Hurst scored the only goal in England’s quarterfinal win over Argentina and kept his place on the team at the expense of Greaves. Hurst earned lasting fame by scoring the first hat trick in a World Cup final; Greaves famously sat impassively on the bench as England celebrated their 4-2 win over West Germany at the final whistle.Substitutions were not permitted at the time and squad members didn’t receive medals, as they have at World Cups since 1974. A campaign by fans led to the presentation of medals to Greaves and 10 other members of the squad, known as the “forgotten heroes,” in 2009. Greaves sold his 18-carat medal at auction in 2014 for £44,000 (about $60,000).“It was devastating for me that I didn’t play in the final,” Greaves said in 2009. “I always believed that we would win the World Cup and I’d be part of it, but I wasn’t.”Greaves in 2013. After his soccer career ended, he moved into television.Action Images/Action ImagesJames Peter Greaves was born on Feb. 20, 1940, in East London. He began playing for Chelsea when he was 17.At 20 years and 290 days, he became the youngest player to tally 100 league goals in English soccer. He scored 41 times, a club record, in the 1960-61 season to secure a lucrative move to A.C. Milan.He scored nine goals in 12 games with Milan but did not settle in Italy, instead ending his brief stay to return to London with Tottenham, where he would spend the next nine years and score 266 goals in 380 games, a club record.Tottenham’s manager, Bill Nicholson, paid £99,999 for Greaves — to spare him the pressure, he said, of being England’s first 100,000-pound player.The move apparently worked: Greaves scored a hat trick in his opening match, a 5-2 win over Blackpool, and helped Tottenham retain the Football Association Cup.In 1963, he scored twice in a 5-1 win over Atletico Madrid in the European Cup Winners Cup, a victory that made Tottenham the first British side to win a European trophy. He was the first division’s leading scorer — a feat he would repeat in 1964, 1965 and 1969.Greaves switched to West Ham in 1970, traded for his former England teammate Martin Peters. He retired at the end of the season with a record total of 357 goals in 516 league matches.He made a brief comeback for the nonleague club Barnet in 1978, but soon quit again and moved into television. He was a presenter of the long-running Saturday show “Saint and Greavsie” in Britain with the former Liverpool player Ian St. John.Information on survivors was not immediately available. More

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      Decades After a Disaster, English Soccer Fans May Stand Again

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      A practice banned for decades could return with new safety features.There was a time when thousands of fans at every English soccer game would stand throughout the match in spectator areas without seats. But after fans were crushed to death in the Hillsborough disaster of 1989, standing areas were banned as unsafe.Still, many fans pined nostalgically for the days of standing. And now, after many years, England’s top two soccer leagues will be allowed to add standing areas again, with safeguards, the Sports Grounds Safety Authority, a government advisory board, said Wednesday.In the past, standing fans were put in sloped, concrete areas. Often there were more fans standing than sitting at games.It was a cheaper way to see the game, and the proximity to fellow enthusiasts often made for a great atmosphere. But the areas sometimes grew rowdy, and especially after a goal, surges of fans could knock people over.During the height of hooliganism in the ’70s and ’80s, fighting sometimes broke out between rival sets of fans. This led teams to erect fences to separate standing fans from their rivals, and also sometimes from the field.That fencing contributed mightily to the Hillsborough disaster, when nearly 100 Liverpool fans in a crowded standing terrace at an F.A. Cup semifinal in Sheffield were crushed to death.Although standing was not the direct cause of the disaster — poor policing was, according to inquiries — the government nonetheless banned standing at games and insisted that every spectator have a seat.But for 30 years, many fans have carried a torch for standing at games. They said that they missed the atmosphere and that standing could be organized more safely than it was in its heyday. They also noted that many fans stood by their seats for a good part of games anyway.Although movement on the issue has taken decades, standing advocates have built momentum, and recently approval has seemed imminent. Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, which opened in 2019, was designed with two areas that could quickly be converted into so-called safe standing areas should it be permitted.Teams in the top two divisions can apply now to start standing areas in January. But those areas will look very different from the open concrete slopes of old.First, there will be seats there that fold up, so that fans can choose to sit if they like. No more than one fan for each seat will be admitted to the area, to avoid the tightly packed throngs that were often seen last century.In addition, metal rails will be placed between each row. Fans can lean on them, and they will also help keep people in their own rows, preventing excited forward surges of humanity that could be dangerous.Safe standing has been implemented elsewhere in the world, with success. German top-flight stadiums include thousands of spots for standers. Orlando City, L.A.F.C. and Minnesota are among the M.L.S. teams with safe standing areas. In Britain, Celtic of Glasgow began allowing a few thousand standees in the 2016-17 season. “We are beyond delighted to finally claim a win for the F.S.A.’s Safe Standing campaign,” Kevin Miles, chief executive of the Football Supporters’ Association, a fan advocacy group, said in a statement on Wednesday. “Today’s announcement is the result of prolonged and sustained campaigning by football fans.”Vinai Venkatesham, Arsenal’s chief executive, said Wednesday that the club would meet with fans next week to talk about adding standing areas. “It is something we are looking at,” he said. “We need to see what any implications will be, such as would it reduce the capacity. But we will listen to what our fans say and explore what can be done.”Tariq Panja More

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      MLS and Liga MX Announce New Leagues Cup Tournament

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      The Leagues Cup, part of an effort to capitalize on global interest in the game, will likely raise new concerns about soccer players’ exhausting schedules.In a major reordering of soccer competition in North America, the top men’s leagues in the United States and Mexico announced Tuesday the creation of an annual World Cup-style tournament in which every team from both leagues will compete. The monthlong tournament will take place in July and August, beginning in 2023, expanding the collaboration between Major League Soccer and Liga MX and adding more matches to an already crowded world soccer calendar.“We need more global interest,” Don Garber, the M.L.S. commissioner, said in an interview. “This is a global sport. We are doing a good job of growing interest in M.L.S. in our league here domestically. The next step is how do we grow interest outside of our region?”A 47-team tournament (it will have 48 whenever M.L.S. expands to 30 teams) with group and knockout stages during the only relatively quiet period of the soccer calendar — between the end of summer international tournaments and the beginning of club play in the fall — is a linchpin of the strategy.The tournament will replace the much smaller Leagues Cup tournament and take its name. In order to grant it legitimacy and ensure teams take it seriously, organizers promised a large prize pool (but didn’t say how large). The top three teams will also earn berths into the CONCACAF Champions League, the region’s top club competition.The new Leagues Cup will require a substantial reorganization of the M.L.S. and Liga MX schedules. Rather than holding the event alongside league competition, both leagues will take a break for the duration of the tournament. For M.L.S., that means a pause of a month in the middle of its season, which typically starts in March, while for Liga MX that likely means a delay to the beginning of its season.The entire soccer world, from clubs to leagues, confederations and FIFA itself, are in a constant pitched battle over the schedule, over new leagues and navigating national coronavirus laws. Promoters seem to often view soccer as a lucrative zero sum game, using increasingly exhausted players to wring as many dollars as possible out of the sport, with little cooperation among organizations.Aware of this tension, M.L.S. and Liga MX say they created the new tournament with the involvement of CONCACAF, which oversees soccer in North America, Central America and the Caribbean. And the Leagues Cup announcement coincided with another on Tuesday, from CONCACAF, which said that starting in 2024 the CONCACAF Champions League would expand to 27 clubs, from 16 in 2021.The expanded Champions League will begin with three regional tournaments, one each for North America, Central America and the Caribbean, before 16 teams qualify for knockout stages.The Leagues Cup will see Mexican players spend even more time in the United States, as the tournament will be held here. In 2023, the best Mexican players will compete for their national team in the Gold Cup, the regional championship for national teams that has always been held primarily in the United States, in June and July. Many will then return to their Mexican clubs, which will already be in the United States preparing for the Leagues Cup.Mikel Arriola, the Liga MX president, is not worried that Mexican soccer fans will dislike seeing their players spend nearly the entire summer playing north of the border, able to watch only on television without significant travel. This tournament is additive, he said, and does not take away from Liga MX.“This will be a mixed model because we will continue with our traditional way in our local league,” Arriola said. “However, we both are innovating in this kind of summer extravaganza.”The organizers hope the tournament, beyond selling millions of tickets, will create a bonanza of television dollars, especially outside of North America. The rights to show M.L.S. and Liga MX games outside of their home countries are currently not particularly valuable. While M.L.S. is shown in, say, England, television and streaming companies there pay far more to show the Premier League or the Champions League than they do for M.L.S. But an easy-to-understand tournament during a lull in the calendar could prove popular.M.L.S. will control television rights to the tournament in the United States and Canada, Liga MX will control the rights for Mexico, and the two will partner to sell them in the rest of the world. M.L.S. is also speaking with media companies about both local and national rights to show its league games, which are currently held by ESPN, Fox and a number of local media companies but expire next year.Media rights to the Leagues Cup could be sold in conjunction with those rights to the same company or companies, or could be sold separately.The success of the tournament will also be judged on whether it improves North American clubs and players. Arriola said the tournament will provide vital competition to teams in the middle and the bottom of Liga MX, who do not qualify for the CONCACAF Champions League.“Sometimes big teams grow alone,” he said. But if the Leagues Cup generates the proper incentives, there will be more of what Arriola called “horizontal growth” across the entire league.Ultimately the Leagues Cup, and everything else between the two leagues, is pointed toward 2026, when the United States will host the World Cup, alongside Mexico and Canada. “Now we have the rocket fuel of the World Cup that could help propel us to a higher level,” said Garber, “and ultimately be viewed as we have aspired to be, one of the top leagues in the world.” More