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      Georginio Wijnaldum and the Collective Toxic

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      No one can compare themselves to Simone Biles, but Wijnaldum’s exit from Liverpool carried many of the same themes.This is not a comparison, because there is no comparison. Nobody, really, can understand what it is like to be Simone Biles. There have, of course, been athletes burdened with the same sort of level of superhuman expectation, their personhood erased in the transcendence to icon, turned into the face of a sport or an avatar for a generation or a standard-bearer for a nation, but they number barely a handful.And none of them have been in Biles’s precise circumstances. None of them — not Michael Phelps or Michael Jordan or Lionel Messi or whoever — know what it is like to be Simone Biles, at her age, in her mind, with her talent, at her level, in her sport, with her background, in this moment and this culture, with all of those things combined.Nobody else has been through what she has been through. Nobody else is qualified to tell her what path to take, because nobody has ever taken that path. Her experience has been unique; it is hers and hers alone. There is a glory in that, but there is also, perhaps, a shadow of bleakness.Georginio Wijnaldum cannot be (and, remember, is not being) compared to Biles. He is an elite athlete, too, of course. He will know — certainly more than most of us — a little of the sacrifices she has had to make and the demands she has had to meet and the devotion she has had to show to reach the pinnacle of her sport.But there is, of course, no comparison at all. Wijnaldum is a fine midfielder, a Premier League and Champions League winner and a sometime captain of his country, but it would be a bit of a stretch to suggest he has redefined soccer itself, or conjured a whole new vision of the sport from his own imagination, or redrawn the boundaries of what we think is possible.He has never had to endure the pressure of competing in an individual sport, or one that is entirely reliant on his own individual performance. If Wijnaldum made a mistake, a teammate might be there to bail him out, or he might get a chance to rectify it a few minutes later, or make up for it the following week.Biles has none of those safety nets. Even the slightest misstep might mean the difference between gold and silver, gold and nowhere, for her and her teammates. There is no second half, no return fixture, no long slog of a league season. There is only, every four years, perfection or failure, here and now.Biles and Wijnaldum are not alike. There is no comparison. But, for one fleeting moment, it may be worth considering their stories in conjunction.This week, as you will have noticed, Biles withdrew (as of this writing) from two of her Olympic finals. She did so, she said, to prioritize her mental health. She had been feeling, as she had alluded to on Instagram, as though she had “the weight of the world on her shoulders” at times.“This Olympic Games I wanted it to be for myself but I came in and I felt like I was still doing it for other people,” she said. “It hurts my heart that doing what I love has been kind of taken away from me to please other people.”“This Olympic Games I wanted it to be for myself but I came in and I felt like I was still doing it for other people,” Simone Biles said after she pulled out of the competition. Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesIn the general tumult of the Olympics, it would have been easy to miss Wijnaldum’s intervention. This summer, he left Liverpool for Paris St.-Germain. His contract had expired; conversations with the club’s ownership had foundered for several months, the two parties unable to find common ground over how much, and for how long, a player of his age should be paid. His last appearance for his former team, at Anfield in May, was very clearly a goodbye: there was a guard of honor, and a special presentation.This week, Wijnaldum attempted to provide a little bit of context as to why he had left a team he had said publicly he would have been happy to remain at for years to come. He seemed to suggest that ownership did not “love” or “appreciate” him as much as it might have done. But he also mentioned the role played by social media.“On social media, if we lost, I was the one who got the blame,” he said. He felt it was heightened during his contract standoff — “when it went bad, I was the player they blamed, that I wanted to leave” — and never spread to fans in the stadium, but he acknowledged that its roots were deeper. “Basically in the last two seasons I had it a few times,” he said.The reaction was, broadly, dismissive: it was assumed that Wijnaldum was either making excuses, or engaging in a little light, perfectly healthy whataboutery to make a decision that was, likely, far more practical (he wanted a longer contract than Liverpool was prepared to offer, and therefore he left) seem more palatable.And yet, in the context of Biles, it is worth taking Wijnaldum at his word. For all the differences between their situations, their worlds, though, their stories echo — however dimly — each other.Athletes of all stripes exist and perform under pressure: from themselves, from their coaches, from their teams and their teammates, from their fans, from their sponsors. That has always been the case; they become adept, far more so than most of us could countenance, at both functioning and thriving in that environment.What has changed, now, is the scale of that pressure: not just its height, but its breadth. Biles came into Tokyo as the designated “face of the Games,” the star of the United States team, the greatest gymnast in history. NBC’s promotional material for the Olympics ran that, to her, “certain laws do not apply, like gravity.”It would be easy — and not inaccurate — to point the finger of blame at the news media for indulging in that sort of hype, for placing that much expectation on a 24-year-old woman, for exposing her to an intolerable level of pressure. It would be no less valid to suggest that the news media had a role to play in turning Wijnaldum’s contract dispute into a source of consternation among some sections of Liverpool’s support.Wijnaldum, who played his final game for Liverpool in May, noted a stark contrast between how he was treated online versus how he was treated in person. Phil Noble/Agence France-Presse, via Pool/Afp Via Getty ImagesBut to do so would be to ignore a change in the media landscape that, in almost every other context, has been determined to be wholesale and revolutionary. Wijnaldum was keen to stress that there was a difference between how he was treated online and in person; the former turned on him far more quickly, far more vociferously, than the latter ever did.Wijnaldum is not an athlete on the same level as Biles. His journey is not parallel to hers, in a million different ways. Their experiences are wildly different. But like her, his career is played out on social media: his every performance scrutinized and dissected, his every shortcoming highlighted, his every failure pounced upon. He is told what is expected, and he is told, rightly or wrongly, when he does not live up to it.It is easy, when discussing an athlete on social media, to assume that they do not hear: that their feeds are managed by agencies — “post something like” — or to believe, in some way, that the spoils of their success, either the money or the fame, inure them to basic human emotion.But they do hear, and they do see, and they do feel. Those insults cut through. Those demands are noticed. Those expectations — not of the sponsors or the coaches or the journalists alone, but of all of us — have a weight. How much that played a role in Biles’ need to take some time and space only she will know, and she is under no compunction to share, but the swirling maelstrom in which she is expected to live her life does not exert some influence. If Wijnaldum is aware of it, it is hard to believe Biles is not.There has, in the days that followed Biles’ initial decision to withdraw, been what she has described as an “outpouring” of support. Her example will, hopefully, make it easier not only for athletes to discuss their mental well-being, but to know where to draw their own lines.But they are not the only ones who need to heed her lesson. They are not the only ones who need to think about the mental health of the stars we have made, the icons we have cast. It is for all of us, too, to remember that pressure does not just come from within. It is exerted, too, all those thousands of comments building their own gravity, their own force, one that is felt by the good and the great alike.Trading UpDavid Alaba showed he can do it all for Austria’s national team and for Bayern Munich. With Real Madrid, he may be asked to do it all, all by himself. Pool photo by Justin Setterfield/EPA, via ShutterstockDavid Alaba can do pretty much everything. He has, for some time, been one of the world’s finest left backs. In his last couple of seasons at Bayern Munich, he has emerged as one of the best central defenders on the planet, too. That’s some going, given that he would also get a game in midfield for pretty much every team in Europe.All of which will come in useful at Real Madrid, where the current plan appears to be to ask the 29-year-old to play in all three positions simultaneously.That is not quite fair. Real has two left backs, in Ferland Mendy and Marcelo, though the latter is in the (late) autumn of his (illustrious) career. It has a midfield — Casemiro, Luka Modric, Toni Kroos — that is not so much settled as petrified. Alaba would be helpful in both roles, but it is in central defense that the need is greatest, so it is in central defense that he must play.It is a crisis of Real’s own making. First, it forgot to tell Sergio Ramos its contract offer had a best-before date, resulting in him joining Paris St.-Germain on a free transfer. And then this week, it agreed to sell Raphael Varane to Manchester United for $60 million. That pair has been Madrid’s bedrock for a decade. In their absence, Alaba is going to have his work cut out.Quite what lies behind Real’s thinking is difficult to parse — though the only cogent logic is that it is financial — but, either way, it is hard to make the case that the team will be stronger this season than it was last. Barcelona is only in slightly better shape, and that is presuming that Lionel Messi does, in fact, sign a new contract, and the club finds some way to register its four new signings without contravening La Liga’s rules.All of which suggests that, for the first time since the turn of the century, there is a genuine power vacuum at the top of La Liga. Atlético Madrid, the reigning champion, should have a chance to retain its title. And Sevilla, for so long the best of Spain’s rest, may finally scent a once-in-a-generation opportunity.It has had to trade this summer, too, as it does every year: selling the winger Bryan Gil to Tottenham and — though the deal is not yet complete — the defender Jules Koundé to Chelsea. Koundé, in particular, would be a loss: a player of prodigious talent and stratospheric ceiling.But that is more than offset by what Sevilla has been able to wrangle in return. From Spurs, the club elicited not only $24 million, but the playmaker Erik Lamela. Chelsea is, reportedly, prepared to offer cash and the France defender Kurt Zouma to get its hands on Koundé.Neither will be mourned, particularly, by fans of their previous teams. Both have long since faded in English eyes. But to Sevilla, they represent a class of player the club cannot usually attract. Lamela, plagued by injury, managed 35 games for Spurs last season; Zouma featured 36 times for Chelsea.These are not high-risk, high-reward gambles. They are not hidden gems being asked to step up a level. They are seasoned professionals, able to command regular game-time at one of Europe’s biggest teams — and Spurs — and who can be expected to slot straight in to Julen Lopetegui’s side.They will join a squad that already contains Diego Carlos, Papu Gómez, Lucas Ocampos and Ivan Rakitic. For years, victory for Sevilla has been reinventing itself every summer, searching for the next big thing to sell. Now, for the first time in a long time, its team has a very different profile: one built, it would seem, not with an eye on tomorrow but with all of its focus on today.CorrespondenceGood news for those readers who feel this newsletter does not scratch their Major League Soccer itch: you are not alone. Far from it, in fact.William Ireland goes out to bat for Liga MX — “the best North American League, and one of the ten or twelve best leagues in the world” — while Steve Iskra nominates Australia’s A-League. “This is the league that produced the young players that beat Argentina in Tokyo,” he wrote.Joe Klonowski would like to see more on the N.W.S.L., while Ian Roberts completes the acronym soup by throwing the U.S.L. into the mix. “A league of passion among the players and fans, instead of a league bringing in players who are well past their sell by date,” he wrote. And Fernando Gama brings up the Copa Libertadores, now bubbling up nicely as it reaches the quarterfinal stage.I would like to thank all of you for your suggestions, and assure you that they have been taken on board. Bear with me, though. I don’t think The Times will allow me to hire staff to help spread the burden.Fernando’s email provided especially good value this week, because he touched on the issue of (men’s) soccer at the Olympics, too. “The games are typically played in August, when the season is starting, so nobody wants to release their players,” he wrote. “And FIFA does not control the Olympics, and cannot profit from it, so doesn’t feel compelled to enter into a rift with clubs over it.”These are both salient points, highlighted by the reminder from Peter Zwickl that Germany only sent 18 players to Tokyo. “Several players or clubs, of a list of 100 candidates, rejected the invitation by the German coach,” he wrote, which just about encapsulates Olympic soccer’s problem.But let’s leave on a more upbeat note from Rey Mashayekhi. “Five years ago, at the Rio Games, Brazil’s defeat of Germany in the Gold Medal match was a hugely significant, cathartic experience for all invested in the Seleçao, coming as it did two years after the horrors of Belo Horizonte in the 2014 World Cup semifinal.“When Neymar converted Brazil’s fifth and decisive penalty, sunk to his knees and looked to the heavens as the stadium exploded in pandemonium around him, it struck me as a truly great moment with all the emotional release of any triumph in the sport.” There’s a reminder here about one of those easily-forgotten truths in soccer, and in any sport: all of it matters as much as we decide that it matters.That’s all for this week. If you would like to vouch for why I should cover Lithuanian soccer or games in Kyrgyzstan (or anything else, for that matter): askrory@nytimes.com. Twitter might work, too. And if it doesn’t become a newsletter, there’s half a chance it will end up as a Set Piece Menu episode. There is, after all, only so much content.Have a great weekend,Rory More

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      Soccer Team Was Lone Bright Spot in West Bank Village. Virus Took That, Too.

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      Despite a fan base of just 1,400 people, the Wadi al-Nis club was a perennial West Bank powerhouse. But the team — most of whose players are related — could not defeat the coronavirus.WADI AL-NIS, West Bank — The bleachers were mostly empty, the coach was nowhere to be found, and the players were dejected as they suffered another lopsided defeat.A feeling of gloom hovered over the soccer pitch, on the outskirts of Jerusalem, as the Taraji Wadi al-Nis soccer team played the penultimate game of its worst season in decades.The visible frustration of the players in their bright blue-and-white uniforms had much to do with the knowledge that their storied, semiprofessional soccer club — the pride of a tiny, pastoral village of just 1,400 residents, almost all from the same extended family — would be downgraded next season to the shame of the second division.For the residents of Wadi al-Nis in the occupied West Bank, the team’s disappointing season was one more example — but a particularly biting one — of how the coronavirus has aggravated the already hardscrabble circumstances in the village, where many people suffer from poverty and inconsistent employment.Wadi al-Nis players, in blue, during a match in the West Bank city of Ramallah in April. The team’s poor season was one more example of how the coronavirus has aggravated the village’s already hardscrabble circumstances.Samar Hazboun for The New York TimesSince the pandemic first emerged in the village last year, low-income families have cut down on meat consumption, laborers who work in Israel and nearby Israeli settlements have at times been unable to reach their jobs, and some of those sick with Covid-19 have racked up hefty medical bills.“The coronavirus has been devastating for our town,” said Abdullah Abu Hamad, 46, a member of the local council and the president of the soccer team, as he overlooked the village’s rocky landscape. “It has shaken up all of our lives, from the builders to the farmers to the players.”Despite the hard life for many in Wadi al-Nis even before the pandemic, one bright spot that had long set it apart from similarly struggling villages in the occupied territories was the outsize success of its soccer team, traditionally a West Bank powerhouse.But the coronavirus has taken that, too.Trophies won by Wadi al-Nis at the team’s headquarters this month. The semiprofessional club will be downgraded next season to the second division.Samar Hazboun for The New York TimesThe financial crisis spurred by the virus has curtailed sponsorships for many Palestinian clubs, according to Susan Shalabi, a senior official at the Palestine Football Association. For the team in Wadi al-Nis, whose tiny fan base meant money was always tight, the loss of about $200,000 in government and private sector sponsorships was ruinous.Instead of practicing at rented fields in neighboring towns, the players now often train by running for hours along dirt paths beside grape vineyards and olive orchards.While the team’s floundering has depressed the spirits of almost everyone in the village, its poorest residents have concerns that go well beyond losses on the pitch.Wadi al-Nis this month. The village has about 1,400 residents, almost all from the same extended family.Samar Hazboun for The New York TimesHaijar Abu Hamad, 64, a widow, usually relies on family and friends to assist her with basic expenses like food, water and electricity bills, but few have been able to continue supporting her in the wake of the virus.“Some days I only eat a piece of bread for dinner,” she said, doing little to hide her distress. “It’s a terrible feeling: You open the fridge and there’s barely anything there.”Ms. Abu Hamad — the family name of almost everyone in the village is Abu Hamad — has two children and four grandchildren who were born with hearing deficiencies. She said the family could not afford to fix one of her grandchildren’s hearing aids.Haijar Abu Hamad, 64, at her home in Wadi al-Nis on Thursday. Life in the wake of the virus has been especially hard. “Some days I only eat a piece of bread for dinner,” she said. Samar Hazboun for The New York TimesIf soccer has been the town’s primary entertainment option, its main economic engine has been jobs in Israel or neighboring settlements.During the initial weeks of the outbreak, however, Palestinian workers faced additional restrictions on crossing into Israel. Those over 50 were generally not allowed to enter at all, while some laborers in settlements were unable to reach their jobs.“It was a devastating time,” said Ghaleb Abu Hamad, 39, who works as a tractor driver in a nearby settlement and has been a longtime defender on the village’s soccer team. “Unlike Israelis who got unemployment funds, we were left to fend for ourselves.”Still, the employment picture has improved a bit. Villagers who work in Israel and neighboring settlements said that they had recently been able to reach their jobs on a regular basis, in part because they had received vaccines from Israel.The name Wadi al-Nis, which means Valley of the Porcupine, is associated with soccer success across the West Bank. For most of its existence, the team, established in 1984, has played in the territory’s most prestigious league, and it won the top division championship in 2009 and 2014, according to Ghassan Jaradat, a media official for the Palestine Football Association.A kindergarten classroom in Wadi al-Nis. The charitable organization that runs the school has faced difficulties in purchasing essential supplies such as pens and paper.Samar Hazboun for The New York TimesBut in addition to its history of soccer triumphs, there is another way in which Wadi al-Nis contrasts with many other villages in the West Bank: It has developed strong ties with the neighboring settlements.Many residents work in the settlements in construction, factory, farming and sanitation jobs. They often share holiday meals with their Jewish neighbors.“We deal with our neighbors with manners, respect and morals,” said Abdullah Abu Hamad, the village council member. “We have good relations with them.”Oded Revivi, 52, the mayor of the nearby Efrat settlement, agreed that the two communities were close, calling the cooperation “endless,” whether that meant returning a lost dog or working together. The emergency medical center in Efrat is used by Wadi al-Nis residents, he said.Instead of practicing at rented fields in neighboring towns, the Wadi al-Nis players now often train by running for hours along dirt paths beside grape vineyards and olive orchards.Samar Hazboun for The New York TimesBut like many other West Bank villages, the political future of Wadi al-Nis is tied to one of the Middle East’s most intractable struggles. And it lacks basic infrastructure such as properly paved roads, public parks, sewerage and bright street lighting. Public transportation infrequently passes through during the day; there is only one store in the center of town.For years, local leaders have tried to convince the Palestinian Authority and international donors to invest in developing the area, but they have made little progress.The Wadi al-Nis Charitable Society, which provides services to the village, said that it had historically encountered obstacles in raising money but that the virus had set it back even more.“We basically got zero this year,” said Walid Abu Hamad, 46, the director of the society. “The virus has sent us into our deepest crisis ever.”Walid Abu Hamad, director of the Wadi al-Nis Charitable Society, which provides services to the village. “The virus has sent us into our deepest crisis ever,” he said.Samar Hazboun for The New York TimesThe organization’s kindergarten has faced difficulties in buying essential school supplies like pens and paper. Its financial assistance for poor people has been slashed. Longstanding plans for a top-of-the-line community center seem further off than ever before.When it comes to soccer, though, villagers are optimistic that the club will rise again — someday.Ahmad Abu Hamad, 33, a veteran defender, vowed that the team would bounce back in the coming years. But he conceded that the team’s failure this past season had compounded the miseries of an awful period in his hometown.“We were called the king of the championships. We won cup after cup after cup and we would celebrate them in the center of town like we do during weddings,” he said as he sat beside four relatives who also play for the club. “Now, the streets are empty and quiet and the feeling of despair is palpable.”Children playing soccer in Wadi al-Nis on Saturday. Despite the hardships, residents are optimistic that the village’s team will rise again — someday.Samar Hazboun for The New York Times More

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      Olympics: Daniel Alves and the True Value of a Gold Medal

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      The Olympics may be a major championship for women’s teams, but they remain an afterthought for the men.Daniel Alves has seen it all, done it all. He has won league titles in three countries, picked up nine cups, conquered Europe with his club and South America with his country. He has 41 major honors to his name, officially making him the most decorated player in history. But still, when André Jardine asked him to take on one last job, his eyes lit up.Jardine, the manager of Brazil’s Olympic men’s soccer team, had framed his pitch smartly. There was, he told Alves, still one thing missing from his career. For all that he had achieved, he had never been to an Olympic Games, much less won a medal. “Let’s complete your résumé,” Jardine said. At 38, entering a third decade as a professional, Alves could not resist.The appeal, for Jardine — only three years older than the player he has appointed as captain for Brazil’s campaign in Tokyo — is obvious. Men’s soccer at the Olympics is, essentially, an under-23 affair: A majority of each team’s squad in Japan can have been born no earlier than Jan. 1, 1997. But there are spaces reserved for three “overage” players.Jardine had been considering how best to fill those spots on Brazil’s roster when it emerged that injury would rule Alves out of the Copa América. Here, he felt, was the chance to draft a figure who is “respected by all Brazilian players, a leader, a winner,” a player not only with “lots of charisma” but with a wealth of experience to help guide his younger teammates. It was too good an opportunity to pass up. If anything, it felt like a sign. “The universe wanted it this way,” Jardine said.It is easy to understand why it struck such a chord with Alves, too. “Challenges like this really motivate me,” he said. “The Olympics are magical: You get emotional thinking about them. To represent my country, my people, in a competition as important as the Olympics is really, really incredible.”“The Olympics are magical,” Alves said. Not everyone sees it that way.Phil Noble/ReutersAnd yet — setting aside the warming, rosy glow of the idea of Alves’s adding yet another trophy to his personal palmarès, all in the name of defending his country’s honor — his presence at the tournament does not necessarily feed into the idea that men’s soccer at the Olympics is especially important at all.That is not to question his motives: Alves is in Tokyo to perform, and to win. His “ultimate ambition,” he has said, is to compete for Brazil in the World Cup next summer; only injury denied him a place in Tite’s squad for the Copa América this summer. This is a chance for him to stake a claim, to prove he can still cut it when surrounded by players a decade and a half his junior. He is not, by any stretch of the imagination, just along for the ride.But the sight of Alves, one of the finest players of his generation, in a cobbled-together under-23 team serves to highlight the inescapable sense that Olympic men’s soccer is something of a novelty act, simultaneously a major international tournament and an inconvenient afterthought, an honor with no clear meaning, a trophy with an asterisk.A glance at the other overage players joining Alves in Tokyo illustrates the issue. New Zealand has selected arguably its best player, in the burly shape of the Burnley striker Chris Wood, to give it the best chance of securing a medal. France, on the other hand, has chosen André-Pierre Gignac and Florian Thauvin, currently playing for Tigres, in Mexico, and the Montpellier midfielder Téji Savanier, none of whom might be regarded as their country’s best player.France called up 35-year-old André-Pierre Gignac for the Games.Franck Fife/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesArgentina and Romania, meanwhile, have named only one overage player each. One is a goalkeeper, and the other is a defender who does not currently have a club. Neither country has been tempted to send anyone who might count as a star. Or, rather, neither has been able to, because clubs are not mandated to release their players for the Olympics, because the Games do not feature on men’s soccer’s official, sanctioned calendar.Despite that, Spain seems to be taking the whole thing seriously: A clutch of players fresh from the semifinals of Euro 2020 have traveled to Japan, including Pau Torres, Dani Olmo and Pedri. Germany’s 22-man delegation, on the other hand, contains not a single player knocked out of the European Championship in the round of 16.All of the players in Japan will, of course, regard being at an Olympics — even in Tokyo’s diminished circumstances — as a rare privilege. Those who have competed in previous Games, even established stars of Europe’s major leagues, have been awed by the atmosphere (and, to an extent, the abandon) of the athletes’ village, star-struck by their sudden proximity to the biggest names in track and field.Lionel Messi won an Olympic gold medal at the 2008 Beijing Games, but almost no one counts it among his career highlights.Cezaro De Luca/EpaBut exactly what success — or failure — means in a soccer sense is less obvious. It is only a few weeks since Lionel Messi was celebrating winning his first major international honor with Argentina at the Copa América. At last, Messi had ended not only his long wait to achieve something with his country, but Argentina’s restless purgatory in the international wilderness. It was, all the stories said, the nation’s first major trophy since 1993.Except, of course, that it wasn’t. Argentina won gold in the Olympics in both 2004 and 2008. Messi was part of the latter team. That neither was mentioned highlighted the stark, and perhaps unfair, truth about Olympic men’s soccer: Ultimately it does not count, not really, not properly. It exists in an uneasy, liminal sort of zone, somewhere between a youth competition and an adult one, between authentic and ersatz.In the women’s game, of course, that is not the case. Or, at least, it has not traditionally been the case. The Olympics have at times been the most high-profile event in the women’s calendar, the grandest stage that the game could offer.When Abby Wambach, the former U.S. striker, released a book on leadership in 2019, she was trailed on the front cover not as a World Cup winner but as a “two-time Olympic gold medalist.” To some extent, that may have been an attempt to market her work to a non-soccer-specific audience, of course, but still: The choice of honor felt significant.Dzsenifer Marozsan helped lead Germany to its first women’s soccer gold in Rio de Janeiro in 2016. The title is on par with the World Cup in the women’s game.Ueslei Marcelino/ReutersThe team that the United States sent for its opening game of the Olympic tournament on Wednesday — a 3-0 defeat to Sweden, in which Megan Rapinoe suggested that the team had done some “dumb” things — contained only two changes from the side that started the World Cup final two years ago. So many of the biggest names in the women’s game are in Tokyo, in fact, that the tournament has the air of an all-star competition.The temptation is to believe that the event’s status will wane as the World Cup continues to grow, that the adage — that the Olympics is the pinnacle for sports that do not have one of their own — will hold, that no sport, ultimately, can have two pinnacles..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-uf1ume{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;}.css-wxi1cx{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}That is not necessarily true. Golf and tennis have both embraced their relatively new status as Olympic disciplines. Winning gold at the Olympics — competing at the Olympics — always means something. What it means, though — how much it means — is not fixed. Alves sees it as a step on a journey. Messi saw it as a road to nowhere. Rapinoe may well see it as a destination in itself. But all of that can change. The value of gold, after all, can rise and fall.CorrespondenceA frankly unlikely claim of clairvoyance from Carl Lennertz as regards to Lionel Messi’s signing a new contract with Barcelona. “I knew he’d re-up when his kids cried last year at the thought of leaving,” he writes. “I’m glad he chose family happiness.”Carl’s prescience is not without foundation, as it happens. It is rarely discussed in the context of transfers — which we tend to assume are determined by money and ambition and status, probably in that order, and nothing else — but family deserves to be in that mix, too. It is often why players choose one country, or one city, over another; or why, as in Messi’s case, staying is easier than going.That does not apply to only the finest players, either: One player I spoke with in the past few months wanted to sign a new contract, ignoring a potential Premier League move, because his daughter had just started school and he did not want to force her to make new friends. Footballers, in other words, are humans, too.Shawn Donnelly, meanwhile, has his finger on the pulse of all the major issues of the day. “If we are going to keep calling it a ‘back heel’, then we should start calling a toe poke a ‘front toe,’” he wrote. I am currently trying to teach my son the back heel, with considerable success: He now uses it as his default passing option, like some louche South American playmaker. And it has, in the course of that educational process, occurred to me that it does border on tautologous.And it falls to Mark Hornish to make the semiregular plea for some coverage of Major League Soccer in this newsletter. “It may surprise you to learn that the United States has a domestic league,” he wrote, with a healthy slice of sarcasm. “It would be great if you could turn your gaze on it in these coming weeks.” I will do my best, Mark. Leave it with me. More

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      Italy Wins Euro 2020, Leaving England in Stunned Silence

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      A Euro 2020 delayed by the pandemic and then extended to a shootout ends, finally, with an Italian celebration on the field and stunned fans in the stands.LONDON — All day, there had been noise. The songs had started early in the morning, as the first few hundred fans appeared on Wembley Way, flags fluttering from their backs. They had echoed through the afternoon, as first tens and then a hundred thousand more had joined them, as shattered glass crunched underfoot.The songs started as soon as the train doors opened at the Wembley Park underground station, the paeans to Gareth Southgate and Harry Maguire, the renditions of “Three Lions” and “Sweet Caroline,” and they grew louder as the stadium appeared on the horizon, until it seemed as if they were emanating from the building itself.Inside, the noise rang around, gathering force as it echoed back and forth when it seemed England was experiencing some sort of exceptionally lucid reverie: when Luke Shaw scored and the hosts led the European Championship final inside two minutes and everything was, after more than half a century, coming home.Tens of thousands of fans, not all of them holding tickets, filled the streets around Wembley.Jane Stockdale for The New York TimesEngland’s Luke Shaw had them roaring when he scored only two minutes into the final.Pool photo by Facundo ArrizabalagaThere was noise as Italy scrapped and clawed its way back, taming England’s abandon and wresting control of the ball, Leonardo Bonucci’s equalizer puncturing the national trance. That is what happens when individual nerves bounce around and collide with tens of thousands more nerves: the energy generated, at some atomic level, is transformed and released as noise.There was noise before extra time, Wembley bouncing and jumping because, well, what else can you do? There was noise before the penalty shootout, the prospect that haunts England more than any other. It was a day of noise. It has been, over the last few weeks, as England has edged closer and closer to ending what it regards as its years of hurt, a month of noise.What all of those inside Wembley will remember, though, the thing that will come back to them whenever they allow — whenever they can allow — their minds to flick back to this day, this moment, is not the noise but the sudden removal of it, the instant absence of it. No sound will echo for as long as that: the oppressive, overwhelming sound of a stadium, of a country, that had been dreaming, and now, started, had been awakened, brutally, into the cold light of day.Many England fans had never seen their team lift a major trophy. Many, now, still haven’t.Jane Stockdale for The New York TimesSolipsism does not fully explain England’s many and varied disappointments over the last 55 years, but it is certainly a contributory factor. Before every tournament, England asserts its belief that it is the team, the nation, that possesses true agency: the sense that, ultimately, whether England succeeds or fails will be down, exclusively, to its own actions. England is not beaten by an opponent; it loses by itself.This, as it happens, may have been the first time that theory had the ring of truth. England hosted more games than any country in Euro 2020. Wembley was home to both the semifinals and the final. More important, Southgate had at his disposal a squad that was — France apart, perhaps — the envy of every other team here, a roster brimming with young talent, nurtured at club teams by the best coaches in the world. This was a tournament for England to win.In that telling of Euro 2020, Italy was somewhere between a subplot and a supporting cast. That is the solipsism talking again, though. Perhaps this tournament was never about England, desperately seeking the moment of redemption it has awaited for so long. Perhaps the central character was Italy all along.Leonardo Bonucci bundled in Italy’s tying goal in the 67th minute.Pool photo by Facundo ArrizabalagaIn the streets of Manhattan and elsewhere, Italy fans found hope in the shifting momentum.Monique Jaques for The New York TimesItaly’s journey does not have the grand historical sweep of England’s, of course — it won the World Cup only 15 years ago, and that is not the only one in its cabinet — but perhaps the story is actually about a country that did not even qualify for the World Cup in 2018, that seemed to have allowed its soccer culture to grow stale, moribund, that appeared to have been left behind. Instead, it has been transformed into a champion, once again, in the space of just three years.Roberto Mancini’s Italy has illuminated this tournament at every turn: through the verve and panache with which it swept through the group stage, and the grit and sinew with which it reached the final. And how, against a team with deeper resources and backed by a partisan crowd, it took control of someone else’s dream.In those first few minutes on Sunday at Wembley, when it felt as if England was in the grip of some mass out-of-body experience, as Leicester Square was descending into chaos and the barriers around Wembley were being stormed, again and again, by ticketless fans who did not want to be standing outside when history was being made, Italy might have been swept away by it all.All day the England fans had sung, their noise filling first the streets and the squares, and then the air inside Wembley.Jane Stockdale for The New York TimesThe noise and the energy made the stadium feel just a little wild, edgy and ferocious, and Mancini’s team seemed to freeze. England, at times, looked as if it might overrun its opponent, as if its story was so compelling as to be irresistible. But slowly, almost imperceptibly, Italy settled. Marco Verratti passed the ball to Jorginho. Jorginho passed it back. Bonucci and his redoubtable partner, Giorgio Chiellini, tackled when things were present and squeezed space when they were not.It felt England was losing the initiative, but really Italy was taking it. Federico Chiesa shot, low and fierce, drawing a save from Jordan Pickford. England sank back a little further. Italy scented blood. Bonucci tied the score, a scrambled sort of a goal, one borne more of determination than of skill, one befitting this Italy’s virtues perfectly.Extra time loomed. Mancini’s team would, whatever happened, make England wait. The clock ticked, and the prospect of penalties appeared on the horizon. For England, one last test, one last ghost to confront, and one last glimmer of hope. Andrea Belotti was the first to miss for Italy in the shootout. Wembley exulted. It roared, the same old combustion, releasing its nerves into the night sky.Andrea Belotti’s early miss opened the door to an England victory in the shootout.Pool photo by Facundo ArrizabalagaAll England had to do was score. It was, after two hours, after a whole month, after 55 years, the master of its destiny. It was, there and then, all about England. Marcus Rashford stepped forward. He had only been on the field for a couple of minutes, introduced specifically to take a penalty.As he approached the ball, he slowed, trying to tempt Gianluigi Donnarumma, the Italian goalkeeper, into revealing his intentions. Donnarumma did not move. Rashford slowed further. Donnarumma stood still, calling his bluff. Rashford got to the ball, and had to hit it. He skewed it left. It struck the foot of the post. And in that moment, the spell, the trance that had consumed a country, was broken.Jadon Sancho missed, too, his shot saved by Donnarumma. But so did Jorginho, Italy’s penalty specialist, when presented with the chance to win the game. For a moment, England had a reprieve. Perhaps its wait might soon be at an end. Perhaps the dream was still alive. Bukayo Saka, the youngest member of Southgate’s squad, walked forward. England had one more chance.But England soon missed, too. And when Gianluigi Donnarumma dove to punch away Bukayo Saka’s final shot, Italy was a champion again.Paul Ellis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAnd then, just like that, it was over. There was still noise inside Wembley, from the massed ranks clad in blue at the opposite end of the field, pouring over each other in delight. But their noise seemed muffled, distant, as if it were coming from a different dimension, or from a future that we were not meant to know.Italy’s players, European champions now, sank to their knees in disbelief, in delight. England’s players stared blankly out into the stadium, desolate and distraught, unable to comprehend that it was over, that the tournament in which everything changed had not changed the most important thing of all, that the wait goes on. And the stadium, after all that noise, after all those songs, after all those dreams, stood silent, dumbstruck, and stared straight back. More

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      England’s Bukayo Saka Urges Facebook and Twitter to Crack Down on Abuse

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      After facing a torrent of racist abuse online, Bukayo Saka said he didn’t want anyone to deal with such “hateful and hurtful messages.”After Bukayo Saka missed a penalty kick for England’s national team on Sunday in the final of the European soccer championship, he and several teammates were overwhelmed by a wave of racist abuse.On Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, people posted monkey emojis and racist epithets to insult Saka, Marcus Rashford and Jadon Sancho, all Black players who missed their penalty kicks in the shootout against rival Italy. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Prince William and others swiftly denounced the ugly eruption of racist commentary, especially against a team that had come to symbolize England’s racial diversity.On Thursday, Saka, 19, spoke out for the first time since Sunday’s final. In a statement on Twitter, he condemned the online bigotry he and his fellow players have faced. After saying how disappointed and sorry he was with the loss, Saka took aim at Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, urging them to do more to crack down on the abuse.“To the social media platforms Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, I don’t want any child or adult to have to receive the hateful and hurtful messages that me, Marcus and Jadon have received this week,” Saka wrote. “I knew instantly the kind of hate that I was about to receive and that is a sad reality that your powerful platforms are not doing enough to stop these messages.”Saka’s comments added to growing calls for the platforms to take action against hate speech.On Wednesday, Mr. Johnson said he had warned representatives from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok and Snapchat that they would face fines under Britain’s planned online safety legislation if they failed to remove hate speech and racism from their platforms.England’s Football Association also released a statement, saying that “social media companies need to step up and take accountability and action to ban abusers from their platforms, gather evidence that can lead to prosecution and support making the platforms free from this type of abhorrent abuse.”Facebook, which owns Instagram, said it was removing comments and accounts that had directed abuse at England’s team and was providing information to law enforcement authorities. Four people have been arrested over online racist attacks aimed at England’s players, the British police said on Thursday.Twitter said it had removed more than 1,000 tweets and permanently suspended “a number of accounts” for violating its rules.Facebook and Twitter have long had trouble grappling with hate speech on their platforms. Last year, during the Black Lives Matter movement and just months before the presidential election, civil rights groups called on advertisers to boycott Facebook if it did not do more to tackle toxic speech and misinformation on its site.The issue became especially heated last year ahead of the presidential election, when President Donald J. Trump spread falsehoods about voting and made veiled threats against lawmakers. In January, after a violent mob stormed the U.S. Capitol, Twitter and Facebook barred Mr. Trump from their platforms for speech that they said had the potential of inciting more violence. More

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      Euro 2020 Is Over. Next Season Starts Now.

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      The players who battled for the Euro 2020 title will walk away from the tournament and right into a new season.LONDON — Giorgio Chiellini and Leonardo Bonucci had a full day of activities planned. They left England in the small hours of Monday morning, and landed back in Rome together with the rest of Italy’s exultant and exhausted Euro 2020 champions not long after dawn. There, they presented the glinting, silver spoils of their campaign to their public. Chiellini was wearing a crown.From there, Italy’s coach, Roberto Mancini, slipped away to snatch a brief moment with his family, and the players were whisked to a hotel. The team would have the morning to sleep, reporters were told, before gathering once more for a celebratory lunch.Monday afternoon brought a full slate of appointments: Chiellini, the Italy captain, was scheduled to present his teammates to Sergio Mattarella, the country’s president, at the Quirinale at 5 p.m., and then lead them to a reception with Mario Draghi, the prime minister, at Palazzo Chigi an hour and a half later. The country’s authorities, as of Monday morning, were still exploring whether they might squeeze in a victory parade. By Monday afternoon, that, too, had been arranged. Only once all of that is done will Chiellini, Bonucci and the rest of the players be able to draw the curtain on their season. A couple of days later, their other set of teammates — the ones with whom they spend most of their days at their club side, Juventus — will report back for the first day of preseason training.Pool photo by Laurence GriffithsAlberto Lingria/ReutersFor Italy, a whirlwind 24 hours went from photos on the field to a raucous return to Rome and then, after a short nap, a trip to meet the country’s president.Angelo Carconi/EPA, via ShutterstockThe club is not expecting much of a turnout. As well as its two central defenders, Chiellini and Bonucci, Juventus knows that their Italy teammates Federico Chiesa and Federico Bernadeschi will be absent as well.So, too, will the various representatives of Juventus who have been engaged by other nations over the last few weeks: Álvaro Morata, whose Spain side was eliminated by Italy in the European Championship semifinals, and the defenders Alex Sandro and Danilo, part of the Brazil squad that lost the Copa América final a few hours before Italy’s triumph. Adrien Rabiot, Matthijs de Ligt, Cristiano Ronaldo and all of the others have been given an extra couple of weeks’ break, too.They will need it. This summer’s championships — in Europe and in South America — have come at the end of a long and arduous schedule, one that stretches back beyond the start of this season, in September, to the resumption of soccer after the hiatus enforced by the coronavirus pandemic.Many of these players have been playing, with only the most cursory of intermissions, since last June: 13 months of uninterrupted slog, prompting warnings from Fifpro, the global players’ union, various managers and, increasingly, the players themselves not only that they were being placed at risk of injury, but that their workload was too great to expect them to be able to perform at their best.It would be comforting to think, with Euro 2020 and the Copa América — though not yet the Gold Cup in North America — now decided that the slog is over; that soccer has caught up with the three months it lost in the first wave of the pandemic, that everything will go back to normal now. In England, clubs are already planning for games with full stadiums as soon as the Premier League gets underway on the second weekend of August.The reality is a little different. June 30 is the date that, traditionally, marks the end of the soccer year. That is the moment at which contracts expire or renew, when clubs release the players they no longer require, when one season silently turns into the next. It fell, this year, as it so often does, in the middle of a tournament. But as one season bleeds into another, the slog has only just reached its midway point. And for that, soccer has nothing to blame but itself.The first game of the 2022 World Cup is fewer than 500 days away. The tournament, scheduled for the winter to avoid the stifling summer heat in the Gulf, is scheduled to get underway on Nov. 21 next year. Qatar, the host, will be involved in that fixture. Thanks to the delay caused by the pandemic, nobody else is even close to qualifying.Pool photo by Andy RainPool photo by Laurence GriffithsMarcus Rashford, top left, Declan Rice and the majority of England’s players will soon be back in training for the new Premier League season, which starts in the middle of August.Pool photo by Carl RecineIn Europe, most teams still have six qualifying matches to play; several more will have to negotiate a playoff before claiming their places. In Asia, the group stages have yet even to start. Africa, too, is not yet underway, and it has a continental championship to fit in: the Cup of Nations is slated to take place in Cameroon in January. South America’s prolonged qualifying process is a third of the way through: Brazil sits atop the standings after six games, but still has 12 left to play.And in North America, the expanded final round of qualifying will not start until September, with teams set to play 14 games to discover which ones will join Mexico, the region’s only sure thing, in the finals next year. All of that has to fit into a club calendar already squeezed by the timing shift necessary to accommodate, for the first time and contrary to what was originally advertised, a World Cup held in the northern hemisphere’s winter.That will force Europe’s major domestic leagues — the competitions that will provide the bulk of the players for the World Cup — to start the 2022-23 season just a little earlier, in order to allow a monthlong break right in the middle of their campaigns. But that does not mean the forthcoming season will finish any earlier: the Champions League final, the climax of the 2021-22 club campaign, is scheduled for May 28, in St. Petersburg. Once again, what little elastic that can be found will come out of the players’ chance to rest.It is not, in fact, until the summer of 2023 that the world’s elite men’s players will have a summer to rest and to recuperate properly. Most of them, the Europeans and South Americans, anyway. There is another Cup of Nations scheduled for Africa that summer, and a further Gold Cup, too.As ever, it is the players who will pay the price, and especially, ironically, those who enjoy the greatest success. It was hard, at Wembley on Sunday evening, not to be impressed by the composure, the calm, the obduracy of Chiellini and Bonucci, those grizzled old warriors at the heart of Italy’s defense. They have 220 international caps between them.They have been doing this for almost two decades, now. They deserve the pomp and ceremony of an official reception with the Italian president. More than anything, though, they deserve a break. They can have one, now. But they should just make sure they are back at work in two weeks. More

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      Barcelona Wants to Keep Lionel Messi. La Liga May Not Allow It.

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      Barcelona’s financial woes and the expiration of its star’s contract have left the club in a bind. And the only solution — about $200 million in salary cuts — won’t be easy.When Lionel Messi stepped off the field late Saturday night after the final of the Copa América, the Argentina captain — one of the most celebrated athletes in history — was, at long last, a champion in his national colors.He was also, only weeks after his 34th birthday, unemployed.Messi’s talent has never been in question. A six-time world player of the year, he is among the best players of his or any generation. His professional future, though, and even his ability to suit up for F.C. Barcelona next season, is suddenly very much in doubt.Messi wants to stay at Barcelona, the only professional home he has ever known, and Barcelona desperately wants to keep him. But the club’s dire financial straits and a series of fateful decisions by team management — including the potentially disastrous one to let Messi’s contract expire at the end of June — have imperiled what is arguably the most successful association between a club and a single player in soccer history.And the vise, in the form of Spanish soccer’s strict financial rules, is tightening by the day.Lionel Messi and his teammates received a hero’s welcome on their return to Argentina after winning the Copa América.Juan Ignacio Roncoroni/EPA, via ShutterstockMessi said nothing about his contract situation over the last month while leading Argentina to victory in the Copa América in Brazil. And Barcelona’s new president, Joan Laporta, has tried to present a confident front. “Everything’s on track,” he told news crews camped outside his offices last week, when he and other Barcelona executives had huddled in search of a solution.But the problem is that Messi’s future may no longer be in the player’s hands, or his club’s. Spanish league rules limit each club’s spending to only a percentage of club revenue, and league officials have said repeatedly that they not will weaken their rules to accommodate Barcelona, which is far over that limit.In short, if Barcelona cannot cut 200 million euros, or about $240 million, from its wage bill this summer — an almost impossibly large sum in a soccer economy cratered by the pandemic — it will not be allowed to register any new players, including Messi, for next season. (Barcelona’s decision to allow Messi’s contract to expire last month means he now must be registered as a new signing, instead of a renewal, which might have been easier.)A rupture between Messi and Barcelona would be seismic for both sides. Messi has been the focal point of Barcelona for nearly two decades, the architect of much of its success on the field and the engine of its financial might away from it.But while Barcelona has collected money at breathtaking speed in recent years — in 2019 it became the first club to surpass $1 billion in annual revenue — it also spent with even more alacrity, living life on the financial edge through impulsive management, rash decisions and imprudent contracts. Messi’s most recent four-year deal alone, if he met every clause and condition, was worth almost $675 million, a sum so large that it had an inflationary affect on the salaries of all of his teammates, fueling a payroll that now eats up about three-fourths of Barcelona’s annual revenue.Now, facing debts of more than 1 billion euros and losses in the hundreds of millions of dollars, Barcelona is struggling to balance its books in a way that adheres to league rules.It is partly because of Messi, of course, that Barcelona finds itself on the brink. Its losses in the past two years have surpassed more than $500 million, much of that because of rich contracts like the one Barcelona’s former administration gave Messi in the fall of 2017.Details of the 30-page deal, which was leaked to a Spanish newspaper, are a testament to Barcelona’s taste for living on the edge: A salary of about $1.4 million a week. A signing bonus of $139 million. A “loyalty” bonus — to a player it has employed since he was 13 — of $93 million.A new contract, yet to be completed, almost certainly will require Messi, one of the world’s most valuable athletes, to accept a substantial pay cut.Victor Font, one of the losing candidates in this year’s presidential election, said he was surprised the team had yet to make the financial arrangements required to keep Messi. But like Laporta, he said he was convinced Messi would remain with the club.“The alternative would be so much of a disappointment that I cannot think there’s an alternative,” Font said in a telephone interview.Messi’s contract with Barcelona expired last month. Signing him to a new one that doesn’t require a significant pay cut will be difficult.Albert Gea/ReutersThe team is not getting any sympathy, or preferential treatment, from the Spanish league. Javier Tebas, the league’s chief executive, told reporters this week that Barcelona only has itself to blame for its financial crisis. Yes, he told reporters, the coronavirus pandemic had battered the team’s finances, but other teams — notably Barcelona’s archrival Real Madrid — have found ways to operate within the league’s rules.The issue, Tebas said, was that Barcelona has no room to maneuver. The league calculates different limits for each team based on each club’s income statements, but caps spending at 70 percent of revenues.“It’s not normal for clubs to spend right up to the last euro of the salary limit,” Tebas said.It is not just Messi’s fate that hangs in the balance, either. Barcelona has already announced the signings of his friend and Argentina teammate Sergio Agüero for next season, as well as those of the Netherlands forward Memphis Depay and the Spanish national team defender Eric García.All three arrived as free agents, meaning Barcelona did not have to pay multimillion-dollar transfer fees to their former clubs, but the league will not register any of them, or Messi, until the club first makes deep cuts to its costs.Barcelona’s new president, Joan Laporta, introduced Sergio Agüero as a Barcelona player in May. But the club is currently not able to register him with the Spanish league.Joan Monfort/Associated PressIn an effort to create some financial wiggle room, the club has been furiously working to offload players, tearing up contracts with fringe talents and negotiating the exits of some of its other stars. But all of its biggest earners remain, and with the transfer market deflated by the lingering effects of the pandemic, it is unlikely to receive significant offers from rivals for players those teams know it needs to sell.Instead, Barcelona may be pushed to sell off key players — the German goalkeeper Marc Andre ter Stegen, the Dutch playmaker Frenkie de Jong and even Pedri, the latest locally reared Barcelona starlet, would most likely bring the highest returns — in order to make ends meet.Font said he expected that Barcelona would prioritize re-signing Messi, even if that meant some of the team’s newest signings, or other key players currently under contract, would have to go.“It’s a matter of trade offs,” Font said. “You may not register other players, but you will not prioritize others over Messi.”But if, as is likely, Barcelona will not be able to make the necessary cuts, it will find itself in another bind. Under the Spanish league regulations, a team can spend only a quarter of the money it receives from player sales on new contracts. That means even if it can clear tens of millions of dollars off the books, it will have only a fraction of that total available to sign Messi — or anyone else.Could the unthinkable — Barcelona’s losing Messi for free — be imminent? Perhaps. But La Liga said as recently as last week that there would be no exceptions, no special rules to keep him in Spain.“Of course we want Messi to stay,” said Tebas, La Liga’s chief executive. “But when you are running a league you cannot base decisions on individual players or clubs.” More