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      For England, a Six-Second Culture War and a 1-0 Win

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      A cause, and criticism of it, only highlights that the majority of England fans all want the same thing.LONDON — Daniele Orsato caught the eye of Harry Kane, the England captain, and pointed to the turf. He had caught Kane a little unaware, perhaps — the forward was still going through a final few stretches — but he nodded his assent. Orsato, the Italian referee, put his whistle to his lips, and gave light to a six-second culture war.It is not especially unusual for England to find itself putting the finishing touches on its preparations for a major tournament against a backdrop of angst and acrimony. There is, with England, always something: a key player injured, a flavor of the month off the team, a concern over whether the squad is being treated with too much, or too little, discipline.The last few weeks have not proved particularly fertile for that sort of traditional fretting. A manufactured quarrel over whether the coach, Gareth Southgate, had erred by electing to name four specialist right backs — a lot of right backs, by anyone’s standards — on his original roster offered hope of a good, old-fashioned controversy. It sputtered when one of them, Trent Alexander-Arnold, picked up an injury that ruled him out of the tournament. Deep down, nobody thinks having three right backs is excessive.His decision to include Jordan Henderson and Harry Maguire, both of them nursing injuries and neither likely to be fully fit for the group stage, might have made an acceptable alternative, but even that failed to fire. Southgate had the luxury of naming 26 players to his squad, not 23; Henderson and Maguire, two of his most experienced campaigners in the two areas of the field where his options were thinnest, were clearly worth the risk.All of which should have meant that England was in territory welcome for Southgate and disconcertingly unfamiliar for fans and the news media alike: approaching a tournament without waking up in cold sweats in the night, with no rancor filling the airwaves or consternation populating the news pages.Raheem Sterling after giving England the lead at Wembley.Justin Tallis/Pool, via ReutersInstead, Southgate and his players found themselves front and center in something much more serious. Like the vast majority of their peers in the Premier League, England’s players have, for the last year, been taking a knee before matches, a gesture adopted from athlete activists in the United States and instituted — at the players’ suggestion — in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd at the hands of a police officer last year.When England took the field for its two final tuneup games ahead of this tournament — both of them staged in Middlesbrough — it did the same. This time, though, the players were jeered as they did so: by a substantial enough portion of their own fans for it to come through, loud and clear, to the watching public.For a week, the gesture and its reception seemed to set England’s players, and staff members, against the core of their own support. Taking the knee, the players were told, was divisive, it was political, it was a meaningless trinket that took attention away from real action, though none of their critics ever took the time to suggest what real action might look like.Several Conservative lawmakers railed against the players’ support for what they say is a Marxist movement dedicated to eradicating the nuclear family and attacking Israel. One, Lee Anderson, revealed that he would no longer be watching his “beloved England.” Boris Johnson, the prime minister, initially failed to condemn those who stood in opposition to an antiracist act, though he later asked that fans support the team, “not boo.”England has also been convulsed, in the past week, by the decision of a small group of students at a single Oxford college to remove a portrait of the queen from their common room. This is how a culture war is played out, in a series of what appear, in isolation, to be entirely absurdist skirmishes. Is anyone offended by some students not wanting to have a picture of the queen on their wall? Does anyone really think Jordan Pickford is a Marxist?Catherine Ivill/Getty ImagesEngland fans are experts at finding fault with their national team.Pool photo by Glyn KirkOn Sunday, though, it was much more fun to cheer.Henry Nicholls/ReutersEven under that pressure, the players stood their ground. Southgate offered not only his support, but effectively his cover, too: He had consulted his players, he knew their views and he would present them, drawing whatever fire might come their way. The Football Association, the game’s governing body in England, issued a surprisingly blunt statement outlining that the players would kneel, that they did not regard it as a political gesture and that no amount of hostility would change that.This, then, was the test: The moment after Orsato blew his whistle but before England’s opening game of Euro 2020, against Croatia, actually began, those who object to the players taking the knee, those who believe the athletes representing their country must do as they are bidden, were confronted with what, now, has become an act of defiance.The whole thing played out in the blink of an eye. The jeers began the first offensive. Just as the music cut out, there was an identifiable chorus of disapproval. But the jeers were quickly pushed back. A much larger proportion of the crowd started to cheer, to applaud, to drown out the objectors. Within six seconds, it was all over. Orsato stood up, followed by Kane and the rest of the England team. The game kicked off. Everyone cheered.This is the myth, of course. Southgate had said, as he chewed the matter over last week, that he knew his team could rely on the support of the fans during the game. That is true: The people who were booing wanted England to win. They celebrated when Raheem Sterling, as articulate an advocate for the causes reflected by taking the knee as anyone in soccer, scored the game’s single goal in the bright, warm sunshine.It is but a small leap from there to the belief that, should this prove to be the first win of seven over the next month, should England end this summer as European champion for the first time in its history, then some sort of social victory will have been secured, too.Gareth Southgate with Kyle Walker, one of the many decisions that worked Sunday.Pool photo by Laurence GriffithsThat is what they said about the Black, Blanc, Beur team that led France to the World Cup in 1998; it is what they said of the German teams of 2008 and 2010 and on, too, the ones made up not of Jürgens and Dietmars and Klauses but Mesuts and Samis and Serdars. These were the teams that could usher in a new, postracial future. Soccer liked to tell itself that it offered a better vision of what a country could be.It is a chimera, of course. Everyone cheered at the end here, too, once England had seen off a tame Croatian team, the sort of victory that is noteworthy not for its spectacle but for its cool and calm efficiency. England barely got out of second gear because it did not need to, much; better to save the energy for the tougher tests that lie in wait.But that does not mean anything has changed. There is still the possibility that when Scotland comes to town next weekend, the players will be jeered by another small section of the crowd.It will be a minority, once again, just as it was here, and there is hope in that, a poignant metaphor for the dangers of assuming that the most vociferous must automatically speak for some sort of vast constituency. But they will still be there, the great anti-Marxist vanguard, unyielding and unchanging and unwilling.No victory on a soccer field will change that. The sight of Sterling’s lifting a trophy on July 11, in this same stadium, would not alter anyone’s worldview. Soccer is the stage on which we have these conversations — in Europe, as Henry Mance wrote in The Financial Times last week, it is often the only place that many of us really interact with our nation as a concept — but it is an imperfect one.We want a team that reflects the country, we say, but we do not mean it: We want a team that reflects us, and our perception of what that country is. England can win, or it can lose, over the next month, but it will make no difference at all in the broader context. It is too much to ask a single sports team to reflect what a country means to 55 million individuals. It is far too much to expect it to heal all of its divisions with a single victory, no matter how loudly it is cheered. More

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      Denmark's Christian Eriksen Is Stable and Talking to Friends

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      Christian Eriksen was in “stable” condition in a Copenhagen hospital, Denmark’s soccer federation said in a statement on Sunday, a day after he collapsed and received life-saving medical treatment on the field during a Euro 2020 match against Finland.Eriksen had “sent his greetings to his teammates,” the statement said, but remain in the hospital for further examination.Update regarding Christian Eriksen. pic.twitter.com/YuKD9hS9LV— DBU – En Del Af Noget Større (@DBUfodbold) June 13, 2021
      The 29-year-old Eriksen is being treated at Rigshospitalet, which sits less than a mile away from Parken Stadium in Copenhagen, where the game was played.Eriksen, an attacking midfielder and the creative engine of Denmark’s team, suddenly stumbled and collapsed to the turf in the 42nd minute of a game against Finland on Sunday.Medical teams, summoned urgently by teammates and opponents who immediately sensed the severity of his condition, worked quickly to stabilize Eriksen on the grass. They continued for 20 minutes as the stunned crowd at Copenhagen’s Parken Stadium and a global television audience looked on.In an effort to protect Eriksen, his teammates and members of Denmark’s staff formed a circle around him to shield him, and the medics, as they worked. Photographs of Eriksen leaving on a stretcher showed him awake.Christian Eriksen was awake when we left the field on a stretcher Saturday.Pool photo by Friedemann VogelThe match was briefly suspended but resumed about 90 minutes later — with the consent of players on both teams, and only after the Danes had received word on Eriksen’s improved condition. Finland won, 1-0.Not everyone was able to continue. A few players were in tears as they warmed up for the resumption of play. Not all of them could complete the game, Denmark’s coach, Kasper Hjulmand, said afterward.“It’s a traumatic experience,” Hjulmand said. “The attitude was, ‘Let’s go out and try to do what we can.’ And then we talked about allowing to have all these feelings. And it was OK to say no if they weren’t able to play. Some of them said that they wanted to try. And I said no matter what feelings they had, it was all OK. You had to allow yourself to try to play the game if you felt like it. And you had to dare to show happy emotions. But it was OK to say no. Because some of them they weren’t able to, they weren’t able to play.”Hjulmand told reporters that his team would be provided counseling and any other assistance it needs as it tries to navigate the rest of the tournament.“We will spend the next few days processing this as best we can,” Hjulmand said. More

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      Venezuela Faces Coronavirus Outbreak Ahead of Copa América Tournament

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      A dozen Venezuela players and staff members have tested positive for the coronavirus a day before they were to play Brazil in the opening match of the South American soccer championship, according to the health authorities in Brazil.The outbreak is the latest bad news for the troubled tournament, the Copa América, which was moved to Brazil less than two weeks ago after the scheduled host, Argentina, said it could not hold it safely during the pandemic. Colombia, the other co-host, had dropped out earlier.Globo reported Saturday that the number of infected members of Venezuela’s traveling party had grown to 12 from five, citing the health authorities in Brasília, where its team is scheduled to play host Brazil on Sunday night. The Associated Press reported that Conmebol, the governing body for soccer in South America and the organizer of the Copa América, had told Brazilian health officials about the positive results on Friday night.“The health department was notified by Conmebol that 12 members of the Venezuelan national team’s delegation, including players and coaching staff, tested positive for Covid-19,” the health authorities said in a statement. Venezuela’s team arrived in Brazil on Friday.“They are all asymptomatic, isolated in single rooms and are being monitored,” the statement added.Neither Conmebol nor Venezuela’s soccer federation made a public comment on the reports, or the positive tests, on Saturday.Reports in Venezuela said the federation was preparing to charter a flight to send 14 replacement players to Brasília so that Sunday’s game could go ahead as planned. Another Venezuelan playing domestic soccer in Brazil also would be added to the roster, the reports said. Teams at the tournament were asked to submit a short list of as many as 60 players as organizers tried to put in place mitigation measures in case of a spate of positive tests.Two players on Venezuela’s roster were forced to drop out after testing positive ahead of the team’s departure for Brazil on Thursday. The positives after the team’s arrival in Brazil will raise questions about the efficacy of those tests.Local news media reports had also raised concerns about how strictly the team was following protocols to isolate itself from outsiders after politicians and celebrities posted images from inside Venezuela’s pretournament training camp.The positive tests most likely will renew opposition toward a tournament that many have said should have been canceled. The players on Brazil’s team have gone public with their concerns about the tournament, even as they have committed to play in it. Almost 500,000 people have died from the virus in Brazil, more than any country except the United States.Colombia vaccinated its team on Thursday.Barranquilla Mayor’s Office/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe Copa América is the oldest international competition in soccer. This year’s edition, though, can already lay a claim to being the most unpopular edition in its 105-year history.An 11th-hour decision to switch the 10-nation event to Brazil amid its ongoing struggles to contain the coronavirus has led to protests and widespread condemnation inside and outside the country. The tournament was supposed to be held jointly by Colombia and Argentina, but Colombia was dropped amid political protests and then Argentina announced — two weeks before the games were to begin — that it could no longer safely stage the tournament.Brazil’s populist leader Jair Bolsonaro, whose handling of the pandemic has drawn much criticism, jumped at the opportunity to step in. The decision to bring the event to a nation still battling the pandemic sparked immediate outrage, with the competition, which will be played without spectators, being darkly described by some opponents as the “championship of death.”The opposition to the tournament extended to the stars of the Brazil squad, which has collectively expressed its opposition to the circumstances that led to the event’s being moved to their home country. The teams held multiple meetings, and at one point considered boycotting the tournament, before resolving to defend the trophy they won for the ninth time on the last occasion the tournament was played in 2019.“We are against the organization of the Copa América, but we will never say no to the Brazilian team,” the players said in an unsigned statement.Still, the outrage continued, and even led to an emergency appeal to Brazil’s Supreme Court by opponents who wanted it canceled. The court on Thursday ruled the games could go ahead.The event will, though, be played without two of its major sponsors. Mastercard, a tournament partner since 1992, and the brewing giant Ambev said they could no longer associate their brands with this year’s Copa América. More

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      Euro 2020: Ravaged and Resilient, the Show Goes On

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      Euro 2020 will not be the tournament anyone wanted, and it arrives after a year few will care to remember. And yet, once it starts, all of that will fall away.This is not how it was meant to be. The stands were supposed to be full, the cities jubilant, the lights of a carnival illuminating a continent. Euro 2020 was supposed to be the moment when it all began again, the great symbol of a world returning to normal. That is not how the tournament is. Instead, it is all it can be, how it has to be.The name itself is a giveaway. We are, as you will have noticed, in the thick of 2021. Not, though, according to the banners and bunting fluttering outside stadiums in 11 cities across Europe, nor on the television schedules of dozens of broadcasters around the world. There, we are still locked into the year that never seemed to end, hotly anticipating the start of Euro 2020.The anachronism is no accident. Last spring, when UEFA decided that it would postpone its showpiece tournament but not — despite the fact that on an elemental level keeping the incorrect date is wholly absurd — rename it, the organization rationalized it as a purely financial decision. They had printed tickets that said Euro 2020. They had commissioned merchandise. They had a website. You can’t just change a website, you know.Anatoly Maltsev/EPA, via ShutterstockBut the decision to retain the name spoke, too, to something far deeper. Within UEFA, there was a genuine, deep-seated belief that the European Championship, delayed by a year, would act as a potent symbol of recovery: the event that marked the end of the plague year and the restoration of the world we once knew. To still call it Euro 2020 is to say that now is when we pick up where we left off.Over the last year, that sentiment has proved remarkably resilient. As early as March 2020, UEFA felt bold enough not only to postpone the event but to set a (provisional) date for when it would be played. As the world convulsed in the first, bare grip of the coronavirus pandemic, the people who organize European soccer were convinced that the whole thing would be done in a year.And so it has continued. No matter how the circumstances have changed or the ground has shifted beneath its feet, UEFA has pushed on, adamant that this is how, and when, normal will start again.In May 2020, the organization’s president, Aleksandar Ceferin, was insistent that the tournament would be staged exactly as it should have been, had the world never changed. There would, he said, still be 12 host cities, spread across the continent, just as his predecessor, Michel Platini, had planned it.Last May, Ceferin confidently predicted that the stadiums would be full, packed to the rafters with fans reveling in each other’s presence and their mutual proximity after a year of enforced distance, isolation and separation. It would be a festival of rebirth, proof that life “will go back to normal, when we get rid of this bloody virus.”Manu Fernandez/Associated PressHe was still confident in January, as a second wave engulfed Europe and lockdowns returned. Salvation, he said, lay in vaccination. Medicine would triumph over infection, and Austria would meet Ukraine for a goal-less draw in Bucharest, Romania, in front of a full house.There was hubris, of course, and gallons of it: not only the manifest evidence of soccer’s messianic streak, its unchecked sense of its own importance, but its absolute belief that it is not really subject to the same laws as anything and everything else. A financial crisis will hit, and soccer will keep on spending. A pandemic will break out, and it will keep playing.The world can stop but soccer will go on, because soccer does not know how to do anything else, and besides: What would everyone do without soccer?Behavioral economists have a term for this — plan continuation bias — though the one airline pilots use is, perhaps, a little more catchy, a little more immediately understood. They call it get-there-itis, the porcine, obstinate and sometimes fatal refusal to allow the facts at hand to change your intended course of action.The fact that none of Ceferin’s predictions came to pass did not have any material impact on Euro 2020. There will not be 12 host cities — though UEFA eventually managed to press-gang 11 into service — and there will not, by a long shot, be full stadiums. Most are operating at about a quarter of capacity. Some may allow more fans as the tournament progresses.But there will be scarcely any traveling fans, their free and easy movement around Europe either complicated or restricted by rules in place to try to reduce the spread of the virus and its variants, to maintain control of a force that is greater than trade or travel or human interaction, let alone a mere game. There will be no carnival.Still the show will go on. It will do so diminished and deracinated, a shadow of what it was meant to be, but it will go on regardless, irrefutable proof of big-time soccer’s barrel-chested, bullheaded intransigence.Andreas Solaro/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesOdd Andersen/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesScenes of Euro 2020: Aleksandar Ceferin’s optimism, a German fan’s caution and Gareth Bale’s focus.Pool photo by Naomi BakerThe same can be said — more so, in fact — of the summer’s other major tournament, the Copa América. That event supposed to be played in Colombia and Argentina, only for Colombia to be stripped of hosting rights because of civil unrest. The whole competition was then meant to be played in Argentina, until that was ruled out by a surge in Covid cases.At that point, rather than give up, the tournament was simply shifted to Brazil, a country where the virus has killed almost half a million people, and cases continue to run at an alarming rate. Soccer really will not be stopped.It would be easy, then — and to some extent warranted — to chide Ceferin for his lack of foresight, or UEFA for its bullishness and its single-mindedness, or soccer as a whole for a blinkered refusal to cede to reality. It would, though, be slightly hypocritical.We have all, after all, spent much of the last year hoping for the point at which the uncanny, eerie version of existence that we currently inhabit might be banished for good, for the moment that things will go back to what they once were, clinging to the notion, despite all of the evidence, that the normal we once knew will soon be restored.Euro 2020 will highlight how distant that remains. The stadiums will be thinly populated and socially distanced. Fans, in some places, will be asked to present proof of either vaccination or absence of infection to access the games. It will still be a landmark tournament, though perhaps not in the way UEFA envisaged. Not a return to the old, but something entirely new: Euros for the pandemic age.Guglielmo Mangiapane/ReutersAnd yet, once it starts, all of that will fall away. All tournaments exist in and of themselves; once the ball and the field and the players take center stage, they develop a life of their own, they become a self-sustaining universe, a monthlong suspension of the outside world. They are breathless and swift and all-consuming, and they make you fall helplessly in love, once more — not with the business of soccer, not with the industrial complex, but with the game at its heart.Euro 2020 will still be an exercise in hubris and pigheadedness and get-there-itis; it will still be a monument to soccer’s unyielding self-satisfaction. But that’s not what will absorb us, over the next month: it will, instead, be the hope and the desolation and the joy of discovery.That the stands are not full, that the carnival is not in full swing, that the world has not yet returned to normal will not matter in those final few seconds before the final whistle, or as the goalkeeper watches on as the ball sails into the corner, or as dreams are dashed or fulfilled. It will not matter that this is not the tournament it was supposed to be. It will be the tournament that it has to be, and that, for now, will be enough.Print This Part Off and Remind Me on July 12Before you settle on a Euro 2020 favorite, remember that Pepe and Portugal lifted the trophy the last time.Christian Hartmann/ReutersThere has always been something of a non sequitur at the heart of the European Championships. For a long time, its calling card — the thing that differentiated it from the World Cup — was its concentration of quality.It was not nearly as glamorous or as global as the greatest show on Earth, the World Cup. From a purely technical standpoint, it was better. In the halcyon days when it had only 16 teams, there was no room, not really, for chaff. The bar for qualifying was so high that few, if any, of those teams that made it as far as the finals were overmatched.And yet, at the same time, the Euros has always been far more susceptible to upsets. Denmark won it in 1992, despite not actually qualifying for it. Greece emerged from obscurity to claim primacy in 2004. Even Portugal, the reigning champion, hardly ranked among the absolute favorites in 2016.Those are just the teams that have won it: the Czech Republic made the final in 1996, and the semifinals in 2004 (that year, at least in these eyes, the Czechs had the best team in the tournament). Russia and Turkey both reached the final four in 2008. Wales did the same five years ago.Given how afflicted by fatigue most of the anticipated contenders will be, there is a fairly compelling theory that this year’s edition will maintain that tradition. Picking a winner, then, would be a fool’s errand. Even picking a clutch of teams as possible candidates may not prove much of a hedge. Still, let’s have a go.A team to beat? Start with France, whose reserves could probably cruise into the quarters.Francois Mori/Associated PressFrance, the reigning world champion, has a strength in depth — Only able to play Kylian Mbappé and Antoine Griezmann in attack? Why not throw in Karim Benzema? — that nobody in the tournament can match. On paper, Didier Deschamps’s team should end the month trying to get N’Golo Kanté to celebrate with another trophy.Behind the French, the field is a little more open. England probably has the greatest resources, for all that it has spent the last month trying to convince itself that the absence of James Ward-Prowse is an unsustainable body blow. Portugal has a fine blend of canniness and craft. Belgium, the world’s top-ranked team, has an experienced side aware that this may be its last chance to win something. Italy, unbeaten in 27 games, has few famous names but plenty of momentum.If there is to be a surprise, then the likeliest source is Turkey — the youngest squad in the tournament, and a vibrant, undaunted team — or possibly Poland: a quarterfinal place should not be out of the question, given the way the draw has fallen, and with Robert Lewandowski up front, anything is possible.That leaves Germany and Spain, the two great unknowns. Germany has been drifting for three years or more; Spain has seen its preparations undone by at least two positive coronavirus tests. Either could win it. Either could fall at the first hurdle. It’s the Euros. The line between the two is very fine.CorrespondenceFurther to the discussion of Forward, Madison! in last week’s newsletter and the subject of authenticity in American soccer, Ryan Parks believes that the Oakland Roots are worthy of consideration. “They should be applauded for their connection to their city,” he wrote. “Their official website includes pages on ‘Purpose’ and ‘Culture,’ which highlights their Justice Fund, Nurtured Roots program, and Artist Residency.” I’m aware of their work, Ryan, and would be inclined to agree with you.Diaa Baghat has been watching “Baggio: The Divine Ponytail” on Netflix, and has a question. “If there was an option, who would you like to see play again at their peak? Dead or alive players are accepted in your wish list.”There’s a few fairly obvious answers to this — Maradona, Pelé, Duncan Edwards, Ian Ormondroyd — but I’m going to cheat, just a little, and say that I would have loved to have seen the Fiorentina of Rui Costa and Gabriele Batistuta in the flesh, just once. Or possibly Jim Baxter, a Rangers and Scotland midfielder who I heard a lot about from my dad. Almost too much, really. He’d probably be a bit of a disappointment.We can think of one moment Roberto Baggio wouldn’t mind seeing played again.Andre Camara/ReutersAnd finally, an excellent point from John Nekrasov. “Maybe Massimiliano Allegri, Carlo Ancelotti and José Mourinho are all being hired as a reaction to the failure of the club legend experiment that we were all talking about last summer. We had that wave of Artetas, Lampards and Pirlos being hired as an attempt to bring that new blood. Now, Lampard’s gone, Pirlo’s gone, and Arteta (sadly for my beloved Arsenal) is also hardly thriving in his current role.”That has the ring of truth to it, John, and is damning in its own way: that clubs are so easily frit — as Jim Baxter might have put it — that they rush straight back into the arms of the tried and tested at the first glimpse of any trouble. More

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      Harry Kane on England, Goals and His Future at Spurs

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      LONDON — There are a lot of things that everybody knows about Harry Kane. First and foremost, there is the fact that he is the captain of England’s national soccer team, a status that bestows upon its bearer the sort of profile unavailable to most athletes, particularly in tournament years. It is part-of-the-furniture fame, royal family fame. Everyone has heard of Harry Kane.Then there are the goals. Harry Kane scores goals with startling efficiency. He scores goals with both feet and with his head. He scores goals from close range and from long distance, for good teams and bad. He does not really seem to be subject to things like form or confidence. He simply started scoring goals seven years ago and never stopped.He has scored so many that he is seventh on the list of the Premier League’s career top scorers; with a fair wind, he will be third next year at this time and within touching distance of the record-holder, Alan Shearer, not long after he turns 30. By that stage, in all likelihood, he will have usurped Wayne Rooney as England’s leading scorer, too.What colors he will be wearing as he does so is anyone’s guess. Everyone has known for some time, of course, that Harry Kane is one of Tottenham’s own, the star of the team he supported as a child.Over the last few weeks, though, a drip feed of interviews has made it clear that, in Harry Kane’s mind, that might have to change this summer, if he is to fulfill his ambition of winning collective awards, rather than individual ones. The expectation is that at some point, one of Manchester City, Manchester United and Chelsea will make him the most expensive English player in history.Kane scored 23 goals for Tottenham this season, winning the Premier League scoring title for the third time.Clive Brunskill/Getty ImagesBut that is where the knowledge stops. Harry Kane is captain of England, he scores a lot of goals and he is about to star in his very own transfer saga. Beyond that, Harry Kane is something of an enigma. It is a neat trick: for a player of his status, and an athlete of his generation, to be as well known as he is and yet not well known at all.Occasionally, some trivial jetsam floats to shore. He went to the same school as David Beckham. He married his childhood sweetheart. He likes “Dexter,” the television show. He is an ardent fan of the N.F.L. in general and Tom Brady in particular, and harbors hopes of playing that other kind of football — as a kicker — someday.They are mere details, glimpses of what lies beneath, rather than a whole picture of a personality. His name, perhaps, illustrates it best. Most players are referred to exclusively by their surname, a tradition that reminds them they are just cogs in a machine. Only a select handful are afforded the privilege of being known simply by their first name.For Harry Kane, it is neither. Calling him “Kane” would seem disrespectful: He is more than just another player. But he is not a “Harry,” either: Somehow that would be too intimate, too familiar.Instead, he will lead England into this summer’s European Championship — hoping to win an international tournament in a final on home soil — as Harry Kane, forename and surname, like a reverse Pelé. It is an honor, in a way, but it is also a sign of some subconscious distance, as though he is a brand, or a corporation, or a place.There are a lot of things everyone knows about Harry Kane. But knowing who he is, or what he is like, is not one of them.BalanceAt the end of his first campaign with Tottenham, Kane and his teammates traveled to Australia for a brief tour. It had been Kane’s breakout year: He had scored 21 goals in 34 Premier League games. Almost overnight, he had gone from a fringe player, forever being shipped out on loan, to a blossoming idol.Kane, though, had not noticed the transformation. While he was in Sydney, he decided that he fancied a stroll. He took himself to the nearest mall, expecting to be able to quietly wander around in peace. Instead, within a few minutes, he found himself swarmed by hundreds of fans. Unable to escape, he had to call the club to get him out.The memory has stayed with him. “I think, at the start, I was a bit naïve about what being famous would be like in terms of what you can and can’t do,” he said. “I appreciate it, obviously, and I enjoy parts of it, and I suppose when I retire and it’s gone, I’ll be able to tell you if I miss it or not. But there are restrictions that come with it.”Kane in the stands after England’s victory in the 2018 World Cup Russia quarterfinals.Ryan Pierse/Getty ImagesKane traces that naïveté to the fact that he had never really considered the “famous” part of “famous footballer.” He grew up, in Chingford, Essex, on London’s northeast fringe, dreaming of playing for Tottenham and for England. His idol was Beckham. Kane cites him as his “role model,” but that admiration went only so far.“I had a mohawk when he had one,” Kane said. “But he wasn’t a role model for me in terms of what he was wearing. It was how he conducted himself. I wanted to be a footballer, that was it. I was not really worried about being in the public eye.”Kane never lost that single-mindedness. Long before he established himself at Tottenham, as he made his way around the country with the smaller clubs where he had been sent, countless coaches were impressed by his doggedness, his determination.At Norwich, Chris Hughton recalled Kane practicing finishing for so long that all of his teammates, as well as the goalkeepers, left him to his own devices. At Millwall, he asked his manager, Kenny Jackett, if he could help him get better in the air. Even now — when most of Kane’s week is spent recovering from one game and preparing for another — he admits to being a little “addicted” to improving his performance data.“I compete with myself,” he said. “When I broke into the Premier League, I was not quite as physically developed as the other players. With Mauricio Pochettino, we did a lot in the gym, trying to improve my strength and speed and power. I got a bit addicted to improving the statistics. I put pressure on myself to get better.”He takes the same approach to the other aspects of being one of the most famous athletes in the country. Kane is not, by his own admission, the sort to “get into situations where I am photographed on a night out.” That side of celebrity, so available to him, is rejected not through necessity but inclination.He keeps his commercial commitments restricted, too. He will not commit to any sponsor engagements 48 hours before a game: Even if they might largely involve, in his words, “standing around,” a photo shoot lasting a few hours can be draining. “And the games are the most important thing,” he said.He works only with a handful of carefully selected sponsors, ones deemed by the player and his brother, Charlie, who is also his agent, to be a natural fit. “If it’s just for the money, it can be hard work,” he said. Like most players, he has a portfolio of charitable causes that he supports, too, some public and some private.Last year, Kane struck an innovative deal to become the main jersey sponsor of Leyton Orient, the east London club where he first played senior soccer, as a way of supporting it during the pandemic. (Kane gave the advertising real estate over to three of his chosen charities.)A 17-year-old Kane at Leyton Orient, during one of several loan stints early in his career.Paul Childs/Action ImagesHis business interests are growing, too. He is one of several England players to have invested in STATSports, a technology company that provides GPS tracking vests to teams across a range of sports. He made the decision not just for profit, but because he felt it “fitted my personality well.”But Kane’s extracurricular activities are notably limited compared with some of his peers’. He could probably have an arrangement with Egyptian Steel, but doesn’t. He might prove a powerful advocate for a facial fitness product in Japan, but he is not tempted to find out. Kane is a familiar face, a familiar name, but not because he is relentlessly marketed. He does not seek to trade too much on his fame, because to him his fame is secondary.There is a reason the things that everyone knows about Kane extend no further, really, than the field itself: because that is all that he has focused on. “I don’t want that attention,” he said. “It is a conscious effort to avoid it. Football is my job. I dedicated a lot of time and work to be where I am now, and I think some players lose sight of that. You start to think the other things are more important, more exciting, but what I am paid for is to work hard and be professional.”What we know about Harry Kane, in other words, are the things that he wants us to know.A Star’s HavenBy his own estimate, Kane has watched “The Brady 6,” a documentary about the six quarterbacks chosen ahead of Tom Brady in the 2000 N.F.L. draft, a dozen or so times. Last spring, like millions of others, he found himself captivated by “The Last Dance,” the documentary series highlighting Michael Jordan’s final year with the Chicago Bulls.Given the scarcity of information about Kane, those two fairly unsurprising viewing choices — professional athlete is intrigued by stories of great athletes — are often co-opted as false insight into who the 27-year-old Kane is away from the field. Barring evidence to the contrary, they prove, after all, that he likes the N.F.L. and basketball.But neither one seems particularly extracurricular. Kane has spoken previously of the echoes he hears of his own story in Brady’s rise — a player written off by most before his career had begun, who managed to go on and conquer the world — and “The Last Dance” is, in the eyes of more than one soccer player, a case study in the nature of greatness. These are not outside interests for Kane. It is background reading.The one place that Kane does seek solace from soccer — the one place he goes deliberately to escape — is the golf course. It is his haven, his chance to take his mind off his relentless drive to self-improve by persistently trying to get better at something else. “It is my way of meditating,” he said. “When you’re playing, it is all you are thinking about for four or five hours. It gets me away from football.”Kane hinted at his potential departure from Spurs during a golf-course interview this year.Andrew Redington/Getty ImagesPerhaps, then, it was only on the golf course that Kane felt comfortable enough, detached enough, to confront the issue of his future. He had been dropping hints for months — if not longer — that his ambitions and Tottenham’s might be starting to diverge, though as a rule he had stopped short of anything that might be considered undiplomatic.Last month, though, while playing golf with Gary Neville, the former Manchester United captain turned television pundit, he was blunt. A difficult conversation with Tottenham was coming, he told Neville; he felt he could go on and win trophies for years to come, and if the club could not provide a team to do that, he would have to consider his options.He is at the stage of his career when he is starting to think about legacy, weighing those individual awards, the scoring titles and the player of the year accolades, against the ones that define a player: the titles won and the cups lifted and the trophies claimed.In an interview with The New York Times in late April he said he “didn’t panic” about it, that he did not believe he had one last shot at winning something, but he will know, too, that time is not limitless. He will turn 28 in July, and is starting to think of what people will know about him when, years down the line, he is no longer the England captain, no longer scoring goals.And he knows that one thing stands out above all others. “England is No. 1 for me,” he said. “It is the biggest thing you can achieve. I dreamed of playing for England, but I also dreamed of winning something for England. That is on top of my list. You play Premier Leagues and Champions Leagues every year, but a major tournament only comes around once every two years. The window is a lot smaller. To win something with England: That would be No. 1.”It would outstrip whatever he achieves, for himself and for his club, whichever club that is: to be England captain, winning a major trophy for the first time in almost 60 years, and doing so on home soil. Make that happen, and that will be the only thing that people will know about Harry Kane. It is the only thing they will need to know. It will be the only thing that matters.“I dreamed of playing for England, but I also dreamed of winning something for England. That is on top of my list.”Ozan Kose/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images More

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      How a Nonprofit Soccer Leader Spends His Sundays

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      When Ray Selvadurai, the director of coaching for the Manhattan Soccer Club, is not on the pitch, he’s with his daughter in the Bronx.Manhattan Soccer Club is one of the largest youth soccer organizations in New York. Its home base for play is Randalls Island in Manhattan, where around 1,500 members between 5 and 23 train and compete on its 31 soccer fields. Ray Selvadurai, who has been with the club for 23 years, is its director of coaching.Play was suspended last year, from March through August, because of the virus, which took one of the club’s beloved coaches. “Freddy Fuentes was only 49; he worked here for 15 years,” Mr. Selvadurai said. “We still haven’t recovered from that, and probably never will.”But with players and parents back at Randalls Island, things, on the field at least, are returning to normal. “We’ve realized how much we missed all of this,” Mr. Selvadurai said. “I’ll never take it for granted again.”Mr. Selvadurai, 48, lives in Spuyten Duyvil, in the Bronx. His daughter, Ella, 10, lives with him on the weekends.LIGHT AND SWEET My biological alarm clock goes off at 7:30 a.m. I have two cups of coffee with milk and two Equals each — I like it sweet. I make it using coffee from Tierney Fine Foods, this old-world deli that is five minutes away from my home. My daughter appears in the kitchen and asks for “Dad’s eggs Benedicts.” We talk about our day and the upcoming week. She tells me about her school friends and her new sister who is only a few months old. This is our special time to sit together and learn about her life.Mr. Selvadurai at home with his daughter, Ella.Ahmed Gaber for The New York TimesSTANDING ‘DADDY’ ORDER If we have home games, I drop her off at her mother’s in Pelham. We do a deli run at Tierney first. Ella walks in and just says, ‘Daddy.’ They know it’s for me and hand her my coffee and a turkey and Cheddar sandwich.A sandwich run at Tierney Fine Foods in the Bronx.Ahmed Gaber for The New York TimesPARK AND PACK The drive to Randalls Island is maybe 20 minutes. I’m there by 10:30. I park in a lot under the Triborough Bridge. I get out my folding chair, which I bought at REI, my favorite store for outdoor camping, which is just big enough for me to sit on and be comfortable, my Yeti filled with water and a notebook, and put everything into my knapsack. For the next six hours I watch the games and training sessions.THE ROUNDS I oversee the entire club, so I’m in charge of developing the curriculum for the players and working with the coaching staff. We are a national level program, so we’ve had some great success professionally. As a director, people need to see you and know who you are. Sundays are when the families come, that’s the real dynamic of this city sport. There’s a tremendous joy to see everyone. It all feels so normal. To watch soccer games live outside is a special thing. When it’s taken from you, you realize how much you miss it.“As a director, people need to see you and know who you are.”Ahmed Gaber for The New York TimesPLAY For the first two hours I watch our local teams, who are ages 12 to 19. At 12:30 I watch the premier teams, also 12 to 19. These kids are at a completely different playing level. At 2:30 I visit the players ages 8 to 11. This is the sponge age; they pick up everything. To see them grow up is a real joy. They love wearing the uniform and being part of a team. This is the future of our club. I’ve been drinking water all day, but around now I’ll have a PowerBar or sandwich.Mr. Selvadurai oversees the coaching for about 1,500 soccer players between the ages of 5 and 23.Ahmed Gaber for The New York TimesBREAKDOWN At 4:30 whoever has the last game helps break down the field. It’s a sea of parents and coaches bringing over soccer equipment — flags, nets and benches — which is nice because everyone collaborates. Everything gets put into a large, red storage locker. There’s a box in the corner full of lost and found items that’s always overflowing: shin guards, cleats, soccer balls, sweatshirts. When you have 1,500 kids, you name it, it’s left here. I trek back to my car. The bridge is right above me. You can see and hear the cars as it connects our community with the other boroughs.SUSHI WITH ELLA I head back to Pelham and pick up my daughter around 5:30 and drive back to my house, which is only 6.7 miles away. She might do her homework or play Roblox on her iPad. It’s a game where you build little towns and economies. She’s a big sushi fan so we order in from Sushi Palace — miso soup, spicy tuna and crab rolls, salmon pieces — and talk about our day.Coffee in the morning with Ella, and sushi with her at night.Ahmed Gaber for The New York TimesBRIDGE FILMS I’ve been trying to get Ella to embrace movies I saw as a kid. We’ve seen all three of the “Karate Kid” movies. Watching them with her makes me feel nostalgic and connects the generations. Sometimes we laugh at the same thing. She’s the female version of me in a lot of ways. By 9:30 she’s showered and in bed.WORK, THEN DISCONNECT I go over notes from the training sessions and games and prepare for the week at the dining room table. I’ll send emails and communicate with coaches. I think about the players. During the week I’m out there with all of them. I’m pretty close to knowing everyone’s name. My players will call and talk. It’s an earned trust between families and players. It’s a lot of responsibility to be this other voice in their lives. At midnight I stop. I have a rule: I keep my phone, on silent, on the coffee table outside of the bedroom. My sleep has to be great and uninterrupted.Sunday Routine readers can follow Ray Selvadurai on Twitter @SelvaduraiRay. More

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      Saudi Arabia Mulls Bid to Host 2030 World Cup

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      Saudi Arabia is pursuing an ambitious plan to secure the hosting rights to soccer’s marquee event, but the effort faces political and technical obstacles.Nothing is off the table. Not a bid to buy one of England’s biggest soccer clubs. Not rich offers for multimillion-dollar broadcast packages. Not even an improbable bid to secure the hosting rights to the 2030 World Cup.As Saudi Arabia sets course to spend its way to the top table of global soccer, the heart of those efforts is a bid to land the sport’s biggest prize. To accomplish its goal, Saudi Arabia has hired Boston Consulting Group to analyze how it could land the quadrennial tournament — one of the most watched events in sports — only eight years after Qatar will become the first country in the Middle East to stage the event.Several other Western consultants have been asked to help with the project, according to one of the advisers exploring the feasibility of a Saudi bid, and acknowledge that it will require “out of the box thinking” — including, potentially, an agreement to share the hosting rights with a European partner. And despite Saudi Arabia’s growing influence in soccer, the bid, particularly in its current form, is considered a long shot.A spokesman for Boston Consulting Group, citing company policy, declined to comment.Sports has fast become a central pillar of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 program — a strategic effort to pivot the nation away from oil dependency — but more recently, the country is making a concerted effort behind the scenes to join its regional rival Qatar as a major power broker in soccer.The strategy has had mixed success. Saudi Arabia has enticed leagues in Italy and Spain to sign lucrative contracts to bring domestic cup finals to the country. But efforts backed by its sovereign wealth fund to acquire an English Premier League club and the broadcast rights to the Champions League have so far failed.Regardless of the results, its ambition remains untrammeled. Saudi Arabia is determined to be in the ring for all of soccer’s major properties, and at the heart of those efforts most recently is the World Cup.Human rights groups have long been vocal opponents about staging major sporting events in Saudi Arabia, particularly since the country was accused of complicity in the murder of the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.But perhaps the most pressing difficulty to bring a World Cup to Saudi Arabia is a technical one. Since Qatar will stage the first Mideast World Cup next winter, any Saudi Arabian bid would require soccer’s global governing body, FIFA, which runs the tournament, to change its policy of continental rotation in order to bring the event back to the region.One option under consideration is to join with a major European nation also hoping to host the World Cup. So far, only Britain and a partnership of Portugal and Spain, a country whose soccer federation has forged close ties to Saudi Arabia, have publicly announced their intentions to enter the bidding process. Italy, another of Saudi Arabia’s soccer allies, is also considering an effort to host the event for the first time since 1990.Such a cross-continental offer would also require a change of policy from FIFA, which has never staged a tournament on two continents. The 2002 World Cup was shared by the Asian neighbors Japan and South Korea. And the joint United States, Mexico and Canada competition in 2026 will be the first time the World Cup, which by then will have expanded from 32 to 48 teams, is staged in three countries.For a Saudi bid to be successful, organizers could once again have to be persuaded to shift the dates of the tournament from their traditional June-July window to November-December to account for hot weather in the Gulf. The global soccer schedule had to be upended to ensure Qatar could stage the tournament safely, and European leagues whose schedules would be upended might be reluctant to repeat the interruption.Saudi Arabian hopes, though, are boosted by its close links to FIFA and its president, Gianni Infantino, who recently drew criticism from human rights groups after playing a starring role in a promotional video for the Saudi ministry of sport.In January, Infantino held talks with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the architect of Vision 2030. And FIFA’s membership agreed last month to a motion offered by Saudi Arabia’s soccer federation to study the possibility of holding the World Cup every two years instead of its current quadrennial format.That change could allow even more countries to enter the bidding.“It is time to review how the global game is structured and to consider what is best for the future of our sport,” the president of Saudi Arabia’s soccer federation, Yasser al-Misehal, said at the time. “This should include whether the current four-year cycle remains the optimum basis for how football is managed both from a competition and commercial perspective.”A spokesman for the Saudi Arabian soccer federation declined to comment on a possible World Cup bid, but did point out that the country was fast becoming a destination for high-profile sporting events. In recent years, it has staged major boxing matches, motor races and golf events.“We’re keen to take the stage in the global game as well, turning our passion into on-pitch success, as well as greater collaboration with the international football family,” the Saudi soccer federation said in a statement.Saudi Arabia, despite its largess, also needs to rebuild bridges with a soccer economy still smarting from the effects of a sophisticated pirate television network based in the country that for years stole billions of dollars worth of sports content, repackaged it and sold it to Saudi subscribers. FIFA, as well as major competitions like England’s Premier League and Spain’s Liga, were blocked from filing legal claims in Saudi Arabia to protest the piracy.The network that broadcast the stolen matches, BeoutQ, formed during a regional dispute with Qatar, is now off the air. And while the conflict with Qatar has largely been healed, beIN, the Qatari-owned sports broadcaster, remains banned in Saudi Arabia. That means the only way soccer-mad Saudis will be able to watch this summer’s European soccer championship, and a parallel event in South America, will be through illegal broadcasts.European soccer’s governing body on Wednesday rejected a Saudi offer of around $600 million to broadcast the Champions League regionally, preferring to stick with its current partner, beIN. More

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      Euro 2020: Italy Bets on Youth, and Fun

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      A nation steeped in soccer stopped producing trophies because it stopped producing players. Can a commitment to youth, and fun, bring back the glory days?At one point, for reasons that presumably made sense in context, the coach and one of his assistants spent a few minutes onstage playing padel — a Basque version of tennis — with a set of frying pans. At another, three players were lined up in descending order of height and asked to perform as backing vocalists for someone who, apparently, self-identifies as a rapper.Most of the countries competing in this summer’s European Championship announced their squads in the traditional manner: a list of names and some anodyne quotes in a simple news release or, for those investing a little more effort, a slick graphic released on social media.Italy, though — well, Italy went in a very different direction. It unveiled its players for the tournament during a variety show, broadcast live and late into the night, that did not actually conclude with confirmation of the squad. The federation never quite managed to fit it in, what with all the music and games and cooking equipment. Italy’s list was released on social media a couple of hours later.The proceedings, though, created just the sort of impression Roberto Mancini — the pan-wielding coach — wanted. Italy’s record at major tournaments over the last decade or so has been checkered at best. It reached one final, at Euro 2012, and performed creditably in 2016. In 2010 and 2014, though, the Azzurri slunk home from the World Cup at the end of the group stage. In 2018, for the first time in more than half a century, they did not even qualify.Italy’s players after they failed to qualify for the 2018 World Cup. The team’s recent history is filled with devastation.Luca Bruno/Associated PressSo as they prepare for the opening match of the postponed Euro 2020, against Turkey on Friday in Rome, Mancini and his team should be under intense pressure. Major tournaments, ordinarily, are a time of high expectation and hair-trigger tension.This Italy, though? Well, it has gone another way. The variety show was only the first piece of media content the national team will put out over the next few days. There is a fly-on-the-wall documentary, too, and an official song that is one long inside joke. Mancini appears, singing along, in the video for it.The angst and the anguish of recent years have been thoroughly banished. Instead, as Mancini said while he stood onstage that night, broadcasting live to the nation, his frying pan laid to one side, he is going to try something novel.“We will get the fans on board,” he said, “by having fun.”Long ShadowsMarcello Lippi did not hear the bell tolling, not at the time. As he pored over his choice of players to take to the 2010 World Cup, Lippi found himself picking the familiar names, the familiar faces over and over again. The core of the squad was much the same as the one that had won the tournament for him in Germany four years before. The coach chose the players, he would say later, out of “gratitude.”“I realized too late that some had given all they had,” he said.That moment of realization can be timed and placed with unerring accuracy: Ellis Park, Johannesburg, June 24, 2010, when Slovakia — appearing in a World Cup for the first time — beat Italy to send the reigning champion home, violet with indignity.That night, Lippi sat on a raised platform in a media center and described how his team had played with “terror in its heart and its head and its legs.” The responsibility for the national humiliation — there had also been a draw, a few days earlier, against New Zealand — was his, and his alone, he said. He would fall on his sword soon after.Young players like goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma have helped change the face of Italy’s national team.Filippo Monteforte/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesOver the last decade, Italians have grown accustomed to that sort of denouement in a major tournament. In 2014, when Italy was again eliminated at the World Cup’s first hurdle, the coach and the two top executives at the national soccer federation all resigned live on television. Failure to qualify for 2018 cost not only the head of Gian Piero Ventura, the coach, but that of his boss, too. Italy has spent a decade leaping out of frying pans and into fires.At the same time, the explanation offered by Lippi for that failure in 2010 has been internalized on a national level, automatically applied to every disappointment that has followed. “I did not think we would win the World Cup,” he said that night in Johannesburg, not far off heresy for an Italian manager. “But I thought we could perform better than that. This is clearly not a fantastic moment for Italian football.”Heads still rolled, but Italy accepted that its tournament performances were symptoms, rather than causes, of a broader malaise. Lippi suffered because the team that had won the World Cup had grown old. His successors failed because no new generation had emerged to replace them. As the shadow of that glorious team of 2006 grew longer, the darker and deeper the gloom became.There are any number of explanations for why that might be. Massimiliano Allegri, Juventus’s coach of the past and present, argues that youth soccer in Italy is, effectively, too tactical: Coaches are so worried about their jobs that they mask the individual shortcomings of their players with strategy.“Instead of letting kids learn how to defend one-on-one, they give them cover,” Allegri said. “They double up. But that means the kid doesn’t learn. So when they have to play one-on-one, they don’t know how.” That, in his mind, is why “Italy does not produce champions anymore.”Paolo Nicolato, the country’s under-21 coach, contends that Italy’s soccer culture is too intolerant of errors, which he labels “a necessary step of growth.” It suffers from a “bad relationship with the future,” he says. “We are very focused on the present.”That assertion is borne out by facts. Last season, of the 50 youngest teams in Europe’s top 20 leagues, only one was Italian: A.C. Milan. Only three Italian sides appeared in the top 100. More significantly, only five percent of all the minutes Serie A teams played last season were given over to homegrown, academy-reared players. Italian soccer remains a culture that is deeply distrustful of youth.“It is a strange championship,” said Maurizio Costanzi, the head of youth development for one of the few teams to buck the trend: Atalanta. He has spent four decades working with young players in Italy, and he has noticed a definite, incontrovertible change in both the quality and the quantity of emerging prospects.He wonders if that might be related, in part, to the demise of street soccer, or to the rise in athleticism in the sport squeezing out the sorts of players — playmakers and schemers — who long characterized the Italian game. But he is sure that those who do make it are not given a chance either quickly or reliably enough to succeed.“You get cycles in every country, and you can’t plan out when players come through precisely,” he said. “But in Italy one of our problems is that we only think about the result. It puts a limit on us. It means that our players seem to mature more slowly.”Striker Ciro Immobile has been a prolific scorer in Serie A.Filippo Monteforte/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAs a player, four decades ago, Mancini was an exception to that rule, making his debut at 16, rising to become an international long before he hit 20. Perhaps it was natural, then, that as a coach he should set about trying to change the culture.The problem, to him, was a lack of opportunity, not a lack of ability. “Maybe you are a little afraid to let the young players play,” he said not long after taking the job as national team coach. “It is just a matter of time. You just have to believe it.”Notti MagicheThe high-speed Frecciarossa train that collected Italy’s squad in Florence on Thursday had been specially painted, its bullet-nosed front decked out in a streak of bright blue. The journey to Rome would take only a couple of hours. When the squad disembarked, though, the plan was for the players to find themselves back in 1990.This is the first time since that year’s World Cup that Italy has hosted a major international tournament. Rome may be one of Euro 2020’s side stages — London has more games than anywhere else, including both semifinals and the final — but that has been more than enough to stoke the memory.The authorities have encouraged it: The opening ceremony on Friday will feature the tenor Andrea Bocelli, playing the role of Luciano Pavarotti and singing “Nessun Dorma,” the soundtrack of that Italian World Cup.The media has perpetuated it: Italy will play the opening game, La Gazzetta dello Sport noted this week, in the stadium that was home to so many of what, in 1990, became known as the notti magiche: magical nights. Even Mancini has embraced it, his decision to call up the unheralded Sassuolo striker Giacomo Raspadori seemingly an attempt to unearth his own Totò Schillaci, the captivating icon of that long, sweltering Italian summer three decades ago.For the first time in a long time, the country seems to have a team capable of wearing its history lightly. Mancini’s Italy has not lost in 27 games, since late 2018. At one point, it had won 11 consecutive games, a record. It may not have faced any of its putative rivals for the crown this summer — the Netherlands aside — but the sense of momentum is undeniable.Mancini has created an Italy refreshed and rejuvenated. In the three years of his tenure, he has given international debuts to 35 players. By Italian standards, there is youth shot through his team. Goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma and defender Alessandro Bastoni are both 22. Midfielders Manuel Locatelli and Federico Chiesa are a year older. Nicolò Barella and Lorenzo Pellegrini are 24.The 21-year-old striker Giacomo Raspadori played his first game for Italy last Friday.Darko Bandic/Associated PressThat the squad has the air of a team for the future, not the present, works in its favor. Italy feels young and daring, new and different. It feels like the sort of team a country might find fun. It is, though, a testament to serious, painstaking work.Ever since that defeat in 2010, Italian soccer has been trying to restore its course, to piece together some idea of how it might produce players again. To do so, it commissioned a series of reviews and assessments carried out by some of the sport’s greatest names: Gianni Rivera, Demetrio Albertini, Arrigo Sacchi, Alessandro Costacurta.The key figure in Italy’s reconstruction, though, is an unknown: Maurizio Viscidi, the coordinator of the country’s youth teams. It was Viscidi — initially hired by Sacchi a decade ago — who oversaw a revolution not only in the structure of Italian youth soccer, introducing an under-15 team and reorganizing youth competitions, but also in its mind-set.He has tried to wean the programs he oversees off an addiction to the result, to the here and now, and to make it think more about the players it is developing. He has instituted a policy linking Italy’s youth teams more intrinsically to the senior side, making the step up easier.And in Mancini, he has found a coach after his own heart. A few months after taking the job, Mancini organized a joint training camp involving Italy’s senior team, its under-21s, and its under-20s. The message was clear: Youth would no longer be overlooked. It would, instead, be front and center. The squad he has named for the tournament is made up of his children of the revolution.How that revolution ends is not yet clear. This summer may be the redemptive climax. It may have to wait until Qatar, next year. It may never come at all.To Mancini, though, that is not the point. What matters, now, is that his team and his country have a little fun in finding out. More