Soccer

Subterms

    More stories

    • 113 Shares129 Views

      in Soccer

      Euro 2020: Scotland Returns, Tartan Army at Its Back

      by

      One of soccer’s most celebrated fan groups is reveling in a rare chance to support its team in a major tournament.GLASGOW — After more than two decades on the soccer sidelines, one of the game’s most celebrated fan groups finally has a chance to cheer on its team again.The Tartan Army is back.Its reputation precedes it. Throughout the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, Scotland was a regular presence at soccer’s biggest competitions, and so were its tartan-clad fans. Rambunctious, joyous and thirsty, the Tartan Army became a tourist attraction in its own right, a traveling horde of merriment that stood out in a culture in which fans were all too often known for leaving behind a trail of blood and broken glass.“They love us,” Alan Paterson, a retired schoolteacher, said of the cities and countries he visited in his years following the national team. “We’re going to spend a lot of money, and they know we’re not going to be a lot of trouble.”The problem is that, after the 1998 World Cup in France, the bagpipes stopped playing. Scotland’s soccer record became a string of disappointment and near-misses. This week, though, after a 23-year absence, the Scots are back on the big stage at last.On Monday, they will open play in the monthlong European Championship with a game against the Czech Republic in Glasgow. But it is the second game, against England in London, that stirs the most emotion for the Tartan Army.Somewhere in Paterson’s yard there is a patch of turf that has been growing for more than 44 years. Paterson is not quite sure where it is at the moment, but he remembers exactly where he was when he acquired it.Peterson passed on his devotion to Scotland’s national team to his son and grandchildren.Kieran Dodds for The New York TimesPaterson, now 66, was among the thousands of Scottish soccer supporters who streamed onto the field after their team outclassed England in 1977 during what was then a biennial pilgrimage to Wembley Stadium for an encounter between Scotland and the Auld Enemy.Paterson was not alone in carrying the spoils of that famous victory back home. Buses and cars headed north after the match were loaded with turf. Hamish Husband, then 19, remembers seeing a group heading out on Wembley Way, the famous thoroughfare that leads toward England’s national stadium, with pieces of the goal posts. Images of the Wembley pitch invasion by Scottish fans that day remain etched in British soccer folklore.“You are really divided between appreciating the delight of the Scottish fans but not wanting to see the ground pulled apart like this,” John Motson, the BBC commentator that day, said as the crossbar on one of the goals collapsed under the weight of fans.“There was a lot of drunkenness and a lot of young guys falling about,” Paterson said. “Things were getting a bit out of hand.”While there was little violence, the images worried officials at home. Hooliganism had taken hold in England during the 1980s and ’90s; pitched battles involving soccer fans became commonplace; and nations drawn to face England would regularly brace for violence. So within a few years, match-going veterans of those times said, Scottish fans decided to take the opposite tack.Tam Coyle, a veteran of more than 100 overseas games since 1985, recalled how fans started a chant with lyrics that included the words “We’re the famous Tartan Army, and not the English hooligans.” And Richard McBrearty, the curator of the Scottish Football Museum in Glasgow, said the rivalry with England was so deep that even the Scots’ reputation for good behavior could be traced to it.“The Scottish fans wanted to isolate themselves,” he said. “They wanted to say, ‘Look at us, we are better than the English.’”Hamish Husband’s collection of tickets. He has seen Scotland more than 200 times, and has travelled the world to support its team.Kieran Dodds for The New York TimesBy the 1980s, Scotland’s fans had become an attraction in their own right. The Tartan Army was a traveling circus — decked out in kilts, bonnets and tartan — that was seen as a welcome curiosity in the towns and cities it visited, and a source of easy profits for the hotels and bars the fans would keep busy until closing time.Even brushes with the law are remembered fondly. Paterson recalled the time he bought brandies for the police officers idling in a car before a game against Sweden at the 1990 World Cup. A year earlier, he said, he was in Paris for a qualification game when a Scottish fan emerged from the back of a police van to huge cheers after swapping clothes with a gendarme.When policing was required, it was often provided by the fans themselves. “There’s a pride in behaving well,” Paterson said.Low expectations helped foster good humor. Much of this was born out of the famous failure of the star-studded Scotland team that went to Argentina for the 1978 World Cup, only to be eliminated after just two games, including a draw against Iran.“On the back of that, for a lot of Scotland fans, there was almost a change in ethos of supporting the team,” said McBrearty, the curator. “Of course they wanted to watch the team, and wanted it to play well, but there was a decision that they were going to go out and enjoy the experience first and foremost.”By the time the 1998 World Cup was played in France, the Tartan Army’s popular appeal and global standing had largely surpassed its team’s. While Scotland tumbled out of the tournament, finishing at the bottom of its first-round group, the Tartan Army headed home with its reputation burnished. FIFA recognized it as the tournament’s best fan group, and the city of Bordeaux took out a full-page advertisement in Scotland’s most popular newspaper.“Come back soon,” the ad read. “We miss you already.”A young Tartan Army member: Freya, Paterson’s granddaughter.Kieran Dodds for The New York TimesHusband, a well-seasoned Scotland supporter.Kieran Dodds for The New York TimesBut there would be no comeback. Fans like Paterson, Coyle and Husband, for whom following Scotland to championship events formed a backdrop to their lives, have waited more than two decades for their team to get to another major tournament. For younger fans like Gordon Sheach, 32, the wait has been just as excruciating.Scotland’s presence at the 1998 World Cup, Sheach said, was a transformational experience, the moment he fell in love with soccer, and with his national team. It was also the moment he decided he wanted to join the Tartan Army at a tournament.But his chance never came. As he grew from boy to adolescent to man, Scotland persistently — maddeningly — found new and painful ways to fail. “I think it almost got to the point where you kind of emotionally disconnected Scotland from major finals,” Sheach said.But even during those years of failure, Scotland’s traveling army stayed on the march. It would turn up at friendly matches and qualifying games near and far, in outposts like Lithuania and Kazakhstan. A charity affiliated with Scottish fans, the Tartan Army Sunshine Appeal, makes a donation to children’s causes in every country where Scotland plays a game. There have been 83 consecutive donations totaling more than $200,000 since 2003, according to the charity’s secretary, Clark Gillies.But when Scotland finally ended its exile, its fans were absent, forced to watch from home because of the coronavirus pandemic. The team kept its supporters on edge until the last ball was kicked in a penalty shootout against Serbia in Belgrade.The stadium was empty, but the country was transfixed. Paterson said he slipped out of his house into the pitch-black November night. He could not watch.Paterson and Torrance in full uniform.Kieran Dodds for The New York TimesGoalkeeper David Marshall’s penalty save set off celebrations in homes across the country, and midfielder Ryan Christie’s emotional interview in the aftermath brought many to tears.“I’m gone,” Christie said as he choked up. “For the whole nation, it’s been a horrible year, for everyone. We knew that coming into the game we could give a little something to this country, and I hope everyone back home is having a party tonight.“Cause we deserve it. We’ve been through so many years — we know it, you know it, everyone knows it.”Scotland, and the Tartan Army, is now back in the big time. Sheach, who was a boy the last time that happened, is hoping Scotland’s presence at the Euros this summer will have the same effect that its appearance at a World Cup 23 years ago had on him.“This summer will be massively inspirational moment for a whole generation of supporters who can see Scotland at a tournament for the first time,” he said. More

    • 125 Shares149 Views

      in Soccer

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

      by

      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

    • 113 Shares139 Views

      in Soccer

      Denmark's Christian Eriksen Is Stable and Talking to Friends

      by

      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

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Soccer

      Venezuela Faces Coronavirus Outbreak Ahead of Copa América Tournament

      by

      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

    • 113 Shares129 Views

      in Soccer

      Euro 2020: Ravaged and Resilient, the Show Goes On

      by

      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

    • 125 Shares129 Views

      in Soccer

      Harry Kane on England, Goals and His Future at Spurs

      by

      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

    • 100 Shares159 Views

      in Soccer

      How a Nonprofit Soccer Leader Spends His Sundays

      by

      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

    • 113 Shares169 Views

      in Soccer

      Saudi Arabia Mulls Bid to Host 2030 World Cup

      by

      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