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      How Euro 2020 Was Saved

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      Pulling off a tournament with games in 11 countries was always going to be difficult. Then the pandemic struck, and the job got even harder.If Aleksander Ceferin has any say on the matter, there will never be another European soccer championship like the one that starts this week. And that decision has nothing to do with the coronavirus.Ceferin, the president of European soccer’s governing body, quickly listed the headaches that came with organizing this summer’s championship. Matches in 11 countries, originally 13, meant finding 11 cities and 11 stadiums capable of hosting them. It meant creating teams to run each site and arranging for dozens of hotels to house everyone who would go. But it also meant navigating legal jurisdictions and linguistic boundaries, tax laws and big politics as well as soccer politics, currency values and visa rules.And that was before the coronavirus made it all exponentially harder.“I would not do it again,” Ceferin said in a phone interview late last month.For the first time in its 61-year history, the European Championship, which begins on Friday with a game between Italy and Turkey in Rome, is being played on a continentwide basis. It will feature big players and small crowds, and host cities as far apart as Seville, Spain, near the southwest tip of the Iberian Peninsula, and Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, nestled on the Caspian Sea. The latter is closer to Tehran and Baghdad than it is to any of the other 10 tournament sites.It will play out using a schedule that had to be fixed enough to ensure several countries would play the bulk of their games on home soil, yet flexible enough that it could change as coronavirus outbreaks and travel restrictions demanded. It meant coming to terms with what Britain’s departure from the European Union amounted to in practice, sometimes before even Britain was sure, and finding solutions after two cities were stripped of their games in April.And it meant that whatever happens over the next month — however many goals are scored, however many thrilling matches are played — that there is certain to be only one overriding sensation for organizers when the final whistle blows on July 11: relief.“It’s very complicated,” Ceferin said in a world-class understatement, “and now it’s even more complicated.”And none of it, he is quick to point out, was his idea. The idea of a pan-continental European championship was the brainchild of Michel Platini, Ceferin’s predecessor as president of UEFA. Platini had proposed the idea of a Europe-wide celebration in 2012, after Turkey, the only bidder for the soccer event, refused to rule out also seeking the hosting rights for the Olympics that would be held in the same summer in 2020.Anatoly Maltsev/EPA, via ShutterstockCrowds, still a rare sight at soccer matches in many countries, were a nonnegotiable requirement for host cities.Joe Klamar/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“It’s very complicated,” the UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin said, “and now it’s even more complicated.”Alessandra Tarantino/Associated PressNo country, UEFA felt, could pull off the Olympics and the European Championship — a soccer tournament second only to the World Cup in viewership and prominence — in close succession. Spreading the Euros around, Platini decided, could spread the joy of the event, but also serve as a valuable hedge in case Turkey had to choose between the games and the Games.By 2015, though, Platini was gone, one of the soccer officials ousted in a corruption scandal. But his concept lived on. When Ceferin was elevated to the UEFA presidency in 2016, he decided to forge ahead with the multinational concept, which by that stage had announced several host cities.While there were some hiccups — Brussels was forced out in 2017 after it could not guarantee a promised stadium would be ready — organizers believed they had pulled off what they once thought to be a Sisyphean task. By March 2020, almost everything that needed to be in place was in place, and the buzz around the tournament was beginning to grow. Some sponsors had activated their promotions, and Euro 2020 collectibles, cards and sticker albums were in stores.And then the pandemic brought the world to a halt.“Everybody was a little bit lost for a while,” Martin Kallen, the UEFA director responsible for the tournament, said of the feeling when it became clear the tournament would not be played as planned. “‘How are we going to do this? How are we going to go forward?’ Not only football, it was everywhere in society. We didn’t know what will happen next week.”Cancellation, according to Ceferin, would have been a devastating financial blow, imperiling the future of some of the federations that rely on stipends from European soccer’s governing body for their existence.“If you postpone, you can negotiate, and the loss is smaller,” Ceferin said. “But if you say, ‘We will not play at all,’ this is a big, big financial impact.”After a couple of weeks of assessing their options — which included raising and then dismissing the possibility of staging the entire tournament in Russia or England — and discussions involving a dizzying array of partners, from politicians to stadium owners, sponsors and broadcasters, the hard work to save the multinational mosaic started again.The first few calls were easy. Rescheduling the tournament for the same dates a year later solved the scheduling concerns, and since the merchandise with the Euro 2020 branding had been shipped, the tournament’s name would stay, too.By the fall of 2020, in fact, it had been decided to stick as close to the original plan as possible, with one important guarantee: Even amid the pandemic, each host city would have to make provisions to allow fans to attend the matches.The requirement seemed onerous and led to some tense exchanges between UEFA and national and regional governments. The decision, officials said, was partly made out of financial necessity — UEFA’s financial projections for the tournament have been revised downward by at least 300 million euros ($366 million) — but organizers also felt the return of fans, even in reduced capacities, was symbolically important.“We want to come back to normality in life, and we want to come back to normality in football stadiums,” Kallen said. Crowds at a big event like the Euros, UEFA had decided, would send that signal.Karim Benzema and France, one of the tournament favorites, warmed up with a win over Wales.Franck Fife/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWith the virus raging, though, and several countries struggling with their vaccination programs, the demand for in-person crowds threatened the hosting ability of as many as four cities.In the end, only two cities lost out. Dublin, where politicians had always said it would be impossible to play with fans, was the first to go. It was the easiest, too; Ireland had not qualified for the tournament, and UEFA considered it unlikely many fans would attend the games in Ireland given restrictions on travel. Bilbao, in Spain, was a different matter.The largest city of the Basque region, where separatist feelings remain high, Bilbao was always a strange choice for UEFA. Spain’s national team has not played in the region since 1967, and it appeared to have made the list only because the since-ousted head of Spanish soccer had pushed its candidacy. Many of the city’s soccer-loving public had eventually come around to the idea of hosting other teams, though, and local officials welcomed the chance to take a turn in the international spotlight.When the games were pulled after UEFA felt the conditions required for fans to attend could never be met, furious local officials publicly assailed the decision and vowed to extract damages. Ceferin expressed sympathy and suggested both cities might host future events, but within weeks he and organizers had a new fire to put out.On the morning of the Champions League final in May, members of UEFA’s hierarchy held an emergency meeting at their hotel in Portugal after learning that new rules in Scotland could force an entire team into quarantine if even a single player tested positive there.A decision was quickly taken to scrap team bases in the country for the Czech Republic and Croatia. (Scotland had already announced that it would train in England.) But two days later, Scotland revealed that one of its players had tested positive. He and six teammates were left home from a friendly at the Netherlands, but their absence highlighted another change instituted this year in deference to the pandemic: Teams have been allowed to travel with 26 players instead of the usual 23.UEFA’s leadership will minimize its travel by splitting into two teams for the tournament. Ceferin will lead one group, and his top deputy, Theodore Theodoridis, will lead the other.UefaThe challenges might not be over, either. There is anxiety about a quarterfinal match set for Munich on July 2, since one of the participants will be traveling from England, which is subject to new, harsher travel rules. (The game could still be moved.)“We always have to have a plan, B, C or D,” said Kallen, noting that UEFA was now experienced in adapting to unforeseen circumstances after moving the Champions League on late notice two years in a row.Even UEFA’s leaders have had to recalibrate their travel plans: They will split into two traveling parties in order to visit all 11 host cities, with one headed by Ceferin and the other by his top deputy, Theodore Theodoridis. Their itineraries have been meticulously planned through June 21, a key date the British prime minister, Boris Johnson, has earmarked to “unlock” England from most of the remaining pandemic-related restrictions on social contact.Ceferin said that he had plans to speak with senior British politicians, including Johnson, before the tournament, and that he still hoped to receive the backing of the British government for a full stadium for the final at Wembley Stadium in London in July.“I think it’s possible,” Ceferin said. “Why not?”The signage is up at Wembley Stadium in London, where the Euro 2020 final (fingers crossed) will be played on July 11.Carl Recine/Action Images, via Reuters More

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      A Nets Coach, a Few Ex-Pros and a Spanish Club With a Plan

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      Mallorca, a Spanish team that has struggled to find its level but just won promotion back to La Liga, is finding out.Graeme Le Saux spent the last year mapping out two futures.In one, the club he helps run, Real Mallorca, would remain in Spain’s second division. Its budget would be halved, and difficult decisions would need to be made. Some players might have to be sold. Horizons would be lowered. That was, to borrow a term that has become familiar this last year, the worst-case scenario.In the alternative — the best case — Real Mallorca would be promoted, back to the bright lights of La Liga. The club’s cash flow would increase, and increase considerably, as television revenue poured in. The team would have to be bolstered, rather than deconstructed. Ambition, though modest, would flutter through the club.As a director of Mallorca, Le Saux saw the complication. It was, he said, a little like going to NASA and asking it either to put a satellite into orbit or to mount a fully-manned mission to Mars, but refusing to decide which until the day of departure. And you did not know the budget. Also, the same four people had to work on both projects. Le Saux was preparing for two futures that opened doors into divergent realities.Mallorca players last summer. In May, they clinched a return to La Liga.Isaac Buj/Getty ImagesLike everyone at Mallorca, Le Saux is acclimatized to that sort of uncertainty. Five years ago, a group headed by Robert Sarver — the owner of the N.B.A.’s Phoenix Suns — bought the club as it languished, anchored by debt, in Spain’s second division.The takeover attracted attention, at the time, because Sarver’s co-investors were not the usual faceless Wall Street types: they included Steve Nash, now the coach of the Brooklyn Nets, and Stuart Holden and Kyle Martino, both former United States internationals turned broadcasters.Andy Kohlberg, once a professional tennis player, would serve as team president. Le Saux — a former Premier League winner and England international, now a mainstay of NBC’s soccer coverage in the United States — came on board a couple of years later, first as an adviser and then as a director.It gave Mallorca the air of a grand experiment. Various teams in Europe — most notably Ajax and Bayern Munich — employ former players in front office or executive roles. But they are grand institutions, places bonded to longstanding traditions, more accustomed to trying to preserve tried-and-tested methods than forging new paths. Mallorca, by contrast, was effectively a blank slate. It was a chance to see what would happen if athletes could build a club in their own image.In a way, the result is almost underwhelming. It turns out, if the athletes were in charge, they would be extraordinarily sensible. They would think long-term. They would devote considerable time and energy to building what Kohlberg calls “a winning culture,” though Le Saux generally prefers “identity.”Steve Nash, center, and Stu Holden watching Mallorca play Barcelona in 2019.Alejandro Garcia/EPA, via ShutterstockThat is not to say their investment and interest is not commercially minded. Before the coronavirus pandemic, one of Mallorca’s great innovations was to introduce the first “tunnel club” in Spanish soccer, a place where corporate guests or well-heeled fans could pay a premium price for a premium seat, taking in the game while eating fresh-baked pizza and drinking cocktails.It is the sort of idea that, in general, would be greeted with scorn and derision in many places in Europe: American owners trampling over the proud traditions of the game in an effort to make a quick buck. Kohlberg’s explanation, though, sounds eminently reasonable: It was a way of “segmenting the fan experience and the customer experience,” allowing ordinary fans to enjoy the game as they always have, while accepting that some people want to, well, eat pizza and drink cocktails.Of far more concern to all of them is the way the sporting side of Mallorca is run. The principles are the same ones that bind most of Europe’s upwardly mobile teams: having a single, stylistic thread running from the first team down to the youth ranks; focusing on and investing in the academy, allowing the club to harvest homegrown talent; making coaching appointments with that vision in mind, rather than jumping at whoever happens to be fashionable or successful at the time.It is not a particularly quick process. “It took 15 years with the Suns to build that culture,” Kohlberg said. It is not an absolute one, either. “It does not mean winning every year,” he said. “It means getting to the playoffs more often than not.” And it is not, crucially, one that has any shortcuts.Mallorca isn’t used to things breaking its way when it faces Spain’s giants.Juan Medina/ReutersSoccer is obsessed with the idea that there is some sort of magic formula to success: that it can be wholly attributed to a manager’s decision to ride a bicycle or that team spirit can be developed by a particularly moist banana bread. Most famously, allowing players to eat ketchup is a crucial ingredient in both success and failure.There is a reason for this: Trivia is imbued with explanatory power because the real difference between victory and defeat is long and painstaking and, deep down, not especially attention-grabbing.“A winning culture starts with management and ownership, and then it is finding people who are consistent with that,” Kohlberg said. “Whether they are involved with training or nutrition or physiotherapy, they all have to buy in to it. And it means not continuing with people who don’t fit into that culture.”Having an ownership group that instinctively understands that — that has experienced, firsthand, the sorts of environments that thrive and the sorts that do not — gives Mallorca an idea of what makes a difference, of what matters. The former professionals he can lean on, Kohlberg said, have an instinctive awareness of what a winning culture looks like.And yet they know, too, that no matter how hard you work, how good you are, how many things you get right, nothing is guaranteed. Mallorca’s long-term vision might always have been in sharp focus, but its perspective has rarely been still. In the five years since Sarver and his group arrived, it has not played in the same division in consecutive seasons.Mallorca’s stadium will host games in La Liga again next season, when the club’s biggest challenge will be staying up.Javier Barbancho/ReutersIn the ownership group’s first full season, the club was relegated to the regionalized third tier of Spanish soccer. “That was a real shock to them, I think,” Le Saux said. “But they knew that they had to make it the best thing that ever happened to them.” The club was promoted back to the second tier a year later, and then jumped straight to La Liga, too. “I had to explain that it was a unicorn moment,” Le Saux said. “It was not the sort of thing that really happened.”Mallorca narrowly fell short of retaining its place in the top flight last year. In the summer, it lost its chief executive, and its star forward effectively went on strike, trying to force a transfer.It spent this season battling for promotion, confirming yet another change of status last month, with three games to go. Only at that point did Le Saux know what the future looked like. Rather than another year in orbit, Mallorca would be going to Mars. And it had about two months to prepare.Many ownership groups would find that infuriating, proof of the ultimate irrationality of soccer. “We are trying to change the culture, the academy, the infrastructure, and that would be easier to do if we weren’t bouncing up and down,” Kohlberg said. Spanish soccer’s financial rules add to the complexity, since the owners are limited by what they are allowed to invest in the team.Some, in that situation, might abandon their principles, seeking an immediate fix just to stabilize. Others might, perhaps, launch some sort of breakaway project, to try to abandon the possibility of relegation altogether. It would be a stretch to say that anyone at Mallorca has enjoyed the uncertainty. “It has been difficult, emotionally and financially,” Kohlberg said.But it feels as if the athlete’s perspective is slightly different than the tycoon’s. Kohlberg takes great pride in having learned to be “nimble and conservative,” to foster an environment in which the club can take every twist and turn and yet never lose sight of its ultimate destination, or its preferred method of transport.Like Le Saux, and Nash, and Holden — Martino has divested his interest in the club — Kohlberg understands that, sometimes, you do not win. Sometimes you try your best and it does not work out. “You can only control what you can control,” he said.At the end of last season, once promotion was assured, Mallorca’s coach, Luis Garcia, decided to give a few of his lesser-used players a chance to take the field. “Not a weakened team,” Le Saux said. “Just a different team.” The club’s ultimate target already assured, the players might have felt able to go through the motions: Nothing, after all, was riding on these games.Instead, Mallorca won twice and, with the season almost over, was on course not only to win promotion but to claim the championship. “We were three minutes away from winning the league,” Le Saux said.Then its final opponent, Ponferradina, scored what Le Saux described as a “really good goal,” and that dream evaporated. He does not dress it up as bad luck, or claim the club was robbed of a glory that was its due. Sometimes, the other team scores a goal. Sometimes, in sport, you do not get what you want. You can only control what you can control. The athletes know that, even when they are in charge.A Lack of ImaginationCarlo Ancelotti, just starting his second stint at Real Madrid, with Zinedine Zidane, who just finished his.Juanjo Martin/EPA, via ShutterstockCarlo Ancelotti is back at Real Madrid. Massimiliano Allegri is back at Juventus. By those standards, Tottenham’s potential appointment of Antonio Conte, fresh from guiding Inter Milan to the Serie A title, would almost be dangerously novel. But whether Conte gets the job or not hinges, it seems, on whether Spurs can tempt Mauricio Pochettino to return from Paris St.-Germain.Every summer brings a game of managerial musical chairs, but two things stand out about this edition. The first is the sheer scale of it. It is not just Real Madrid, Juventus, Inter and Spurs looking for new coaches, or even those teams — Everton, Lazio and (possibly) P.S.G. — who suddenly find themselves in need of a replacement, but a pattern across Europe.There are still three Premier League jobs open, at Everton, Wolves and Crystal Palace. Roma, Napoli and Fiorentina all have new coaches. A majority of Bundesliga teams will go into next season under fresh leadership, and so will Lille, the French champion, and Lyon. It is verging on a complete reset.Except that it is not, because — Germany aside — so many of the names are so intensely familiar. The second defining trait of this year’s coaching carousel, particularly at the elite level, is how uninspired so many of these appointments are. Ancelotti is a fine manager, one of the best of his generation, but his return to Madrid — which he led to the Champions League title in 2014 and which fired him a year later — is an absolute failure of imagination, of vision.A mural of José Mourinho in Rome. His appeal to clubs never goes out of style.Andreas Solaro/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesJuventus restoring Allegri is essentially an admission that the last two years have been a waste of everyone’s time. Spurs fired José Mourinho to find a coach with an expansive style and a belief in youth, and yet seem now to have fixated on Conte, who has neither, but does come with a thicket of championship medals around his neck.Mourinho at Roma, Luciano Spalletti at Napoli, Gennaro Gattuso at Fiorentina — these are all experienced, gifted coaches, ones who do not deserve to be condemned to the scrapheap, who still have something to offer. But still: They are hardly redolent of some grand vision for how to compete for trophies or restore a club for glory.Not one is a bold, daring choice, an effort to do something a little bit different, to see if there is another way. A stagnation has settled in, a risk aversion, one that will do nothing but perpetuate the status quo. This is a time for new ideas, but those ideas will not come from the same old faces.CorrespondenceA little nostalgia hit from Rod Auyang, who still “harbors a fondness for the ‘golden goal’ sudden death system for settling ties after 120 minutes,” rather than penalty shootouts. I quite liked the golden goal, too, though I’d like to see a slight amendment: maybe after every five minutes without a goal, each team loses a player?Tim Fuller is of the same mind. “Play an unlimited series of 10-minute periods in extra time,” he writes. “The first goal in extra time would be a ‘golden goal’ that ends the game.” To stave off fatigue-related injuries, he has two suggestions: one is to remove a player from both teams every few minutes (good), and the other is to forbid even the goalkeepers using their hands (bad, but potentially quite funny).Let’s check in with Chicago Fire fans after last week’s thoughts on their nickname.Eileen T. Meslar/Associated PressSeveral of you, including Joey Klonowski and Chris Conant, got in touch to say that Chicago is very proud of its fire, thank you very much, and I am happy to stand corrected. Whether the city is proud of the Fire, I’m not sure. And thanks to Jim Blaney, for pointing out that while Naples Volcanoes is a bad name, Naples Lava is a brilliant one. My other suggestion would have been the Naples Pyroclastic Flow, but Jim’s is better.And I loved this email from David Goguen, on the subject of authenticity. “I often let my 6-year-old son pick the matches we watch together,” David wrote. “The other day he chose a tie between Forward Madison [good name, needs punctuation] and Union Omaha.“He was tickled when the Madison fans started squawking like flamingoes in support of their club. An original gesture, perhaps a bit ridiculous, but traditions have been forged through less. And I thought it fitted right in with the quaint stands, the bucolic trees behind, and the smoke from the vendors’ grills.“It got me thinking about how every tradition has to start somewhere. There was a moment on Merseyside when the supporters heard ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ through the speakers for the first time, and maybe they were baffled. The first few times I heard FC Koln’s anthem I thought it was a lost track from Scorpions, but now it gives me chills. History has to start somewhere, and authenticity by it’s very definition can’t be faked. Here’s to real roots, however absurd, and more flamingos.”(On the subject of Forward, Madison! I loved this piece, by the sometime Times contributor Leander Schaerlaeckens, on the trend toward original, innovative jerseys not only in M.L.S., but throughout the American soccer landscape. The Kingston Stockade number, for one, is lovely. But it will have to go some to beat what longtime readers will know is officially the best jersey ever produced.) More

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      How to Watch Euro 2020: Schedule, Location, Teams and More

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      11 cities, 24 teams and hundreds of headaches: The European soccer championship is here after a year’s delay. Here’s what you need to know.The European Championship, generally considered the biggest soccer tournament after the World Cup, is being held this summer after a year’s delay because of the coronavirus pandemic. Here’s a rundown on the teams, the players and the host cities for what is still being called Euro 2020.When and where is the tournament?Euro 2020 — back on, with a few changes, but still refusing to admit it’s 2021 now — runs from June 11 to July 11.The Euros, like the World Cup, traditionally have been hosted by one country, or two in partnership. But for the current edition, European soccer’s governing body, UEFA, decided to spread the games around to at least a dozen cities across Europe. The choice was not universally supported, given the inherent logistical hurdles of managing sites as far apart as Spain and Azerbaijan. But it turned out to be an even more awkward decision once the coronavirus hit.First, the entire tournament was postponed a year. Then, only weeks before the first game, coronavirus restrictions for several more changes: Dublin lost its games, and several matches in Spain were shifted to Seville from Bilbao.Unless something else changes, 11 European cities will host games: Amsterdam, Baku, Bucharest, Budapest, Budapest, Copenhagen, Glasgow, London, Munich, Seville, St. Petersburg.The first game, Italy vs. Turkey, is June 11 in Rome. The knockout stages begin on June 26, and the semifinals and final all will take place at Wembley Stadium in London. The final is July 11.Robert Lewandowski, who broke the Bundesliga goals record this season, is Poland’s biggest threat.Roman Koksarov/Associated PressWho’s playing?Twenty-four teams qualified for the tournament, including all the major European powers you would expect: France, Spain, Italy, Germany, England. New rules created qualifying paths for lower-profile countries who normally miss out, allowing North Macedonia to qualify for the first time. Finland, which qualified in the traditional way, is also making its debut.Just about all the top-name players from Europe, like Robert Lewandowski of Poland, Cristiano Ronaldo of Portugal and Kylian Mbappé of France, will be there. Karim Benzema is back in the French team after being dropped five years ago in a sex tape blackmail scandal, but several top players are out, and Spain will arrived at a major tournament without a Real Madrid player for the first time.Who’s missing?Qualifying knocked out regular faces like Serbia and Norway, and Romania and Azerbaijan will host games even as their teams failed to make the field.The absence of Norway will mean no Erling Haaland, whose transfer saga may be the story of the summer. Also missing will be Zlatan Ibrahimovic of Sweden, who has a knee injury, and the veteran Spain defender Sergio Ramos, who was omitted by his coach because of fitness concerns. The Netherlands goalkeeper Jasper Cillessen was dropped after testing positive for the coronavirus, and Germany’s Toni Kroos has only recently returned to training after a recent bout with it.A more recent, more worrisome injury has Belgium concerned: its star midfielder Kevin de Bruyne of Belgium sustained a fractured nose and eye socket in the Champions League final. His status for the monthlong tournament is unclear.Will fans be allowed?Yes, but the numbers and rules vary by city, and the rules are still changing. Scotland recently urged its fans, who can attend games in Glasgow, not to travel to London when the team plays there.The shifting of matches may not be over, either. As teams advance, the tournament schedule still could be affected by rules about travel set by various European governments.Who has won in the past?Portugal is the defending champion. The tournament dates to 1960, and Germany and Spain have the most wins, with three. England is the highest-profile team never to have won it (or even made the final).Who is going to win this time?France is the favorite in the betting at this stage, with England just behind. But the tournament is considered quite open, with Belgium, Spain, Germany, Portugal, Italy and the Netherlands all given a fighting chance. Slovakia and Hungary have the longest shots, at 500-1 or more.Thomas Müller and Germany will rank, as usual, among the tournament favorites.Andreas Schaad/Associated PressYou can also bet on who will score the most goals: The current favorites there are Harry Kane of England, Romelu Lukaku of Belgium, France’s Mbappé and Portugal’s Ronaldo.How does the tournament work?The 24 teams are divided into six groups of four and play three games each in the preliminary round. The top two teams from each group, plus four of the six third-place teams, all advance to a 16-team knockout round.After that, it’s single elimination, with tied games heading to extra time and then penalty kicks, if necessary, to produce a winner.How can I watch?In the United States, the bulk of the games will be on ESPN, with a few on ABC. When two games are played simultaneously, one will run on ESPN2 instead. For Spanish language coverage, many games will be on Univision. Games also will be streamed on ESPN+.Broadcasters elsewhere include Bell Media and TVA (Canada), BBC and ITV (Britain), Optus (Australia), M6 and TF1 (France), ARD and ZDF (Germany) and Wowow (Japan). Here’s a complete list.Now, the most important question. Is there a mascot?Yes. He is Skillzy. He is reportedly inspired by “freestyling, street football and panna,” which is a fancy term for a nutmeg, the move in which a player kicks the ball through an opponent’s legs.Skillzy follows in the footsteps of Super Victor (France 2016), Goaliath (England 1996) and Pinocchio (Italy 1980).Like many sporting mascots, Skillzy has drawn a mixed reception. You be the judge.You might say the Euro 2020 mascot, Skillzy, is edgy. You might also wonder why he’s wearing a hoodie and long sleeves in the summer heat.Robert Ghement/EPA, via Shutterstock More

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      Chelsea's Champions League Secret: N'Golo Kanté

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      Every coach has a plan. But players still decide games, and only Chelsea has Kanté. In the Champions League final, that made all the difference.PORTO, Portugal — Another attack had broken down, another minute had passed, and by now there was just a hint of panic in Kyle Walker’s eyes. The Champions League title was slipping away. And so he did what he has been conditioned to do these past five years. He turned to the place that always gives him the answers.As Chelsea dallied over taking a goal kick, hoping to see a few more precious seconds ebb away as it closed out its victory, Walker and Manchester City’s coach, Pep Guardiola, held an impromptu summit on the touchline. It was not hard to work out the dynamic. Walker wanted to know what to do. What had Guardiola seen? Where was the breach in the line? How did they rescue this?Guardiola responded with a torrent of instructions, as he always does. He is never short of ideas. Ordinarily, he passes them on to one or other of his fullbacks — the closest players to him — and they diffuse them through the rest of the team. This time, though, was different.Walker could see Guardiola’s lips moving. He could hear the words coming out, just about, above the din of Chelsea’s jubilant fans. But there was a look of blank incomprehension on his face, as if Guardiola had accidentally addressed him in Catalan or issued his instructions as a rap.Pep Guardiola and his players, out of time and out of answers.Pool photo by David RamosWalker furrowed his brow and stared, hard, at his coach, in a vain attempt to make it all make sense. Whether what Guardiola said got through, whether it was put into practice or not, a couple of moments later Walker was back at the touchline, this time with the ball in his hands. He took a couple of steps, and then launched it long, deep into the penalty area. A beat later, the same thing played out.Manchester City, that byword for sophistication and planning and command under Guardiola, the outstanding strategist of his generation, had resorted to soccer’s final roll of the dice, its last resort for the damned: the long throw-in.In the biggest game in the club’s history, in his own long-awaited return to the Champions League final, the system that Guardiola has so obsessively, so painstakingly coded into his players’ double helixes for half a decade had not just failed. It had broken down completely.There is a reason that, in times of trouble, Manchester City’s players seek the counsel of the bench. For all that Guardiola’s teams are often characterized as freewheeling, expressive, adventurous, the reality is — and this is not a criticism — the contrary. Manchester City’s great strength is not its pioneer spirit. It is that it has the most detailed map.Or, rather, Guardiola does. Much of what makes City so brilliant is not spontaneous, off-the-cuff virtuosity. It has all been trained and honed and perfected. Those slick interchanges of passing, all of the players darting into precise pockets of space to unpick the fabric of a massed defense? That is not improvisation. It is programming.And so when things go awry, when the plan does not seem to be working, the reflex of Guardiola’s players is to ask for further directions. It is hard to watch City for any period of time and not notice it. It is a reflex now: When some issue arises, the first instinct is always to look to the bench, to be given an update. There is no real room for personal interpretation. Under Guardiola, the system is king, and Guardiola is the system.He is not unique in that. Soccer in the 21st century is a cult of the supermanager: not only Guardiola but José Mourinho, Jürgen Klopp and Antonio Conte, Julian Nagelsmann and Mauricio Pochettino and Thomas Tuchel, the freshly minted champion of Europe.Chelsea’s Thomas Tuchel brought his family onto the field to celebrate after the final, a year after they had consoled him after he lost in it.Pool photo by Pierre-Philippe MarcouTuchel with Roman Abramovich. Tuchel told reporters after the game that it was the first time he had met the owner who hired him in January.Pool photo by Michael SteeleThey have diverse approaches and distinct philosophies, but they are united by a core belief: that at its heart, soccer is a game of competing systems. What defines the identity of the victor and the vanquished are choreographed movements and passing patterns and detailed tactics of each team. They all believe that it is the coach who has agency, that whoever has the best system will win.And yet that does not quite paint the whole picture. It would be perfectly valid to analyze Chelsea’s slender and yet convincing victory in Porto on Saturday as a tale of two systems: the one inculcated by Tuchel, brightly conceived and adroitly executed, overcoming the one unexpectedly — and to some extent inexplicably — adopted by Guardiola.Rather than stand by the approach that had made City all but untouchable in England since January, Guardiola chose to dispense with the services of a holding midfield player. Instead, he played Ilkay Gundogan in that role, with an array of creative, ball-playing playmakers around him.The temptation is to assess that call in psychological terms. This was Guardiola second-guessing himself, as he tends to in this competition, because he is so obsessed with winning it. Or, conversely, it was Guardiola distilling his beliefs down to their purest essence, trying to use the grandest stage of all to showcase his latest idea, the four-dimensional chess move of the boss-level supercoach.In all likelihood, the rationale was probably more technical. Guardiola expected Tuchel to sit back and defend, which would have made a holding midfielder an unnecessary encumbrance. Instead, he would need more players who could pick their way through Chelsea’s back line. It was, if one sees the game as a struggle between systems, the logical move.Reece James, one of Chelsea’s homegrown champions.Pool photo by Manu FernandezThe problem is that the game is not a struggle between systems. Or, at least, that is not all it is. On a more fundamental level, a game is also a struggle between humans: a physiological one, a psychological one, an intensely and intimately personal one. It is an examination of your fitness and your talent, your reactions and resolve. Chelsea’s system might have been superior. But so too, crucially, were its individuals.Not simply because, where City’s players seemed diminished by the occasion, driven to a frenzy by their desperation to deliver the club its self-appointed destiny, Chelsea’s appeared to be inspired by it.Reece James and Mason Mount, fresh-faced and locally reared, improved with every passing minute. Kai Havertz, the goal scorer, gave a statement performance, one that warranted his captain César Azpilicueta’s assertion that he will go on to be a “superstar.” Jorginho seemed unruffled. Antonio Rüdiger was nothing but ruffle.But more significant still was the fact that while City’s players had to turn to the bench to solve their problems, Chelsea had someone on the field to do it for them. Arsène Wenger was probably underselling it when he described N’Golo Kanté’s performance as “unbelievable.”With metronomic, almost eerie regularity, City built attacks only to find out that at the key moment, Kanté was there, in just the right place to win a tackle, at just the right angle to block a pass, at just the right time to interrupt the plan. At time, it felt as if someone had passed Kanté a script. He did not wait for instruction from the side. He just went to where the danger was, and eliminated it.Kanté was, in his own way, no less decisive here than Lionel Messi was in the 2009 and 2011 finals, or Cristiano Ronaldo was in 2014. The fact he is still pigeonholed as a holding midfielder means this will not be remembered as “the Kanté final,” but it would hardly be unwarranted.Kanté seemed to understand City’s plan as well, or better, than its players did.Pool photo by Michael SteeleBut to focus exclusively on his destructive capabilities, formidable though they are, is to do Kanté a disservice. He was also, often, the one who led Chelsea’s counterattacks. He determined the shape of the midfield. His passing helped to destabilize City’s defense. For a few minutes in the first half, he did a passable impression of Frank Lampard, turning his hand to breaking into the City penalty area, timing his run late.He did what great midfielders do, and shape-shifted as the flow of the game demanded. No wonder, as tends to happen with Kanté, a meme appeared at one point, detailing the great midfield threesomes of the recent past: Barcelona’s Xavi, Andres Iniesta and Sergio Busquets; Real Madrid’s Casemiro, Toni Kroos and Luka Modric; and Kanté, all by himself.That was, in the end, the difference on Saturday night. One team had Kanté on it, and the other did not. Perhaps there is some system that Guardiola could have conjured to negate him or to bypass him, but it is not immediately clear what form that would take.Even in the era of the supercoach, it is not always the finer tactical details alone that explain a result. The system is not always king. A game can be defined by ideas, but it can also be defined by people. And when it is, the visionaries on the sideline do not — cannot — have all the answers, because there are some things that do not appear on maps, no matter how finely drawn. More

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      Champions League Final: Chelsea Beats Manchester City

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      PORTO, Portugal — Manchester City’s players did not seem to want to leave. Not right away, at least. They stood, as if frozen in place, as Chelsea’s players heaved the prize City craves more than any other into the air. They could not go. To go, after all, would be to accept that it was real, that it was over.They had found themselves on the far side of the field at the Estádio do Dragão, silver medals draped around their necks. To get to the mournful safety of the locker room, they would have to walk past the seats that had, only a few minutes earlier, contained the massed ranks of their fans, hoping and willing that City might find a goal, that it might find salvation, that it might win a Champions League final it would go on to lose to Chelsea, 1-0. The seats were all but empty now. The fans had not stuck around to watch, to wallow.Slowly, the players mustered their last vestiges of energy and began their long, sorrowful march. Several were on the verge of tears. Several more were long past the verge. Others seemed glazed, scarcely able to move, as if they were buffering, trying to process what had happened, what this meant.It was just as they started to move that the fireworks went off, crackling and glittering and thudding into the sky. Soon, City’s whole team and its staff members were obscured, swallowed whole by a great cloud of cordite by fireworks that were supposed — were expected — to be for them. That is the thing about soccer, about sports. Sometimes, things do not turn out like they should.Kyle Walker and his teammates had to endure a celebration they had hoped would be their own.Jose Coelho/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIn a lot of ways, Chelsea and Manchester City are two sides of the same coin. They are the vanguard of the money that has swept into soccer over the last 20 years, brought by hedge funds and vulture capitalists and oligarchs and nation states. They are, depending on one’s perspective, either the great insurgents or the nouveaux riches.But they are, at the same time, fundamentally different. The Chelsea of Roman Abramovich has always embraced chaos. It has now won the Champions League twice, both times in seasons in which it changed its manager at the slightest hint of disappointment, in seasons when its ultimate triumph made little sense.The Chelsea that was champion of Europe in 2012 was managed by Roberto Di Matteo, who won the trophy without his captain and with a debutante left back. The Chelsea that repeated the trick in 2021 has a squad that is both vastly expensive and curiously incomplete. Its leading goal-scorer, domestically, is a defensive midfielder who only shoots, really, when he takes penalties. Its main striker does not score goals. He does not, at times, look like he knows how.Manchester City, by contrast, is a monument to control. In the 13 years since it was taken over by a member of the royal family of Abu Dhabi, it has sought to perfect every single aspect of being a soccer team. It has worked under the assumption that success is, effectively, a formula: that if all of the variables are regulated, winning is inevitable.And so City is the benchmark: it has the best youth academy, the best training facilities, it has a playing style that unifies the club from bottom to top. It has the most data and the biggest scouting network, it has the deepest squad and the greatest manager and the most sophisticated commercial operation and the largest network of sister clubs.Chelsea’s N’Golo Kanté, who dominated a midfield City had hoped to control.Pool photo by Susan VeraNone of it has come cheap. Quite how much all of it has cost is not possible to put a precise figure on, but it has cost not far off a couple of billion dollars, at the very least, to transform a soccer team that was a byword for disappointment into a gleaming advertisement for the modernity and mastery of its backers.It has worked. Under Pep Guardiola, City has risen to become the dominant force in English soccer. For three of the past five years, it has probably — by most metrics — been the best team in Europe, whatever that means, really: the most complete and the most consistent, the one with the highest ceiling.It is a constancy that has always evaded Chelsea, always too turbulent, too impatient, too comfortable with change. And it has been achieved by translating the control that defines the club into its playing style. Guardiola wants not just to have possession of the ball, but to have ownership of space itself: to dictate where passes go and where players do.All of it, each meticulously-selected piece of the puzzle, had been done with this moment in mind. The Champions League represents the ultimate fulfillment not just of Guardiola’s vision, but City’s. It is justification for all of that investment, vindication for all of those ideas, and it is reward for doing all of those things right.There is just one flaw. Success is not a formula. Not this sort of success, anyway, the success that relies on an alignment of the stars and the rub of the green and the minutiae of countless little moments. That is the undeniable, untameable nature of sport: that, in the end, there is always something that you cannot account for, something that you cannot control. That, sometimes, things do not turn out the way they should.Pep Guardiola, who has been in charge of some of Europe’s best teams for the past decade, failed again the win the trophy he values the most.David Ramos/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAnd so, in the game that represented that manifestation of its destiny, Manchester City sought to exert a supreme, almost obsessive, control, and found only chaos. Guardiola named a team full of attacking midfielders — one at left back, three in midfield, two more upfront — with the aim of starving Chelsea of first the ball and then hope. In the event, it was City who seemed frantic, uncertain, whizzing and whirling round the field at breakneck speed to try to slow down the game.It lost because Chelsea was the precise opposite. It is only six months since Thomas Tuchel, its coach, was fired by Paris St.-Germain, unable to recover from losing the Champions League final last season. He was tasked not only with replacing Frank Lampard, a beloved club legend who many fans thought deserved more time to prove his worth, but with shaping some sort of identifiable team from the morass of gifted, but drifting, players he inherited.He was told to fashion order from chaos, and this was his ultimate, his irrevocable proof. City barely laid a glove on Chelsea. It found its every path blocked, its every idea pre-empted, its every thought read. As Guardiola’s team grew more frenzied, Chelsea held its fire, bided its time, and waited for the moment to strike.Kai Havertz flicked the ball past City’s goalkeeper, Ederson, and turned it into the net in the 42nd minute.Michael Steele/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIts chance came just before halftime. For all those midfielders in Guardiola’s lineup, not one of them was in the vicinity of Mason Mount as he picked the ball up in his own half. Timo Werner, the nonscoring striker, darted into a channel, dragging City’s central defenders from their positions. Kai Havertz sprinted into the gap. Mount found him, and he bore down on goal, unencumbered, unaccompanied.That was enough. That was all Tuchel’s team needed. It would be Chelsea’s players, at the end, running around the field, running to their fans, running on fumes and on adrenaline, running nowhere in particular, running because joy that pure, that uncut, the joy of a dream realized, is beautiful chaos.And it would be City’s on that long march past those empty seats, through that cordite cloud stinging eyes already raw with tears, slowly coming to terms with the fact that — for now, at least — it is real, and it is over. This is the game they were gathered to win, the trophy that is the club’s ultimate purpose. This was their moment. But that is sports. Success is not a formula. Sometimes, things do not turn out as they should, as you expect. Sometimes, there is just a little bit of chaos.Pool photo by Susana Vera More

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      Is the Champions League Final Christian Pulisic’s Moment?

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      There is an American at today’s game. Two actually.Christian Pulisic is expected to feature for Chelsea, though it will be from off the bench, the high-water mark in stages for the high-water mark in American players in Europe.The other American, Manchester City goalkeeper Zack Steffen, most likely will be a spectator in Porto unless there is an emergency or two in his team’s camp. Steffen’s consolation is that he has already become the first American to win the Premier League.But for most fans in the United States, Pulisic will be the main talking point today. Even since he joined Chelsea from Germany’s Borussia Dortmund in 2019, for a $73 million fee that raised eyebrows on both sides of the Atlantic, he has battled to find his place in London, and his team.Chelsea and its fans have had little complaint about his play.Just last month, he scored the goal that provided a valuable point on the road against Real Madrid in semifinals.A week later he showed similar poise to set up a goal by Mason Mount that finished off Madrid.But the ongoing competition for places in Chelsea’s star-studded attack is never easy; a year after bringing Pulisic into a team that already had Mason Mount, who plays a similar game, Chelsea bought the German forwards Timo Werner and Kai Havertz.Injuries, too, have been a persistent issue for Pulisic, and that is perhaps part of the reason Chelsea Coach Thomas Tuchel has tended to see him as more of a second-half super sub than a 90-minute fixture in his team.But did his performance against Real Madrid, and some other strong outings this spring, change that impression? No. He will start on the bench as usual, but said this week that he would be ready when called.“I’ve learned a lot, I’ve come very far,” Pulisic said in an interview with CBS Sports this week. “There have been some real ups, also some times where I had some really difficult moments. I’m happy with my form now. I’m happy with the way I’m feeling. I’m confident.” More

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      How to Watch the Champions League Final: Time, Streaming and Location

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      Manchester City is chasing its first European club soccer title, and Chelsea its trying to win its second. Here’s how to watch.Chelsea and Manchester City, two deep-pocketed titans of England’s Premier League, will play for the biggest prize in European soccer on Saturday when they meet in the Champions League final in Porto, Portugal.Chelsea, a serial collector of titles and trophies since 2003, has won the competition once before, in 2012. Manchester City, a club that only in the last decade emerged from the long shadow of its more famous (and much more decorated) neighbor, Manchester United, is playing in the final for the first time.That unfamiliarity may bring some nerves, and some intrigue. But new faces or old, everyone will head into the final with eyes wide open about the stakes.“If you win, you’re a hero,” Manchester City midfielder Kevin De Bruyne said this week. “If you lose, you’re almost a failure.”What time is the game?Kickoff is set for 3 p.m. Eastern. Unlike some kickoff times, that one should be pretty accurate.How can I watch?The game will be broadcast in the United States by CBS Sports and on the Paramount+ streaming app. If you prefer commentary in Spanish, go to Univision or the TUDN app.If you are anywhere else in the world, check this comprehensive list of broadcast partners on UEFA’s website, which includes everything from RMC Sport (France) to Qazsport (Kazakhstan) to the magnificently named Silk Sport (Georgia).Manchester City’s Pep Guardiola has won the Champions League as a player and as a manager. But not with Manchester City.Carl Recine/ReutersWill there be fans inside the stadium?Yes. Each club received an allotment of 6,000 tickets to the game, and organizers said the crowd would be limited to 16,500 — well short of the 50,000-seat capacity of Porto’s Estádio do Dragão.Chelsea returned 800 of its tickets, with its fans angrily claiming that onerous UEFA rules had “intentionally prevented” eager supporters from traveling.Manchester City, on the other hand, announced this week that its owner, Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the Abu Dhabi royal and the deputy prime minister of the United Arab Emirates, had graciously picked up the travel tab for everyone.Fans in Porto, where the bars closed early this week.Pedro Nunes/ReutersWhat was the mood been like this week?Tariq Panja of The Times sent along this dispatch from Porto on Friday:Fans from England started arriving in small numbers throughout the week, and by Friday afternoon parts of the city were thronged by supporters of the two teams.A large group of Manchester City supporters became an attraction of sorts for locals as they drank beer and sang songs in the sunshine in the bars that lined one bank of the Douro river, one of the city’s main tourist spots.The fans were being closely watched by the Portuguese police, which the night before had to intervene when some visitors became frustrated by local coronavirus restrictions that forced bars and restaurants to close by 10:30 p.m.For many of the English visitors, the trip to Porto was the first time away from their country since its recent reopening after one of Europe’s longest lockdowns.Rúben Dias has been the savior of City’s defense this year.Manu Fernandez/Associated PressTell me something I can say to sound smart today.“Buying Rúben Dias changed everything for Manchester City, giving Pep Guardiola the quality he needed on defense to support that offense while it purrs along.”“Sure, Chelsea’s Christian Pulisic can become the first American to play in the Champions League final today. But he won’t be the first American to win it: That honor belongs to Jovan Kirovski, with Dortmund in 1997.” More

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      Revisiting Ilkay Gundogan

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      The Manchester City midfielder is a rare player in the Champions League final: one with experience in the game. He wants to know what it feels like to win.Ilkay Gundogan is a little sheepish as he admits it. It is not what he is supposed to do, he knows. He is supposed to take each game as it comes. That is the professional’s mantra. Don’t get ahead of yourself. Think about today, rather than tomorrow. That is what a sports psychologist would advise. It is what his manager, certainly, would recommend.It is not, though, what he has done. From the moment Manchester City eliminated Paris St.-Germain earlier this month to qualify for its first Champions League final, Gundogan has found himself thinking about almost nothing else. “There’s not been a day when I haven’t thought about this game,” he said. “Maybe too much, to be honest.”Even after Manchester City won the Premier League title — in absentia, effectively; the club’s crown was confirmed when Manchester United, its closest challenger, lost to Leicester City on May 12 — he did not feel in celebratory mood. The euphoria of that achievement almost passed him by. Instead, in his mind, it meant he could focus more absolutely on Chelsea, on Porto, on Saturday.“I tried to convince myself that everything was preparation for the final,” he said. “I didn’t want to hold back for one second. In training, in my private life, I tried to keep myself as up as possible.”City’s top scorer in the Premier League this season was not Gabriel Jesus, Raheem Sterling or Kevin De Bruyne. It was Gundogan, with 13 goals.Pool photo by Scott HeppellAffectionately, his friends and his family suggested that he was at risk of causing himself additional stress. Gundogan is smart, and thoughtful, and logical. He had considered the issue. They worried about him far more than he worried about himself. “This is just how I am,” he said.He has wondered, over the last few weeks, whether the final has occupied so much of his mental energy because he knows the pain of losing one. Alone on City’s squad, Gundogan has tasted the Champions League final. He was on the Borussia Dortmund team that lost, late, to Bayern Munich in London in 2013. It is not something he has put out of his mind. “When you get the taste of playing in that game, and you lose, it does feel like unfinished business,” he said.Every major final, of course, is laced with these sorts of stories: the club seeking revenge for a bitter defeat or the coach trying to cement his legacy or the president trying to live up to the legacy of his father or the team trying to quiet the ghosts of its predecessors.This weekend’s is no different. There are private stories, not unlike Gundogan’s. Chelsea’s Thiago Silva was part of the P.S.G. team that lost to Bayern Munich in Lisbon last year. He, too, will see this as a chance to address a regret. His teammate Mateo Kovacic, meanwhile, has been to the biggest game in club soccer twice, and has never played in it: He remained on the substitutes’ bench as Real Madrid lifted the trophy in 2017 and 2018.Gundogan in 2013, when he scored in the Champions League final but did not win it.Adrian Dennis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAnd there are broader themes. This is Pep Guardiola’s first encounter in a decade with the game in which he confirmed his brilliance, his opportunity to win a third European Cup, the high-water mark for any manager. It is the culmination of Manchester City’s relentless march toward the pinnacle of the European game, the coronation as the game’s supreme power that represents the ultimate purpose and vindication of Abu Dhabi’s billion-dollar intervention in soccer.But some stories cut through more than others. A few years ago, Gundogan granted The Times rare access to his rehabilitation from a torn cruciate ligament. Over the course of eight months or so, he allowed us to track every stage of his recuperation — from his surgery in Barcelona to his first steps in the gym and on to his return first to training and then to the field.He invited us into his home, introduced us to his family, allowed us to photograph him in his private box at the Etihad Stadium as — a little distracted, a little mournful — he watched his team play yet another game without him. He made us Turkish coffee. He showed us his collection of sneakers. He did not mind when we asked whether he needed quite so many in gold.One afternoon, after checking that nobody was around, he took us into the club’s sanctum sanctorum: the first-team changing room at City’s training facility. Strictly speaking, it is for players only; the club has a firewall around first-team areas, one that applies even to senior employees, let alone journalists.Stealthily, as though he was quite enjoying the transgression, Gundogan opened a door at the back of the room to reveal what looked, at first glance, like a spa room at a country house hotel: a sauna, a cold bath, a couple of pristine swimming pools, complete with retractable floors and basketball hoops.After injuring his knee, Gundogan offered The Times an unusually candid look inside his recovery.Kieran Dodds for The New York TimesMore important, he spoke openly and frankly about the loneliness of injury, the fear, the frustration, the self-doubt, the boredom, the existential angst of being unable to do a job that is also an all-consuming identity. He talked a lot about the close group of half a dozen friends that has surrounded him since he was young; about how the prospect of a monthlong vacation with all of them, in Los Angeles, had gotten him through the long, bleak spring that year.That injury was not the first setback Gundogan had experienced. He had previously missed out on playing for Germany in the 2014 World Cup and in Euro 2016, too. He had endured a back problem that, at one juncture, he feared might dog him throughout his career, perhaps even end it.He is cool and considered and rational — he is proud of his Turkish heritage, but in many ways, he is very obviously German — but those disappointments nagged at him. He worried, deep down, that he was cursed not to have the career he might have had.And then, slowly but surely, he made his way back. As he did so over the past few years, it would have been impossible not to take some pleasure in seeing him thrive after seeing, close up, all that he had been through, not to feel a little vicarious happiness when he started, all of a sudden, scoring goals as City swept the rest of the Premier League aside this season. There had been points when he worried that the injury would rob him of something, that he would return somehow diminished, and yet here he was, better than ever.Gundogan has won 10 trophies at City. Saturday offers the opportunity for one more, and a bit of validation.Pool photo by Clive BrunskillTo report on a game is to suspend emotion. It sounds deeply unconvincing, but it is true: From experience, what matters in the 89th minute of watching your team in a major final is not whether it holds on to a lead or staves off a defeat, but that you have a decent connection to the Wi-Fi, more than 40 percent of your battery’s life, and a lead section for the story your office expects that is not a complete disaster. The disappointment or delight comes only after the words are written.Personal connections, though, are more complex, harder to suspend; those are the stories that cut through. Whatever happens on Saturday, what will matter most is what always matters on these occasions: reliable Wi-Fi, a conveniently located power socket, a vague idea of something to write.Should Manchester City win, though, the first thought will not be what it means for the power dynamics of the game or where this places Guardiola in the pantheon of history’s greatest coaches. It will be much smaller, much more personal: that this is the moment Gundogan has waited for, that this is the moment he worried he might never get to have, that everything he has been through was, ultimately, worth it.Maybe This New Idea Is a Good Idea?Chelsea’s team rolled into Porto on Thursday afternoon.Violeta Santos Moura/ReutersThis is becoming something of a theme. This week, as you may have noticed, my unstoppable — no, really: We try to get him to take vacations, and he just … doesn’t — colleague Tariq Panja reported that UEFA was exploring the idea of tweaking the format of the Champions League, swapping out the current two-legged semifinals for a weeklong “final four” tournament.To those of you who follow college basketball in the United States, this concept will require no explanation. To those of you who don’t: In lieu of the traditional home-and-away semifinals, followed by a final in a neutral venue, all three matchups would be one and done, held in the same city, over the course of a few days.The reaction to this news, broadly, was predictable: much wailing and gnashing of teeth and rending of garments over UEFA’s riding roughshod over the long-suffering, match-going fan. It seemed, to be frank, a little overblown, as if this is just how soccer as a whole is conditioned to greet any change whatsoever nowadays, as the manifestation of some lingering evil.That is not to say the idea is perfect. It is not. The home leg of a semifinal is the biggest game a club can host at its stadium. Abolishing them would deprive tens of thousands of fans every year of an opportunity to attend a genuine, red-letter event. Travel to and accommodation in the predetermined host city every year would be chaotic, and expensive. And mixing fans of four clubs over the course of a week would be a strain on police resources.A change like this could not be imposed from above; it would have to be done in consultation with and with concessions to fans. UEFA would need to demand that cities provide reasonably priced accommodations as a condition of hosting. Flights, too, would have to be made affordable.But none of that is impossible. The idea could work. At the very least, it is surely worthy of discussion. It might be worse than what we have now. It might be tried and deemed to have failed. But there is also a possibility that it might prove better, more dramatic, more compelling.We have spent the last two months railing against the elite teams’ demanding that they play one another more often, claiming that the familiarity will breed contempt, that jeopardy is what makes the Champions League special. Reacting no less furiously to something that would introduce added jeopardy, and make games between the elite ever so slightly rarer, seems incoherent, as if what you are objecting to is not the nature of change, but change itself.Mañana, MañanaA sneak peek at Luis Suárez’s Christmas card to Barcelona’s board.Gabriel Bouys/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesLuis Suárez, deep down, will not be impressed. The Uruguayan striker was unceremoniously dumped by Barcelona last summer, the club deciding that he was so old and so expensive that it would — despite the protestations of Lionel Messi — be a relief to offload him onto Atlético Madrid.A year later, of course, it has worked out quite nicely for Suárez: He scored the goal, last Saturday, that gave Atlético its first title in La Liga since 2014. That his exit still rankles, though, is clear: The sweat from that game had barely dried before he was suggesting that Barcelona had “undervalued” him.That will only be exacerbated by the fact that, a year later, Barcelona has at last identified a replacement. To take over from the then-33-year-old and thus over-the-hill Suárez, the club has plumped for the, er, 32-year-old Sergio Agüero. In public, Suárez has given the move his “complete support.” In private, he cannot fail to not to see the irony.That is not to say there is no sense in Barcelona’s apparent transfer policy this summer. In addition to Agüero, the club is hoping to add Georginio Wijnaldum (30) and the 27-year-old Dutch forward Memphis Depay. Eric García, a 20-year-old defender, is the only notable introduction of youth into a squad in desperate need of rejuvenation.It appears that Sergio Agüero will pursue his next trophy at Barcelona.Pool photo by Peter PowellWhat unites all four, of course, is the fact that they will not cost Barcelona a cent in transfer fees. All of them are out of contract. Their salaries may be burdensome, but they represent a chance to bulk out the team on a shoestring. Given Barcelona’s precipitous financial situation, adding four players for nothing would seem to be smart business.And yet the suspicion lingers that none of this solves the problem. Both Agüero and Wijnaldum are too old to have any resale value at all when the time comes for them to leave. Depay, too, will depreciate quickly. Barcelona, once again, is taking the short-term path when salvation lies in the long: selling off whatever aging stars they can this year, adding youth where possible, and starting the long, slow process of rebuilding.He might have had his revenge, but Barcelona was not wrong, last summer, to release Suárez. He is in the twilight of his career. He was earning a lot of money. That was not the mistake (though selling him to Atlético was, clearly, foolhardy). The mistake is replacing him with a player of exactly the same profile, solving today’s problem without thinking about tomorrow.Penalties Are Easy NowVillarreal players who made their penalties charging the goalkeeper who finally stopped one, Gerónimo Rulli.Pool photo by Aleksandra SzmigielAt the point when Gerónimo Rulli, an actual goalkeeper, stepped up to dispatch what was presumably the first penalty of his career with all the practiced élan of a seasoned striker, it felt as if the Europa League final might go on forever.Manchester United and Villarreal had played out a grinding 1-1 draw over the course of 120 minutes and were now seemingly inseparable even by penalties. All 11 Villareal players had scored — those who seemed nervous and those who seemed calm, the youngsters and the veterans, the forwards and the defenders. Even Raúl Albiol, who has apparently transmogrified into a weary fisherman.And all 10 of United’s outfield players had matched them. Of those, Luke Shaw alone had any real reason to feel fortunate, his shot squirming away from Rulli’s left arm and nestling, with a sigh of relief, in the corner of the goal. The rest had all been picture perfect: precise and powerful, penalties as executed by machines.It was David De Gea who broke the streak, a cruel inversion of the usual law that goalkeepers are supposed to be heroes in penalty shootouts, not villains. As the inquests into United’s defeat began, the line between success and failure felt grotesquely thin: How dare Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, the United manager, not have factored in that his goalkeeper might not be great at taking penalties?De Gea’s failure, though, highlighted just how good all of the other penalties had been. This seems to happen more and more now — penalty shootouts in which more than the traditional five are required, in which all of the players seem to have the technique and the poise to convert, even under intense pressure.It is worth asking why that might be. Players, generally, are technically better than they were a couple of decades ago. Clubs practice shootouts more often (though not Villarreal, as it happens). Managers focus intently on the psychology of their squads, readying them for these high-pressure moments. And does that mean that we might need to find an alternative to penalties? Asking goalkeepers to take penalties is, after all, not too far removed from the way of settling ties soccer used to have: the toss of a coin. There must, somewhere, be a better option.CorrespondenceWe start on an existential note from Tse Wei Lim: “There is something very capitalist, or perhaps Shakespearean, about the idea that Atlético, having learned to excel in La Liga, should now attempt to excel in Europe. Is there anything wrong with a club being content with domestic excellence and a profound sense of identity?”There is not, not at all, and this is something that soccer as a whole might do well to consider (and I include myself in that). Not achieving the ultimate success — if that is what the Champions League represents — does not consequentially make you a failure.Named for Madrid and dressing like Spain: lots of letters about Real Salt Lake this week.Andy Clayton-King/Associated PressA lively exchange of views followed the discussion of team names in Major League Soccer. Ryan Humphries believes those that work “build on European names without pilfering them: Columbus Crew and my hometown Philadelphia Union shine because they embody the idea of a united front, just as in Manchester and Newcastle, but in a distinctly American way. This is opposed to Real Salt Lake or Sporting Kansas City, which really sound like Gucci knockoff identities.”(This is a great phrase and I will, sadly, be stealing it without attribution.)Joey Klonowski, meanwhile, suggests “the best team names capture the history or iconography of their city. In America, that’s possible with American-style names (Portland Thorns, Chicago Fire) or with Euro-style names (Minnesota United).” I agree, though the Fire thing is weird: Why celebrate an event that destroyed a city? You wouldn’t turn Napoli into the Naples Volcanoes, would you?And more disdain for Real Salt Lake from Don Waugaman. The most egregious example, Don wrote, of “an attempt to impose a borrowed form of authenticity on a product is Real Salt Lake, a direct rip-off of one of the world’s biggest soccer teams in a country that was founded on anti-monarchism. Couldn’t we at least have gone with ‘Republica Salt Lake’?” Or, to follow the Fire example, maybe the Salt Lake Winter Olympics Bid Scandal.That’s all for this week. I’ll flick through your questions and comments and ideas while I’m enjoying the — checks weather app — rain in Porto. More