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      Science and Data Change Soccer’s Definition of Old

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      Top clubs have long looked to shed players once they hit age 30. But those presumptions rely on outdated logic, statistics show.LONDON — The exact location of the threshold has always been contested. At Manchester United, for a time, it lurked close enough to 30 for that to serve as a natural watershed. Once players hit their 30s, Alex Ferguson, the club’s manager at the time, tended to grant them an extra day’s rest after a game, in the hope that the break might soothe their creaking bodies.Arsenal’s Arsène Wenger was a little more nuanced. He had a formula. Once midfielders and forwards reached the grand old age of 32, he was prepared to offer them only one-year contract extensions. “That is the rule here,” he once said. “After 32, you go from year to year.” He made an exception for central defenders; they could sign contracts that carried them to age 34.But while the precise cutoff has always been subjective, the broad and longstanding consensus within soccer is that it lies in there somewhere. At some point early in their 30s, players cross the boundary that distinguishes summer from fall, present from past. And as soon as they do, they can officially be regarded as old.Manchester City spent big, and got younger, in acquiring striker Erling Haaland.Dave Thompson/Associated PressThat delineation has long informed both the player-recruitment and the player-retention strategies of teams across Europe. A vast majority of clubs have, as a rule, adhered for years to a simple principle: buy young and sell old.Tottenham’s acquisition last month of the 33-year-old Croatia midfielder Ivan Perisic, for example, was the first time that the club has signed an outfield player in his 30s since 2017. Liverpool has not done so since 2016. Manchester City has not paid a fee for an outfield player over age 30 for almost a decade. Goalkeepers, widely held to boast greater longevity, are the only players granted an exception.Instead, players approaching the twilight of their careers are generally seen as burdens to be shifted. This summer has been a case in point: Bayern Munich has managed to alienate the almost-34-year-old Robert Lewandowski by (unsuccessfully) trying to anoint Erling Haaland, a decade his junior, as his heir.Liverpool, meanwhile, has started the work of breaking up its vaunted attacking trident by replacing the 30-year-old Sadio Mané with Luis Díaz, 25, and adding the 23-year-old Darwin Nuñez to succeed Roberto Firmino, who turns 31 in October. As it seeks to overhaul its squad, Manchester United released a suite of players — Nemanja Matic, Juan Mata and Edínson Cavani among them — into a market already saturated with veterans, including Gareth Bale and Ángel Di María.The reasoning behind this, of course, is straightforward. “The demands of the game are changing,” said Robin Thorpe, a performance scientist who spent a decade at Manchester United and now works with the Red Bull network of teams. “There is much more emphasis on high-intensity sprinting, acceleration, deceleration.” Younger players are deemed better equipped to handle that load than their elders.Just as important, though, recruiting younger players promises “more return on investment when you’re looking to move them on,” according to Tony Strudwick, a former colleague of Thorpe’s at United who also has worked at Arsenal. Clubs can earn back their outlay — perhaps even make a profit — on a player acquired in his early 20s. Those a decade or so older are, in a strictly economic sense, seen as a rapidly depreciating asset.Those two ideas are, of course, related, and so it is significant that at least one of them may be rooted in outdated logic.Liverpool gave Mo Salah a three-year deal a few weeks after his 30th birthday.Athit Perawongmetha/ReutersAccording to data from the consultancy firm Twenty First Group, players over age 32 are consistently playing more minutes in the Champions League every year. Last season, players over age 34 — practically ancient, by soccer’s traditional thinking — accounted for more minutes in Europe’s big five leagues than in any previous season for which data was available.More significantly, that has not been at any notable cost to their performance.“Age has its pros and cons,” the former Barcelona right back Dani Alves, now 39 and determined to continue his career, told The Guardian this month. “I have an experience today that I didn’t have 20 years ago. When there’s a big game, 20-year-olds get nervous and worried. I don’t.”Twenty First Group’s data bears Alves out. Though players in their 20s do press more than those in their 30s do — 14.5 pressing actions per 90 minutes, as opposed to 12.8 — that reduction is offset in other ways.In both the Champions League and Europe’s major domestic competitions, older players win more aerial duels, complete more dribbles, pass with greater accuracy — if they are central midfielders — and score more goals. More than twice as many players over age 30 now rank in Twenty First Group’s modeling of the best 150 players in the world than appeared in the same list a decade ago.The data suggests, very clearly, that 30 is not as old as it used to be.Luka Modric, who will turn 37 in September, joked recently that he might play until he’s 50.Frank Augstein/Associated PressFrom a sports-science perspective, that is hardly surprising. The idea of 30 as an immutable aging threshold predates soccer’s interest in conditioning: The current generation of players in their 30s, Strudwick pointed out, may be the first to “have been exposed to hard-core sports science from the start of their careers.”There is no reason to assume they would age at the same rate, or the same time, as their forebears. “Look at the condition that players are in when they retire,” Strudwick said. “They haven’t let their bodies go. They might need to be pushed a little less in preseason, and their recovery may take longer, but from a physical and a performance point of view, there is no reason they can’t add value into their late 30s.”That longevity can only be increased, Thorpe said, by improvements in nutrition and recovery techniques.When he was at Manchester United, he said, “the rule of thumb was always that players over the age of 30 got a second day’s rest after games. It felt intuitively like the right thing to do.” The truth, though, was that it wasn’t always the older players who needed the break.“When we researched it, when we looked at the data,” Thorpe said, “we found that it was way more individual. Some of the older players could train, and some of the younger players needed more rest.”As those sorts of insights have become more embedded in the sport, he argued, it follows that “more players should be able to do more later on in their careers.” Luka Modric might have been joking when he told an interviewer, before the Champions League final in May, that he intended to play on “until 50, like that Japanese guy, [Kazuyoshi] Miura,” but it is no longer quite as absurd as it might have once sounded.That the clubs do not appear to have noticed — that players over age 30, with rare exceptions, still seem to be regarded as a burden rather than a blessing — is, as far as Strudwick can see, now almost exclusively an economic issue.“A player’s life cycle is an inverted U shape,” he said. “But salary expectations are linear.”A more scientific approach might have flattened the downward curve of a player’s performance graph, or even delayed its onset, but it cannot eliminate it completely. At some point a player will enter what Strudwick called the “roll-down phase.” The one thing that no club wants — that no club can afford — is to be paying a player a premium salary when that moment arrives. That is what motivates clubs, still, to believe that a threshold arrives at 30: not what players can contribute, but what they cost. More

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      Bad Planning and Errors Led to Champions League Chaos, Report Says

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      A French Senate inquiry faulted the authorities for blaming large crowds of supporters instead of owning up to their failures, after violence and confusion marred a final near Paris. PARIS — Faulty coordination, bad planning and multiple errors by French authorities were responsible for the chaos that marred this year’s Champions League soccer final just outside Paris, according to a parliamentary report published on Wednesday that criticized officials for blaming English fans instead of acknowledging their own failings.The scenes of confusion and violence at the May 28 final between Real Madrid and Liverpool were described as a “fiasco,” and with Paris scheduled to host the Summer Olympics in two years, the report urged French officials to dispel doubts over the country’s ability to host large-scale sporting events. The report found that the authorities were unprepared for the tens of thousands of Liverpool supporters who converged on the Stade de France, and in no uncertain terms, it rejected the French government’s initial insistence that the dangerous crush of fans had been caused on that evening by the presence of fans who had fake tickets, or none at all.“To us, it is clear that it isn’t because Liverpool supporters were accompanying their team that things went badly,” Laurent Lafon, a lawmaker who presides over one of the two Senate committees that ran the investigation, said at a news conference on Wednesday.Supporters were also mugged after the game by groups of petty criminals who took advantage of the chaos to try to enter the stadium and to harass fans. Few police officers were stationed to prevent crime, because most were focused on potential hooliganism or terrorist threats, the report noted. The poor planning meant that serious problems were nearly inevitable, the report said. “A series of dysfunctions” occurred “at every stage,” Mr. Lafon said, because soccer officials, the police and the transportation authorities were “in their own lane without any real coordination” — failing to anticipate that a large number of supporters would come and reacting sluggishly when crowds started to build up.Chaotic scenes of fans scaling stadium fencing and of families being sprayed with tear gas at the game — the biggest match in club soccer, watched by hundreds of millions around the world — seriously dented France’s credibility to hold similar high-profile events, like the 2023 Rugby World Cup and the Olympics.Liverpool fans lining up to enter the stadium. The planning for the match has raised questions about France’s ability to host big sporting events.Matthias Hangst/Getty ImagesThe senators urged President Emmanuel Macron’s government to recognize the mistakes, to tweak policing tactics, and to improve France’s strategy for securing large-scale sporting events.“We mustn’t let spread the idea that we can’t organize big sports events,” said François-Noël Buffet, another senator who led the inquiry, on Wednesday. “If the truth had been told right away, we wouldn’t be here two months afterward.”Gérald Darmanin, Mr. Macron’s tough-talking interior minister, had quickly blamed the chaos on 30,000 to 40,000 Liverpool supporters with fake tickets or no tickets at all — in the end, only about 2,500 forged tickets were scanned, the report said.Mr. Darmanin, who belatedly apologized for the organizational failures on that evening, said on Wednesday that the government would follow the report’s recommendations. Those ideas include improving real-time communication between the authorities for large-scale events, systematically planning alternative overflow routes to prevent crowd buildups, and to reduce bottlenecks by finding ways to encourage fans to arrive earlier.“Not only were there dysfunctions, but also errors of preparation,” Mr. Darmanin told lawmakers on Wednesday, adding that authorities would “draw all consequences” in preparing for future events.The report faulted the French authorities for their “dated perception of British fans, reminiscent of the hooligans of the 1980s,” that led them to overstate the threat of violent supporters and to underestimate the threat of petty criminality.“The political will to suggest that the presence of British fans was the sole cause of the chaotic situation at the Stade de France, perhaps in order to hide the poor organizational choices that were made, is in any case unacceptable,” the French senators wrote in a summary of their report.Video surveillance footage from the stadium was automatically deleted seven days after the game, per usual practice, because authorities failed to request copies — a decision that showed poor judgment and prevented them from accurately determining the number of ticketless fans, the senators said. Spirit of Shankly, one of the main Liverpool fan groups, welcomed the report, calling it a “clear message of support” for Liverpool supporters who attended the match. Many had accused the French police of using aggressive tactics, including tear gas, on the night of the game, and were outraged when French officials pinned the blame on them.Riot police took up positions in front of the Liverpool fans during the match. The report faulted French authorities for their “dated perception of British fans, reminiscent of the hooligans of the 1980s.” Matthias Hangst/Getty Images“Spirit of Shankly would like to thank the Senate both for welcoming the testimonies of fans and consequently vindicating them from any responsibility,” the group said in a statement on Wednesday, although it added that it still expected “a full apology from the French government.”The report, which was written after public hearings with government officials, local authorities and fan groups, acknowledged that several factors complicated crowd control that night, including a strike on one of the main commuter trains leading to the stadium, and larger-than-expected crowds of English supporters converging on the stadium.But the senators said the French authorities did not have adequate contingency plans in place and failed to adapt when the situation started to spiral out of control.Stadium employees were insufficiently trained to handle disgruntled or distressed fans, the report said, and the police and transportation authorities reacted far too slowly to redirect the flow of fans and avoid bottlenecks that were created when a pre-filtering system meant to prevent terror attacks was also used by stewards to check tickets.There were not enough signs and staffers in place to guide supporters, the report added, and there was no system in place to update supporters on what was going on — including on the fact that the game had been delayed, “which would have avoided stampedes to get inside.”A report commissioned by the government came to similar conclusions last month, and UEFA, European soccer’s governing body, is carrying out its own review. The French senators blamed UEFA for its ticketing policy, arguing in their report that it should make “unforgeable,” paperless tickets mandatory for major events like the Champions League final.Tariq Panja More

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      Bad Planning and Errors, Not Fans, Led to Champions League Chaos, Report Says

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      A French Senate inquiry faulted the authorities for blaming large crowds of supporters instead of owning up to their failures, after violence and confusion marred the match near Paris. PARIS — Faulty coordination, bad planning and multiple errors by French authorities were responsible for the chaos that marred this year’s Champions League soccer final just outside Paris, according to a parliamentary report published on Wednesday that criticized officials for blaming English fans instead of acknowledging their own failings.The scenes of confusion and violence at the May 28 final between Real Madrid and Liverpool were described as a “fiasco,” and with Paris scheduled to host the Summer Olympics in two years, the report urged French officials to dispel doubts over the country’s ability to host large-scale sporting events. The report found that the authorities were unprepared for the tens of thousands of Liverpool supporters who converged on the Stade de France, and in no uncertain terms, it rejected the French government’s initial insistence that the dangerous crush of fans had been caused on that evening by the presence of fans who had fake tickets, or none at all.“To us, it is clear that it isn’t because Liverpool supporters were accompanying their team that things went badly,” Laurent Lafon, a lawmaker who presides over one of the two Senate committees that ran the investigation, said at a news conference on Wednesday.Supporters were also mugged after the game by groups of petty criminals who took advantage of the chaos to try to enter the stadium and to harass fans. Few police officers were stationed to prevent crime, because most were focused on potential hooliganism or terrorist threats, the report noted. The poor planning meant that serious problems were nearly inevitable, the report said. “A series of dysfunctions” occurred “at every stage,” Mr. Lafon said, because soccer officials, the police and the transportation authorities were “in their own lane without any real coordination” — failing to anticipate that a large number of supporters would come and reacting sluggishly when crowds started to build up.Chaotic scenes of fans scaling stadium fencing and of families being sprayed with tear gas at the game — the biggest match in club soccer, watched by hundreds of millions around the world — seriously dented France’s credibility to hold similar high-profile events, like the 2023 Rugby World Cup and the Olympics.Liverpool fans lining up to enter the stadium. The planning for the match has raised questions about France’s ability to host big sporting events.Matthias Hangst/Getty ImagesThe senators urged President Emmanuel Macron’s government to recognize the mistakes, to tweak policing tactics, and to improve France’s strategy for securing large-scale sporting events.“We mustn’t let spread the idea that we can’t organize big sports events,” said François-Noël Buffet, another senator who led the inquiry, on Wednesday. “If the truth had been told right away, we wouldn’t be here two months afterward.”Gérald Darmanin, Mr. Macron’s tough-talking interior minister, had quickly blamed the chaos on 30,000 to 40,000 Liverpool supporters with fake tickets or no tickets at all — in the end, only about 2,500 forged tickets were scanned, the report said.Mr. Darmanin, who belatedly apologized for the organizational failures on that evening, said on Wednesday that the government would follow the report’s recommendations. Those ideas include improving real-time communication between the authorities for large-scale events, systematically planning alternative overflow routes to prevent crowd buildups, and to reduce bottlenecks by finding ways to encourage fans to arrive earlier.“Not only were there dysfunctions, but also errors of preparation,” Mr. Darmanin told lawmakers on Wednesday, adding that authorities would “draw all consequences” in preparing for future events.The report faulted the French authorities for their “dated perception of British fans, reminiscent of the hooligans of the 1980s,” that led them to overstate the threat of violent supporters and to underestimate the threat of petty criminality.“The political will to suggest that the presence of British fans was the sole cause of the chaotic situation at the Stade de France, perhaps in order to hide the poor organizational choices that were made, is in any case unacceptable,” the French senators wrote in a summary of their report.Video surveillance footage from the stadium was automatically deleted seven days after the game, per usual practice, because authorities failed to request copies — a decision that showed poor judgment and prevented them from accurately determining the number of ticketless fans, the senators said. Spirit of Shankly, one of the main Liverpool fan groups, welcomed the report, calling it a “clear message of support” for Liverpool supporters who attended the match. Many had accused the French police of using aggressive tactics, including tear gas, on the night of the game, and were outraged when French officials pinned the blame on them.Riot police took up positions in front of the Liverpool fans during the match. The report faulted French authorities for their “dated perception of British fans, reminiscent of the hooligans of the 1980s.” Matthias Hangst/Getty Images“Spirit of Shankly would like to thank the Senate both for welcoming the testimonies of fans and consequently vindicating them from any responsibility,” the group said in a statement on Wednesday, although it added that it still expected “a full apology from the French government.”The report, which was written after public hearings with government officials, local authorities and fan groups, acknowledged that several factors complicated crowd control that night, including a strike on one of the main commuter trains leading to the stadium, and larger-than-expected crowds of English supporters converging on the stadium.But the senators said the French authorities did not have adequate contingency plans in place and failed to adapt when the situation started to spiral out of control.Stadium employees were insufficiently trained to handle disgruntled or distressed fans, the report said, and the police and transportation authorities reacted far too slowly to redirect the flow of fans and avoid bottlenecks that were created when a pre-filtering system meant to prevent terror attacks was also used by stewards to check tickets.There were not enough signs and staffers in place to guide supporters, the report added, and there was no system in place to update supporters on what was going on — including on the fact that the game had been delayed, “which would have avoided stampedes to get inside.”A report commissioned by the government came to similar conclusions last month, and UEFA, European soccer’s governing body, is carrying out its own review. The French senators blamed UEFA for its ticketing policy, arguing in their report that it should make “unforgeable,” paperless tickets mandatory for major events like the Champions League final.Tariq Panja More

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      Paulo Dybala, Juventus and the Problem With Italy

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      The travails of Dybala, whose contract with Juventus runs out this month, are emblematic of a soccer ecosystem that is often a world apart.Paulo Dybala did not, particularly, look as if he were ready to say goodbye. As the lights at the Allianz Stadium in Turin, his home for the last seven years, flashed and flickered, and Tina Turner’s “The Best” began its crescendo, he started to cry. Not in the sense of a single, elegant tear rolling down the cheek. He sobbed. He racked. His chest heaved as he gulped for air.As Juventus’s fans stood as one to applaud Dybala, Leonardo Bonucci, his longstanding teammate, rushed over to put an arm around his shoulder. It was not an act of consolation so much as one of support. His eyes red and his face raw, it looked momentarily as if Dybala might struggle to remain upright.Dybala had not wanted to leave. Not really, not deep down. Instead, his hand had been forced. His contract at Juventus expires next week. He had been set to sign a new one, one to keep him in Turin for four years, last October, but Juventus withdrew it. The club had scheduled further discussions for March, but those never materialized.Things had changed in the intervening months, the team’s executives explained to Dybala’s agents. The Juventus attack was going to be built around Dusan Vlahovic, a Serbian striker signed from Fiorentina in January. There would be no room for Dybala, either on the field or on the salary roll. His time was up. He was free to leave.Dybala in May, after his final game at Juventus.Massimo Pinca/ReutersDybala might, when the tears had dried and he had recovered his composure, have wondered if that was no bad thing to be this summer. Europe’s teams are still recovering from the financial impact of the coronavirus pandemic. Most are not sufficiently flush to pay vast transfer fees, but that has not dimmed their desire for improvement. This is — as it was always going to be — the summer of the free transfer.Antonio Rüdiger has already taken advantage of it, swapping Chelsea for Real Madrid. His former teammate at Chelsea, Andreas Christensen, has done the same, joining Barcelona. Paul Pogba will, in the coming days, announce that he is returning to Juventus after his contract at Manchester United expired. All of them will have made sure that at least some of the money that they might have fetched in transfer fees on the open market now finds its way into their pay packets instead.Dybala might have expected to attract more suitors than all of them. He is 28, in the thick of his prime years. He was, for a while, arguably the most gifted player on one of the most successful teams in Europe. He has won Serie A titles and played in the Champions League final. He scored 113 goals in 283 games for Juventus. He is, by any measure, an elite forward. His signature would be a coup.It has not quite played out like that. With a week to go until he is no longer a Juventus player, Dybala has yet to find a new employer. Inter Milan, for weeks his most likely destination, has suddenly cooled on the idea, having already restored Romelu Lukaku to its ranks. A.C. Milan, the returned Serie A champion, would be an alternative, but no offer has yet emerged.Romelu Lukaku couldn’t wait to leave Chelsea and return to Inter Milan. His move ended one possible exit route for Dybala.Tiziana Fabi/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMore curious still is the apparent apathy from outside Italy. Dybala, a player who has previously captured the imaginations of Manchester United, Tottenham, Barcelona and Real Madrid, has received only one serious proposal from abroad, from Sevilla, that great collector of mercurial Argentine forwards. The catch is that it comes with a significant pay cut. One of the finest players in Italy is available at no cost, and much of Europe has barely blinked.In part, that is because of Dybala himself. His salary expectations rule out a vast majority of clubs. His injury record might give others pause. His form, over the last couple of years, has been a little inconsistent, though he would doubtless point out that Juventus has hardly played in a way that might extract his best performances.That, in fact, may be the most apposite factor. In an era when most teams play with some version of an attacking trident — two wide players cutting in, one central forward employed to create space — Dybala does not have a natural home.He is, by inclination and disposition, a No. 10, a position that has all but ceased to exist in modern soccer. Even Juventus, where the role — as much as the number — carries a certain “weight,” as one of the club’s executives said this year, is abolishing it. Elite soccer, now, does not have room for what Italian soccer has long called the fantasista. Dybala may prove to be the last of the line.But the limbo in which Dybala finds himself is part of a broader trend, too. Italian soccer is an increasingly isolated ecosystem, a world unto itself. It is not just that Italian players, as a rule, do not leave Italy: Only four members called to Roberto Mancini’s team for this month’s meeting with Argentina, the so-called Finalissima, played outside Serie A, the same number as he called up to his victorious squad for Euro 2020. It is that the country’s coaches travel less and less frequently, too. Carlo Ancelotti may have won yet another Champions League less than a month ago, and Antonio Conte might have helped Tottenham win back its place in Europe’s elite, but they are exceptions rather than the rule.Gennaro Gattuso was installed a few weeks ago at Valencia — a match made in Jorge Mendes’s idea of heaven — but he is the only other Italian coach in Europe’s big five leagues. The Netherlands, Portugal, Germany and Spain export great numbers of managers, seeding ideas and spreading philosophies. The graduates of Coverciano, Italy’s fabled coaching academy, tend to stay closer to home.Carlo Ancelotti is a rarity: a successful Italian coach working outside of Italy.Oscar Del Pozo/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIncreasingly, too, Serie A has drifted free of its moorings at the heart of elite soccer’s economic system. According to the consultancy firm Twenty First Group, 138 players have left France’s top flight for teams in the other big-five leagues in the last five years. Ninety-eight have left Spain. Only 82 have left Italy, fewer even than the Premier League, soccer’s great apex predator.Some, of course, have been eye-catchingly successful: Liverpool plucked Mohamed Salah and Alisson Becker from Roma; Paris St.-Germain, a frequent importer of luxury Italian goods, has acquired the likes of Mauro Icardi, Gianluigi Donnarumma and Achraf Hakimi from the two Milanese clubs. There have been other, more low-key triumphs, too: Bayer Leverkusen’s signing of Patrik Schick and Leicester’s recruiting Timothy Castagne.But largely, Italian clubs now trade with each other. In the same time period, teams in France, Spain, Germany and England sold around 100 players apiece to their domestic rivals. Italian sides did almost twice as much business internally: 215 players have left one Serie A club for another since 2017.It is that, more than anything, that may have precluded Dybala’s having the choice he might have expected, once his sorrow at seeing his time at Juventus cut short had abated. Italy is no longer a place teams go to shop. One of the best players in Europe is out of contract next week, and only a handful of teams seem to have taken note. Not because of what he can do, or because of what he has achieved, but because of where he has done it, a global star who flourished in Italy’s own little world.Time to Say GoodbyeSadio Mané is happy. It’s OK to be happy for him, too.Christof Stache/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThose of you not regularly exposed to Britain’s soccer content-industrial complex might be blissfully unaware of the fact that a variety of retired players have declared Sadio Mané’s transfer to Bayern Munich a bad one. Michael Owen is “struggling to understand” why a player with one year left on his contract would leave Liverpool for a European giant.Ally McCoist, meanwhile, finds it “very strange.” Paul Merson was equally baffled. Dean Saunders believes Mané, the Senegal forward, will “ruin the best two years of his career.”To some extent, of course, the thing that comes out worst from this whole confected farrago is the soccer media in Britain, thanks to its willingness to lend weight to the words of almost anyone who has ever kicked a ball and its desperate need to drag out whatever thin talking point it can find in a long, slow, balmy June.The reality, of course, is that there is nothing to say about Mané’s departure from Liverpool. Indeed, it is something of a unicorn: a player swapping one major club for another with absolutely no acrimony whatsoever.The rationale behind Mané’s decision is blindingly obvious: He has spent six years at Anfield, won everything, and now wants to try something new. Bayern Munich offers not only a guarantee of trophies but a consistent place in (at least) the Champions League quarterfinals and the sort of salary that Liverpool was not prepared to pay.It is so simple that even the one faction that might be expected to have criticized Mané’s decision, Liverpool’s fans, seems satisfied. There is a disappointment that the club’s beloved front three is no more, of course, but there has been no fury, no resentment and no accusations of greed or treachery.That has partly to do with the affection and esteem in which Mané is held, but it also has to do with the timing of his departure. Mané goes having achieved everything he set out to achieve at Liverpool. There are no unanswered questions, no sense of what might have been, no reason to regret. There is also no feeling that he lingered too long. Perhaps that is what has caused the confusion. Perhaps that is what that legion of former players is struggling to understand. Transfers are not meant to happen like this. Someone is meant to be angry. Everything falls apart if they are not.Welcome to FIFA’s Party. B.Y.O.Gianni Infantino and FIFA’s golden goose.Eduardo Munoz/ReutersEnvironmentally, it borders on the criminal. Logistically, it will be a nightmare. There are too many teams and too many games and, as begrudging as it sounds, too many venues. If this year’s World Cup threatens to be too compact, too tight, then the 2026 iteration seems too sprawling, too vast.Still, for all of that, it is hard not to find the prospect of a World Cup scattered across North America tantalizing. A final in Los Angeles, Miami or (the correct answer, for reasons not quite as partisan as they might seem) New York? A debut for the men’s tournament in Canada? A return to Mexico, to the Azteca, the quintessential World Cup venue? Soccer at Arrowhead? All of it is perfect.That, of course, is not why FIFA awarded the tournament to North America. It did so because it will be the most lucrative World Cup in history. It might well be the most lucrative World Cup there could ever be. The North American bid team’s own projections estimated that FIFA will leave the United States, Canada and Mexico with an $11 billion surplus.Not that FIFA needs the money, of course. The organization’s cash reserves already run into the billions. And yet it still felt the need to demand various tax breaks from candidate cities, simply to make the whole exercise more money-spinning for itself.All of that, though, simply makes the question more urgent. What, precisely, does it intend to do with the infusion 2026 will bring? Will there be a sudden, dramatic improvement on the amount of money it can pump into the game in less-developed soccer nations?A FIFA employee may well have provided the answer. Earlier this month, Arsène Wenger — a little ham-fistedly — suggested that soccer was missing out on talent because the infrastructure to find it was not as advanced in Africa as it is in Europe. There are no prizes for guessing whose responsibility that is. FIFA already has the money to redress the balance between Europe and, well, everywhere else. After 2026, it will have no excuses for failing to do so.CorrespondenceShawn Donnelly has a question. “It’s easy to find out how much money athletes are making during the season. Why is it so difficult to get the same information for European soccer players? It seems like these figures are state secrets. As a fan, it’s tough to get a full picture of how much the players are making, and so to know the real cost to the clubs.”This is meat and drink for the correspondence section: an Atlantic cultural divide. There is, as a rule, traditionally a greater degree of transparency in American sports. (I always enjoy American journalists who complain, understandably, that teams increasingly won’t let them into the locker room; try shouting a single question at Harry Winks in a parking lot, only for him not to answer it.) That seems the most obvious explanation.But I might be tempted to flip the question on its head, too. Why are American sports and American athletes so willing to divulge their salaries? As a journalist, obviously, I’d encourage it. As a fan, too. Fans have a right to know these things. But I’m not sure any of us especially enjoy talking about how much, or how little, we earn, just as I’m not sure any of us like being questioned about our performance at work while in our underwear.Speaking of asking questions, there were plenty of submissions for commentary bugbears, too. Karl Thompson pitched, “well, there was contact,” when discussing whether something should or should not be a penalty. Benson Lieber dismissed my suggestion of “interrogating” because it has “become one of the most prominent buzzwords in the literary humanities,” which is more than enough to rule it out. And Josh Curnett volunteered, “showed a clean pair of heels,” which feels evocative enough to be allowed a pass.And special mention to Andrew Melnykovych, who wondered: “Are you asking questions of asking questions?” More

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      At Champions League Final, the Fans Weren’t the Danger

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      Preconceptions about Liverpool supporters and policing decisions that didn’t prioritize their safety led to the chaos at the Champions League final. That’s dangerous for every fan.It can be hard, at times like these, to know exactly who to believe. On one side, there are the thousands of witness accounts, the contemporaneous reports from much of the world’s news media, the countless videos and an apparently bottomless reserve of high resolution photographs, all telling one story about last Saturday’s Champions League final.And on the other side, there are the claims of the politicians and administrators and law enforcement officials who were responsible for the staging of European soccer’s showpiece event and who would, ultimately, be held accountable if it was found that they had overseen a complete and colossal organizational failure. It is just so hard to know which side is more likely to be telling the truth.Not that it matters, of course, because the damage is done. Around 20 minutes before the game was scheduled to start, UEFA, European soccer’s governing body, announced to the Stade de France and to the watching world that the game would have to be delayed because of the “late arrival” of fans to the stadium.It was not relevant, it seemed, that images had been floating around online for more than two hours of huge lines not only at the stadium’s gates, but at its perimeter, too, or that it had been blindingly obvious for some time that there were impossible bottlenecks to get close to the ground, or that several journalists had informed UEFA of the problems.Thomas Coex/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesNo, all of that was put to one side, and UEFA blamed the fans. It did so either without full knowledge of the situation at its own event — an unforgivable ignorance — or knowing that its statement was at best misleading or, at worst, an outright and pernicious lie.And that was all it took. As soon as UEFA decided that the real problem with this sporting event was all the people who wanted to watch it, the — let’s keep the lawyers happy — misinformation spread and disseminated and infected everything it touched. From that point on, Liverpool’s fans were presumed guilty until proven innocent, not least by considerable portions of the people who should, really, have been their allies: other soccer fans.Still, UEFA can take some solace from the fact that — even with that head start — it has not been the worst actor in the sorry story that has played out over the last week or so, a time that should have been dedicated to celebrating the marvel that is this ageless Real Madrid team.No, that dubious honor goes to various elements of the French state. Not just the body-armor-clad riot police — who sprayed tear gas at fans waiting patiently to attend a sporting event, who tried to funnel thousands of people through two narrow gaps under a highway overpass, who shuttered entry points without explanation for hours as the crowd gathered and swelled, and who then locked down the stadium during the game to pen fans inside — but their champions: the country’s interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, and to his counterpart for sports, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra.For almost a week now, Darmanin and Oudéa-Castéra have blamed Liverpool’s fans on Twitter, in comments to the news media and in front of a rapidly-convened Senate hearing.France’s sports minister, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, and the country’s interior minister, Gérald Darmanin.Thomas Coex/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThey have blamed Liverpool fans despite all of those pictures of large, patient crowds. They have blamed Liverpool fans despite seeing videos of children being lifted from the ground to prevent them from being crushed. They have blamed Liverpool fans despite seeing footage of their own police officers squirting pepper spray and firing tear gas at people trying, quietly, to scan tickets.They have continued to blame Liverpool fans even as their own story keeps changing, even as the number of “fake tickets” presented at the Stade de France that evening has diminished from “30,000 to 40,000” to a fraction of that. They have stuck with their line even when it veered into baseless slurs, when it involved Oudéa-Castéra saying that Liverpool fans — maybe just English fans — posed a “very specific risk” to public safety.They have done so even though it does not take into account the problems that Real Madrid’s fans faced, or the footage and photographs of local residents forcing their way in, or the corroborated accounts of large-scale gang activity both before and after the game.They have done so even when it leaves more questions than answers: Where, precisely, did the 40,000 bearers of pretend tickets go, and why were they not captured wandering the streets of Saint-Denis? Were they ghosts? Other excuses have drifted into the realm of dystopian fantasy: Darmanin, at one point, claimed the police had to act because of the risk of a “pitch invasion.”This might all have the ring of a cover-up — and not even an especially good one, given how often the French authorities have had to contradict themselves — but there exists the possibility that it is not. Maybe it is not a series of outrageous and egregious lies. Maybe they have not seen all of those images, heard all of that testimony. Maybe it is just two politicians relying in good faith on poor, premature information. Maybe.It is hard, though, not to read into the persistence with which Darmanin and Oudéa-Castéra have peddled their accusations a certain calculation.Despite the fact that their interpretation of last Saturday evening is demonstrably, provably untrue, they have stood by it because the alternative is unpalatable: Admitting that the French security services got this one wrong would mean admitting that they have also got their approach to policing French domestic soccer wrong and that they are probably going to get next year’s Rugby World Cup and the 2024 Paris Olympics wrong, too.Most of all, they have stood by it because, deep down, they know it will work. They know, at least, that it might create the illusion of an alternative set of facts. They know, too, that much of the heavy lifting will be done by prejudice, by those who would point out, archly, that this does seem to happen to Liverpool fans or England fans or just soccer fans as a whole an awful lot.They know that while social media allowed all of those images and videos and firsthand accounts to be surfaced and to be spread, citizen journalism is a much less potent force online than deep-rooted partisanship. They know that the latter will overpower the former at some point, at least enough to muddy the waters, to obscure not only this specific truth but also the idea of truth, to ensure that some blame is apportioned elsewhere.Plenty, certainly, have seized on the opportunity to assume that Liverpool fans, or English fans, or even a certain stripe of soccer fans as a whole must be at fault. Plenty have decided that this must be the first time that anyone has ever tried to gain access to an event by using a fake ticket, without wondering whether perhaps some of those people were victims, rather than perpetrators, of a crime, without asking if perhaps that is the sort of thing the authorities should be prepared to encounter.And yet the temptation to side with the authorities, in the aftermath of an event like this, rather than those who are different from you only in terms of the team they support is a dangerous one.Thomas Coex/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWhat was proved at the Stade de France on Saturday evening was that soccer — in France, at least — is still an industry content with having tear gas fired on its customers, on families and on children. That it finds it acceptable to put them in a position where they have reason to fear for their lives, to risk them being crushed to death, to assume all of them are equally guilty and then, rather than to ask how this might have been avoided, to have the temerity, in the face of all available evidence, to blame them for it.And that has ramifications for everyone. For any soccer fan, for any sports fan, for any participant in French democracy. The Stade de France is not the first time a UEFA final has descended into chaos. Last summer’s European Championship final, in London, prompted a governmental review. Last month’s Europa League final, in Seville, drew a letter of complaint from both clubs about the way their fans were treated.Increasingly, it appears that UEFA is no longer capable of staging these games. More troublingly, in France in particular, it would seem that nobody in any position of power is interested in discovering how to police events of this scale to make sure they are not only safe and secure but enjoyable, too. Nobody wants to accept responsibility. Nobody wants to learn lessons.What happened at the Stade de France, and the smear campaign unleashed in its aftermath, has ramifications far beyond the reputation of Liverpool’s fans. Allowing the allegations of Darmanin and Oudéa-Castéra to take root is to allow this to happen again, to guarantee that there is a repeat, that another set of fans will be funneled and kettled and trapped and gassed and told — by those in power, by those responsible, by those who are supposed to have them in their care — that it is their fault.At times like this, it should not be hard to choose which side to believe, to know who is very obviously telling the truth.That Didn’t Work. Let’s Do It Again.Hold you applause for Barcelona, please.Dan Himbrechts/EPA, via ShutterstockThere was a time, a little while ago, when it was possible to feel quite encouraged by Barcelona. Xavi Hernández had made a bright start as manager, steering the club back into the Champions League. In Gavi and Pedri and Ansu Fati and Ronald Áraujo, the young and gifted core of a new team was starting to emerge.Even the club’s transfer activity seemed quite smart. Ferran Torres and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang had given the team a lift in January. Franck Kessié, the Ivorian midfielder at A.C. Milan, had been secured on a free transfer for the summer, giving the team a dynamism it has missed for some time.True, the debts are still enormous, but the club seemed to have acquiesced to cold reality. It was cutting its cloth, balancing its books, adapting to its new strictures. It was even trying to rehabilitate its relationship with Ousmane Dembélé, an admirable but somewhat quixotic attempt to recognize that salvaging a distressed asset is cheaper than acquiring a new one.And then it emerged that it might be considering the idea of selling Frenkie De Jong to Manchester United. Now, on the surface, that felt like an unfortunate necessity: At 25, De Jong is the sort of player who might generate a fee with which to rebuild a team. Sometimes, those kinds of difficult decisions have to be made.But then it turned out that Barcelona was planning on using at least a portion of the money it might receive — most likely from Manchester United — for De Jong to buy Marcos Alonso and César Azpilicueta.Both are fine players, of course. Azpilicueta, certainly, would be an asset both on and off the field to Barcelona. But they are hardly spring chickens: Alonso is 31 and Azpilicueta 32. Alonso excels in a position, wing back, that Barcelona does not even use. This is not the work of a club that has learned its lessons. Not in the slightest.You Cannot All Be LeBronAll will be revealed, then, on June 17. In less than two weeks, humanity will finally discover the answer to the most burning question of the age: Which team will get to have endless, heated discussions about whether Paul Pogba is playing sufficiently well next season? And it will do so in the most apposite medium imaginable: through watching his own, personal documentary.Just a little of the sting from The Pogmentary — no, really — was drawn earlier this week, when Manchester United confirmed that Pogba would be leaving the club, six years on from his $100 million arrival, at the end of his contract. The “huge decision” that sits at the center of much of the promotional spiel of the documentary, it turns out, was not entirely his.Oli Scarff/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesPogba is not the first player to go down this road, of course. His French teammate, Antoine Griezmann, announced his move to Barcelona in the form of what might as well broadly be called a documentary, too. That Griezmann, like Pogba, is a devoted N.B.A. fan is probably not irrelevant here. These are both transparent homages to The Decision, LeBron James’s great gift to the documentarian’s art.The problem, of course, is that LeBron James is one of the greatest players ever to grace a basketball court, a status that is probably just a little beyond both Pogba and Griezmann. If James’s announcement was full of hubris and self-importance — the phrase “I’ll be taking my talents” should always, always be laced with irony — then it is easy to feel there is something just a little more tawdry about soccer’s ersatz versions, something slightly, well, desperate.To the players, though, that is a price worth paying. Pogba’s time at Manchester United has, by almost any measure, been anti-climactic. The peak years of his career, at least at club level, have been spent seeing his status slowly fade, leaving a player once regarded as one of the finest midfielders in the world now widely regarded as an expensive luxury.The bombast and the faint pomposity of a glossy documentary, an announcement about his future — spoiler alert: He will probably return to Juventus — is, at its heart, a way of asserting that he is still a star, that he can still command attention, that he can still dictate his own terms. It is a message tailored, in part, to whichever club (again: Juventus) he joins. More than that, though, it has the air of a message to himself.CorrespondenceA couple of thoughts from readers on the final day of the Premier League season, which as far as I can tell happened several years ago. “Seeing how Serie A settles a points tie by looking at a comparable win/loss, why can’t the Premier League do something similar?” asked Erich Almasy. “Watching Manchester City run up the scores to get a higher goal difference is embarrassing and clearly hurts clubs fighting relegation.”(A brief translation for readers unfamiliar with league table math: Serie A separates teams that are level on points by head-to-head record. The Premier League does it on goal difference.)I will confess to being slightly torn on this one. Head-to-head seems slightly fairer to me — though not in this Premier League season, when it would have been no use at all if Liverpool and Manchester City had finished level on points, given both games between the two of them ended 2-2 — and I do believe that seeing teams run up the score is not especially compelling sporting entertainment.But what is the alternative? That City (and Liverpool) just take the last 30 minutes of games off? Goal difference is also, to my eye, more dramatic. A.C. Milan’s better head-to-head record against Inter Milan this year meant it effectively had an extra point; in England, there is at least the possibility of a team overturning a disadvantage in goal difference on the final day.Pep Guardiola left the final day as he entered it: confident Manchester City would bring him the Premier League title.Hannah Mckay/ReutersI am more inclined to agree with Chuck Massoud-Tastor. “How does the Premier League defend the idea of starting all games simultaneously on the final day? Would they not garner more viewership and excitement with staggered starts? Am I just being a provincial American?”Yes, Chuck, you are, but that doesn’t mean you’re not right. It would be possible to stagger at least some of the games on the final day, at least in some scenarios, as long as all of the games pertaining to relegation or Europe or the title happened simultaneously.I’m not sure any drama would be lost. In a way, it might even serve to allow each story line a little time to breathe. That said, the issue is in the logistics. You do not know which games will be significant for which prize until relatively late, and rearranging games on short notice would only inconvenience fans. More

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      40,000 Fake Tickets at the Champions League Final? Actually, It Was 2,589.

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      The French authorities blamed tens of thousands of counterfeit tickets for the chaos before Saturday’s Champions League final. The official count was far lower.One of the main claims pushed by French officials to explain the chaotic crowd scenes that created a dangerous crush of fans outside last weekend’s Champions League final near Paris has been that tens of thousands of people arrived at the match bearing fake tickets.France’s interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, has claimed as many as 70 percent of tickets presented at the Stade de France in St.-Denis were fake. He told a news conference Monday that the “root cause” of the chaos was roughly 30,000 to 40,000 English fans bearing counterfeit tickets — or no tickets — who jammed the entrances.But according to official numbers reviewed by The New York Times, the exact number of fake tickets intercepted by stewards manning the entrance gates was far lower: 2,589, to be exact.That figure is almost three times the usual number of forgeries at the Champions League final, a game widely considered to be European soccer’s equivalent of the Super Bowl, but significantly lower than the figure used by Darmanin, who had as of Wednesday not provided details of the source of his estimate.Darmanin and France’s sports minister, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, who has made similar claims about fake tickets, have faced growing criticism over the handling of the game. France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, on Wednesday called for “full transparency” in an investigation of the match-day scenes and their causes. At an appearance in front of a committee of the French senate later Wednesday, Darmanin admitted, “Clearly things could have been organized better.”“It is evident,” he added, “that this celebration of sport was ruined.”France’s interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, faced testy questioning from lawmakers on Wednesday.Geoffroy Van Der Hasselt/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIn what became a testy appearance in front of the committee, Darmanin and Oudéa-Castéra came under sustained pressure over the organizational failures. In response, they largely repeated the language that has enraged Liverpool, its fans and members of the British government.At one point, Oudéa-Castéra told lawmakers that Liverpool supporters carried a “very specific risk” in the view of the French authorities, without elaborating what she meant.Darmanin, meanwhile, insisted the counterfeit ticket numbers were of an unprecedented scale, claiming at one point there were so many that stadium security guards thought their tools to validate them were faulty.The hearing lasted longer than an hour, ending with little clarity and a doubling down by the officials on their previous claims, again without evidence to support their conclusions.That prompted one lawmaker to ask: “Since Saturday, we have blamed Liverpool fans and the club, striking workers and locals for the chaos. What allows you to make these declarations without a thorough investigation?”Not all attendees had the same experience at the final. While most of Real Madrid’s fans arrived with electronic tickets, Liverpool requested paper ones for its official allocation of 23,000 tickets. Those tickets came embedded with two main security features: one that needed to be confirmed with a chemical pen and a second that was a laser engraving of the Champions League trophy.Those holding tickets without the two security features were to be denied access by stewards at an initial checkpoint far from the stadium’s bar code readers. But that system collapsed under a deluge of fans: To relieve the growing crush of people, officials abandoned those first checks and allowed the crowds to move closer to the stadium.The debacle has led to chorus of criticism of the security at the match, in which Real Madrid defeated Liverpool, 1-0, to claim its record 14th European title. Liverpool police who attended in supporting roles labeled the situation outside the gates “shocking.” The club, its fans and a European supporters group all called for investigations even as the game was underway. And in the days since, British government officials have demanded answers from their French counterparts and European soccer’s governing body, UEFA, for the treatment of thousands of Liverpool supporters.Thousands of fans were trapped for hours in tight crowds before the final, causing a delay to the match’s kickoff. Thomas Coex/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesSupporters faced multiple issues, including dangerous crushes, after being corralled into narrow spaces, and the final was delayed more than 30 minutes as the French riot police used tear gas and pepper spray on fans after appearing to lose control of the situation. At the same time, hundreds of local youths tried to force their way into the stadium, either through the turnstiles or by climbing over security fences. Officials estimated as many as 4,000 ticketless people may have succeeded.Part of the explanation into why Liverpool supporters found themselves trapped in such a small space has now turned to transportation problems on the day of the game, including a strike by workers that affected one of the major rail links to the stadium.UEFA and local officials have compared travel data from Saturday’s game to figures from the French Cup final held at the Stade de France on May 7. They found that one of the stations closest to the Stade de France had four times as many fans travel through its gates Saturday than had used the station during the French Cup final. That, they believe, contributed to the dangerous bottleneck of supporters.It may be months before a complete picture of what occurred at the stadium emerges. On Tuesday, UEFA, reeling from chaotic scenes at last year’s European Championship final in London as well as the recent Europa League final in Seville, Spain, appointed a former education minister of Portugal, Tiago Brandão Rodrigues, to lead an independent inquiry into the failures around the Champions League final.The claims made by the French government’s representatives, though, continue to infuriate Liverpool and its ownership. The club’s chairman, Tom Werner, said as much in a caustic letter to Oudéa-Castéra, the French sports minister.He wrote, he said, “out of utter disbelief that a minister of the French government, a position of enormous responsibility and influence, could make a series of unproven pronouncements on a matter of such significance before a proper, formal, independent investigation process has even taken place.”He decried the “loose data and unverified assertions” presented to reporters Monday before an investigation had taken place.“The fact that your public position went against this objective is a concern in itself,” he added. “That you did so without any recourse to ourselves or our supporters is an even greater one. All voices should count in this process, and they should count equally and fairly.”As well as assailing Oudéa-Castéra for her claims, Werner also demanded a public apology. By late Tuesday, Oudéa-Castéra’s tone — though not her claims about fake tickets — had changed.“The issue of the false tickets does not change this: Liverpool is one of the greatest clubs ever,” she wrote on Twitter. “And on Saturday there were supporters with valid tickets that spent a terrible evening or were not able to watch the game. We are sorry for that.”Liverpool continues to be inundated with video evidence shot on cellphones by its supporters. The images, many of which have also been uploaded to social media, are sometimes harrowing, showing children and older fans dealing with the effects of tear gas fired — sometimes indiscriminately — by the riot police.Fans of Real Madrid faced similar problems on their side of the stadium. Since the final, several supporters have come forward to say they were attacked or robbed on their way in and out of the stadium.Amando Sánchez, 51, who traveled to Paris in a group of 14, mainly family members, said his 87-year-old father and an older brother missed the game as a result of chaos at the entry gates. Another brother, Sánchez said, fought off an effort to steal his ticket as he prepared to present it at a stadium turnstile.“Really no one was in charge,” Sánchez said in an interview Wednesday. More

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      Why the Champions League Final Was Delayed

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      PARIS — A logjam of fans that led to a 35-minute delay of the start of Saturday’s Champions League final between Real Madrid and Liverpool was caused by people attempting to use “fake tickets” to enter the match, the tournament’s organizer said.The problems with crowd control and access — which appeared to result from organizational failures rather than crowd misbehavior — saw thousands of fans, many of them Liverpool supporters with valid tickets, trapped in lines for hours, with few gates available for entry and a shortage of staff members on the ground. The confusion left fans locked out of their team’s biggest game of the season, and created a potentially dangerous situation in which French police officers, wearing helmets and carrying shields, used canisters of what UEFA, which runs the Champions League, said was tear gas to keep the surging crowds at bay.Fans left rubbing their eyes, coughing and spluttering. This has been absolutely chaotic, and needlessly so. An opening ceremony now taking place in the stadium while there’s still mayhem outside. pic.twitter.com/tttNHcYXmI— tariq panja (@tariqpanja) May 28, 2022
      “In the lead-up to the game, the turnstiles at the Liverpool end became blocked by thousands of fans who had purchased fake tickets which did not work in the turnstiles,” UEFA said in its statement. “This created a buildup of fans trying to get in. As a result, the kickoff was delayed by 35 minutes to allow as many fans as possible with genuine tickets to gain access.”The statement went on, “As numbers outside the stadium continued to build up after kickoff, the police dispersed them with tear gas and forced them away from the stadium.”In the chaos, fans pleaded with stadium stewards to be allowed in, pressing their tickets through the iron gates, and many were left coughing and gasping for breath on the sidewalks outside the Stade de France, a modern arena built for the 1998 World Cup.Fans were stopped by police at the turnstiles of the Stade de France, as the Champions League final was delayed.Kai Pfaffenbach/ReutersOther fans looked for alternate ways in, climbing fences and locked gates. One group of V.I.P.s, delayed because of a problem scanning the Q.R. codes attached to their tickets, scaled a fence in an effort to get to their seats. Once over it, one of the officials said, they watched as the police fought with spectators still outside.Inside the stadium, where the teams had completed their warm-ups, two 15-minute delays were announced. But even before the crowds outside had dispersed, UEFA went ahead, incongruously, with an elaborate pregame ceremony starring the singer Camila Cabello. Once she finished, the teams took the field and traded handshakes, and the final began.Police officers stationed at the entrances to the stadium pinned much of the blame for the chaos on the local population of the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis, where the stadium is located, saying it was not fans wearing the colors of the competing teams but those dressed in what they described as “civilian clothing” who had tried to enter the stadium without tickets.But France’s interior minister, Gerald Darmanin, repeated UEFA’s version of events in a Twitter post. “Thousands of British ‘supporters’ without tickets or with counterfeit tickets forced entry and sometimes assaulted the stewards,” he wrote. “Thank you to the very many police forces mobilized this evening in this difficult context.”Fans blamed a lack of organization, saying several entrance gates were closed, forcing those attending the game to funnel into long lines that developed into a crush of bodies as kickoff time neared.UEFA officials initially seemed to lay the blame for the problems on “late-arriving fans,” even though huge crowds had been stuck at the gates for hours before the scheduled kickoff.Tommy Smith, a Liverpool fan who had traveled to Paris from Ireland with a group of friends and family, said his group had arrived two hours before the scheduled kickoff and found that there were few entrances where fans could present their tickets. “They closed every turnstile Liverpool-related,” Smith said. “Fans waited two hours, orderly, nothing out of order, and we were tear-gassed.” He said there was little information or direction from stadium staff.Liverpool released a statement during the game in which it said the club was “hugely disappointed at the stadium entry issues and breakdown of the security perimeter that Liverpool fans faced.” The team said it had requested a formal investigation into the events.Ronan Evan, the executive director of Football Supporters Europe, an umbrella group for fans, told The New York Times that the fans were blameless.“Fans at the Champions League final bear no responsibility for tonight’s fiasco,” he said. “They are victims here.”By halftime, a UEFA security official said, the Stade de France had been locked down, with all entrances and exits closed, while the police were still deploying tear gas outside the stadium concourses.“For now it’s safer for you inside than outside,” the UEFA official told an Australian executive looking to leave the stadium at halftime. The security official said that “it was a police decision” to close entry and exit points.In its statement after the game, UEFA said it would investigate the causes of the crowd problems, which came almost a year after surging crowds of ticketless fans attending the European Championship at Wembley Stadium, in London, overwhelmed stewards to gain access to the final of that tournament. The tournament was also a UEFA event.“UEFA is sympathetic to those affected by these events,” the organization said, “and will further review these matters urgently together with the French police and authorities, and with the French Football Federation.” More

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      Luis Díaz Is the Liverpool Star Who Never Should Have Made It

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      Follow live updates of the UEFA Champions League final.LIVERPOOL, England — Luis Díaz bares his forearm and places a finger on his wrist, as if taking his own pulse. He does it without breaking eye contact, without pausing for breath. He does not seem to notice he is doing it. It is a reflexive, unconscious motion, the best way to demonstrate what he means.Díaz does not, he says, speak Wayúu, the language of the Indigenous community in Colombia to which he can trace his roots. Nor does he wear traditional clothing, or maintain every custom. Life has carried him far from La Guajira, a spit of land fringed by the Caribbean Sea on one side and Venezuela on the other, the Wayúu homeland.It is at that point that he traces his veins with his finger, feels the beat of his heart. “I feel Wayúu,” he says. He may not — by his own estimation — be “pure” Wayúu, but that does not matter. “That is my background, my origins,” he said. “It is who I am.”As Díaz has risen to stardom over the last five years or so — breaking through at Atlético Junior, one of Colombia’s grandest teams; earning a move to Europe with F.C. Porto; igniting Liverpool’s journey to the Champions League final after joining in January — his story has been told and retold so often that even Díaz, now, admits that he would welcome the chance to “clarify” a few of the details.Luis Díaz joined Liverpool in January, and helped fire its run to Saturday’s Champions League final.Paul Ellis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesSome of those have been muddied and distorted by what Juan Pablo Gutierrez, a human-rights activist who first met Díaz when he was 18, describes as the desire to “take a romantic story and make it more romantic still.” The great Colombian midfielder Carlos Valderrama, for example, is often credited with “discovering” Díaz. “That’s just not true,” Gutierrez said.And then there is the tendency toward what Gutierrez labels “opportunism.” Countless former coaches and teammates and acquaintances have been wheeled out by the news media — initially in Colombia, then through Latin America, and finally across Europe — to offer their memories of the 25-year-old forward. “There are a lot of people, who maybe met him for a few days years ago, who bask in the light that he casts,” Gutierrez said.Still, the broad arc of his journey is familiar, in both senses. Díaz had an underprivileged upbringing in Colombia’s most deprived area. He had to leave home as a teenager and travel for six hours, by bus, to train with a professional team. He was so slender at the time that John Jairo Diaz, one of his early coaches, nicknamed him “noodle.” His first club, believing he was suffering from malnutrition, placed him on a special diet to help him gain weight.Though its contours are, perhaps, a little more extreme, that story is not all that dissimilar to the experiences of many of Díaz’s peers, an overwhelming majority of whom faced hardship and made remarkable sacrifices on their way to the top.What makes Díaz’s story different, though, and what makes it especially significant, is where it started. Díaz does not know of any other Wayúu players. “Not at the moment, anyway, not ones who are professional,” he said.There is a reason for that. Scouts do not often make their way to La Guajira to look for players. Colombia’s clubs do not, as a rule, commit resources to finding future stars among the country’s Indigenous communities. It is that which lends Díaz’s story its power. It is not just a story about how he made it. It is also a story about why so many others do not.Paul Ellis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesDaniel BolívarAs far as Gutierrez could tell, Luis Díaz was not only not the best player in the tournament, he was not even the best player on his team. That honor fell, instead, to Diaz’s friend Daniel Bolívar, an inventive, shimmering playmaker. “Luis was more pragmatic,” Gutierrez said. “Daniel was fantasy.”In 2014, the organization Gutierrez works for, O.N.I.C. — the official representative group of Colombia’s Indigenous populations — had set up a nationwide soccer tournament, designed to bring together the country’s various ethnic groups.“We had seen that the one thing they all had in common, from the Amazon basin to the Andes, was that they spent their free time playing soccer,” Gutierrez said. “Some played with boots and some played barefoot. Some played with a real ball and some played with a ball made from rags. But they all played.”The event was the first of its kind, an unwieldy and complex logistical affair — the travel alone could take days — that unspooled over the course of a year. Its aim, Gutierrez said, was to “demonstrate the talent that these communities have, to show that all they lack is opportunity.”The message was intended to resonate beyond sport. “It was a social and political thing, too,” Gutierrez said. “The word ‘Indian’ is an insult in Colombia. The Indigenous groups are called primitive, dirty, savage. There is a long legacy of colonialism, a deep-seated prejudice. The tournament was a way to show that they are more than folklore, more than the ‘exotic’, more than headdresses and paint.”Daniel Munoz/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIt is a long way from the dusty fields of Diaz’s Colombian hometown, Barrancas, to the manicured pitches and bright lights of the Champions League.Daniel Munoz/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesSome teams, like F.C. La Guajira, now train on artificial turf fields, but that is no guarantee that scouts from the country’s biggest clubs will ever see them play.Daniel Munoz/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBy the time the finals — held in the capital, Bogotá — came around, Gutierrez was involved in another project. In 2015, with Chile scheduled to host the Copa América, a parallel championship was arranged to celebrate the continent’s Indigenous groups. Colombia’s squad would be drawn from the best players in its national tournament.The team from La Guajira, representing the Wayúu community and featuring Díaz and Bolívar, had made the finals, and its two standout players were selected for inclusion in the national team. It would be coached by John Jairo Diaz, with Valderrama — referred to throughout Colombia exclusively as El Pibe — included as technical director.Valderrama’s involvement meant a lot to Luis Díaz. “That he saw me play and liked me is a beautiful thing,” he said. “I didn’t know him at all, but I admired him a lot. He’s a reference point for all of Colombian football. It was a huge source of pride that Pibe Valderrama might choose me for a team.”Valderrama was not, though, quite as hands-on as has often been presented (a misconception he does not appear eager to correct). “He was an ambassador,” Gutierrez said. “We knew that where the Pibe goes, 50,000 cameras follow. It was a way of making sure our message was heard.”Díaz shone at the tournament, performing well enough that Gutierrez received at least one approach, from a club in Peru, to try to sign him. It would prove a watershed. There were, Díaz believes, plenty of good players in that team. “The problem was that some of them were a little older, so it was difficult to become professional,” he said. He would prove to be the exception.Valderrama’s seal of approval, as well as the news media coverage the tournament generated, led to a move to Barranquilla F.C., a farm team for Junior — the first step on the road to the elite, to Europe, to Liverpool. It was the start of Diaz’s story.And yet, as Gutierrez points out, laughing, Díaz was not exceptional. “He was not the best player in that tournament,” he said. “He wasn’t even the best player on his team.” By common consensus, that was Bolívar.Daniel Bolívar was a former teammate of Díaz’s. Those who watched them say he was a better player.Daniel Munoz/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBolívar’s story is not as well-known as that of Díaz. It does not have the stirring ending, after all: Bolívar now works at Cerrejón, the largest open-pit coal mine in South America, back in La Guajira.But his story is far more typical of Colombia’s Indigenous communities: not of a gift discovered and nurtured, but of talent lost. “There is no reason he could not be playing for Real Madrid,” Gutierrez said of Bolívar. “He did not lack ability. He lacked opportunity.”The Lucky OneFor all the challenges he faced, the obstacles he had to overcome, Díaz knows he was one of the lucky ones. His father, Luis Manuel, had been a gifted amateur player in Barrancas, the family’s hometown; Díaz still grins at the memory of how good his father had been. “Really good,” runs his assessment.By the time Díaz was a child, his father was running a soccer school — La Escuelita, everyone called it — and in a position to give his son the benefits of a more structured sporting education than he had received. “You could see that he was a little more professional, even then,” Gutierrez said. “He was a bit more advanced, and the credit for that goes to his father.”His father’s dedication to his career is what made the difference, what turned Díaz into a unicorn: He not only helped him train, but his decision to run the soccer school meant his son had competitions to play in. Those enabled him to win a place in the Wayúu team for the Indigenous championship as a 17-year-old, which positioned him to win his spot in the national team a year later, which led to his move into the professional game.Díaz’s first drew notice at an Indigenous tournament in Colombia. That led to a move to bigger teams and, eventually, to Porto.Manuel Fernando Araujo/EPA, via ShutterstockNot everyone, of course, can benefit from that constellation of factors. “In these regions, there is not the support in place,” Díaz said. “There are a lot of good players there, but it is hard for people to leave, to take that step and follow their dream. They can’t leave for reasons of money, or for family reasons. And that means that we are losing a lot of players with a lot of talent.”Gutierrez hopes that Díaz can be an antidote to that pattern. “For a long time, the view has always been that Indigenous peoples do not exist,” he said. “That is the legacy of colonialism: that they are not seen, or they are only seen as something exotic, something from folklore.”Díaz’s presence on soccer’s grandest stage — he could, on Saturday, become the first Colombian to play in and win the Champions League final — is a way to “deconstruct” that image, Gutierrez said. “This is a community at immediate risk of extinction,” he said. “And now, because of Lucho, it is in the light of the world’s cameras. He is sending a message that his community cannot send.”There is no doubt in Díaz’s mind about where he comes from, of whom he represents. He does not speak the language, but it is the blood in his veins, the beat of his heart. Díaz is the exception, the talent that was found while all the others were lost. His hope, Gutierrez’s hope, is that he will not be alone for long.Daniel Munoz/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images More