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      The Two Ciro Immobiles

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      The spearhead of Italy’s attack is either its secret weapon or its fatal flaw. At age 31, it is still not clear which.The raw facts are, on the surface, overwhelming. In the last five seasons, Ciro Immobile has scored 26 goals, then 41 goals, followed by 19, 39 and 25. Over the course of that run, he has won the Golden Boot — the prize given annually to Europe’s most prolific goal-scorer — once, and tied the record for the most goals scored in a single season in Italy’s top league, Serie A.The context of those facts only serves to embellish them. Immobile does not play for an all-conquering superpower, the sort of team that carves out a dozen chances a game and regularly dispatches overmatched opponents by four- and five-goal margins. He plays, instead, for Lazio, a side constructed — by superclub standards — on a shoestring.And he operates in Serie A, a league which no less an authority than Cristiano Ronaldo regards as the most difficult in the world in which to score goals. A league in which Ashley Cole, among the greatest defenders of his era, was regarded as being surprisingly naïve, tactically.The conclusion, then, should be obvious. Immobile, 31, belongs in the front rank of contemporary forwards, perhaps not quite an equal to the only four players in Europe’s major leagues to have scored more than him in the last five years — Lionel Messi, Ronaldo, Robert Lewandowski and Harry Kane — but not out of his depth in their company.Immobile has scored twice at Euro 2020 for Italy, which cruised in the group stage and faces Austria on Saturday in the round of 16.Pool photo by Andreas SolaroThat, certainly, is how he looks up close. Simone Inzaghi, Immobile’s coach at Lazio for the last five years, regards him as “one of the three or five best attackers” in Italy in the last two decades. On his goal totals alone, he should have been in contention for a Ballon D’Or.From a distance, though, everything changes. Immobile’s name is rarely mentioned when lists of the finest attackers of his era are compiled. On the eve of Euro 2020, the most pressing question asked of Italy’s coach was whether his team could hope to fare well in the tournament when it was lacking a top-class forward. And no, Immobile, the striker who had scored 123 goals in 177 games, did not count.A few weeks ago, as the Italian season drew to a close, Immobile had a brief and vaguely unbecoming spat with Urbano Cairo, the president of Torino. Cairo had, at one time, regarded the forward as “a protégé.” It was a prolific season in Turin, in fact, that had first made Immobile one of Italy’s hottest properties.But Cairo was annoyed to see Immobile, in his view, diving to win a penalty in a game between Torino and Lazio, so he waited for him by the locker room to make his feelings known. That night, Immobile posted a message to his Instagram account denying Cairo’s accusation. “Everybody knows who Ciro Immobile is,” he wrote.He was almost right. Everybody thinks they know who Ciro Immobile is. It is just that not everybody thinks the same thing.The Real CiroThe conversation, as Monchi remembers it, was “very open, very honest, very mature.” Five months earlier, in July 2015, he had brokered the deal to bring Immobile to Sevilla from Borussia Dortmund. As Sevilla’s sporting director, Monchi had been looking for a third striker, one “with a different profile” from the two the club currently employed: the rangy Fernando Llorente and the explosive, hard-running Kevin Gameiro.Immobile — who describes his own gifts as “strength, tenacity and cunning” — fit the bill. Monchi, renowned as among the shrewdest pilots of the transfer market, spotted the potential for a deal. Immobile’s service were no longer needed at Dortmund; Sevilla could obtain him on an initial loan, and later, and permanently, at a bargain price if he met certain performance clauses.Instead, the striker would go down as one of Monchi’s rare missteps. He did not score his first goal for the club until November. He made only a handful of appearances. And then, early in January, he requested a meeting with Monchi and Unai Emery, the club’s coach at the time, to discuss his future.Immobile explained that he felt he needed a change of scenery; he admitted that he was not performing as he should. “He was worried about the European Championship,” Monchi said of the 2016 tournament then looming just over the horizon. “He wanted to be in the Italy squad, and he knew that to do that he had to be playing. And he was not playing enough here.” Sevilla acquiesced, and allowed him to join Torino on loan.“There are two reason transfers go wrong,” Monchi said. “One is that the player does not find the confidence they need at their new club, or in a new league. That is especially important for strikers. And the second is that the style of play of the team does not suit them. I think both applied to Ciro.” To him, it was just one of those things. He knows that, sometimes, deals just do not work out. He and Sevilla moved on.Immobile has been a prolific scorer at Lazio, but his ventures outside Italy did not go as well.Pool photo by Friedemann VogelFor Immobile, the consequences lasted a bit longer. He had spent 18 months abroad, and they had been an unmitigated failure. At Dortmund, he would later say, he felt “unsupported” by the club. In eight months, he told Gazzetta dello Sport’s SportWeek magazine, not one of his teammates had invited him out for dinner.Dortmund was “cold,” there was “nothing to do,” and while the coach who signed him, Jürgen Klopp, had insisted on providing him with a German translator, his replacement, Thomas Tuchel, removed that privilege, insisting on holding even one-on-one meetings in German, a language that Immobile found “impossible” to learn.More pertinent, he found himself unable to cope with the weight of expectations. He had been pinpointed as a replacement for the Bayern Munich-bound Lewandowski and he sensed his predecessor’s gold-fringed shadow at every turn. “The error I made at Dortmund was that Lewandowski left and I felt the responsibility,” he said.Immobile looks back on his time in Germany with regret. He and Klopp encountered each other at “the wrong time in their careers,” he has said. Had the timing been different, been right, then he feels that Klopp’s percussive style would have suited him perfectly. As it was, Klopp never had chance — in Immobile’s words — to work with “the real Ciro.”And yet, for many, that was precisely what Klopp, and later Monchi, had seen. Those unhappy 18 months came to define Immobile’s career, to set his reputation. No matter what he did afterward, no matter how many goals he scored in Italy, no matter what the context, the fact that he had failed in Dortmund and in Seville meant his fate was sealed. Everybody thought they knew who Ciro Immobile was.Italy’s coach, Roberto Mancini, at times seemed to be searching for any striker who was not Immobile.Mike Hewitt/Getty ImagesRevengeUntil almost the last moment, the one part of Italy’s team that remained a mystery — to Roberto Mancini, its coach, as much as anyone — was the attack.Over the course of his three years in charge of the national side, Mancini has experimented with various systems, and various options: the young Moise Kean and the experienced Fabio Quagliarella, the traditional Andrea Belotti and the unorthodox Federico Bernadeschi. From the outside, Mancini has looked, at times, like a man searching for a way not to play Immobile upfront.That is not because Mancini doubts whether Immobile is right for international soccer — he has no doubts as to his ability — but if international soccer is right for him. “If we played 38 games over the season, Ciro would score 25 goals,” Mancini said a few weeks before naming his squad for Euro 2020. “It is tougher when you only join up two or three times a year.”That is as close to a consensus as there is on Immobile: He can be devastating, but he needs everything to feel just right, on the field and off it. At Lazio, he has found it. Inzaghi designed the team to suit Immobile’s strengths, deploying Luis Alberto and Joaquin Correa as foils for his darting runs, his elusive movement, his hunter’s instinct.Just as important, his family is settled in Rome. He feels valued by the club — Lazio’s president, Claudio Lotito, organized a private audience with the Pope a few months ago — and he has a grander animating force.Italy may advance only as far as Immobile can carry it.Pool photo by Andreas SolaroIn 2020, when Immobile won the Golden Boot, the first player not based in Spain to win the prize since 2014, he admitted that it was “a kind of revenge.” Quite who he was taking it on was not clear — it was “not against anyone personally,” he said — but it seemed fair to read it as a riposte to all who doubted him, who took the disappointments of Dortmund and Seville as shorthand for his career, who did not see the player that Immobile saw in himself.That award, perhaps, started to shift the debate in his favor just a little. Five goals in five games in the Champions League last season will have helped, too; that is the stage, after all, on which soccer now ordains greatness, and it has been to Immobile’s detriment that he has graced it only rarely.Euro 2020, then, offers him a precious chance to prove his point, to demonstrate that Italy does have a forward fit for a place among the elite, that all of those goals cannot just be written off as circumstantial evidence. He may, yet, be allowed a little autumnal afterglow to bathe his career.The group stage brought two goals in two starts on home soil. The knockout rounds, starting with Austria on Saturday, are an opportunity to build his case. All he needs to do is what he has been doing, with a relentless consistency, for the last five years: scoring goals, making the raw facts of the matter overwhelming. More

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      Euro 2020 Final Will Stay in London

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      An agreement to resolve a dispute about foreign visitors includes the news that a crowd of about 60,000 will be allowed for the final at Wembley Stadium next month.The deciding games of this summer’s European soccer championship are staying in London after tournament organizers and the British government reached an agreement, ending speculation that England’s pandemic travel restrictions would prompt the relocation of the semifinals and finals from Wembley Stadium.The decision, announced on Tuesday, hours before England’s final group-stage game against the Czech Republic at Wembley, came after days of intense talks between European soccer’s governing body, UEFA, which runs the tournament, and local authorities about exemptions to Britain’s pandemic travel rules. UEFA had sought changes that would allow thousands of overseas supporters — and as many as 2,500 V.I.P.s — to attend the semifinals and final in London.A statement to announce the agreement did not outline what exemptions had been granted. It did, however, state the capacity for the three games had been increased to 75 percent of Wembley’s capacity, a figure of more than 60,000. That means the Euro 2020 final will represent the biggest attendance at a sporting event in Britain since the start of the pandemic.🏟️ The UK government has announced that more than 60,000 fans will be permitted at the #EURO2020 semi-finals and final at Wembley Stadium, increasing attendance to 75% of capacity for each game.Full story: ⬇️— UEFA (@UEFA) June 22, 2021
      “The last 18 months have taught us — both on and off the pitch — how integral fans are to the fabric of the game,” UEFA’s president, Aleksander Ceferin, said in the statement. He was planning to hold more talks with British government officials later on Tuesday, when he attended England’s game at Wembley.Officials briefed on the statement said there was broad agreement to meet UEFA’s requirement for 2,500 invited guests — including commercial and broadcast partners and soccer dignitaries — to attend the games at Wembley. However, a demand to allow thousands of fans to travel to London for the game from the nations represented in the final games is unlikely to be met.According to those involved in the negotiations, a dispensation could be made for at most 2,000 supporters from the participating nations, a largely symbolic number that could limit the potential criticism for lifting restrictions for a similar number of V.I.P.s.The crisis over the Wembley matches arose amid a surge in infection rates in Britain that has forced the government to back away from plans to lift the final restriction on social distancing that had been planned for this week. The spike, linked to a new and aggressive variant of the virus, had already dashed hopes that the final could be played in front of a capacity crowd of 90,000 at Wembley.The stadium — one of 11 being used across Europe — is currently allowing only 22,500 fans for the three group-stage games. That number will increase to 40,000 for the second of two rounds of 16 matches, but capacity for Italy’s match with Austria on Saturday will remain capped at 22,500.“As we continue to make progress on our road map out of lockdown, keeping the public safe remains our top priority,” said Oliver Dowden, the British lawmaker responsible for sports.The ongoing concerns about the spread of the virus were highlighted by the news that several members of the Scotland and England teams who played a game at Wembley last week were now in isolation. Scotland’s national team announced on Monday that its young midfielder Billy Gilmour would self isolate after a positive coronavirus test, and England said on Tuesday that two of its players, Ben Chilwell and Mason Mount, who had contact with Gilmour would enter isolation as well.The decision ruled both England players out of the match against the Czechs, which England won, 1-0.Scotland, without Gilmour in its midfield, was eliminated after a 3-1 defeat against Croatia in Glasgow. More

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      For France and Other Euro 2020 Favorites, Draws and a Fresh Start

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      The favorites have survived the group stage at Euro 2020. Now the tournament gets interesting.With a couple of minutes to play in Budapest, the French midfielder Adrien Rabiot looked squarely at Sergio Oliveira, his Portuguese opponent, and advised him to back away. Like everyone else in the stadium, Rabiot had heard the news. The group stage of Euro 2020 was effectively over. Both France and Portugal were through to the knockout rounds. There was no need to run or to chase or to press. Now was the time for watching the clock.It had not, for either team, been a straightforward evening. The game had oscillated — Portugal led, then France, then Portugal struck back — and so had their fates, dependent to some extent on the outcome of the group’s other game, between Germany and Hungary in Munich. At one point or another, each of the four teams had believed they were going through.Only once Leon Goretzka had secured Germany a point against Hungary was it all settled. Hungary would be the fall guy; the three favorites all had safe passage to a round of 16 that offers a suite of intriguing encounters and two particularly mouthwatering ones: Portugal’s encounter with Belgium in Seville on Sunday, and England’s welcoming Germany to London on Tuesday.The jostling for position is, now, at an end. The real business starts here.When Adam Szalai scored early, Hungary briefly thought it was through to the knockouts.Pool photo by Matthias HangstDon’t Be Fooled: France Is the FavoriteThe reigning world champion, France, may not have sailed through its group with quite the ease of some of its challengers — Belgium, the Netherlands and Italy all posted perfect records — but that does not quite tell the whole story.The caliber of its opponent, first and foremost, was notably higher: France dropped points to Portugal, the defending European champion, and a Hungary team — one good enough to come within a whisker of beating Germany — roared on by a fiercely partisan home crowd.Karim Benzema scored twice for France, which tied two of its group-stage games but still won its group.Pool photo by Darko BandicJust as significant, particularly in its final game, France managed to give the impression that it has more to offer as and when necessary. Whenever Rabiot, Paul Pogba and the rest needed to lift the rhythm, they did so seamlessly. It is probably worth noting, too, that Kylian Mbappé has not scored yet, a ceasefire that will not hold forever.Nor, as yet, has an obvious contender emerged to France’s air of superiority. Germany, Portugal, Belgium, England and Spain — the group of teams that would expect to profit from any slight hesitation on the part of France — have yet to hit their stride. The teams that have impressed, Italy and the Netherlands, seem a little too young or a little too fragile to last the course. This is still France’s tournament to lose.Timing Is EverythingRoberto Mancini has his wish. On the eve of Euro 2020, Mancini, Italy’s coach, declared that he wanted his team to win over a public scarred by a decade of disappointment by “having fun.” His players have duly delivered.Italy has won all three group games. It has played thrilling, inventive soccer, backed by a raucous and partisan crowd in Rome. It is — despite relatively stiff competition from the Netherlands — the most compelling team in the tournament, the one that it is most rewarding to watch. It is also yet to concede a goal, because deep down, it is still Italy.Manuel Locatelli, right, led the celebrations against Switzerland.Pool photo by Riccardo AntimianiThat early promise is no guarantee of later success, of course. Every European Championships has a side that wins hearts and minds early on — the Czech Republic in 2004, the Netherlands in 2008 and Italy in 2016 — only to fall as soon as the level of difficulty ratchets up.Mancini’s team should have enough to breeze past Austria in the first knockout round, but Belgium, its most probable opponent in the quarterfinal, would provide a sterner test. Those two sides are an intriguing contrast: more than any team, Italy benefited from the postponement of this tournament. The yearlong delay because of the pandemic granted Mancini’s young side invaluable experience. It may have proved too callow had the competition been held, as scheduled, in 2020.The converse is true of Belgium. Roberto Martínez’s team also has won all its games, but it has done so with none of the verve or panache that has marked Italy’s progress. Belgium slumbered past Russia. It played in fits and starts to see off a spirited Denmark, and then roused itself late to swat aside Finland. Belgium is the world’s top-ranked team, but it also has the oldest squad in the tournament. It has the air of a team whose moment has just passed. Italy’s, you sense, is yet to come.Some Roads Are Easier Than OthersNobody is under any illusions that the current format for the European Championship is perfect. It is cumbersome and it is unwieldy and it is, at times, unsatisfactorily inconclusive. Switzerland won on Sunday night, but only knew the meaning of its victory on Monday. Ukraine lost on Monday, but had to wait until Wednesday to discover its fate.But that is not to say that the tension does not have its benefits. Only one of the final round of games — the Netherlands’ win against North Macedonia — was devoid of it; the Dutch had already won their group, and their guest in Amsterdam had already been eliminated. The 11 remaining matches all had something riding on them, whether that was settling the matter of who won the group or identifying which teams would qualify for the knockouts.Croatia finished second in its group but wound up with a better matchup than the winner.Pool photo by Paul EllisThat balance between benefit and drawback continues in the round of 16. On Saturday, Wales faces Denmark in Amsterdam. Both finished as the runner-up in their groups. But so did Austria, and it must play Italy.The need to squeeze in two games in the round of 16 between second-placed teams, to make the whole format work, has the effect of unbalancing the draw. That has been mitigated a little this time by the fact that Spain could not top its group, thanks to Sweden’s late winner against Poland, and will face Croatia in Copenhagen. But the consequence is clear: Some teams have a much more challenging route to the final than others.On one side of the draw, for example, Belgium must first face Portugal, then endure a potential quarterfinal with France, before meeting Spain — perhaps — in a semifinal. On the other, both England and Germany have cause to curse a difficult first knockout round matchup, but the prize for winning is a rich one: a quarterfinal against Sweden or Croatia, and then most likely the Netherlands in the semifinals.An uneven draw is not necessarily a bad thing. It means there is a route to the latter stages for nations that would, in other formats, expect to be dispatched far earlier. That is to be welcomed. A little randomness, after all, never hurt anyone.But it also rather exposes the logic that it does not matter when you face the major powers: To win the tournament, after all, you have to play them at some point. The problem is that, sometimes, you have to face more of them than others.Switzerland Punches Above Its Weight AgainLook who’s back in the knockout stages.Pool photo by Ozan KoseAnd so, there they are again, like clockwork. Just as was the case in Brazil in 2014, France in 2016 and Russia in 2018, Switzerland has made the last 16 of a major tournament. Quietly — how else would the Swiss do it? — the country is enjoying a golden era.It is not, in truth, an especially enthralling one. It is easy to deride the Swiss, as well as that other great recidivist qualifier for the knockout rounds, Sweden, as little more than cannon fodder for the traditional powerhouses in the round of 16. Neither team plays an especially adventurous style — though the Swiss victory against Turkey had no little style about it — and neither particularly captivates the imagination.But that should not detract from what an achievement it is for two countries — admittedly extremely wealthy ones — with a combined population of less than 20 million people to stand so tall, so consistently among the superpowers of Western Europe, the countries that have effectively turned developing young soccer players into an industrial process.And nor should it disguise the fact that the inability of two of Europe’s most populous nations — Turkey and Russia — to do the same is a quite extraordinary failure. Turkey has not even been to a World Cup since its third-place finish in 2002. It made the semifinals of Euro 2008, and has not played a knockout game since.Turkey will sit out the knockouts again.Pool photo by Naomi BakerRussia was a semifinalist in 2008, too, and it enjoyed a stirring run to the quarterfinals in its home World Cup three years ago. But those finals-free runs represent a paltry effort for two countries with such a vast reservoir of talent.The causes of those respective failures are not uniform — Russia does not export players, Turkey does not develop nearly enough of them — but there is one binding thread: Both Russia and Turkey are isolationist soccer cultures, resistant to the cutting-edge thinking and best practices that emanate from the leagues to their west. More than anything, both need to import ideas. They could do worse than to start their learning journey by looking at the Swiss, and the Swedes. More

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      Spain Waits, Impatiently, for the Goals to Arrive

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      Spain is still wonderful at passing the ball. It is far less effective, at least lately, and especially at Euro 2020, at putting it in the net.Elías Bendodo has the long and unwieldy job title of a man with too much on his plate. For the last three years, he has served as minister of the presidency, public administration and interior for the Spanish region of Andalusia. On the side, he acts as the local government’s spokesman, all while serving as president of the Málaga branch of the Spanish political organization Partido Popular.He is, in other words, busy. In the last few weeks alone, Bendodo has had to organize regional elections, handle the expansion of the area’s coronavirus vaccination program and intervene in a dispute between rivals for the post of mayor in the city of Granada.He has also spent a surprising amount of time talking about the best way to mow grass.It started after Spain’s opening game of Euro 2020 last week against Sweden, a scoreless draw at La Cartuja, a vast, soulless and unloved stadium on the outskirts of Seville. The turf, Spain’s players and staff members said, was too short, too dry, too rough. “The field of play hurt us,” said Luis Enrique, the team’s coach.Things had not improved by the time Spain returned to the stadium for its second game, against Poland on Saturday. “The field does not help,” said Rodri, the Manchester City midfielder. “It’s in very bad condition. It does not suit the fluidity of our game.” That match ended in a draw, too, leaving Spain needing to win its final game, against Slovakia on Wednesday, to be sure of qualification for the tournament’s knockout rounds.By that stage, a controversy was brewing. El País reported that Spain’s coaching staff had asked the stadium’s grounds crew to cut the grass short, perhaps too short, for the Sweden game. Luis Enrique demanded the situation be remedied. In the searing heat of an Andalusian summer, the grounds crew worked overnight to make the grass grow.It was at this point that Bendodo could not help but be drawn in. Suddenly, the most pressing issue in his bulging agenda was not the vaccination program or the lifting of the rules on wearing masks, but whether some stadium grass was a little on the short side.“Any situation relating to the lawn that can be improved will be improved,” he vowed with the kind of purpose and sincerity traditionally reserved for a condemnation of a failing school or a crackdown on crime.And yet even Bendodo recognized the inherent absurdity of the situation, that this subject should have gone all the way to the top, that one of the most senior politicians in one of Spain’s most populous regions should have to weigh in on the subject of a lawn.“We would not be talking about this,” he said, “if we had scored a goal.”That, far more than the grass at La Cartuja, is Spain’s problem, and it has been Spain’s problem for some time. It was an issue before the tournament — Luis Enrique was pressed on it after his team lost in Ukraine last year, despite registering 21 shots on goal — and it was an issue in its tuneup games before Euro 2020. The search for “the goal” has become an overpowering theme. “The goal,” Rodri said, “is everything.”Though there have been exceptions, most notably a 6-0 win against Germany at La Cartuja in November, the pattern has been clear for some time. Spain dominates almost every game it plays. It all but monopolizes the ball. But it cannot score goals, not in any great numbers. It has, as the journalist Ladislao Molina put it, become “the king of inconsequential possession,” capable of playing 917 passes against Sweden but fashioning barely a handful of chances. Spain has created a monument to what the manager Arsène Wenger used to call “sterile domination.”If the players have chosen to point the finger of blame downward, at the turf at La Cartuja, at least a portion of fans have identified another culprit: Álvaro Morata, Spain’s top forward. Morata was jeered by the crowd during a friendly against Portugal before the tournament, and Luis Enrique has come under intense pressure to drop him from the team.In public, Morata has been adamant that the criticism does not affect him. Even his most illustrious predecessors, he has said, were targeted for abuse while playing for the national side. “If Fernando Torres has been criticized in Spain, imagine the intellectual level of many people,” he said in an interview with the sports daily AS.In private, he may be more vulnerable. It was notable that after Morata struggled against Sweden, the team’s psychologist, Joaquín Valdés, sat next to him on the bench, talking intently with a player who has acknowledged in the past that he dwells on the goals that do not go in and who was once advised by his former club teammate Gianluigi Buffon not to let anyone see him cry.He can, though, at least count on the unstinting support of his manager. A few days after the draw with Sweden, Luis Enrique declared that his team against Poland would be “Morata and 10 others.” He was rewarded by Morata’s scoring Spain’s only goal of the tournament so far; the forward celebrated by rushing to his coach, embracing him.Álvaro Morata celebrating his goal on Saturday — Spain’s only one at the Euros — with Luis Enrique.Pool photo by David RamosThat is the message that has emanated consistently not only from Luis Enrique and his staff, but the players, too: The goals will come. After that defeat to Ukraine last October, the manager insisted that if 21 shots were not enough to score a goal, then the solution was to take more shots. Pedri, his teenage midfielder, espoused the same logic after the first game at the Euros. “We have to do the same,” he said. “If we create many opportunities, the goal will go in.”It is that orthodoxy, though, that may well lie at the root of Spain’s problem, beyond the shortcomings of both the turf and Morata. The overwhelming majority of Luis Enrique’s squad came through the ranks at one of Spain’s elite academies, largely those of Real or Atlético Madrid and Barcelona, at a time when the country was home to arguably the greatest international team of all time.They were all raised not only in the shadow of the Spain team that won back-to-back European Championships — as well as the country’s first World Cup — but in the style of that team, too, forged and polished into bright, inventive, technically accomplished players designed to perpetuate the same school of thought that had brought the generation before such glory.And yet that approach is destined to fall short, to get close to the goal but never quite reach it. It was another great truism of Wenger’s that soccer was heading for a dearth of central defenders and center forwards, the positions where players needed a particular edge, one that was dulled by institutionalization.He could have predicted no better example than Spain. The team that swept all before it might have been constructed around Xavi and Andrés Iniesta, but they had the grizzled determination of Carles Puyol at their back and the incision of David Villa and Torres in front. This team, by contrast, lacks both qualities.Morata has shouldered much of the public’s blame for Spain’s scoring struggles.Pool photo by Marcel Del PozoIn defense, that is self-inflicted — Luis Enrique elected not to call up a half-fit Sergio Ramos for the tournament — but in attack, it is endemic. If Morata seems to embody the type of forward raised by an elite academy, elegant and sophisticated but lacking ruthlessness, then his putative rivals for a place support the theory.Gerard Moreno, the only other specialist striker in Spain’s squad, was playing third-division soccer at age 16, and did not make his debut in La Liga until he was 22. He bloomed late, winning his first cap for Spain at 27.It is a career trajectory that is startlingly similar to quite a few of the most productive Spanish forwards of recent years: Iago Aspas, now 33, who has only ever shone at Celta Vigo; José Luis Morales, the same age, who rose from obscurity to captain of Levante in La Liga; Kike García, a little younger at 31, coming off the back of a fine personal season for relegated Eibar.That it is these players — the ones who cut their teeth and sharpened their instincts away from the elite — who are the only viable candidates to replace Morata encapsulates the problem. Spain’s academies churn out midfielders and fullbacks with startling regularity, but they have struggled to produce the caliber of striker the national team needs if it is to scale the heights it touched a decade ago.Spain will plow on, of course. A win against Slovakia will see it through to the knockout rounds. Another draw may yet be enough to sneak through, too. From there, Luis Enrique has sufficient talent at his disposal to run deep into the tournament. Spain will, in other words, do the same thing it has always done, the only thing it now knows how to do: pass and pass and pass again, kicking the real cause of its ills into the long grass. More

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      UEFA Could Move Euro 2020 Final From Wembley

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      Tournament organizers and the British government are holding talks about easing pandemic restrictions before the final at London’s Wembley Stadium on July 11.The deciding games of the monthlong European soccer championship have for years been planned for London, where Wembley Stadium is set to host both semifinals and the final of the quadrennial event next month.Only weeks before the Euro 2020 final, though, organizers and the British government are discussing exemptions to pandemic travel restrictions that would allow thousands of overseas supporters — and as many as 2,500 V.I.P.s — to attend the games in London.If an agreement, or a compromise, cannot be reached, UEFA, the governing body for European soccer that runs the championship, has not ruled out moving the final to another country.“There is always a contingency plan but we are confident that the final week will be held in London,” UEFA said in a statement.Prime Minister Boris Johnson confirmed Friday that his government was open to modifying its rules provided any changes “keep the country safe from Covid.”“We’ll be talking to UEFA about what they want and see if we can make some sensible accommodations,” Johnson said. “But the priority obviously has to be public health.”UEFA secured some exemptions to rules on travel and quarantines for visiting foreign nationals before the tournament, and both it and the British government had thought the coronavirus infection rates that had prompted the restrictions would have fallen by the time the tournament’s deciding games were to be played at Wembley in early July. Instead, case numbers are surging in England, largely because of a new and aggressive variant of the virus, and that led Johnson to postpone lifting the final restrictions on social distancing that had been planned for June 21.That delay already means that any hopes of playing in front of capacity crowds at Wembley have been dashed; it has already been announced that the 90,000-seat stadium instead will operate at only half its capacity for the two semifinals and final. The stadium — one of 11 being used across Europe — is allowing only 22,500 fans for three group-stage games being played there.Johnson held private talks this week about the matter with his UEFA counterpart, Aleksander Ceferin, according to a person with knowledge of the discussions. Privately, officials on both sides expressed confidence that a compromise can be found to keep the game in Britain, though news media reports have said that Budapest, the only host stadium operating at full capacity during the Euros, is being considered as a fallback option.The current talks about looser rules are not the first wrangle this year between UEFA and the British authorities, though, over exemptions for a soccer event. In May, the soccer body and the British government failed to come to an agreement that would have allowed this season’s Champions League final, a game featuring two English teams — Manchester City and Chelsea — to be relocated to London from Istanbul. After trying and failing to reach a deal, UEFA took the final to Porto, Portugal.There is a considerable amount at stake for both sides. For UEFA, London has become a popular and lucrative host for major finals. For the British government, which has recently waded into soccer debates in an effort to boost its popularity and credibility, keeping the games and preserving a valuable relationship with UEFA is seen as vital as Britain tries to forge a new identity after its acrimonious departure from the European Union.UEFA’s president, Aleksandar Ceferin, at a match in Munich this week.Pool photo by Alexander HassensteinBut Britain is also counting on UEFA’s support for a joint bid with Ireland to stage the 2030 World Cup. Without UEFA’s backing, that effort would be doomed. Johnson mentioned the World Cup bid on a phone call with Ceferin, according to a person on the call.UEFA’s proposed solutions to the impasse on visitors have included fans entering the country “using a strict testing and bubble concept,” its statement said. Guests would be asked to restrict their movements to approved transportation and game venues, and to leave Britain within 24 hours.“We understand the pressures that the government face and hope to be able to reach a satisfactory conclusion of our discussions on the matter,” the UEFA statement said.The pandemic era has taught European soccer’s governing body how to become nimble, and how to relocate high-profile games on short notice. For the past two years, UEFA has shifted its marquee club championship, the Champions League final, because of pandemic-related complications in the original host city.But anxiety has grown among UEFA officials since a fast-spreading variant of the virus cast doubt on the anticipated “unlocking” of Britain by June 21. Johnson confirmed a four-week delay to the plans last week, signaling to UEFA that it needed to secure new exemptions from its hosts or seek an alternative site.Privately, UEFA officials believe they are unlikely to get clearance for the thousands of foreign supporters that they are seeking, but they are optimistic that as many as 2,500 dignitaries, including executives from sponsors and broadcasters that provide much of the tournament’s $2 billion in revenue, will be cleared to come. Waivers have already been provided for about 1,000 guests, but allowing more V.I.P.s — but not access for fans — is politically risky for both UEFA and Britain.In his call with UEFA’s leaders, Johnson reminded the officials that London’s diverse population meant that any team that reached the final could count on vocal, locally based support.For UEFA, having crowds at the stadiums is as much a symbolic imperative as it is a commercial one. Much of this season’s soccer was played against the backdrop of empty seats and closed arenas, and Euro 2020, as far as the organizers were concerned, had to be seen as a sign of a return to old times. Cities that could not guarantee that fans would be allowed to attend matches were dropped and replaced. The games they lost were relocated to cities with less stringent rules.Games have now been played at all 11 venues, and attendances have ranged from as few as 10,000 to a nearly full house of 55,662 in Budapest for Hungary’s game against Portugal. More

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      Euro 2020: Denmark Stuns Russia to Reach Round of 16

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      A 4-1 victory over Russia sent Denmark to the knockout stages, a stunning turn in a tournament that began with the collapse of Denmark’s star, Christian Eriksen.Denmark’s players gathered in a circle on the field at the Parken Stadium in Copenhagen and stared intently at a staff member’s phone. They must have known, by then, that they had qualified for the last 16 of the European Championship, but they wanted to be sure. They wanted to see the score confirmed, officially.The Danes had come into their final group-stage game on Monday needing the dice to roll in their favor to make it through. They required a win against Russia on home soil, and for Belgium to beat Finland in St. Petersburg. That they had a chance at all, though — that their coach, Kasper Hjulmand, could tell his players that this was the start, not the end, of their tournament — was remarkable in itself.It is not yet 10 days since Hjulmand admitted that his players were “broken,” traumatized by the experience of seeing their friend and teammate Christian Eriksen collapse on the field during their opening game against Finland, forced to stand guard around him as his heart was restarted as he lay motionless on the turf, and to accompany him from the field as he was taken to a hospital.Denmark’s players formed a worried circle around Christian Eriksen on June 12. Later, they wondered if they should have played at all.Pool photo by Friedemann VogelThey had to comfort his distraught partner, and then endure the most agonizing wait to discover if he was out of danger. Soccer’s place in the pecking order was illustrated by the squad’s insistence it would not decide whether that game would continue or not until the players had word about Eriksen’s health.Only when they were told that he was conscious and speaking at the hospital did they press on, playing the game the same evening because — as Hjulmand said — they could not bear to face a night of sleepless worry and then have to start again the next day. They played, and lost. A few days later, in front of an emotional crowd of about 25,000 fans at Parken, they played and lost again, this time to Belgium.That was hardly surprising. Hjulmand had said that counseling would be available to all of his squad, should they feel the need, but it would take some time for that to have an impact. This was not the sort of blow you shake off in time for the next game.Still, Denmark had one more chance. It had taken the lead, through Eriksen’s replacement, Mikkel Damsgaard, and doubled it through Yussuf Poulsen, but Finland was still stubbornly holding on in St. Petersburg. And then a roar swept around Parken: News had filtered across the Baltic that Belgium had scored. Only, as it turned out, the goal was ruled out — after a short delay — for offside.Defender Andreas Christensen scored Denmark’s third goal.Pool photo by Stuart FranklinAs Denmark was absorbing that blow, Russia won — and converted — a penalty kick. Everything hung in the balance once more. Again, Denmark was made to wait.A few minutes later, there was another roar from the stands, this one a little more reticent. This time Belgium had taken the lead. This time the goal counted. Denmark could relax. When Andreas Christensen scored a third, and Joakim Maehle a fourth, the team and the stadium and the nation could celebrate. Maehle ran to the crowd, holding up the numbers 1 and 0 with his fingers: Eriksen’s jersey number.“I’ve never experienced anything like this,” Maehle told the Danish broadcaster DR.Denmark’s prize is a round of 16 match on Saturday, against Wales, in Amsterdam, at the stadium where Eriksen made his name. It does not matter at all, not in the grand scheme of things, but still, it means the world. More

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      Portugal's Renato Sanches and the Risks of Going Too Fast

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      For a couple of months, no more, the fee seemed steep. A few weeks before the start of the last European Championship, in 2016, Bayern Munich agreed to a deal with Benfica to sign the latest prodigy from the Portuguese team’s apparently never-ending production line: an 18-year-old midfielder with only nine months of senior experience on his résumé.If it was something of a coup for Bayern — Manchester United and several other members of Europe’s elite had been interested, too — it was a resounding success for Benfica.Bayern, the perennial German champion, was committed to paying a basic fee of $41 million, with $53 million more due if certain performance targets were met. All told, it amounted to the most valuable sale of a player in Portuguese history, which was not bad, given that the teenager, Renato Sanches, had started the season on the club’s reserve team.After just a few weeks, and Bayern seemed to have pulled off a heist. Sanches went supernova at Euro 2016 that summer: If Cristiano Ronaldo was the undisputed star of Portugal’s championship-winning campaign, the teenager ran him close.Sanches created the goal that helped Portugal squeeze past Croatia in the last 16, scored in the quarterfinal against Poland and then demanded not only to take a penalty in the subsequent shootout, but to go second. He would happily have stepped up first, but that spot had already been reserved by Ronaldo.Sanches was named man of the match for his performance that day — handpicked by Claude Makélélé, no mean midfielder himself — and before the final, against the host nation, France, he was honored as the best young player of the tournament. A few months later, he would be named the most promising player under age 21 in Europe.The agreement with Bayern held hints of that promise. One of the clauses dictated that the German team would have to pay a few million more if Sanches was crowned world player of the year before the end of his initial contract, in 2021. Before the tournament, Bayern might well have regarded that as very much a theoretical contingency. By the end, it looked all too real.That clause would have expired this summer. Bayern never had to honor it. Sanches made the last of his meager 53 appearances for the club almost two years ago, the light from his starburst long since faded. In the five years that have passed since Euro 2016, Sanches has lost his place in his team, lost his way, and finally lost himself. Only now is he beginning to find the road back.Sanches was one of the world’s most valuable teenagers after Euro 2016.Bartlomiej Zborowski/European Pressphoto AgencyIn a HurryRenato Paiva, the coach of Benfica’s under-19 team at the time, had pinned the set-piece routines to the locker room wall and gone outside. A few minutes later, he returned, and found a group of players in conclave, with Sanches at their center. “I’d put down who was going to take free kicks short,” Paiva said. “Renato was telling them all: ‘Don’t bother with short ones; the way we score goals is to get the ball into the box.’”Paiva slipped away, unnoticed. “I waited until after the warm-up,” he said. “I pulled him aside and asked him if he wanted to be a player or a manager. He said, ‘No, no, I want to be a player.’ So I told him to concentrate on that and leave the set-piece routines to me.”Sanches was clearly a young man in a hurry. He had been promoted to Paiva’s under-19 team early, one of a handful of players — including Manchester City’s Rúben Dias — to be fast-tracked straight from the under-17s. “When he first joined us, he said to me that he was not here to watch, and he was here to play,” said Paiva, who said he replied: “You show that on the field, not in conversation.”When Sanches did, another leap followed. He was 17 when he made his professional debut, for Benfica’s second-string team. Within a year, the first team called for him. “The transfer market was closed, and the first-team manager, Rui Vitória, needed an energetic midfielder,” Paiva said. “It was the sort of time where you have to experiment, so he took Renato and gave him a chance. That is soccer: It is about the moment.”Though circumstance had fallen in his favor, nobody at Benfica doubted he was ready. “It was fast,” said Nuno Gomes, the director of Benfica’s youth academy at the time. “But if you had watched him play at all those levels, as I did, then you would not have been surprised.”If anything, though, Sanches was just getting going. His first start for Benfica’s first team was on Nov. 25, 2015. Within six months, he had been selected as part of Portugal’s squad for the European Championship and sold to Bayern Munich for a king’s ransom.Sanches was 18 when he joined the first team with Benfica.Peter Kneffel/European Pressphoto AgencyA stint at Bayern Munich didn’t go as well as he hoped.Christof Stache/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesA move to France’s Lille brought a way out and a French title.Michel Spingler/Associated PressThat, Paiva said, had not necessarily been part of the plan. Benfica had been preparing a new contract, hoping to keep him with the club for a couple more years. As soon as Bayern’s offer came in, though, the equation changed. “It is very difficult, even for the biggest club in Portugal, to compete with those teams,” Gomes said. “The value of the offer, and also the wages being offered to the player, were too big to refuse.”Even if Sanches’s departure came earlier than planned, Gomes, like everyone else with Benfica, assumed that his rapid trajectory would continue in Germany. “We thought he would perform well there,” he said. Paiva, though, harbored a few doubts. “He still had a lot to improve, especially tactically,” he said. “Economically, selling him was the only thing the club could have done. But was it the right time in terms of the development of the player? No.”Watching the RainSanches’s most memorable contribution to English soccer was not a flattering one. It came in a road game against Chelsea. Sanches, wearing the red alternative jersey of Swansea City, the team he had joined on loan in 2017, picked up the ball and glanced to his left, looking for a pass.As he did so, the electronic advertising boards running around the perimeter of the field changed display, the red logo of an energy drink brand suddenly flashing. You can predict the punchline. Instead of passing to one of the two teammates equidistant from the logo, Sanches sent the ball to the advertising board itself. Somehow, the fact that he got the pass exactly right — it hit the logo, square and plum — added to the farce.Sanches’s spell at Swansea has long been filed away as one of those curious, comic interludes that English soccer does so well. That he was there at all — only a year or so after he had emerged, fully formed, as European soccer’s next sensation — was strange enough. That he should have made so little impact made it only more baffling still.“I think, if I’m honest, that he never really wanted to be here,” said Alan Curtis, a longstanding member of Swansea’s coaching staff, and now an honorary club president. “I think he was sent here.”A spell with Swansea was probably the low point.Andrew Boyers/ReutersSanches’s first season with Bayern was underwhelming, but hardly embarrassing. The club raised the idea of sending him out on loan, to allow him to get more regular game time, accelerating his development. “If he stays, no problem,” his coach at Bayern, Carlo Ancelotti, said. “If he goes, also no problem.” It was hardly a ringing endorsement.Ancelotti’s former assistant, Paul Clement, was in charge at Swansea, and used his relationship to pitch South Wales as a possible destination. Sanches had moved to Wales on his own, though, and while Swansea’s staff and squad did their best to “look out for him,” he struggled to settle.“I think he wanted, if he was in the Premier League, to be in London,” Curtis said. “This is a beautiful part of the world, with some amazing walks and some stunning beaches, but it’s quiet.“We can control a lot of things, but we can’t turn Swansea into a teeming metropolis. No matter how much you want it to work, if a player is not happy, if there is something in the back of their mind, then it is hard to perform.” Clement — fired in December of that season, after a poor start — said it seemed to him as if Sanches had “the weight of the world on his shoulders.”That, certainly, is how the player remembered it. “Everything went wrong,” he wrote in an article for The Players’ Tribune a couple of years later. “Just as I was adjusting to my new team, I got these weird injuries. I had never had injury trouble before, but all of a sudden I was out for months, sitting alone in an apartment in Swansea, watching it rain all day.”He returned to Bayern — where he was promised a fresh start under Ancelotti’s eventual replacement, Niko Kovac — but he remained a peripheral figure. “This is not how any of this was supposed to go,” Sanches wrote at the time.He grew frustrated, the impatience that had once supercharged his rise now speeding his downfall. At the start of the 2019-20 season, he either forgot or refused to do a warm-down session after Bayern’s first game of the campaign. He had appeared, briefly, as a late substitute. He remembered, though, to give a television interview suggesting he wanted to play more regularly, or leave.Sanches was a rising star at Euro 2016, but the label faded as he struggled to find a club role.Hugo Delgado/EPA, via ShutterstockThe Way BackPaiva saw the move and recognized it instantly. He was watching Portugal’s opening game of Euro 2020 — the 3-0 win against Hungary this week — from Ecuador, where he is coaching Independiente del Valle, but it transported him back to Benfica’s youth academy.A few minutes after his introduction as a substitute, Sanches picked the ball up on the right flank and darted past one opponent. He cut inside, and squared up to two more. He barreled straight past both of them through sheer force of will and continued his run. He looked up and slipped a pass into Rafa Silva, who drew a foul, won a penalty and secured the victory.“That was pure Renato,” Paiva said. “It showed everything about him: his ability, his power, his determination, his will to win. It is what he did at every level when he was younger. He was on the field for 10 minutes, but he used it like it was 100.”Even after all he has been through, those that know him well are sure that the ability that marked him out for greatness is still there. It was never an illusion. It had not disappeared. It was just lying dormant.Sanches, over these last two years, has started to right his course. It began with a move to Lille, only a few days after that disruptive interview while still at Bayern. He was not cheap — he was, at the time, the most expensive player in the club’s history — and his impact was not immediate.Pegged for stardom, Sanches has often remained in the shadow of more high-profile teammates instead.Pool photo by Tibor Illyes“You arrive at Lille, having not played for several seasons,” the club’s manager, Christophe Galtier, said a few months after his arrival. “You might ask yourself if you have made the right choice, or have the required level. He needed reassuring.” Galtier has advised him to “relax” a little, to be less impatient.The change of environment has worked. Sanches, who has played most often on the right of midfield, emerged as one of the driving forces behind Lille’s unexpected French title. Europe’s big clubs, including Liverpool and Manchester United, are said to be circling once again.He is back on the Portugal squad, too, back in the European Championship, back to where he was before, the world at his feet. “I feel much better than in 2016,” Sanches said last month. “I feel more capable, more experienced. I feel prepared to play more and more.”He has come full circle. Now, at last, he is ready to start his journey again. More

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      At Euro 2020, a Reminder That Good Can Be Great

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      Holding national teams to club standards spoils the fun of international tournaments like the Euros and Copa América.Let’s start with a little intellectual exercise. A purely hypothetical, entirely subjective, ultimately inconclusive one, admittedly, but still: Now that each of the presumed contenders to win the European Championship has shown at least some of its hand, how competitive would any of them be if they were to be parachuted, as they are, into the Champions League?Instinctively, it feels as if France, at least, would do pretty well. A front line of Antoine Griezmann, Karim Benzema and Kylian Mbappé bears comparison to any attacking trident in the club game.Paul Pogba and Adrien Rabiot contribute elegance, drive and imagination to the midfield. N’Golo Kanté, at this point in history, appears to be the key ingredient to any world-beating team. The defense is not quite so stellar, but Didier Deschamps has fashioned a miserly, obdurate back line around Raphaël Varane and Presnel Kimpembe, both proven performers among soccer’s elite. And besides, if either was found wanting, Deschamps has a wealth of replacements at his disposal.On paper, then, France could be considered a contender, the sort of team that — with a fair wind — might be able to best Manchester City and Bayern Munich and Chelsea.The only quibble is with style: For all its excess of talent, Deschamps’s France is an inherently reactive proposition, an approach that, by and large, has been rejected by the game’s leading clubs. (It is why José Mourinho, its high priest, is now at Roma, very much marooned in the second rank.)France would, though, go much further than most of its rivals. Portugal (outplayed by Bayern Munich in the theoretical quarterfinals of this exercise) has the compact defense and the devastating attack, but its midfield is limited. Germany’s semi-coherent pressing style would be either overpowered by a smoother, slicker machine, or picked apart by a counterpuncher (knocked out by Liverpool in the last 16).Portugal: a puncher’s chance against anyone thanks to Cristiano Ronaldo.Hugo Delgado/EPA, via ShutterstockEngland (unfortunate early knockout defeat to Real Madrid) gives up too many chances, Belgium (dizzied by Manchester City) is too old, and a little too slow. Italy (stifled by Chelsea) has too little experience, the Netherlands (third in the group stage, behind RB Leipzig) too little class. Spain (dismantled by Borussia Dortmund) has Álvaro Morata up front.There are, of course, valid reasons for these weaknesses, these comparative flaws. National teams cannot solve shortages in one specific position, or even a broad area of the field, by going out and buying someone to plug the gap. Their tactical systems are, necessarily, less sophisticated than those of the game’s best club sides because their coaches have so little time with their players.And, of course, none of it actually matters. France will never have to play Manchester City. Real Madrid will never have the chance to record an undeserved win against England. When, in three weeks, one of these teams is proclaimed the winner of Euro 2020 at Wembley, it will not diminish its achievement that it is not better than Bayern Munich.Indeed, to some extent it is the flaws that mark all international teams that lend tournaments their magic. France, on first glimpse, is superior to all of its rivals, but it is not perfect, impervious. It has weaknesses, ones more likely to be exposed and exploited in a single game, one-and-done knockout than over the course of a league season, or even in the home-and-away format of the latter stages of the Champions League.At least in a tournament summer, it is a strength, not a weakness, of international soccer that it is not subject to the same schisms as the club game, where a smattering of teams have hoarded so many players and so much talent that they are, in effect, untouchable by all but a handful of rivals. The gap between great international sides and merely good ones is much smaller than that between the very best clubs and, well, everyone else.Germany and France: a good bet against any opponent.Pool photo by Matthias HangstThe comparison is still worth making, though, and the hypothetical worth indulging, because the difference between club and international soccer affects the way we judge teams when a tournament rolls around.Our barometer of what is good — of what it takes to win a competition, of what makes a team a serious contender, of what excellence looks like — is set during the long stretch of the club season, from August until May.We watch Manchester City, Liverpool, Bayern and the rest and understand that they represent the bar: To be good enough to win the Premier League or the Champions League, a team must be able to reach that specific level of organization and sophistication and potency. They are all of such a high standard that almost any flaw qualifies as fatal.The same does not hold in an international tournament. None of the teams in Euro 2020 — and the same is true of the Copa América — have yet surpassed that bar. Belgium looked good, but against a weak Russian team. Italy has won twice but only against a disappointing Turkey and Switzerland. England was wasteful against Croatia. The Dutch let Ukraine back into the game. Portugal required 84 minutes to score against Hungary. Spain had Álvaro Morata up front.The Netherlands: two wins, and the same old worries.Pool photo by Piroshka Van De WouwWe look at these teams and we see shortcomings and then use them as evidence that they cannot be considered serious contenders to win the tournament.That, though, is the club game talking. It is what we have learned to be true in the Champions League being applied to a tournament where the same logic does not hold, like watching a school track-and-field day and expecting to see times fitting for an Olympic final. (“That 8-year-old hasn’t even gone under 10 seconds, they don’t stand a chance.”)With a couple of exceptions — most notably the Spain team that won three consecutive tournaments between 2008 and 2012 — most teams that succeed on the international stage are flawed. Most of them would, at best, be considered broadly passable if they came up against the very best clubs. Only a few would make it to the quarterfinals of the Champions League.That is not something to be bemoaned. If anything, it is to be encouraged. But it means, as we settle into a tournament like the Euros or the Copa América, we need to remember that you do not need to be great to win it; that the expectations we develop over the course of a club season are not especially relevant; that, at the international level, a team cannot be written off because it does not look great, because sometimes, every couple of years, being merely good is enough.Not Everything Is Reduced by PerspectivePlayers from Belgium and Denmark stopped their match in the 10th minute and joined fans for a one-minute ovation for Christian Eriksen, who wears No. 10.Pool photo by Friedemann VogelDenmark’s players had barely stopped running. For 10 minutes, they had hunted down Belgium’s glittering lineup remorselessly, ruthlessly, racing around the field at the Parken Stadium with a fierce, frenzied energy. And then, as soon as the clock struck 10, they stopped, they stood and they applauded. And the fans applauded with them.It is not quite true to say that the fate of Denmark’s campaign in Euro 2020 does not matter, that what happened to Christian Eriksen last Saturday has rendered it all irrelevant. It is of secondary importance, of course, compared with Eriksen’s health, but it does not render those fans in the stadium in Copenhagen on Thursday inhuman for wanting their team to win. It does not make the players monsters for being disappointed that, despite a spirited first half, they eventually lost to Belgium.Soccer is at its best in its darkest moments. The outpouring of concern and affection after Eriksen’s gut-wrenching, terrifying collapse was — despite the intense darkness of the circumstance — cheering. Players and officials and fans set aside tribal and national allegiances to extend their support. Perhaps that is just the decent thing to do, but still: Those clubs offering their thoughts and prayers did not have to say anything, so even a small kindness should be worthy of praise.But soccer also has a tendency, at those times, to downplay its significance, to insist on its own irrelevance, as if in the most extreme circumstances it allows us all to glimpse the great secret that lies behind the fourth wall: that this is all just a game, that we are all party to some great mutual, self-sustaining delusion, that none of it really matters.That is and is not true. It is possible to care far more about Eriksen’s health than whether Denmark qualifies, but the two do not need to be mutually exclusive. Part of the reason that Eriksen means so much to so many people is because soccer does matter; because he has brought them pleasure in, and excelled at, something that matters not only to them, but to him, too.Yussuf Poulsen, center, gave Denmark an early lead against Belgium.Stuart Franklin/Pool, via ReutersA Lost SoulEven before he got to the part where he explained what had happened, it was abundantly clear that, deep down, Sergio Ramos did not want to be standing at a microphone, explaining that he was leaving Real Madrid. His voice was cracking by the end of the first sentence. He was holding back tears midway through the second.This was not a player who had decided it was time for a fresh start, or a broader horizon, or a final payday. He was not making a reluctant, but necessary, change. Instead, he had been left with little to no choice. He had been haggling with the club for months over the length of a new contract. He wanted two more seasons; Real Madrid felt that, at his age, one was more appropriate.In Ramos’s telling, at least, as he was mulling it over, it turned out that he had run out of time. Quite how a club can forget to tell its iconic captain that a deadline to agree a contract is approaching — let alone that it has passed — is hard to fathom, but credit to Real Madrid for managing it.Could this really be the last glimpse of Sergio Ramos at Real Madrid?Susana Vera/ReutersIn a strictly sporting sense, Real Madrid should not bat an eyelash at his departure. His replacement was secured weeks ago: the Austrian captain David Alaba, signed on a free transfer from Bayern Munich, may not be a specialist central defender, but he is sufficiently versatile that he is probably in the top 10 in the world at that position anyway.But in almost every other way, Real Madrid will be impoverished by Ramos’s absence. No player better summed up the club: his fierce will to win, his irrevocable competitive streak, the faint sense that it was hard to work out quite how he was as good as he was. Real is losing far more than a central defender; it is losing its heart and soul, the player who had come to embody the club. That it is losing all of that so carelessly is, perhaps, the most damning indictment imaginable.CorrespondenceNo doubt about the question on everyone’s mind this week, given voice by Shawn Donnelly: “Who would win in a game between Georgia, the state, and Georgia, the country?”After a little cursory research, Shawn, this one is quite easy: the country, every single time. Georgia the state can call on Kyle Martino, Clint Mathis, Ricardo Clark and — at best — two other people I have heard of. Georgia the country gets to name Kakha Kaladze, Temuri Ketsbaia, Georgi Kinkladze, Levan Kobiashvili and not one but two Arveladzes. It’s a walkover.James Armstrong nominates Ferenc Puskas as the player he would most like to time-travel to watch — which seems, if I am honest, a bit of a waste of that particular superpower — though I wonder if there is another player from that famous Hungarian squad of the 1950s who might be an even smarter suggestion: Nandor Hidegkuti, the man who made the team tick.The United States ran its unbeaten streak to 42 games with a 2-0 win over Nigeria on Wednesday.Chuck Burton/Getty ImagesAnd an extremely apposite question from Brandon Conner, to round things off. “As the Women’s Super League has risen lately, and with the increased importance the richer clubs have placed on their women’s teams, I wonder how this will affect the international landscape. The U.S.W.N.T. has been the lone bright spot in America’s soccer hopes, but could the rise of European teams investing in women’s soccer eventually bring an end to the U.S. women’s dominance?”My short answer would be yes: That will, I would guess, be the story of women’s soccer over the next decade or so. Not because Europeans are naturally superior at soccer to Americans and not even, really, because of the investment, but because all of those clubs bristling up against one another turns Europe into a cradle of ideas. It creates what is described in “Soccernomics” as a best-practice network, in which proximity to the network is what determines success and failure. More