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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

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      Christian Eriksen Will Have a Defibrillator Implanted

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      The Denmark player collapsed during a Euro 2020 game on Saturday. The device could allow him to resume his career.Christian Eriksen, the Danish soccer player who collapsed on the field during a game at the European Championship, will have a defibrillator implanted to help prevent future heart episodes, Denmark’s team doctor said Thursday.The device, an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator, or I.C.D., will be placed under Eriksen’s skin and monitor his heart rhythm. A combination pacemaker and defibrillator, the device tracks a person’s heartbeat and can send electrical pulses to restore a normal rhythm as needed.“After Christian has been through different heart examinations, it has been decided that he should have an I.C.D. (heart starter),” the doctor, Morten Boesen, said in a statement released by Denmark’s soccer federation. “This device is necessary after a cardiac attack due to rhythmic disturbances.”“Christian has accepted the solution,” it added.The doctor did not address Eriksen’s possible return to the sport.Another player taking part in the Euros, Daley Blind of the Netherlands, had a similar device implanted in 2019 after two in-game collapses, although it was not known how directly comparable his condition is to Eriksen’s. Blind and Eriksen are friends and former teammates at the Dutch powerhouse Ajax Amsterdam.Eriksen, 29, collapsed on the field late in the first half of a game against Finland at Euro 2020 on Saturday, and then received lifesaving treatment, including C.P.R., as his teammates and fans at the game in Copenhagen — and a global television audience — looked on in shock. After a delay, the game was restarted, a decision that has been heavily criticized in Denmark, including by the team’s current and former players and its head coach. Finland went on to win, 1-0.Eriksen released a message and photograph from the hospital on Tuesday thanking fans for their good wishes, saying, “I’m fine, under the circumstances.”Manager Kasper Hjulmand of Denmark said he expected that Eriksen would watch the game from the hospital. After the loss to Finland, the game is critical for Denmark’s hopes of advancing at the tournament.Belgian players have said they plan to kick the ball out of bounds in the 10th minute of the game as a tribute to Eriksen, who wears No. 10 when playing for Denmark. Several Belgian players, including striker Romelu Lukaku, have played alongside Eriksen for European club teams.Simon Kjaer, the Denmark captain, was among the first to reach Eriksen when he collapsed on Saturday, and he appeared near tears as he warmed up for the restart 90 minutes later. Kjaer was substituted in the second half of the match, but was returned to the starting lineup that will face Belgium on Thursday.On Thursday, he released a statement to fans in which he said the team would “enter the pitch against Belgium with Christian in our hearts and thoughts.”“It gives us peace in our minds, which allows us to focus on the game of football,” he said of knowing Eriksen’s condition had stabilized. “We will play for Christian, and as always for all of Denmark. That is the greatest motivation for all of us.” More

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      In Pandev They Trust

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      Goran Pandev’s face is everywhere in Strumica, a sleepy city tucked away in the corner of North Macedonia, not far from the borders with Greece and Bulgaria. It is on the banners around the field at the local stadium. It is painted on the walls of the changing rooms. It beams out from the television screens of dozens of cafes, which faithfully broadcast every game played by the striker’s Italian club team, Genoa.Strumica has produced presidents and prime ministers, but it is Pandev it holds closest to its heart. He has repaid that affection. Plenty of the players who leave North Macedonia for fame and fortune in western Europe’s most glamorous soccer leagues invest in businesses at home. Eljif Elmas, a midfielder for Napoli, often returns to the family pastry shop in the capital, Skopje. Boban Nikolov, who plays for Lecce, helped his father open a transport company in the city of Stip.Pandev’s only rival for the title of the country’s greatest-ever player, Darko Pancev, runs a cafe in Skopje named after the jersey he wore during his career: Café 9.Tose Proeski National Arena is home to multiple clubs as well as North Macedonia’s national team.North Macedonia’s soccer federation sees the national team at a unifying force that transcends ethnic differences.Euro 2020 has been a point of pride, but some in the country choose to support Albania’s national team.“Here, it is common for former footballers to open a cafe or restaurant and sit there all day,” said Mario Sotirovski, the soccer editor of the newspaper Vecer. “Pandev is different.”For more than a decade, he has funded an eponymous soccer academy here, training 300 young hopefuls at its spectacular, Italian-inflected campus in the city, as well as 1,000 more across the country. “He is an idol for all the kids,” said Jugoslav Trenchovski, Akademija Pandev’s director.The facilities available at the academy — there are plans to open a sports center by the end of this year that will include a hotel, a spa and a museum — make it an outlier in North Macedonia. Other than the million-dollar national training center, largely financed by FIFA, that opened its doors in 2018, the country’s soccer infrastructure is largely threadbare. Most stadiums only have one grandstand. Capacities rarely exceed 4,000.Pandev’s greater impact may not be in concrete and steel, though, but in something far less tangible. In November last year, the striker — at 37, he is older than the country he represents — scored the goal in a qualifying game against Georgia that assured North Macedonia a place in this summer’s European Championship. It was, he said at the time, “a great victory for our people.”In North Macedonia, the significance of qualifying for its first major tournament extended far beyond sport. “From now on, the whole world will know where our country is,” said Muamed Sejdini, the president of the Football Federation of Macedonia. “When I talk to people from abroad, I will no longer have to explain that we border with Serbia, Albania, Bulgaria and Greece.”Akademija Pandev, founded by Goran Pandev, trains about 300 children in Strumica.Young women’s players from F.C. COOL, a youth team in Skopje.Other young talents train at the federation’s national training center.The women of ZFK Ljuboten, a team in Tetovo, near the border with Kosovo.But it is more than a matter of national pride. In 2019, after two decades of dispute with the last of those neighbors and a contested referendum, the country changed its name: from the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia to North Macedonia. By placating Greece, the country hoped to remove the first, and most daunting, obstacle in its path to joining the European Union.Now, two years later, there is a belief that its case can only be strengthened by playing in the Euros. “These players have raised the bar a lot,” said Sase Gjoles, the lead singer for the band Vis Risovi. “There is no going back. It is a message for the new generation.” Gjoles has written a song to support the team during the tournament. Its chorus runs: “Let’s go to Europe, the place where we belong.”That sense of unity is important. Around a quarter of North Macedonia’s population is ethnically Albanian, separated from the Macedonian majority by its language and its predominantly Muslim faith. “None of us supports Macedonia,” said Arijan Murtezani, a graduate student. “It’s our country and we respect it, but we also love and honor our national heritage, which is Albanian.”Murtezani is a member of the Ballistët, an ultras group that supports Shkëndija, a team in the largely Albanian city of Tetovo. Shkëndija — spark in Albanian — plays in red and black, the colors of the Albanian flag, and was banned in the latter years of Communist rule amid concerns its popularity might stoke nationalistic fervor.A playground in Kavadarci, home to the first-division team Tikvesh.An F.K. Vardar fan wears her passion on her shirt, and her arm.Supporters of Pobeda Prilep, two-time champions of the Macedonian first division.Many of the teams in Macedonian soccer are defined by their ethnic ties, and violence between ultra groups can run along those lines. In June 2018, a Vardar Skopje fan was killed in broad daylight at a bus stop; two fans of Shkupi, a team from an ethnic Albanian neighborhood in the capital, ended up in prison.Sejdini, the soccer federation’s president, said he hoped that the team’s European Championship campaign will help unite the country under one flag. There is an initiative among ultra groups to form a united front to support the national team, under the name Falanga — the phalanx. The words refers to the military formation invented by Philip II of Macedon, the father of Alexander the Great, two millenniums ago.The team, certainly, reflects North Macedonia’s complex, interwoven fabric. Some of its stars are ethnically Albanian — Ezgjan Alioski and Enis Bardhi — and some, like Nikolov, are Macedonian. Elmas, a winger for the Italian team Napoli, is of Turkish descent. The hope is that they can help to forge an identity for the country, one that is not only projected externally, to Europe, but internally, too.Still, it was fitting that, when North Macedonia took the field in a major tournament for the first time in its brief history, its first goal — in a 3-1 defeat to Austria on Sunday — came from a familiar face; the most familiar face of all, the one that hangs on banners and is painted on walls and beams out from televisions across Strumica. Goran Pandev has spent a decade trying to change soccer in his country. With one strike, he might have changed his country through soccer.City Stadium in Kicevo, the home of F.K. Napredok. More

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      Euro 2020: France Beats Germany, in Control at All Times

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      A score line disguises an imperious performance from the reigning World Cup champions as they throttle Germany in their debut at Euro 2020.For a few minutes, not long after the start of the second half, France finally had to break a sweat. Quite how many minutes, exactly, is a matter of perspective: the French might come in low, at about 10 minutes; Germany, by contrast, might be inclined to be a little more generous, and put the figure a little higher, at 15 or so.It might have felt a little longer to Raphael Varane, gritting his teeth, or to Didier Deschamps, trusting just a little to luck, or to a French fan, watching on, desperate for their team to cling on to a lead that, at 1-0, somehow managed to seem as fragile as porcelain but yet as certain as iron.But that is all it was: in the opening game of a major tournament, against a putative rival, in Munich on enemy territory, France looked discomfited for no more than a quarter-hour, and even that was relative. Serge Gnabry might have scored: certainly once, possibly twice. Toni Kroos snapped a shot in from distance. Robin Gosens hurled himself at a tantalizing Gnabry cross, only to make contact not with the ball but with Benjamin Pavard.There was no seat-of-the-pants desperation, no skin-of-the-teeth siege. France, the reigning world champion, did not ride out a storm. At best, it weathered a brief, inconvenient squall, waited for the clouds to dissipate, and then set out under fair blue skies once more, untroubled and unruffled and serene, a team in complete control.Scenes from a Munich evening: a French star in full flight, a German racing to keep up.Pool photo by Franck FifeThat France possesses greater depth than any nation in the world, at this point, goes without saying. It has, as the former Lille executive Marc Ingla put it, become “the Brazil of Europe,” home to a seemingly endless production line of impossibly gifted young players.Its top flight, Ligue 1, has rebranded itself as the “league of talents,” a place to see tomorrow’s stars today. It has so many towering central defenders that one of them, Aymeric Laporte, had to decide that he was Spanish just to play international soccer. France has more players currently employed in Europe’s top five leagues than any country, including Brazil.And its national team reflects that. Deschamps, the French coach, was so spoiled for choice when picking his squad for this tournament — even before he decided to offer Karim Benzema, his prodigal son, a shot at redemption — that he could have left all 26 players he did select at home, picked a whole different squad, and probably still made the semifinals.That is the quantity; the quality is no less intimidating. Benzema was thrown into an attack that already included Antoine Griezmann, the team’s spiritual leader, and Kylian Mbappé, next in line to be the best player in the world. The midfield is built around the indomitable N’Golo Kanté, or possibly the artful Paul Pogba, or maybe even the elegant Adrien Rabiot: It depends, largely, on who has the ball at any moment.It is the combination of the two — the gifted players and the sheer number of them — that makes France such a daunting proposition, that ensured Deschamps and his squad arrived at this tournament expected to add a European Championship to the World Cup it secured in Russia three years ago, and take its place among the front rank of the greatest international teams of the modern age.Paul Pogba was a handful for Germany all night.Pool photo by Alexander HassensteinBut it is not the quality of its individuals that defines this France team. It is the strength of the collective that Deschamps — hardly the most charismatic or inspiring of coaches, even among his peers in the international game — has forged from them. France did not win the World Cup by morphing into some soccer equivalent of the Harlem Globetrotters. It does not intend to repeat the trick here by taking the breath away.Instead, Deschamps has taken the gold of a generation and used it to build a wall: one that shimmers and glitters and can, in the right light, be quite beautiful, but is still, first and foremost, a wall. France’s defense is stolid and obdurate and miserly. Its midfield contains more than enough brilliance to dazzle opponents, but it is no less adept at squeezing them, constricting their space and their choice until they run out of ideas or, better yet, hope.With its almost comically devastating attack — the raw speed and the rare brilliance of Mbappé, the precision of Benzema, the craft of Griezmann — France could cause chaos at will. It does not. It uses its front line only sparingly, picking its moments, content that the unspoken threat of their presence is deterrent enough.Instead, it prefers to spend its time seeking total, absolute control. That is the mark of truly great, truly gifted teams: They give you the sense that everything that happens on the field is at their behest, as if they are in charge not only of the speed of the game but the ticking of the clock. The very best teams have one thing that the merely good can never quite attain: agency. And France has agency in abundance.That, certainly, is what Germany found. It did not play badly — there will have been plenty to give Joachim Löw, its coach, hope that there will be no repeat of the humiliation of 2018 in his farewell tournament — but it did not matter, because for long stretches it was playing someone else’s game.Kylian Mbappé celebrates and Mats Hummels attempts to disappear after his own goal gave France a 1-0 lead.Pool photo by Lukas Barth-TuttasFrance took the lead, through a Mats Hummels own goal, midway through the first half, and though it did not seem particularly hurried to double it, it never looked like relinquishing it. When Germany did, briefly, wrestle the upper hand, the French seemed happy enough. Deschamps’s team sank back to its own half, then to its own penalty area, and repelled everything that came its way.And when the Germans had run out of steam, when they had blown themselves out, the French cleared the sweat from their brow, and took control once again. France had a goal. A second might have been nice — Rabiot hit the post, Mbappé had one ruled out for offside, Benzema did, too — but it was not, strictly, necessary.For all the talent at his disposal, Deschamps knows that one is always enough. That, perhaps, is the defining trait of his team. It is what, deep down, makes it so ominous, more than the players on his squad or the ones left at home: that no matter what it needs to do, no matter how great the challenge, France always has enough. More

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      Was Paul Pogba Bitten in Germany vs. France?

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      Pogba reacted and Antonio Rüdiger has video deniability, experts say. But what exactly happened in the 45th minute of a Euro 2020 match?The linesman apparently didn’t see it. Neither did the Spanish referee. And the television replays were inconclusive.But Euro 2020 got its first real controversy on Tuesday:Did Germany’s Antonio Rüdiger bite France’s Paul Pogba on the shoulder?Let’s go to the videotape.What is Rudiger doing 😳 pic.twitter.com/gsMyYBLyz1— ESPN FC (@ESPNFC) June 15, 2021
      The incident happened just before halftime, as Rüdiger snuggled up to mark Pogba from behind as he prepared to receive a throw-in deep in Germany’s end during their teams’ group-stage match in Munich. Suddenly, Rüdiger, the German defender, pressed his face into the back of Pogba, the France midfielder, and the latter let out a shot, grabbed the back of his right shoulder and then leaned forward while holding it.In the United States, ESPN’s broadcast team didn’t draw any conclusions of what occurred. In Britain, Roy Keane, who knows a thing or two about getting under an opponent’s skin, called it more of a “nibble” than a bite on ITV. In Brazil, where he is preparing to play for Uruguay in the Copa América on Friday, Luis Suárez probably wondered why he was suddenly a trending topic on Twitter.But was it a bite? Or did it just look like one?Pogba pleading his case. Antonio Rüdiger looking to play on.Pool photo by Matthias HangstReplays offered Rüdiger enough of a degree of deniability, the former Premier League referee Mark Clattenburg suggested on ESPN. He said there was no way the match referee — or even the video review system in operation at the tournament — could rule on it beyond a shadow of a doubt based on the available replays. (The video-assistant referee was far more certain about the two French goals it ruled out for offside.)But almost as soon as Pogba vs. Rüdiger became a flash point, it was over. Play continued, with Rüdiger taking a free kick. A few minutes after that, it was halftime. But what, exactly, had Pogba been complaining about?Neither Pogba nor Rüdiger offered any clarity immediately after the match, which France won, 1-0.UPDATE: The players appeared to have resolved any animosity, if there ever was any, after the final whistle.Pool photo by Alexander Hassenstein More

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      Euro 2020: Austria’s Marko Arnautovic Faces UEFA Investigation

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      North Macedonia’s soccer federation filed a complaint and said that it “strongly condemns the nationalistic outburst” by the forward after a goal on Sunday.European soccer’s governing body has begun an investigation of Austria forward Marko Arnautovic after he was accused of making nationalist comments after scoring a goal in victory against North Macedonia in Euro 2020 on Sunday.UEFA confirmed on Monday that it had appointed an investigator “to conduct an investigation regarding the incident involving the player Marko Arnautovic.” The action came after North Macedonia filed a complaint.With two minutes to play on Sunday in Bucharest, Romania, Arnautovic scored a goal to seal Austria’s 3-1 victory over North Macedonia. His vigorous celebration included shouted words and gestures directed at several North Macedonian players.At one point during the outburst, the Austrian team captain, David Alaba, entered the team’s goal celebration and grabbed Arnautovic by the jaw. Many have interpreted the action as Alaba’s attempt to silence Arnautovic.North Macedonia filed an official complaint after the game.“The FFM strongly condemns the nationalistic outburst of Austrian player Marko Arnautovic, after a goal scored in yesterday’s match, addressed to the Macedonian player Ezgjan Alioski,” the federation said in a statement. “At the same time, we inform you that we have submitted an official letter to UEFA demanding the harshest punishment for Arnautovic.”Unofficial reviews of the video from the game have suggested that the remarks by Arnautovic, who is of Serbian heritage, referred to Albanians, and North Macedonia has contended they were directed at Alioski, who has Albanian roots.Ethnic and political rivalries are a persistent story line in European soccer. Just last week, UEFA ordered a change to Ukraine’s jerseys after Russia objected to a slogan on the collar and a map that included Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014.Disputes involving Serbia and its Balkan neighbors are common, and frequently involve Albania, since representatives of the Albanian diaspora dot the rosters of several national teams, including North Macedonia, Kosovo and Switzerland.At the World Cup in 2018, for example, two Swiss players of Albanian extraction, Granit Xhaka and Xherdan Shaqiri, were fined for making the sign of the double eagle, an Albanian national symbol, during a game against Serbia. That match produced at least six separate disciplinary investigations.Arnautovic spoke with North Macedonia’s Ezgjan Alioski after the match.Pool photo by Justin SetterfieldArnautovic apologized for his outburst on Instagram after Sunday’s game.“There were some heated words yesterday in the emotions of the game for which I would like to apologize — especially to my friends from North Macedonia and Albania,” he wrote. “I would like to say one thing very clearly: I am not a racist. I have friends in almost every country and I stand for diversity. Everyone who knows me is aware of that.”Arnautovic, 32, is a veteran forward currently playing club soccer in China for Shanghai Port. His previous stops include Germany’s Werder Bremen and Stoke City and West Ham in England.But he has been dogged by a reputation for bad behavior and anger on the pitch. “People are always searching for something,” he told The Telegraph in 2013. “If I drop a water bottle it’s like I’ve dropped a bomb or killed a guy. They make a big drama of it.”In 2009, when playing in Holland, he was accused of directing a racial slur at a Black opponent. The authorities said they found no evidence, and no action was taken. More

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      Christian Eriksen’s Teammates Question Decision to Resume Play

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      “We made the least bad decision,” one Denmark player said of the choice to continue a Euro 2020 match after Eriksen collapsed and went into cardiac arrest.Denmark’s soccer team returned to the field on Monday, practicing for the first time since the shocking collapse of their teammate Christian Eriksen during a match on Saturday. But the players did so amid growing criticism of the decision to resume the team’s Euro 2020 match just over an hour after Eriksen received lifesaving treatment on the field after his heart stopped.When the players on Denmark’s team and their opponents from Finland returned to the field on Saturday, it was widely reported that they had chosen to do so.But the players on Monday disputed that simple explanation, which had been offered by the tournament’s organizer, UEFA, and said they had been put in an impossible position: resume the game that day, or return the next day to complete it.“We were all about to lose a friend and a teammate,” Denmark forward Martin Braithwaite said. “There were lots of players who were unable to play. We were in a bad place. We made the least bad decision.”“We were put in a position that I personally feel that we shouldn’t have been put in,” goalkeeper Kasper Schmeichel said.Hannah Mckay/ReutersEriksen, one of Denmark’s stars, collapsed on the field late in the first half of a game against Finland at Parken Stadium in Copenhagen. He lost consciousness and received treatment on the field, including C.P.R. His teammates were visibly shaken. Several prayed as they stood in a circle to protect Eriksen from view. A few wiped away tears.Eriksen was removed from the field by stretcher and appeared to be conscious. The game was halted, and there was talk of postponing the evening game between Belgium and Russia as well.But then, to the surprise of many, it was announced that the game would resume after a two-hour delay. UEFA, the governing body for European soccer, said the decision came “following the request made by players of both teams.” Finland scored on a header in the second half to beat Denmark, 1-0.But on Monday, Danish players and staff members said the reality was far less straightforward.“We were put in a position that I personally feel that we shouldn’t have been put in,” goalkeeper Kasper Schmeichel said.Liselotte Sabroe/EPA, via ShutterstockDenmark’s players returned to training Monday in Copenhagen. At Scotland’s game, fans sent messages of support.Pool photo by Robert PerryAustria’s Michael Gregoritsch ran to the bench to display a jersey with a message to Eriksen after scoring on Sunday.Pool photo by Marko Djurica“It probably required that someone above us had said that it was not the time to make a decision and maybe should wait for the next day,” he added.Braithwaite said: “We had two choices from UEFA: to go out and play the match immediately or play the next day at noon. None of those choices were good. We took the lesser of two evils.”Coach Kasper Hjulmand said the team had decided that facing the prospect of returning the next day was unworkable.“The players couldn’t imagine not being able to sleep tonight and then having to get on the bus and come in again tomorrow,” Hjulmand told reporters after Saturday’s game. “Honestly it was best to get it over with.”Peter Schmeichel, the former Denmark goalkeeper and the father of Kasper, disputed UEFA’s characterization that the players insisted on playing.“I know that not to be the truth,” he said on “Good Morning Britain.” “Did they have any choice? I don’t think they had.”UEFA said the tournament’s tight schedule required a quick resolution. Denmark’s next game was Thursday, but the Finns had to travel to Russia and prepare for a game on Wednesday afternoon.“UEFA is sure it treated the matter with utmost respect for the sensitive situation and for the players,” UEFA said in a statement. “It was decided to restart the match only after the two teams requested to finish the game on the same evening. The players’ need for 48 hours’ rest between matches eliminated other options.”Eriksen, 29, remained in stable condition in a Copenhagen hospital on Monday. He has spoken with his teammates and was said to be in good spirits, the players said.“I have no doubt that we’ll see something special at Parken on Thursday,” Braithwaite told reporters. “Not just from the players but from the entire crowd. That’s something I look forward to. And I’m sure I will use it as motivation to go out and play for Christian.” More