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      A Biennial World Cup Is Dead, but FIFA’s Fight Isn’t Over

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      FIFA has quietly given up on a plan to hold the World Cup every two years. But surrender may not mean peace for its president, Gianni Infantino.DOHA, Qatar — Gianni Infantino strode into the bright lights of a packed convention center alongside the emir of Qatar on Friday and declared that he expected this year’s World Cup to be the best ever. It was not an unusual boast; Infantino has made it before, in Russia in 2018, and he will surely make it again when the tournament heads to North America in 2026. But behind his beaming smile, and his bombastic words, the trip to the desert had been the setting for the FIFA president’s latest disappointment.It was here where yet another of Infantino’s hopes for revolutionary change, the kind of bold but ultimately failed plan that has marked his presidency of soccer’s global governing body, finally came to an end. The divisive efforts to double the frequency of the men’s World Cup, to milk FIFA’s multibillion-dollar cash cow every two years instead of every four, are over.While Infantino reminded FIFA’s members, gathered together in person for the first time in three years, that the idea of a biennial World Cup had not been his — a claim that was technically accurate — he had spent a significant amount of financial and political capital to try to engineer what would have amounted to one of the most significant changes in soccer history. Polls were commissioned to showcase support. Experts were enlisted to push back against critics. But the concept’s opponents never wavered: By last fall, European and South American soccer leaders were already threatening a boycott if it came to fruition.In Doha, Infantino finally raised the white flag.The reversal, yet another capitulation on yet another of his grand ideas, followed earlier blunders that have led to damaging rifts with important constituencies. In 2018, Infantino tried to force through a $25 billion deal with the Japanese conglomerate SoftBank to sell some of FIFA’s top assets and create new club and national team competitions, provoking a fight so bitter that he and the leader of European soccer did not speak for a year.In 2019, FIFA used back-channel efforts to try to expand this year’s World Cup to 48 teams from its planned 32. The proposal was abandoned because it would have required the host, Qatar, to share games with its neighbors, including a group that was then engaged in a prolonged economic blockade of the tiny Gulf nation.A Guide to the 2022 World CupThe 32-team tournament kicks off in Qatar on Nov. 21.F.A.Q.: When will the games take place? Who are the favorites? Will Lionel Messi be there? Our primer answers your questions.The Matchups: The group assignments are set. Here’s a breakdown of the draw and a look at how each country qualified.U.S. Returns: Five years after a calamitous night cost the U.S. a World Cup bid, a new generation claimed a berth in the 2022 tournament.The Host: After a decade of scrutiny and criticism, there is a sense that Qatar will at last get the payoff it always expected for hosting the World Cup.Last week, Infantino, 52, could not quite bring himself to say explicitly that the biennial World Cup, the source of so much acrimony over the past year, was not going to happen. Instead, he allowed only that it was now time to “find agreements and compromises.”Infantino, with the emir of Qatar on Friday, predicted this year’s World Cup would be the best edition of the event ever.Kai Pfaffenbach/ReutersFIFA, he told delegates, needed new competitions, the kind that would produces the type of revenues needed to fulfill the promises FIFA has made to its 211 member federations. No FIFA president has been generous as Infantino, and for him follow-through is suddenly vital: He announced on Thursday that he would stand for re-election next year.Plans for future events are already taking shape. Annual competitions for boys and girls are planned, with a 48-team youth event for boys and 24-team girls competition unlikely to face any opposition. And opposition to an expanded Club World Cup to be played every four years — another Infantino priority — is now surprisingly muted. A 24-team Club World Cup had been awarded to China for 2021 but was scrapped because of the coronavirus pandemic and then sidelined altogether as Infantino focused his energies on the biennial World Cup.Now, with even once-reticent European officials engaging in positive talks, the Club World Cup — potentially expanded even more, to 32 teams — is likely to be agreed upon in the next few months. The new event could begin as soon as 2025. Or it could be delayed until 2027 should FIFA, in the face of resilient European opposition, find an alternative national team competition to the biennial World Cup. Some regional bodies, including Concacaf, the group responsible for soccer in North and Central America, are still pushing for a major new national-team competition.“I think the appetite is there for change, and I think the rest of the world really wants change,” said the Concacaf president, Victor Montagliani.Montagliani suggested a revived and expanded version of the mothballed Confederations Cup, a largely unpopular tournament held in World Cup host countries as a test event, might be an option, as could a global Nations League that could feed into a new quadrennial event for its regional winners — an idea some Europeans ridiculed as a biennial World Cup “by the back door.”At the heart of much of the tension, though, remains a bigger fight: the battle for supremacy between European soccer and FIFA. European officials have been angered by what they perceive as efforts by Infantino, a former UEFA general secretary, to diminish Europe in an effort to bolster his popularity around the world, and signs of their rift were clear in Qatar last week. Several members of UEFA’s delegation, for example, including its president, Aleksander Ceferin, were notable by their absence at Friday’s World Cup draw, an event that took place only a day after they had taken part in the FIFA Congress.Infantino has talked openly about breaking Europe’s stranglehold on success — FIFA last year appeared to encourage efforts to found a breakaway European Super League before walking away from the project as it collapsed — and he retains important allies who share his concerns about its dominance.“What are the rest of us supposed to do? Just twiddle our thumbs and send players and capital over to Europe?” said Montagliani, a Canadian. “That can’t happen. I’m sorry. The reality is, they have as much of a fiduciary duty in terms of the rest of the world, and I think it is time that we all get around the table and figure that out.”The now-doomed biennial World Cup campaign saw Infantino bring other allies into the fight, including leveraging popular former players and coaches to press the issue on his behalf. The efforts were led by Arsène Wenger, the former Arsenal coach, who toured the world espousing the benefits of the competition, and members of the FIFA Legends program, a FIFA-funded group of former international stars, who also offered glowing reviews. (Current players were by and large opposed to the idea.)At the same time, opinion polls and surveys and public relations consultants were tasked with changing minds of a skeptical news media and wary fan groups. In the end, though, the effort produced only disruption and discord. And it does not appear to have been cheap: FIFA last week reported a spike in its communications costs in its latest financial disclosure. They rose by almost $10 million — 62 percent — compared with the previous year.Now, as he pushes ahead and makes promises for his re-election, some are waiting for, even expecting, Infantino’s next big idea, one that could deliver cash to his constituents and also the legacy as a change-maker that he craves. More

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      FIFA Will Allow Foreign Players in Russia to Break Contracts

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      The move is expected to be temporary, and less than player advocates had demanded, in hopes of not setting a precedent.Having decided that Russian teams cannot play international soccer for an indefinite period because of the country’s invasion of Ukraine, soccer’s governing body is now planning to announce that foreign players contracted by Russian teams can suspend their contracts and move elsewhere — at least temporarily.The decision will affect about 100 players, who will be able to set aside their Russian contracts and sign with new clubs through to June 30. The measure stops short of what groups representing players and worldwide leagues had requested. In a joint letter, reviewed by The New York Times, FIFPro, the largest players union, and the World Leagues Forum, an umbrella organization for more than 40 competitions, had asked FIFA, soccer’s global governing body, that athletes be allowed to leave Russia permanently.The request has created an awkward situation for FIFA. The organization had broken precedent when it moved to punish Russia for its actions in Ukraine — including barring Russia’s national team from qualifying matches for this year’s World Cup — but allowing players to break their contracts, especially outside of soccer’s traditional winter and summer windows, was potentially far more problematic.Talks over the weekend between the player groups and FIFA, which also included lawyers for European soccer’s governing body, UEFA, and club representatives, failed to reach a consensus, with officials said to be concerned about setting a precedent. Instead, FIFA has decided that players who want to leave Russian teams can do so but must return after June 30.An official statement is likely to come as soon as Monday. In their letter, FIFPro and the leagues group suggested that some players were no longer comfortable playing for Russian teams after the invasion of Ukraine.“These foreign players may rightfully consider that they are not willing to represent any longer a Russian team and should be able to immediately terminate their contract with their employer without facing any sanction whatsoever from international bodies and to be registered in a new club without being restricted by transfer period regulations,” the letter said.Under local rules, Russian clubs can have as many as eight foreign players, known as legionnaires, on their rosters. The current Russian champion, Zenit St. Petersburg, has five Brazilians, a Colombian, a Croatian and a player from Kazakhstan on its squad.At least one club, Krasnodar, announced last week that it would allow its foreign players and coaching staff to suspend their contracts. Its German coach, Daniel Farke, the former manager of the English Premier League club Norwich, quit less than two months into his contract without overseeing a single game. But foreign players continued to suit up for Russian teams in the most recent round of domestic league games over the weekend.Russia’s declaration of war has exposed gaps in the statutes under which sporting organizations like FIFA are organized. After the invasion began, and drew worldwide condemnation, FIFA lawyers and officials scrambled to find a way to take action that could be justified under its regulations. At first, officials proposed measures that stopped short of an outright ban: Russia was to be prohibited from playing on home soil and barred from using its flag and even its name. But that punishment unraveled within 24 hours when Russia’s opponents — and about a dozen other countries — announced that they would refuse to share a field with Russia wherever, and whenever, games were to be played.A day later, FIFA threw Russia’s teams and its clubs out of world soccer. But its lawyers are already bracing for a fight over the decision. Russia’s soccer federation has called for an expedited hearing at the Court of Arbitration for Sport in order for a decision to be made before March 24, the date when it was supposed to host Poland in a World Cup qualification playoff.Russia-Ukraine War: Key Things to KnowCard 1 of 3Evacuation efforts under attack. More

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      FIFA Will Ban Russia, Ejecting It From World Cup Qualifying

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      World soccer’s global governing body suspended Russia and its teams from all competitions on Monday, ejecting the country from qualifying for the 2022 World Cup only weeks before it was to play for one of Europe’s final places in this year’s tournament in Qatar.The suspension, which was announced Monday evening in coordination with European soccer’s governing body, also barred Russian club teams from international competitions. The decision came a day after FIFA was heavily criticized for not going far enough in punishing Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, and amid mounting demands from national federations for stronger action.The initial pressure for an outright ban of Russia came from soccer officials in Poland, Sweden and the Czech Republic, whose national team faced the prospect of games against Russia in a World Cup playoff in March. Other countries and officials, including the federations representing France, England and the United States, quickly said they would not play Russia under any circumstances.England 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿, Albania 🇦🇱, Czech Republic 🇨🇿, Denmark 🇩🇰, Ireland 🇮🇪, Norway 🇳🇴, Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿, Switzerland 🇨🇭, Sweden 🇸🇪, Wales 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿… football Europe follows the Polish path. Together we are stronger! #SolidarityWithUkraine 🇺🇦Dziękujemy! | Thank you!— Cezary Kulesza (@Czarek_Kulesza) February 28, 2022
      FIFA and its European counterpart, UEFA, said the ban on Russia would be in place “until further notice.”“Football is fully united here and in full solidarity with all the people affected in Ukraine,” FIFA said in a statement. Ukraine’s team, which is set to play Scotland in its own World Cup playoff in March, will remain in the competition.UEFA then went a step further in breaking its deep ties to Russia: It announced that it had ended a sponsorship agreement with the Russian energy giant Gazprom. The deal was worth a reported $50 million a year to European soccer.UEFA had last week stripped St. Petersburg, the home of Gazprom, of this year’s Champions League final. The game will be played in France instead.Ukraine will take part in the playoffs for the final European World Cup places next month. Russia, now, will not.Fehim Demir/EPA, via ShutterstockFIFA and UEFA decided to bar Russia only hours after the International Olympic Committee called for international sports federations to prohibit Russian athletes and teams from all global sporting events where possible. The Olympic officials said Russia had breached a commitment — known as the Olympic Truce, and signed before the start of the Beijing Winter Games and scheduled to run through the Paralympics that open this week — when it invaded Ukraine.The immediate consequence of soccer’s ban on Russia is that it will lose its place in a four-team group for one of Europe’s final places for the World Cup. Poland, which was scheduled to play Russia in March in Moscow, had said flatly that it would refuse to take the field for the game, a stance it repeated after FIFA announced its initial slate of penalties on Sunday night.Cezary Kulesza, the president of Poland’s soccer federation, called FIFA’s initial decision not to eject Russia “totally unacceptable.” In a post on Twitter, he added: “We are not interested in participating in this game of appearances. Our stance remains intact: Polish National Team will NOT PLAY with Russia, no matter what the name of the team is.”Sweden and the Czech Republic, the teams that could have met Russia — also in Moscow — if the Russians beat Poland, said that they, too, would refuse to play, even at a neutral site.Russia-Ukraine War: Key Things to KnowCard 1 of 4On the ground. More

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      Champions League Final Will Be Played in Paris, Not Russia

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      European soccer’s governing body on Friday voted to move this season’s Champions League final, the showcase game on the continent’s sporting calendar, to Paris as punishment for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.The game, on May 28, had been scheduled to be played in St. Petersburg, in a stadium built for 2018 World Cup and financed by the Russian energy giant Gazprom, a major sponsor of the governing body, UEFA. It will take place instead at the Stade de France, in the northern Paris suburb of Saint-Denis. It will be the first time France has hosted the final since 2006.UEFA said it had made the decision as a result of “the grave escalation of the security situation in Europe.”The 2021/22 UEFA Men’s Champions League final will move from Saint Petersburg to Stade de France in Saint-Denis. The game will be played as initially scheduled on Saturday 28 May at 21:00 CET.Full statement: ⬇️— UEFA (@UEFA) February 25, 2022
      UEFA also said it would relocate any games in tournaments it controls that were to be played in Russia and Ukraine, whether involving clubs or national teams, “until further notice.”At the moment, that affects only a single club match: Spartak Moscow’s next home game in the second-tier Europa League. But UEFA’s move to punish Russia will put new pressure on world soccer’s governing body, FIFA, to move a World Cup qualifying match set for Moscow next month.On Thursday the soccer federations from Poland, Czech Republic and Sweden wrote to FIFA calling for Russia to be banned from hosting playoff games for the 2022 World Cup that are scheduled for next month. Poland is scheduled to play Russia in Moscow on March 24. If Russia wins that game, it would host the winner of the game between the Czechs and Sweden in a match to decide one of Europe’s final places in the World Cup in Qatar later this year.“The military escalation that we are observing entails serious consequences and considerably lower safety for our national football teams and official delegations,” the federations wrote in a joint statement. They called on FIFA — which has authority over the games — and UEFA to immediately present “alternative solutions” for sites that were not on Russian soil.Russia’s soccer federation, known as the R.F.U., reacted angrily to the decision to move any matches.“We believe that the decision to move the venue of the Champions League final was dictated by political reasons,” said the federation’s president, Alexander Dyukov. “The R.F.U. has always adhered to the principle of ‘sport is out of politics,’ and thus cannot support this decision.”“The R.F.U. also does not support the decision to transfer any matches involving Russian teams to neutral territory as violating the sports principle and infringing on the interests of players, coaches and fans.”Russia-Ukraine War: Key Things to KnowCard 1 of 4On the ground. More

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      Stranded Soccer Stars, Frantic Calls and a Race to Flee Kyiv

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      “We are here asking for your help,” one Brazilian soccer player pleaded. “There’s no way we can get out.”Inside the windowless conference room of the Kyiv hotel where the soccer stars had gathered, the anxiety was growing by the minute. An aborted attempt to flee had been a disaster. And the sounds of war — mortar fire, rocket blasts, screeching warplanes — provided a near constant reminder of their precarious circumstances.By Saturday morning the group, made up mostly of Brazilians but now swelled by other South Americans and Italians, numbered as many as 70. The players had come to Ukraine to play soccer; weeks earlier, they had taken the field in Champions League, Europe’s richest competition. Now, with their season suspended and Russian forces advancing on the city, they were huddled with their families — wives, partners, young children, aging relatives — and plotting how, and when, to make a run for their lives.“I hope everything will be OK,” one of the stranded Brazilian players, Junior Moraes, said Saturday morning in an interview with The New York Times. Moraes, a forward for the Ukrainian club Shakhtar Donetsk, explained how the group had been hustled to the hotel last week by their team. In the days that followed, as first the country and then the city had come under attack, their ranks expanded after foreign players from a rival club, Dynamo Kyiv, asked to join them.Fearing for their safety and their families’, the players had released a short video that quickly went viral. Food was in short supply, the players said. Necessities like diapers had already run out.“We are here asking for your help,” the Shakhtar player Marlon Santos said, citing the obstacles. “There’s no way we can get out.”Plans to evacuate were hatched and then quickly scrapped. Flights were impossible; Ukraine had shut down civilian aviation, and Russian forces were attacking the airport. Gasoline was in short supply, and a group now numbering in the dozens knew it would be nearly impossible to arrange enough cars, or stay together amid the chaos.Making a run for it carried its own risks, too, since it would have required surrendering their connection with the outside world. The hotel at least had a supply of electricity and, just as crucially, a reliable internet connection, Moraes said.In frantic phone calls, he and others in the group, which included Shakhtar’s coach, Roberto De Zerbi, an Italian, had made contact with consular officials and governments back home. Empathy was abundant. Solutions were not.The players and their families were advised to try to make it to the train station in Kyiv and join the throngs heading west toward Lviv, a city in western Ukraine, closer to the Polish border, that had become a focal point for the exodus from the Russian advance.“In the beginning it seemed like a good idea,” Moraes said of the plan to make a dash for Lviv. “But look, we have babies and old people also here. If you leave the hotel with the internet and electricity keeping us in contact with everybody, and go to another city and stay with kids in the street, how long could we do that before it is very bad?”Shakhtar Donetsk played in the Champions League as recently as December. Now its season has been suspended. Kiko Huesca/EPA, via ShutterstockInstead, the group turned its attention, and its hopes, back to soccer. Shakhtar’s management had arranged for the Brazilians to stay at the hotel as the security situation in Ukraine degenerated. (The team has been based in Kyiv for years, since it was forced to flee Donetsk in 2014 after an earlier Russian-backed assault.) But while team officials assured the group it was working on a solution, none had materialized.The thought of passing another night in the conference room had brought some of those present to the brink of a “psychological collapse,” Moraes said. Several members of the group had tried to make it to safety by fleeing in the early hours of Saturday morning, he said, only to quickly return in a state of shock.“When they went outside there were explosions and they returned screaming in the room,” Moraes said. “It was panic, crazy.”By then the Brazilian players and their families had been joined by a contingent from Argentina and Uruguay. Soon other Brazilians living in Kyiv — but unconnected to soccer — reached out asking for shelter and were welcomed inside.Moraes said De Zerbi, 42, and his assistants had refused to abandon the group. “They had two opportunities to leave us,” Moraes said, “and the coach said, ‘No, I stay here until the end.’”Shortly before his conversation with The Times, though, Moraes had received a phone call. Aleksander Ceferin, the president of European soccer’s governing body, UEFA, was on the line and promising, Moraes said, that “he was pushing to find a solution.”Russia-Ukraine War: Key DevelopmentsCard 1 of 3A new diplomatic push. More

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      UEFA will strip St. Petersburg of the Champions League final.

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      European soccer’s governing body is convening an emergency meeting of its top board members on Friday after deciding to strip St. Petersburg, Russia, from hosting the Champions League final, the biggest club game of the year, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.The governing body, UEFA, had resisted taking the measure earlier this week, even after the country moved into two rebel-held parts of Ukraine and after its president, Vladimir V. Putin, announced Russia had formally recognized them as independent republics. UEFA took the measure after Russia’s invasion began early Thursday.The game, on May 28, was to be played in a stadium built ahead of the 2018 World Cup and financed by the Russian energy giant Gazprom, a major UEFA sponsor since 2012. In 2021, UEFA added Gazprom’s chairman, Alexander Dyukov, to its board, known as the Executive Committee. It is unclear if Dyukov will attend the meeting, which will be a video call.UEFA said in a statement that its president, Aleksander Ceferin, a Slovene lawyer, decided to call for the meeting “following the evolution of the situation between Russia and Ukraine in the last 24 hours.”“UEFA shares the international community’s significant concern for the security situation developing in Europe and strongly condemns the ongoing Russian military invasion in Ukraine,” it said.Speculation began this week about potential sites for a relocated game, with the British news media calling for it to be played in London. Last year’s final was played between two English teams, Manchester City and Chelsea, which is bankrolled by the Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich.The Champions League final has faced disruption since the outbreak of the coronavirus, with the tournament’s denouement played out in Portugal for two straight years. Other sites outside the United Kingdom remain a possibility, including Istanbul, which had to make do with hosting rights for 2023 after giving up the final game in 2020 and 2021.The British government had been the most vocal in calling for the game to be taken away from Russia, with officials actively lobbying the soccer authorities.“I have serious concerns about the sporting events due to be held in Russia, such as the Champions League final, and will discuss with the relevant governing bodies,” Nadine Dorries, the British government minister responsible for sports, wrote on Twitter.Fan groups, too, had called for the game’s relocation.A banner advertising the Champions League final at the Krestovsky stadium.Anatoly Maltsev/EPA, via Shutterstock“On this tragic day, our thoughts are with everyone in Ukraine, our friends, colleagues, members, & their loved ones,” the Fans Supporters Europe group tweeted hours after Russia’s invasion had started. “Given the events unfolding, we expect an imminent announcement from UEFA on the relocation of the Champions League final.”Soccer federations from Poland, Czech Republic and Sweden have written to FIFA calling for Russia to be banned from hosting playoff games for the Qatar World Cup. Poland is due to meet Russia in Moscow next month, and if Russia wins, it will face a final eliminator against the winner of the game between the Czechs and Sweden also in Russia.Gazprom’s influence extends beyond UEFA. Officials from the company — which controls Russia’s top club, F.C. Zenit — sit in other influential positions, like the board of the European Club Association, a representative group for top clubs. Gazprom has since 2007 also sponsored one of Germany’s leading teams, Schalke, an association that now appears to be at an end.“Following recent developments, FC Schalke 04 have decided to remove the logo of main sponsor GAZPROM from the club’s shirts. It will be replaced by lettering reading ‘Schalke 04’ instead,” the club said on Twitter on Thursday.UEFA will also decide on the fate of teams from Russia still involved in its competitions. Zenit was on Thursday to play the second game of its two-leg playoff against Real Betis in Spain in the Europa League, Europe’s second-tier club tournament.The crisis has also led to mounting speculation about the future of Abramovich’s decade-long ownership of Chelsea. He was not named in a first tranche of Russian billionaires subject to British government sanctions this week. But some lawmakers said he, and Alisher Usmanov, a billionaire whose holding company USM is the biggest partner of another Premier League team, Everton, should be added to the sanctions list.Chris Bryant, a lawmaker in the opposition Labour Party, told Parliament on Thursday that Abramovich should be “no longer able to own a football club in this country.”Bryant criticized the government for allowing Abramovich to continue doing business in the United Kingdom after saying he had seen official government documents from 2019 that described the Russian as having “links to the Russian state and his public association with corrupt activity and practices.”“That is nearly three years ago and yet remarkably little has been done in relation,” Bryant said. Abramovich previously faced difficulties entering Britain after new visa restrictions were imposed on Russian businessmen in 2018. A spokesman for Chelsea declined to comment. More

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      Relevent Wins Champions League Rights in U.S.

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      UEFA awarded its global broadcasting rights to a longtime partner, but granted Relevent, owned by the Miami Dolphins owner Stephen M. Ross, the same deal for the United States.One after another, the executives from some of the world’s biggest sports agencies filed into a basement auditorium at the headquarters of European soccer’s governing body. On their way in, they passed replicas of some of the biggest trophies in the sport, a pointed reminder of why they had traveled to UEFA’s offices on the banks of Lake Geneva to offer large sums of money to some of soccer’s most powerful officials.On offer that week in November? A rare chance, the first in 20 years, to bid for the rights to one of the most valuable properties in sports: the Champions League.For two days, groups armed with slides and projectors pitched a group that included not only UEFA’s leadership but also representatives of Europe’s top clubs, who, for the first time, were allowed to participate in the process. After three rounds of bidding, UEFA and the European Club Association, its partner in the venture, picked the winners.The global rights went to the Europeans’ longtime partner, TEAM Marketing, which now controls the rights for a three-year cycle from 2024 to 2027, the first in an expanded Champions League that will include more matches.The Champions League Is Changing. Here’s How It Will Work.After more than a generation in its current form, the Champions League is remaking itself, and about to become an actual league for the first time.The bigger surprise came in what they will not control: the lucrative rights to the United States. Those were won by Relevent Sports Group, the marketing company backed by the Miami Dolphins owner Stephen M. Ross. Relevent prevailed after it said it could guarantee at least $250 million for the rights in the United States, about $100 million more than UEFA’s competitions currently deliver there.Relevent and rivals like Endeavor-owned IMG, Octagon and Infront Sports & Media also bid for the global rights, which are estimated to be worth as much as $5 billion per season. TEAM, according to people familiar with the bidding process, was selected because it agreed to lower its commission on selling the rights and because it has a dedicated staff on hand to begin sales immediately.An official announcement of the new rights agreements will be made next week, after a meeting of UEFA’s board. The European Club Association’s board was informed of the selections at a meeting in Munich on Wednesday.UEFA, Relevent and TEAM all declined to comment on the deals, which came as part of an unexpected bit of collaboration between European officials and some of the continent’s biggest clubs only months after some of those same teams attempted to form a breakaway Super League.After two decades of frustration, and with clubs growing increasingly concerned that money was being left on the table, the club association finally pushed UEFA to take the rights to market. In the past, the Champions League agreement had consistently rolled over into a new one with TEAM, a company that has historically had just one client: UEFA.Nasser al-Khelaifi, the chairman of the E.C.A. and the president of the French club Paris St.-Germain, and the E.C.A.’s chief executive, Charlie Marshall, joined a UEFA contingent led by UEFA’s president, Aleksander Ceferin, to hear the pitches late last year.A final decision on the winners was made after a meeting Jan. 25 of their new joint venture company, UCC S.A. That company will grow in importance in the coming months: A new management team set to be installed that could reduce the need for intermediaries like TEAM and Relevent, and give clubs an even greater say over the commercial operations of competitions that produce billions of dollars in television and sponsorship revenue every season.For Relevent, the deal is the latest chapter in its efforts to pivot toward a new strategy geared around selling premium soccer rights after a decade in which its highest-profile asset was the loss-making International Champions Cup, an annual off-season tournament that matched top European clubs in exhibition games in North America, Europe and Asia. But it also comes amid a significant bit of price escalation for soccer rights in the United States; the Premier League recently agreed to a six-year deal with NBC worth almost $2 billion.In 2018, Relevent signed a 15-year collaboration with Spain’s top league, an agreement that essentially turned the company into La Liga’s commercial operation for North America in exchange for a guarantee that it could generate business worth a minimum of $2 billion during the term of the contract. Three years later, Relevent brokered an eight-year, $1.4 billion rights agreement with ESPN for La Liga games, then got $600 million more from broadcasters in Mexico and Central America.Now, its relationships with European soccer may only deepen. Relevent has been courting UEFA to add its name to its off-season tournament business, which has lost about $100 million since it was established in 2012.With the Champions League deals in place, UEFA and the club association are likely to enter into a protracted period of wrangling over how the income from the rights sales will be distributed, with the largest teams likely to demand a greater share than they are currently receiving. More

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      Champions League Repeats Its Draw After a ‘Technical Problem’

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      A buzzed-about round of 16 matchup between Manchester United and Paris St.-Germain was the result of a mistake. P.S.G. will face Real Madrid instead.They drew the Champions League round of 16 on Monday, and set up a mouthwatering match between Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo.Then they drew it again, and that match was gone.A “technical problem” meant that the Champions League was redrawn, leading to mostly new matchups — easier for some, harder for others — and shattering fans’ dreams of Paris St.-Germain vs. Manchester United.After the initial draw, fans and teams began posting on social media hyping the matchups. But in the end, only one of those games will happen. Three hours later, officials reconvened to draw the teams again.In the initial draw, Manchester United was matched with Villarreal. But those teams had met in the group stage, so a new name was pulled, giving Villarreal a match against Manchester City instead.At that point, the ball with United’s name in it should have been put back in the bowl. That did not appear to happen, so United did not have a chance to be drawn against the next team, Atlético Madrid. The rest of the names were pulled, and the draw appeared to be concluded.But as a result of the slip-up, UEFA, the European governing body, decided the fairest course was to pull all 16 teams again.UEFA was happy to try to shift the blame for the goof, saying: “Following a technical problem with the software of an external service provider that instructs the officials as to which teams are eligible to play each other, a material error occurred in the draw for the UEFA Champions League round of 16.”After the redraw, Chelsea wound up drawn against Lille, just as they had in the first draw. The other seven matchups were different however: Salzberg-Bayern, Sporting Lisbon-Manchester City, Benfica-Ajax, Atlético Madrid-Manchester United, Villarreal-Juventus, Inter Milan-Liverpool, and P.S.G.-Real Madrid.The team that might be unhappiest with the new draw is Real Madrid, which started with a very winnable match against Benfica, and wound up playing the star-studded lineup of P.S.G. Still, Real leads the Spanish league comfortably and would seem to have every chance to come away with a win.Pep Guardiola, the Manchester City manager, who started with a match against Villarreal and ended with one against Sporting, said: “It was a mistake. These things can happen, to managers, players and UEFA too. It is fair. It would be a mistake not to repeat, there would suspicions.”Matchups in the second-tier Europa League tournament include Barcelona, making an unaccustomed appearance after finishing third in its Champions League group, against Napoli and Porto vs. Lazio.In the new third-tier tournament, the Conference League, with a more eclectic mix of clubs, Leicester City will take on Randers of Denmark. Teams from Israel, Azerbaijan and Norway are also in the last 16.Each of those tournaments was drawn just once. So far. More