World Cup 2022 (Soccer)

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      Twists and Turns: A World Cup Fitness Coach Explains Pregame Warm-Ups

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      In the final hour before a game, teams’ activities can look as random as recess at the local elementary school. But there is order in the chaos.DOHA, Qatar — Watching players perform their pregame warm-ups on the field is one of the more delightful World Cup rituals. They’re skipping, they’re lunging, they’re sashaying. They’re stretching and sprinting. Some are running drills or rocketing balls at goals (or goalkeepers). Others are playing what looks like backyard keep-away, firing one-touch passes around a small circle as two players in the middle dodge and dart to try to win the ball.It can look as random as recess at the local elementary school (albeit if the kids were professional athletes), but there is organization in the chaos.To help us understand what is going on, we turned to Andrew Clark, the high-performance coordinator for Australia’s team, known as the Socceroos. (Currently No. 38 in the FIFA rankings, the team exceeded expectations by placing second in Group D; it will play Argentina on Saturday in the first knockout round.)Clark talked us through the importance of finding the sweet spot between too little and too much pregame preparation, and how to keep the players’ nerves from shredding before the match.This interview has been edited and condensed.What is the goal of the warm-up?The purpose of a warm-up is to prepare the players to perform in the most efficient way, to get them 100 percent ready physically and mentally for the match. There’s a whole lot of detail underneath that of raising body temperature, turning on decision-making and performing the sort of actions that are going to be required in a game. But we have to make sure that we don’t overdo it. We don’t want to overload the players and take away energy that’s needed for the match.Neil Hall/EPA, via ShutterstockDan Mullan/Getty ImagesMatthias Hangst/Getty ImagesWhy can’t you just do the exercises out of sight, inside the stadium?You want to give the players a sense of what they’re about to walk into. Little things like the wind, the temperature, how wet the grass is, what it feels like, the speed of the pitch. Where are the shadows on the field? Also, just being there and feeling the atmosphere in the stadium gives them energy and takes away a bit of their anxiety.All the players — the starting lineup as well as the substitutes — are out there, but they’re doing different things.We’ve got 26 players, but only 11 players can play, plus five players off the bench. For the players on the bench, we’re trying to make sure they’re ready in case they’re called at short notice during the match. But they’re warming up 50 minutes before kickoff, and it might be nearly two hours before they enter the field. What we need is basically just to make sure their systems are starting to turn on, their core temperature is up, their spine is activated.And then those players will go off and do something more relaxed, like the little circle groups that you see. If you push them too hard, they can go over the top, and you can actually kill their performance. So it’s very important that we keep them calm and relaxed.In a tournament situation, it’s a constant struggle to try to expose the players who aren’t playing in the matches to enough training. All of them have put in all the work to get to this point. And emotionally it’s difficult. They’re not getting the same gratification as the guy who scores the winner. We work really hard to make sure that we don’t neglect them, that we give them the best opportunity when the time comes.Fabrizio Bensch/ReutersWhat about the starting players?They’re going through a process of turning their body on and slowly working through the dynamic ranges of motion that they’ll be required to perform in the match. Then they’ll do some maximum-velocity type activities.And then we go into a game-based situation where it becomes spatial and decision making. Usually it’s some sort of position game — 5 versus 5, plus one spare player, or 4 versus 4, plus 3. We want to make sure they’re starting to make decisions similar to what they’re doing in the game.What about when they seem to be all doing different things?After that, you start to see things that are specific to certain players. Some players are finishing on goal, some players are crossing. We have our own ideas, but we take guidance from what a player needs in those last few minutes. We know what a central defender needs; we know what a midfielder needs, and we design activities that allow them to do that.The last thing we do is come together and do something as explosive as possible just to finish off. It’s called post-activation potentiation, or PAP, and it involves an excitation of the neuromuscular system. They walk into the changing room fully activated, fully charged and ready to start the game.What do they do back in the locker room, after the warm-up but before the game begins?There’s still 15 minutes to the match, so the challenge for a player is filling that 15-minute gap. It’s a chance to refuel, it’s a chance to go through some final checks, put their pads on, say a few words.Matthias Hangst/Getty ImagesWhat if they’re super-nervous — or not nervous enough?Once we’re spread out on the field, the stadium swallows up communication, so this is the time everyone can talk. You have to understand how they’re feeling, whether they need a rocket or whether, OK, there’s a lot of anxiety in this group, we need to be very calm. They can be either overstimulated or under-stimulated, and we try to balance that out, to get back to the midpoint where people are nice and stable and ready to perform their best.There’s less pressure on you than on teams from places like Argentina and Brazil. Does that make it any easier?Because of the weight of expectation placed on them, other teams can be overly anxious about needing to beat us. We see that as an opportunity. We prey on their anxiety. More

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      A chaotic end to the group stage sends Brazil and Switzerland to the knockout round.

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      The chaos that governed the first three days of World Cup group-stage finales did not bypass Group G on Friday so much as churn around the periphery of its two matches, swooping in to cause mayhem in torrents and spurts before leaving as quickly as it arrived.As Brazil’s reserves clashed with Cameroon, Serbia and Switzerland tussled for the group’s final qualification spot. That match included a paroxysm of goals — five in 30 minutes — and then a barren stretch that taunted both teams, one more than another. When it was over, Switzerland had won, 3-2, and advanced to the knockout stage, where it will face the Group H winner Portugal on Tuesday. The Swiss overcame a first-half deficit behind Breel Embolo’s equalizer just before halftime and then a decisive strike in the 48th minute by Remo Freuler. A tense matchup between rivals Switzerland and Serbia ended with a Swiss comeback, and elimination for the Serbs.Javier Soriano/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAs Serbia rued its missed opportunity — its next appearance in the Round of 16 as an independent nation will be its first — the Swiss celebrated a third consecutive trip to the knockout round. They have become a regular presence there, though not quite as much as Brazil, which tends to forward its mail there every four years. Its match against Cameroon bordered on anticlimax. Already qualified, Brazil was going to top Group G barring a zany turn of events, which wasn’t totally out of the realm of possibility. So its manager, Tite, rested nine starters — from Richarlison to Thiago Silva, Casemiro to Vinicius Junior — and played only two regulars, Fred and Eder Militao. It was not a punitive measure; Tite recognized that, with a swift turnaround before Brazil’s next match, he wanted a full complement, or close to it, available against South Korea on Monday. Brazil earned the majority of chances, and it dominated possession, but it also lacked a certain precision in the attacking third. It tried to score, and it failed, turned away by the dazzling Cameroon goalkeeper Devis Epassy, who was everywhere he needed to be and nowhere he wasn’t. To qualify, the Indomitable Lions needed more help than could reasonably have been expected, and still, that help nearly arrived: Vincent Aboubakar guided in the decisive goal deep into second-half stoppage time, putting Cameroon ahead, by 1-0, for the only, and final, time. But it needed another goal, which Aboubakar apparently did not realize. He ripped off his shirt in celebration, earning an automatic yellow card — his second — and was sent off.In snapping Brazil’s 17-game unbeaten streak in World Cup group-stage play, the Indomitable Lions became the first team to register a shot on target against it at this World Cup, and also the first to score. They also, and file this away for a pub quiz, became the first African team to beat Brazil at a World Cup. But nothing more. More

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      The U.S. World Cup Team Is Notably Diverse, but the Pipeline Needs Help

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      In some ways, things haven’t changed much in American soccer.You may well have never heard of him, but Desmond Armstrong is a pioneer. In 1990, he became the first African American to represent the United States in a World Cup game.Never mind that the United States, then returning to the World Cup after a four-decade hiatus, was humbled by Czechoslovakia in a 5-1 loss. By starting as a defender for the Americans that June day in Italy, Armstrong signaled that his home country could produce elite players who weren’t white.Sadly, with a few exceptions, his trailblazing role did not get much attention in the press that day. Nor did it in the run-up to the tournament, or when the American team played Italy to a near draw in group stage play days later. Another talented Black player, Jimmy Banks, also broke ground on the 1990 U.S. team, subbing in for his initial action during the game against the Czechs. Banks’s part as a breaker of norms was similarly overlooked.Color Armstrong unsurprised.“The disregard was commonplace from the media back then,” Armstrong told me this week when we discussed the omissions. He is 58 now, still fit and trim, and running a grass roots youth soccer club in Nashville.“It was sort of like, Jimmy and I are on the team, but aside from the team making history since the U.S. hadn’t been in the Cup in 40 years, we are also making history,” he said. “It’s just that what we were doing was something that didn’t go acknowledged by many people.”“We were recognized as a footnote, if at all.”Armstrong, right, vying for the ball during the FIFA World Cup match between Italy and the United States in 1990.Chris Smith/Popperfoto via Getty ImagesArmstrong and Banks, who died in 2019 after battling pancreatic cancer, deserve our acknowledgment, respect and appreciation.A Brief Guide to the 2022 World CupCard 1 of 9What is the World Cup? More

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      How South Korea Knocked Uruguay Out of the World Cup

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      AL WAKRAH, Qatar — With each stuttering step, the goal staring back at Andre Ayew seemed to get a little smaller. Ayew, Ghana’s most experienced player, had taken it upon himself to take a crucial penalty against Uruguay, to exorcise the demons of 12 years ago, the last time Ghana had a crucial penalty to advance in the World Cup against Uruguay.But history repeated itself. Ayew missed.Ayew’s tame penalty was easily saved by goalkeeper Sergio Rochet, and Uruguay soon scored twice, and though it was still early, Ayew’s miss effectively sealed the end of Ghana’s journey. Instead of becoming the third African team to reach the knockout round, an achievement that would have been a first in the tournament’s near 100-year history, Ghana is out.The bad news for Uruguay? It is out, too. On a path to finishing second in the group with only minutes remaining against Ghana, Uruguay got the worst goal possible: Korea had scored a late goal to beat Portugal in a game played simultaneously about 14 miles away.That score pushed the Koreans into a tie with the Uruguayans in the standings, and tied with them on goal difference. Uruguay’s last hope was to use about seven minutes of injury time to find the third goal that would push it through. It never came.Hwang Hee-chan scored a goal for Korea in stoppage time, eliminating Uruguay while pushing Korea through to the knockout rounds.Alex Grimm/Getty ImagesInstead, it joined Ghana in leaving the tournament in torment, the latest victims in yet another wild denouement for a tournament that is becoming accustomed to dramatic plot twists.Ghana could have gone through with just a tie, having started the day in second place, but in Uruguay it came up against an opponent that continues to haunt the dreams of millions of soccer fans in the West African country. And once again, 12 years after his handball had helped Uruguay eliminate Ghana from a World Cup, it was Luis Suárez who proved to be Ghana’s tormentor.A Brief Guide to the 2022 World CupCard 1 of 9What is the World Cup? More

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      How Japan’s Win Over Spain Knocked Germany Out of the World Cup

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      AL RAYYAN, Qatar — The 11 Japanese players on the field were fighting back every Spanish threat and counting every tick of the clock. The substitutes stood on the sideline, arms locked, ready to rush the field. The fans beat a drum, and it felt like a quickening heartbeat.The whistle blew, and Japan had done it: It had upset another European soccer heavyweight, turned its four-team group inside out, and advanced to the round of 16.And Spain, knowing the tiebreaker scenarios and tracking what was happening 30 miles away in a game between Germany and Costa Rica, breathed a collective sigh of relief. It, too, had advanced from Group E, even after a 2-1 defeat at Khalifa International Stadium.Germany won its match but lost its hope. The Germans, the 2014 World Cup champions, were stunningly eliminated from the tournament before the round of 16 for the second time in a row. This time, Germany was undone by its own middling play over three games and the ruthless cruelty of group-stage math.At halftime of Thursday’s Group E games, which were played simultaneously, it looked as if Germany and Spain were going to move on. Minutes later, it looked as if it would be Japan and Costa Rica, after each scored two quick goals to take second-half leads.None of it was certain, though, until the games ended about 40 minutes later, and almost at the same time.The dizzying in-game what-ifs reinforced a quadrennial truism: The simultaneous group-stage finales provide what might be the greatest drama of the tournament.A Brief Guide to the 2022 World CupCard 1 of 9What is the World Cup? More

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      Belgium’s Golden Generation Reaches the End as Croatia and Morocco Move On

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      AL RAYYAN, Qatar — After the final whistle of a scoreless draw between the golden generations of two small European nations’ soccer teams, the end came for one of them. Eras in soccer last only so long, injuries and age catching up to all.The tie was enough for Croatia to advance to the knockout stage of this World Cup. Its players, several of whom were on the field when Croatia lost the 2018 World Cup final in Russia, will get to play at least one more game in Qatar. They hugged and slapped hands after Thursday’s game ended at Ahmad bin Ali Stadium.But Belgium — a team that rose to new heights, and spent several years atop the world rankings and finishing third in 2018 — will go home. Once expected to contend for a World Cup title during an era in which it was able to call upon some of the world’s best players at several positions — goalkeeper, midfielder, forward — Belgium instead never won a major international title, or even reached a final. Now, its stars are unlikely to play together again. Most of Belgium’s top players are in their early to mid-30s. This trip to Qatar was their final collective shot.“A huge disappointment for us,” Belgium Coach Roberto Martínez said.After the game, Romelu Lukaku, 29, Belgium’s career leading scorer, was moved to tears and consoled by teammates on the sidelines. Axel Witsel, 33, a midfielder, collapsed to the ground, as did the 33-year-old defender Toby Alderweireld. Kevin De Bruyne, 31, a midfielder widely considered one of the best players in the world, walked around saying his goodbyes.Martínez, Belgium’s coach since 2016, later admitted that he hugged everyone because it was to be his final game as the team’s leader.A Brief Guide to the 2022 World CupCard 1 of 9What is the World Cup? More

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      Referee Stéphanie Frappart Will Lead First All-Woman Team at World Cup

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      Some 92 years after the first World Cup game was held in Uruguay, Stéphanie Frappart is set to become the first woman to be the lead referee during a men’s match at the tournament. Frappart, a French referee, has been appointed to a refereeing crew of all women during a decisive group stage game between Costa Rica and Germany on Thursday.Frappart, 38, will lead alongside Neuza Back of Brazil and Mexico’s Karen Diaz Medina. It is a barrier-breaking moment which both coaches welcomed and suggested was overdue.“I trust her 100 percent,” Germany’s manager, Hansi Flick, said of Frappart’s appointment. “I think she deserves to be here due to her performance and achievements.”Costa Rica’s manager, Luis Fernando Suárez, said the same during his prematch news conference.“I am a great admirer of everything women have conquered,” he said. “And I like that they want to keep conquering things. And this is another step forward, especially in this sport, which is a very macho.”Frappart told French reporters she considered her selection as lead referee “a surprise.” Still, she has had a stellar career for nearly two decades. A native of Le Plessis-Bouchard, a remote town in the far north of the Paris region, she officiated her first game in 2003 at age 19 — a women’s match between the Henin-Beaumont F.C. and La Roche-sur-Yon. Within two decades, she was overseeing a Women’s World Cup final.Since then, she climbed the ladder like no woman before her, racking up accolades. In 2014, she became the first woman to be lead referee during a men’s Ligue 2 game, in France’s second division. She then refereed games in men’s Ligue 1, during international friendlies and in the Champions League.On Aug. 14, 2019, Frappart also became the first woman to referee the UEFA Super Cup between Chelsea and Liverpool. After the game, Jürgen Klopp, the Liverpool coach, praised her performance.“If we would have played like they whistled, then we would have won, 6-0,” he said.Frappart’s also refereed the Women’s World Cup final in 2019, when the United States beat the Netherlands to cap a tournament that was a major public forum for the U.S. team’s fight for equal pay and treatment from its national federation.Pierluigi Collina, the chairman of the FIFA referee committee who is known for being tough on colleagues, has high praise for Frappart. “I hope that there will be more Frapparts in the future and that this will no longer constitute an oddity or news story,” Collina told the Italian press in 2021. At the Globe Soccer Awards in 2019, Frappart won an award as best referee and Collina handed her the trophy.Frappart told French reporters that she was “aware” that her presence in the tournament is “going to inspire.” But she would prefer to let her whistle do the talking.“I don’t want to be judged differently because of my gender but because of my refereeing skills,” she said.In Qatar, Stephanie Frappart has already officiated as fourth referee for two matches during the group phase, when Mexico faced Poland and Portugal played Ghana. More

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      Pulisic Is Recovering but Still Uncertain on US vs Netherlands

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      DOHA, Qatar — Christian Pulisic was happy to talk about what happened leading up to the goal he scored on Tuesday that carried the United States into the round of 16 at the World Cup.He was happy to talk about the ride to the hospital after colliding with Iran’s goalie, about how during that journey he followed the rest of the game on a trainer’s cellphone, and about the chances — not 100 percent, he said Thursday — that he would be available to play when the United States faces the Netherlands on Saturday.What he was far less comfortable talking about, as he stared out into the faces of at least 100 journalists, were the details of where he had been injured. U.S. Soccer has labeled Pulisic’s injury a “pelvic contusion.” Asked by a reporter to clarify what that meant, Pulisic took a long pause.“I mean,” he said, “it’s a pelvic contusion, you know?” The pelvic bone, he added, “is there for a reason, and I hit it well.”The specifics hardly matter. What does matter, at least for the United States, is that Pulisic admitted he was not sure he would be physically capable of going through a full training session with his teammates Thursday, 48 hours before they play the biggest game of their lives.A Brief Guide to the 2022 World CupCard 1 of 9What is the World Cup? More