World Cup 2022 (Soccer)

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      World Cup Dreams, Gone in an Instant

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      For hundreds of the world’s best players, injury is the fear shadowing every step, every turn, every tackle as the World Cup looms.LEEDS, England — For a second, Aleksandar Mitrovic looked panicked. He slumped onto his back on the Elland Road turf, his face a grimace, his hands covering his eyes. It was not immediately apparent what had happened: Perhaps his ankle had jarred, or his knee twisted, or a hamstring popped.Fulham’s medical team rushed onto the field. Marco Silva, the club’s coach, has been “managing” his striker’s fitness for weeks, ever since Mitrovic picked up an injury while away on international duty with Serbia. He was taken off early in a defeat against Newcastle. He missed a game with Bournemouth altogether. He has admitted to playing in “a lot of pain.”Now Mitrovic lay prone for no more than a minute, patiently acquiescing, as the doctors rotated his foot and gingerly stretched his knee. Cautiously, he stood up, doing all he could to put as little weight as possible on his left leg. Watch enough soccer and, after a while, it becomes easier to tell when a player is exaggerating for effect. Mitrovic’s eyes, fretful and wide, made it clear that he was sincere.He would not, it is fair to say, just have been worrying about missing the rest of Fulham’s victory over Leeds, or the frustration of the possibility of a couple of weeks on the sidelines.His thoughts would, instead, have rushed — unbidden and irresistible — to the worst-case scenario. The opening game of the World Cup is barely three weeks away. Coaches will start to name squads, even preliminary ones, in the next two weeks. Any setback now, any pull or strain or tear or crack, might cost a player their place.Mitrovic, like a few hundred others, would have wondered immediately if this was the moment he lost his World Cup.Aleksandar Mitrovic got an injury scare at Leeds. Others have experienced the worst.Craig Brough/ReutersIn the end, there was no reason to worry. The 28-year-old Mitrovic — who will, all being well, act as the spearhead of Serbia’s attack in Qatar — took a little while to satisfy himself that he was not taking any risks, and then threw himself back into the fray. Late on, conscious of the striker’s value, Silva withdrew him, just in case.Others have not been so fortunate. Qatar 2022’s absentee list is already a substantial one. France will not be able to call on N’Golo Kanté. Lucas Hernández, Paul Pogba and Raphaël Varane may yet miss out, too. Argentina will be without Paulo Dybala. Portugal will not have Diogo Jota in its ranks. Uruguay will have to cope without Ronald Aráujo.There are doubts, too, over many more: Marcelo Brozovic and Ángel Di María and so many English right backs that Trent Alexander-Arnold, the Liverpool ingénue so inexperienced that he has apparently yet to learn crucial skills like “tackling,” might even get to play.There is nothing unusual about that, of course. True, the World Cup has never before happened in the middle of the European season; FIFA, in a rare example of what might, in another organization, be called wisdom, has never previously thought to ask players to go straight from the blood and thunder of the domestic schedule into an era-defining international tournament with only six days to acclimatize.A thigh injury has made Leroy Sané a fitness concern for Germany.Christof Stache/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBut playing the World Cup in its traditional July slot did not make players immune from injury; the three-week firewall between the end of the European season and the start of the tournament did not possess any curative power. In World Cup years, those players aspiring to represent their nations have always had to weigh the risks and rewards as the club campaign reached its climax. Few previous tournaments, if any, have been played with a full contingent of stars.There are, though, a couple of differences this year. The most obvious is the sheer number of games. Ordinarily, by April and May, most teams are only playing once a week; it is only the select few, competing not only in their domestic tournaments but in the late stages of European competitions, that face the prospect of matches every three days.Read More on the 2022 World CupLavish Spending: No expense has been spared in putting on a show in Qatar. But the tournament is a feeling that money can’t buy, our soccer correspondent writes.United States: The American men’s soccer team has cycled through strikers during the qualifying period. It needs to settle on one before heading to Qatar.Brazil: As the team begins its quest for a sixth World Cup, it appears to have the resources needed to succeed — though Neymar still shoulders much of the load.Sticker Shock: In Argentina, the prospect of Lionel Messi’s last World Cup has helped feed a white-hot market for a beloved collectible, featuring long lines, surging prices and, briefly, government intervention.This time around, because of the squeeze on the calendar created by the looming hulk of Qatar, everyone appears to be playing constantly. That means players not only have more chances to get injured, but find themselves more susceptible to it. There is no time to rest, to recuperate, to rehabilitate. Sinews are permanently strained, bodies forever on the edge.Manchester United defender Raphaël Varane is one of a handful of France players who will, or could, miss the World Cup through an untimely injury.Daniel Hambury/EPA, via ShutterstockThe second difference is a little less easily quantified. Few players would admit that, as the season reaches its conclusion, they dial back their intensity just a little, conserving their energies for a tournament still a couple of months away. That, after all, sounds troublingly close to confessing to coasting.And yet it seems impossible that the majority — those not competing for trophies or jostling for European positions or to avoid relegation — would not do just that. It is too easy to overestimate the margins in elite soccer, to assume that everything can be measured in substantial, chunky percentage blocks.In reality, of course, the differences are so slender as to be barely perceptible. A player with the World Cup at the back of their mind does not run at half-speed, or refuse to tackle; they simply do not burn further into the red when their body is at the limit. They do not shirk a tackle, but they may not go in with quite as much force, or to quite the same extent. They shave the edges.That is not quite so easily done when the season is still taking shape, and ambition remains more potent than reality. Fulham sits seventh in the Premier League, after all, and is in the tick of the battle for a place in the Europa League. The consequences of not making that sprint, of not going for that tackle, could yet be considerable. This is a time when taking risks still comes with a reward.Paulo Dybala could miss the World Cup after he was injured in a game for Roma.Fabio Frustaci/EPA, via ShutterstockThat may not be how everyone sees it, of course. This season is developing to be a reasonably curious one, to say the least. It is not just that Fulham sits seventh in the Premier League. It is that Liverpool appears to be playing while mired in treacle, and Tottenham seems underpowered, and Chelsea and Manchester United have both come across as somehow inhibited at various times.It is that Union Berlin is top of the Bundesliga, with even mighty Bayern Munich trailing in its wake, and with Borussia Dortmund nowhere to be seen. It is that Juventus and Inter Milan have fallen by the wayside in Italy already, cast aside by a rampant Napoli. It is that Barcelona and Atlético Madrid are already out of the Champions League, Spain left with just one representative in a tournament it has dominated for a decade.All of this might just be the curiosities that always come with a new campaign, the vicissitudes of fate, the changing of the seasons. Each of those stories, after all, has its own, deep roots. Perhaps it is all just noise.Or it might be that, on some level, nobody wants to be Kanté, or Jota, or Dybala. They do not even, if they can help it, want to be Mitrovic. And so the typical strangeness of the new season has become more pronounced.It might be that, for the last couple of months, what has unfurled has been to some extent a phony war, contested by combatants with a different conflict in mind.The Best Player to Watch in EuropeThe season’s breakout hit: Khvicha Kvaratskhelia.Alberto Lingria/ReutersAndrés Carrasco came to closer summing up the experience of watching Khvicha Kvaratskhelia than anyone else. The head of Dinamo Tbilisi’s youth academy was contemplating whether there are any shared characteristics among Georgian attacking players, whether there is a defined national style, when he hit upon the word.Yes, he said, there is something. They tend, to his Barcelona-trained mind, to be just a little bit “anarchic.”Kvaratskhelia has, in his first few weeks at Napoli, become a sensation in both Serie A and the Champions League, not so much for what he does — though his goal return is more than respectable, particularly in a league that prides itself on its parsimony — but for how he does it.At any given moment, Kvaratskhelia does not do what you expect him to do. He makes strange, faintly unsettling choices. He plows on when he should turn back. He shoots when he should pass. He dances through defenders when the road is very clearly closed. And it is that which makes him so refreshing.European soccer is a deeply ordered world. Even those teams who seem to play with a reckless abandon, who appear so freewheeling, so maverick, tend to be playing according to set patterns. Those combinations, those movements that come so easily are in most cases the product of hours of work on the training ground. They are learned by rote, not conjured from the imagination.Kvaratskhelia — for now, at least — stands in opposition to that. He is raw, unfiltered, untamed. Defenders, at first glance, appear to be completely flummoxed by him, as if he is not playing by the established conventions. For much the same reason, many of those who have watched him frequently in Italy are thrilled by him. He is a little dose of anarchy, and European soccer is all the better for it.CorrespondenceIt’s been a while since we’ve had a confession in this section, but Dan Andersen provides the prompt for a fairly major one. It is possible that, despite my job title as chief soccer correspondent, I no longer know what offside is any more.“If Harry Kane is offside,” Dan wrote, referring to the remarkable denouement to Tottenham’s game with Sporting Lisbon on Wednesday, “video technology makes that decision in a nanosecond,” before wondering why, exactly, it took three minutes for someone to work that out.That is a question that I cannot answer, but far more troubling is that — as far as I can tell — Kane was not offside: sure, he was ahead of the last defender, but he was behind the teammate who headed the ball to him. If the ball travels backward, I was taught, there is no offside. I’m in good company, too: Eric Dier evidently learned the same thing.We may, as it turns out, both have been misled. Apparently the trajectory of the ball is irrelevant, and always has been irrelevant. This may, of course, be true: Eric and I may have been laboring under a misapprehension for years. Or it may only be true now, another tweak to a law that has been reshaped to the point of vacuousness in recent years, further evidence for my long-held belief that we all need to sit down and come up with the rules again from scratch.Onside? Offside? Who even knows anymore?Ian Walton/Associated PressJames Waller, meanwhile, wants to take our nostalgia for mud and add to it. “Given drainage systems, the ludicrously waterlogged pitch is largely a disappointing thing of the past,” he wrote. “It may have turned events into a mad lottery but it was undeniably entertaining at times.” Extra points to James for finding that footage on “Bing Video,” rather than YouTube.And finally, David Moulton is seeking clarity, which is something that can be said for all of us, really. “I am confounded by the long downfield kick by goalkeepers,” he wrote. “It is agony to watch, knowing that at best there is a 50 percent chance of success. I mean, why not pass it directly to your own player, with the expectation that they will control the ball at least somewhere past midfield?”The most straightforward answer here is tradition: goalkeepers take long goal kicks because goalkeepers have always taken long goal kicks. It is not, primarily, an attacking move, of course. The long goal kick is manifest fear. The logic behind it is that it is much better, all told, for the ball to be a long way from your goal and as close as possible to the opposition’s.I am, though, intrigued by goal kicks. It is an avowed belief that you can see all of modern soccer in its brilliance and its mania at a goal kick: half of the players clustered around the penalty area, ready to start or resist the press; half a dozen or so more deep inside the other half of the field, awaiting the counter attack; and a great, gaping green space in between, because the one place nobody ever puts a goal kick now is midfield.That’s all for this week. We have good news and bad news for you. This newsletter will, once the World Cup rolls around, be going on hiatus for a month or so. It will, though, be replaced by a daily — that’s right folks, daily — newsletter during the tournament, hopefully guiding you through all of the stories, the games and our coverage of Qatar 2022. You can decide which one is good news and which one is bad for yourselves. More

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      Brazil’s Neymar No Longer Facing Prison After Spain Drops Fraud Charges

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      The Brazilian star, his parents and two former Barcelona presidents had faced the prospect of prison after being accused of corruption and fraud.Neymar, Brazil’s star forward, no longer faces the possibility of being sent to prison after Spanish prosecutors on Friday dropped their charges of fraud and corruption against the soccer player, his parents and several top soccer executives involved in his 2013 transfer to Barcelona.The resolution of Neymar’s case came after two weeks of testimony in a fraud trial in which prosecutors had initially sought a two-year prison term for Neymar, who will lead Brazil’s attack at the World Cup in Qatar next month, and longer sentences for his parents.Just as the two-week trial was coming to a close, however, a prosecutor told the judge hearing the case in Barcelona that in view of the information presented to the court there was not enough evidence that a crime had been committed.The state’s withdrawal, though, may not be the end of the legal drama: The prosecutor suggested that DIS, a Brazilian sports investment company that jointly brought the case, could continue to pursue its claim for millions of dollars in damages in civil court.Neymar’s move to Barcelona from the Brazilian club Santos nearly a decade ago remains one of the most notorious transfers in soccer history. It was only after the transfer was completed when it emerged that his family had reached a secret agreement with the Spanish club months earlier that guaranteed Neymar and his parents 40 million euros (more than $50 million at the time) in a private arrangement.Read More on the 2022 World CupIs Qatar Ready?: As fans prepare to flood the tiny Gulf nation, cranes and loaders are still running hard — as is criticism of Qatar’s human rights record and exploitation of workers.A Free Trip With a Catch: Organizers are providing travel and tickets to hundreds of fans. But only if they promised not to criticize Qatar, and to report people who do.United States: The American men’s soccer team has cycled through strikers during the qualifying period. It needs to settle on one before heading to Qatar.Brazil: As the team begins its quest for a sixth World Cup, it appears to have the resources needed to succeed — though Neymar still shoulders much of the load.DIS, owned by the founders of a supermarket chain, at the time held a 40 percent stake in Neymar’s transfer rights, a share that saw the firm receive 6.8 million euros of the official fee Barcelona eventually agreed to pay Santos. That payday, DIS’s lawyers contend, would have been far higher had Neymar and Barcelona not signed the secret precontract.The trial, which opened only weeks before Brazil’s opening game at the World Cup, brought unwanted attention to Neymar ahead of what could be his last chance to win soccer’s biggest prize. Brazil’s team is among the favorites going into the tournament in Qatar, and his representatives have described the case as a needless distraction. Neymar’s legal team had argued for months that the Spanish case was without merit because private corruption is not a crime in Brazil, where the transfer had taken place.Neymar told the court this month that he had done nothing illegal, and that he had only signed documents presented to him by his father, who manages his career.“My father has always been in charge,” Neymar said in court. “I sign what he tells me to.”Even after all these years Neymar’s move to Barcelona remains a dark chapter in soccer’s frequently opaque $7 billion player trading industry. The details that have emerged in the years since it took place have shed light on how an international cast of investors, agents and other intermediaries profits from the biggest deals, but also how secret side deals — often designed to deliver returns to investors or hide millions of dollars from the tax authorities — have become commonplace.The case’s denouement this week came after the prosecutor told the court, according to Spanish news media reports, that although no violations of Spain’s penal code had been proved, there were indications that other rules, including Brazil’s civil code and FIFA regulations, may have been breached. The prosecutors said, though, that the proper forum for the claims made by DIS was civil court.Lawyers for the defendants, which as well as Neymar and his family include the former Barcelona presidents Sandro Rosell and Josep Maria Bartomeu, are now expected to seek damages and costs from DIS, which will continue pursuing its own damages claim. More

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      M.L.S. Playoff Preview: An L.A. Derby and More Questions Answered

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      Major League Soccer’s playoffs have reached the conference semifinals as the league sprints to finish before the World Cup.Major League Soccer is in a hurry to crown its champion this season, with its final set for Nov. 5 — just over two weeks before the World Cup opens in Qatar. The final sprint, which begins with four quarterfinals this week, includes some marquee matches that will offer some players a final opportunity (or two or three) to impress national team coaches before the final rosters for the World Cup are due in mid-November.This year’s playoffs feature two previous M.L.S. Cup champions (the Los Angeles Galaxy and New York City F.C.) and two teams (Austin F.C. and F.C. Cincinnati) that are making their first appearance in the postseason. But the postseason also has tracked closely with regular-season results: The top four teams in the Western Conference are still alive, as are four of the top five from the East.Philadelphia and Los Angeles F.C., which earned first-round byes by finishing first in their conferences, will enter the postseason at last on Thursday: Philadelphia faces F.C. Cincinnati, and L.A.F.C. hosts its crosstown rival, the Los Angeles Galaxy.On Sunday, New York City F.C., the league’s defending champion, will play C.F. Montreal, and F.C. Dallas will meet Austin F.C. in an all-Texas affair.The conference semifinals, which are single-game elimination matches, start on Thursday and will wrap up on Sunday. The conference finals are scheduled for Oct. 30, and the M.L.S. Cup final is set for Nov. 5 — the earliest date for the game in league history. The final will be played at the home of the finalist with the best regular season record.Read More on the 2022 World CupLavish Spending: No expense has been spared in putting on a show in Qatar. But the tournament is a feeling that money can’t buy, our soccer correspondent writes.United States: The American men’s soccer team has cycled through strikers during the qualifying period. It needs to settle on one before heading to Qatar.Brazil: As the team begins its quest for a sixth World Cup, it appears to have the resources needed to succeed — though Neymar still shoulders much of the load.Sticker Shock: In Argentina, the prospect of Lionel Messi’s last World Cup has helped feed a white-hot market for a beloved collectible, featuring long lines, surging prices and, briefly, government intervention.Here’s a quick catch-up of where things stand.The Battle of Los AngelesL.A.F.C., which won the Supporter’s Shield for posting the league’s best regular-season, will begin what it hopes is a home-field run to M.L.S. Cup on Thursday night, when its hosts the crosstown Los Angeles Galaxy at Banc of California Stadium. The venue has been a formidable challenge for visitors this season: L.A.F.C. went 13-2-2 there this season.L.A.F.C.’s first playoff test, though, like all games in the teams’ nascent rivalry, brings the potential for fireworks. The last time the two Los Angeles teams played against each other in a playoff game was in 2019, when L.A.F.C. won, 5-3, in one of the highest-scoring playoff games in M.L.S. history.Gabriel Pereira and New York City F.C. will be playing away from Yankee Stadium for as long as the Yankees remain in baseball’s playoffs.Mark Smith/USA Today Sports, via ReutersRoad Team F.C.New York City F.C. is trying to become the first team to win consecutive M.L.S. Cups since the Galaxy did it in 2011 and 2012. But unlike L.A.F.C., its path to the final — for now — looks to be a road trip.As long as the Yankees remain alive in Major League Baseball’s playoffs, N.Y.C.F.C. will be unable to play on its regular home field at Yankee Stadium. That proved to be little trouble in the first round, when the team beat Inter Miami, 3-0, at Citi Field in Queens. On Sunday, New York City F.C. will head to Montreal for a conference semifinal.In the quest for another title, N.Y.C.F.C. will count on their pair of Brazilians, Gabriel Pereira and Héber, who each scored eight goals in the regular season, and the potential of a return from injury of Talles Magno. Those three, and midfielder Santiago Rodríguez, have helped fill the offensive hole left by the midseason departure of last season’s leading scorer, the Argentine striker Valentín Castellanos, who joined the Spanish side Girona F.C. on a loan in July.N.Y.C.F.C. has been led since June by an interim coach, Nick Cushing, who took over after Ronny Deila left to join Standard Liège in Belgium. The team wobbled badly after the change, losing seven of nine games in August and September, but it closed the season with three straight wins.Montreal, meanwhile, might be the hottest team in the league: It has lost only once since July.Jesus Ferreira of F.C. Dallas was named this season’s M.L.S. young player of the year. The playoffs can serve as an audition for him to play for the United States in the World Cup.Jerome Miron/USA Today Sports, via ReutersFinal World Cup AuditionsFor some players, the playoffs offer more than just a shot at the M.L.S. Cup title. A number of players also are playing knowing that national team coaches will be watching.One player looking to lock down his spot — and some playing time — ahead of the World Cup is the 21-year-old forward Jesus Ferreira of F.C. Dallas. Ferreira, who was just named this season’s M.L.S. young player of the year, led Dallas with 18 goals in 33 games. He is in contention for a striker role for the United States, but a poor showing in a friendly against Japan in September didn’t help his case. A good run of playoff form, however, might help restore his confidence, and his place in U.S. Coach Gregg Berhalter’s plans.Another American hopeful is N.Y.C.F.C.’s goalkeeper Sean Johnson, who posted 14 shutouts during the regular season and started every game for New York. Johnson has an outside shot at making the roster and going to Qatar, even if he is not likely to be starter.Ismaël Koné, a 20-year-old midfielder for Montreal, is looking to earn a spot on Canada’s national team, which will be returning to the World Cup for the first time since 1986. Koné scored two goals and had five assists for Montreal during the regular season, and he scored a key goal in Montreal’s 2-0 victory over Orlando City in the first round of the playoffs. More

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      Iran Soccer Stars Speak Out on Protests; Group Urges FIFA Ban

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      Some of the country’s most famous players have expressed support for street protests over the death of a young woman. On Thursday, an activist group went further: It asked FIFA to bar Iran from the World Cup.One of the most beloved players in Iran’s soccer history had his family home raided by the authorities after speaking out against the government. At least two other well-known players have been arrested and detained for lending support to the protests that have roiled Iran since the death of a young woman, Mahsa Amini, on Sept. 16.And six weeks before the World Cup in Qatar, the Iranian national team’s star forward has suggested that he and his teammates are subject to what is in effect a gag order, warned that even commenting on the protests might cost them their places on the team. Unable to speak publicly, Iran’s players prepared for their final tuneup game this week in Austria with what amounted to a silent protest instead, covering their jerseys in black jackets during the national anthem.Now, a group that has long campaigned for women and girls to be allowed into stadiums to watch soccer in Iran has urged the game’s global governing body, FIFA, to intervene. In a letter to the soccer body’s president on Thursday, the group called on FIFA to throw Iran’s team out of the World Cup for a “blatant violation” of soccer’s rules on governmental interference.As Iranian football fans, with heavy heart we asked FIFA, due to ongoing human rights violation based on Articles 3-4 of its statutes, immediately expel Iran from #Qatar2022 Worldcup.Open letter to @FIFAcom⬇️#MahsaAmini#مهسا_امینی#banIRfromWorldcup#StandwithIranianWomen pic.twitter.com/b1tbOJR3T2— OpenStadiums (@openStadiums) September 30, 2022
      “The Iranian Football Association is an important ambassador of the Islamic Republic and is acting in line with the repressive regime,” the activist group, Open Stadiums, wrote in a letter to FIFA’s president, Gianni Infantino. “It comes as no surprise, then, that they have prohibited footballers from showing any solidarity with the Iranian citizens’ call for freedom and the victims of the same authorities’ brutal crackdown.The letter asked FIFA “to immediately expel Iran from the World Cup 2022 in Qatar.”FIFA declined to comment on the letter on Thursday.The request to eject Iran was made more in hope than expectation: FIFA is unlikely to eject the team from a tournament for which it has qualified, especially so close to the competition, nor has it shown any effort to pressure Iran with anything more than public statements. A majority of Iranian fans also would oppose to a World Cup ban; many of them revere the national team, which is known as Team Melli, and see it as a representative of the people rather than the government.More on the Protests in IranA Women-Led Uprising: Casting off their legally required head scarves, Iranian women have been at the forefront of the demonstrations, supplying the defining images of defiance.Economic Despair: While Iranians have a range of grievances to choose from, the sorry state of Iran’s economy has been one of the main forces driving the protests.Attacks on Kurds: Iranian officials, who blame Kurdish groups for fomenting some of the protests, have launched a string of attacks against the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq.Power of Protests Wanes: Mass protests like the ones in Iran were once considered a grave threat to even the fiercest autocrat. But their odds of success have plummeted worldwide, a new study shows.But soccer’s leadership could face considerable pressure from the impact of the protests sweeping Iran after the death of Amini, a 22-year-old woman who had been arrested by the country’s morality police; any effort by the government to silence the national team’s players; and repercussions against current and former players who have publicly supported the protests.At Iran’s game last week in St. Pölten, Austria, security officers ejected several fans who had brought signs bearing the picture of Mahsa Amini into the stands.Christian Bruna/EPA, via ShutterstockInfantino visited Tehran in 2018 to watch the final of the Asian Champions League, a game for which a small group of women was permitted to enter the city’s Azadi Stadium. In the months that followed, he claimed that FIFA had made “repeated calls” to the Iranian authorities to “address the unacceptable situation” of women not being permitted to enter stadiums.“Our position is firm and clear,” Infantino said in 2019, after a fan set herself on fire outside a courthouse where she faced being jailed for having attended a game. “Women have to be allowed into football stadiums in Iran.” He restated that position as recently as last year, when he praised the work of the president of Iran’s federation after a meeting in Doha.Open Stadiums on Thursday said it had concluded that “these were all empty words and promises.” In March, for example, women holding tickets to a match in the northeastern city of Mashhad were denied entry when they tried to enter the stadium. Some were attacked with pepper spray by security officers.“Nothing has changed,” the group wrote to Infantino. “Iranian women remain locked out of our beautiful game, and we are systematically repressed when we try to enter stadiums.” The group accused Infantino and FIFA of allowing a “gross human rights violation” to happen with its “protection and approval.”Female protesters burned their legally required head scarves and cut their hair to protest the death of Mahsa Amini, who died in police custody after being arrested for failing to cover her hair modestly enough.Getty ImagesSeveral of the country’s most famous players, including Ali Daei — for years the leading scorer in international soccer history — have criticized the government both for Amini’s death and the subsequent repression of protests. “Solve the problems of the Iranian people rather than using repression, violence and arrests,” Daei wrote on Instagram.One of the most prominent soccer voices to speak out has been Ali Karimi, once of Bayern Munich and arguably the most successful Iranian player of all time. Karimi, now 43, has for days used his social media feeds — including his Instagram account, which has almost 13 million followers — to criticize the government; to share footage of the protests and the violent response of the police; and even to advise his followers on how to circumvent blocks on Iranian internet access.Government officials and their allies have called for Karimi to be arrested, and it has been reported that state television is under instructions not to mention either him or his former teammate, Daei, by name.On Monday night, Karimi’s house in the Tehran suburb of Lavasan was seized by the authorities, with a large concrete block placed at its entrance. Other properties were also reported to have been “sealed.” In response, more than a million Iranians added their names to a petition circulating on social media that said, “I stand with Ali Karimi.”Karimi, now believed to be in the United Arab Emirates, responded on Instagram that “a house without soil is worthless.”Iran’s best player, Sardar Azmoun, expressed support on Instagram for the protests in Iran before deleting the post. He suggested that Iranian officials had barred the team from commenting.Jakub Sukup/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesHis successors on the national team say they have not been able to be quite so outspoken. Sardar Azmoun, a striker with the German side Bayer Leverkusen, suggested in an Instagram post that “national team rules” prevented players from expressing their views on the protest before insisting that he would willingly “sacrifice” his place at the World Cup for “one hair on the heads of Iranian women.”A number of other players posted similar messages. A few hours later, they had all been deleted. Some players “blacked out” their social media accounts, while Azmoun — known as the Iranian Messi and widely considered his country’s best player — removed all imagery from his Instagram feed for several days. When images reappeared on Wednesday, the account featured a carefully worded message of support for Iran’s women.The unease within the national team — which has spent the past two weeks in Austria on a pre-World Cup training camp — became clear before a game with Senegal on Tuesday. At the request of the Iranian authorities, no fans had been allowed to access the stadium, though a group of protesters had gathered outside. As the Iranian anthem played, and the protesters shouts carried through the air, the players remained impassive, the flag on their jerseys hidden beneath thick black coats.The country’s authorities have insisted that they will “take action against the celebrities who fan the flames of the riots,” the INSA news agency reported, attributing the comments to Tehran’s provincial governor, Mohsen Mansouri.On Thursday, they followed through on the threat. State news agencies confirmed that Hossein Mahini, a defender who had been part of Iran’s squad at the 2014 World Cup and had most recently been playing for Saipa, a second-division team in Tehran, had been arrested for “supporting and encouraging riots on his social media pages.”About 24 hours later, Azmoun was back on Instagram. In a new post that was both a subtle challenge to the national team’s gag order and a signal of his solidarity, he posted an image of Mahini underneath a large blue heart. More

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      The World Cup Is a Feeling, One That Money Can’t Buy

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      The tournament is, at heart, a feeling, and FIFA and Qatar may be forgetting that no amount of spending is a substitute.The good news is that it’s a yes from the gigantic, fire-breathing spider. It is hard, after all, to imagine a World Cup without its finest tradition: 50 tons of decommissioned crane arranged into the shape of a monstrous arachnid, pumped full of highly flammable fuel and then stocked with hopefully less flammable D.J.s.The spider will form the centerpiece of one of the cultural highlights of this fall’s World Cup in Qatar: a monthlong electronic music festival called the Arcadia Spectacular, staged just south of Doha and boasting what the promotional material calls an “electrifying atmosphere, extraordinary sculpted stages and the most immersive shows on earth.”The idea has been modeled, fairly transparently, on England’s Glastonbury Festival — the spider itself has been a regular feature there for a decade — and, though it was only announced at a relatively late stage in preparations for the World Cup, organizers expect it to draw some 200,000 fans. Each and every one of them should be warned: They will, it turns out, be “mesmerized late into the night.”The spider, though, will not be alone, which presumably can be a problem when you are a nightmarish metallic behemoth.The World Cup’s newest entrant: the Glastonbury Festival’s fire-breathing, laser-shooting spider.Dylan Martinez/ReutersThe Arcadia Spectacular is not the only music festival to be tacked on to Qatar 2022. There will be another at Al Wakrah, hosted by a company called MDLBEAST: you can tell it will be cutting-edge, because it’s in block capital letters and also has done away with some of its vowels, the most old-fashioned type of letter.Those events, though, form only a part of the entertainment tapestry on offer to fans over the course of the tournament. There is Al Maha Island, with its ice-skating rink, its circus and its theme park; Lusail, the first-ever city built for a World Cup, where the central boulevard will feature “vehicle parades” and futuristic light shows; the Doha Corniche, four miles of roving street performers and “carnival atmosphere”; and, of course, the beach clubs, the fan park and, around every stadium for every game, the catchily named “Last Mile Cultural Activation.”Qatar, in other words, has been as good as its word: It promised it would put on a show, and it has delivered. No expense has been spared. No stone has been left unturned. Its plans for what might be termed the tournament experience are grand, and ambitious, and spectacular.It is just a shame that they are not, in any way, reflective of what fans want or need, and that they so betray such a fundamental misunderstanding — on the part of both the local organizers and, more damningly, FIFA itself — of what it is that makes a World Cup special.It is not the soccer that makes the World Cup, not really. There are times that the games are breathtaking and nail-biting and heartbreaking, of course, when what happens on the field is etched on to the collective memory like a bright, lasting tattoo or an aching scar. But more often it is something more ethereal. The World Cup, at heart, is a feeling.Read More on the 2022 World CupLavish Spending: No expense has been spared in putting on a show in Qatar. But the tournament is a feeling that money can’t buy, our soccer correspondent writes.A New Flash Point: An effort by European soccer federations to highlight gay rights with rainbow armbands during the World Cup could force a collision between FIFA rules and social campaigns.United States: The American men’s soccer team has cycled through strikers during the qualifying period. It needs to settle on one before heading to Qatar.Brazil: As the team begins its quest for a sixth World Cup, it appears to have the resources needed to succeed — though Neymar still shoulders much of the load.The most memorable thing about Russia, four years ago, for example, was not the French team that emerged victorious. It was not the Croatia side that carried a nation of five million to the cusp of ultimate glory. It was not even the sight of Germany, the reigning champion, crashing out in the group stage, or the baffling self-immolation of Spain.No, what made Russia 2018 — particularly now, given all that has happened, given how unreal that month in the sun now feels — was Nikolskaya, the street in central Moscow that became a hub for fans from all over the world, full of flags and bunting and song. It was the sight of thousands upon thousands of Peruvians on the streets of Saransk, a red sash across their hearts. It was the sense that, even in a vast land of steppe and mountain and forest, you were never more than six feet from a Colombian.The glittering lights and teeming crowds on Nikolskaya Street helped bring Russia’s World Cup to life. Sergei Ilnitsky/EPA, via ShutterstockThat joy, that sense of togetherness, does not just touch those in attendance. It spreads like a smile to the many, many more watching at home. It provides not only the soundtrack to the games but the backdrop, too. It turns stadiums from sterile bowls into something filled with life. It takes a mere soccer tournament and turns it into an event. It cannot be forced. It cannot be commanded into an existence. It has to gestate, develop, ferment.There are many reasons to criticize the idea of a World Cup in Qatar. First and foremost, there are the ongoing concerns about human rights, the queasy amorality of a tournament built by and on indentured labor. There is the troubling uncertainty, too, over quite how welcome gay fans might be, over whether this truly will be a tournament for everyone.But though it pales in significance to those issues, it is worth pausing to consider what sort of World Cup this might be, too, because it is there that it is possible to glimpse most clearly not only who Qatar — and particularly FIFA — thinks the world’s biggest sporting event is for, but what it is.It was in August, three months before the tournament was scheduled to start, that Qatar announced the Arcadia Spectacular, complete with its horrifying steel tarantula. It seemed odd to unveil such a major addition to the slate at such short notice, but there has been a distinctly last-minute air to much of the World Cup. It is as if all of the effort, all of the energy, was poured into securing the tournament and building the stadiums, so that only at the last moment did anyone wonder about all the people who might turn up to watch.Nowhere is that clearer than in the accommodations that are supposed to house the million or so fans expected to attend in November and December. Even now, less than two months out, not all of the lodging being prepared for the tournament is available to book, for the very good reason that not all of it is ready.And then there is the cost. The tournament’s organizers insist that Qatar has a “comfortable inventory for fans”: there will, they say, be “up to” 130,000 rooms to house fans every night of the tournament. There is “something to suit everyone,” too, with options ranging from hotels to villas and apartments and on to cruise ships, luxury tents, simple cabins and even camper vans. The cheapest option is “as low as $80 per room per night,” a spokesman for the Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy said.Luxury hotels like the one that will host Mexico’s team are out of reach for most fans.Karim Jaafar/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWhile that is true, it is not quite clear what that $80 buys you. Several organizations representing fan interests harbor significant doubts about what sort of facilities will be on offer in the cabin parks. It is not yet clear, one representative said, if those staying in the parks will be able to watch games on television, or quite how they would access food and water. (The Supreme Committee insists that there will be food trucks at each of the sites.)Nor is it entirely obvious quite what proportion of the available accommodation could be counted as “suitable for the budget-conscious traveler,” as the website of the Qatar Accommodation Agency, the central portal for booking rooms in Qatar during the tournament, puts it. (The Supreme Committee did not disclose, when asked, what percentage of the available rooms in Qatar for the tournament might be considered relatively low-cost.)There are, currently, apartments available for $102 per person, per night, for certain dates, though they come with a warning that availability is running low. Miss out on them and the price creeps up quickly. Other options start at $300 a night. A luxury tent goes for more than $400. A berth on a cruise ship starts at around $500. Hotels can stretch into the thousands of dollars for a single night.It is not unusual, of course, for prices to soar during a major event. Just as they might at the Champions League final, say, or at the Super Bowl, fans expect to be gouged to some extent when they choose — and it is important to remember that it is a choice — to attend. The price of flights goes up almost instantaneously. A premium is added to hotel rooms. Private renters spot an opportunity. There is nothing quite like sports for a grand celebration of capitalism at its most rapacious.But while that problem is certainly not unique to Qatar, it is inarguably more pronounced. South Africa and Brazil and Russia could draw on an existing network of cheap hostels and midrange hotels, as well as private homes available on Airbnb.Their prices spiked, too, of course, and the photos — from bitter personal experience — did not always tally with the reality, but it was possible to attend all of those tournaments on a relative budget. The more adventurous could hire a van, or pitch a tent, or squeeze into a hotel room with far more friends than is advisable.None of those options are available in Qatar. The existing hotel infrastructure is almost exclusively luxury. Many of the hotels that have been built for the tournament, bafflingly, are the same. The few hostels seem to be booked up. Belatedly, the authorities have permitted Qatari residents to rent out their homes privately, but doing so at the last minute does not exactly scream “low cost.”A suite inside Al Thumama Stadium is built for a certain class of World Cup fan.Mohammed Dabbous/ReutersThis is the World Cup as Qatar envisages it, and seemingly as FIFA does, too: a premium product, a lifestyle experience that can be acquired at a certain price point, a playground for the corporate class, the itinerant rich, the luxury traveler. It is an event designed by consultants, for consultants, the sort of place in which a gigantic, fire-breathing spider is hired to disguise in spectacle the absence of sensation.And this World Cup will, sadly, be poorer for it. A carnival atmosphere is not something that can be commanded into existence. It is not possible to take all of the stages and sets and logistics of Glastonbury and simply recreate them somewhere else, just as it is not possible to take the organic, authentic melting of thousands of fans from around the world and replace it with a series of “cultural events” and “sponsor activations.”What makes the World Cup, what always makes the World Cup, are the people. Not the ones on the field, not even the ones in the stands, but the ones who come just to be there, just to sample it, to add color and sound and joy.It is hard not to worry that many of those fans will have been priced out of Qatar, or excluded by virtue of not being allowed into the country without a ticket for a game, and that with them the feeling will change, turning the tournament into an ersatz version of itself, a tribute to all the things money can buy — up to an including a flame-throwing spider — and all of the things that it cannot.CorrespondenceSpeaking of all the things that money can buy, Thomas Stratford has been wondering about Graham Potter. “If the main reason for introducing the transfer window in European soccer was to provide greater stability for clubs, what’s the rationale for excluding managers from a similar system?” Thomas asks.There is, as we all know, only one thing worse than a bandwagon-jumper, and that is a bandwagon-jumper who then claims not only to have built the bandwagon, but invented the concept of motion. So I would hope that you would believe me when I say that this is something I have advocated for a while: There absolutely should be only one window in the season in which you can change managers.Man in the news: Graham Potter of Chelsea.David Klein/ReutersAnd, seeing as we’re on a roll, Shawn Donnelly is here with another fine suggestion: “With so many Premier League teams paying huge money for Brazilian players, why don’t Premier League teams simply buy a Brazilian team and use it as a farm team for their club?”They’re starting, Shawn. Manchester City is about to add a Brazilian club to its ever-expanding network of clubs, and I believe a couple of the investors at Crystal Palace are looking to do the same. It makes perfect sense not only for Brazilian players, but as a way to get a head start across all of South America.And a final question from Erin Koch. “The commissioner of the N.W.S.L. was interviewed at halftime of the attendance-record breaking San Diego Wave v. Angel City match, and she very strongly emphasized her league’s independence as a differentiator and advantage compared to the W.S.L. in England. Is independence realistically likely to be an advantage? Wouldn’t it be better to have the financial backing of some of the world’s biggest clubs?”Angel City and San Diego broke the N.W.S.L. attendance record last week by drawing a crowd of more than 32,000.Denis Poroy/Getty ImagesThis is a key question, and one that I’ll devote a full column to in due course, but my instinct is: no. Having a major (men’s) team bankrolling an operation offers an obvious short-term advantage, clearly. But my worry for the women’s game in Europe has long been that as long as it is attached to the men’s game, it will always be second priority. The N.W.S.L.’s model is healthier long-term, I think, at least in principle. More

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      Neymar Is Still a Singular Star, but He Has More Help on Brazil

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      As Brazil begins its quest for a sixth World Cup, the team’s resources run deep — though Neymar still shoulders much of the load.LE HAVRE, France — As the announcer at the Stade Océane cycled through Brazil’s team on Friday, before the squad dismantled Ghana, 3-0, a murmur of appreciation greeted each familiar, stellar name. Alisson was granted gentle applause. Thiago Silva earned a respectful, admiring cheer. Raphinha drew a sizzle of anticipation.And then, leaving just a hint of a dramatic pause, the announcer came to Neymar.There were, perhaps, mitigating circumstances. The 30-year-old Neymar was, after all, on home turf, or something very close to it. Le Havre, a sleepy port town on the Normandy coast, sits just a couple of hours northwest of Paris. The stands were dotted not just with jerseys in Brazil’s bright canary yellow but with the rich, deep blue of his Paris St.-Germain club team, too.But still, the contrast in his reception and those of his teammates felt telling. Brazil’s squad shimmers with stars. Alisson may be the finest goalkeeper on the planet. Thiago Silva is probably the best defender of his generation. Casemiro was part of the most dominant midfield in modern history.Even among their number, though, Neymar stands out. Their fame is not comparable to his, not really; the excitement he engenders, the adoration he receives and the wonder he instills are of a different order of magnitude. It was Neymar who was picked out on the big screen, again and again, during warm-ups. It was Neymar who had to sing his national anthem with a camera no more than six inches from his face. In a team full of headline acts, he remains the undisputed main event, the leading character, the center of gravity.For now, at least. As the roar that had met Neymar’s name subsided, the announcer still had one player left to introduce. “Numéro vingt,” he said — “Vinicius Junior.” The cheer that followed was not quite so loud as Neymar’s. It did not last quite as long. But the difference was not so stark as might have been expected.Read More on the 2022 World CupA New Start Date: A last-minute request for the tournament to begin a day earlier was only the latest bit of uncertainty to surround soccer’s showcase event.Chile’s Failed Bid: The country’s soccer federation had argued Ecuador should be ejected from the tournament to the benefit of the Chilean team. FIFA disagreed.Golden Sunset: This year’s World Cup will most likely be the last for stars like Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo — a profound watershed for soccer.Senegalese Pride: Aliou Cissé, one of the best soccer coaches in Africa, has given Senegal a new sense of patriotism. Next up: the World Cup.With two months to go before the World Cup, Tite, the Brazil coach, would not have it any other way. It has been 20 years since Brazil was declared champion of the world; miss out again in Qatar, and the wait for a sixth crown will match the lacuna between the third and fourth.More troublingly still, in the past four tournaments, it has not really gone close: beaten comfortably by the French in 2006, the Dutch in 2010 and the Belgians in Russia four years ago. The team made the semifinals on home soil in 2014, of course, but the less said about how that particular story ended, from a Brazilian point of view, the better.That defeat, though, highlighted the problem that has beset Brazil for the past decade. Neymar was missing with an injury as Germany etched a scar on the national psyche in the Maracana in 2014 (joined on the sidelines, not insignificantly, by Thiago Silva). In his absence, Brazil seemed bereft, adrift, unable to conceive of how to win the game without its leading man, the player to whom the team, as much as the country, was in thrall.He was present in Russia, but he was subdued, his legs weary and his inspiration dulled, easily corralled by Belgium in the stifling heat. Still, though, Brazil continued to look to him, to hope that he might somehow lift himself, and carry them with him. If he could not, they did not seem to know who might.This time around, things should be different. Vinicius, a few months on from scoring the winning goal in a Champions League final, is surging, European soccer’s breakout star. His teammates and his nation have rallied around him in the aftermath of the racist abuse he has received in Spain for having the temerity to celebrate his goals; several fans had made their way to the Stade Océane to urge him to keep dancing.He is not alone. Brazil’s attacking resources run so deep that Tite did not even have to call up Gabriel Jésus and Gabriel Martinelli, Arsenal’s forwards, for his squad; he could afford to introduce Rodrygo, Vinicius’s Real Madrid teammate, with just a couple of minutes to go. Roberto Firmino did not even make it off the bench. For what may be the first time in his international career, Neymar does not need to feel that everything hinges on him.Perhaps his performance, then, can be explained by a newfound sense of freedom. Perhaps he is playing unfettered by the suffocating pressure that he has carried for so long. Perhaps, on what may be the strongest team that Brazil has boasted since 2002 — a team, certainly, more than capable of ending the country’s wait — he feels more comfortable, more capable of expressing himself.Whatever the reason, his display against Ghana was that of a man neither willing nor ready to vacate center stage. It would have been enough that he created two of Brazil’s three goals, both of them finished off by Richarlíson — Marquinhos scored the other, a thunderous header from a corner — but that was the reward for, rather than the total of, everything he did.Neymar, it is fair to say, looks different this season. He has now registered 11 goals and 10 assists in 12 games for club and country, a streak of form that makes it feel somehow deeply strange that roughly two months ago, not only did P.S.G. appear willing to sell him, but nobody seemed desperately keen to buy the most expensive player in the sport’s history.The raw numbers, as ever, are merely an illustration. There has been a sharpness, a poise and, perhaps most encouraging of all, an invention to Neymar over the past couple of months. Tite has said that he is “flying,” his “speed and execution in perfection sync.” Even Thierry Henry, habitually unimpressed, feels he has “come to tell everyone: Don’t forget me.”Against Ghana, it was there in his delivery, whip-smart and inch-perfect. It was there in the moments he sped up, feinting and shifting his weight and accelerating away from his opponents. And, most of all, it was there in the moments he slowed down. More than once, he found himself with the ball at his feet, in the penalty area, and he seemed to stop, to pause, before picking the right pass, the perfect pass, the one that carved Ghana open.That has always been Neymar’s gift: picking his moments. As the World Cup hovers into view, as that sixth star starts to exert a gravity on Brazil, he seems to have done it again. More

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      Pressing World Cup Question for U.S.: Who’ll Score the Goals?

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      An American team that cycled through strikers during the qualifying period needs to settle on one before heading to Qatar. The good news is some of the options are hitting their stride.COLOGNE, Germany — Evaluating any soccer player, with all the multifaceted layers of performance, all the twists and turns of action on the field, poses a complicated challenge. Yet the game’s strikers are so frequently reduced to a kind of rudimentary binary:Are they scoring goals or not?As the United States men’s soccer team gathered this week to train and play their final two exhibition matches before the World Cup begins in November, the state of the team’s strikers — the internal competition, the ongoing uncertainty over whom the team could call upon in two months — highlighted the broader anxiety and excitement of the current moment in world soccer.There are, everyone realizes, precious few moments left to impress coaches. After a game Friday against Japan in Düsseldorf, Germany, the United States will face Saudi Arabia on Tuesday night in Spain. After that, the next time the team will be together in the same city will be in Qatar, only days before its World Cup opener on Nov. 21 against Wales.For the American strikers, that means this final camp represents one last chance to claim a starting job that has effectively been up for grabs for more than a year. Josh Sargent got the first chance. Then came Jordan Pefok. Ricardo Pepi got a long look after an early scoring burst in qualifying, but as the tournament wound on others cycled in, too. Jesus Ferreira. Gyasi Zardes. Pepi again.Ricardo Pepi, center, with Jesus Ferreira before a World Cup qualifier in March. Both have been given a chance in the No. 9 role.Moises Castillo/Associated PressThe concern is that no one forward has risen above the rest to claim the No. 9 role wholly as his own. Less than a year ago, the problem was that no American striker seemed to be playing particularly well for his club. The problem now may be a more welcome one: Essentially all the contenders for the job seem in recent weeks to have found something close to their top form.Sargent, for example, already has six goals for his English club, Norwich City. Pepi recently scored his first after a loan to a club in the Dutch Eredivisie. Pefok’s Union Berlin is, surprisingly, leading the Bundesliga. But scoring for the United States, as all of them know, has proved considerably more difficult to replicate, at least up front: Of the 18 goals scored by the Americans in their 14 qualifying games, only four came from a forward playing a traditional striker’s role.Coach Gregg Berhalter has identified at least a half dozen strikers ahead of his final roster selection — a group that includes Ferreira, Pefok, Pepi, Sargent, Brandon Vazquez and Haji Wright — and is expected to whittle the list down to three. Given the heated nature of the positional battles — and the stakes of securing, or missing out on, a World Cup place — Berhalter said on Thursday that he had noticed some understandable nerves and anxiety within the team as a whole in the early days of training.“There’s a slight hint of it — it’s not something palpable that you can feel — but you see a couple guys are tight in some exercises,” Berhalter said. The coaching staff has tried, perhaps in vain, to put everyone at ease, he said. “The message is, ‘Go do your thing, and let the chips fall where they may.’”Josh Sargent, center, has six goals for Norwich City this season.Wolfgang Rattay/ReutersJordan Pefok, who is not in camp, has helped Union Berlin into first place in the Bundesliga.Hendrik Schmidt/DPA, via Associated PressThe goals that did come from strikers in qualifying were not shared widely. Pepi tallied three in over two games in September and October but then faded out of the picture after struggling following a January transfer. Ferreira scored in the second-to-last game of the qualifying tournament, a 5-1 rout of Panama.Read More on the 2022 World CupA New Start Date: A last-minute request for the tournament to begin a day earlier was only the latest bit of uncertainty to surround soccer’s showcase event.Chile’s Failed Bid: The country’s soccer federation had argued Ecuador should be ejected from the tournament to the benefit of the Chilean team. FIFA disagreed.Golden Sunset: This year’s World Cup will most likely be the last for stars like Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo — a profound watershed for soccer.Senegalese Pride: Aliou Cissé, one of the best soccer coaches in Africa, has given Senegal a new sense of patriotism. Next up: the World Cup.Ferreira, 21, who had a four-goal performance in a match this June, has been perhaps the steadiest, if not the most spectacular, performer of late.In an interview this week, he opened up about the pressure of competition for spots and how his past struggles on the field had affected his mental health. The spotlight of playing around the penalty area seems to make strikers most susceptible to armchair psychoanalysis. But the singular nature of the job’s expectations can weigh on a player as well.“I’ve always had a problem with my mood,” Ferreira said. “When some things don’t go my way on the field or I mess up, I kind of tend to shut down, and I knew that from the beginning.”But Ferreira has thrived this year, scoring 18 goals in 31 matches for F.C. Dallas in M.L.S. He attributed that recent run of good form in part to his work with a sports psychologist who has helped him focus on positive aspects of his game and not let himself get overly focused on goals — or the absence of them.The ebb and flow of form highlighted by Ferreira could be plainly observed in Sargent, too. When the Americans began the final round of their World Cup qualifying campaign last year, Sargent seemed to be Berhalter’s preferred striker. He started two of the team’s first three games in September, but he failed to make an impact and was not a factor for the rest of the qualifying tournament.At the time, Sargent was playing out of position for a Norwich City team tumbling toward relegation from the Premier League. This season, in the second-tier Championship, Sargent has found his groove with six goals in 10 games.“My confidence is at an all-time high at the moment,” Sargent said. “I’m just trying to keep that momentum going as long as possible and keep scoring goals.”Berhalter had struggled to get a read on Sargent, 22, during his last club season. His team was struggling, and he was often playing in a wider and more defensive role as it was overwhelmed by better rivals. In recent weeks, he has been returned to the No. 9 position that both he and the American staff preferred for him, and the goals have returned.Berhalter said he was pleased to see him experience a personal resurgence, pointing out the refinement of late in Sargent’s movement off the ball and the contact and placement of his shots.“As a coaching staff, we felt for him,” Berhalter said. “We were watching these games, and we felt bad. It’s not nice to have to watch that.” He added, “Now he’s gotten these chances, these opportunities, and he’s producing.”When Sargent failed to produce early in qualifying, it was Pepi who took advantage, briefly claiming the position. But he soon began to struggle, too, while trying to find his footing after leaving M.L.S. for Germany. Last week, Pepi, 19, scored for Groningen of the Dutch league to end a personal 30-game scoreless drought.“I’m happy he’s back in his goal-scoring form,” Ferreira said of Pepi.Coach Gregg Berhalter’s job gets much easier with a reliable scorer up front.Martin Meissner/Associated PressHow will the roster be finalized? A player’s wider body of work matters. But for strikers, more than anyone, current form — measured most plainly, but not exclusively, in goals — seems to carry a significant amount of weight.“All I could say to them is that, you know, perform the best you can with your clubs, keep trying to score goals, and we’ll evaluate it, and we’ll try to get it right to help the team,” Berhalter said. “We may not get it right. You know, that’s part of it also. We may make mistakes.”Any focus on club form could keep the door open for Pefok, Vasquez and Wright, who were not invited to this camp. In the end, though, whoever emerges on the final roster in November, and whoever gets the call for the World Cup opener against Wales, will have endured a crucible of internal competition.“We’re a brotherhood, we’re a family, but we’re also here to compete,” said midfielder Weston McKennie, one of the players whose place at the World Cup feels assured. “It’s a dog-eat-dog world. You can be friends off the field, but when it comes to on the field, you’re going for my position, I’m going for your position.” More

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      Rainbow Armbands Are Flash Point for Qatar World Cup

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      An effort by European soccer federations to highlight gay rights could force a collision between FIFA rules and social campaigns.LONDON — FIFA and World Cup organizers came under pressure on Wednesday from a group of European soccer federations who said they planned to have their captains wear armbands with a rainbow heart design as part of an anti-discrimination campaign during international matches and at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.The group of European soccer federations, which includes the World Cup contenders England, Germany and France, joined forces on Wednesday in announcing their intention to have their captains wear the armbands, which feature a so-called One Love design that is similar in design — but not identical — to the well-known Pride flag that serves as a symbol for the gay rights movement.One Love ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜In a statement against discrimination and for diversity, @Manuel_Neuer will wear a special captain’s armband for our upcoming Nations League games and during the World Cup in Qatar ©️ pic.twitter.com/fiORl1Nu0t— Germany (@DFB_Team_EN) September 21, 2022
      The Dutch soccer federation, which has played a leading role in the campaign, said eight European teams that have qualified for Qatar would take part, and that two others would wear the armbands in coming national team matches in a European competition, the Nations League. The group of national federations includes the teams of Belgium, Denmark, Norway, Wales, Sweden and Switzerland.The announcement is the latest front in a rift between soccer governing bodies and nations competing in Qatar who have faced sustained pressure from fans, human rights groups and others to take a stand against the Gulf country’s laws against homosexuality and the treatment of the hundreds of thousands of foreign laborers who helped the tiny emirate prepare for the Middle East’s first World Cup.Read More on the 2022 World CupA New Start Date: A last-minute request for the tournament to begin a day earlier was only the latest bit of uncertainty to surround soccer’s showcase event.Chile’s Failed Bid: The country’s soccer federation had argued Ecuador should be ejected from the tournament to the benefit of the Chilean team. FIFA disagreed.Golden Sunset: This year’s World Cup will most likely be the last for stars like Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo — a profound watershed for soccer.Senegalese Pride: Aliou Cissé, one of the best soccer coaches in Africa, has given Senegal a new sense of patriotism. Next up: the World Cup.The armbands have not yet been approved by soccer’s governing body, FIFA, which has strict rules on how teams can be dressed at the World Cup, and on the insertion of politics and social issues onto the field of play. The decision by the federations to apply public pressure highlights the fine line that competing teams — as well as FIFA and its sponsors — are trying to navigate in balancing the demands of their fans and human rights groups while not upsetting Qatar, a conservative Muslim nation and the tournament’s host.“Wearing the armband together on behalf of our teams will send a clear message when the world is watching,” the England captain Harry Kane said in a statement.The armbands’ design, while using rainbow colors, stops short of matching the more common Pride flag. Qatari officials have long said that all fans are welcome at the monthlong tournament in November and December, but security officials there also have warned supporters not to travel with the rainbow flag for their own safety, and it remains unclear how same-sex couples will be treated when it comes to policing and accommodations.For FIFA, the armbands are merely the latest lightning rod for a tournament that has stirred controversy and disquiet since Qatar was first awarded hosting rights in December 2010. Earlier this week, the Polish captain Robert Lewandowski, the reigning FIFA player of the year, accepted an armband in the colors of Ukraine’s flag from the Ukrainian soccer great Andriy Shevchenko that he said he would carry with him to Qatar.Poland was among the European nations that said they would not play against Russia after its invasion of Ukraine in February. FIFA eventually banned Russia from playing international soccer, a decision that led to its elimination from the World Cup qualification playoffs.FIFA managed to fend off an appeal of the ban from Russia by arguing that it could not organize the World Cup if a large number of teams refused to play the country. The same strength-in-numbers rationale may have been behind the decision by the group of Europeans nations to have their captains wear the rainbow armbands.“Football is there for everyone and our sport must stand up for the people across the world who face discrimination and exclusion,” said Germany goalkeeper Manuel Neuer, who captains his national team. “I am proud to be sending out this message with my colleagues from the other national teams. Every single voice counts.”England’s soccer federation also announced that it would be lobbying to strengthen migrant-worker rights in Qatar, and expressed its support for compensation to be paid for any injuries and deaths during the construction phase of the World Cup. That desire stopped short of an effort from several human rights groups who are urging FIFA to create a $440 million compensation fund for workers.Felix Jakens, an official with Amnesty International in Britain, said English soccer officials should specifically push for a “fund for abused workers and the families of those who’ve died to make the World Cup happen.”Human rights groups have claimed that more than 6,000 workers have died in construction projects related to the World Cup. Qatari World Cup officials have put that number at three, limiting their responsibility to those who died specifically building stadiums for the event. More