World Cup 2022 (Soccer)

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      Why Is Antoine Griezmann France’s Most Important Player?

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      For Antoine Griezmann, the first few months of this season drifted uncomfortably close to indignity. His status at Atlético Madrid, it seemed, had diminished to the extent that he was a mere curiosity, one of the most celebrated forwards of his era reduced to something between a meme and a punchline.The problem was not, really, of his own making. A few years ago, Griezmann had left Atlético — the team that had helped to make him a star — for Barcelona. The move, announced in a glossy, LeBron James-style documentary that did little to endear him to anyone, did not work out.The Barcelona he had joined was creaking and fading, the dull rumble of thunder gathering in the distance. Griezmann played well only in flashes and flurries, not the sort of return expected — or needed, given the club’s increasing desperation — for his eye-watering cost. Last year, he was permitted to return on loan to Atlético, his purgatory in Catalonia at an end.The complications, though, did not end. His loan deal ran for two seasons. If he played a certain number of minutes in the second campaign, Atlético would be compelled to pay Barcelona a set fee to retain him permanently. Unwilling to commit and hopeful of reducing the price, Atlético sought to find a loophole.Diego Simeone, the club’s manager, started introducing Griezmann only as a second-half substitute. He played 30 minutes here, 20 minutes there. Atlético never confirmed the rationale, but that Griezmann was being held back as a negotiating technique seemed apparent.Antoine Griezmann on the bench before an Atlético Madrid LaLiga game in October.Jon Nazca/ReutersThat particular issue was, thankfully, sorted out before the World Cup. But the damage — at least to Griezmann’s reputation — had been done. Barcelona did not want Griezmann. Atlético did, but only on the cheap. He was no longer the impish, inventive forward who had been regarded as one of the finest players in the world only a few years earlier. Now, he was an afterthought.And then came Qatar. Griezmann is not the most celebrated member of France’s attacking line — that title would go to Kylian Mbappé — and he is not the most prolific, thanks to the evergreen Olivier Giroud. He may not have the world at his feet, like Aurélien Tchouámeni. But there is a compelling case to be made that Griezmann is the most important member of Didier Deschamps’s squad.Griezmann may not be France’s star, but he is certainly its brain. It is Griezmann who provides imagination, and guile, and craft. That is what has always appealed to Deschamps about him, what has helped him accrue 72 consecutive appearances for his nation over the past six years.At this World Cup, though, it is another trait that has made Griezmann invaluable. After injuries to Paul Pogba, N’Golo Kanté and Karim Benzema, Deschamps had to construct a new approach for the French on the fly. He had to recalibrate his midfield and adjust the positioning of his attack. Griezmann is the one who makes it all work. He has the intuition to alter how he plays, and where he plays, to keep things running smoothly, and the versatility to make sure he thrives wherever he is required.Griezmann has always had that gift, of course. He has, at various stages in his career, played on both wings, as a lone striker, and as a central, creative force. At club level, it is possible — even likely — that his versatility has held him back. Europe’s major teams now play in high-definition systems, ones in which the specialists required for every role are recruited at vast cost. That Griezmann is not quite so easily pigeonholed might, in some lights, look like a drawback.In international soccer, though, it is quite the opposite. Even Deschamps, beneficiary of the fruit of the sport’s most prolific talent farm, has to adjust and adapt to what is available to him; he cannot simply buy a solution to any particular problem. In those circumstances, a player like Griezmann, someone who can be whatever the coach needs him to be, is a rare and precious thing: a Swiss Army knife that serves, quite nicely, as a key.Under manager Didier Deschamps, Antoine Griezmann has accrued 72 consecutive appearances over six years for France’s national team.Ronald Wittek/EPA, via Shutterstock More

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      Grant Wahl Died of a Burst Blood Vessel, His Family Says

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      An autopsy in New York showed that the journalist had a tear in the ascending aorta, a large vessel that carries blood from the heart.Grant Wahl, the celebrated soccer journalist who died suddenly last week at the World Cup in Qatar, had a rupture in a blood vessel leading from the heart, his family announced on Wednesday.His death resulted from a weakness in an artery wall called an aneurysm, which may balloon outward and then tear open. An autopsy conducted in New York revealed that Mr. Wahl, 49, experienced a catastrophic rupture in the ascending aorta, which carries oxygenated blood from the heart.The autopsy puts an end to rampant speculation that followed Mr. Wahl’s death. Posts on social media hinted at links to Covid vaccines or retaliation by the Qatari government for an article Mr. Wahl had written about immigrant deaths.Mr. Wahl’s wife, Dr. Celine Gounder, is a leading infectious disease physician who rose to prominence during the coronavirus pandemic and advised President Biden’s transition team on Covid-19. She and the rest of the family rejected, in particular, the speculation linking his death to vaccines, saying that it was especially insulting because of her work.He probably died instantly and did not feel pain, Dr. Gounder said in an interview on Tuesday. “I really do feel some relief in knowing what it was,” she said.Mr. Wahl had been sick with a cold for several days before collapsing, and had written in his newsletter and on Twitter that he felt his body was breaking down after weeks of poor sleep and long days covering the games.He had just turned 49 and was quite healthy, making his death even more of a shock to his friends, family and readers. The sniffles and other cold symptoms he had were most likely unrelated to the aneurysm, Dr. Gounder said.Until the autopsy, Dr. Gounder said, she had been worried that perhaps she could have prevented his death if they had talked more often while he was in Qatar or if she had been there with him.Mr. Wahl’s brother, Eric Wahl, initially said on social media that he suspected foul play and later suggested that his brother might have experienced a blood clot in his lungs. On Tuesday, Eric Wahl said that he no longer believed those were factors in his brother’s death.The autopsy found that Mr. Wahl had an ascending thoracic aortic aneurysm, a weakening of the blood vessel that often goes undetected. As the aneurysm grows, it may produce a cough, shortness of breath or chest pain, some of which the doctors consulted by Mr. Wahl in Qatar might have attributed to his cold and a possible case of bronchitis.In rare cases, the aneurysm can rupture and lead to death. Doctors are now exploring whether Mr. Wahl had Marfan syndrome, a risk factor for this type of aneurysm. He was tall and thin and had long arms, all of which can be signs of the genetic syndrome.Mr. Wahl joined Sports Illustrated in 1996 as a fact checker, a traditional entry route for young journalists, and wrote hundreds of articles on a variety of sports for the magazine over the next two decades.One early profile, a cover story on a teenage LeBron James in 2002, remained a touchstone for both writer and subject 20 years later. Mr. Wahl would occasionally reminisce about it to his 850,000 followers on Twitter, and Mr. James spoke about its meaning to him and his family while eulogizing the writer at a news conference and on social media over the weekend.But Mr. Wahl was best known for writing about soccer, which he began covering while he was a student reporter at Princeton University in the early 1990s. Through his books, tweets, podcasts and magazine articles, he became a guide of sorts for a generation of fans and readers just learning the game.He also used his profile and social-media megaphone to highlight the growth of women’s soccer, the breadth of corruption in soccer, human rights violations and gay rights.Mr. Wahl had worked at Sports Illustrated for more than 23 years when the magazine’s publisher abruptly fired him over a dispute about pandemic-related pay cuts. But he had a large following by then, and started an email newsletter and podcast that quickly became successful.In Qatar, Mr. Wahl was covering his eighth World Cup. He was in the press box in the closing minutes of the quarterfinal match between Argentina and the Netherlands when he collapsed.According to two New York Times journalists who were present, medical personnel tried to revive Mr. Wahl for about 20 minutes before he was transported to a hospital in Doha. He was pronounced dead at the hospital.Dr. Gounder’s relationships with the Biden administration and public health agencies, including the New York City health department, helped her bring the unembalmed body to the United States for the autopsy.Dr. Gounder said she wanted to ascertain the circumstances of her husband’s death in part to quell online speculation. “I wanted to make sure the conspiracy theories about his death were put to rest,” she said. More

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      Messi and Argentina Are Headed to the World Cup Finals

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      LUSAIL, Qatar — His arms aloft, Lionel Messi stood before those who had come to adore him. In that second, he had the massed ranks of Argentina’s fans inside the Lusail Stadium under his spell. They did not bounce and writhe in celebration. Instead, he held them perfectly still, caught in a moment of quiet communion between the divine and his congregation.Then, of course, it broke. The stands above seemed to melt and to shake, a roar of joy and relief and affirmation reverberating around this vast, golden bowl. On the field, Messi was flooded by his jubilant teammates. He had not scored the goal — that relatively simple task had fallen to Julián Álvarez — but he had created it, willed it into being, fashioned it from whole silk. And now, at last, he had done what he had set out to do.For years, Argentina has hoped. For weeks, Argentina has believed. Only in that moment, though, with a 3-0 lead over Croatia with just 10 minutes of the semifinal remaining, did Argentina know. On Sunday, Lionel Messi will lead out his country in the World Cup final. Eight years on, the player who might be the best of all time will again grace the biggest game in the world. He will have one last shot at redemption. He will have his chance at revenge.It has become a familiar trope that this World Cup — his last — is Messi’s final opportunity to make up for the disappointment of defeat by Germany in 2014, to cement his legacy, to match the achievements of his only possible historical peers, Pelé and Diego Maradona, and deliver his nation the greatest glory the game can offer. That framing is appealing, but it is wrong.Petr David Josek/Associated PressMessi’s legacy is already secure. His list of honors borders on the absurd, an endless parade of trophies lifted and records smashed: four Champions League titles, 790 goals, 11 domestic championships, a Copa Ámerica, Barcelona’s all-time leading scorer, five Ballons d’Or (or equivalent), the most prolific player in Spanish history.Messi is not here because he needs a World Cup to be remembered as a great. He is here because it is the one thing that would mean more — to him, to his congregation, to his homeland — than any other. He is here because he sees it as somewhere between his duty and his destiny. He is here because it would be his crowning glory.A Brief Guide to the 2022 World CupCard 1 of 9What is the World Cup? More

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      How Many Times Has Argentina Been to the World Cup Finals?

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      Only three other nations have advanced to as many World Cup finals as Argentina, which reached its sixth by beating Croatia, 3-0, in a romp that conferred upon Lionel Messi an ultimate, glorious chance for immortality.Much like his compatriot Diego Maradona, who in 1990 rebounded after a group-stage defeat to Cameroon to lead Argentina into the final, Messi helped La Albiceleste overcome a shock opening loss to Saudi Arabia, scoring in each knockout-round game. His penalty kick in the 32nd minute opened the scoring against Croatia.Germany, which exited after group-stage play in Qatar, has played in a record eight finals, while Brazil, the winner of five titles, has appeared in seven. Italy, which failed to qualify for this World Cup, has played in six. In the only other World Cup final of his transcendent career, Messi lost in 2014 to Germany. Here’s how Argentina has fared in other World Cup finals:2014: A marvelous goal by Mario Götze just before the match would have gone into a shootout lifted Germany to a 1-0 win. Afterward, Messi sat in the changing room and cried “like a baby,” his friend and teammate Pablo Zabaleta said.1990: A late penalty kick by Andreas Brehme propelled West Germany to a 1-0 victory. Argentina became the first team not to score in a World Cup final.1986: Argentina clipped West Germany, 3-2, to conclude a tournament remembered just as much — if not more — for Maradona’s notorious “Hand of God” goal against England in the quarterfinals.1978: Argentina became the fifth host nation to win a World Cup, scoring twice in extra time to beat the Netherlands, 3-1.1930: In the inaugural World Cup, Argentina allowed three goals after halftime to lose, 4-2, to Uruguay. More

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      How Qatar Keeps Its World Cup Stadiums Cool Enough for Everyone

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      A mechanical engineer at Qatar University used giant tanks of cold water to create a cooling system in one of the hottest places on the planet.DOHA, Qatar — Saud Ghani knows cool.In his air-conditioned Porsche, he pulled up to a shady spot at Qatar University. He entered one of the many laboratories in the engineering department where he studies thermal dynamics — mainly, how to keep people comfortable in a warming world.Even his title is cool: professor and chair of air conditioning.The university’s campus was empty because the semester had been suspended for the World Cup. The temperature outside was about 90 degrees Fahrenheit. The indoor labs were noticeably chilly.This was the quiet epicenter of what became a global story of audacity. This is where Ghani and his associates oversaw the design of systems that dared to air-condition the eight outdoor World Cup stadiums in and around Doha, one of the world’s hottest big cities.“People think, oh, you have too much money and you’re just pumping cold air,” Ghani said. “That is not it at all. But what can you do? If people want to criticize from the sideline, I think that’s an oversight. But if they want to learn, they are 100 percent welcome here.”So Ghani set off on a private tour.He wanted to show the scaled replicas of each stadium, most of them tweaked during the design stages — at Ghani’s behest and to the architects’ chagrin — to better keep out hot air. He wanted to show the garage-sized wind tunnel and smoke and laser lights used to examine how air would circulate through each design. He wanted to show the miniature model of bleachers, with little hollow humans made on a 3-D printer and steadily injected with warm water — at 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit — to simulate body temperatures, and where infrared cameras could tell which of the fake people were too warm or too cool.“I want people to feel neutral,” Ghani said. “I don’t want them to feel cold. I don’t want them to feel warm. It’s about perception. It’s not just temperature. But how do they feel?”This Goldilocksian pursuit raised plenty of questions. Not the least of them are two big ones:Did this man, in these labs and at this World Cup, just alter the future of stadium design in a warming world?Could open-air stadiums that keep athletes and spectators comfortable at room temperature, no matter the heat of the day, exist?Ghani shrugged off the first one. He said yes to the second.A City Humming With CoolSaud Ghani, center, explaining the cooling system to visiting journalists in June. Ghani has said he wants people to feel “neutral,” neither warm nor cold.Tasneem Alsultan for The New York TimesGhani, 52, is from Sudan and got his doctorate in mechanical engineering at the University of Nottingham in England. Married with three children, he came to teach at Qatar University in 2009, just as the country was preparing its long-shot bid for the World Cup.One day he got a call from Qatar’s highest levels: Can you design a system that keeps people cool, even in an outdoor stadium, even in Doha, even in the summer? The bid’s success, or failure, might rest on it.Sure, Ghani said.In 2010, Qatar won the right to host this year’s tournament, for reasons that have to do with corruption more than thermal dynamics.In 2015, acknowledging that scorching temperatures, in and out of stadiums, could be both miserable and dangerous, FIFA moved the competition from its traditional summer dates to late fall. The change may have made Ghani’s mission easier, with daytime temperatures in the 80s and 90s instead of 110 or higher, but he insisted that it did not matter.These eight stadiums of various sizes and designs were not just for the World Cup. One will be dismantled, but seven will be used, year-round: for big events, for club teams, for university athletics, maybe even as part of a bid for the Olympics. (Such promises for everyday uses can go unfulfilled, as the ghost venues of past Games attest.)In Qatar, the heat for nine months of the year is almost unbearable, Ghani said. And it is not going to get better.A Brief Guide to the 2022 World CupCard 1 of 9What is the World Cup? More

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      What’s Powering Argentina at the World Cup? 1,100 Pounds of Yerba Mate.

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      The herbal drink is beloved by South American players, who have taken it with them around the world — including to Qatar.DOHA, Qatar — Yerba mate is not, to be fair, for everyone.A strong and often bitter herbal infusion brewed hot or cold from the leaves of a plant native to South America, yerba mate is popular in Paraguay, Uruguay, Brazil and Argentina. Some of the best soccer players in the world hail from that region and swear by it, and they have spread it around the world through their club teams. The World Cup in Qatar, though, raised some logistical and supply challenges, not least of which was: Where would devotees find yerba mate in the Gulf?So they came prepared. Brazil’s national team, which has a few mate drinkers, brought 26 pounds of it to Qatar, a team official said. Uruguay’s squad packed about 530 pounds. But it was Argentina, which will face Croatia in the semifinals on Tuesday fully expecting to extend its stay through Sunday’s final, that topped them all. To ensure that the roughly 75 members of its traveling party — players, coaches, trainers and the rest — would have a steady supply of a drink they consider essential, Argentina’s team hauled a whopping 1,100 pounds of yerba mate to Qatar.“It has caffeine,” Argentine midfielder Alexis Mac Allister said in Spanish while explaining why he consumed so much of the drink that some have likened to a stronger green tea. “But I drink it more than anything to bring us together.”A spokesman for Argentina’s national team, Nicolás Novello, said the team brought different types to suit everyone’s taste: yerba mate with stems (a milder taste), without stems (a stronger, more bitter taste) and with herbs (for other flavors). Observers said nearly everyone, including the team’s star, Lionel Messi, was drinking it; the team’s devotion to the drink was clear every time it unloaded its team bus, and after matches, a handful of players would carry out the traditional mate essentials: a cup made of a hollow gourd, its accompanying straw and a thermos of hot water.Drinking mate is so commonplace within the Argentine and Uruguayan teams, in particular, that the latter made the thermos, known as Botija in Spanish, its official mascot. A large blue mascot’s outfit even made it to Qatar, where it struggled to fit through the turnstiles of the metro system in Doha.Uruguay’s Botjia mascot had trouble making it through a turnstile in the metro subway system in Doha.Erin Schaff/The New York Times“When I played in Argentina, a nutritionist used to say mate hydrates you,” said Sebastián Driussi, a midfielder for Austin F.C. in Major League Soccer. Driussi represented Argentina at the youth level internationally and spent three years with the popular Argentine club River Plate. “I don’t know, but it’s like water for us. Before a game, in the locker room, everyone is drinking it all the time. There is no schedule or bad time to have mate. Us in Argentina, we say that mate makes friendships.”A Brief Guide to the 2022 World CupCard 1 of 9What is the World Cup? More

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      The Pundit Whisperer of Qatar’s beIN Sports World Cup Coverage

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      Qatar’s beIN Sports hired a host of retired soccer stars to bring authority to its World Cup coverage and a group of interpreters to render their words into Arabic. The toughest assignments go to one man.DOHA, Qatar — There is perhaps no one in the world who has paid closer attention to the diction and pronunciation of the former England soccer captain John Terry over the past month than Lassaad Tounakti, a 52-year-old Tunisian with a gift for languages, a passion for cologne and an accidental television career.For Tounakti, understanding the minute details of the way Terry speaks is no casual affair. His ability to understand Terry’s every utterance has been a vital part of one of the World Cup’s toughest, and least forgiving, man-to-man assignments: As the main interpreter for beIN Sports, Tounakti has since the start of the tournament served as the voice of Terry and other retired stars hired by BeIN as it has transmitted the tournament night after night to Arabic-speaking viewers across the Middle East and North Africa.It can seem, at times, like a Sisyphean task. BeIN Sports, the broadcaster based in Qatar, has devoted six channels to the World Cup, including two that are Arabic only. Each one is broadcasting tournament content for up to 18 hours a day. There are pregame shows, halftime chats and postgame panel discussions, but also sideline interviews, on-the-street cutaways and fan-zone appearances. Much of that programming is beamed out live to the world, and much of it involves a delicate live dance involving Arab hosts and guests and former soccer stars who do not speak a common language.Interpreting their words — quickly, precisely and live on the air — requires an extraordinary fluency in not only languages but soccer. For Tounakti, it means translating every word of Arabic into English in the ears of the former soccer stars before flicking a switch — literally and in his mind — and immediately rendering their thoughts, delivered in English, back into Arabic.Tounakti uses two buttons during broadcasts: E for English and A for Arabic.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesEvery voice is different. The English diction of Kaká, a World Cup-winning Brazilian, is different from that of the Dutch soccer great Ruud Gullit, and the nuances of their pronunciations are different from those of the former Germany captain Lothar Matthäus.Because of the sheer volume of coverage it is providing, beIN is employing four staff interpreters and supplementing them with freelancers for the World Cup. Most interpreters work in a rotation, but there are some accents, some ways of speaking, that require just a little bit more expert handling. Terry’s thick East London accent is one of those.“For the time being,” Tounakti said, “John Terry is mine.”Speaking to the WorldTounakti’s career as the Arabic voice of beIN’s imported experts was in many ways accidental. As a delegation from Qatar prepared to fly to Zurich in December 2010 to make its final pitch to host the 2022 World Cup, beIN realized it did not have an interpreter who spoke both French and English.Tounakti, a university professor with a doctorate in linguistics and experience interpreting for the country’s emir, was enlisted for the trip, which ended with his voice relaying the shocking news that Qatar had won the rights to bring the World Cup to the Middle East for the first time. “They say I am the guy that made 350 million people cry,” he said.In the decade since the vote, beIN, which is owned by the Qatari state, grew into one of the world’s biggest broadcasters, spending billions of dollars on sports rights every year and expanding into dozens of countries. Most of that expansion has been preparation for this moment: a month of televising the World Cup from Qatar.BeIN Sports has devoted six channels to the World Cup, including two that are Arabic only. Erin Schaff/The New York TimesWhile the 64 games have been a centerpiece of the coverage, a significant part of the network’s content has revolved around the high-profile guest commentators the company has hired at great expense to bring credibility, celebrity and commentary to its coverage.Last week, in the street separating two buildings in beIN’s complex in Doha, Peter Schmeichel, a former Denmark and Manchester United goalkeeper who is one of the company’s longtime analysts, arrived for an evening shift in the studio accompanied by Jermaine Jones, a German-born former U.S. midfielder.A Brief Guide to the 2022 World CupCard 1 of 9What is the World Cup? More

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      Croatia Is the World Cup Team That Refuses to Lose

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      Croatia, a nation of four million people, needs one more win to reach a second straight World Cup final. If it happens, it will probably come on penalties, and certainly after extra time.DOHA, Qatar — Zlatko Dalic knew that something had to change. Dalic, the coach of Croatia, was just not sure, at that precise moment, exactly what it was. Brazil was starting to ratchet up the pressure, its bright yellow jerseys pouring forward in waves. His Croatia team was scrabbling to repel the attacks. His players, he could see, were barely hanging on.His first instinct was that he needed new blood, fresh legs. In particular, his prized midfield — the timeless Luka Modric and his unflinching lieutenants, Marcelo Brozovic and Mateo Kovacic — seemed to have pushed itself beyond its limit. Perhaps, he and his staff wondered, an increase in energy might offset the unavoidable decrease in quality.In a break in play, Dalic summoned Modric, Croatia’s totemic captain, to the sideline. He was considering “replacing the midfield,” Dalic told him. What did he think? Dalic should have known the answer. Modric, at the age of 37, gave the idea the shortest shrift imaginable. Modric stayed on. He was there as Croatia held out for extra time. He was there as Bruno Petkovic scored a late equalizer to send the game to penalties. He was there to take, and score, the third spot-kick, the one that swept a country of fewer than four million people to the brink of a second successive World Cup semifinal.“This is Croats,” Dalic said. “They take it when it is most difficult.”Luka Modric and Croatia are one win from their second straight World Cup final.Gabriel Bouys/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThat indefatigability, that refusal to countenance defeat, has become Croatia’s calling card. On its run to the World Cup final in 2018 and to a semifinal against Argentina here, Croatia played five knockout games. All five went to extra time. Four of them went to penalties. Croatia won them all. It has become a team that does not so much beat its opponents as outlast them.“We know nobody likes to play against us,” defender Borna Sosa said as his teammates were still celebrating Friday’s victory against Brazil. “We have really good players and a really good mentality, and it is always really difficult to win against us. We are ready to go until the end.”A Brief Guide to the 2022 World CupCard 1 of 9What is the World Cup? More