World Cup (Soccer)

Subterms

    More stories

    • 113 Shares119 Views

      in Soccer

      Behind Argentina’s World Cup Magic, an Army of Witches

      by

      Magalí Martínez knew something was off: The seemingly invincible soccer star Lionel Messi was scuffling on the soccer pitch. To her, it looked like he was afflicted with a supernatural curse that has roots in different cultures across history, the “evil eye.”So Martínez, a self-proclaimed witch and part-time babysitter, got to work. She focused intensely on Messi, began repeating a prayer and drizzled a bit of oil into a bowl of water. If the oil remained dispersed, he was safe. If it collected in the middle, he was cursed.“It came together like a magnet,” she said. “I knew I wouldn’t be able to cure him alone.”She went to Twitter and called on her fellow witches across Argentina. “Evil-eye healing sisters, Messi is very affected,” she said. “I need your help.”A thousand people shared her tweet, with many saying they, too, were witches and would work to protect Argentina’s golden boy.Argentina has not lost since.The bookkeepers have set their odds, gamblers have placed their bets and the experts have made their picks for Sunday’s World Cup final between Argentina and France, but their analysis of the matchup — focused on just the 22 players on the field — might not be considering a wild card: Argentina’s army of witches.Witches in Argentina have formed groups to give their soccer team a magic boost ever since the team’s first loss in the World Cup.Anita Pouchard Serra for The New York TimesIn recent weeks, hundreds, if not thousands of Argentine women who call themselves “brujas,” or witches, have taken up arms — in the form of prayers, altars, candles, amulets and burning sage — to protect their nation’s beloved soccer team in its quest to secure a third World Cup title and its first in 36 years.“We think of ourselves as agents that, from love, can take care, protect and sow happiness,” said Rocío Cabral Menna, 27, a witch and high-school teacher in Messi’s hometown, Rosario, who burns a bay leaf inscribed with her predicted score in a ceremony before each match. The players are competing on the field, she said, and at home, “the witches are taking care of them.”The trend caught fire after Argentina’s shocking loss to Saudi Arabia in the opening match, causing Argentines to search for any way to help the team on which this nation of 47 million has pitted its hopes.After that match, several witches started a WhatsApp group to instruct other witches on how to help the national team. They called it the Argentine Association of Witches, or La Brujineta, a play on “bruja” and “La Scaloneta,” Argentina’s nickname for its national team.“I thought there were going to be 10 people at most,” said the group’s founder, Antonella Spadafora, 23, a witch who runs a convenience store in a city in northwest Argentina. Within days, more than 300 people had joined the group. Last week, there was so much demand that they started a Twitter account. It has gained 25,000 followers in seven days.“We got tired of being closet witches,” said Andrea Maciel, 28, a witch and graphic designer in Buenos Aires who now helps manage the group.The witches said their main focus is to use rituals to absorb negative energy from Argentina’s players and exchange it with good energy. That, however, leaves them exhausted.Rocío Cabral Menna is a witch, poet and literature professor in Rosario, Argentina, the hometown of Lionel Messi.Sebastián López Brach for The New York TimesCabral Menna works with tarot cards and candles to help Argentina’s team.Sebastián López Brach for The New York Times“Headaches, dizziness, vomiting, muscle pain,” Spadafora said. “We are absorbing all the bad vibes,” she added. “It wears you down a lot, because these are very public figures who have so much negative energy from other people.”So, to divide the burden, the group leaders now split the witches into groups before every match, each focused on protecting a certain player.While many of the witches said they are working to look after Messi and his teammates, others are attempting to cast spells on opposing players, particularly the goalkeepers. One ritual involves freezing a slip of paper with the name of a player on it, saying a curse and then burning the frozen paper just before the match.But the Brujineta group warned that trying to curse France could backfire, particularly because of the team’s star forward, Kylian Mbappé.“We do not recommend freezing France, as their players are protected by dark entities and the energy can bounce back!!” the group announced on Twitter on Wednesday. “We saw very dark things in the French team and especially in Mbappé. Please share!!!”The witches focused on the World Cup represent a wide variety of occult disciplines, more New Age than ancient and Indigenous. Practices include black magic, white magic, Wicca, Reiki, Tarot, astrology, and healers of the evil eye and other ailments.Some women said they were born with special abilities, while others said they developed their skills through study. Several said they began practicing witchcraft as part of a growing feminist movement in Argentina that began in 2018 with the fight for legal abortion.“I think we all have magic inside,” said Cabral Menna.But the witches are far from the only Argentines trying to help their team in the supernatural realm. On game days, many more Argentines have been practicing some sort of cábala, or superstition designed to avoid causing any bad luck to their team. The cábalas often involve people sticking to the exact same routine if the team is winning, including where they watch the game, with whom, in what clothes, at what volume and on which channel.Jesica Fernandez Bruera, an astrologer in Rosario.Sebastián López Brach for The New York TimesDuring Argentina’s matches, Fernandez performs several rituals, such as burning laurel leaves.Sebastián López Brach for The New York TimesThe practice is so mainstream that millions of Argentines likely practice some sort of cábala, a word that derives from kabbalah, a Jewish mystical tradition. Cábalas have been especially pronounced this year after Argentina’s loss in its opening match.Adrián Coria, Messi’s childhood coach in Rosario and later on the national team, said that he watched the first loss with his family in his living room. Then his wife and daughter sent him to a small cabin in the backyard for the second match. “Alone,” he said. He has since watched the rest of the World Cup there.Cabral Menna, the witch from Rosario, said she and her mother watched Argentina’s first victory in her mother’s bedroom. “It’s the only part of the house without air conditioning,” she said. “It’s very hot. But we’re not going to move.”And Sergio Duri, the owner of a restaurant in Rosario with Messi’s signature on the wall, said he now watches the matches in his kitchen with one dachshund, Omar, while his wife watches them in their bedroom with the other dachshund, Dulce. “If this comes out, everybody will know that we’re all completely crazy,” he said. “But these are cábalas, you know?”The players are also practicing cábalas. Alejandro Gómez, Leandro Paredes and Rodrigo de Paul, three midfielders, have taken to walking around the pitch an hour before kickoff while chewing candy, a tradition they started last year when Argentina won the Copa América, South America’s premier soccer tournament.During Argentina’s matches, Maia Morosano performs rituals to lead to a win, such as burning certain herbs.Sebastián López Brach for The New York TimesMorosano, who is from Rosario, is also a poet.Sebastián López Brach for The New York TimesMorosano casting spells for the national team.Sebastián López Brach for The New York TimesSo now the question for the witches is: What will happen on Sunday?“We don’t want to give information as if we have the absolute last word,” Spadafora said. “But obviously we have started working, and obviously we have checked with most of the means at our disposal — esoteric means, for example, pendulums, Tarot, all the divination methods — and it indicates that Argentina is going to win.”Azucena Agüero Blanch, a 72-year old professional fortune-teller once consulted by former President Carlos Menem, has also explained that she is working with magical stones to ensure an Argentina victory. “Many people who are pushing for Argentina to win have called on me to work on this,” she told an Argentine newspaper.On Friday night, Martínez was in her candlelit home in Buenos Aires wearing a robe covered in tigers and lighting candles at an altar that included burned sandalwood; Ganesha, the elephant-headed Hindu god; and a photo of Diego Maradona, the late Argentine soccer star who is something like a deity to many in this country.Martínez said she has a series of methods to protect the national team, including a practice that involves swinging a pendulum, or a wooden cylinder on a string, above a player’s jersey number and then burning cotton doused with a mistletoe tincture. She said she follows the news for updates about players’ ailments and then uses the pendulum to help alleviate them. “The pendulum is the most powerful tool I have,” she explained.She said she has also had psychic moments during matches. During Argentina’s match against Australia on Dec. 3, she said she had a vision of the Argentine forward Julián Álvarez celebrating a goal.At 5:13 p.m., she tweeted: “Julian Alvarez I want your goal 🕯👁🕯👁🕯.”Four minutes later, Álvarez scored.Tarot sets used by Violeta Parisi, a witch in Buenos Aires.Anita Pouchard Serra for The New York TimesParisi, 24, is one of the hundreds of witches across the country practicing magic to help their national team.Anita Pouchard Serra for The New York TimesAn altar in Parisi’s bedroom.Anita Pouchard Serra for The New York TimesNatalie Alcoba contributed reporting. More

    • 188 Shares199 Views

      in Soccer

      Morocco Gave Everything in the World Cup Semifinal. It Needed a Little More Against France.

      by

      AL KHOR, Qatar — The drums kept on beating. The whistles kept on shrieking. Morocco’s players kept on coming, again and again, their legs burning and their lungs heaving, as they raged against the dying of the light. At the end, Morocco had run out of road. At no point, not for a second, did it run out of fight.The World Cup, then, will culminate in the sort of blockbuster final that both FIFA, its organizer, and Qatar, its host, have craved: Lionel Messi’s Argentina, seeking to deliver arguably the finest player of all time his crowning glory, against Kylian Mbappé, his heir apparent, and France, aiming to become the first nation in half a century to retain the most coveted prize in sports. Today, Gianni Infantino feels very smug indeed.Regardless of which team emerges triumphant on Sunday, though, which story line is reverse-engineered as destiny, on some level this will always be Morocco’s World Cup, the one that made it a trailblazer, a record-breaker, a watermark that will not fade. From this point on, a whole slew of achievements will all be the first since Morocco.It was here that Morocco became the first team from the Arab world to make a World Cup quarterfinal. Then, a few days later, it was here that it became the first African team to extend its run all the way to the semifinals.That it could go no further, beaten by France, 2-0, in a breathless, furious game at Al Bayt, neither erases nor diminishes those feats. It does not alter the fact that it was in Qatar where Morocco proved to a “whole generation” that it could produce “miracles,” as its redoubtable goalkeeper, Yassine Bounou, put it. It was in Qatar that Morocco, according to its coach, Walid Regragui, redefined the limits of “what was possible.”A Brief Guide to the 2022 World CupCard 1 of 9What is the World Cup? More

    • 125 Shares129 Views

      in Soccer

      Argentina’s Most Sacred World Cup Watch Party: Maradona’s Former Home

      by

      A Buenos Aires businessman bought Diego Maradona’s old house and has been opening it up for Argentina’s World Cup matches, meat included.BUENOS AIRES — Argentina had just punched its ticket to the World Cup final with a 3-0 victory over Croatia on Tuesday, but most Argentines at the party simply wanted to poke around this stranger’s house.There was a retiree taking selfies in a mirrored corner bar. A house cleaner hung out the window of a bare bedroom. A tattoo artist checked out a backed-up toilet upstairs. And a hotel owner who had brought his mother-in-law was wandering around barefoot.“When I entered, I started crying,” said Osvaldo Bonacchi, 52, an air-conditioner repairman, who was starting to tear up again on the spiral staircase leading to the carpeted attic, where someone said there used to be a sauna. He had lived nearby for 15 years, and always wondered what it was like inside.“To be here is a dream,” he said.The battered, three-story brick chalet in a quiet Buenos Aires neighborhood once belonged to the Argentine soccer hero Diego Maradona, and in this World Cup, it has become one of the hottest places in Argentina to watch a match.A local entrepreneur bought the house last month and has opened the doors for the past several games, paying for drinks and more than 1,000 pounds of meat for hundreds of friends, neighbors and strangers crowded around Maradona’s backyard pool to cheer on the national team.The bar in Maradona’s former home.Ariel Fernando García, the new owner of the home, with his daughters on what was once Maradona’s balcony.“We started letting people in, and then they collapsed and started crying,” the house’s new owner, Ariel Fernando García, 47, said of the first party. “For me, he was an extraterrestrial,” he said of Maradona. “No man has given more joy to Argentines.”Maradona died of a heart attack in 2020 at age 60 but remains one of Argentina’s biggest figures. His story of a poor Buenos Aires boy rising to become one of history’s greatest soccer players and the leader of Argentina’s 1986 World Cup championship team has made him a sort of deity in this nation of 46 million.In fact, the Church of Maradona is a legally recognized religion in Argentina, now entering its 25th year, that claims tens of thousands of members with branches around the world. Some Google searches will return a little box of questions that other people searched, starting with: “Is Diego Maradona a God?”A Brief Guide to the 2022 World CupCard 1 of 9What is the World Cup? More

    • 138 Shares129 Views

      in Soccer

      Théo Hernandez, France’s Goalscorer, Stepped Up After His Brother, Lucas, Fell

      by

      Most of the injuries that have befallen France, that sapped its team of world-class stars like N’Golo Kante and Paul Pogba, occurred before Les Bleus began playing in Qatar. But one, a torn knee ligament for Lucas Hernandez, came early in their first match against Australia.The man who replaced him at left-back just scored France’s first goal in its World Cup semifinal against Morocco. His name his Théo Hernandez, and he is Lucas’s younger brother.In the fifth minute, Théo Hernandez, who plays for A.C. Milan, corralled a loose ball near the goal post and showed tremendous poise and agility in getting on top of the ball with his left foot, sneaking it past the Moroccan goalkeeper, Bono.An absolute dream start for France 🇫🇷 pic.twitter.com/utpt5ysaTn— FOX Soccer (@FOXSoccer) December 14, 2022
      Théo Hernandez committed the foul Saturday late against England that led to what could have been a tying penalty; Harry Kane missed it. But today, he made up for that mistake with a goal that might lift France into its second consecutive final. More

    • 200 Shares189 Views

      in Soccer

      France Is the First Country in Over 20 Years to Qualify for Consecutive World Cup Finals

      by

      France’s quest to repeat as champion reached a climactic stage today when Les Bleus nipped Morocco, 2-0, on goals by Théo Hernandez and Randal Kolo Muani to advance to the World Cup final.In denying Morocco, the tournament darling, an implausible berth in the final match, France became the first nation in more than two decades to qualify for consecutive finals. The last was Brazil, which actually made three straight, from 1994-2002.A magnificent French team edged Croatia in 2018 to win the title, and though this squad is no less marvelous, only four of its starters from that year — Olivier Giroud, Antoine Griezmann, Kylian Mbappé and Hugo Lloris — are likely to feature against Lionel Messi, Lionel Messi and Lionel Messi and Argentina on Sunday.Although nations have played in consecutive finals on five other occasions, only two — Brazil, in 1958 and 1962, and Italy, in 1934 and 1938 — have won both. The other instances include the Netherlands, in 1974 and 1978; West Germany, in 1982, 1986 and 1990; and Brazil, in 1994, 1998 and 2002. More

    • 100 Shares189 Views

      in Soccer

      Why Is Antoine Griezmann France’s Most Important Player?

      by

      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

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Soccer

      Messi and Argentina Are Headed to the World Cup Finals

      by

      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

    • 138 Shares189 Views

      in Soccer

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

      by

      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