World Cup (Soccer)

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

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      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

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

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      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

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

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      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

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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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      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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      These Soccer and World Cup Movies Have Big Goals

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      Soccer movies are often eclectic and at times unclassifiable, drawing from multiple continents and genres.Every four years, the World Cup offers something not unlike the movies: For a whole month, it stops time, enveloping its distant spectators in the electric-green glow of the screen.But there’s more to the “beautiful game” than balletic ball-moves and the cheek-gnawing suspense of gameplay characterized by low score count. Ladj Ly’s 2019 crime thriller, “Les Misérables,” set in the immigrant-populated underworld of the Parisian banlieues, paints it vividly: In the opening minutes, we’re plunged into the Champs-Élysées, where throngs of fans draped in red, white and blue celebrate France’s victory at the 2018 World Cup. The pulsing moment is one of communal exultation at odds with the film’s forthcoming depiction of a fractious multiethnic society.“The thing about football — the important thing about football — is that it is not just about football,” the English author Terry Pratchett wrote in the novel “Unseen Academicals.” This observation could very well apply to all sports built on mass followings and billion-dollar business deals, but soccer — a potent symbol of globalization heavy with historical baggage — is uniquely revealing: The game is a prism through which the ever-evolving world, and the interconnected fortunes of people from disparate parts of it, comes to light.No wonder soccer movies are often eclectic and at times unclassifiable, drawing from multiple continents and genres. Take John Huston’s World War II adventure drama “Escape to Victory.” Pelé, the legendary Brazilian striker, is joined by Sylvester Stallone, Michael Caine, and real-life professional footballers from across Europe and North and South America to play ball against Nazi rivals. And from Hong Kong, there’s Stephen Chow’s hit kung fu comedy “Shaolin Soccer,” a nod to the fast-growing popularity of soccer throughout Asia, released one year before the 2002 World Cup in Japan and South Korea. Not that soccer films are all about global cooperation and underdog badassery; other films poke fun at the game’s biggest icons. For this, see the brilliantly unhinged “Diamantino,” a surreal Portuguese spy movie spoof featuring a Cristiano Ronaldo look-alike who gets in the zone by imagining himself in a cotton-candy field surrounded by elephant-size Pomeranians.Stephen Chow in “Shaolin Soccer,” which he also directed.Miramax FilmsThe 2022 World Cup in Qatar, the first ever held in a Middle Eastern nation, has courted countless controversies, with the host country’s conservative traditions starkly at odds with the sport’s modern fandoms. FIFA and Qatar have been pelted with charges of corruption and bribery, but most harrowing, perhaps, are reports of the country’s exploitative use of migrant labor, resulting in the deaths of thousands of workers from primarily South Asian and African countries. The documentary “The Workers Cup” (2018) takes us to the labor camps erected on the outskirts of Doha, where we meet a handful of soccer-enthusiast workers who come to terms with the underpinnings of a brutal industry — the same one responsible for nurturing their own athletic dreams.Since the start of the tournament, fans and players have spoken out about the region’s thorny politics (including the criminalization of homosexuality) and religious practices. On this front, and on the matter of soccer’s ability to ease or exacerbate ethnic tensions, the documentary “Forever Pure” (2017) comes to mind. Directed by Maya Zinshtein, it traces one of the ugliest episodes in Israeli soccer, doubling as an exposé into what it sees as the country’s systemic racism. Consisting of interviews with the players, owners and fans of the Beitar Jerusalem Football Club, the documentary examines the reactions of these individuals against the addition of two Muslim players to the team — and the language of racial purity used to justify their opposition.Corneliu Porumboiu, right, in his documentary, “Infinite Football,” with Laurentiu Ginghina.Grasshopper FilmLess inflammatory but similarly illuminating are two documentaries that plumb political dimensions through intensely personal stories of soccer obsession — both by the Romanian auteur Corneliu Porumboiu. The first, “The Second Game,” features voice-over commentary from Porumboiu and his father as the two watch a 1988 match refereed by the elder Porumboiu between two of Romania’s leading squads. The game takes place one year before the revolution that toppled the country’s totalitarian leader, ‌Nicolae Ceausescu — a period in which Romanian soccer was openly a tool of political scheming; one team was associated with the military, the other with the secret police. At the same time, there’s the slightest hint of nostalgia as the two men look back on several players, considered part of Romania’s golden generation of soccer, who would eventually leave the country to play for more prestigious professional teams in Western Europe.The second film, “Infinite Football,” introduces us to a hobbling ex-footballer-turned-pencil-pusher with an elaborate plan to reinvent the rules of the game, to better prevent injuries like the one that ended his athletic career. It’s a parable for the fractured state of Romania itself through the lens of one man’s desperate attempt to fix what broke him.In the first week of this year’s tournament, members of the Iranian team refused to sing the national anthem before their game against England — a display of solidarity with an ongoing protest movement against Iran’s leadership, spurred by the killing of a young woman in police custody. The confluence of these events brings to mind one of the great soccer movies of the past twenty years, “Offside” (2007) by Jafar Panahi, the Iranian master currently imprisoned for his political beliefs. A pointed critique of the country’s misogynist strictures delivered at the pitch of a dark comedy, the film follows a group of women who have been caught disguising themselves as men to enter a Tehran stadium where a match will determine Iran’s qualification for the 2006 World Cup.Golnaz Farmani in “Offside.”Sony Pictures ClassicsLike “Offside,” several international films consider the way soccer fandom pits modernity against traditional ways of life, simply through the struggles of people attempting to watch a game. “The Cup” (2000) was the first film from Bhutan to be submitted for an Oscar, featuring real-life Tibetan monks swept up in the frenzy of the 1998 World Cup. A group of novices lead makeshift soccer games using a can of Coca-Cola as a ball, and at night sneak away from the monastery to watch the Cup in a nearby cottage. Granted permission to set up a television on monastery grounds for the final game between France and Brazil, the boys race to collect funds for a satellite dish and set up the device in time for kickoff.The same dynamic plays out across three different remote locations in Gerardo Olivares’s gentle mockumentary “The Great Match” (2006), which is also structured around the struggle to watch a World Cup final — the 2002 showdown between Brazil and Germany. The film follows the misadventures of three unrelated groups of soccer fans: Kazakh nomads from the Eastern Mongolian steppes, camel-mounted Berber tribespeople in the Sahara, and Indigenous Amazonians.Both films present the love of soccer as a universal bond, a bitter pill considering it might also be the only common ground between us viewers and these disappearing cultures — soccer, after all, is nothing if not a tool of cultural hegemony. At the same time, though the stakes aren’t a matter of life or death, the passion of these fans — the way they persist in their efforts to seize a small slice of pleasure in a world of tireless work, exile and material hardship — might say something about what soccer would have to offer were it stripped of its territorial fanatics and its billion-dollar pomp and ceremony.Where to Stream These Soccer MoviesStream “Les Misérables” on Amazon Prime Video.Rent “Escape to Victory” on multiple digital platforms.Stream “Shaolin Soccer” on Paramount+ or the Criterion Channel.Stream “Diamantino” on major digital platforms.Stream “The Workers Cup” on multiple digital platforms.Rent “Forever Pure” on Apple TV.Stream “The Second Game” on the Criterion Channel or Mubi.Stream “Infinite Football” on the Criterion Channel or Kanopy.Stream “Offside” on the Criterion Channel.Stream “The Cup” on the Criterion Channel.Stream “The Great Match” on Tubi or Film Movement Plus. More

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      Pouring Through a Crisis: How Budweiser Salvaged Its World Cup

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      Taken by surprise by Qatar’s decision to ban beer at stadiums, the company remade its marketing strategy in real time.DOHA, Qatar — The theme at the luxury W hotel in central Doha is beer. Budweiser beer. The walls are festooned with Budweiser labels. “Budweiser” is painted in enormous script along the check-in desk. There’s a “Budweiser Player of the Match” corner, where armchair soccer stars can take selfies while hoisting a fake trophy against a Budweiser background. Bathed in red and white, the place has the feel of a giant beer can.Budweiser, which has been the official beer sponsor of the World Cup for the last 36 years, remade the hotel into what it called “a home away from home experience” in anticipation of the 2022 tournament. That was before the moment, two days before the opening match, when Qatar’s government threw Budweiser’s carefully crafted (and quite expensive) beer-selling plans into disarray by suddenly forbidding the sale of alcohol in or around the tournament stadiums during the event.The dismaying nature of the situation — the abrupt contravention of a plan years in the making, the 11th-hour dismantling of the elaborate Budweiser tents at the matches, the financial and related consequences for a longtime tournament sponsor, the public nature of it all — was aptly articulated at the time by Budweiser itself.“Well, this is awkward,” the company wrote in a tweet — which it then promptly deleted, both illustrating and compounding its point.But, like the ghostly tweet, preserved forever in screenshots marked with “lol”s, Budweiser remains a presence at the World Cup, albeit in a watered-down way.Certain fan zones were among the limited places where fans could buy alcoholic beers.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesWhile the stadiums have been scrubbed of regular beer, they are awash in stacks of alcohol-free Budweiser Zero. Ads for the drink play on a loop on stadium screens, and refrigerators full of it sit within arm’s reach at concession stands, right next to the Coca-Cola.But given the average fan’s attitude toward the usefulness of nonalcoholic beer as a sports-experience enhancer (“Why?” asked a fan at Lusail Stadium on a recent night, when asked if he had tried one yet), the available quantities would seem to reflect wishful thinking as much as responsible drinking.At Lusail, the signs next to the Budweiser Zero duly noted that “Budweiser is proud to serve its products in compliance with the local rules and regulations.”“Proud” is one way of putting it.“I’m just glad it wasn’t us,” said a representative for another FIFA sponsor, who spoke on condition that neither she nor her company be identified, saying that she did not want to publicly criticize the Qatari government. “Qatari regulations are very strict and top-down, and it’s hard when you feel that the regulations can change so abruptly.”A Brief Guide to the 2022 World CupCard 1 of 9What is the World Cup? More