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    Champions League’s New Format Creates a New Reality

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    This year more than ever is showing that the competition means different things to different clubs. And that’s a good thing.Lille’s players lingered on the field at the Stade Pierre-Mauroy, communing with their fans. The stands were still full, long after the game had finished, and the party was showing no signs of ending. Ethan Mbappé — famous name, if not quite a familiar face — wore the broad grin of a man who was going to take considerable pleasure in messaging his brother later.His team had enjoyed a mixed start to the season. Lille sat fifth in Ligue 1, France’s top division: three wins, two losses and a draw. Quite what the next few months would bring was not yet clear. There would not, in all likelihood, be a title challenge in the league. Competition for a Champions League slot was looking intense.And now, all of a sudden, everything had gathered into cold, sharp focus. Whatever else happened during this campaign, whether those early victories heralded the start of something or whether those defeats were harbingers of trouble, this would always be remembered as the year that Lille beat Real Madrid.Lille’s victory in the Champions League on Wednesday ended Real Madrid’s 36-match unbeaten streak.Francois Lo Presti/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesOver the course of its first two rounds, it has been difficult to know what to make of the new format for the Champions League. There is some firm ground: The competition’s new guise is, we can agree, a monument both to the self-interest of Europe’s most powerful teams and the cravenness of the bodies charged with acting as custodians of soccer’s health.It has been expressly designed, after all, to bow to the incessant demands of the continent’s aristocrats. They wanted more games against each other. Thanks to UEFA’s spinelessness, they got them.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Euro 2024 Final: Spain Beats England to Claim Fourth Title

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      A 2-1 victory in the Euro 2024 final extended England’s suffering but crowned a generational star in Spain’s teenage forward, Lamine Yamal.First, Spain’s players had to perform the rituals of celebration. They communed with their fans. They draped themselves with a selection of flags, national and regional. They commiserated with their bereft English opponents. Once those were completed, they gathered by the podium hastily constructed on the field at Berlin’s Olympic Stadium.Most of the players took that moment to compose themselves, to share an embrace, to try to absorb the scale of their achievement over the past month: At the start of Euro 2024, Spain stood in the second rank of continental powers. Now, after a flawless tournament and a 2-1 triumph over England in the final on Sunday, the country sits at the pinnacle once more.Lamine Yamal, though, could not contain himself. He danced and bounced, unable to stop moving. He knew, though not from firsthand experience, that each and every player would get chance to lift the trophy, so he made sure to practice his technique, heaving an imaginary cup three times.When Spain’s players were eventually summoned to receive their prize, Yamal went a little too early. The assembled dignitaries were not yet in place when he scampered onstage. He had to be called back by his teammates, greeted not with censure but an affectionate, somewhat paternal, ruffle of the hair.It has been easy, over the past few weeks, to forget quite how young Yamal is. Only 16 years old for most of the tournament, he is so young that German law requires that he have special dispensation to work late in the evening. He is so young that he has had a designated guardian with him at all times. He is so young that, standing by the podium, he could probably taste the cake he was given to celebrate his 17th birthday on Saturday.And yet, despite his youth, Yamal can claim a large portion of the credit for taking a relatively unheralded Spanish side to a largely unanticipated glory. It was his goal that turned the semifinal with France on Tuesday. It was his pass that created Spain’s opening strike in Sunday’s final, turned home by Nico Williams.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Champions League: Security Increased After ISIS Threats

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      Online messages urged violent attacks on four matches, prompting the police in England, France and Spain to step up precautions.Public safety officials in England, France and Spain said Tuesday that they would step up security for matches this week in the Champions League, Europe’s marquee soccer competition, after ISIS-related groups called for violent attacks on the contests.The first of four quarterfinal matchups were scheduled in London and Madrid on Tuesday, and were to feature some of the top clubs in world soccer: Spain’s Real Madrid; the English giants Arsenal and Manchester City; and Germany’s Bayern Munich. Two other high-profile matches will take place on Wednesday in Paris and Madrid.“We don’t know what location might be particularly targeted, neither in what conditions,” the French interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, told reporters in Paris. But he said he had spoken with police officials in Paris on Tuesday morning and had been assured that they “have considerably reinforced the security measures.”In Spain, the interior ministry said it had raised the country’s terrorist alert level after the appearance of a photo online carrying the message “Kill them all” and the names of the four stadiums where this week’s games are to be played, according to reports in the Spanish newspaper El Mundo. The ministry said security measures at the matches in Madrid had been increased and additional agents deployed.At least one of the threats was accompanied by an image showing the main entrances to Arsenal’s stadium in London.“The U.K. terrorism threat level remains at ‘substantial,’ meaning an attack is likely,” said Ade Adelekan, the deputy assistant commissioner for the Metropolitan Police in London. The Metropolitan Police said it would have a “robust” security plan in place for the Arsenal-Bayern Munich match at London’s Emirates Stadium.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Why Real Madrid Is Soccer’s Model Club

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      The club is strutting into a future different from the one envisioned by its president, Florentino Pérez. But its prospects are as bright as ever.Florentino Pérez had a contented smile on his face, and with good reason. He had just watched Spain and Brazil share a thrilling, freewheeling draw at the stadium he has expensively, lavishly, reappointed. Now, Pérez, Real Madrid’s all-powerful president, found himself in a whitewashed tunnel, presented — completely by chance, obviously — with his favorite kind of photo opportunity.To one side stood Vinícius Júnior, Real Madrid’s standard-bearer and main event, dutifully introducing the man who pays his wages to his Brazil teammates. A little further along the corridor, hurrying to pay obeisance, was Rodrygo, another of Pérez’s employees.But Pérez’s focus was on Endrick, the 17-year-old star-in-waiting who will complete his long-awaited move to the Santiago Bernabéu this summer. To say the two of them shared a conversation would be pushing it: In footage of their brief meeting, Endrick does not appear to speak. After a handshake, Pérez utters only one line, but it is perfect. “We’re waiting for you here,” he said.Real Madrid has had Endrick lined up for some time: The club announced that it had reached an agreement to sign him from Palmeiras three days before the final of the 2022 World Cup. He would, as FIFA’s rules dictate, remain in Brazil, with the club that has sculpted him into the most coveted prospect in world soccer, until he turns 18 this July.Florentino Pérez, the Real Madrid president, in front of an image of another of his prize acquisitions: a renovated Santiago Bernabéu Stadium.Juanjo Martin/EPA, via ShutterstockThat kind of long-term planning feels just a little out of step with Real Madrid’s traditional modus operandi. The club identifies, correctly, as a titan, and — under Pérez’s stewardship, in particular — it has taken great pride in living the values associated with the classical definition of that term: impetuous, impulsive, irascible.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Real Madrid's Marcelo May May Miss Game for Election Duty

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      Unless the Brazilian defender is excused from working at a polling place next week, he may miss his club’s Champions League match at Chelsea.Real Madrid could be without one of its best defenders for a semifinal match in the Champions League next week because he was randomly selected to work a shift at the polls during local elections in Madrid.Marcelo, a fullback who started the first leg of Real Madrid’s semifinal against Chelsea on Tuesday in Spain, was randomly selected by the Spanish government to work at the polls next Tuesday, when there will be elections for seats in the Madrid Assembly, El Mundo reported. A second Madrid player, Victor Chust, was also selected, but he is injured and will not be missed by the team.All registered voters in Spain are eligible to be randomly selected to work at the polls. Though Marcelo, 32, was born in Brazil, he has played for Real since 2007 and has been a Spanish citizen for a decade.Spanish law allows for exemptions, which may be given for “professionals who must participate in public events to be held on the voting day that are scheduled before the electoral call when the party cannot be replaced and his nonparticipation forces suspension of the event, producing economic damages.”In the past, soccer players and others with pressing business have been excused from the polling duty. In 2019, for example, Aitor Fernández, a Levante goalkeeper, did not have to work the polls because his team had a match that day.Even leaving aside whether Marcelo is irreplaceable and whether the game would have to be canceled in his absence, there is another problem for Real’s appeal: In the case of Fernández, his game was the same day as the election. In Marcelo’s case, the second leg of the semifinal against Chelsea in London is not until the following evening. But Real Madrid is planning to travel to England a day early, the same date of the elections, and because of coronavirus protocols it may not be possible for Marcelo to make the trip on game day.El Mundo reported that Marcelo was “very upset by his electoral luck.” Real Madrid and Chelsea tied the first leg, 1-1, on Tuesday, when Chelsea’s Christian Pulisic became the first American to score in the semifinals of the competition.If he has to stay behind, Marcelo will at least pick up a small bonus: Poll workers are paid 65 euros ($78) for their day’s work.A logical replacement for Marcelo at left back would be Ferland Mendy, but it is not clear if he will be ready to return from a calf injury. More