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      Why Thomas Tuchel Was the Right Choice for England. And the Wrong One, Too.

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      An outcry over the hiring of a German to lead England’s national team was predictable. But don’t dismiss every objection out of hand.As a rule of thumb, it pays to look at the cast of characters already arrayed on one side of an argument before deciding to join them. When that list starts with Nigel Farage, swallows up Sam Allardyce and eventually sprawls across the editorial board of The Daily Mail, it should, really, serve as a burning red flag.That all three should have taken roughly the same position on England’s decision to appoint Thomas Tuchel as manager of its men’s national team is not anything approaching a surprise.Allardyce, in his defense, at least made a cogent and relevant case: Hiring a foreigner to lead the English national team could hardly be said to encourage English coaches. Farage and The Mail could not even muster that level of subtlety. Farage, England’s most stubborn bargain-basement populist, just wants the England manager to be English. The Mail seemed especially vexed that the choice was German.Still, as England’s fans tried to define their personal reaction to Tuchel’s arrival, many would — not unreasonably — have concluded that the presence of Farage and the rest clinched the matter. Much of public discourse is underpinned, now, by the belief that our identities are what is known as stacked: that what an individual thinks about abortion, say, is a reliable indicator of their views on gun control.To side with Farage, The Mail and the rest on Tuchel, then, would involve being unwillingly and unwittingly tethered to their views on a variety of subjects. It might, even, be seen to serve as a tacit endorsement of their positions on immigration, say, or who is and who is not eligible to claim English national identity.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’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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      Robert Lewandowski on Fame, Frailty and the One Voice He Won’t Ignore

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      Much has been said about the increased workload of top players, the Barcelona star said, but the mental toll of expectations and fame is just as likely to lead to burnout.This week’s newsletter has been subject to a friendly takeover by my friend, colleague and occasional padel partner Tariq Panja, who spent some time talking to Robert Lewandowski a few weeks ago. The fruits of their conversation are below. But because I dislike not getting the chance to sound off on things on a regular basis, and would otherwise have to bore my wife with my thoughts on the #Barclaysman phenomenon, I’ve contributed some thoughts after his bit.Robert Lewandowski has been famous for a long time. And as one of the most successful players of his generation in the world’s most popular sport, he knows that attention comes with the job. But he is also a dad.So, like most elite soccer players, he must do a lot of planning and preparation when it comes to something as simple as going out for a stroll with his family, particularly if he leaves Castelldefels, the exclusive coastal enclave near Barcelona where he now lives.Over the years, he developed a tool kit for outings. Sunglasses and a cap are standard, even if they probably won’t fool the fans liable to mob him. But now any such outing also includes a preliminary chat with the person who decides how much Lewandowski can, and should, interact with the public: his daughter Klara.“We have an agreement that she can always tell me, ‘Yeah, you can do this’ or, ‘No,’ if she’s feeling stressed,” Lewandowski said in a recent interview. “Because for the kids, it’s not a normal situation.”In Europe, players of Lewandowski’s caliber, even as he nears the end of a trophy-laden career, are catnip for hordes of selfie-seeking soccer fans. So having a few hours out with the family can often mean striking a balance between meeting the needs of an eager and demanding fan base, especially one as large and as passionate as Barcelona’s, and those of his young family.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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      Premier League Preview: Here We Go Again

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      The European soccer season is back. Here are the top story lines to watch this season.You will, in all likelihood, have heard the sentence already. You will certainly hear it on Friday, at least once, and then over and over again on Saturday and Sunday, delivered by every pearly toothed host and every red-faced pundit and every eager-voiced commentator. The Premier League, they will say, is back.This is not true, of course. It is an anachronism, a throwback to the days when soccer had the common decency to take the summer off and hand center stage over to other sports for a while. The Premier League — all club soccer, in fact — cannot be back, as detailed last week, because it never really goes away.Chelsea spent the Olympics signing vast quantities of South American teenagers for reasons that remain moderately opaque. Several of its domestic and European rivals used the European Championship and the Copa América as the perfect cover for hiring and firing sundry, essentially interchangeable managers.Soccer, club soccer, is a juggernaut, and the thing about juggernauts is that they do not stop rolling. They do not rest up for a few weeks, take the summer off, have a bit of a rest. That sense of permanence, that omnipresence, is what has turned soccer into less of a pastime and more of a lifestyle choice, a strikingly lucrative cultural touchstone.And yet, by some sleight of hand, those few days before a new campaign begins do somehow feel like the start of a different day. No matter how hard-boiled, how cynical, how self-aware an observer you have become, there is something about the prospect of the new season — new jerseys being worn and new signings being fielded in new stadiums, bright in summer sunshine — that captures the imagination.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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      St. Lucia and Dominica Win First-Ever Olympic Medals

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      If it feels like the same countries are winning most of the Olympic medals every two years, that’s because it’s largely true.Even though more than 150 countries and territories have claimed a medal since the modern Games began in 1896, the list of winners is top-heavy. Entering the Paris Summer Games, the United States has the most, by far, with 2,975 medals, according to the International Olympic Committee’s research wing. A group of usual suspects follow: the former Soviet Union (1,204), Germany (1,058), Great Britain (955), France (898).Nearly 70 countries and territories, though — roughly a third of the parade of nations — cannot boast an Olympic medalist in any discipline, summer or winter. Some, like South Sudan, which sent its first team to the Olympics in 2016, have only just begun trying. Others, like Monaco, have been at it for more than a century.“It’s frustrating, definitely,” said Marco Luque, a member of the Bolivian Olympic Committee’s board and the president of his country’s track and field federation. “And you feel impotence, of not being able to do better.”Every once in a while, though, a nation breaks its maiden. On Saturday night at the Stade de France, Thea LaFond-Gadson, 30, of the Caribbean island of Dominica, won the gold medal in women’s triple jump. And soon after, Julien Alfred, 23, of St. Lucia, also in the Caribbean, won the gold medal in the women’s 100-meter sprint.“It means a lot to the small islands,” she said. “And seeing how we can come from a small place but also be on the biggest stage of our career.”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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      The Olympics Has a Bad Guy: Anyone in an Argentina Jersey

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      Grudges from the World Cup and rugby union have spilled over to the Games. But is this new sports feud even real?The Olympic Games have long been governed by a tacit code: If fans can’t say anything nice, they shouldn’t say anything at all. Jeering, whistling and catcalling at athletes who have spent years to make it to the pinnacle of their sports is “unacceptable,” as Thomas Bach, the president of the International Olympic Committee, once put it. To boo is, well, taboo.As far as the French are concerned, though, there appears to be one exception: anyone wearing the sky blue and white of Argentina.In the opening few days of the Paris Games, Argentina was booed before, during and after a men’s soccer game in Marseille. It was heartily booed for three days straight every time its men’s rugby sevens team appeared at a packed Stade de France. And it was booed again whenever one of those rugby players had the temerity to touch the ball.Its anthem was booed once more — although a little more gently — when Argentina’s team made its debut in the men’s volleyball tournament at the South Paris Arena on Saturday evening.The hostility has left some of the country’s opponents wondering what is going on. Nicholas Malouf, an Australian rugby sevens player, said he “did not know the background” behind the tension. Antony Mboya, representing Kenya in the same sport, assumed the local French crowd was just “backing an underdog.”In reality, the animosity is much more targeted. Both sides have come to understand that France, at this moment in time, does not much like Argentina. “It has become a real rivalry for us,” said Jules Briand, a French fan who traveled both to watch his team compete in rugby sevens and to indulge in a little jeering.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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      Racheal Kundananji Leads Zambia Against USWNT at Paris 2024

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      In seven years, Racheal Kundananji went from playing her first organized game to signing a multimillion-dollar contract. Her rise could have lasting effects.Racheal Kundananji was just 17 when she showed up to practice with her first-ever soccer team wearing track spikes.Until then, track and field was the only organized sport she had known in the Zambian copper-mining region where she grew up. Now she was sprinting around a bumpy patch of dirt that seemed more suitable for off-road biking than for soccer, displaying skills as rugged as the field itself.“She would run very fast,” said Risto Mupaka, a coach of the team, Konkola Queens. But, he added, “turning was a problem.”It didn’t take her long to figure out the game. After only four practices, Kundananji played her first match. She scored three goals.Seven years since that debut, Kundananji, 24, will lead Zambia’s national team into the Paris Olympics carrying a title that those who knew her at 17 could have scarcely believed: She is now one of the most valuable women’s soccer players on the planet.Bay F.C., a San Francisco-based expansion team in the National Women’s Soccer League, paid $788,000 to acquire Kundananji in February. It was the highest transfer fee ever paid for a female player.Darren Yamashita/USA Today Sports, via ReutersWe 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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      Mayhem at Copa América Final Raises Questions About 2026 World Cup

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      Chaos at the stadium raised questions about crowd control and security just two years before the U.S. is set to co-host the World Cup in 11 cities.Throngs of fans rushed past security at the final match of the Copa América soccer tournament, some of them brazenly climbing tall fences. A few appeared to try to enter the Hard Rock Stadium near Miami through a ceiling vent. Children cried as the crowds pushed into metal barriers. Some adults grew faint under the broiling sun.The highly anticipated matchup between Argentina and Colombia on Sunday was intended to showcase the best of South American soccer — and serve as a dress rehearsal for the United States to co-host the men’s World Cup in 2026. Instead, it turned into mayhem, delaying kickoff for over an hour as the situation outside the stadium doors grew dangerous.On Monday, tournament organizers, stadium officials and the local authorities struggled to explain exactly what had gone wrong, offering few details about evident organizational failures, pointing fingers and mostly blaming fans who did not have tickets for the match for showing up anyway and becoming “unruly.” Law enforcement officials arrested 27 people and evicted 55 others from the stadium, according to the Miami-Dade County Police Department.Ramón Jesurún, president of the Colombia Soccer Federation, was arrested, along with his son.Carlos Ortega/EPA, via ShutterstockAmong those arrested were Ramón Jesurún, the head of Colombia’s soccer federation, and his son, Ramón Jamil Jesurún. They were charged with battery of a security guard in a stadium tunnel after the match had concluded, with Argentina defeating Colombia, 1-0, in extra time. The younger Mr. Jesurún was also charged with grabbing another stadium employee. Father and son spent the night in the Miami-Dade County jail, public records showed.The chaos caused international embarrassment for organizers of the Copa América, which had already been marred by complaints from players and coaches about the poor quality of the playing surfaces, training facilities and security. After a semifinal match in North Carolina last week, several Uruguayan players jumped into the stands to fight with Colombian fans whom they later said had been threatening the players’ families.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