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      Why We Should Have Nice Things

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      Modern soccer shouldn’t be set up to rob fans of their joy.All being well, Bayer Leverkusen will end this season with one record, two trophies and just three haunting, existential questions. They will all trace back to Wednesday, back to Dublin, back to the Europa League final, and they will all take exactly the same, baleful form: What if?What if Exequiel Palacios had seen Ademola Lookman coming? What if Granit Xhaka had not given the ball away? What if Edmond Tapsoba had stretched out his leg? Could the final have been different? Could Leverkusen have rallied to beat Atalanta? Could Leverkusen’s manager, Xabi Alonso, have steered his team to an unbeaten treble?It is cruel, of course, that it should be this way. Leverkusen has, after all, illuminated the European season like no other team. It has won its first German championship, after 120 years of trying. It should, this weekend, add the German cup to its trophy haul. It has overtaken Benfica as the owner of the longest unbeaten run in European soccer since World War I. And it has done it all, in case nobody has mentioned it, in Alonso’s first full season in management.That is how its season should be remembered. When Alonso, his players and his fans reflect on this campaign in years to come, they should focus on what the team achieved, not on where it fell short. It has outstripped even the most fanciful of its ambitions. But should is not the same as will. Nothing hurts as much as nearly. Leverkusen will, whether it wants to or not, always wonder.Even before it lifted the Bundesliga trophy, Bayer Leverkusen knew it wouldn’t lose Manager Xabi Alonso.Ina Fassbender/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThere is, though, a silver lining. A couple of months ago, as both Liverpool and Bayern Munich began to search for a new coach, Alonso made it clear that he would not welcome an approach from either club. He was, he said, still honing his craft. He had made a long-term commitment to Leverkusen, and he did not intend to break it at the first available opportunity.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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      Investor’s Lawsuit Accuses 777 Partners of $600 Million Fraud

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      In a suit filed in federal court in New York, a firm that provided hundreds of millions of dollars to 777 accused the company of double-pledging its collateral to other investors.The American investment firm 777 Partners, whose bid to buy the English Premier League soccer team Everton has been on hold for months amid doubts about the company’s finances, was accused by one of its lenders on Friday of running a yearslong fraud scheme worth hundreds of millions of dollars.The accusation came in a lawsuit filed Friday in federal court in New York by Leadenhall Capital Partners, a London-based asset management company. It said that it had provided 777 Partners with more than $600 million in financing, only to discover that roughly $350 million in assets serving as collateral for the loans either were not in 777’s control or had already been pledged to other lenders.The lawsuit is the latest, most serious claim against 777 Partners, which has for years made bold assertions about its financial health — it has previously claimed $10 billion in assets — even as it was trailed a string of lawsuits, corporate failures and unpaid bills.The suit could have immediate implications for 777’s stalled bid to buy Everton: The Premier League has not approved the sale, and the financially strapped club recently said it was seeking alternate investors.But questions about the company’s balance sheet also carry the risk of contagion for the broader world soccer market, given that 777’s portfolio includes ownership stakes in teams in Australia, Brazil, Belgium, France and Germany, and because it owes debts at all of 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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      Champions League: Bayern Munich, Dortmund and the Lure of the Past

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      Change comes neither easily nor naturally at Germany’s two most successful clubs. Will success in the Champions League delay it again?In those few minutes after Niclas Füllkrug had scored, as the Yellow Wall swayed and roared, Borussia Dortmund must have felt the stirring of some distant memory. Waves of attacks pounded down on Paris St.-Germain, now dizzied and wearied. The world shimmered with possibility. A place in the Champions League final felt, for a moment, close enough to touch.This is how it used to be, or at least some approximation of it, back in the days when Dortmund made Europe shake. Gregor Kobel, the team’s goalkeeper, was pulling off daring turns in his own penalty area. Mats Hummels, a fixture in the lineup a decade ago, was spraying languid passes with the outside of his foot. Jadon Sancho and Karim Adeyemi were electric, relentless.There is a chance, of course, that it will all count for nothing. More than a chance, really: Dortmund may live to regret that a second goal never came. P.S.G. had enough opportunities to hint at its threat, too, hitting the post twice in the space of 10 seconds at one point. It may not prove quite so forgiving in the return leg in Paris on Tuesday.But that Dortmund will travel to France with hope — perhaps even with a little expectation — is still an unanticipated development. This was supposed, after all, to be a chastening week for German soccer: Most expected Dortmund and Bayern Munich, the Bundesliga’s two great crisis clubs, to be exposed in the Champions League semifinals. And yet, halfway through, both teams remain vividly alive.Niclas Füllkrug scored the goal that gave Dortmund a 1-0 victory over P.S.G. in their two-legged Champions League semifinal.Ina Fassbender/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesDortmund’s case was the more extreme. The club has spent much of this season engaged in a bout of restive soul-searching. Dortmund’s coach, Edin Terzic, has been under such scrutiny for so long that it is probably fair to assume he has memorized the password to his H.R. portal. The club enters this weekend languishing in fifth place in the Bundesliga, its form patchy, its progress stalled.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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      Lessons in Democracy From F.C. Porto

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      A powerful president and a popular rival highlight an election that has already featured fights, arrests and accusations of intimidation.Things started with a brawl and have scarcely gotten better from there. Over the course of the past five months or so, there have been a string of arrests; allegations of drug trafficking and money laundering; dark whispers of illegal data breaches; vague accusations of intimidation; and several charged invectives about financial impropriety, dishonesty and betrayal.Across the globe this year, at least 64 countries will hold elections. So, too, will the European Union. The campaigns will be fierce. Frequently, they may be toxic. Few, though, will prove quite so virulent — or offer quite such an instructive case study of the state of democracy in 2024 — as the one to decide who gets to be president of F.C. Porto.Like dozens of clubs around Europe, Porto — one of the three great houses of Portuguese soccer — is owned by its members. Their number is currently somewhere north of 140,000. Every few years, the club holds an election, for both a president and an executive board, to determine who should run the club on their behalf.Ordinarily, these amount to little more than paperwork. Only a small percentage of members vote. The choice is usually between two essentially indistinguishable old men, when there is a choice at all. Until the last round of elections, in 2020, Porto had been a democracy in only the most nominal sense.Since 1982, Jorge Nuno Pinto da Costa has served as Porto’s president. In that time, he has seen the team crowned champion of Europe twice — 1987 and 2004, trivia fans — and established it as Portugal’s pre-eminent force. Porto has won 23 Portuguese titles on Pinto da Costa’s watch, nine more than Benfica, its nearest rival in that time.Porto fans before a game against Benfica in March.Pedro Nunes/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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      Why Don’t More People Resent Manchester City?

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      Out of the Champions League but on top of the Premier League, Manchester City shows that it takes more than trophies to make a villain.Silence swept from one end of the Etihad Stadium to the other, a wave of dawning realization. The background noise that a crowd cannot help but generate — the rumble and murmur of 20,000 separate conversations — fell away. Calculations were made. Conclusions were drawn.For most of Wednesday evening, the natural operating assumption was that Manchester City would advance past Real Madrid and reach yet another Champions League semifinal. Pep Guardiola’s City team was creating so many chances that victory felt, really, like a statistical inevitability. Even as the tied game ticked into extra time, the match felt strangely nerveless. City went close with a chance again. No matter. The next one would be along soon.The idea that any other ending was available did not seem to have occurred to anyone, right up to the point when Bernardo Silva and Mateo Kovacic missed their penalties in quick succession, and all of a sudden City found itself on the brink. The possibility of elimination had felt so far-fetched that its arrival almost came as a surprise.A moment later, Antonio Rüdiger was hurling himself, topless, into a morass of delirious Real Madrid fans. Jude Bellingham was leading chants in his second language. And Guardiola’s hopes of retaining the Champions League trophy had been dashed. He stood in the center circle, looking just a little lost. “What more could we have done?” he would ask later.Pep Guardiola, on the rare day when it all went wrong.Darren Staples/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIt has felt for a while as if Manchester City has achieved so much, so fast, that it has had to start inventing challenges to meet. Can Guardiola win titles without a striker? Yes. What about with central defenders who are actually midfielders? Also yes. Can he craft a team capable of collecting 100 points, or winning every domestic trophy, or doing a treble? Yes, yes, yes.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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      Coaches Have to Be Salesmen, Too

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      David Moyes has established West Ham as a fixture in the top half of the Premier League and a regular presence in Europe. So why do so many fans want him out?West Ham, in the end, could not quite withstand the barrage. Bayer Leverkusen’s first goal — a Jonas Hofmann shot that picked its way through a thronged penalty area — broke its resistance. The second, a late, artful header from Victor Boniface, shattered its hopes. The club’s Europa League adventure will likely extend no further than the quarterfinals.Still, there is no great shame in that. Leverkusen is, of course, Europe’s great form team: on an unbeaten run that now stretches to 42 games, and on the verge of claiming its first German championship. Xabi Alonso, its estimable young coach, remains on course to claim a treble — league, cup, Europa League — in his first full season.The bare facts of West Ham’s campaign are not quite as impressive, but they are admirable enough. The club sits seventh in the Premier League, above both Newcastle United and Chelsea and just a point behind Manchester United. A top-six finish remains a realistic ambition.That would mean another run at Europe next year, a fourth in succession. West Ham is starting to feel at home on the continent: It reached the Europa League semifinals in 2022, losing out to Eintracht Frankfurt, and then beat Fiorentina to claim the Europa Conference League trophy in 2023.That was West Ham’s first trophy since 1980, and only the fifth major honor in its history. David Moyes, the coach, and his team were met with a heroes’ reception and a bus parade through the streets of east London. The club’s fans have, for much of this season, delighted in making the ever-so-slightly inaccurate claim that they are “champions of Europe.”At West Ham, the good old days might be right now.Carl Recine/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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      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