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☆ At the World Cup, the Field Thins and the Contenders Expand
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-04 | by ( Rory Smith | More About Rory Smith | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Canada, the Olympic champion, will not add a Women’s World Cup to its list of honors this year. Marta, the Brazilian star, will not end her career with the one international trophy that has eluded her. And Germany, somehow, managed to engineer its own exit despite winning its first game by six goals. At the end of two weeks, this World Cup has incontrovertibly delivered on its stated aim — to provide a stage on which women’s soccer’s simmering revolution might burst into life. That unpredictability, that sense of old hierarchies and longstanding orders being overturned on a daily basis, has illuminated the World Cup, of course.

Persons: Marta, — Organizations: Portugal Locations: Canada, Germany, Nigeria, Australia, Colombia, United States, Jamaica, France

☆ The Gaps Get Smaller as the World Cup Gets Larger
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-30 | by ( Rory Smith | More About Rory Smith | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Given where the journey had started and where it had led, it was no wonder that watching the Philippines win a game at the Women’s World Cup felt as if it defied rational explanation, even to those involved. Now that same team had beaten New Zealand — on home soil, no less — and with the whole world watching. It was impossible to imagine that a team that had been there could ever be here, and vice versa. “Overwhelming, crazy,” said Sarina Bolden, the live-wire forward who had scored her country’s first goal at a World Cup. He started out at “staggering” and went from there, cycling through “miraculous and unbelievable” before landing on “mind-blowing.”

Persons: ”, Sarina Bolden, Alen Stajcic Organizations: Nepal, New Zealand Locations: Philippines

Those deals, though, pale into comparison with its most ambitious target yet: Kylian Mbappé. Over the weekend, one of the Saudi Professional League’s more prominent teams, Al Hilal, submitted an offer worth $332 million for the France striker to his current team, Paris St.-Germain. Should the deal go through, it would make Mbappé the most expensive player in the sport’s history by some distance, dwarfing the $263 million P.S.G. On Tuesday, it was reported by some news outlets that P.S.G. for a team in what was most recently ranked as soccer’s 58th strongest domestic league.

Persons: Cristiano Ronaldo, Karim Benzema, Al Hilal, Germain, ’, Nasser Al, Al Hilal’s, Fayza Lamari, Mbappé, Ronaldo, Lionel Messi Organizations: Saudi, France, Mbappé Locations: Saudi, Paris St

☆ Australia’s New Queen
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-19 | by ( Rory Smith | More About Rory Smith | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

Sam Kerr’s tone barely shifted. She had not, she said, had time to think about it yet. She had other things on which to focus her attention. Westminster Abbey, to act as Australia’s flag-bearer at the coronation of King Charles III. Of course, she said, she was conscious that being handpicked by Australia’s prime minister to carry her country’s flag at the coronation was an “amazing, amazing honor.” It would, she acknowledged, probably be the sort of thing she would “tell my kids about in 10 or 15 years.”

Persons: Sam, Kerr, King Charles III, ” Organizations: Westminster Abbey, Everton Locations: Barcelona, Liverpool

☆ The Curse Stalking Women’s Soccer
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-19 | by ( Rory Smith | More About Rory Smith | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The third time around, Megan Rapinoe’s reaction to a potentially career-ending knee injury went no further than an eye roll. She had torn her anterior cruciate ligament. She had torn the anterior cruciate ligament in her left knee at age 21, when she was a breakout star in her sophomore year at the University of Portland. At that time, she felt what she called “the fear” — the worry that it might all be over before it had begun. A year later, she had done it again: same ligament, same knee, same arduous road back.

Persons: Megan Rapinoe’s, “, ” Organizations: University of Portland Locations: France

☆ Women’s World Cup Contenders
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-17 | by ( Rory Smith | More About Rory Smith | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

The Women’s World Cup, which opens this week, is the biggest in its 32-year history, but it may also be the most open field the tournament has seen. While plenty of the 32 teams descending on Australia and New Zealand probably have modest ambitions for the next month, it is not a stretch to say that almost half of the field might regard themselves as serious title contenders. (Some more accurately than others.) These 10 countries are the most likely to stick around all the way until the end. United States

Locations: Australia, New Zealand, United States

☆ When You Can’t Believe What You’re Seeing
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-14 | by ( Rory Smith | More About Rory Smith | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Nobody is quite sure where the term “kayfabe” originated. It may be a bastardized form of pig Latin, something to do with the actual word “fake.” It may have its roots in the culture of wandering 19th-century carnivals, the world inhabited by P.T. Barnum and the confidence men and the salesmen who sold actual snake oil. Its modern usage, though, is sufficiently specific that only a relatively small proportion of people would even have a sense of what it means. For decades, wrestlers were expected to keep kayfabe even when they were off the clock.

Persons: ”, . Barnum, Abraham Josephine Riesman delineates, Vince McMahon —, Donald Trump Organizations: World, Entertainment Locations: “

The cold calls and text messages started arriving on Jan Van Winckel’s phone a couple of months ago, and they have not stopped. They come at a rate of about 10 a day, he said, a steady stream of hope-you’re-wells and long-time-no-speaks from old acquaintances, archived contacts, friends of friends of friends. That is what makes him valuable to agents, brokers and executives pinging his phone, over and over, all asking for the same thing: an introduction to a Saudi club president, a connection to an official at the Saudi Pro League, the phone number of someone, anyone, who might be able to help them stake their claim in soccer’s new gold rush. In the first week of June, Saudi Arabia’s soccer authorities and its sovereign wealth fund announced an audacious plan to transform the game in the kingdom: The Public Investment Fund, they announced, would take control of four of Saudi Arabia’s most prominent teams, and hundreds of millions of dollars would be made available to buy some of the game’s biggest stars. And in that moment, even before the first checks were cut, the Pro League became one of the most appealing destinations in the world.

Persons: Jan Van Winckel’s, Van Winckel Organizations: United Arab, Saudi Pro League, Public Investment Fund, Saudi, Pro League Locations: United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Saudi

☆ Ukraine Waits for a Tomorrow It Cannot See
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-07 | by ( Rory Smith | More About Rory Smith | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

There are certain things Andriy Shevchenko cannot talk about. The dread instilled by learning just how many missiles had been aimed the previous night at you, your loved ones, your home. The sensation of knowing another swarm of drones is on its way, the only hope that each one can be shot from the sky. When Ukrainian forces, after a monthlong counteroffensive, reclaimed control of the city, they found it scarred beyond recognition. Some estimates had it that 70 percent of its structures had been destroyed or damaged.

Persons: Andriy Shevchenko, Shevchenko, ” Locations: Irpin, Kyiv, Bucha, Ukrainian

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