The Washington Post - USA (2020-08-02)

D2 EZ SU THE WASHINGTON POST.SUNDAY, AUGUST 2 , 2020

concerns over the coronavirus and in honor of the “hundreds and thousands of Americans” who have died of covid-19, the disease it causes.... The IndyCar doubleheader scheduled for Mid-Ohio next weekend was postponed because of the spike in coronavirus cases across the nation, which means the series won’t race again until the Indianapolis 500 on Aug. 23. — Associated Press

Bournemouth Manager Eddie Howe left the club following its relegation from the English Premier League.... Defender Chancel Mbemba scored twice to lead 10-man FC Porto to a 2-1 win over Benfica in the Portuguese Cup final in Coimbra.

MISC. Nick Kyrgios withdrew from the U.S. Open because of

SOCCER Winger Lior Refaelov scored the winning goal against his former club as Royal Antwerp beat Club Brugge, 1-0, in the Belgian Cup final in Brussels in the country’s first competitive game since March.... Lazio striker Ciro Immobile matched the record for goals in a season in Italy’s Serie A with 36. He scored in the first half of a 3-1 loss at Napoli....

PRO BASKETBALL Sylvia Fowles had 21 points and 13 rebounds, and the Minnesota Lynx beat the Connecticut Sun, 78-69, in Bradenton, Fla.... New York Liberty rookie Sabrina Ionescu, the No. 1 pick in the WNBA draft, was diagnosed with a Grade 3 ankle sprain, which usually requires months to heal, after getting hurt vs. the Atlanta D ream on Friday.

WNBA 1 p.m. Phoenix vs. New York Liberty » ESPN 3:30 p.m. Atlanta vs. Indiana » N BATV 6 p.m. Dallas vs. Las Vegas » E SPN2 GOLF 7 a.m. European Tour: H ero Open, final round » G olf Channel 1 p.m. PGA Tour: WGC St. Jude Invitational, final round » G olf Channel 3 p.m. PGA Tour: WGC St. Jude Invitational, final round » W USA (Ch. 9), WJZ (Ch. 13) 3 p.m. PGA Tour Champions: Ally Challenge, final round » Golf Channel 5 p.m. LPGA Tour: Drive On Championship, final round » G olf Channel 7 p.m. PGA Tour: Barracuda Championship, final round » G olf Channel TENNIS Noon World Team Tennis, final » W USA (Ch. 9), WJZ (Ch. 13) 3 p.m. 2020 (Re)Open: Ultimate Tennis Showdown 2, round robin » T ennis Channel AUTO RACING 9 a.m. Formula One: British Grand Prix » E SPN 3 p.m. NASCAR Cup Series: Foxwoods Resort Casino 301 » N BC Sports Network PREMIER LACROSSE LEAGUE Noon Championship series: Whipsnakes v s. Archers » NBC Sports Network

TELEVISION AND RADIO MLB 1 p.m. Tampa Bay at Baltimore » MASN, WTEM (980 AM), WJFK (106.7 FM) 1 p.m. New York Mets at Atlanta » T BS 4 p.m. Los Angeles Dodgers at Arizona » M LB Network 7 p.m. Boston at New York Yankees » ESPN NBA 2 p.m. Washington vs. Brooklyn » N BC Sports Washington, WFED (1500 AM) 3:30 p.m. Portland vs. Boston » W JLA (Ch. 7), WMAR (Ch. 2) 6 p.m. Sacramento vs. Orlando » N BATV 8:30 p.m. Milwaukee vs. Houston » W JLA (Ch. 7), WMAR (Ch. 2) NHL 2 p.m. Arizona vs. Nashville » U SA Network 3 p.m. Philadelphia vs. Boston » W RC (Ch. 4), WBAL (Ch. 11) 6:30 p.m. St. Louis vs. Colorado » N BC Sports Network 8 p.m. Columbus vs. Toronto » NHL Network 10:30 p.m. Minnesota vs. Vancouver » NBC Sports Network SOCCER 8 p.m. Mexican Liga MX: Guadalajara at Santos Laguna » Fox Sports 1

Tour Champions event in five months. Quigley played bogey- free at Warwick Hills in Grand Blanc, Mich. Carlos Franco also had a 64 and was in the group one shot behind that included Jim Furyk (66) in his debut on the 50-and-older circuit.... Branden Grace t ested positive for the novel coronavirus, a double blow to the South African who was a birdie out of the lead at the Barracuda Championship in Truckee, Calif., and now can’t play next week in the PGA Championship. Troy Merritt m ade two late birdies to take a four-point lead into the final round of the P GA Tour’s lone modified Stableford scoring event.... Sam Horsfield will enter the final day with a one-shot lead in the European Tour’s Hero Open in Birmingham, England.... Danielle Kang returned from a rain delay with two straight birdies and at the end of the day had a share of the lead with Jodi Ewart Shadoff a nd C eline Boutier in the LPGA Drive On Championship in Toledo.

GOLF

Todd shoots 1 under

to lead in Memphis

Brendon Todd s hot a 1-under-
par 69 on Saturday at the
St. Jude Invitational to take a
one-stroke lead into the final
round of this World Golf
Championship event.
Todd started the third round
with a two-stroke lead. He had
five birdies and four bogeys to
put him at 13-under 198 at TPC
Southwind in Memphis.
The 35-year-old Georgian is
looking for his fourth career
victory and third since last fall.
Byeong Hun An of South
Korea finished with a 66 and is
one stroke back. Rickie Fowler
was two strokes back after a 69.
Defending champ Brooks
Koepka shot a 68 and was fourth
at 9 under. J ustin Thomas, who
can become No. 1 in the world
with a victory here, was fifth at 8
under after a 66....
Brett Quigley shot an 8-under
64 to hold a one-shot lead in the
Ally Challenge, the first PGA

DIGEST

ADAM DAVY/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Christian Pulisic put Chelsea ahead, becoming the first American
to score a n FA Cup goal, but he left later with a hamstring injury.

BY AMOS BARSHAD

london — In response to this summer’s resurgent Black Lives Matter protests, the English Pre- mier League — the world’s most- watched soccer league — took un- precedented actions. Team jerseys featured a Black Lives Matter sleeve patch, and for select games, player names on the backs of jerseys were replaced with the words “Black Lives Matter.” And before kickoff, whole teams took knees in solidarity with the movement as commentators soberly intoned things such as “they’re sending a message that Black lives matter.” Within a week of the mid-June restart, the fuzzy feelings were punctured by a plane, flying over Manchester City’s stadium during a match against Burnley, trailing a banner reading “WHITE LIVES MATTER BURNLEY!” The move was quickly decried, but the re- minder had been served: Racism has always been — and continues to be — a problem in English football. There was no questioning the optics of the Premier League’s response to the Black Lives Matter protests. But plenty have ques- tioned a true desire for meaning- ful change. Only in June was a system set up for reporting racial abuse received online. There was no movement to diversify coaching and administrative ranks in the EPL or to address racial bias in commentary. With the season ending last Sunday, were the patches just, well, a patch? “Okay. That’s cute,” says Jordan Jarrett-Bryan, a reporter for Brit- ain’s Channel 4 and a radio host for talkSPORT, of his initial response to the patches. “But when people are being murdered because they’re Black, I’m not inter- ested in feeling good. I’m interest- ed in actual reform.” The racist abuse that Black players such as Laurie Cunning- ham and Viv Anderson notorious- ly suffered in the 1970s continues, in some form, to this day. Govern- ment figures showed a significant yearly increase in reported soccer- related incidents in 2018-19. In July, British police arrested a 12- year-old boy who sent Crystal Pal- ace star Wilfried Zaha racist mes- sages on social media. Racism is largely expressed via fan abuse but not exclusively: In February, Leeds goalkeeper Kiko Casilla was suspended after racially abusing an opposing player. Similar alle- gations have been around for years in European soccer. “Everything that’s being raised — everyone knew about all of this,” says Felicia Pennant, founder and editor in chief of Season, a fashion and soccer digital platform that works against the “male, pale and sometimes stale” of the main- stream. “What I would really like to know is, why is this different now?” In an emailed statement, a spokesperson for the Premier League pointed to two ongoing initiatives launched in late June: a new “dedicated reporting system” for players, coaches and their fam- ilies to report online racist abuse and a program that aims to place up to six Black, Asian and minori- ty ethnic (BAME) coaches a year in “intensive work placement” with clubs in the three divisions below the Premier League. At the sport’s grass roots, however, there are widespread concerns that the Premier League and

its corporate and broadcast part- ners have shown little motivation to change their multibillion-dol- lar business. Some fans are left feeling that, if there is a progres- sive streak in soccer culture, it won’t be found in the pros. Beyond the Premier League, and the three pro leagues below it, there’s a quasi-infinite archipela- go of semi- and nonprofessional soccer played in teeny grounds and bustling parks. There is also a growing network of independent publications such as Season and CARICOM that aim to show soccer “through the criminally un- derexplored lens of the Black ex- perience in the United Kingdom,” as well as community organizations such as Nutmegs, Romance FC, NUR and Goaldiggers FC that aim to provide women and non- binary people of color with opportunities to engage in soccer culture. Season’s Pennant, a die-hard Chelsea supporter from South London, remembers watching bedrock soccer programming, such as England’s beloved “Match of the Day,” and often thinking the same thing: “There’s no women here, there’s no one Black here, and there’s no Black women here.” Season’s goal in part is to give “women and people that don’t feel represented elsewhere a space to truly be honest” — to say “yes we do exist and this is what we think and we love football as much as you do.” Watching TV personalities re- spond with seeming sincerity to the reckoning over race relations in soccer left Pennant “vexed,” she says — some were people she has interacted with in chilly professional encounters, in rooms where she was the only Black per- son. “I mean, the hypocrisy.” Watching a White fellow pundit ask ex-player Micah Richards to “educate” him on race relations, she thought, “the emotional labor is always put on Black people.” She points to two of the league’s big- gest stars: “Raheem Sterling is always asked about racism. Ask Harry Kane.” As part of its own response to the Black Lives Matter protests, Season posted “The Season Guide to Being Anti-Racist and Support- ing the Black Community in Foot- ball” and offered a piece on “how to turn BLM solidarity into ac- tion.” For the most part, however, Season and other organizations like it are not explicitly political but inherently so. “I want to be optimistic,” she says. “You have to hope” that change can be affected “by doing what we do.”

Mundial, a magazine and cre- ative agency, is part of the boomlet of nontraditional soccer media. (Its staff is mostly White). Last year, Mundial started a team, Sporting Club de Mundial, in the East London neighborhood of Hackney. “We looked to create a team that could be a proper repre- sentation of football in Hackney,” says Sam Diss, Mundial’s head of content. “The team is 75 percent made up of local lads, most of them BAME players.” The team competes in the Hackney & Ley- ton League, which itself has “a diverse board of administrators” and coaches “that reflect the makeup of the area.” Diss says that’s something that can be seen throughout London. “Local amateur leagues are seen as properly representative of their areas,” he says, “and that represen- tation is taken as a source of pride: Players argue over which district has the best park football all the time.” That’s particularly important in an era when, Diss argues, “a lot of professional football clubs have forgotten they’re supposed to be representative of a community and not just a cluster of copy- righted images and hashtags.” The group Nutmegs focuses on women and non-binary people of color. Its co-founder, Hayley Ben- nett, also believes the professional clubs have discarded certain re- sponsibilities. Nutmegs was creat- ed because “the social side of watching football was not de- signed with women or non-binary people of color in mind,” Bennett says. “We realized we would need to create our own.” That has included organizing outings for fans who had never before felt fully safe attending live games. However, Bennett points out, “We are not trying to make football more inclusive or diverse as we don’t see that as our respon- sibility. There are people in posi- tions of leadership who should be doing that.” The Black Lives Matter protests have renewed talk around an oft- discussed move: a true zero-toler- ance policy against racial abuse in which one documented incident would get you a lifetime ban. As Jarrett-Bryan points out, incidents of racial abuse are not as prevalent in other popular Eng- lish sports such as rugby or cricket. “You can’t tell me there aren’t racist cricket fans!” he says. “The difference is, you can’t get away with it there. But that won’t hap- pen because there’s no diversity within the upper echelon of the Premier League. Why would you expect a bunch of White men to

understand why it’s important to protect Black players? Why would you expect a fish to bark?” Jason Lee, a former Premier League player, is now the equali- ties education executive of the Professional Footballers Associa- tion. “Let’s look at the execs,” he says. “Let’s look at the boards. Who are the decision-makers? There are people within organizations that are ambitious, and it’s not coincidence. It’s not paranoia. They’re not getting opportunities because of the color of their skin.” There have been intermittent pushes in England to adopt the NFL’s Rooney Rule, which stipu- lates that interview pools for coaching jobs must include a mi- nority candidate. “We wanted that forever,” Lee says. “That’s never been able to get off the ground. There’s voluntary participation. Voluntary is a waste of time.” Lee wants mandatory institution of the rule, via government legisla- tion, if that’s what’s it takes. He connects the lack of coaching opportunities to another long- standing issue: racial bias in commentary. Denmark research firm RunRepeat recently published the results of a lengthy analysis of television commentary in English soccer; it quantified that lighter- skinned players are regularly praised for “intelligence” and “quality” while darker-skinned players are commonly associated with “pace” and “power.” Lee is hopeful the study will lead to more bias training. He underlines, however, that these are grievances that have long been voiced and have long fallen on deaf ears. Bringing this up without the Danish firm’s statistics, he says, probably would have seen him dismissed as “another Black man saying, ‘I’m not happy.’ ” With the 2019-20 Premier League season over and without the pressure of protests, will Eng- lish soccer continue an honest racial reckoning? “Is this perfor- mative?” Pennant asks. “What’s your plan in a year? Ignorance is bliss, but no one can say they’re ignorant any more. If you are si- lent, you’re complicit. Bottom line.” “We’re nowhere near satisfied,” Lee says. “And if it’s uncomfort- able for some people, that’s their problem. Some are asking, how long will this go on for? Mate, it’s been going on for hundreds of years.” The 2020-21 Premier League season kicks off Sept. 12. For now, there are no plans to continue the Black Lives Matter sleeve patches. [email protected]

For Premier League, a call for change that matters

NEIL HALL/NMC/POOL/EPA-EFE/SHUTTERSTOCK The EPL returned with strong Black Lives Matter optics. At the grass-roots level, there’s skepticism.

Skeptics doubt leaders will do what it takes to end prevalent racism The goal continued an out- standing stretch for the American attacker, who has scored five goals, added two assists and creat- ed several other scoring opportunities since English soccer returned from the pandemic shut- down six weeks ago. Sidelined for the second leg of the UEFA Champions League’s round of 16 at Bayern Munich next weekend, Pulisic will finish the 2019-20 campaign with 11 goals: nine in 25 Premier League appear- ances (19 starts), one in five FA Cup and League Cup matches and one in four Champions League games. After the early goal, Pulisic and Chelsea faded as Arsenal began to find its way. Both teams were de- fensively brittle, particularly Chel- sea. Nicolas Pepe’s terrific equalizer in the 25th minute was nullified by an offside violation in the build- up. But a minute later, Chelsea’s Cesar Azpilicueta took down Au- bameyang as the Arsenal forward beat him into the box. Aubamey- ang converted the penalty kick. Pulisic’s historic day ended just after intermission. Accelerating out of midfield and looking in- creasingly dangerous as he bore down on the penalty area, Pulisic injured himself. Though he main- tained his run, his grimace sig- naled trouble. He launched an an- gled shot wide of the far post, then collapsed. Trainers helped him off the field. His day was over. Spanish veteran Pedro entered. “If Christian goes through and scores as opposed to missing and doing his hamstring,” Chelsea Manager Frank Lampard said, “well, the circumstances in the game conspired against us.” Chelsea’s problems would deepen. In the 67th minute, Hector Bel- lerin made an assertive central run and Chelsea lost its shape. From the right side, Pepe squared the ball to Aubameyang, who toyed with defender Kurt Zouma and cleverly chipped a six-yard effort over goalkeeper Willy Ca- ballero for his 29th goal in all 2019-20 competitions. Arsenal’s lead gained strength in the 73rd minute when Chelsea’s Mateo Kovacic was red-carded after a second yellow card. Injuries and other delays led to an astounding 14 minutes of stop- page time, but Arsenal did not break. As Pulisic watched the final moments from the players’ tunnel, the Gunners won the trophy for the fourth time in seven years. “We didn’t play well enough to win a final,” Lampard said. “A lot of today is on us.” [email protected]

BY STEVEN GOFF

Christian Pulisic’s appearance
in the FA Cup final Saturday began
with elation and ended in agony.
The U.S. national team winger
became the first American to score
in English soccer’s prestigious
competition, giving Chelsea an ear-
ly lead against Arsenal at Wembley
Stadium in London. But a minute
into the second half, he strained his
right hamstring while rampaging
toward the goal, abruptly sidelin-
ing him for the rest of Arsenal’s 2-1
comeback victory.
The match was played without
fans because of the novel corona-
virus pandemic.
Pulisic, 21, became the third U.S.
national team player to start in the
final of a competition, dating from
1872, that welcomes teams from all
10 tiers of the sport in England. His
predecessors were midfielder
John Harkes (Sheffield Wednesday
in 1993) and goalkeeper Tim How-
ard (Manchester United in 2004
and Everton in 2009).
Pulisic — the son of former
George Mason University soccer
players — scored in the fifth min-
ute for Chelsea, which last sum-
mer acquired the Hershey, Pa., na-
tive from German club Borussia
Dortmund for a U.S.-player-record
$73 million.
Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang,
Pulisic’s former Dortmund team-
mate, tied the match with a 28th-
minute penalty kick and scored
the go-ahead goal midway
through the second half as Arsenal
extended its record of FA Cup ti-
tles to 14.
“This pays for all the moments
that we suffered, so I’m so happy,”
said Arsenal Manager Mikel Arte-
ta, a former Arsenal player who
took charge in December and
oversaw a team that finished
eighth in the Premier League. By
winning the FA Cup, the Gunners
qualified for the 2020-21 UEFA
Europa League.
Pulisic’s goal will not soon be
forgotten in U.S. circles. He led the
charge with a central run, then
pushed the ball through a channel
to Mason Mount in stride, penetrat-
ing the left side of the penalty area.
Mount one-timed a cross to Ol-
ivier Giroud, who used his left foot
to flick to Pulisic. In tight space,
Pulisic evaded defender Kieran
Tierney with his first touch and
chipped it past goalkeeper Emilia-
no Martinez.

Pulisic, Chelsea soar

early, then stumble

ARSENAL 2, CHELSEA 1

U.S. star scores, injures

hamstring in FA Cup final

The Washington Post - USA (2020-08-02)

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