The New York Times - USA (2020-10-10)

B10 Y THE NEW YORK TIMES SPORTSSATURDAY, OCTOBER 10, 2020

SOCCER SCOREBOARD

FOOTBALL N.F.L. SCHEDULE Thursday Chicago 20, Tampa Bay 19 Sunday Cincinnati at Baltimore, 1 Philadelphia at Pittsburgh, 1 Carolina at Atlanta, 1 Las Vegas at Kansas City, 1 L.A. Rams at Washington, 1 Arizona at Jets, 1 Jacksonville at Houston, 1 Miami at San Francisco, 4:05 Giants at Dallas, 4:25 Indianapolis at Cleveland, 4:25 Minnesota at Seattle, 8:20 Open: Detroit, Green Bay Monday Denver at New England, 5 L.A. Chargers at New Orleans, 8:15

N.W.S.L. SCHEDULE Saturday, October 3 Washington 1, Sky Blue FC 0 Portland 1, Utah 1, tie Sunday, October 4 Houston 4, North Carolina 1 Friday, October 9 Houston at Orlando, 5 p.m. Saturday, October 10 Chicago at Sky Blue FC, 12:30 p.m.

SOCCER

M.L.S. SCHEDULE Wednesday, October 7 Orlando City 0, Atlanta 0, tie Miami 2, Red Bulls 1 Montreal 2, Columbus 1 Toronto FC 1, New England 0 Philadelphia 3, Cincinnati 0 NYCFC 4, D.C. United 1 Houston 2, FC Dallas 0 Kansas City 1, Chicago 0 Los Angeles FC at Colorado ppd. Seattle 2, Real Salt Lake 1 Portland 6, LA Galaxy 3 San Jose 3, Vancouver 0 Saturday, October 10 Houston at Miami, 5 p.m. Red Bulls at Atlanta, 6 p.m. LA Galaxy at Colorado, 7 p.m. Real Salt Lake at Vancouver, 10 p.m. Sunday, October 11 New England at NYCFC, 4:30 p.m. Seattle at Los Angeles FC, 7 p.m. D.C. United at Chicago, 7:30 p.m. Toronto FC at Cincinnati, 7:30 p.m. Columbus at Orlando City, 7:30 p.m. Montreal at Philadelphia, 7:30 p.m. Nashville at Kansas City, 7:30 p.m. Minnesota at FC Dallas, 8:30 p.m. San Jose at Portland, 10 p.m.

BASKETBALL

N.B.A. PLAYOFFS All games in Lake Buena Vista, Fla. FINALS (Best-of-7) x-if necessary L.A. Lakers 3, Miami 1 Wednesday, Sept. 30: L.A. Lakers 116, Miami 98 Friday, Oct. 2: L.A. Lakers 124, Miami 114 Sunday, Oct. 4: Miami 115, L.A. Lakers 104 Tuesday, Oct. 6: L.A. Lakers 102, Miami 96 Friday, Oct. 9: Miami vs. L.A. Lakers x-Sunday, Oct. 11: L.A. Lakers vs. Miami, 7:30 p.m. x-Tuesday, Oct. 13: Miami vs. L.A. Lakers, 9 p.m.

TENNIS

FRENCH OPEN Friday At Stade Rolan Garros, Paris Men’s Singles, Semifinals Rafael Nadal (2), Spain, d. Diego Schwartzman (12), Argentina, 6-3, 6-3, 7-6 (0). Novak Djokovic (1), Serbia, d. Stefanos Tsitsipas (5), Greece, 6-3, 6-2, 5-7, 4-6, 6-1. Women’s Doubles, Semifinals Kristina Mladenovic, France, and Timea Babos (2), Hungary, d. Barbora Krejcikova and Katerina Siniakova (4), Czech Republic, 6-2, 4-6, 7-5. Alexa Guarachi Mathison, Chile, and Desirae Krawczyk (14), United States, d. Nicole Melichar, United States, and Iga Swiatek, Poland, 7-6 (5), 1-6, 6-4.

GOLF

SAS CHAMPIONSHIP Friday At Prestonwood Country Club Cary, N.C. Purse: $2.1 million Yardage: 7,137; Par: 72 First Round Woody Austin ..............33-33—66 -6 Corey Pavin................33-34—67 -5 Gene Sauers...............34-33—67 -5 Marco Dawson .............31-37—68 -4 Colin Montgomerie...........34-34—68 -4 Kirk Triplett ................36-32—68 -4 John Huston ...............35-34—69 -3 Tim Herron ................34-35—69 -3 Scott Parel.................35-34—69 -3 Kevin Sutherland ............33-36—69 -3 Kenny Perry................33-36—69 -3 Darren Clarke...............34-35—69 -3 David Toms................35-34—69 -3 Brandt Jobe ...............35-34—69 -3 Stephen Ames..............35-34—69 -3 Tom Byrum................35-35—70 -2 Cameron Beckman ..........35-35—70 -2 Mike Goodes...............34-36—70 -2 Bernhard Langer ............35-35—70 -2 Jim Furyk .................36-34—70 -2 Ernie Els..................35-35—70 -2 Doug Barron............... 36-34—70 -2 Carlos Franco ..............38-32—70 -2 Vijay Singh ................33-37—70 -2

BASEBALL

M.L.B. PLAYOFFS x-if necessary DIVISION SERIES (Best-of-5) American League (All Games on TBS) Tampa Bay 2, New York Yankees 2 At San Diego Monday, Oct. 5: New York Yankees 9, Tampa Bay 3 Tuesday, Oct. 6: Tampa Bay 7, New York Yankees 5 Wednesday, Oct. 7: Tampa Bay 8, New York Yankees 4 Thursday, Oct. 8: New York Yankees 5, Tampa Bay 1 Friday, Oct. 9: New York Yankees (Cole 7-3) vs. Tampa Bay (Glasnow 5-1) Houston 3, Oakland 1 At Los Angeles Monday, Oct. 5: Houston 10, Oakland 5 Tuesday, Oct. 6: Houston 5, Oakland 2 Wednesday, Oct. 7: Oakland 9, Houston 7 Thursday, Oct. 8: Houston 11, Oakland 6 National League Los Angeles Dodgers 3, San Diego 0 At Arlington, Texas Tuesday, Oct. 6: Los Angeles Dodgers 5, San Diego 1 Wednesday, Oct. 7: Los Angeles Dodgers 6, San Diego 5 Thursday, Oct. 8: Los Angeles Dodgers 12, San Diego 3 Atlanta 3, Miami 0 At Houston Tuesday, Oct. 6: Atlanta 9, Miami 5 Wednesday, Oct. 7: Atlanta 2, Miami 0 Thursday, Oct. 8: Atlanta 7, Miami 0 LEAGUE CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES (Best-of-7) American League At San Diego (All Games on TBS) Sunday. Oct. 11: Houston vs. Tampa Bay- New York Yankees winner Monday, Oct. 12: Houston vs. Tampa Bay- New York Yankees winner Tuesday, Oct. 13: Tampa Bay-New York Yankees winner vs. Houston Wednesday, Oct. 14: Tampa Bay-New York Yankees winner vs. Houston x-Thursday, Oct. 15: Tampa Bay-New York Yankees winner vs. Houston x-Friday, Oct. 16: Houston vs. Tampa Bay- New York Yankees winner x-Saturday, Oct. 17: Houston vs. Tampa Bay-New York Yankees winner National League At Arlington, Texas (Fox or FS1) Monday, Oct. 12: Atlanta vs. Los Angeles Dodgers Tuesday, Oct. 13: Atlanta vs. Los Angeles Dodgers Wednesday, Oct. 14: Los Angeles Dodgers vs. Atlanta Thursday, Oct. 15: Los Angeles Dodgers vs. Atlanta x-Friday, Oct. 16: Los Angeles Dodgers vs. Atlanta x-Saturday, Oct. 17: Atlanta vs. Los Angeles Dodgers x-Sunday, Oct. 18: Atlanta vs. Los Angeles Dodgers WORLD SERIES (Best-of-7) At Arlington, Texas (All Games on Fox) Tuesday, Oct. 20: Wednesday, Oct. 21: Friday, Oct. 23: Saturday, Oct. 24: x-Sunday, Oct. 25: x-Tuesday, Oct. 27: x-Wednesday, Oct. 28:

They hoisted, they hugged and
they kissed the Stanley Cup —
then they filled it with Champagne
and gulped it empty again.
Soon, the Tampa Bay Light-
ning’s players will see their names
stamped for posterity in the silver
of hockey’s most cherished tro-
phy, but last week their immediate
priority was doing what champi-
ons get to do: hold the Cup close,
whether or not your season and
your planet have been disordered
by a pandemic.
The N.H.L. breathed a corpo-
rate sigh of relief when the Light-
ning defeated the Dallas Stars to
claim the Cup on Sept. 28, making
it the first major North American
professional sports league to com-
plete its season amid the corona-
virus pandemic.
Now, following the success of
the summer’s emergency experi-
ment, the league and its champi-
ons face a new quandary: How
does a team safely fulfill all the
rights — and rites — that come
with winning a championship?
Since 1995, each Cup-winning
player, coach and trainer has been
granted a day to host the Stanley
Cup in his hometown. Last year,
when the St. Louis Blues won, that
endeavor kept Phil Pritchard, a
Hockey Hall of Fame vice presi-
dent known as the keeper of the
Cup, and his staff on the move for
more than 100 days. Along the
way, they visited Canadian towns
called Calahoo and Port Hood,
along with Helsinki, Finland, and
Novosibirsk, Russia.
Lightning wing Pat Maroon
knows the drill. Having won the
Cup last year, too, as a member of
the Blues, he is just the third play-
er in the expansion era to have
won championships in consecu-
tive seasons with different teams.
Maroon, a native of St. Louis,

spent his day with the Cup in July 2019 at home before visiting a mall where he had played in-line hockey as a youth, and hosting a lunch party, where the Cup was filled with toasted ravioli. Just when he might get to re- prise that experience remains to be seen. Last week, on Wednes- day, the Lightning shared the Cup with their fans by way of the Stan- ley Cup’s first boat parade, along the Hillsborough River. Later, the team held a rally for fans at Ray- mond James Stadium, home of the N.F.L.’s Buccaneers, with capacity restricted. The not-entirely- masked crowd of just over 11,000 was spread out across a stadium that can accommodate nearly 66,000. Plans for further Stanley Cup pilgrimages are still in flux. A potential itinerary for daily visits would be another international one: While 14 of the Lightning’s players are Canadian and another six American, the roster also in- cludes four Russians, two Czechs, a Swede and a Slovak. Will Pritchard be steering the Cup to Plano, Texas (Blake Cole- man), Moscow (Nikita Kucherov), or Ornskoldsvik, Swe- den (Victor Hedman)? Will a player convert the Cup into a tra- ditional Russian samovar (as the Penguins’ Evgeni Malkin did in 2017), feed Kentucky Derby-winning horses from it (as the Rang- ers’ Eddie Olczyk did in 1994) or arrange to christen a baby (the Cup has played its part in at least three baptisms)? No one’s com- mitting to anything quite yet. Pritchard said on Monday that the league was consulting with the Lightning in the hopes of arrang- ing some kind of “celebration tour.” “Of course, being very con- cerned about everybody’s health and safety, it is an ongoing discus-

sion,” he said. Whatever happens, opportuni- ties for touching and drinking from the Cup, he emphasized, will be limited. “Currently we are stay- ing in Tampa,” he said. After last week’s public events, the Cup spent the weekend on Tampa-area golf courses with Lightning players and at a party for the team’s coaches. On Sunday, it accompanied the team’s cap- tain, Steven Stamkos, and other players to Raymond James Sta- dium to watch the Buccaneers de- feat the Los Angeles Chargers. An Englishman, Lord Stanley of Preston, donated the original Cup in 1892, when he was serving as governor-general of Canada. It was a challenge trophy when it was first awarded the following winter, 24 years before the found- ing of the N.H.L. Celebratory routines soon set- tled into place. A crowd of 30,000 thronged the streets of Montreal in 1902 to fete the local AAA team. It’s unlikely that they were pio- neers in quaffing from the Cup, but they do seem to have been the first to make the news in doing so, filling it with wine aboard a train headed home and treating friends to a sip. Other adventures have seen the Cup sunken in swimming pools, forgotten by the side of a Montreal street, stolen and held for ransom. But it probably wasn’t kicked onto a frozen canal. When the flu pandemic put a stop to the 1919 finals before a winner could be decided, the Stanley Cup seemed to have remained safely ensconced in Montreal. In mid-August of this year, con- cerns about how the champions would celebrate as the coronavi- rus continued to spread did occu- py the attention of league officials, several of whom suggested that some sort of strictures might be prudent when the time came to hand over the Cup. A month later,

none were on obvious display as the Lightning left Edmonton, Al- berta, and headed home to share their victory with their fans. “How does one do socially distant parades??” Tampa Bay Buc- caneers quarterback Tom Brady tweeted last week in congratulat- ing the Lightning. The team’s an- swer was to take to the Hillsbor- ough River on a day when Florida reported at least 174 new corona- virus deaths and 1,948 new cases. City and Lightning officials emphasized the care with which the revelry was organized. “To honor our team and the Stanley Cup’s first trip back to Tampa Bay in 16 years, we worked diligently with the City of Tampa, Hillsborough County and others to create socially distant, outdoors

celebrations, spread out over two miles on the Tampa Riverwalk and at a less than 20 percent of capacity at Raymond James Sta- dium,” the Lightning said in a statement. “Clearly,” Mayor Jane Castor said, “we had to do everything that we could to make the celebrations safe, but still allow the com- munity to participate in such an incredible occasion.” As seen on social media, some of the evening’s events appeared as if from another year, with fans as eager to high-five and huddle for selfies with the champions as some players accommodated them. And it wasn’t hard to find footage of fans lining up to drink from the Cup. Broadcast from another, health-

ier time, it might have resembled good, raucous fun; in a 2020 con- text, it had the look of a potential superspreader event. A city spokeswoman said officials hadn’t seen an uptick associated with the event but also noted that “we cal- culate two weeks at a time.” “We are doing our best to watch all that,” Pritchard said on Oct. 1, the day after the parade. As the keeper of the Cup, Pritchard is in his 32nd year of never being too far from the trophy. From Tampa, he acknowl- edged the challenges of reconcil- ing the best health-and-safety practices with the close-quarters ebullience inherent in Cup celebrations. This year, more than ever, he is also the cleaner of the Cup, wiping it down as many as four times a day with a three-part treatment of warm water followed by a soft de- tergent solution and medical dis- infectant to deal with fingerprints and pathogens. Eventually, as he does each year, Pritchard will accompany the Cup to Montreal, where the en- graver Louise St. Jacques will diligently use a letter stamp to ham- mer the names of the new champions into the silver band of the Cup’s body. That’s usually an autumn ap- pointment. Before that, a stand- ard hockey off-season would be spent on the road going city to city with the Cup. That’s uncertain now. Last week, defenseman Kevin Shattenkirk was already vowing that he would take the Cup home to New Rochelle, N.Y., a New York City suburb, as soon as possible. “Needless to say, we are very proud of Kevin,” Mayor Noam Bramson of New Rochelle said in an email, adding that the city still hadn’t considered just how an offi- cial recognition might be realized. “Options,” he noted, “are severely constrained by Covid.”

One Stanley Cup Tradition Might Not Survive Amid Pandemic

The Lightning shared the Stanley Cup with fans with a boat parade along the Hillsborough River.

IVY CEBALLO/TAMPA BAY TIMES, VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS

Each player getting a

day with the trophy

remains uncertain.

By STEPHEN SMITH

These may be the last days in
office for Josep Maria Bartomeu,
Barcelona’s embattled president.
An insurgent group, frustrated
by the decline of the team and
furious at how
close the club came
to losing the star
forward Lionel
Messi, has suc-
ceeded in col-
lecting the signa-
tures of more than 16,000 mem-
bers required to call for a vote of
no confidence in his board. The
walls are closing in.
Bartomeu must now choose an
interim candidate to take his post
while he awaits the results of a
referendum on his leadership. If
he survives that vote, he will
remain in his post until the club
holds elections in March. If he
does not — if 66 percent of those
who vote turn against him — he
will be deposed, and the presi-
dential election will be brought
forward to January.
Or, as one of the leaders of the
movement against him, Jordi
Farre, said, Bartomeu could fall
on his sword. He could resign,
saving himself the ordeal of a
toxic election campaign that
would serve only to heighten
divisions with the club and its
fan base, and take his board —
the board that almost cost the
club the greatest player in its
history — with him.
This is how it is meant to
work; close to a Platonic ideal of
how a club should be run. Bar-
tomeu is — rightly or wrongly —
accused of overseeing the institu-
tional failures that have turned
Barcelona into a shell of its for-
mer self. Its finances are at their
limit. Its squad is in dire need of
rejuvenation.
Bartomeu’s judge and jury on
those charges will be the club’s

fans, or at least its members. Barcelona, like three other teams in Spain — Athletic Bilbao, Os- asuna and Real Madrid — as well as the majority of clubs in Ger- many, Turkey and Sweden (and many clubs in Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay) is a democracy. There is power, but there is also control. There is account- ability, in a way essentially im- possible in the “ownership neu- tral” world of English soccer, where each club exists as an entity part way between a busi- ness and a fief. And that is, without question, A Good Thing. But it is also only one side of the story. Because while democracy provides the mechanism that allows Barcelona’s members to wrest power from Bartomeu, it also may explain quite how it all came to this. Bartomeu was never seen as a president in waiting. He rose to power almost by accident, the next-in-line, the continuity candidate after a suite of controversies and scandals had forced the removal or resignations of those above him. Once he was in place, though, it was the nature of Barcelona that made his mis- takes, if not inevitable, then certainly incentivized. In theory, an elected president should think about a club’s long- term health: investing in youth, bolstering the recruitment de- partment, diversifying revenue streams, striking sponsorship deals. Bartomeu did some of that. He also dedicated himself to trying to turn Barcelona into a beacon of modernity; he spoke about wanting the club to be the Silicon Valley of soccer. That is the theory; the practice is different. In practice, an electoral approach encourages in- stant gratification. It is why,

invariably, candidates for club elections in Spain promise to bring in a specific coach or sign a certain player. All of the long- term planning might win minds, but any president knows that, to retain power, conquering hearts is much more significant. And so Bartomeu responded to the loss of Neymar in 2017 by spending vast — and, with the benefit of hindsight, unwarrant- ed — sums on Philippe Coutinho and Ousmane Dembélé. When, in 2019, Barcelona’s squad was crying out for a new generation, he signed... Antoine Griez- mann. He dispensed with Er- nesto Valverde, a competent but uninspiring coach, despite not having a replacement. Part of that is his poor judg- ment, a testament to a gift for appointing the wrong people at the wrong time. But part of it is an inevitable byproduct of a structure that discourages stabil- ity. When a club president knows there is always a reckoning

around the corner, they must always be in electoral mode. They must always be searching for ways to sate their public. They are always thinking about bread and circuses. The counterargument: Ger- many. Most Bundesliga teams are majority owned by groups representing fans. That status is, with only a handful of historic (and one or two slightly less popular, more modern) excep- tions, effectively enshrined in law, and it is fiercely protected. For the most part, it works. German clubs are stable. Few live beyond their means. Fans’ rights are protected, their voices heard. Games are held in sleek, modern stadiums. Television’s influence is moderated. Tickets are reasonably priced. It is, to many, a model soccer culture. It is not without problems. The democracy can be superficial, not quite a Banana Republic but little more than a rubber stamp, with clubs’ power structures

dominated by unmoving cliques and vulnerable to factionalism. Economically, there are far more people working in clubs in Germany than would ever admit it in public who believe that, in order to compete in the long- term, the 50+1 rule that guaran- tees fan control must either be modified or lifted. Socially, it tends to ensure Germany’s clubs remain in the grip of (mostly) men who are (mostly) of a certain age and a conservative mind-set, and that younger, more diverse voices are often locked out of the conversa- tion. German clubs can be un- wieldy and resistant to change. Besides, there is little proof that Germany is a rule. Every club in Turkey is owned by its members. Every president is on the permanent treadmill of election and re-election. The result is almost permanent chaos. Many there are convinced the only way to restore the health of the country’s soccer culture is to allow private investment: not just to pay down crippling, insur- mountable debts but to encour- age efficiency, to prevent power- hungry presidents from spending vast sums of borrowed money on fading stars to try to protect their own positions. They would recognize the problem facing Barcelona, but they would recommend a more revolutionary response than forcing out Bartomeu and hold- ing another election. The next president may go the same way, and the one after that, on and on into the future. Barcelona is lucky, in one sense. Democracy might yet bring the club back from the brink. The problem is that it may have taken the club there in the first place.

Democracy Takes Over at Barcelona, for Better or Worse

RORY

SMITH

RORY SMITH ON SOCCER

The curtain may be falling on Josep Maria Bartomeu’s tenure as Barcelona president. He is facing a referendum on his leadership.

ENRIC FONTCUBERTA/EPA, VIA SHUTTERSTOCK

HOCKEY

ORLANDO RAMIREZ/USA TODAY SPORTS, VIA REUTERS

Giancarlo Stanton of the Yankees before A.L.D.S Game 5 against the Rays on Friday. Coverage at nytimes.com.

Deciding Game

The New York Times - USA (2020-10-10)

Get our desktop app

Company

Features

Documentation

Resources