Culture

'They would have been angry if we had won' – The tiny Brazilian club who fooled North Korea

Published

5 months ago

February 28, 2024

'They would have been angry if we had won' – The tiny Brazilian club who fooled North Korea

Everyone seems to have a slightly different estimate of how many people were outside the stadium on that strange November afternoon, but the consensus is that it was a lot.

As the bus crept through the crowd, the Brazilian footballers on board stared out of the windows. Locals — tens of thousands of them, on some accounts — flooded the streets. Most greeted the bus with diffident waves. A few ran alongside, hoping to catch a glimpse of someone they would not have recognised anyway.

An hour later, those same footballers walked through a long underground tunnel, up a flight of stairs and out onto the pitch. They lined up in front of the dugout and sang Brazil’s national anthem.

The match that began moments thereafter took place in 2009, but you would never know it from the photographs. There is an austere, monochrome quality to the images, and not just because they were captured on a basic digital camera. There are no advertising hoardings and none of the other hypercapitalist trappings that adorn the modern game. As a result, it looks a lot like pre-war football.

Then there are the stands, which are packed but oddly lifeless; these appear to be spectators rather than supporters. There is also a jarring uniformity to them, which starts to make sense once the context becomes clear.

One picture, taken before kick-off, shows an outmoded electronic scoreboard. It reads “PRK 0-0 BRA”. That’s North Korea vs Brazil.

The game was played in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital. The home team represented the most closed-off nation in the world, a military dictatorship which has been shrouded in mystery for decades. The away team? That’s where things get even more complicated.

North Korea hosting Brazil at the Kim Il-Sung Stadium would have been a major geopolitical event. You would have heard about it if it had happened, which it didn’t.

But something even more unlikely did.

The team billed as ‘Brazil’ were, in fact, a tiny club side from a satellite town 80 kilometres north west of Sao Paulo. Theirs was a squad of journeymen and part-timers, none of whom could believe their eyes when they walked out of the tunnel and looked up at the scoreboard.

“It was clear that the North Korean regime wanted the word ‘Brazil’ to appear there,” says Waldir Cipriani, one of the organisers of the match. “But we were just a Brazilian team who wore yellow.”

The Reverend

Fifteen years ago, there were two football teams in Sorocaba. The most historic was Sao Bento, whose greatest claim to fame was reaching the last 16 of the Brazilian championship back in 1979.

Their neighbours, Atletico Sorocaba, had only been around since the early 1990s and had never made it higher than the third division nationally. Their matches — low-level affairs in the regional leagues, mainly — rarely drew more than a couple of thousand fans.

If the very notion of a Brazilian club team landing an away fixture against North Korea seems a bit far-fetched, the idea of that team being Atletico Sorocaba… well, we’re so far into the realm of the absurd that we’re going to need a map to get out again. That, though, is exactly what happened.

Atletico Sorocaba, in red, take on Palmeiras in the 2013 Sao Paulo state championship (Eduardo Efrain/LatinContent via Getty Images)

To understand how and why, we need to go back to the early 2000s when Atletico were acquired by a South Korean investment group led by Sun Myung Moon — or, to his friends and followers, ‘Reverend Moon’.

Moon was the founder of the Unification Church, a religious movement that stressed the importance of the family and proclaimed Moon himself to be the second coming of Christ. To call the church controversial would be to undersell it; the ‘Criticisms’ section of its Wikipedia page runs to 7,000 words. Moon, who died in 2012, was found guilty of tax fraud by a United States federal grand jury in 1982, spending 13 months in prison.

Atletico Sorocaba was not Moon’s first incursion into Brazil. After growing disenchanted with the U.S. — “the country that represents Satan’s harvest… the kingdom of extreme individuality, of free sex” — he acquired 85,000 hectares of land in Mato Grosso do Sul state in the 1990s. He planned to create a model community in the town of Jardim, on the border with Paraguay. According to news reports in Brazil, thousands of South Koreans relocated to the region at his behest.

As the Unification Church expanded, Sorocaba — around 100km from Sao Paulo and with a population of around a million — was seen as a useful staging post. It was Cipriani, a prominent figure within the church structure in Brazil, who recommended that Moon buy Atletico. Cipriani subsequently became the club’s vice president.

“Reverend Moon invested in football because he had a vision,” Cipriani tells The Athletic. “He believed that football was the cure for human hatred. He used to say that you forget about your enemy when you’re running after a ball. That was why he wanted to promote it.

“He especially liked the characteristics of Brazilian football — the playfulness, the love of dribbling. He believed that Brazilian football would help him. He saw it as a force for peace.”

Whatever Moon’s motivations, he could not be accused of thinking small. His largesse allowed Atletico to renovate their training complex and the result was so impressive that Algeria would later choose it as their base for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. Atletico would play numerous games in South Korea over the years, despite their relative irrelevance on their own domestic scene.

North Korea, though? That was another level entirely. No team from outside the Asian Football Confederation had ever played there.

Atletico Sorocaba opening that door owed, mainly, to two factors. The first was North Korea’s qualification for the 2010 World Cup. A team that had had little motivation to leave its bubble in 43 years — their previous World Cup appearance had been in 1966 — now needed a crash course in the global game.

“North Korea were interested in getting experience of Latin American football,” explains Cipriani. “There was this pressure from the government, who wanted the team to do well at the tournament. The team performing well was going to be good for the country.

“This was just one month before the final draw. They had been trying to organise friendlies, but which other country was going to go to the effort of going to North Korea, sorting out all the visas, for 90 minutes of football?”

Enter Moon, whose background provided motive and opportunity. Moon was born in 1920 in what would become North Korea. He was imprisoned in a North Korean labour camp for two years in 1948, only moving to South Korea after being liberated by United Nations troops during the Korean War. As a result of his experiences, Moon was staunchly opposed to communism — “especially atheistic Marxism,” says Cipriani — but still cultivated links with Kim Il-sung, the supreme leader of North Korea between 1948 and 1994.

The Reverend Sun Myung Moon (left) speaks at New York’s Madison Square Garden in 1974 (Bettmann Archive/Getty Images)

“I learnt the essence of Christianity from him,” says Cipriani. “People speak a lot about loving your enemy, but you have to put it into practice. His teaching was to love your enemy, but hate the thing that makes him your enemy — love the ill, hate the illness. Reverend Moon was anti-communism, but not anti-communist.

“When Reverend Moon went to Pyongyang, it was after being invited by Kim Il-sung, who had spent 40 years trying to kill him. Before he died, Kim Il-sung authorised Reverend Moon to build a car factory and acquire a five-star hotel (in North Korea). So in practice, due to that relationship, we had great contacts in the North Korean ministry of sport.”

Those connections bore fruit in 2009, against a favourable diplomatic backdrop.

“Brazil was in a honeymoon period with North Korea,” says Cipriani. “Lula da Silva (Brazil’s president at the time) had opened an embassy there earlier in the year and the ambassador liked socialism. We never discussed it because he showed us a lot of hospitality. We left out the politics and the ideology. Our objectives were sporting and diplomatic. We were there to build bridges. That was Reverend Moon’s aim.”

It is impossible to know whether Moon’s opportunism was truly in service of improved relations between North Korea and South Korea, or merely part of a wider strategy for himself and his church. Either way, it was adventure time for Atletico Sorocaba. They were heading to Pyongyang.

Black-and-white city

“I didn’t even know there were two different Koreas,” Leandro Silva says with a grin.

Silva was 21 years old in 2009. He was Atletico Sorocaba’s right-back, one of a handful of players who had come through the youth ranks at the club. “Simple lads,” Cipriani calls them.

Initially, Atletico’s players did not know they were going to North Korea. The plan was to play games in China and South Korea, a fun little jaunt that would help them prepare for the 2010 season. The news that they might be taking a detour came late in the day; they were already in Beijing by the time their visas were finally approved.

“Enchanting, a novelty,” is how Cipriani describes the chance to go to Pyongyang, but not everyone was quite so animated by the prospect.

“My first reaction was one of shock and fear,” recalls Silva. “I tried to find out a bit about North Korea but I could only see bad news. Poverty, lack of freedom, food shortages… everyone said it was a country at war, heavily armed.

“I thought about what it would mean to be there when something happened. I thought about my family. They (club officials) explained everything to the players but we were worried.”

The journey to Pyongyang did not exactly settle the nerves. “We set off from China on this aeroplane… this ugly, scruffy, old thing,” says Silva. “You can’t imagine how bad it was. There were suitcases rattling around in the back and others strapped to the roof outside. The plane bounced and wobbled the whole way.”

Cipriani remembers Edu Marangon, Atletico’s coach, being so scared he could barely speak. The team masseur, Sidnei Gramatico, summed up the situation in an interview with GloboEsporte: “Have you ever seen an aeroplane stuck together with superglue? I have.”

A frosty reception awaited them at the airport. “Soldiers everywhere… it felt like you were arriving at a concentration camp,” Marangon told Record TV. “It was like we had taken a space shuttle to another planet.”

The players and staff were asked to hand over their electronic devices. Mobile phones were confiscated and put into storage at the airport; laptops and cameras were inspected as if they were bombs.

From the airport, the delegation boarded a bus. Destination: Mansu Hill, home of a 22-metre-high statue of Kim Il-sung. It was the first of a series of excursions to important North Korean cultural sites, organised by the dictatorship. “Our itinerary there was decided down to the last millimetre,” says Cipriani. “Every part of the trip was organised.”

The Atletico travelling party at a statue of Kim Il-sung (Waldir Cipriani, Atletico Sorocaba)

That first drive through Pyongyang left a mark on Silva. “It was like something from a film about the old days,” he says. “You know those period dramas on Netflix, with vintage cars? It was like that, a black-and-white city. There was no colour there.

“There were men crouched down on their haunches, smoking cigarettes. There were people working on plantations and no kids out playing. You could see in people’s faces that their lives were dedicated to work. It was very regimented and very grim. What we saw was a real dictatorship.”

The players laid down flowers at the monument, had a brief look at the pitch they would be playing on two days later, then went for a meal at the embassy. At all times, they were shadowed by North Korean officials in long coats. “We were always accompanied,” says Silva. “We couldn’t do anything without an escort. If you went to the bathroom, someone would follow you and wait outside the cubicle door.”

Some of the players saw the funny side. Marangon, the coach, did not. He found the entire experience deeply unsettling. “I asked God to let me see the sea one more time,” he told Brazilian website UOL. “I didn’t know whether I’d ever leave that place.”

In the evening, the players got settled at their hotel, which was not nearly as bleak. “It was top quality, five stars,” says Silva. “They put on these special meals for us, almost banquets. They tried to make things from our cuisine: rice, beans. It was a long way from the Brazilian food we were used to, but we could see the effort they put in. It was really cool.

“We all had a good laugh, joking as normal. The hotel staff didn’t understand anything we said and we didn’t understand them either. Waldir Cipriani understood a bit of Korean, but for the rest of us, there was a lot of laughter. There was also a microphone in the dining room and we would sing Brazilian songs and dance a bit. They would laugh at our style of music.”

At night, there were card games in the rooms. At least until 10pm, when the electricity went off, plunging the city into darkness.

‘Brazil are here’

On the second day, Atletico trained for two hours on the Kim Il-Sung Stadium’s artificial pitch. They were studied throughout by the North Korean players and coaching staff, all of whom were sat in the stands. At the end of the session, it was North Korea’s turn to train. Atletico were not allowed to watch.

“We had no information about the team we were playing,” says Cipriani. “Zero.”

The following afternoon, after a little more obligatory tourism (a visit to a museum dedicated to Kim Il-sung’s fight against the Japanese), the Atletico players returned to the stadium. There, they were confronted with scenes that would have made even an international footballer draw breath.

“When they saw the stadium, with 80,000 people inside and 20,000 more outside… well, you can imagine their reaction,” says Cipriani, and while most estimates put the capacity of the Kim Il-Sung Stadium at around 50,000, that hardly dilutes the anecdote.

“It was a lot of people,” says Silva. “It was a novelty for them. I think it was this feeling of, ‘The Brazilians are here, Brazil are here’. I think they wanted to see different people — people of a different race, a different colour.”

Brazil, or just Brazilians? That part is up for debate. Some insist that the game was, in some sense, ‘sold’ to the North Korean people as a historic meeting with the most successful nation in World Cup history.

The scoreboard reading North Korea 0-0 Brazil, at kick-off (Waldir Cipriani, Atletico Sorocaba)

“I think that’s the story they told the people there,” goalkeeper Klayton Scudeler said in an interview with Radio Novelo. “The stadium was packed on every side. I think people thought we were the Brazil team and that’s why it was so rammed.”

Cipriani agrees. “They created this political propaganda,” he says. “The regime wanted people to see North Korea beat Brazil before the World Cup.”

Others, like Silva, are more sceptical. What is certain, however, is that the letters ‘BRA’ up on the scoreboard lent the occasion an extra dose of prestige.

“When I saw the scoreboard and looked at us, all wearing yellow kit… it was cool but I also felt this responsibility,” says Silva. “I felt like I was playing for the Selecao (another name for the Brazil national side). It was an emotional experience.”

It was the same for Marangon. “We had to put on a performance that honoured our country,” he said. “In that situation, we were Brazil.”

For the players, that sense of patriotism was tempered by pragmatism. “Edu said to play hard, but we were joking around before kick-off,” says Silva. “We said, ‘If we win this game, we might not get out of here alive’. It was a stadium full of soldiers! We thought a draw would make everyone happy.”

As it turned out, they did not need to go easy. North Korea were better than they expected.

“We didn’t expect North Korea to be the best technically, but they were very good,” recalls Silva. “They were also very fast. They clearly did a lot of fitness work. They must have trained with the military because physically they were very strong. They played quick football, each player taking one or two touches, always in the direction of the goal.”

Atletico Sorocaba – not Brazil – take on North Korea (Waldir Cipriani, Atletico Sorocaba)

That was one memorable aspect of the game. Another was the behaviour of the crowd, who cheered enthusiastically when North Korea had the ball and were eerily quiet when Atletico were in possession.

“It was like they were organised or controlled, like they were following rules,” Silva says. “It wasn’t the kind of energy you get from fans in other countries and it wasn’t this big mix of colours. They were all from the military, all in dark green uniform.”

Cipriani agrees. “It was clearly the work of the state,” he says. “In North Korea, you click your fingers and you fill the stadium. If you decide that this school will send 50 students, that this union will send its workers, that other groups and factories will do the same… it was a state directive to fill the stadium.

“There was no comparison with a stadium in Brazil. There was this deathly silence when we had the ball. It was like a funeral.”

The game ended 1-1. Two days later, over a celebratory meal at one of his residences in South Korea, Moon thanked the players for their efforts — and for the result.

“He said that the North Koreans would have been really angry if we had won,” Cipriani recalls. “He was happy that we drew.”

Recon and recognition

A month after Atletico’s trip to Pyongyang, Brazil were drawn in the same World Cup draw as North Korea. A story that had been doing the rounds in the local press went national.

All of the major Brazilian newspapers got in touch with Marangon, Cipriani and the players. So, too, did Brazil manager Dunga and his technical staff.

“They didn’t know anything at all about the North Korean team,” says Cipriani. “There was no information. Brazil were set to play North Korea and Atletico Sorocaba knew more than they did.”

Silva looks back on that period with great fondness. “My phone rang off the hook,” he says, giggling. “People wanted to know about their best players, their technical level, their tactics. The fact we went there ended up being a big deal.

“When the World Cup began I was getting so many messages from friends and family. ‘You played them, right?! That’s so cool!’. I remember watching the (Brazil vs North Korea) game and telling my friends, ‘I marked that guy! I’ve got his shirt!’. It was really gratifying.”

Brazil’s Kaka holds off North Korea’s Mun In-guk at the 2010 World Cup; Brazil won the fixture 2-1 (Mike Egerton – PA Images via Getty Images)

In the years that followed, Atletico made three more journeys to North Korea: the senior side visited in 2010 and 2011, and the under-15s took part in a youth tournament in 2015.

“It was different each time,” says Cipriani. “But by (the second visit) they had realised they weren’t playing the Brazil national team, just a small club from Sao Paulo state with a yellow away kit.”

Cipriani stepped away from the club in 2014. Two years later, with financial support from the Universal Church having dried up in the wake of Moon’s death, Atletico Sorocaba folded, leaving behind only surreal memories.

“I still have a North Korea shirt from that game — the number two, from their right-back,” says Silva. “I’ve been offered a lot of money for that shirt, but I’m not selling it. It’s important to me, historic.

“I’ll cherish these memories forever. They were very special moments in my career. There are so many famous players and teams in the world who have never done what we did. I’m really proud of it.”

Postscript

Brazilian journalist Renato Alves visited North Korea in September 2017. He was there to research his third book, The Hermit Kingdom. He was taken on a 10-day propaganda tour and was accompanied everywhere by three guides.

One of the sights on his itinerary was the Arch of Triumph, a huge structure aping the Parisian landmark of the same name. Stood on top of the monument, one of the officials accompanying Alves pointed to the Kim Il-Sung Stadium, just a stone’s throw away.

“In this stadium, our eternal president made his first speech after liberating the Korean people from Japanese imperialists,” he said.

“Oh, and it was also there that Brazil played against our national football team. You must have heard about that match. It was very good. I was there.”

(Top photos: Waldir Cipriani; design: Eamonn Dalton)

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Culture

Mets shouldn't be buyers. They should be aggressive buyers at the deadline

Published

3 hours ago

July 26, 2024

Press Room

Mets shouldn't be buyers. They should be aggressive buyers at the deadline

NEW YORK — On Wednesday, in discussing how his bullpen plans shift moment to moment over a nine-inning game, Carlos Mendoza chuckled at the idea of forming a pregame plan and sticking to it.

“I don’t know that there’s ever a time you come up with a game plan and stick to it,” the Mets manager said. “Every time you make an adjustment because the game unfolds. … You have an idea, but then you have to make adjustments.”

Perhaps Mendoza’s boss, David Stearns, should take that advice when it comes to this season.

The Mets entered 2024 with a clear, consistent plan from ownership down to the clubhouse. While they did not possess the high expectations of previous spring trainings, they thought they could be legitimate contenders for the postseason while preserving a sustained window of contention in the future. And here they are, days ahead of the trade deadline, as legitimate contenders for the postseason who have preserved a sustained window of contention in the future.

But after another memorable win Thursday night, a walk-off 3-2 victory over Atlanta that felt like the inverse of so many nightmarish nights at Turner Field, maybe it’s time for Stearns and the New York front office to get a little greedy about 2024. Yes, the Mets are going to be buyers at the trade deadline. But let’s make a case for the Mets to do more than add a reliever in the next week, a case for the Mets to be aggressive buyers like they last were en route to an unexpected pennant in 2015.

The Mets are good enough

Let’s do some blind resumes for teams on the morning of July 26 over the years.

Blind resumes

Team	W Advertisement	L	Pct. Advertisement	RD	NL Rank	GB of Playoffs Advertisement
A	56	46	0.549 Advertisement	85	5	—
B	55 Advertisement	47	0.539	9	T5	— Advertisement
C	55	47	0.539	49 Advertisement	T3	—
D	54	48 Advertisement	0.529	23	5	—
E Advertisement	50	46	0.521	46	7 Advertisement	0.5
F	48	51	0.485 Advertisement	36	10	6

OK, blindfolds off! What do those pretty similar teams all have in common? They all won the pennant.

NL pennant-winners (plus the Mets)

W	L Advertisement	Pct.	RD Advertisement	NL Rank	GB of Playoffs
56 Advertisement	46	0.549	85	5	— Advertisement
55	47	0.539	9	T5 Advertisement	—
55	47	0.539	49 Advertisement	T3	—
54	48	0.529 Advertisement	23	5	—
50	46 Advertisement	0.521	46	7	0.5
48 Advertisement	51	0.485	36	10	6 Advertisement

They were also pretty aggressive at the trade deadline. I classified the 2018 Dodgers (Manny Machado) and 2022 Phillies (David Robertson, Brandon Marsh and Noah Syndergaard) as All-in Buyers — teams that surrendered significant prospect capital for the present. The 2019 Nationals added three relievers, including the guy who would record the final out of the World Series. In 2021, Atlanta brought in four outfielders, including the NLCS and World Series MVPs. In 2023, Arizona dealt for a closer to better position itself for the postseason.

(For what it’s worth, the 2015 Mets, another All-in Buyer, were 50-48 with a negative-seven run differential on July 26.)

No, the Mets lack the kind of rotation and bullpen you generally rely on to carry you in October. However, New York possesses an offense that appears built for the postseason. As evidenced by its bashing of Gerrit Cole twice in the last month, the Mets’ lineup can go deep with the best of them. Only Baltimore has hit more homers since the Mets’ hot streak started May 30, and they’re tied for fourth in the majors in homers on the season — ahead of everyone but the Dodgers in the National League. On Thursday, New York was in the game against a dominant Chris Sale because Francisco Lindor turned one Sale mistake into two Mets runs.

Homers carry offenses come October. The similarly productive but differently constituted offense in 2022 tied for 15th in the league in home runs, then watched Atlanta and San Diego outhomer it in the biggest games of the season. This Mets offense can swing a short series with its power.

The National League is open

Here’s an important caveat: If I covered the Pirates or the Reds or the Padres or the Diamondbacks, I’d probably be making the exact same case. Because the National League is as open as it’s been in years.

Los Angeles and Atlanta have been the two best teams in the senior circuit for the last several seasons. Both are enduring more turbulent regular seasons than they’re accustomed to. The Dodgers continue to have health questions about their rotation, a dynamic that doomed them last October. Atlanta’s best hitter and best pitcher are out for the season. Its lineup looks like a shell of what the Mets are used to confronting.

While the Phillies have taken the mantle of the NL’s team to beat, they’re a team the Mets are pretty good at beating. They memorably went 14-5 against Philadelphia in 2022, and even during a down 2023 went 6-7 against it. This year, the Mets are 2-4 against the Phillies. And remarkably, since the start of the 2022 season, New York is 10-3 when facing either Aaron Nola or Zack Wheeler.

The timing actually clicks

It’s really tempting for teams to try manipulating their window of contention — to be cautious this year to put more eggs in a basket down the line. In doing so, however, they often miss the year to win.

The 2015 Mets could have been more cautious: Syndergaard and Steven Matz were rookies, Wheeler was hurt, the NL had several very good teams — surely the Mets’ best chance to advance in October would be down the road? As it turns out, that young rotation was never as healthy or as dominant as it was right then and there, and the Mets’ aggressiveness paid off in a pennant.

(Contrast that with the 2013-2015 Pirates, who never made the big move to push a very good team over the top. They still haven’t won a postseason series since 1979.)

For the Mets, it’s also fair to ask: What year, specifically, are they waiting for? Injuries to some key prospects this year mean New York won’t head into spring training 2025 planning to give an everyday spot to a talented rookie. The full incorporation of guys like Jett Williams, Drew Gilbert, Luisangel Acuña and Ryan Clifford won’t happen until 2026 — by which point Lindor will be 32 and Brandon Nimmo 33, on the outskirts of their primes.

The goal is to open a sustained window of contention and pounce on legitimate opportunities to win divisions, pennants and championships. The Mets are there. The two players they have signed long-term are having career-best years. Their cornerstone first baseman might not be here next year.

The window of contention is already open.

What does this mean?

Let’s be honest: This is where most columns like this end. There’s all that reasoning for going for it, now it’s Stearns’ job to turn that into something.

But I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that the current shape of the deadline market makes it difficult to go for it. Teams like the Pirates and Reds and Padres and Diamondbacks are all still in it in the National League, and the number of sellers is tinier than usual. The best starter likely to be traded may not be able to start much more this season. The best reliever likely to be traded has a walk rate you wouldn’t comfortably hit on in blackjack.

It’s harder to provide the kind of blueprint for the deadline that I do for the offseason because acquisition costs in trades are so much more difficult to project than open-market salaries. So I’ll settle for suggestions that would fit more of an all-in approach.

1. Engage the White Sox on Garrett Crochet with the understanding you’d be acquiring him to pitch out of the bullpen in 2024. The Athletic reported Thursday that Crochet would prefer to stay on a starter’s schedule (albeit with limited innings) down the stretch of this season unless an acquiring team signs him to a contract extension.

As I outlined Thursday morning, the Mets could use a long-term ace. Here’s a 25-year-old left-handed All-Star who leads the league in strikeouts and is interested in a long-term extension. Those all feel like good things. (Like Wheeler, Crochet’s likely arbitration salaries for the next two seasons will be suppressed by his lack of availability up to this point in his career. Thus, a long-term extension would cost less against the luxury tax than it might otherwise.)

Trade for Crochet, extend him and make him a multi-inning reliever with scheduled appearances the rest of the way. Imagine him coming in behind your right-handed starters in the postseason and serving as a one-man bridge to Edwin Díaz. Put him back in the rotation in 2025 and beyond. That might be worth the significant package of prospects it would require, as it would mean the Mets wouldn’t have to dive into the deep end of the starting pitching market this winter for a free agent already in his 30s.

2. If Crochet proves too much, combine a rotation upgrade — chiefly, a pitcher who misses more bats than the current starters — with two additions in the pen and one to the bench.

In the rotation, Detroit’s Jack Flaherty and Toronto’s Yusei Kikuchi come to mind. Flaherty will cost a good amount, but he too could become a viable option to re-sign.

For the bullpen, one high-leverage lefty should be the priority. Scroll past Tanner Scott to his teammate Andrew Nardi or to The Athletic’s years-long target Andrew Chafin of the Tigers. Another multi-inning arm could help keep the group fresh, as well. Cincinnati’s Buck Farmer or Detroit’s Alex Faedo could work there.

The final piece would be a versatile bench contributor who could protect the Mets against regression or injury at a few different positions. Detroit’s Andy Ibañez, Tampa Bay’s Amed Rosario, Toronto’s Isiah Kiner-Falefa and Oakland’s Abraham Toro could fit that role.

(Photo of José Buttó: Adam Hunger / Getty Images)

Culture

A history of spying in football: Drones, interns at training and kit men in ceilings

Published

11 hours ago

July 26, 2024

Press Room

A history of spying in football: Drones, interns at training and kit men in ceilings

Are not even the Olympic Games sacrosanct?

Yeah, you’re right. Probably not, given their long history of judging corruption, state boycotts and widespread doping.

But the news which broke on Tuesday, three days before the opening ceremony and hours before the first action in the 2024 Games’ football tournament, meant that the cherished Olympic values of fair play stood in tatters even before organisers emblazoned that message across the Parisien sky and the River Seine.

That it was Canada who performed such an egregious breach of the rules — by all stereotypes a country known for its people being polite, respectful, laidback and just terribly nice — only adds to the ironic drama.

There are five rings in the Olympic logo — take just two of them intertwined, and they resemble a pair of binoculars.

So this is what happened…

On Tuesday, at a training session ahead of their opening match of the group stage in Saint-Etienne on Thursday, staff members from the New Zealand women’s football team noticed a drone hovering above them.

Bev Priestman, the Canada coach, watching her team in action earlier this year (Jason Mowry/Getty Images)

They called the on-site police, who detained the device’s operator, who was later revealed to be a staff member from the Canadian team, the reigning Olympic women’s champions, and their opponents in that opener today.

In an initial statement, the Canadian Olympic Committee (COC) apologised — but more was to come.

The following day, it became clear that there had been two drone incidents, with the other taking place five days earlier, on July 19. Now facing severe sanctions, the COC needed to act.

Joseph Lombardi, an “unaccredited analyst”, and Jasmine Mander, a member of the coaching staff who oversees Lombardi, have been removed from the team and sent home and Canada’s English head coach Beverly Priestman has voluntarily stepped down from being on the touchline for the New Zealand game.

“On behalf of our entire team, I first and foremost want to apologize to the players and staff at New Zealand Football and to the players on Team Canada,” Priestman said. “This does not represent the values that our team stand for.”

That final sentence is a little difficult to justify, given that spying on another team’s training is hardly an accidental action — nobody finds themselves flying a $2,000 piece of tech over their next opponents — twice — by mistake. Rather, it comes as a product of culture and command.

“I am ultimately responsible for conduct in our program,” Priestman added. “Accordingly, to emphasize our team’s commitment to integrity, I have decided to voluntarily withdraw from coaching the match on Thursday. In the spirit of accountability, I do this with the interests of both teams in mind and to ensure everyone feels that the sportsmanship of this game is upheld.”

This may be new to the Olympics — but spying in football is old business.

Teams sending scouts to watch the next side they are going to play at training probably predates the invention of the offside rule. In fairness, though, we do not know if ancient Olympian Theagenes of Thasos sent emissaries to watch Arrichion of Phigalia working on his moves.

Didier Deschamps, the France head coach, spotted a drone over training at the 2014 World Cup (Martin Rose/Getty Images)

In international football, France men’s manager Didier Deschamps noticed a drone above his players as they trained at the 2014 World Cup in Brazil — it was never discovered which, if any, of their group-stage rivals Ecuador, Honduras and Switzerland it belonged to.

Go back two more decades and ahead of a vital away World Cup qualifier against Norway in 1993, England manager Graham Taylor was so convinced his team were being watched that he moved their training base to a military facility. The issue? That new location was near the house of the chief sportswriter of one of Norway’s leading newspapers, who subsequently published their tactics the next morning. England lost, 2-0, in Oslo, ended up missing out on the 1994 World Cup, and Taylor got sacked.

Similarly, in a case of paranoia outweighing perspective, the Chilean football federation once sent up their own device to destroy a drone hovering over their session before a match against Argentina. It was perhaps football’s first case of aerial warfare since Roy Keane’s infamous tackle on Alfie Haaland. In this case, it turned out the questionable drone was a surveying tool being used by a Chilean telecommunications company.

But there is one example of spying which did emanate from South America — when, in early 2019, Leeds United’s Argentine head coach Marcelo Bielsa admitted sending an intern to watch the following weekend’s opponents Derby County work on their formation, set pieces and so on. It was not the first time.

“We watched training sessions of all the opponents before we played them,” Bielsa, now Uruguay’s head coach said. In Argentina, this practice was common apparently, and one he had continued after coming to work in Europe.

Officers have just attended the Training Ground for @dcfcofficial After a suspicious male was seen at the perimeter fence. Excellent searching conducted & male was located. All checks above board!
Keeping the team safe to bring home a win against #LUFC on 11th! #SpyingIsCheating pic.twitter.com/a12Zj8gISX
— Derby Response – This account is closing (@DerbyResponse) January 10, 2019

Derby and Frank Lampard, their manager at the time, were furious. When Bielsa rang the former Chelsea and England midfielder to explain himself, there was no apology — but instead, in broken English, he attempted to remove any ambiguity around the circumstances.

Leeds won the ensuing match, 2-0 — and the following week, Bielsa held an unprecedented press conference for local journalists, 66 minutes long, in which he used a PowerPoint presentation to demonstrate the full extent of the analysis he carried out on opposition clubs.

For Bielsa, who held open training sessions throughout his time at Athletic Bilbao in Spain, watching teams going through their tactical preparations like this was not spying, but simply gathering information.

Leeds’ Bielsa, centre, admitted spying on Lampard, right, and Derby (Alex Dodd – CameraSport via Getty Images)

It was later pointed out by Leeds fans that, as a player, Lampard has been part of a Chelsea side which profited from similar, um, info-gathering missions.

In an interview with UK newspaper the Telegraph, former Chelsea manager Andre Villas-Boas admitted that, in his time as an assistant at the London club under Jose Mourinho, he would “travel to training grounds, often incognito, and look at our opponents’ mental and physical state before drawing my conclusions”. Chelsea won the Premier League title twice with Mourinho and Villas-Boas in situ.

Given the amount of information that rival clubs can draw on, some coaches are simply not too bothered by allegations of spying. In 2018, German Bundesliga side Werder Bremen used a drone to spy on Hoffenheim — but Hoffenheim’s coach Julian Nagelsmann, now manager of Germany’s national team, brushed off its impact.

“I’m not really angry at the analyst doing his job,” Nagelsmann said, before adding it was “commendable” that Bremen were going to such lengths to try to win.

Similarly, in the aftermath of the Leeds incident, former striker Gary Taylor-Fletcher recalled an incident from his Lincoln City side’s 2003-04 League Two play-off semi-final second leg away to Huddersfield Town.

While the Lincoln players were receiving their half-time team talk, Taylor-Fletcher tweeted, a polystyrene ceiling tile broke and then fell down — revealing the sizable heft of longtime Huddersfield kit man Andy Brook listening from the cavity above. Lincoln went on to lose the tie, while their opponents lost their dignity — but did end up getting promoted. And Taylor-Fletcher can’t have been too annoyed because, a year later, he left Lincoln for… Huddersfield.

Football is not alone in this sort of espionage — and other sports can be much more high-tech.

The McLaren Formula 1 team were given the largest fine in sporting history — $100million — and thrown out of the sport’s 2007 Constructors’ Championship after senior engineer Mike Coughlan received technical design documents which had been leaked from rivals Ferrari.

There have also been several high-profile incidents in American football.

Also in 2007, the New England Patriots, the most successful NFL team of recent years with six Super Bowl wins since the turn of the century, were punished for recording the defensive signals given to players during a game by coaches of the New York Jets. New England’s legendary head coach Bill Belichick was fined $500,000 — the maximum allowed by the league, and the most in NFL history — while the team were denied their first-round pick in the following year’s player draft.

Belichick in 2007, when his team were caught recording the New York Jets’ defensive signals (AP Photo/Mel Evans, File)

Does cheating prosper? Well, New England won all 16 games in the 2007 regular season — but were surprisingly beaten in the Super Bowl by the New York Giants.

And it’s not just the professionals in the gridiron game. Last October, the University of Michigan’s head coach Jim Harbaugh was suspended over a similar sign-stealing scandal which quickly escalated to involve allegations also levelled at several other college teams. Harbaugh was banned for several games, but Michigan went on to win the U.S. college national championship on his return. Harbaugh has since moved on to become head coach of the NFL’s Los Angeles Chargers.

So this is the bottom line: teams cheat.

In a multimillion (or even billion) dollar/pound/euro industry, marginal gains like those detailed here are worth the risk of detection. For every Canada, Leeds and Michigan caught, there are clubs and sides whose operatives get away with it.

Widespread but not necessarily endemic, it is both serious and not serious, funny and infuriating, the natural by-product of a game being taken as lifeblood.

Back in the ancient Olympics, contemporary accounts reveal athletes being bribed to say they were from certain city-states rather than others — facing a potential punishment of public flogging if they were caught.

Things have not really changed — and the punishment, at least to the guilty party’s public reputation, is not so different either.

Teams are willing to run that risk.

(Top photos: Getty Images; design: Eamonn Dalton)

Culture

Esteban Ocon joins Haas F1 for 2025 season

Published

18 hours ago

July 26, 2024

Press Room

Esteban Ocon joins Haas F1 for 2025 season

Esteban Ocon will race for Haas in Formula One from 2025 after signing a multi-year deal with the American team.

Haas announced on Thursday ahead of this weekend’s Belgian Grand Prix that Ocon, 27, would complete its line-up for next year alongside British rookie Oliver Bearman, who will graduate from Formula Two.

The Frenchman will become the first grand prix winner to race for Haas, and the move sees him reunite with Ayao Komatsu, Haas’s team principal, who served as his engineer for his maiden F1 test with Lotus back in 2014.

Ocon said in a statement that he and Haas had enjoyed “honest and fruitful discussions these last few months” about the future, and that he would be “joining a very ambitious racing team, whose spirit, work ethic, and undeniable upward trajectory has really impressed me.”

The move means Haas will run an all-new F1 line-up for 2025 as Ocon and Bearman replace Nico Hulkenberg and Kevin Magnussen, both of whom were already confirmed to be leaving the team.

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“The experience he brings, not just from his own talent base but also from working for a manufacturer team, will be advantageous to us in our growth as an organization,” Komatsu said of Ocon.

“It was vital we had a driver with experience in beside Oliver Bearman next year, but Esteban’s only 27 — he’s still young with a lot to prove as well. I think we have a hungry, dynamic driver pairing.”

What led Ocon to Haas?

Since Ocon announced in June that he would be leaving Alpine upon the expiration of his contract at the end of the season, Haas has always looked like his most likely destination.

Ocon was always going to be part of what is proving to be a very fluid F1 driver market for 2025, offering race-winning experience to any interested teams after his shock victory for Alpine at the 2021 Hungarian Grand Prix.

There were talks with a number of teams over a potential drive for next year, with Williams previously holding an interest in him as an alternative to its top target — Carlos Sainz.

Ocon is currently racing with Alpine (Bryn Lennon – Formula 1/Formula 1 via Getty Images)

But it became clear in recent weeks that a deal with Haas was close to being finalized, particularly after the team confirmed Magnussen’s departure in Hungary.

Ocon said last week it was “very clear what our intentions are for the future,” with the hope of getting a deal announced before the summer break, which starts next week.

He will join a Haas team currently enjoying an upswing in performance under Komatsu. It lies seventh in the constructors standings, and has already scored more than double its points tally from the entirety of last year.

A fresh start for Ocon

The move will serve as a new beginning to Ocon, whose final season with Alpine has proven to be a frustrating one.

Between the team’s lack of performance and tension with teammate Pierre Gasly that flared after their collision on the opening lap in Monaco, there was always the feeling a chapter was ending, even prior to news of Ocon’s departure.

This move will end Ocon’s long-standing relationship with the Enstone-based team, known previously as Renault and Lotus, which began more than 10 years ago. He joined their junior academy at 14, but their financial issues led Mercedes to take him under its wing.

Mercedes helped Ocon get onto the F1 grid in 2016 and quickly win praise for his performances and consistency while driving for Force India, leading to him even being a consideration for a Mercedes F1 seat in 2020 as teammate to Lewis Hamilton.

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But he was never seriously on Mercedes’ radar this time around as they look to replace Hamilton, with the vacant seat likely to go to its 17-year-old protege, Andrea Kimi Antonelli, who is racing in F2.

With Haas, Ocon will get long-term stability and, for the first time in his career, have the chance to help build a team up by serving as the experienced head alongside a much younger teammate in Bearman.

(Andrea Diodato/NurPhoto via Getty Images)