The police chief in Uvalde, Texas, who was out of town during the school shooting that killed 21 people in May 2022, announced Tuesday he would resign. His resignation is the latest fallout from law enforcement unrest over the time it took officers to confront the gunman.

The chief, Daniel Rodriguez, did not give a reason for his decision to resign.

His department and others who responded that day were criticized for the more than 70 minutes it took officers to enter classrooms where the gunman was holed up with teachers and students. His announcement comes less than a week after a city investigation found that Uvalde officers who responded to the scene acted in good faith and did not violate department policy.

Mr. Rodriguez, who has been police chief since 2018, was in Arizona at the time of the shooting but was in contact with the officer he put in charge, Lt. Mariano Pargas Jr. Mr. Pargas resigned in November 2022 after 18 years on the force and has since been re-elected as county commissioner.

“After deep contemplation and consideration, I believe it is time for me to embrace a new chapter in my career,” Mr. Rodriguez said in a letter announcing his resignation on Tuesday.

Uvalde Mayor Cody Smith said the chief’s resignation would take effect April 6. He said Homer Delgado, an assistant police chief, would serve as interim police chief while the city searched for a new leader.

“Nothing is more important than the safety of our community, and we look forward to working together to identify the best candidate to serve the people of Uvalde,” Mr. Smith said in a statement.

On May 24, 2022, a teenage gunman armed with an AR-15 style rifle climbed over a low fence and entered Robb Elementary School through an unlocked door. He unleashed a barrage of bullets, killing 19 children and two teachers and wounding 17 other people.

More than 370 officers from local, state and federal agencies gathered at the scene but did not attempt to confront the shooter for more than an hour

The city held a special meeting last week to announce the results of a two-year investigation into the shooting. At the meeting, an investigator hired by the city — Jesse Prado, a retired Austin police detective — said his findings showed that while law enforcement made many documented mistakes that day, Mr. Pargas and the more than two dozen other officers on the city force had acted in good faith and did not violate department protocol.

The city’s findings, included in a 182-page report released Thursday, are the third major investigation into the slow police response. Two previous investigations, one by a state commission and the other by the U.S. Department of Justice, concluded that the police response was marked by a series of leadership failures, poor decision-making and a lack of training.

Other studies are underway. Local District Attorney Christina Mitchell has convened a grand jury to hear testimony to determine whether criminal charges should be filed against officers who responded that day. The Texas Department of Public Safety, which also sent officers to the scene, has not yet released the results of its investigation.

In the days after the shooting, much of the blame for the slow police response fell on Pete Arredondo, the small school district’s chief of police, who many considered the incident commander. He was fired by the school district shortly thereafter. The district later dismantled the entire police force, which consisted of five officers, and hired new officers.

The Texas Department of Public Safety has removed at least two of the seven officers under investigation for their roles in the response, including Sgt. Juan Maldonado and a Texas Ranger, Christopher Ryan Kindell.

Uvalde County Sheriff Ruben Nolasco and Uvalde County Constable Emmanuel Zamora have been criticized for their roles in the police response and are still trying to retain their elected posts. Sheriff Nolasco heads toward a May primary; Zamora won the Republican primary for his post on Tuesday.

Relatives of the victims demand full responsibility for the police response. Jesse Rizo, whose niece Jackie Cazares was killed in the shooting, said he hoped other officers would be fired or otherwise punished.

“Ultimately, these people, from the top down, need to be held accountable,” he said. As for Chief Rodriguez, he said, “His departure is long overdue.”

The head of the Internal Revenue Service warned Thursday that proposed cuts to his agency's budget would ultimately cost the federal government more money and pushed back against accusations that he ignored laws for political purposes.

The comments from IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel came in testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee as he approaches his first full year on the job. He has overseen a $60 billion overhaul of the tax collection agency. That funding has been scaled back from $80 billion under the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, and Republican lawmakers are seeking further cuts.

“For every $100 million taken from the IRS, the deficit grows by $600 million over 10 years,” Mr. Werfel said, citing Treasury Department data.

Republicans took $20 billion from the IRS last year when they struck a deal with Democrats to lift the debt limit. They have called for additional recoveries during negotiations with the White House over how to pay for additional aid to Ukraine.

The threat of budget cuts has added uncertainty to the Biden administration's plans to upgrade the technology the IRS uses to process tax returns and boost the agency's ability to conduct audits, which Mr. Werfel has promised these will focus on complex business partnerships and wealthy individuals. .

Mr. Werfel said the agency has made significant progress over the past year by improving its responsiveness to taxpayers, clearing a backlog of unprocessed tax returns and taking steps to improve tax data security after the financial information of wealthy taxpayers, including former President Donald J. Trump, have been leaked in high-profile security breaches.

Mr. Werfel faced pressure over his management of the agency and whether he had ignored tax laws for political purposes. Republican lawmakers expressed particular concern about his decision to delay implementation of a controversial tax policy that would require users of digital wallets and e-commerce platforms such as Venmo, PayPal and Etsy to report small transactions to the IRS.

“I am extremely concerned that the IRS has been a little too focused on following the Biden administration's political cues rather than fulfilling its congressionally mandated duties,” said Rep. Carol Miller, a Republican from West Virginia , who accused the agency of engaging in an “illegal overreach.”

Mr. Werfel defended the delay, saying his job allowed him to implement tax laws so that taxpayers were not harmed by policies that could cause widespread confusion.

“I believe the IRS commissioner has the authority to enforce laws in a manner that safeguards taxpayer rights,” he said.

For years, the IRS has faced accusations that it is acting with a political agenda, as well as conspiracy theories about armed agents harassing businesses and taxpayers.

In response to questions about weapons and ammunition stockpiles the agency possesses, Mr. Werfel said that very few IRS agents used weapons and that most ammunition was for training purposes. The Treasury Department has said that only about 1 percent of new officers will work in jobs that require carrying weapons.

“Most IRS employees are customer service representatives,” Mr. Werfel said. “They are armed only with telephone headsets, and all our accountants are armed only with calculators.”

Upon his confirmation to the Senate last February, Daniel Werfel told lawmakers that if he were given the job of commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, he would work to increase “public confidence” in the beleaguered agency and its $80 billion that Congress had granted it would use to build a “more modern system.” and high-performing organization.

A year later, Mr. Werfel has overseen the elimination of a backlog of thousands of tax returns, reduced wait times on IRS phone lines and created a system that allows qualified taxpayers to file their federal returns free of charge. But these achievements were not enough to satisfy Republicans, who accused Mr. Werfel of making the IRS more intrusive and even engaging in lawless behavior.

Hostile hearings in Congress are routine for IRS commissioners, and when Mr. Werfel testifies before the House Ways and Means Committee on Thursday, he will receive a frosty reception as he fends off attempts to cut his agency's budget.

For Mr. Werfel, the confrontation is an opportunity to explain why even skeptics would benefit from a well-funded IRS

“I think the strongest statement the IRS can make, if there is a proposal to significantly reduce our budget, is to showcase our work and demonstrate that we are on a good path to improving tax operations in a way that benefits taxpayers,” Mr. Werfel said in an interview this week.

The IRS would get $80 billion as part of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, and that money is expected to help the agency strengthen its enforcement capabilities to tackle tax fraud and modernize its outdated technology. As part of a deal to raise the debt limit last year, Democrats agreed to Republicans' demands to claw back $20 billion of those funds. And Republican lawmakers have eyed additional cuts in recent months amid negotiations over paying for other policies.

During his first year in office, Mr. Werfel has tried to allay concerns from agency critics that the IRS would hire thousands of armed agents to harass middle-class Americans and small businesses. To do that, he has focused on efforts to make the IRS more accessible by staffing its customer service centers and making it possible for taxpayers to reach the agency without waiting on the phone for hours.

As part of its modernization campaign, the IRS also announced initiatives to crack down on wealthy tax evaders, stopped sending agents unannounced to homes to collect unpaid taxes and began introducing artificial intelligence technology into its audits.

But top Republicans have argued that any sign of progress at the IRS is being overshadowed by ongoing problems. They insist that Mr. Werfel's agency, which they say has a history of attacking conservatives, is influenced by politics and favors Democrats.

These concerns have been fueled by recent security breaches. The IRS is under pressure to improve its data security protocols after a former contractor accused of leaking the tax documents of Donald J. Trump and other wealthy Americans was sentenced to five years in prison. This is evident from a report published last week by the Inspector General of the Ministry of Finance of the Tax Authorities found that as of July, more than 200 former IRS employees or contractors still had access to sensitive information.

Tax committee members are expected to press Mr. Werfel on Thursday over why he has delayed enforcement of a controversial tax policy that would have required users of digital wallets and e-commerce platforms such as Venmo, PayPal, Cash App, StubHub and Etsy start reporting. small transactions to the tax collection agency. The policy was introduced as part of the 2021 American Rescue Plan and has been criticized for increasing scrutiny on lower- and middle-class taxpayers. While Republicans abhor the policy, they argue that Mr. Werfel's delays violate the law.

“The IRS should not protect Democrats from the consequences of their own bad legislation,” Jason Smith, the Republican chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, said in a statement. “The IRS cannot bypass the Constitution and simply rewrite laws.”

Mr. Werfel said he planned to argue that he was within his rights to delay the so-called Venmo tax because the law, as written, would cause widespread confusion and potentially harm taxpayers. And he would argue that data security at the agency has improved significantly over the past year. However, such incidents have provided critics of the IRS with fodder to argue that it does not deserve the additional funding it has received.

“Any time you're negotiating a budget issue, and you want money for Ukraine or Israel or something, we're going to take it out of the IRS piggy bank,” said Grover Norquist, founder and president of Americans for Tax Reform, an advocacy group that advocates for lower taxes. “Because they haven't shown any seriousness about being better at something.”

The Biden administration has said the continued attacks on the IRS are part of a strategy to weaken the agency so it doesn't have the capacity to catch wealthy taxpayers evading paying what they owe. The Treasury Department estimates that the United States has a… almost $700 billion It is argued that stronger enforcement of the tax code is critical to reducing America's dependence on borrowed money.

“There are those who have power and those who have wealth who would like nothing more than for the IRS not to have the resources to go after them and make them pay their fair share,” said Wally Adeyemo, the deputy minister of Finance, in an interview.

Frequent discussions about defunding the agency have left Mr. Werfel looking over his shoulder as he tries to implement the priorities in the ambitious multi-year operating plan the agency laid out last year.

Mr. Werfel said the barrage of criticism directed at the IRS over the years had taken its toll on staff, but that he believed morale was beginning to improve. He compares the role of the body to that of an impartial referee necessary for the functioning of government, but he recognizes the challenge of staying out of politics.

“I think most people see us as the tax collector, and that's not the most popular action the government is taking,” Mr. Werfel said. “It's becoming a reality that when the debate is about the role of government, the size of government, the actions of government, the IRS is going to be at the center of that debate.”

Heated disagreements were not uncommon at Board of Commissioners meetings in Trumbull County, Ohio, after Niki Frenchko took office in January 2021, becoming the only Republican on the three-member board. But tensions erupted in July 2022 and ended in Ms Frenchko's arrest after she continued to express her views at a public meeting.

A federal judge ruled Tuesday that the arrest violated the constitutional rights of Ms. Frenchko, who had criticized the sheriff and ignored another commissioner's order to apologize before she was arrested.

“Here in America, we do not arrest our political opponents,” Judge J. Philip Calabrese of the Northern District of Ohio wrote in Tuesday's ruling.

Trumbull County, about 60 miles southeast of Cleveland, has a population of about 200,000. The commissioners are the administrative body of the provincial government.

The two other commissioners, Mauro Cantalamessa and Frank Fuda, were Democrats and Ms. Frenchko, as the only Republican, saw it as her job to “need” them, the ruling said. Mr. Fuda retired from the end of 2022.

“For their part, they viewed her as ignorant of the basic workings of provincial government and as a nuisance, to say the least,” the ruling said. “As her colleagues became increasingly frustrated and impatient with her, their personal and political disagreements became increasingly intense.”

Ms. Frenchko broadcast her arrest, which occurred after a dispute during a July 2022 commission meeting, in a livestream video. She was charged with disrupting a lawful assembly, but the charges were dropped several weeks later.

In April 2023, Ms. Frenchko filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the two other commissioners, the board of commissioners, the county, the sheriff's office and two sheriff's office sergeants, saying her First Amendment rights were violated and that the sheriff's office had no reason to arrest her.

Judge Calabrese agreed with his ruling Tuesday, but stopped short of striking down the Ohio law that made her arrest possible. The statute prohibits obstructive behavior or speech that “violates the sensitivities of the group.”

The judge said that the two other commissioners; Sheriff Paul Monroe; and the two sheriff's deputies, Sergeant Harold Wix and Sergeant Robert Ross, were personally liable for damages, to be determined at a later hearing.

“This statement affirms what I have done in the past and gives me the strength to continue fearlessly doing the people's business in the months and years ahead,” Ms. Frenchko said in a statement.

Andrew Yosowitz, an attorney for the two sergeants, said in an email that they planned to appeal.

“When Ms. Frenchko repeatedly interrupted and disrupted the commissioners meeting, said Sgts. Wix and Ross acted reasonably to enforce Ohio law, which protects the First Amendment by prohibiting a person – any person – from disrupting a lawful assembly,” Mr. Yosowitz said.

Attorneys representing the county, the sheriff's office, the board of commissioners, Sheriff Monroe, Mr. Fuda and Mr. Cantalamessa did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Judge Calabrese said in his ruling that Ms. Frenchko was removed from the meeting “without question” because she “conveyed a message that did not resonate with those in power.”

The dispute stemmed from a meeting in early June 2022, when Ms. Frenchko read a letter from the mother of a man jailed in Trumbull County. said the letter writer that her son had not received adequate medical care after contracting meningitis.

Sheriff Monroe wrote a letter demanded in July that Ms. Frenchko apologize for the statements she made and criticized her for publicly reading the letter because the claims had not been verified.

Since 2010, at least seven lawsuits have been filed alleging that the rights of inmates at the Trumbull County Jail were violated. The Cincinnati Enquirer reports this.

Mr. Fuda instructed a clerk to read the sheriff's letter during a commission meeting on July 7, 2022. Ms. Frenchko interrupted the clerk and objected, the ruling said. Mr. Fuda ordered her to stop interrupting, use his gavel and raise his voice, but Ms. Frenchko continued to object and mocked the clerk, who began to cry, the ruling said.

After the clerk finished reading, Ms. Frenchko discussed the letter for about two minutes, the ruling said. Mr. Cantalamessa interrupted her and said, “You're talking about the chief law enforcement officer in Trumbull County; it is unacceptable.”

The argument continued and Mr. Fuda told Ms. Frenchko to apologize to the sheriff. “If you don't, we'll move on,” he said, according to the ruling.

Mrs. Frenchko continued to speak.

The sergeants ordered her out of the interrogation room and she was handcuffed outside while she recorded the interaction on her cell phone. According to the ruling, Ms. Frenchko was then taken to the county jail, located in the same building, and released later that day.

The new head of New York City’s troubled prisons, Lynelle Maginley-Liddie, vowed Friday to work with the federal regulator that oversees the system to prevent a takeover of the dangerous Rikers Island complex. humane” environment for people in custody.

Ms. Maginley-Liddie, an eight-year veteran of the Department of Correction and previously first deputy commissioner and chief diversity officer, said at a news conference Friday that a federal takeover of Rikers Island was not a “done deal.” To avoid losing control of the prison, she said she would take advantage of the relationship she had built with the monitor, Steve J. Martin.

Mayor Eric Adams interrupted the press conference at City Hall to read from a newly filed status report from the monitor that praised Ms. Maginley-Liddie as “transparent and candid” and as someone who understood “the important work ahead.”

The praise was a bright moment in what would otherwise have been an avalanche of bad news about Mr. Adams’ management of Rikers Island. Citing a failure to correct dangerous conditions at the prison complex, Damian Williams, Manhattan’s top federal prosecutor, last month formally joined efforts to wrest control of the prison from the city and place it under the authority of place an outside entity known as a trustee. Letitia James, New York’s attorney general, recently did as well joined these efforts. Nine people have died in the prison complex this year.

The federal monitor has said the city, including former prison commissioner Louis A. Molina, vigorously resisted efforts at reform.

Mr. Martin wrote in a status report on Friday that prisons still pose “a high risk of harm to those incarcerated there” and that he remained “concerned by the leadership’s development and mismanagement of several initiatives” to address issues to solve.

Ms Maginley-Liddie said her focus would be on “recovery and investment in a safe, humane and supportive environment for every person in our care.”

Advocates had criticized Mr. Molina for reducing transparency at Rikers. During his tenure, officials stopped notifying the public when deaths occurred in custody and a prison oversight panel’s unrestricted access to video footage from Rikers Island was revoked, although it was later reinstated.

Mr. Molina was not at Friday’s news conference, although Mr. Adams praised him. In the same status update that the mayor read when he praised Ms. Maginley-Liddie, the observer expressed concern that Mr. Molina, who Mr. Adams recently appointed assistant deputy mayor for public safety, continues to oversee would have in the department.

The Legal Aid Society said in a statement that “the current deteriorating state of the Department of Correction is far beyond the ability of any single commissioner to correct,” and that only an independent authority in the form of a trustee can address “systemic changes ” could achieve. ” required.

The Campaign to Close Rikers Island, a group that wants to ensure the prison closes by the legally mandated date of August 2027, also said a new commissioner would not be able to solve the problems there.

“Rikers are irredeemable, regardless of who is in charge,” said Darren Mack, a spokesman for the group.

In October, City Council President Adrienne Adams announced the second version of the independent commission that created the plan to close Rikers. The mayor had expressed his skepticism that the prison could be closed within the specified period.

On Friday, Mr. Adams argued against a trustee. He said an outside agency would not be able to fix “the systems” in the prisons. The mayor also said he inherited a broken system.

“I can’t emphasize enough,” Mr. Adams said, “this place has been broken for decades.”

Elizabeth Glazer, the director of the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice under former Mayor Bill de Blasio, said Ms. Maginley-Liddie’s ability to work with the monitor was a good sign, but the ultimate test would be whether the city could improve its approach change. handle the monitor.

“Much of the obfuscation has been caused by attempts to distract the observer, and whether that will be lifted by the new commissioner and she will be allowed to do her job is the biggest concern,” Ms. Glazer said.

Pete Rozelle’s immediate reaction could not accurately be described as unbridled enthusiasm. He was 33. He had, for the last three years, been the general manager of the Los Angeles Rams. He was suave, charming and well liked. But he was nevertheless starting to wonder whether running an N.F.L. football team was really the job for him.

And then, outside the Kenilworth Hotel in Miami in January 1960, he was cornered by a cadre of the league’s most fearsome power brokers: the Mara brothers, Jack and Wellington, owners of the Giants; Dan Reeves, the Rams’ benefactor; and Paul Brown, the coach and founder and all-purpose potentate of the team in Cleveland that still bears his name.

They had an offer to make Rozelle. They did not want him to run a franchise. They wanted to put him in charge of the whole league.

It was an offer, in Rozelle’s mind, that he had to refuse. “You’ve got to be kidding,” he told them, according to Michael MacCambridge’s magisterial history of the league, “America’s Game.” “That is the most ludicrous thing I have ever heard.”

Rozelle’s logic was simple. The job of N.F.L. commissioner looked an awful lot like a poisoned chalice. The league’s various owners were split on almost every issue imaginable — not only on who should be commissioner, but also whether to add another slate of expansion teams, whether to sign a collective television deal and how to stave off the threat of the rival American Football League.

There was even contention over where, exactly, the league’s offices should be. Rozelle was not the only one who might have looked at the job description and decided he would have to be a fool, or a madman, to accept.

Still, over the course of the afternoon, Rozelle was won over. He was persuaded by Reeves, Brown and the rest that his candidacy would be successful, that the issues could be resolved, that he would “grow into” the position. His wife, Jane, reassured him that he would be a good fit. Later that day, Rozelle was elected as commissioner.

The challenges faced by the N.F.L. of the early 1960s are alien to the Premier League of 2023. The Premier League is, by almost any measure, a picture of health. It is the most popular domestic sports league of all time. Television has made it rich beyond measure. It is a playground for billionaires and private equity funds and nation states. It does not fear the emergence of a rival; if anything, its primacy is such that it is asphyxiating its former peers, a wealth gap that isn’t good for the game.

This weekend, the Premier League will return after a brief hiatus for international duties with a top-of-the-table meeting between Manchester City and Liverpool, the game that has become its marquee fixture. City is the world’s dominant team. Liverpool is one of soccer’s grandest names. The two teams are packed with global stars and each is led by one of the most influential coaches of their generation. Millions will tune in to watch. If the Premier League is in crisis, it has taken a strange form.

And yet, below the surface, the competition is buffeted by currents that Rozelle would recognize. This week, the clubs of the Premier League met in London for one of their periodic conferences. Among other matters, they voted on whether to introduce a ban on — and this is catchy — “related party loans.”

In truth, this is hardly an existential matter for the league. (It is far more pressing, and far more problematic, elsewhere.) More and more teams in England, as is the case across Europe, are now part of so-called multiclub networks, in which owners possess not one but a whole stable of teams.

The Premier League had, correctly, recognized that this offered teams a chance to circumvent the competition’s extremely lax rules on spending: Nottingham Forest could, say, take a player on loan from its sister club, Olympiacos, at a cheaper rate than it might have to pay on the open market, boosting its performance without affecting its balance sheet.

The fact that this is only an issue now, of course, has nothing to do with Forest’s links to Greece or Brighton’s relationship with a team in Belgium but with Newcastle, which is owned by the same Saudi sovereign wealth fund that has spent the last few months stuffing its four domestic teams with superstars. The Premier League wanted to head off the prospect of those players being conveniently diverted to Newcastle at discounted rates.

But the motion did not pass. The Premier League’s rules state that, to be approved, any vote requires the support of 14 of its 20 teams. This time, it fell one short. Seven teams decided, essentially, that the idea of related party loans was a good one. It is no surprise that those seven teams either are, or soon might be, part of multiclub systems.

It would be naïve, though, to assume that the motives on the other side of the argument were any more pure. It is possible that some of the 13 who did back the idea of a ban did so because they believed the loophole might in some way undermine the integrity of the league, or because they felt there really ought to be rules governing a sporting competition. More likely — as suggested by the timing — they saw a chance to deny their rivals a possible advantage.

There is nothing new in this. Several years ago, a number of teams put to the league the idea that they might pool the performance data produced by their games, so as to allow teams to better understand their opponents. Bundesliga of Germany had already adopted a collective approach. A majority of teams rejected it. Such a move would, they said, favor the clubs that had been early adopters of analytics.

This is how the Premier League works: as a sort of tyranny of a self-interested majority. And, on the surface, teams confusing what is in their interests with what is in the interests of the league as a whole has done little harm. The league has grown to become a global behemoth. It is probably now Britain’s greatest cultural export.

Increasingly, though, that approach appears to be nearing a breaking point. Manchester City has been charged with — though not found guilty of — 115 breaches of the league’s financial regulations. This month, Chelsea brought to its attention huge discrepancies in its books.

And the day before the league’s executives met in London to present craven self-interest as a form of democracy, Everton was stripped of 10 points in the standings for surpassing the maximum loss permitted by the league. (A lesson here: If you tell people that the aim is to lose no money, but that they can lose $130 million without being punished, they will assume that $130 million is not so much a ceiling as a target.)

In a 41-page report exploring the Everton case, Paragraph 107 is the key. Part of the evidence submitted by Everton, it says, came from a representative of the club who explained that his job was not to make sure that it met the league’s financial requirements, but to “protect and interpret” those requirements “to the benefit” of his employer.

“The Commission notes that the Premier League already needs to devote considerable resources to monitoring compliance by its member clubs,” the report adds. “If all clubs were to adopt a similar approach, the Premier League’s task would become yet more challenging.”

That should not be the case, of course. The teams of the Premier League should understand that for a sporting competition to have any validity, any meaning, it needs to have an agreed-upon set of rules. But what Everton, Chelsea and Manchester City prove — like the vote on related party loans — is that the clubs do not want to engage with those rules in good faith. They see them instead as rules to be manipulated and circumvented and sometimes ignored, and view doing so as all part of the game.

Whether that does any actual damage is difficult to say. The allegations against Manchester City have done little to dampen enthusiasm for the league, just as the sight of Newcastle reaching the Champions League with Neymar and Cristiano Ronaldo — on loan — would hardly drive fans away.

There comes a point, though, when a fracture happens. Perhaps that is between the clubs, so ensconced in their own universes that they can no longer agree on anything. Or perhaps that is between the teams and the fans, once the asterisks start to pile up in previous seasons and nobody is sure whether what they are watching will actually count.

There are two ways of averting that. One, rather utopian, is to persuade the clubs to work more collectively, to understand that growth is a shared endeavor and that their success is codependent. The other is to create an office, one with genuine power, to enforce the rules (ideally in real time), to issue punishments and to protect the interests of the league.

On several occasions in the 1990s, the Premier League sent emissaries to the United States to see what English soccer could learn from America’s major leagues. They came back with an awareness of the power of television, an understanding of the significance of corporate revenue, and a surprisingly longstanding conviction that cheerleaders would be a good idea in a Yorkshire winter.

Nobody, it seems, recommended instituting a commissioner to shape and guide their business. Given where the Premier League finds itself now, caught in an impasse between irreconcilable camps, it is apparent that is something of an omission. If the clubs cannot willingly work together, cannot operate for their own wider benefit, then it is obvious they have to be made to do so.

The only problem, of course, is the obvious one. The clubs themselves would have to vote on not only the identity of the commissioner, but also the existence of one. As ever, they would do so entirely along the lines of their own self-interests. In that case, and in that case alone, though, they might just find an unfamiliar unanimity.

It is not absolutely clear, at this precise moment, if Inter Miami will be taking part in the tournament that everyone is talking about: the eternally prestigious Riyadh Season Cup.

On Tuesday, Turki al-Sheikh, the chairman of the General Entertainment Authority in Saudi Arabia, was under the distinct impression that he had booked the world’s finest Barcelona tribute act to be part of a three-team tournament featuring Miami’s fellow “giants” — his words, not anyone else’s — Al-Nassr and Al-Hilal.

A few hours later, sadly, it became clear that nobody had told Inter Miami. “Earlier today, an announcement was issued stating that Inter Miami is scheduled to play in the Riyadh Season Cup,” the club said in a statement that is, by any standards, a classic of the genre. “This is inaccurate.”

It seems a fair bet to assume that this all ends with Inter Miami pitching up in Saudi Arabia in a few months anyway, and that the dispute was rather more about who was allowed to announce the news, and when, than it was about the actual content of it. Still, even if the whole thing does not materialize, it is hard to escape the impression that the episode offers a fleeting glimpse of soccer’s future.

The appeal of bringing Miami to town, of course, is the prospect of bringing Lionel Messi and Ronaldo into direct competition again. It would be, as the now-disputed news release had it, a “Last Dance” sort of occasion, an assertion undercut only a little by the fact that: one, the actual “Last Dance” — the documentary series — is about a meaningful championship, not a friendly match; and two, there is every chance that either the Saudi authorities or M.L.S. will find a way to have them play each other again at the next available opportunity.

Still, such quibbling is probably futile at this point. Inter Miami against Al-Nassr in Riyadh, in February, is not even a remote imitation of the sorts of games that defined the rivalry between Messi and Ronaldo. It is instead an exhibition, a staged production, more than a sporting contest. It is soccer as brought to you by W.W.E.

But it is also, needless to say, what people want. Fans will buy tickets to see Messi and Ronaldo face-to-face once more. Broadcasters will pay — perhaps not much, but still — to show the game. People will tune in, idly, reluctantly, with half an eye on something else. And as they do, soccer will take another step on the road to becoming something further from sport and closer to what might best be described as “general entertainment.”

Correspondence

Last week’s newsletter touched, fleetingly, on Sweden, the only major men’s league in Europe that continues virgin and unsullied by the arrival of V.A.R. That means, of course, that Sweden is also blissfully ignorant of the infinite debate about V.A.R. that occurs every time anyone mentions V.A.R.

(It seems now that soccer is essentially a year-round conversation about how much of our agency we should surrender to technology broken only by two breaks in which we talk about the acquisition of players. Perhaps, in years to come, we will finally do away with the actual sport entirely so as to concentrate exclusively on the bits we really like.)

In honor of the Swedish approach, then, I am going to set aside the many emails about V.A.R. that arrived in the inbox this week and focus instead on three questions that are perhaps less pressing but almost certainly more original.

“Why are Wolverhampton Wanderers referred to as Wolves by match commentators?” Rick Smith asked. “I can’t think of any other team regularly referred to by its nickname. The only thing I can think of is, way back in the days of print media, some editor or typesetter said Wolverhampton had too many letters to fit in a headline.”

My sense here is that Rick’s assertion is essentially correct, though I can think of a few examples that come pretty close. The best is the Scottish team Heart of Midlothian, which is referred to almost exclusively as Hearts. It is increasingly common to see “Spurs” in a league table rather than “Tottenham Hotspur.” In all of these cases, I suspect the basic cause is the desire to abbreviate, both from the fans and the news media.

Question No. 2 comes from Ted Richards. “With the margins in performance at the top level becoming smaller and smaller, and the improvements in data collecting and tracking, has there been any movement, at the club level, to preferring international players closer to home?” he asked. “Might a club prefer a Mudryk over a Martinelli, knowing international duty would not require hours in the air while crossing many time zones?”

The short answer to this is yes. Clubs do factor international commitments into signing players — particularly in the context of African stars likely to be called up for the midseason Cup of Nations — but it is ordinarily only one factor to be weighed, rather than an outright red flag.

And finally, Bob Bonpietro has hit upon another subject on which I already have thoughts. “After seeing France beat Gibraltar, 14-0,” he wrote, “isn’t it time UEFA reconsider its qualifying format for the European Championship? These types of games usually end in routs. Why not do something akin to Concacaf to winnow out the minnows?”

The argument has always been that the smaller nations improve only by being exposed to the standard to which they aspire, and it is one with some evidence in its favor. Luxembourg, for example, traditionally one of Europe’s great walkovers, finished third in its qualifying group this time around. Albania, historically only a rung above, has now qualified for two of the last three Euros.

All of that notwithstanding, the idea of holding some sort of prequalifying tournament does have some merit. Inviting the 16 “weakest” teams — decided by ranking, perhaps, or performance in the last round of qualification — to play off for a limited number of places in qualifying proper would allow those countries to play more meaningful games; would create a more attractive qualifying tournament; and would not stop the momentum of the upwardly mobile.