Author: WebDesk

“The challenge with Messi is not just his quality but his ability to kind of move around in the game,” said Jesse Marsch, Canada’s American coach who was once in charge at Leeds United, on the eve of his team’s Copa America opener at the Mercedes Benz Stadium in Atlanta. “He doesn’t just show up in the same places all the time. Obviously, anytime he gets on the ball, the way that he can start to create combinations and really provide confidence and poise and quality for the team is very unique, right? This is what makes him the best…

This was always going to be a dogfight, especially with the Netherlands having handed Bangladesh an 87-run thrashing in the ODI World Cup last October. On Thursday afternoon at Arnos Vale in Saint Vincent, roles were reversed, with Bangladesh indebted to some sublime late-overs bowling from Rishad Hossain and Mustafizur Rahman for an uiltimately convincing 25-run victory that had them eyeing a place in the Super Eights. Bangladesh owed their total of 159-5 to a 46-ball 64 not out from Shakib Al Hasan, an emphatic response to relentless talk about his lack of form, and a sprightly 26-ball 35 from…

Mustafizur Rahman and Rashad Hossain bowled wonderful spells to set the game up for Bangladesh, but so low has the team’s confidence been in recent times that they struggled to pull off the pursuit of 125 runs for victory. With nerves fraying as the game reached a climax, the experienced Mahmudullah saw them home with two wickets and six balls to spare. Sri Lanka, having been thumped by South Africa in their opening game, now face an early exit. Having lost a bilateral series to the USA recently, Bangladesh’s lack of belief with the bat was evident at the start…

Delhi Capitals (DC) beat Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) by 19 runs on Tuesday to theoretically stay alive in this year’s IPL. Practically, however, with 14 points from as many matches and a net run rate of -0.377, their season is over. And yet, DC can count on some positives and Rishabh Pant’s comeback is the biggest of them. Returning to competitive cricket after almost a year andahalf, nobody knew how Pant’s body would react. For someone who suffered a horror car accident and then spent almost a year at the National Cricket Academy doing rehab, it was not easy to…

RevSportz Comment If you’re Arsenal and Mikel Arteta, you could be forgiven for wondering what more you could have done. Since the turn of the year, Arsenal have won 15 of their 17 English Premier League matches, and drawn at Manchester City, while scoring an incredible 52 goals. That run, which has seen 11 clean sheets and just eight goals conceded, has included victories over Liverpool, Manchester United, Tottenham Hotspur and Chelsea. But the sporting universe frequently deals in karma, and it’s quite likely that their solitary defeat in 2024 will extend the club’s wait for a league title to…

RevSportz Comment There are lines from Dire Straits’ Romeo and Juliet that go: ‘When you gonna realise, It was just that the time was wrong…’ That refrain, from a song released nearly a decade before Marco Reus was born in Dortmund in 1989, could well form the soundtrack for Reus’s career. But maybe, just maybe, the final chapter could yet have the happy ending that has eluded him. Paris Saint-Germain once again played target practice with the crossbar and post during the Champions League semi-final second leg at the Parc des Princes, but could have few complaints about the 1-0…

RevSportz Comment Fans of European football’s legacy clubs love to taunt them by saying the name of the club should actually be Plastic Saint-Germain. The inference is clear, that PSG are not a ‘real’ football club, but instead just a consequence of the obscene wealth that the Qatari state has pumped into a team that had won the French title just twice before 2011. Their 1-0 defeat in the first leg of the Champions League semi-final against Borussia Dortmund would have been viewed as poetic by many. Dortmund may not have PSG’s resources, but the atmosphere whipped up by the…

In the years before social media, nicknames and monikers were far rarer. But if you followed cricket in the 1960s and ’70s, the nickname Deadly could belong only to one man. Derek Underwood played in the same era as India’s legendary quartet, but his was a very different art. If Bhagwat Chandrasekhar relied on his polio-withered arm and freakishly quick arm action, Erapalli Prasanna and Bishan Singh Bedi were both masters of flight and guile. Underwood, who passed away on Monday at the age of 78, was at his deadly best when the ball gripped. On a ‘sticky’, common in…

In his poignant essay on the life and times of Colin Milburn, whose career ended after he lost his left eye in an accident, Matthew Engel wrote: “Milburn might not have been the greatest cricketer of his generation, but he was, beyond question, the cricketer we could least afford to lose. And we lost him.” As far as Indian football is concerned, Syed Abdul Rahim was the individual it could least afford to lose. And more than six decades after cancer claimed him at the age of 53, football in this country is still counting the cost. The gold medal…

Blas Iglesias Fernandez, the Cuban coach that many credit with transforming India’s fortunes in the boxing ring, is back in the fray in time for the Paris Olympics. Fernandez, who first came to India back in 1990, was part of the coaching system that gave rise to Olympic medals for Vijender Singh (2008) and MC Mary Kom (2012). Fernandez, the only foreign coach to be bestowed the Dronacharya Award, is now 68, but the Sports Authority of India (SAI) have given him a two-year contract as High Performance Coach. Fernandez will be based at the National Boxing Academy in Rohtak,…