Author: WebDesk

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,…

RevSportz Comment Three weeks before Arsenal arrived at the Etihad Stadium, Liverpool and Manchester City locked horns in what was likely to have been the last league meeting between Jurgen Klopp and Pep Guardiola. It was a game for the ages, showcasing the cut and thrust of English football at its very best. Liverpool shaded possession, thanks to a hugely impressive second half, but both teams had six shots on target. And for all of Liverpool’s swashbuckling second-half play, the moment of the match was undoubtedly the corner routine from which John Stones gave City the lead. That was a…

The more you think about it, the term ‘team sport’ is the ultimate oxymoron. In no sphere of human endeavour does individual adulation reach the levels that it does in sportlike football and cricket. In that sense, Muhammad Ali was an anomaly, a sportsperson in an individual pursuit who became a global icon. But in Ali’s case, much of that popularity was down to the politics and popular culture of the day, rather than anything he did within the confines of the boxing ring. Otherwise, your Usain Bolts and Roger Federers trail way, way behind the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo…

World history is full of ‘what-ifs.’ What if Adolf Hitler hadn’t launched Operation Barbarossa which led to the disastrous winter war in Russia? What if Japan hadn’t bombed Pearl Harbour? Sport is no different. Who knows where Indian cricket would be now if not for Kapil Dev’s marvellous running catch at Lord’s on June 25, 1983 – the key moment in a famous upset win over the mighty West Indies. And would India football have plumbed such depths but for SA Rahim’s untimely death battling cancer in 1963? For Indian cricket, another flutter-of-butterfly-wings-causing-a-tsunami moment came 30 years ago today, at…

Eric ten Hag’s next game as Manchester United manager will be his 103rd. For Louis van Gaal, his countryman and predecessor, that was the fatal number. Within minutes of winning the FA Cup final in 2016, van Gaal was given his ‘Dear John’ letter, with Jose Mourinho eventually taking his place. But whatever happens in the future, ten Hag will always have March 17, 2024, and a victory that United fans will recall for generations. Since Sir Jim Ratcliffe and his team took charge of football operations at Old Trafford, there have been no unequivocal or emphatic statements in support…

RevSportz Comment When Virat Kohli left the tour of Australia after the first Test in 2020-21, in order to be present for the birth of his first child, there wasn’t really a groundswell of opinion either way. To begin with, the world was dealing with the invisible destroyer that was Covid-19. With millions dying and words like ‘quarantine’ and ‘bio bubble’ becoming part of everyday vocabulary, even diehard fans considered a Test series too trivial a matter to get agitated about. Of course, there were a few murmurs about a captain leaving a sinking ship — India were embarrassingly bowled…

Web Desk The Riyadh-based Al-Hilal are already the most successful side in AFC Champions League history, with four continental titles and five other appearances in the final. That’s alongside 18 domestic league championships, twice as many as their nearest rivals. Now, as they stand on the threshold of title No. 19 and a fifth Champions League, Al-Hilal have also played themselves into football’s history books with a 28th straight win. They eclipsed the previous record, set by The New Saints in Wales in 2016, by thumping Al-Ittihad, one of their biggest rivals, 4-0 on aggregate in the AFC Champions League…