Author: RevSportz Comment

It’s a measure of how much Liverpool Football Club values continuity that there have been only 22 full-time managers in their storied 133-year history. For perspective, Tottenham Hotspur have had nearly as many this century alone. Starting with Tom Watson in the 19th century, three Liverpool managers have presided over 500 games or more. A fourth, Jurgen Klopp, almost made it to that landmark, finishing with 491 matches in charge. Arne Slot, who has been on the touchline for 76 games now, has a win percentage (63.16) better than Klopp, Bob Paisley, Kenny Dalglish and Bill Shankly – widely considered…

This 408-run thrashing in Guwahati is hardly the first dispiriting or demoralising loss that Indian cricket has suffered, even in this 21st century of limitless wealth and plentiful success. But in most cases, even the worst defeats came with some sort of silver lining or caveat. The two previous heaviest defeats by runs – in Nagpur in 2004 and Karachi in 2006 – were examples of that. In Nagpur, cricket had very little to do with India’s loss. At the time, Indian cricket was caught in the middle of a power struggle between Jagmohan Dalmiya, who had held the reins…

There was a time not long ago when Kerala football looked dead and buried. The great days of the 1980s and ’90s, when Kerala Police competed with the best teams in the country, were long gone, and famous stadiums like the Corporation Stadium in Calicut (now the EMS Stadium) had become accustomed to crowds of only a few hundred, where once 30,000 to 40,000 fans packed the galleries. Even the relatively new Gokulam FC, which once attracted average attendances of nearly 20,000 before the COVID-19 pandemic, now struggles to get more than 3,000 spectators. The flow of players to the…

For many, the enduring image of the United States hosting the FIFA World Cup in 1994 will be the Roberto Baggio penalty that sailed over the bar and into the Pasadena sky to end an ultimately disappointing final against Brazil. The tournament itself had been a calculated gamble: taking the world’s most popular sport to a nation where American Football, basketball, and baseball dominated both the sporting arenas and the cultural imagination. But the seeds sown that summer has since reshaped the sport’s status in the United States, changing it from a niche pastime into a rapidly expanding and passionately…

RevSportz Comment The venue may have changed, from the old WACA to the new Perth Stadium, but the most isolated city in the world remains the final frontier for Test batting. The WACA was notorious for its snaking cracks and trampoline bounce, and while the new venue rarely features cracks that a bicycle tyre could disappear into, the bounce remains a huge challenge for batters. But it’s also not an insurmountable challenge. The problem that we often see in the present day is a lack of comprehension. Too many teams and players have no clue what ‘intent’ means. More often…

RevSportz Comment Despite seeing an Erling Haaland penalty superbly saved by Giorgi Mamardashvili, Pep Guardiola’s 1000th game as a manager/coach ended in a resounding 3-0 victory over Liverpool at the Etihad Stadium. Jeremy Doku, whose quick feet had won the penalty, was the star of the show and he killed off any hopes of a Liverpool comeback with a stunning curled finish from outside the box in the 63rd minute. Liverpool, whose title defence is all but over following a fifth defeat in 11 games, will look back ruefully on a Virgil van Dijk header from a Mo Salah corner…

RevSportz Comment The last thing any professional footballer wants is to lose to his or her former club, especially if you had once been a cult hero there. Yet, that was the sobering reality for Trent Alexander-Arnold, whose Anfield return lasted less than 15 minutes and was played out to a cacophony of boos and jeers. His Real Madrid side were played off the park in a 1-0 defeat, with the scoreline kept respectable only by some stunning saves from Thibaut Courtois in Los Blancos’ goal. The run-up to the game had seen Alexander-Arnold’s mural outside Anfield defaced, with a…

RevSportz Comment Liverpool-Manchester United has largely been a rivalry shaped by geography rather than results. When Liverpool ruled the roost under Bob Paisley and his successors, United weren’t regular challengers for the title. And when Sir Alex Ferguson knocked Liverpool off their perch in the early 1990s, it was Arsenal and, later, Chelsea that shaped up as United’s biggest on-field rivals. In recent seasons, the other Manchester side, City, were the ones Liverpool went toe to toe with, as United slipped further and further behind. In that sense, Sunday’s 2-1 win at Anfield was a seismic result, a small…

Speaking at the Together for Palestine concert in London last month, Eric Cantona – Manchester United legend and maverick French footballer of the 1990s – minced no words. “I played for France and Manchester United,” he said. “I know that international football is more than just sport. It is culture, it is political, it is soft power. “In a way that a country represents itself on a global stage, the time has come to suspend Israel from that privilege.” He also pointed out what he viewed as hypocrisy on the part of FIFA, which had banned Russia within days of their invasion of…

RevSportz Comment When India and Pakistan were at war in 1971, Sunil Gavaskar, Bishan Singh Bedi and Intikhab Alam – all playing for the Rest of the World against Australia down under – would gather around a transistor radio and listen to updates from the conflict. More than three decades later, even in the aftermath of the Kargil War, it wasn’t uncommon to see Indian and Pakistani cricketers going out for dinner together. But there was no thought of breaking bread over the past three weeks in the United Arab Emirates, as politics and sport collided as never before…