Author: RevSportz Comment

Real Madrid last lost a European Cup/Champions League final in 1981, to Bob Paisley’s Liverpool. Since then, they have won nine straight finals, which is simply unreal. It was also in 1981 that the second movie in the Friday the 13th horror franchise came out. Appropriate really, since like Jason in those movies, Real Madrid never die. Comprehensively outplayed for the best part of an hour at Wembley, they moved through the gears when it mattered, beating Borussia Dortmund 2-0 with goals from Dani Carvajal and Vinicius Junior. It was their sixth Champions League win in 11 seasons, and a…

We live in an age of football coaches wedded to philosophies. If Jurgen Klopp’s teams will be remembered for their gegenpressing and Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona for their tiki-taka, it was Murderball that Marcelo Bielsa’s players were subjected to. Each of these coaches has influenced dozens of others, and impacted the sport from top to bottom. On Saturday night, however, the most successful football manager in history will step out on to the Wembley turf for the Champions League final, and no one would be able to tell you what his philosophy is. Carlo Ancelotti is far too classy a man…

There are times when journalism can be a noble, even admirable, profession. There are countless media persons who have exposed war crimes, political impropriety and financial scandals. In many cases, they paid a harsh price for that courage. For every Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein – celebrated in print, on screen and in popular culture – there are ten others who have ended up in a ditch with a bullet in the head. That is proper journalism. Then you have the scummy tabloid variety, of reporters turning up on a young woman’s doorstep to tell her that her husband –…

In three years as manager of Anderlecht, Vincent Kompany won just 42 of his 96 games. But he then moved to Burnley and wowed the Championship – the second tier of English football – as the Lancastrian side romped to the title with 101 points. There were great expectations when they took their place in the English Premier League (EPL), but those were swiftly shattered as Burnley’s players found the chasm between the two leagues far too wide to bridge. Kompany and Burnley finished 19th, with a miserable five wins, and just 24 points from 38 games. While their attempt…

How should we view the season that Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) had in IPL 2024? Does their trouncing in the final at the hands of Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) undermine all the good work done before? Or will the batting template that they followed this season gain currency in years to come, and be seen as a watershed? Facts first. This was SRH’s first foray into the play-offs since 2020. In two of the last three seasons, they had finished rock bottom. Whatever they were doing then, with just 13 wins across three seasons, clearly didn’t work. A radical transformation wasn’t…

In April 1989, with Alex Ferguson into the third year of what appeared certain to be an ill-fated stint in charge of Manchester United, Guns N’ Roses, then the biggest rock band in the world, released Patience. In the years that followed, that tune with its inimitable acoustic guitar, would almost become the soundtrack of the Ferguson years. Fast forward to the present day, and Manchester United will play Manchester City, their cross-town rivals, in the FA Cup final at Wembley. The club once derided by Ferguson as the ‘noisy neighbours’ are now so far ahead of United that they…

When he wrote his autobiography, The Clown Prince of Soccer, in 1956, Len Shackleton, the Sunderland legend, included a chapter titled: The Average Director’s Knowledge of Football. It was a blank page. Nearly seven decades later, little has changed – Todd Boehly playing Russian roulette with great managers at Chelsea being a prime example. Few stories illustrate the rank stupidity of the money men more than the case of Gian Piero Gasperini though. After cutting his managerial teeth at Crotone and Genoa, Gasperini, who had played alongside Paolo Rossi in Juventus’s youth sides, was a somewhat left-field choice to take…

Xabi Alonso enjoyed the unique distinction of having played for three of Europe’s four most successful football clubs. Liverpool (6), Real Madrid (14) and Bayern Munich (6) are members of the Fab Four who have won European football’s greatest prize – the European Cup/Champions League – at least six times. AC Milan (7) are the other. Alonso won the Champions League with Liverpool (2005) and Real (2014), and added league titles in Spain and Germany to his trophy cabinet. He also won the FA Cup in England. All this, of course, was in addition to a World Cup winner’s medal…

His Test numbers are those of an all-time great, and he has played key roles in Australian triumphs in both white-ball formats. But for a long while, it was doubtful in the extreme whether Pat Cummins would have a career of note. He had to wait more than six years after his debut to play a first Test on home soil, and a young man with less inner steel would have thrown in the towel after spending home summer after home summer getting treatment for multiple back stress fractures. Cummins was just 18 and a half when he played a…

It was supposed to be tense. Nerve-wracking. The trouble was, someone forgot to tell Manchester City, and Phil Foden in particular. The final day of the English Premier League (EPL) season did see Arsenal win, eventually, against Everton. But by then, a brace from Phil Foden, surely the player of the season, and another vital goal from Rodri had ensured that the trophy would be staying at the Etihad for another year. Just look at the numbers and marvel. City had 72 per cent possession, while peppering the West Ham goal with 28 shots. As many as 12 were on…