After months of endless speculation, with different suitors taking the lead every other week, Erling Haaland will be (finally) entering the next phase of his career when he plays for...
To say it’s been a fall from grace for Mercedes would be an understatement. The German team were nearly untouchable in the turbo-hybrid era between 2014 and 2021. Such was...
Despite having Champions League football within their grasp for so long, Arsenal’s wait to return to Europe’s elite club competition will go on for at least another year. The disappointment was evident on the faces of the players and fans following Arsenal 5-1 demolition of Frank Lampard's Everton on the last of the season, as Tottenham Hotspur’s 5-0 thumping of long-relegated Norwich City made Arsenal’s emphatic win all but irrelevant. Mikel Arteta’s young Gunners fell at the final hurdle, with injuries and perhaps inexperience taking their toll at crucial moments. Five defeats in their last seven games and a slew of injuries to key personnel completely derailed Arsenal’s bid for a top-four finish. 69 points in the last two seasons would’ve secured a top-four finish, but this season it just wasn’t meant to be. Thus, it is difficult to really assess Arsenal’s season, and that is why their fifth-place finish has created such a debate. It’s 50-50. While half of the Arsenal fanbase views it as a failure, the other half believes there have been clear signs of progress. At the end of the day, both sides' arguments hold value.
There aren’t enough superlatives to articulate the extent of bravery it must have taken for Daniels to make this decision, that too at the very beginning of his career. After all, there’s a reason there haven’t been any openly gay male footballers in the UK in over three decades; there are very few of them across the world at all. Unlike its female counterpart, men’s football is plagued by homophobia to its very core. Troubled by the prospect of having to endure abuses and vile chants their entire lives, players have for long chosen to live closeted, lead a life of lies and refrain from simply being who they truly are. Even in retirement, very few footballers have chosen to come out and try to foster an environment that would encourage people of the LGBTQ+ community to live openly. It hasn’t been easy, however. Societal discriminations percolate into sporting communities, as is their wont. Matters of abuse on racial, communal and religious grounds have only recently become subjects of import, and even slower is the rate at which changes take effect. It is no surprise, therefore, that having openly gay male footballers in the game is almost unheard of, let alone being something that should have long been normalised.
In today’s fast-paced world where everything is getting digitised and mass marketing campaigns are a common trend, it is hard to read the newspaper, browse the internet, or watch TV without the words “blockchain”, “cryptocurrency” and “NFT” flashing in front of your eyes. I’d assume you’ve already seen multiple ads and TV commercials where famous athletes and actors would be telling you to buy cryptocurrencies or NFTs, or seen stories on the news about people buying crypto and NFTs for increasingly mind-blowing sums of money. Today, even most of our favourite brands and companies have NFT offerings to offer in exchange for exclusive benefits. But what do these terms mean, and how do these technologies work? The rate at which these technologies are evolving makes it almost impossible to predict how the state of the market will be next week or next month in comparison to today.
The first draft for this piece was prepared on the eve of the New Year gone by, way before any of us got a look at the new 2022 cars. While the predictions were not off the mark by a great deal, being someone who takes pride in his work, analysis and subsequent predictions, I took my time gathering lap times and telemetry data of all the teams to update this piece. Things have changed dramatically over the six-day pre-season testing period. At the end of the Barcelona testing, McLaren, Ferrari and Mercedes were the teams who stood out as the frontrunners, while Williams looked to be one of the favourites to make the jump into the front of the midfield pack as Haas and Alfa Romeo looked devoid of ideas. However, the testing in Bahrain spread out the field further, with Red Bull and Ferrari standing out as the top dogs followed by eight-time champions Mercedes, who looked more vulnerable than assured with their sidepod-less design, while McLaren were one of the biggest losers with Daniel Ricciardo sitting out with COVID and persistent brake heating issues that hampered their already-curtailed testing progresses. History suggests that often one or two teams unearth some groundbreaking innovation and blow away their competitors like Brawn GP did in 2009 or Mercedes in 2014, while the rest end up playing catch-up throughout the year. Experts and the F1 community in general feel it will again be a Mercedes vs Red Bull two-horse race for the World Constructors’ Championship, although there is renewed optimism around Ferrari to deliver their first title since 2008. Teams like Alpine and Aston Martin could also spring a surprise or two and become frontrunners come Bahrain, while the optimism around Haas makes them one to watch as well when the cars hit the track on March 18. So, without further ado, here are my predictions for the 2022 F1 season.
Chelsea are run exactly how a football club should be run, with everything like a cog in a well-oiled machine — a testament to the system set in place. One of the main reasons they have reached the status they hold today is obviously down to their excellent management led by Marina Granovskaia and the support staff and players, but there has been one individual who has built the club from the shadows and remained there for quite a while, until the spotlight fell on him, anyway. Yes, it’s none other than Roman Abramovich. When he bought the club in 2003, Chelsea, despite already being a historic club, weren’t even half of what they are today. Yes, the legacy and trophies were there, but investing heavily, making sure the best people were brought in for the jobs, and setting up a flawless system are some of the things Abramovich brought with him that transformed the club. During Abramovich’s time as the club’s owner, Chelsea’s men’s team have lifted five Premier League titles, five FA Cups, three League Cups, two UEFA Champions League titles, two UEFA Europa League titles, one FIFA Club World Cup and one UEFA Super Cup. The women’s team, on the other hand, have also enjoyed unparalleled success and won multiple trophies which include the FA Women’s Super League four times, the Women’s FA Cup three times, the FA Women’s League Cup two times and one Women’s FA Community Shield.
Loud explosions, aerial attacks, closed airspace, crowded bomb shelters and vital services at a standstill: this is the present situation in Ukraine amid incessant Russian attacks, much to the shock...
World No. 1 tennis player. Splendid fitness icon. Age on his side. Oozing with energy. A global figure. Twenty Grand Slams. With such a reputation, it is but inevitable that...
Can George Russell, who has three years of experience driving in Formula One and thousands of miles under his belt in that Mercedes car, beat Lewis Hamilton in 2022? In...
