“Football has to change and adapt. We have to analyse why young people, 16-to-24-year-olds, 40% of them aren’t interested in football.”

As Real Madrid president Florentino Perez was quoted saying this in response to the Super League outbreak, there was a divided opinion amongst fans about it.

It didn’t go well with the idea of creating a new league exclusively for the giant clubs purely based on financial incentives. Thus, the Super League died a painful death even before it could be debated upon.

There is one thing though which the authorities of the beautiful game have learnt from this fiasco. Football needs change.

For decades now, the rise and popularity of the NBA has been associated with its shorter duration games. Not only does this…

This is what International football is about. When our expected big nations managed to get out of the group stages comfortably, everyone believed that the unmatched fixtures between the big guns and the relatively smaller nations would be another easy walkthrough for the likes of the French, the Dutch and the Germans. But as we said, this is what International football is about.

The last three days have witnessed something unbelievable in European football. First, it was the ousting of the Netherlands at the hands of Czech Republic, then it was the 6-goal thriller between France and Switzerland which led…

INTRODUCTION

Manchester City take on their famed opponents Chelsea in the final match of the 2020–21 UEFA Champions League competition on 29 May 2021, Saturday at the Estadio do Dragao in Porto, Portugal. The Cityzens from Manchester have been designated as the home team for this occasion and one can safely assume that they will also enter it as favourites. However, it has to be noted that quite recently, in the English Premier League competition as well as the FA Cup, Chelsea had unceremoniously defeated Manchester City. In the former, Chelsea went ahead by a 2–1 scoreline while in the latter, they beat them 1–0. This will remain in the collective memory of Manchester City and their fans and ensure that they do not take this encounter lightly at all. The visiting side Chelsea, who are very good at reading situations and converting them into their favour, can take hope from the fact that Manchester City have never played in a Champions League final before.

However, there is very little to suggest that Pep Guardiola’s Blues from Manchester are going to be daunted by the fact that this is going to be their first time in a major European final. Of course, Manchester City have tasted European glory by winning the 1969–1970 UEFA Cup Winners Cup by beating Gornik Zabrze of Poland in the final, but as of 2021, that remains their only piece of continental silverware. Plus, of course, the Cup Winners Cup was a competition contested by the winners of domestic cup competition winners and did not really matter in the long run…

Manchester City’s English centre back John Stones has had a tumultuous career. To say that he has been through a rollercoaster ride will be stating things very lightly indeed. Born in 1994, the now-26-year-old centre back spent his youth career at Barnsley before being signed by Everton in 2013. He made a total of 95 appearances for the Blues of Liverpool before being snapped by Manchester City in 2016, for whom he has made more than a hundred and fifty appearances already. …

It’s the curse of the 21st century. Nothing is personal anymore, nor about passion. Everything is a business. Well, our beautiful game hasn’t been spared from this cruelty either. Football has become a money minting business after all. Though this has had it’s benefits too, with club managements investing heavily in technology off the pitch. It has helped players take their games to the next level.

But on 18th of April 2021, the boundaries were crossed, big time. Spanish club Real Madrid’s long time president Florentino Perez announced the European Super League — a league of the best clubs in…

FC Barcelona have fallen hard from the mighty heights that they had once occupied. They crashed out of the UEFA Champions League competition after drawing 1–1 to Paris Saint Germain in the round of sixteen stage. In the first leg of the selfsame encounter, they were beaten 1–4 by the Frenchmen and this meant that they had to score at least three goals at the Parc des Princes Stadium in Paris in the second leg encounter on Wednesday. However, they failed to do so and were shown the door from the European competition by their historical foes Paris Saint Germain.

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Manchester United have surprised us all this season. They are standing in the second position of the league table at the moment with 45 points to their name at the time of writing and are considered as serious contenders for the Premier League trophy this season. …

Chelsea Football Club took the ominous decision to sack their first team head coach and manager Frank Lampard on Monday, bringing an end to the club legend’s below-average performance at the helm. Although it can be argued that Lampard did not have as disastrous a season as several other managers before him, it also needs to be understood that it is only good performances and winning games that speaks in this fast-paced generation and the former England international had failed to provide either to the Chelsea faithful in the recent past.

THE ROMAN ABRAMOVICH EFFECT

Chelsea’s owner Roman Abramovich, an…