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Apr 25, 2020

Premier League's virtual comeback a triumph – especially for Diogo Jota | Simon Burnton

The Wolves man’s golden-goal win against Trent Alexander-Arnold kept Liverpool waiting for a title at the climax of a pound-shop version of MTV CribsIt was the least fitting of finals: after a tournament that had featured a net-busting 106 goals in just 18 matches when the best players met there were just two in the final, shared between Trent Alexander-Arnold and Diogo Jota, with the latter eventually winning after 68 impossibly tense, albeit sped-up minutes of golden-goal extra time. Still, after the events of the last few weeks the merest glimpse of the word “live” in the corner of a Sky Sports screen must have been enough to make action-starved fans quite emotional. Related: Esports ride crest of a wave...

Sep 18, 2018

Olympics unlikely to be bridge too far for eSports if the money is right | Andy Bull

Distinctions between sports and games seem less important than the money that can be made from them, as one billionaire bridge ace proved by getting cards into the Asian GamesThe richest sportsman on the planet isn’t Floyd Mayweather, LeBron James, Lionel Messi or Roger Federer, but Michael Bambang Hartono, a 78-year-old from the small town of Kudus, in Central Java, Indonesia. His jab’s weak, he surely can’t dunk, and his backhand likely sucks, but he’s a crack lobbyist and he plays a mean hand of bridge. These two talents go together. In 2016, after years of effort, Hartono persuaded the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) to include bridge as a competitive event at the 2018 Asian Games. Last month, he...