Former Channel Five baseball co-host David Lengel believes Major League Baseball can make a splash in Britain despite a late startFor the tightly knit baseball community scattered throughout the UK and Ireland, Tuesday’s announcement from Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred and London mayor Sadiq Khan was as big as it gets: the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox will play a pair of regular-season games at London’s Olympic Stadium in June 2019.For folks like myself, co-hosts Jonny Gould, Josh Chetwynd and others who passionately represented the sport on Channel Five’s baseball coverage from 1997 to 2008, the chance to finally see America’s national pastime on British soil is a champagne moment. Related: Red Sox and Yankees confirmed to...
Aubameyang can revive Arsenal, Butland lays bare Stoke’s shameful truth and West Ham would be foolish to ditch MoyesPierre-Emerick Aubameyang might not be a classic Arsène Wenger signing because he cost a lot of money and is already close to his peak but at 28 he is certainly a man who can lead the next incarnation of Arsenal. Alongside Alexandre Lacazette the duo showed how exciting Arsenal can still be even if Burnley looked like a team packed for their summer holidays as they made up the numbers, offering less energy than the post-match speeches, in what was effectively a testimonial at the Emirates. Wenger might rue the fact he missed bringing the Gabonese international Aubameyang to England earlier –...
There is a sense Real Madrid could be sleepwalking towards a hammering in the Champions League final but Liverpool showed against Roma they cannot be trusted eitherThere was a point on Tuesday night when the thought occurred that this Real Madrid are like Brazil at the 2014 World Cup, a gifted but complacent side who could be sleepwalking towards a hammering.Marcelo’s “We are Real Madrid” comment, and the sense of entitlement it implied, suggested he had learned nothing from the humiliation of Belo Horizonte. But then came Liverpool’s anxiety-riddled progress on Wednesday and the realisation that even after the improvements of the past four months, they still cannot be trusted. Either side could score six in Kiev; both may. Nobody...
Jürgen Klopp’s men did what they had to do by scoring first in a tense semi-final second leg at Roma, where they lost on the night but squeezed into the Champions League finalIt was, of course, never in doubt. Or perhaps only a little in doubt in those moments when Roma pressed and suddenly Liverpool’s defence began to look alarmingly zany, pockets of space opening up as though subject to a sudden buckling of the earth’s crust.Certainly the Champions League has never known anything like this. A 4-2 victory for Roma brought to an end a double-header that has seen 20 goals scored in two semi-finals, capped by a pair of hysterically open second legs. Defending is over. Clean sheets...
Bayern thrashed Zidane’s side 2-2 and there is plenty to suggest a knockout blow can be landed on their elegant glass jawReal Madrid tried so hard to lose this semi-final. Bayern Munich tried so hard to win it. That neither could achieve this apparently shared aim speaks in the first place to Real’s pure champion will and secondly to that nexus of game-management, calamitous Bayern defending and something close to a kind of white-shirted voodoo, the ability to win even while in the process of sputtering and panting like a stalled presidential motorcade.This was a fun, wild, oddly drunken game of football that ended 2-2 at the Bernabéu and 4-3 to Real on aggregate. At the end of which a...