From impassioned debates around the kitchen table to detailed reports about matches that never happened, Europe’s soccer media are working overtime to give fans a welcome distraction during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Former Tottenham Hotspur, Barcelona and England striker Gary Lineker, a keen amateur chef, even opened up his home in a bid to satisfy the public’s appetite for sports talk.
As presenter of long-running British top-flight highlights show Match of the Day, Lineker, ignoring social distancing guidelines, played host to regular studio guests Alan Shearer and Ian Wright around his kitchen table at the weekend.
Match of the Day was screened as a panel show on Saturday, with Lineker, Shearer and Wright debating the greatest captains of the English Premier League era.
For once there was no talk of the video assistant referee, as former Newcastle United and Blackburn Rovers star Shearer detailed his memorable battles with Manchester United’s Roy Keane, while former Arsenal striker Wright described his use of “Franglais” to annoy teammate Patrick Vieira.
In what was due to be FA Cup quarter-final weekend, the BBC also filled the void of what would have been live games with classic matches from the competition’s past.
Linker, 59, has since gone into self-isolation after his 28-year-old son George told him that he might have contracted the coronavirus.
ITALY
In one of the nations worst hit by the pandemic, the Italian media have been focused on boosting national pride.
Sky Sports have already broadcast Italy’s matches on their way to victory in the 2006 FIFA World Cup.
The schedule for Monday was “a whole day spent together with Italian coaches who have left their mark in England.”
There were segments on Claudio Ranieri, who masterminded Leicester City’s fairy-tale Premier League title triumph, Roberto Mancini, who won the title at Manchester City, and Carlo Ancelotti, a double winner at Chelsea.
FRANCE
Much of the weekend’s French coverage was given over to the big clash between Olympique de Marseille and Paris Saint-Germain, which was meant to be played on Sunday.
Sunday’s edition of sports daily L’Equipe had a front-page montage of current PSG defender Marquinhos giving chase to Chris Waddle in a Marseille shirt.
Inside, the paper pitched together a dream team for each side — Marseille with Waddle, Didier Deschamps, Didier Drogba and Jean-Pierre Papin against PSG with Rai, Ronaldinho, Zlatan Ibrahimovic and George Weah.
Nostalgia has been a recurring theme and on Sunday night Canal Plus filled the slot that should have been dedicated to live coverage of the match by showing highlights of games between Marseille and PSG in the past decade.
BeIN Sports showed France’s 2018 FIFA World Cup final win against Croatia at the same time.
GERMANY
Sky Sports’ German channel spent the weekend running Bundesliga compilation packages featuring great goals and dramatic late winners.
Streaming service DAZN have put up every single UEFA Champions League final since 1991-1992.
Newspaper Bild summed up the desperation for some sporting drama the best. It teamed up with the Chess24 Web site to stream the World Chess Championship Candidates Tournament from Russia, under the headline: “Finally, some sport.”
ANFIELD BLUES: Kylian Mbappe arrived at Anfield on a run of 21 goals in 17 games, but he managed just three attempts in the match, none of them hitting the target Kylian Mbappe has been nearly unstoppable this season, but he hit a roadblock in their UEFA Champions League match at Anfield on Tuesday. For the second year running, the Real Madrid forward had a night to forget at Merseyside as Liverpool won 1-0. Mbappe looked a shadow of the player who has been tearing defenses apart all season. “We were lacking that threat in the final third,” said Madrid coach Xabi Alonso, without naming Mbappe individually. The FIFA World Cup winner for France rarely looked capable of finding a breakthrough against a Liverpool team who have been so defensively fragile for much of the
LOCAL SUCCESS: In the doubles, Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei and Jelena Ostapenko of Latvia defeated Italians Sara Errani and Jasmine Paolini in straight sets Elena Rybakina on Monday punched her ticket to the WTA Finals last four with an impressive 3-6, 6-1, 6-0 victory over second seed Iga Swiatek in round-robin play in Riyadh. After cruising past Amanda Anisimova in her opener on Saturday, Rybakina claimed her second win of the week to guarantee herself top spot in the Serena Williams Group. Anisimova on Monday rallied back from a set and a break down to triumph 4-6, 6-3, 6-2 in her all-American battle with seventh seed Madison Keys, who has been eliminated from the competition. “Madi was playing so well, it was quite a battle out there,”
For almost 30 minutes, Vitomir Maricic did not take a breath. Face down in a pool, surrounded by anxious onlookers, the Croatian freediver fought spasming pain to redefine what doctors thought was possible. When he finally surfaced, he had smashed the previous Guinness World Record for the longest breath-hold underwater by nearly five minutes. However, even with the help of pure oxygen before the attempt, it had pushed him to the limit. “Everything was difficult, just overwhelming,” Maricic, 40, told reporters, reflecting on the record-breaking day on June 14. “When I dive, I completely disconnect from everything, as if I’m not even there.
An amateur soccer league organized by farmers, students and factory workers in rural China has unexpectedly drawn millions of fans and inspired big cities to form their own, raising hopes China can grow talent from the ground up and finally become a global force. The nation of 1.4 billion people has about 200 million soccer fans, more than any other country, but it has failed to build world-class teams, partly due to a top-down approach where clubs pick players from a very small pool of prescreened candidates. The professional game is marred by a history of fixed matches, corruption, and dismal performances,
RSS