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Men behind the curtains - Spain

by Sam Ghebreab

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The highs and lows of the Men behind the curtains - Spain

In Spain there are 3 types of persons you are likely to see in the spotlight – the star players, the crazy presidents and the coaches (managers). Spain is fascinated with stars or craques as they are called in Spain, more than any other country, which is apparent with local reporting even when the stars come back from the summer holidays. The presidents in Spain also get involved in their fair share of drama. Barcelona’s President Joan Laporta, usually one of the more laid back presidents, famously stripped down to his underpants after getting so riled at the airport security who forced him three times to go through the scanner. Coaches also get some of the limelight, but they often get the blame, because as the rules go, ‘when the team wins it is the players we laud and when they lose it is the coach we go after. However, occasionally, like now with Pep Guardiola in Barcelona, they too get lauded and deservedly so. All of this seems logical and nobody can really protest any of these parties getting attention since these people are often at the centre of the action in their own way.

Nobody would dare speak ill about Sir Alex Ferguson’s achievements in England, while players like Lionel Messi makes the game worth watching and Italian President Silvio Berlusconi resurrected AC Milan when he became their president in the 1980’s. Now that is all good and well if it wasn’t for the fact that one piece is missing from the jig-saw – the role of the sporting director. Rarely we do hear about the great directors of sports who plays a huge part in the structure of football clubs and not just in Spain but in most of the continent they have big roles in determining the directions clubs are going in. Of the big football countries in Europe only England doesn’t have them and with the recent success of English clubs in Europe it is hard to argue against only having managers. Recently though we have started to see a few English clubs experiment with the European structure of a coach and a sports director but so far it hasn’t been a great success and it won’t persuade other clubs to change their ways, so what is the case for having a sports director?

The Black Bradman's Centenary

by Satish Sekar

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It’s over-used and almost devoid of meaning, but George Headley really was special. Had he lived Jamaica would be celebrating the centenary of the greatest batsman the Caribbean island produced today [May 30th], but Headley was unlikely cricketing hero. He was born in Panama and was sent to the West Indies as a ten-year-old to learn English, but he also learned how to wield the willow. He was competent on both sides of the wicket and was thought to be on a par, or even superior to the great Sir Donald Bradman on a wet wicket. Headley was known by some as ‘The Black Bradman,’ and was by far the greatest batsman the Caribbean produced in the 1930s – so great that Headley’s team-mates called Bradman, ‘The White Headley.’ The comparisons insulted neither player. The great Australian spin-bowler Clarrie Grimmett gave him high praise indeed, labelling him the best leg-side player he had ever seen and the great English opening batsman Sir Leonard Hutton rated his eye highly, believing nobody could play the cut later than Headley.

The West Indies played their first Test Matches in 1928 and were treated to a harsh lesson in the rigours of international cricket, losing all three matches by an innings. Headley was omitted from the tour, as the man who would carry the hopes of his compatriots throughout the thirties was still a teenager.

More highs and lows

by Sam Ghebreab

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The men behind the Spanish curtain

By the summer of 2006 Real Madrid was ready for a new project with Ramon Calderon as president and Predrag Mijatovi� as sports director. As with Perez, Calderon came in on a promise of signing not just one, but three star players or galacticos. Unlike Perez however he wasn’t able to lure Ricardo Kaká, Cesc Fàbregas, or Arjen Robben from their clubs and their sports project got off to a bad start. Instead Mijatovi� bought an unwanted Ruud Van Nistelrooy from Manchester United, Emerson and Fabio Cannavaro from crisis-hit Juventus, Mahamadou Diarra from Lyon and signed Antonio Reyes on loan from Arsenal. From the start there was concern about the new management; Mijatovi� wanted to bring in the pragmatic and defensive-minded Fabio Capello while Calderon wanted the attack-minded Bernd Schuster to lead the Real Madrid. The power that sports directors wield resulted in Mijatovi� having the final say and Capello was signed to coach Real Madrid. However, the squad he persisted with lacked the stars to make the team comparable to the craques of Barcelona which consisted of Ronaldinho, Samuel Eto'o and Lionel Messi. Mijatovi� tried till the end but it wasn’t enough. They managed to win the league in highly dramatic fashion but even the title failed to convince as fans knew this side wasn’t good enough yet. Mijatovi� would become a disaster for the club, spending hundred of millions without having significantly improved the squad and while the relative weakness in the Spanish Primera División allowed Real Madrid another league title in 2007, the failures in the Champion’s League showed everybody that the team wasn’t among the cream of the European crop.
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Europe's Pinnacle of Success

by Christopher Laws

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The 2008/09 Champions League qualifying rounds brought few surprises but several close games and impressive performances. Liverpool edged through to the group stages of the competition, scoring the solitary goal of their tie against Standard Liège in the extra-time which followed a goalless second leg; Arsenal comfortably won through after scoring six goals against then newly-appointed Steve McClaren’s FC Twente; Anorthosis Famagusta, led by manager Temuri Ketsbaia, became the first Cypriot team to reach the Champions League group stages after a 3-1 aggregate victory over Olympiakos; and the competition’s two Ukrainian participants impressed – Shakhtar Donetsk beating Croatia’s Dinamo Zagreb 5-1 on aggregate and Dynamo Kyiv routing Spartak Moscow 8-2.
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Mid May Issue

by Sam Ghebreab

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Welcome to the May issue of Empower Sport Magazine

60 years ago tragedy struck one of the greatest football teams Italy ever produced, il Grande Torino. Most of the talented squad were killed in a plane at the Basilica of Superga. In The immortal Grande Torino and later The Greatest we find out what made this team so special that is still talked about to this day not just in Torino but in all of Italy. Alongside current Torino President Urbano Cairo we look back on some of their great feats and round up by recapping the sad events that would take 31 lives. Sandwiched between these articles is the rest of this issue, which we trust you will find interesting and informative. After our first appreciation of il Grande Torino, we change sports to cricket.

As Chris Gayle's West Indies team meekly surrendered the Wisden Trophy won in the Caribbean just a few weeks earlier, we look back to where it all began - 1928. The fourth Test playing nation had a harsh introduction to Test cricket. In The Forth Member - Hard Lessons, we look back to their first tour of England. They were comprehensively outplayed but learned quickly and improved gradually winning their first series at the fifth attempt. In African Options we weigh the pan-African ideals of reggae artiste Peter Tosh against today’s football. We have covered this topic before but this time we focus on the Netherlands and whether or not this is a good breeding ground for African national teams that wants a little back from the children who have left for the stability in Europe, ar whether they should look to developing talent in Africa.

We follow that with a return to Italian football as Torino attempt to pay tribute to their greatest team by wiining in style, or at least winning. In No Renaissance for Torino Satish Sekar takes us to Fiorentina’s Artemio Franchi Stadium, where Torino's attempt to preserve Serie A status requires a win against the European hopefuls. And then its back to cricket for a look at one of the newer developments in the sport the much talked about twenty20. In Hands Off Twenty20 Satish Sekar finds that there is indeed something to be enjoyed from twenty20 and it should be welcomed rather then discarded, especially as the World Cup for Twenty20 takes place in England next month. We will be reporting from it. We close this issue by returning to the story of il Grande Torino. We hope that you enjoy this issue.

The Immortal Grande Torino

by Satish Sekar

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Sixty years ago [May 4th 1949] il Grande Torino, was cut down in its prime after re-writing the record books of Italian football. Empower-Sport Magazine pays tribute to perhaps the best team that football-mad Italy ever produced. It was disappointing – a disgrace even – that every match in Italy, or even throughout football, did not begin with a minute's silence to honour the memory of il Grande Torino on the weekend that marked the anniversary of the disaster. Shamefully, only one match paid a deserved tribute – Fiorentina versus Torino – and disgracefully, some Fiorentina fans refused to observe the tribute with the respect they deserved and even hurled Superga-related insults at Torino during the game, but to the credit of the majority of Fiorentina fans, they were met with disapproval. Nevertheless, it was particularly sad as Fiorentina was one of four clubs to honour il Grande Torino in 1949 by fielding their youth teams against them as Torino had no option but to allow their Primavera (youth) team play the final fixtures of the 1948-49 season, due to the Superga Disaster – the plane carrying eighteen members of the Torino squad, team officials, journalists and flight crew, clipped a wall near the eighteenth century Basilica at Superga in bad weather, killing all thirty-one on board. It was the worst disaster ever to affect a football team – one that set Torino and even Italian football back many years.

Valerio Bacigalupo: Aldo Ballarin, Dino Ballarin, Milo Bongiorni, Eusebio Castigliano, Rubens Fadini, Guglielmo Gabetto, Ruggero Grava, Pino Grezar, Ezio Loik, Virgilio Marosso, Danilo Martelli, Valentino Mazzola, Romeo Mente, Piero Operto, Franco Ossola, Mario Rigamonti and Julius Schubert were the Torino players who died, but they were not alone. Coach, Leslie Lievesley: trainer, Egri Erbstein, managers Ippolito Civallieri and Arnaldo Agnisetta and masseur Ottavio Corina were the Torino staff to die along with organiser Andrea Bonaiuti. Journalists Renato Caselbore, who founded Tuttosport, La Stampa's Luigi Cavallero and Renato Tosatti of Gazetta del Popolo also died, along with four members of the flight crew, Cesare Biancari: Celestino d'Inca, Antonio Pangrazi and the captain Pierluigi Meroni. They deserve to be remembered by every football supporter throughout the world. Anything less is quite simply a disgrace to the sport.

The Fourth Member � Hard Lessons

by Satish Sekar

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The oldest rivalry in cricket began in 1877, more than twenty years before the sport's first governing body, the Imperial Cricket Conference was established in 1909. The member nations were the eternal rivals Australia and England, who were joined by South Africa who wanted to organise a triangular tournament in England. Despite the Australians' hostility to the idea the tournament took place in 1912, but was ruined by English weather. Nevertheless, it was very much a sport for white gentlemen at that time as its amateur status meant only the privileged could afford to play, but there were occasional exceptions – Kumar Shri Ranjitsinhji was a stylish batsman, who was good enough to play Test cricket decades before his countrymen achieved membership of the Test-playing club. He was the first non-white player to play cricket at the highest level, playing fifteen Tests against Australia between 1896-1902. He also captained Sussex before returning to India and becoming the Maharajah of Nawanagar in 1907. Rich cricketing genes ran in his family as his nephew, Kumar Shri Duleepsinhji also played twelve times for England between 1929-31. Despite India gaining Test Match status the following year the stylish batsman never represented his own country. The major competitions in Indian cricket are named after the pair. Iftikhar Ali Khan, the Nawab of Pataudi, played just six Test Matches, but he was the first to play for both England and India in 1932-33 and then in 1946. But India had to wait its turn and was not the first new member of the ICC to join the founders.

Colonialism spread the popularity of the sport to different corners of the globe and eventually ensured that the preserve of privileged white men became a racially inclusive sport. The growth of cricket in the Indian sub-continent was essential to the development of the sport as indentured labour took the Indian diaspora to Africa, the Caribbean and to South America as they brought a love of the game with them, which helped the game to grow in South Africa and Guyana especially. It is somewhat ironic that despite this rich history India was not the first non-white member of the Imperial Cricket Conference; it was beaten to the honour of the inaugural tour of England by a colony – both Australia and South Africa held dominion status at the time – by the West Indies.

African Options

by Satish Sekar

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The most militant of the legendary reggae group, the Wailers, Peter Tosh was gunned down in Jamaica in 1987, but left a musical legacy. Among the lyrics he made famous was: “Don't care where you come from, as long as you're a black man, you're an African.” So how true is this on the football pitch? We decided to put it to the test in the Eredivisie during our trip to the Netherlands last December – a visit that saw Heracles Almelo visit strugglers FC Volendam, Sparta Rotterdam host Heerenveen, Feyenoord tackle NAC Breda and Mario Been's NEC Nijmegen visit title favourites AZ Alkmaar. We were given access to several players, both Africans and those of African origins.

Dominique Kivuvu gave us an exclusive interview that was featured in the last issue of the magazine. He has Angolan origins and Luis Oilveira Gonçalves, the former coach of the Pancalas Negras monitored his progress, but decided that the young Dutch-born midfielder wasn't ready yet and that he had other options for Kivuvu's position before last year's African Cup of Nations tournament in Ghana. Kivuvu wants to test himself at the highest level, but believes that he has time. After failing to make Gonçalves' squad Kivuvu expressed an interest in playing for the Netherlands – the country that he represented at youth level previously – in the Olympic Games in Beijing, so what are his international allegiances. “I haven't looked at the future,” he said. “I hope I get a good future and I play for a big club and I play for a national team, but I'm not looking that far.” Kivuvu has two passports, so he has yet to commit his international future. “I think there is a way for me, because I never played an official game with the Netherlands, so I still can choose,” said the industrious midfielder whose energetic displays won over his coach at NEC, Mario Been. Nevertheless, it was hardly a ringing endorsement of Tosh's philosophy. Read More...

No Renaissance for Torino.

by Satish Sekar

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Il Grande Torino were pioneers of attractive, attacking football, especially in Italy, but Serie A failed to pay due respect on the sixtieth anniversary of the Superga Disaster. Firenze's Artemio Franchi Stadium – home to the Viola – was the only ground in Italy that paid tribute to the great Torino side of the 1940s. The current Torino side cannot compare to the legendary side led by the great Valentino Mazzola, but they have different priorities, as they are involved in a battle to preserve their place in Serie A, so the pretty football on May 3rd came from a Fiorentina side, which characterises the style and philosophy of Claudio Cesare Prandelli's teams, but for the all the possession that Fiorentina mustered in the first half there were few genuine chances.

Torino tried to frustrate their opponents, who were missing Romanian striker Adrian Mutu through injury, and played mainly on the counter-attack through their captain Roberto Stellone, but Rolando Bianchi – a misfit in English football after being vital in Reggina's survival two seasons ago – could not time his runs adequately to profit from his skipper's ingenuity. However, Fiorentina should have had a half time lead. Only Danish international Martin Jorgensen, a twentieth minute substitute for an injured Franco Semioli, knows how he failed to convert the simplest chance of the season, as somehow he found a way to blaze over when it was easier to score as the first 45 minutes drew to a close after an inviting cross from Manuel Pasqual left Torino keeper Matteo Sereni resigned to picking the ball from his net. Read More...

Hands Off Twenty20

by Satish Sekar

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The purists hate it, but few can dispute that Twenty20 is currently the most popular form of cricket. It is a discipline that top cricketers need to master as it can be effective in other forms of the game as well. Recently we reported on a thrilling final day of the four-day match between Surrey and Middlesex at the Brit Oval. It turned into that type of run chase by the Twenty20 champions, Middlesex, who surely were best equipped to win such a match, but they found a way to fall just short, after having been put into a good position by the talented Australian Philip Hughes, Nick Compton and Eoin Morgan. They tried to end it early and kept losing wickets at crucial times. It happens in Twenty20, but in time players will learn to adapt that form of the game to other forms when the situation calls for it.

Twenty20 was invented in England, but after the last World Cup in South Africa in 2007 India beat Pakistan and the sub-continent took over. The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) backed the Indian Premier League (IPL), but a rival emerged headed by former Indian great Kapil Dev, the Indian Cricket League (ICL). It was a private venture and players joining it were banned from representing their countries. IPL head Lalit Modi adopted a tough stance against to try to crush it. The veteran Pakistani batsman Mohammad Yousuf initially joined the ICL, left it for the IPL, but facing a lawsuit, was left without a team and forced back to the ICL. He is currently banned from playing for Pakistan. Former captain Inzamam ul-Haq is also banned, but has retired from international cricket anyway and is outspoken in his criticism of the Pakistan Cricket Board and International Cricket Council. Inzi, as he is affectionately known, slammed them for picking three ICL based players for the Twenty20 World Cup only to drop them at the last minute. He pointed out that before big money came into cricket such tournaments went on regularly in Bangladesh and there were no bans. Read More...

The Greatest

by Satish Sekar

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Juventus was the first of the major football clubs in Torino (Turin), but the threat of moving the Old Lady away from the city, led to an acrimonious split in 1906, led by Alfredo Dick, which resulted in the foundation of rivals, Torino. Juventus was the more successful club undoubtedly the team of the 1930s, winning five consecutive Italian titles, but the 40s belonged to their Torino, who matched their feat and could even have bettered it but for World War II. Il Grande Torino was perhaps the greatest football team ever; they certainly feature in any sensible discussion on the best club team that Italy ever produced.

Skippered by the legendary play-maker, Valentino Mazzola, father of one Italy's best ever players Sandro, il Grande Torino set several records, winning five of Torino's Serie A championships consecutively. A decade before Brasil made the football world take notice in 1958, il Grande Torino played an attacking brand of football that some believe was the precursor of total football. They won their first title in 1943 and picked up where they left off two years later, after football was interrupted by the war, although the impressive Hajduk Split team found a way to both spurn the invitation to join the Italian league and join the Yugoslav partisans.

An Unwanted Distinction

by Satish Sekar

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As West Indies captain Chris Gayle contemplates his third failure in a row amid accusations of disrespecting both this tour and Test Match cricket as a whole and the media storm that it has caused, he may spare a thought for his countryman and fellow West Indies international Leslie Hylton. On this very day 54 years ago Hylton secured an unwanted piece of cricket history at the cost of his life. Hylton was a fearsome fast-bowler in his prime and not a complete mug with the bat. His first class record for Jamaica was not bad – in 40 matches he scored five half centuries with a best of 80, took 31 catches and 120 wickets at a reasonable strike rate and average. He never took ten wickets in a match, but claimed five victims in an innings thrice in first class cricket, but never in Tests.

Thrilling

by Satish Sekar

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It began innocuously enough, heading for a tame draw. It had to be a draw; the previous three days proved that it would be. Only 21 wickets had fallen in three days and almost 900 runs had been scored. It would take a sensational collapse – perhaps two – to get a result. Michael Brown and Mark Ramprakash added 80 for the second wicket before the same combination that accounted for Scott Newman – caught by Philip Hughes, bowled Tim Murtagh – dismissed Ramprakash for 37. After his first innings heroics Usman Afzaal added just six before Neil Dexter caught him off the bowling of Middlesex captain Shaun Udal and Surrey was facing a minor crisis at 90 for 3. Read More...

Motivated

by Satish Sekar

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Eight years ago former England batsman, Mark Ramprakash ended his 14 year association with Middlesex to join bitter rivals Surrey and he clearly relishes playing at the Oval. The most recent member of the hundred 100s club plundered Middlesex's attack last Wednesday, ably assisted by Usman Afzaal, whose rapid 82 included 13 boundaries before he was bowled by Middlesex's captain, the veteran spinner Shaun Udal. Ramprakash's 104th first class century was his 51st for Surrey, but those statistics don't include one-day matches. Ramprakash had only just returned from a two-match suspension for abusing an umpire last season. His 133 took 260 balls with 13 fours, but gave him the satisfaction of silencing the hecklers who refuse to forgive his decision to quit Middlesex. Read More...

Capitulation

by Satish Sekar

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The West Indies became only the fourth Test playing nation in 1928, having gained membership of the Imperial Cricket Conference in 1926. They have produced some of the finest players ever to grace the game, beginning with the sport's first black superstar batsman, George Headley. They boasted the Three Ws – Sir Frank Worrell, Clyde Walcott and Everton Weekes in the 1960s and then Rohan Kanhai, Clive Lloyd, Viv Richards and Gordon Greenidge tore quality attacks apart with abandon. The desire to play shots remains in the current generation of Caribbean batsmen, but few could dispute that West Indian cricket has experienced a steady decline since their period of domination in the seventies and eighties. Their bowling too has suffered since the fearsome fast-bowling quartets of that period retired.


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