Blues denied league and cup double

Blues denied League and Cup Double

Arsenal beat Chelsea 2-1 to claim 13th FA Cup

After lifting the Premier League for the fifth time last Sunday, Antonio Conte's Chelsea were looking to seek a league and cup double. However Arsene Wenger and the Gunners had other ideas.  

Star man Alexis Sanchez put the Gunners in the lead inside 4 minutes. There were rumours that would suggest that Chilean may have handled the ball, but referee Anthony Taylor had no hesitation in letting the goal stand after clarifying the decision with his assistant. 

Arsenal were far the better team in the first half and were determined to not let their lead slip, despite having a handful of chances to double their lead. especially when Mesut Ozil's chip over Coutois was cleared of the line by stand-in captain Gary Cahill.

Chelsea on the other hand found it difficult to get themselves into the game.

In the second half,  Chelsea started to improve their game but just before Diego Costa equalised, Victor Moses received a second yellow card for diving.  

This certainly was the turning point of the final and Arsenal took advantage of the situation with a goal in the 79th minute. Aaron Ramsey's bullet header from a cross by Oliver Giroud who had just came on for Danny Welbeck to put the Gunners back in front. 

Costa had the chance to make it 2-2 but Arsenal's 2nd choice keeper David Ospina stood strong and denied the Spaniard with a top class and crucial save in the 76th minute as Arsenal held on to their lead and claimed their record breaking 13th FA cup.

The key man for Arsenal was the captain Per Mertesacker. the way he lead his team in the  match was outstanding, especially on the defensive side.

This may not have been the perfect send off for John Terry, but he has had a terrific career for Chelsea. Being part of a team who have 17 trophies in 12 years is just incredible. What a great ambassador he has been for Chelsea Football Club.

Although Chelsea were disappointed with the result, they should be proud of themselves. It has been a terrific season for them and Antonio conte.

Ever since the Italian arrived at Stamford Bridge, Chelsea have never looked back. It has been a totally different season as opposed to 2015-16. 

As for Arsene Wenger, it seems as if he has his redemption after a frustrating season for the Gunners. On Wednesday, we will find out about his future as to whether  or not he will stay at Arsenal for next season.

If he does decide to go, he would leave behind a legacy of being one of the Premier League's greatest and successful managers of all time. It would be fascinating to see who replaces him.

One of the potential Candidate's could be Louis Enrique who just recently resigned as Barcelona boss.

The fans have mixed feelings about Wenger although the majority of them feel that his time is up and and that the club must move on for the sake of its future.  

There is why Arsene Wenger can't be in contention of becoming the director of the club, especially after all that he has been through over the past 21 years.

The best thing that the club needs to do is to either sack Wenger or sell all their players and bring in some fresh young players who are willing to prove their potential and have the motivation in wanting to achieve success for the club in the future.  

There are rumours about Manchester City being interested in Arsenal's Alexis Sanchez.  If the Chilean does decide to go to the Etihad, this could be a psychological blow to the Gunners. As he has clearly been their best player over the past two seasons.    

As for Chelsea, it would be interesting to see what Conte does in the summer. is he going to buy a new striker to replace Costa? are they looking for another defender? These will be the questions for Conte himself to answer.

At the moment, Everton striker Romelu Lukaku is in pole position to replace the Spaniard but all is yet to be revealed.   

2017 Elections

The 2017 UK Prime Minister elections are under way and all 4 parties are doing all they can to grab the chance of running the country.  Although Theresa May was brought in as a replacement for David Cameron, it seems as if the public are now starting to question her motives and duties for running the country.  Is having another election at this stage the right thing to do? This is the question on everyone’s mind. 

This is a vox pop on the public's reaction to this debatable subject.
https://soundcloud.com/stream

Guardian visit

The Guardian

I visited the Guardian offices in Kings Cross yesterday. The Guardian is one of Britain's largest media group in the UK. What was most intriguing to see is how go about reporting and covering sports and news stories. The different ways of how they present these stories through different sources of media such as on a smart phone etc is really useful as it enables people to . We spoke to one of the Sports Editors to find out more on how they cover sport and in particular, the live events.

What stands out for me is how quickly they are able to cover sporting events, especially when it comes to producing the final report. they also receive a lot of comments on via social media about what people have written or have said on a particular story or feature article.  I appreciate the way they design and and structure the articles as you can clearly see the different features of the article as it's easy to read.

The Guardian covers a lot of interesting stories which are more to do with sport and in particular football. They usually cover every league around Europe, more so the Premier League. If you look at the Liverpool vs Middlesborough match report, it includes everything you that you need to know about the game including the manager's reacts on their team's performance and what it means to them.

Take Jurgen Klopp talking about a top 4 finish in the Premier league as an example  'it has been an outstanding season for us.' 'it makes a difference financially but it is the sports side of things that is more interesting.' As a journalist, it always intriguing to hear what people's views are as you can then use them to emphasise their feelings and views on a subject and then used them to express your own.

The website is full of lots of interesting features including the world's latest news stories. they also include mini interview clips to sum up the reaction from the subject  of the article, for example after Manchester United's victory over Ajax in the Europa League final, they include clips of Paul Pogba and Jose Mourinho giving their reaction to the game itself.

So this means that the Guardian is one of the most successful news and media agencies in the world because it has been around for a good lengths of time and has maintained a good reputation in terms of it's ability to consistently publish news.









   

Vox Pop: PM Elections

2017 Prime Minister Elections

The 2017 UK Prime Minister elections are under way and all 4 parties are doing all they can to grab the chance of running the country.  Although Theresa May was brought in as a replacement for David Cameron, it seems as if the public are now starting to question her motives and duties for running the country.  Is having another election at this stage the right thing to do? This is the question on everyone’s mind.

Play

Amar Patel

Final Version Radio Vox Pop PM Elections 01

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King vs Williams: The Woman Who Gave Sport and Tennis a New Identity

Billy Jean-King vs Serena Williams: The Women Who Gave Sport and Tennis a New Identity

 WSerena Williams and Billy Jean King are two of the greatest female tennis players of all-time. These two women have changed the identity of world tennis and sport in terms of race and feminism. King was regarded as the woman who gave the rights for sportswomen to earn an equal amount of money to the men for the achievement of individual success in tennis history. She was a big supporter of giving women the rights to play sports professionally and is still an icon of world tennis. 

Williams on the other hand was and still is most successful black female tennis player to have played the sport. She changed the world of race and cultural identity through her success on the court.  What stood out was her ability to consistently dominate tennis matches by using both her physical and mental strength. Her groundstrokes were huge especially the forehand which was so lethal that her opponents found it difficult to bring the tennis balls back into the court as she was the one who always used to dictate most of the rallies.

Billy Jean-King on the other hand was playing in a far more competitive era of the women’s game with the likes of Christina Evert. She began her career playing against the men as all the singles matches were men against women. Her best victory was against Bobby Riggs in 1973 just before she organised the WTA (women’s tennis association), to allow more women to get involved in tennis and to make them into professional and top-class tennis players.

Tennis is one of the sports in which women have generally had more success in. Williams has been the dominator in terms of achieving success over the past 18 years. She has a total of 23 grand slam singles titles plus two Olympic gold medals as opposed to Billy Jean King who had won 39 grand slams. King was more successful in the women’s doubles where she won 16 Grand slam titles as opposed to Serena who won 14 along with her sister Venus. So, you can see clearly that Serena is a better singles player than King was.

Both players grew up in different backgrounds. King was brought up in an active and sporting family where her mother was a swimmer and her brother was a baseball player. Although King did not have any connection with tennis through her family, she started playing on free public courts in Long Beach, California. Serena’s family was and is like a mini tennis club where her elder sister Venus had won 7 grand slam singles titles. Richard their father had a huge impact on their success. He started coaching both sisters from when Serena was just 3 years old. It seemed like Serena was the one who benefitted the most from his coaching tactics as she always had the upper hand on her sister Venus in terms of how their careers have progressed over the last 15 years

It would have been interesting to see whether Serena would still be able to dominate tennis, had she played in the Billie Jean-king era when the women’s game was much more competitive with the likes of Christine Evert. Although she lost in the 2016 Australian Open final to Germany’s Angelique Kerber, it hasn’t made that much of an impact on herself becoming the top ranked player in the world.

In 1966, King was the top ranked player in the world. She had a win/loss record of 695-155 in singles and a record of 87-37 in doubles. Williams on the other hand has a win/loss record of 783-130 in singles and 185-31 in doubles.  Although both players have won all four grand slams, Serena Williams is the 5^th female to do it in a calendar year behind Steffi Graf, Chris Evert, Martina Navratilova, Margaret Court and Maria Sharapova. 

Billy Jean-King and Serena Williams have been terrific ambassadors of both tennis and world sport, especially in the women’s game. These two women have certainly changed the world of tennis and the advocacy of feminism in sport.

Women's European Cup Germany

Germany on the Move

We are just 2 months and 2 weeks away from the start of the 2017 women's European Championships. Germany are considered as the favourites to win the competition. The defending champions will be in Group B along with Sweden, Italy and Russia. Germany are currently ranked number 1 in the Women's FiFA rankings.

Germany have named a squad of 20 players for this summer's European Championships. The squad is as follows: 

Goalkeepers: 1 Almuth Schult, 12 Lisa Weiss, 21 Meike Kamper

Defenders: 2 Josephine Henning,  3 Varena Faist,   5 Kirstin Damann,  6 Jaqueline Klasan, 14 Babett Peter, 19 Svenja Huth, 22 Tabea Kemme,  23 Katherin-Julia Hendrich,

Midfielders: 9 Sarah Doorsoun-Kahjeh,  16 Anna Blasse,

Forwards: 7 Linda Dallmann,  11Anja Mittag, 13 Hasret  Kayikci, 18, Lena Petermann

Below is the schedule for Group B:

Monday 17 July
Italy v Russia (Rotterdam) 18:00
Germany v Sweden (Breda) 20:45

Friday 21 July
Sweden v Russia (Deventer) 18:00
Germany v Italy (Tilburg) 20:45

Tuesday 25 July

Russia v Germany (Utrecht) 20:45

Sweden v Italy (Doetinchem) 20:45

Saturday 29 July 

Quarter Finals 

TBC v TBC 

TBC V TBC

TBC V TBC

TBC V TBC

Thursday 3 August 

Semi Finals

TBC V TBC

TBC V TBC 

Birgit Prinz  
Birgit Prinz is one of Germany's top players. She has played for Paris Saint Germain, FC Rosengard, Turbine Potsdam and Wolfsburg in the Frauen-Bundesliga. Prinz has enjoyed more success at Turbine Potsdam where she scored a total of 134 goals in 180 appearances.  

Coach: Steffi Jones-ex-player  

Jones has taken charge of the German women's national
team. she was a defender who played for FSV Frankfurt during the early 2000s. Jones was just 4 years old when she first kicked a football.

Path to finals 

Germany were placed in group 5 of the qualifying stages along with Russia, Hungary, Croatia and Turkey. Germany are currently top of the group and have won all of their 8 games thus far.

Women's Bundesliga  Like the men, there is also a Bundesliga for the women. Wolfsburg are the current leaders   and are 3 points clear.  Wolfsburg are ranked 2nd in the Ladies European team Rankingsa behind Olympique  Lyonnais Féminin.

Predictions

Germany are currently ranked no:1 in the women's FIFA rankings and have won the tournament 7 times. It would be surprising if they don't manage to reach the semis along with the likes of France, USA and England or even the final.