Brian Homewood

Field hockey hopes to begin a new era on Saturday when Spain and Belgium kick off its ambitious annual Pro League, a new competition which aims to transform the sport and reduce its dependence on the Olympic Games for exposure. The league will feature nine national teams in the men’s and women’s competitions, playing each […]

ZURICH: Club football played second fiddle to the World Cup in 2018 and that was probably just as well given its utter predictability. Four or the five major European domestic leagues, which concentrate nearly all the top players and most of the sport’s wealth, turned into one-horse races in the latest demonstration of the growing […]

GENEVA: A small country with a modest footballing infrastructure, Croatia has consistently churned out world class players and performed well at the top level. Their footballing success, which culminated with the team reaching the final at this year’s World Cup in Russia with wins over Argentina and England along the way, left many observers asking […]

MOSCOW: The reaction of the Panamanian television presenters said it all. As their national anthem rang out before the country’s match against Belgium, David Samudio Garay clenched his fists, waved them in the air and bear-hugged his colleague Miguel Remon who was crying with emotion. The pair then exchanged high-fives. Meanwhile, in distant Iceland, 99.6 […]

MOSCOW: They have experience, bags of talent and there is no questioning their fighting spirit yet there is something still strangely lacking in the Croatia team which has reached the World Cup semi-finals for the second time in their history. Croatia became only the second team to win successive penalty shootouts at the World Cup, […]