Sunglasses brands have engaged the services of famous athletes for many years now, with Oakley often at the forefront of these agreements. From Patrick Mahomes to Josef Newgarden, Kylian Mbappe to Rory Mcllroy, Oakley has a proven track record of hooking up with winners and trendsetters. They’ve continued this theme in their recent agreement with one of the most famous names in the world.
Rodman was a name synonymous with basketball. Dennis Rodman is a five-time NBA champion and two-time NBA All-star. He also helped drive the Oakley brand, appearing courtside and on film sporting frames like the custom Zero 0.3 and Trenchcoat. Now, his daughter Trinity has signed up to be an Oakley sunglasses ambassador, but she isn’t one to shoot hoops – Trinity is a top soccer prospect in the United States. Read more
Mezut Ozil and team mate Julian Draxler are already looking ahead after their 2-0 defeat of Ukraine.
The victory wasn’t quite convincing as Ukraine put up a strong fight but the German experience gave them the edge. Both players already set their sights on the game against Poland.
The German team are already eager to seal qualification for the next stage. Ozil believes his team mate Bastian Schweinsteiger,31, found some form in their tournament opener, despite his poor run at Manchester United in the last campaign and the recurrent injuries. In the game against Ukraine in Lille, Schweinsteiger scored the second with the assist from Ozil who sent the cross. He scored the second for the Germans after Shkodran Mustafi scored the first. Read more
Melbourne Victory beats Western Sydney Wanderers 2-0 thanks to a double by Oliver Bozanic. This boosted their chance to finish inside the top six.
Bozanic, who has been criticized time, and again this season, justifies his presence in the team not only with two wonderful goals but also with a great performance. His energetic display in the midfield allows him not only to score goals but also close down Sydney’s playmaker.
With Valeri available soon for Melbourne Victory, it would be interesting to see how both Bozanic and Valeri play together in the future.
Melbourne Victory was motivated from the start of the game and was determined to win this match. This was evident not only in attack but also in how the team defended together once they lose the ball. Victory’s form has been poor during recent weeks but in this game they were different. They were ready for a fight.
The first goal came when Oliver Bozanic fired a shot outside the box amidst the defenders. The outstretch keepers could not keep the ball out, and it was Melbourne that was leading.
Sydney Wanderers tried to equalize after having conceded the goals, but Lawrence Thomas denied them each time. Read more
Everton ended their run of three league matches without a win in the best manner possible.
They thrashed Sunderland 6-2 at Goodison Park in a result that provides a lot of confidence to the blues. Over the last few weeks, confidence has especially been around these parts after the club went through the whole month of October without a league victory. The previous success for the club in the Premier League game against West Brom when a narrow 3-2 victory gave them all three points. The result against Sunderland, though, is much more emphatic.
Everton were always going to be the favourites against a relegation threatened to Sunderland, who had not really shown much improvement since the arrival of Sam Allardyce. The former Newcastle United manager has a reputation for keeping poor teams in the division due to a combination of factors. Allardyce favours a physical style of football that is really hard to play against, but it seems that he will need more time and possibly new players in order to spark a revival at Sunderland. Aston Villa continue to remain rooted at the bottom of the table while Sunderland are only slightly better. The Black Cats now have the worst defence in the Premier League with 25 goals conceded already. Read more
A number of tributes have been going in for Liverpool midfielder Steven Gerrard, who prepares to play his final game at Anfield.
The midfielder has joined LA Galaxy on a two-year contract and will be linking up with his new teammates after the end of the Premier league season. Since Liverpool conclude this campaign with an away match against Stoke City, a lot of tributes have been flowing in for Gerrard ahead of the final home game for Liverpool against Crystal Palace. The 34-year-old has spent his entire career at the club despite interest from several top clubs on numerous occasions.
Francesco Totti is also a legend in his own right. He has been at Roma since becoming a professional. Unlike Gerrard, it does not seem as if the Italian international is not ready to leave Roma for a final stint in the MLS or the Middle East. The 40-year-old continues to be a key player at the club. Gerrard, however, was in and out of the team during his final season and this appears to have played a major factor in convincing the player to leave Liverpool. Totti has lavished praise on the 34-year-old by saying that he is the complete midfielder in the world. Read more
The English Premier League has confirmed that it will be sharing a significant portion of the new television money to the lower leagues.
The Premier League has been heavily criticised for widening the gap between the Championship and the English top division. Clubs in the Premier league can earn – through television money – in a single campaign what they would on for a decade in the Championship. Such wide gulf in class could mean bad for the game going forward, but Premier league chief executive Richard Scudamore has confirmed that the lower leagues will now receive £1 billion – over three years – from next season onwards.
This figure is a substantial increase from the current £700 million provided to the lower leagues. This increase comes after Premier league negotiated a new £ 5 million deal with sky and BT for television rights starting from the 2016 season. The league will be investing this figure in five areas – grassroots, participation, solidarity, disadvantaged groups, and matchday experience. Some have criticised the small increase in additional revenue, but it represents an increase of more than 40% over the existing deal. Premier league, meanwhile, had a £ 3 billion deal with its existing broadcasters. The league has the potential to learn more depending upon international sales figures. Read more
The Premier League has once again proven to be the most marketable league in the world after negotiating a £ 5 billion deal with Sky and BT for the live telecast rights.
This deal will come into force from the 2016-17 season and it will make the Premier League clubs even richer. It would finally enable the likes of Chelsea and Arsenal to compete with the likes of Real Madrid and Barcelona, who boast of huge TV money to go along with the large commercial revenue from the sponsors. TV money is a major contributor to the finances of a club.
The latest deal will see the bottom club in the Premier League receive more money than several time European champions Ajax, who play in the Dutch league. It remains to be seen if this huge sum of money will trickle down to the lower levels of British football. Currently, only a small fraction of the amount goes into the championship and the lower stages as parachute payments. Premier league has promised to support grassroots level football at a much bigger scale than it is currently funded. The news comes as a welcome boost for the likes of Manchester City, who failed to comply with the FFP regulations. Read more
The Premier League and the Major League Soccer both will be looking to expand their exposure in television by having more matches televised and broadcasted by more channels in 2015.
The Premier League is working on introducing regular Friday night live matches and have a total 168 live matches available per season for a fan to be able to watch on their household.
Even some major technology companies such as: Apple and Youtube are believed to be thinking about bidding to buy digital rights for matches where they could have the liberty of uploading certain matches to their online platforms.
Meanwhile on the MLS, the 2015 will be bringing a new level of exposure of football to the United States which is not considered to be one of the biggest or most influential sports in the country. Univision, ESPN and Fox are all of the networks that will get an exclusive national broadcast window each weekend as they all signed a $720 million rights deal with the American League which starts on 2015.
The matches that are going to be broadcasted by the Univision network will have the chance of being viewed in English and Spanish as well as this increases the amount of audience that would be interested in sitting at home and watch their favorite club playing in the MLS.
This is the first time ever that Univision has ever had streaming rights to its MLS broadcasts as well as being the first time that Univision is going to be production their own broadcasts from their own site instead of having a feed produced by a simultaneous local broadcast.
Next year, ESPN will also have online streaming rights to every MLS game which is not broadcasted national in United States and this allows fans from across America to be able to watch matches through the website of ESPN and a number of their applications.
The president of Barcelona, Josep Maria Bartomeu revealed to the media that despite doing everything correctly, it’s frustrating and embarrassing being accused of tax fraud due to the transfer of Neymar.
Bartomeu said: “Barcelona acted in the proper way but if somebody thinks that there is damage to the name of Barcelona then there is damage to be repaired. We are not happy with the situation but we will defend our club very strongly. It’s embarrassing because we think we are right. We think we did things properly, that everything was done in the correct and best way.”
Neymar’s transfer from Santos to Barcelona led to Sandro Rosell having to resign from his position at the club as well as having investigations done which concluded in the revelations of the Catalan club having paid more than €71 million and not the €48 million which they had initially stated.
All of this has affected the image that Barcelona has been developing with the world around of them but even after everything that was announced and confirmed surrounding the transfer and the club, Bartomeu says that they will keep taking care and defending Barcelona. They aren’t doing too badly as they are still challenging for La Liga, and into the quarters of the Champion’s League – in fact they are the most backed team according to Completebetting.com’s list of free bets.
Bartomeu added: “We paid because of prudence, because there is a possible different interpretation. So we want to be prudent. We don’t want to take any risks. Barca is a very well-known brand name in the world and we have to take care of Barca of the club and doing this is prudent situation to keep the good image of our club. We don’t agree with the judge, of course. For us, this is an absurd and unfair situation because we did everything correctly in signing Neymar to FC Barcelona.”
After everything that was done, some people are beginning to question whether or not Neymar was worth all the money and trouble that Barcelona had to go through in order to add him into the club.
