Tag Archives: football

There are no recognisable football fields, no players, and just a rusting goalpost at Pakistan’s Hawksbay training centre, built with a $500,000 (£325,000) FIFA grant on a windswept plot by the Arabian Sea near Karachi, and officially completed two years ago. In Nepal, goats graze on a rutted playing field …

The coach of the Indian football team has told his bosses to stand up to the country’s domineering television companies if they ever want the game to flourish in India. Stephen Constantine, who is preparing for India’s World Cup qualifier against Iran in Bangalore next week, has seen friendly matches …

‘Brothers’ star Akshay Kumar has become the first Indian celeb to back the ‘Dizzy Goals’ challenge in support of a major campaign to raise awareness of the new Global Goals for Sustainable Development.

Launching next month at the UN General Assembly in the presence of 193 world leaders, the Global Goals are more than a dozen ambitious targets including ending poverty, providing quality education, abolishing gender inequality, improving the provision of renewable energy as well as tackling climate change.

The ‘Dizzy Goals’ is a parallel initiative aimed at drumming up support for the Global Goals and has already received the backing of football icons such as Real Madrid star Gareth Bale and England legends Gary Linaker and Alan Shearer.

The challenge involves well-known personalities running around a ball until they’re dizzy and then attempting to score a goal.

Akshay Kumar took up the hilarious challenge in Houston, USA during rehearsals for a music concert which marks the actor’s 25th year in Bollywood.

Kumar is well known for his stay-fit lifestyle and pushing himself to the limit of physical endurance but this was something else.

With just days to go until the General Election, party leaders have been scrambling to reach out to the voter group that will help decide who will occupy 10 Downing Street on 8 May.

Britain’s long-marginalized Black and Ethnic Minority (BME) voters have been the target of some serious schmoozing over the past 12 months and on Saturday it was the turn of the Conservatives to extend a hand of friendship as Prime Minister David Cameron launched his party’s’ BME manifesto.

Mr Cameron promised a raft of measures that aims to create what he called an “opportunity country” where everyone can “make the most of their talents” irrespective of ethnic background.

The promises included the creation of hundreds of thousands of jobs and ensuring that 19,000 BME students are in university.

The two measures appear to address two key issues that have caused widespread anger among British Asians – the disproportionate number of long-term unemployed BME youths as well as the equally disproportionate number of young ethnic minority individuals unable or unwilling to pursue university education.

Mr Cameron also pledged that the first Asian Prime Minister will be from his party – a promise he first made at an Asian awards night in 2014 and which has proved popular among British Asians.

“We are the first party to have a female prime minister, we were the party of the first Jewish prime minister and I know one day, we are going to be the party of the first black or Asian prime minister," he said.

It was stirring stuff, no doubt about it, but the message of engagement of Britain’s ethnic minorities was ultimately drowned out – as these things usually happen in politics – due the fact that Mr Cameron forgot which football team he supports.

London-based billionaire Indian businessmen Lakshmi Mittal may just have provided the answer to that interminable question: what do you buy the billionaire who has everything? After the string of mega mansions, the yacht, the private jet and the premiership football club, the steel tycoon has reportedly closed on a deal …

A 25-year-old Birmingham man has been charged with causing racially aggravated harassment after he was found tearing pages from the Quran during a football match. Mark Stephenson was arrested following the incident during the Birmingham City vs Middlesborough game on 7 December. West Midlands Police said Mr Stephenson had been …