Erling Haaland, Norway’s large, maniacal striker, has several exceedingly Norwegian traits. He sometimes exercises by chopping wood in the forest. He consumes 6,000 calories a day. After training sessions, he drinks raw milk. He owns a tax-sheltered investment company in Luxembourg named Pillage. He bought an edition of the “Heimskringla,” a 13th-century Old Norse saga, for $130,000—then donated it to his local library because, he explained, “I’ve never been much of a reader.” He has flowing blond hair, often compared to a Viking’s. He brings the intensity of a raiding party to the sport. Haaland scores goals at a higher rate than almost any soccer player ever. He has said, “I think of football all the time.” His wake-up alarm plays the theme song for the Champions League. He once posted a photo of himself on a plane, staring ahead intensely, with the caption “Just raw dogged a 7 hour flight no phone no sleep no water no food only map.” The Guardian once called him a “ravenous Nordic goal-yeti.”
Haaland’s style of play elicits not wonder but terror. He is enormous: six feet five, 200 pounds, about the size and speed of the N.F.L. wide receiver Randy Moss. “Watching him, I sometimes find myself giggling as I might over a big, obscene crash at a demolition derby,” Zach Helfand writes. Read more: https://t.co/iAtLMOvrv0
Here's an Irish sporting achievement that deserves to be celebrated. Ireland, population 7.1 million with about as many cricket players as would fill a stand at Lord's, have beaten India with 1.4 billion people at their national game. Kudos.
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A historic day at Stormont 🤩
Ireland caused a massive shock as they claimed a first senior international win over world champions India in Friday's opening T20 international in Belfast🏏
#BBCCricket
To truly understand Jaspal Rana, you have to look past the medals and understand the space he occupied, the very culture he helped shape. Shaping culture is how you change a nation’s sport. Look at the impact of a Bill Russell, Johan Cruyff or a Kenny Dalglish.
I’ve never met the man. To me, he was always this mysterious, incredibly strong character, so deeply defined by his sport that you wished he could be loaned out to other disciplines. In today’s world, you almost wish we could create AI models of him, clones dropped into different sports systems to disrupt age-old, self-serving processes and to crush the comfortable myths about coaching we so dearly hold onto.
He was a remarkably handsome man whose sharp demeanour on and off the range defined not just himself, but the sport of shooting in India. He gave it an attitude.
In sport, you hear a lot of stories, but Milan in 1994 reads like a movie script. On the eve of the Junior World Championships, Rana was hospitalized with a painful boil on his knee that would have required surgery. Refusing to miss the event, he practically escaped the hospital with his coach. Overnight, the boil burst. By morning, the leg was badly swollen. He literally cut his jeans into shorts to compete. Refused painkillers fearing a doping violation. Sleep-deprived and in terrible pain, he just hoped to finish. Instead, he shot a 569, won World Championship gold, and set a Junior World Record. A legend was born.
We talk about legacy loosely these days, but Rana earned his. Transitioning to the coach’s chair, he brought that same intensity. He possessed a rare ability to not just spot talent, but to recreate it, winning gold. It wasn’t just training athletes; it was reshaping their destinies.
Indian sport has too many knee-benders, characters who blend into the background to keep their motors purring comfortably. A force like Rana stood out because he proved that champions only emerge when a system is thoroughly disrupted. In a world of diplomatic coaches, happy to pile on international miles without a coherent strategy, Rana was the catalyst. He shook the system, made people uncomfortable, but left it stronger and victorious. Time, however, always falls short for such men.
📸 Courtesy: Pankaj Sharma
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Nahid Rana is yet to play international cricket in Australia, South Africa, New Zealand or England. That’s a mouth watering prospect if he continues on the upward trend.
Shortly after their achievements, we received an unexpected letter. We publish this letter in this article for our readers.
Photo: Lennart Ootes
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