Everyone wants an explanation for what’s wrong with Markkanen, who was expected to carry the rebuild forward. The fingerprints are all over an analytics department that took human nature out of his development.
Mahomes’s legend keeps growing after he delivered Kansas City to its first Super Bowl in 50 years. Now the 24-year-old QB has the biggest stage in the sport to showcase his brilliance.
Inside a cramped referees locker room with low ceilings and wood-paneled walls—a bucket of hot rocks away from a small sauna, basically—Andrei Svechnikov is lacing up his skates and listening to instructions. Alongside fellow Hurricanes winger Martin Necas, the 19-year-old will soon make a guest coaching appearance at a practice for some under-10 boys and under-12 girls teams. It won’t be a heavy lift, Emile Hartman, the Hurricanes’ youth and amateur hockey coordinator explains to them. Just hop into drills, pass pucks, bump fists …
“And,” says Hartman, nodding toward Svechnikov, “I’m sure all the kids will want you to pull out the move.”
Well, duh. Ever since Svechnikov whipped that mind-melting goal over Flames goalie David Rittch’s right shoulder in late October—the only successful lacrosse-style attempt in NHL history, until he did so again less than two months later—greater Raleigh hasn’t stopped gushing over his signature, eponymous skill.
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer has refused to rule out the prospect of Marcus Rashford missing the rest of the season, as the Manchester United manager called on his embattled side to “step up” and stop the loss of their top goalscorer from derailing their season.
The United manager – who conceded Rashford’s absence had heightened the need for reinforcements this month – also launched a staunch defence of his handling of the England striker’s fitness.
… ASN: How tough is it to get young players to buy into the Red Bull system compared with other systems? What has been your experience in teaching it to young players?
McCafferty: I think players are excited by it. It takes certain types of players. The work ethic is non-negotiable. Against the ball, you have to be able to press. The mentality when you don’t have the ball is that you have to win it back quickly. When we win it back, we want to try to exploit the opponent and score quickly. I think it’s a very exciting philosophy and way of playing. It’s entertaining. For us, we can get the players to buy in if we tell them the “whys.” If we do these things, this is why we will be successful. If we can win the ball back, we will get more goal scoring chances – things of that nature. That ties into our training. Every night in training, is intense. The intensity in which we train has to be the intensity in which we play. Those are non-negotiables for us.
To compare fixed epochs (FIXED) and rolling averages (ROLL) for quantifying worst-case scenario (‘peak’) running demands during professional soccer match-play, whilst assessing contextual influences. DESIGN:
Descriptive, observational. METHODS:
Twenty-five outfield players from an English Championship soccer club wore 10-Hz microelectromechanical systems during 28 matches. Relative total and high-speed (>5.5 m s-1) distances were averaged over fixed and rolling 60-s to 600-s epochs. Linear mixed models compared FIXED versus ROLL and assessed the influence of epoch length, playing position, starting status, match result, location, formation, and time-of-day. RESULTS:
Irrespective of playing position or epoch duration, FIXED underestimated ROLL for total (∼7-10%) and high-speed (∼12-25%) distance. In ROLL, worst-case scenario relative total and high-speed distances reduced from 190.1 ± 20.4 m min-1 and 59.5 ± 23.0 m min-1 in the 60-s epoch, to 120.9 ± 13.1 m min-1 and 14.2 ± 6.5 m min-1 in the 600-s epoch, respectively. Worst-case scenario total distance was higher for midfielders (∼9-16 m min-1) and defenders (∼3-10 m min-1) compared with attackers. In general, starters experienced higher worst-case scenario total distance than substitutes (∼3.6-8.5 m min-1), but lower worst-case scenario high-speed running over 300-s (∼3 m min-1). Greater worst-case scenario total and high-speed distances were elicited during wins (∼7.3-11.2 m min-1 and ∼2.7-7.9 m min-1, respectively) and losses (∼2.7-5.7 m min-1 and ∼1.4-2.2 m min-1, respectively) versus draws, whilst time-of-day and playing formation influenced worst-case scenario high-speed distances only. CONCLUSIONS:
These data indicate an underestimation of worst-case scenario running demands in FIXED versus ROLL over 60-s to 600-s epochs while highlighting situational influences. Such information facilitates training specificity by enabling sessions to be targeted at the most demanding periods of competition.
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) has selected Dr. Emil Jovanov, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), as a Fellow for his contributions to the field of wearable health monitoring.
“This is a huge honor for me and a huge honor for the university and for the work we are doing here,” Dr. Jovanov says. “I was really very happy and humbled that some of the best people in the world gave me recommendations.”
In 2000, Dr. Jovanov was the first to propose Wireless Body Area Networks (WBAN) as a sensor system integrated on or in bodies to communicate through the Internet for health monitoring.
Keeping an athlete hydrated not only keeps them safe but can make a difference in their performance. We look at some of the technologies that are out there that can help manage and prevent dehydration.
As the NBA continues to consider dramatic changes to the league calendar, it no longer plans to stage an owners vote in April on a formal plan, league sources told ESPN.
The NBA informed its teams on Friday that it wants to continue studying and discussing the three significant items, including an in-season tournament, a play-in tournament and the reseeding of the conference finalists, sources said. The NBA had hoped to have the two-thirds majority needed to make these changes for the 2021-22 season — the league’s 75th anniversary — and still hopes, despite no April vote, that might happen, sources said.
What do talented young soccer-playing girls in North America dream about? What goals and ambitions drive them as they climb the chaotic pyramid of the elite youth landscape?
For decades, it’s been a scholarship offer from a major NCAA Division I program, starting with the University of North Carolina and followed by others in similarly rarified air atop the college game. And that probably won’t fundamentally change any time soon. But the faint outlines of a different way – a deeper, richer and bolder way – began to take shape at last week’s NWSL draft.
For the second straight year, the No. 1 pick left her blue-chip college side early to turn pro.
San Francisco handed Green Bay an ass-kicking for the ages to earn its spot in the Super Bowl. The Niners’ outing is a testament to the vision of John Lynch and Kyle Shanahan—and the players who executed it all season long.
… Klopp launched into an impassioned plea for football’s governing bodies to thrash out an agreeable timetable last week after learning that the Africa Cup of Nations would be moved from the summer months to January next year due to the heavy rainfall expected in host nation Cameroon across June and July.
The Reds boss, as he did for the fixture pile-up across the typically hectic festive period, urged the authorities to think about the players at risk of injuries due to the volume of football thrown in their path across a calendar year.
Tuesday’s soccer news starts with the potential for more games that count for some of the world’s biggest clubs. The NY Times’ Tariq Panja reports on a meeting between those clubs and the owner of the Miami Dolphins and International Champions Cup investor Stephen Ross. The purpose is to turn the summer touring schedule into games that count. That means full buy-in from the clubs likeliest to participate.
It’s an interesting scenario in what will soon be the era of the FIFA Club World Cup. Whatever that tournament’s current reputation might be, it changes through expansion and a move to the summer. The new Club World Cup is FIFA’s attempt to own a major piece of the club game, and with it add more games to the schedule.
For all of professional soccer, it’s the scheduling problem that now looms. It doesn’t take much to see just how many games players are now obligated to play. Through club and international commitments, there’s barely a break in the schedule especially for European-based players. If it’s not international commitments it’s club obligations both competitive and friendly. In an era where more physical endurance is a requirement across the board to keep jobs, organizers continue to add games.
AJ Hinch, Alex Cora and Carlos Beltrán lost their jobs in the wake of the Houston Astros’ sign-stealing scam, leaving three teams without managers three weeks before the start of spring training.
On and off the field, the fallout from one of the biggest scandals in Major League Baseball history is bound to carry over. A look at what’s on deck for the Astros and MLB.
University of Tokyo (Japan), Institute of Industrial Science from
Researchers at the University of Tokyo and Kozo Keikaku Engineering Inc. have introduced a method for enhancing the power of existing algorithms to forecast the future of unknown time series. By combining the predictions of many suboptimal forecasts, they were able to construct a consensus prediction that tended to outperform existing methods. This research may help provide early warnings for floods, economic shocks, or changes in the weather.