Mubeen Blogs

⚽️ World Cup kick-off 6pm EST, 11pm BST, 8am Sun AEST ⚽️ Player guide | Bracketology | Golden Boot | Email Jeff While it was always a reach to project this tournament would feel like 104 Super Bowls, some matchups inevitably fit the blockbuster billing. Brazil and Morocco’s opener in Group C is this tournament’s first glamour fixture, pitting the five-time champions against the dark horse darlings of 2022, who arrive in great form. Few know exactly what to expect from Carlo Ancelotti’s first World Cup on the touchline. A gilded figure on the club side, Ancelotti picked a squad teeming with stout center-backs and dynamic dribblers, but with some uncertainty in midfield, at full-back, and up top. Endrick finally taking a long-awaited leap would do wonders to assuage those latter concerns, and will most likely be necessary if Brazil are to snap their 24-year drought. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/f8nrhqs

Despite missing key players, Hajime Moriyasu’s side have built strength in depth to challenge the traditional order In 2002 there was a sense that Japan had slightly missed an opportunity. South Korea may have enjoyed the benefit of some favourable refereeing, but they also impressed. They were quick, technically good and tactically extremely flexible and they progressed to the semi-final of their home World Cup. Japan did not do much wrong, topping their group before going down 1-0 to Turkey in the last 16, but the contrast with their co-hosts was inevitably underwhelming. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/Wt7zOjG

Eljay Crisp-Carr was arrested on Thursday, and police are still searching for another suspect in Toledo shooting Police in Ohio have arrested a suspect in a recent shooting that wounded 12 people at a crowded weekend neighborhood street festival. Eljay Crisp-Carr, 20, was taken into custody on Thursday and charged with 11 counts of felonious assault. Court documents do not list an attorney for him, and no one answered a call to a phone number associated with him on Friday morning. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/RWT3yxV

The American author received ‘thousands of rejections’ over two decades before finally hitting gold with her first published novel Just as I am about to interview this year’s Women’s prize winner , debut American novelist Virginia Evans, at the party on a drizzly evening in a leafy London square, we are interrupted because someone wants to congratulate her. The fan is Richard Curtis. A warm-hearted weepy with a sprinkling of gentle humour, Evans’s prize-winning novel The Correspondent is prime Curtis material. In fact, he is too late. “I think he just wants to be my friend,” Evans jokes modestly – Notting Hill is her favourite movie of all time. A film of The Correspondent is already in the pipeline with Jane Fonda playing 73-year-old Sybil Van Antwerp, the crotchety correspondent of the title. Evans will be one of the producers and will have a cameo appearance, “walking a dog or something”. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/qRFb3Mh

New Farm Bill places caps on non-US foods; nutritionists say it restricts availability of healthy meals for kids School nutrition workers and advocates have “lots of concerns about bananas”, said Erin Ogden, policy associate for federal child nutrition programs at the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI). Bananas are nutrient-dense foods that many children like. That makes them popular offerings in school cafeterias, since any healthy food that a kid will eat prevents waste and ensures that child isn’t eating either nothing or something less wholesome instead. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/8eCcl0x

Changes will address energy management issues Verstappen one of most outspoken critics of current rules The key players in Formula One have come to an agreement to settle the proposed changes to the sport’s engines for the 2027 and 2028 seasons. These have been seen as crucial in addressing widespread driver dissatisfaction with the current formula, not least for the four-time champion Max Verstappen who has repeatedly threatened to leave the sport owing to how unhappy he is with the current engine rules. Verstappen has been particularly outspoken, declaring the rules “anti-racing” , but he has been far from alone. The FIA, teams, engine manufacturers and F1’s owners have since been in discussions looking at ways to address the issue. Notably their resolution does not reach the minimum scale of improvement Verstappen believed was needed until 2028. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/BytVCsm

The men’s head coach discusses his ‘American dream’ at the World Cup and tempering the host nation’s ‘arrogant’ expectations This American dream begins in small-town Murphy, Santa Fe. That’s Santa Fe, Argentina, at a little club where the old folk played bochas , a kind of boules, and they had one of the few colour television sets. It was 1978, Mauricio Pochettino was six years old and he can see it perfectly, still feel the meaning of it all. “I lived in a prefab with my grandmother and my older brother because my parents were off working the land, then at the weekend we would go to the club,” he says. “There were three courts and I remember standing there, hanging on to my dad’s pocket, watching the World Cup. The ticker-tape at River [Plate], that image engraved. Passarella, Ardiles, Luque, Bertoni, Kempes, Fillol, Tarantini … my heroes.” Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/6xMQra5