Sports
Chelsea Spanks Spartak Of Moscow
Chelsea all but sealed their place in the next round with a ruthlessly impressive Champions League display on a plastic pitch in freezing Moscow.
Russian Yuri Zhirkov scored his first goal for the Blues with a spectacular long-range effort in the 23rd minute.
Nicholas Anelka then slotted a superb second just before half-time.
Spartak pressed after the break, but Chelsea – without Didier Drogba and Frank Lampard – stood strong in Carlo Ancelotti’s 100th Champions League tie.
The Italian’s vast experience in Europe’s premier club competition is the chief reason Chelsea employed him as manager last year – and convincing displays like this offer compelling evidence that he can repeat the Champions League success he achieved with AC Milan.
Chelsea now tops group F with three wins in three games, and a point from their next three games will guarantee qualification for the second round.
For the west Londoners, a trip back to the cavernous Luzhniki Stadium meant returning to the scene of their greatest disappointment – Manchester United defeated them in painful fashion after a penalty shoot-out in the 2008 Champions League final.
With the mercury touching freezing amid a virtual full-house of nearly 80,000 fans cheering Russia’s best-supported club on boisterously, some teams might have found it an intimidating environment.
But Chelsea, full of nous and understated confidence, made light work of a team who had won both of their previous group F matches.
Fourth in the Russian League table, Spartak did make a strong start as Dmitri Kamborov slashed just over after a brilliant surging run from Sergei Parshivlyuk sliced through Chelsea’s backtracking rearguard.
Brazilian striker Welliton – the Russian league’s top goalscorer – then swivelled in the box under close attention from Branislav Ivanovic to force a neat reaction stop from Petr Cech, who kicked the ball away from his near post.
But Chelsea soon got their foot on the ball to dominate a team quite clearly missing their playmaker and captain Alex.
A couple of decent long-range shots from Soloman Kalou and Michael Essien should have served as a warning, but Spartak’s failure to shut down space on the edge of the box proved costly in the 23rd minute.
John Mikel Obi pumped the ball long and, with the ball bouncing invitingly from a loose Spartak header, former CSKA Moscow player Yuri Zhirkov sprinted towards it to lash a looping volley high into the net above Andriy Dykan’s desperate dive.
With Anelka leading the line superbly in the absence of Drogba while his midfielders dominated their territory behind him, Chelsea eventually managed to quieten the incredible din from the stands.
With the club’s Russian owner Roman Abramovich watching, Essien’s cross was deflected away from danger just after the half-hour as Spartak struggled to make an impact with Welliton stranded alone in attack.
After squandering a good chance when one-on-one with Dykan, classy Anelka brilliantly notched his 50th goal for Chelsea – and his fourth in three Champions League games this season – just before half-time.
Essien rampaged through the heart of Spartak’s midfield before slipping a neat pass inside the channel his French team-mate was lurking in.
Anelka then accelerated forward before turning back inside the hosts captain Parshivlyuk with ease, confidently curling his classy low right-footed shot into the far corner.
Admirably refusing to give in, Spartak came out on the attack in the second half.
Kombarov, Welliton and Aiden McGeady all fired shots towards Cech’s goal, the Czech having to push the former Celtic winger’s effort over the bar after a vicious deflection.
Chelsea did manage the odd surge with Anelka the outlet – but Cech proved their busiest and most important player as Moscow pinged pacy passes together and pressed: two solid saves from Ibson around the hour mark clearly stung the hands of the visitors keeper.
Essien screwed a good chance wide in the 72nd minute after Kalou, soon replaced by young midfield hopeful Josh McEachran, had pulled the ball back with cool accuracy from the bye-line.
John Terry had not trained properly ahead of the match, but with him in typically defiant form, Spartak could not find a way though the determined wall of blue – and a determined Chelsea made plain their lofty Champions League intentions.
The Sports Writers Association of Nigeria ( SWAN) Rivers State Chapter has set up five standing working committees on Tuesday, in its general congress.
At the playoff held at the Lagos Lawn Tennis Club, Onikan, the team of Canice Abua, Michael Emmanuel, Daniel Adeleye, and Abubakar Yusuf was majestic as they restored Nigeria’s hope in a sport that once gave the country so much joy.
Speaking after the final game, Nigeria Tennis Federation (NTF) President, Victor Ochei, said the Davis Cup feat is the stepping stone to better days in the sport, adding that the federation has set up programmes that will help the budding talents across the country play at the same level as their counterparts in other tennis-developed countries.
Ochei said: “The whole aim of having this new board is to lift the sport to the level we used to be. I tell you, tennis is taking a new shape in Nigeria. We are putting everything and anything to make that work happen.”
Ochei said that the NTF has looked at sponsorships and how to get the emerging players compete at the same level with their peers elsewhere, adding that the federation is working on organising local competitions and helping the players to compete in international championships.
“We believe that with what we are doing now, sponsors will come to us to organise new competitions. But beyond that, there’s a strategic growth development plan, a 10-year development plan, which the board is working on.
“The programme will ensure that we catch them young. This is because we believe that to create champions, we must start grooming them early. The champions you are seeing today were those groomed yesterday.”
“The process of building new champions will include building the coaches, the players, the infrastructure and sensitising the parents so that we can start catching them as young as age five to six.
“By the time that we groom them through 10 years of training, at age 15, 16, you will see fantastic professional players.”
To achieve the federation’s plans, Ochei admits that the NTF needs a lot of investment, adding that the board is working at realising the funds quietly and tenaciously.
The NTF president acknowledged the contributions of former international stars like Nduka Odizor and Sadiq Abdullahi to the bid to rejuvenate Nigerian tennis, adding that NTF is open to collaborating with former players who know what it takes to play at the highest level of the sport.
He said, “Nduka Odizor is around as one of our VIP personalities. He has been psyching up the boys in the battle with Uzbekistan. He will not enter the court to play, but his mere presence is enough motivation to the boys, who will want to be like him in the future.
“You see, the type of support the Odizors, the Imonities and the Abdullahis got in their time is no longer there, but we are revamping it with the support of our stakeholders in the Diaspora.
“It will appear to take us some time, but I can tell you that the Diaspora support is massive.”
In its bid to get good results in this year’s Commonwealth Games, the National Sports Commission (NSC) has disbursed N200 million as training grants to 26 athletes.
The 2026 Commonwealth Games will be held in Glasgow, Scotland.
The NSC stated that the grants were disbursed through its Elite and Podium Board, noting that N200 million was allocated to select top-performing athletes.
The beneficiaries are both foreign-based and home-based, the NSC said, adding that it will cater for their training and preparation expenses.
According to the NSC, the recipients span several sports, including athletics, wrestling, weightlifting, and para-sports, in line with the Commission’s mandate to prioritise athletes’ welfare and high-performance development.
The Commission added that the disbursement follows the establishment of the Elite and Podium Board, created to implement a scientific and institutionalised support system aimed at sustaining peak performances by Nigerian athletes at major international competitions.
NSC Director General, Bukola Olopade, said the Commission, under the administration of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, was established to restore confidence and provide renewed hope for Nigerian sportsmen and women by placing strong emphasis on athlete welfare.
“The training grants disbursed to 26 athletes across different sports followed a careful and professional selection process by the Yusuf Ali-led Elite and Podium Board. This is our way of reassuring our athletes that their welfare remains our utmost priority,” he said.
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