Tell Magazine

Chelsea Football Club and Bayern Munich secure their places in the final of the UEFA Champions League against the expectation of many   It proved the pundits, bookmakers and many football analysts wrong. The just concluded semi-final round of the UEFA Champions League matches had an outcome that many football experts did not foresee. The two Spanish heavy weights, Real Madrid and Barcelona, heavily tipped to make the final of the mondial, were both eliminated in their respective two-legged contest hence, the final of the Champions League would see Bayern Munich, the German team, which is currently second on the Bundesliga, face Chelsea, the English team, which is sixth on the English Premier League.   Interestingly, this was a final…

Prior to the release of FIFA’s world ranking yesterday, Nigeria was on the 57th position in the world, and seventh in Africa, but is now ranked 60th in the World and 10th in Africa.   With a total of 554 points, Nigeria moved down three places as against the previous position occupied in the last ranking released in March   Since 1994 that Nigeria was ranked 5th in the World, the country has not come close to the top on the Ranking.   Ivory Coast remains number one in Africa having maintained the number 15 position in the world it held in March. Ghana is the second best football team in Africa after moving by one place to occupy the…

Football pundits seem to have run out of superlatives to describe Lionel Messi’s mesmerising and sublime skills, while the Argentine’s rise to the peak of world football poses many questions about Nigeria’s youth football development programme   For the scandalous lack of superlatives, Stanley Okoro, a member of the silver winning Golden Eaglet team of 2009 FIFA U-17 World Cup hosted in Nigeria, was erroneously labelled Nigeria’s own ‘little Messi’ by a section of the country’s sports circle during the tournament.   Fast forward three years later. While the real version has gone on to win two UEFA Champions League trophies with Barcelona, and was also named FIFA World’s Best Player three times consecutively, Okoro, who once played for Heartland…

Following his exploits at the final of the 2012 African K1 Canoe Slalom Championships in Bethlehem, South Africa, where he swept away competition from Beijing 2008 bronze medallist French-born Togolese Benjamin Boukpeti to retain his African Slalom Men’s K1 title, thereby securing Africa’s sole K1 spot at the London 2012 Olympic Games; Nigeria’s Jonathan “Johny” Akinyemi has been voted the February International Canoe Federation (ICF) Athlete of the Month.   Akinyemi, who holds a degree in Theology and is currently studying Accounting in university, received 55% of the votes in a poll that saw an unprecedented number of visitors access the ICF website to vote. Poland’s Marcin Pochwala and Piotr Szczepanski came in a close 2nd place. “Good news....I won…