Author: The Nation

AFTER 17 years, Marcelo returned home with a hero’s welcome, as more than 30,000 Fluminense fans attended his unveil at Maracana stadium on Friday night.

The former Real Madrid left-back has signed a two-year deal with Brazilian side after terminating his contract with Greece’s Olympiacos.

“It’s the best moment of my life, I am coming home. Thank you all!”, Marcelo said to the crowd during his introduction.

“I am very, very, very happy! It’s a moment that I have always dreamed of, to  be here with you. I have other dreams as well, which were to wear Fluminense’s jersey again, feel like a warrior again and fight for all trophies. I am sure we will have a wonderful year.”

Marcelo signed a contract until December 2024 with an option to extend until the end of 2025, Fluminense said.

He left Real Madrid last year as the club’s most decorated player. In 15 years, he won 25 trophies, including five Champions Leagues and six La Ligas.

At Fluminense, Marcelo is expected to play as a midfielder and he will wear the No. 12 shirt, the same one he wore in Madrid.

Karim Benzema lashed out at Didier Deschamps and referred to him as a “liar” after the France manager gave an interview about his World Cup injury.

The Real Madrid striker picked up an injury in training and was sent home before the tournament kicked off in Qatar. Benzema’s legal representative, Karim Djaziri, insisted that his client would have been fit for the knockout rounds of France’s World Cup campaign in Qatar and backed his claims with a supporting video. However, in a recent interview with Le Parisien, Deschamps claimed that he did not ask Benzema to leave and instead insisted that it was the striker’s decision.

“In every situation, there is only one truth and Karim knows that. He joined us on November 14 after a period of semi-inactivity with his club,” Deschamps said. “He followed an individual programme, and his return to full training was pushed back. I wasn’t planning on having him back to full fitness for the match against Australia, unlike for Raphael [Varane]. When Karim injured himself, our team doctor went with him to the Aspetar clinic to undergo an MRI scan. Karim showed the results to someone who folllows him [medically] at Real Madrid, who also gave him an opinion. When he was back at the hotel, it was already past midnight. I went to see Karim in the room with the doctor, who gave me a summary of the scan.

“We stayed together about twenty minutes. As I was leaving I told him: ‘Karim, there’s no rush, you can organise your return with the Team Manager’. When I woke up, I found out he had left. That’s his decision, he won’t say otherwise, I understand and respect it.”

Benzema denied the claims made by Deschamps and responded on his Instagram where he captioned a story post with “What audacity”, in reference to the interview. In the next story, he uploaded a video of a man saying, “Liar! Yes, you, liar. You lie. You’re a great liar!”. In the caption, he further mocked the coach by writing “Sacred Didier” along with a clown emoji.

Wrongly convicted of murder, the artist has sold one of his paintings to Michelle Obama since his conviction was quashed

A mere five-minute stroll from Augusta National lives a man with a more extraordinary back-story than anybody who will tee off in the upcoming Masters. Golf was largely responsible for restoring Valentino Dixon’s freedom, which in itself is poetic given his upbringing in the streets of East Side Buffalo.

“I had never set foot on a golf course before I went to prison,” Dixon explains. “I have played about 20 times now.

 “Golf meant absolutely nothing to me. I grew up in a tough, inner-city neighborhood where it was just football and basketball. Golf was for white privileged people; at least I thought it was. It had nothing to do with a poor black kid, growing up in a drug-infested neighbourhood. I was never in a gang or anything like that but a lot of my friends got killed when I was younger.”

Dixon has rubbed shoulders with Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus. He has sold artwork to Michelle Obama. Yet for 27 years – he received a life sentence – Dixon was imprisoned for a shooting he was not responsible for. The delivery of justice arrived only after Dixon’s astonishing knack for reproducing golf holes on canvas received widespread publicity. He walked free in 2018, after the confession of another man – made two days after the 1991 shooting – was so belatedly accepted.

For the first seven years of his internment and despite earlier being such a promising art student Dixon did not draw a thing. His passion was refuelled by a delivery of supplies from an uncle. “He told me if I could reclaim my talent, I could reclaim my life,” says Dixon. “I started to draw again. My uncle said I may have to draw myself out of prison. That made me say to myself: ‘If I become one of the greatest artists who has ever lived, that has to get me some attention and has to get me my freedom.’ I was drawing for up to 10 hours every day for the next 20 years.

“Had I not been drawing every day, a warden would never have known me or asked me to draw the golf hole.”

The 12th at Augusta National. No ordinary golf hole. Golden Bell. “I was like: ‘Golf? I don’t know anything about golf. I’ll draw it but please, give me a break here,’” Dixon recalls. “My neighbour said I should draw more golf holes and I said: ‘Hell, no!’ He tossed some Golf Digest magazines on my bed. I started drawing courses every day and once I started I couldn’t stop.”

With this came the attention which accelerated Dixon’s bid for freedom. His voice started to be heard and the errors attached to his original trial came to light. So what was it about the appearance of golf venues that captured Dixon’s imagination from inside a cell? “Twice a year, when we were kids, our father would take us fishing. That was the only time I had real peace, those fishing trips. The golf courses reminded me of that.”

Dixon has received a medal from the Vatican. Nicklaus compared Dixon’s spirit to that of Nelson Mandela. Obama bought an item as a gift to her husband, Barack, after noting the artist’s tale on a US television show. “Everybody wants golf art,” he says. “I have some amazing art work but everyone wants golf art. I think that’s all connected to the story. Golf art got me out of prison. Without golf art, I’d still be sitting in jail right now.”

Dixon met Woods shortly before the golfing icon won his 15th major, the Masters of 2019. “He knew my story,” says Dixon. “We chatted for five minutes. I told him he would win the Masters. He said: ‘I’ll try.’ I said: ‘No, you are going to win the Masters.’ He looked at his manager and said: ‘I like this guy.’” Woods’s victory reverberated way beyond golf.

Dixon now has a golf apparel range for sale alongside his artwork and greetings cards. He helps prisoners in their attempts to overturn injustice (“If I can get out of the situation I was in …”) and speaks in youth centres in the hope of advising teenagers to take the correct path in life. Dixon, now 53, has visited most of the iconic golf courses in the US. He was a guest, too, when the DP World Tour made a recent stop in Dubai. It seems impossible that this could ever compensate for being robbed of almost three decades of his life but Dixon is an upbeat, infectious character.

“I was never consumed by anger; that is not in my nature,” he says. “I was upset with the people who did this to me but I was around people who were angry all the time. I wasn’t like that. I could still smile, laugh, joke. I didn’t allow what was going on with me to change me. I believe in taking obstacles and using them as motivation. Where is bitterness and anger going to get me? I would only be a miserable person.”

In a month’s time the most famous names in golf will roll into Augusta in preparation for the first major of 2023. Close by will be an individual whose attitude and talent levels should draw admiring glances from those competing on golf’s hallowed turf. “I always thought outside the box as an artist,” says Dixon. “I always had big dreams for myself.” He got there in the end, following the most unimaginable of journeys.

Culled from theguardian.com

Professional footballers are often analysed as the sum of their outputs: appearances, goals, assists, achievements and statistics. On a football pitch, there can be no hiding: these aspects of players – those which constitute their performances – are out there, plain for all to see. It is understandable, therefore, that in the bustle and business of a Premier League season, quieter moments for contemplation can seem harder to come by.

Yet to become an elite athlete means becoming prepared to face the very toughest challenges of all kinds, taking on any obstacle head-on – a mentality embodied by EberechiEze following his Achilles injury in May 2021,

Eze has previously discussed how those events shaped him but, two years on, recently sat down with Baller Talk to reflect further upon the mental demands which shaped him with stark, poignant honesty.

“It was just a sad day,” Eze recalled, speaking of his injury. “I remember picking up my phone. They send a message before they select anyone, or if you’re in the preliminary squad, and I remember getting a message for England’s first-team.

“I just put my phone down in shock. To see that happen on that day was just a madness… it was just a sad day of shock, telling my parents, telling my family…. you feel helpless to be honest – it was a sad day for sure.

“Before getting injured, I was in one of those phases where you’re feeling yourself, just feeling good…. You feel like you can do whatever you want, and that’s where I was at: any game I went into, I was positive that I was going to score, assist or have a good game.

“It was just me enjoying my football, which is why…. not that there’s a good time to get injured, but for it to happen then, it felt like such a blow because I was… becoming the type of player I want to be. It just felt like a tough time to get hit like that.”

While the injury posed physical challenges for Eze, the forward admitted that the greater strain it placed was on his mentality.

He explained: “The only thing I was thinking about was: ‘Am I going to get back to what I was doing?’ I was watching videos of myself and I know what I can do… but your doubt is: ‘Am I going to reach that [again]?’ That self-doubt, that fear, for me was only neutralised because of my faith in God.

“I think having the family that I’ve got, who are so tight and connected, I don’t take it for granted… when I needed them the most, they were there for me. I can say that about every single one of them. I know a lot of people can’t say that, so I’m hugely grateful to God that that’s the position I’m in.

“Despite being hugely disappointed with what had happened, and obviously demoralised and going through it, my mindset from before my operation was that I knew how quickly other people had got back from the injury – and I was going to do it the fastest anyone’s ever done it.”

“Despite being in a sad situation, my mindset was still: ‘I’m going to get back’. I had to almost force myself to believe it, and it took time for me to get there, but from the moment that it happened…

“I said all I can do is put in as much work as I can, in order to be [back] the fastest it’s ever been done – and not just be back just for the sake of it, but to be stronger, performing better, and in a better position than I was before.

“It was a tough journey. It took everything from me. Every day was working towards getting my Achilles and whole body better – how can I improve myself, and how can I use this time when I’m not playing football to maximise myself?

“For all that I went through and all that I’d seen on this journey, I know for a fact that I’m in a better place because of that experience.

“Every decision that I make, when I go home, whether I’m at football, at home or going out: ‘Is this decision going to help my Achilles and help my rehab and help me improve’? If it’s not, I’m not on it.”

Just six months after the initial injury, in November 2021, Eze made his sooner-than-expected return as a second-half substitute against Aston Villa.

“I remember being on the bench, warming up, and then the manager telling me: ‘Get ready, you’re coming on.’ That feeling was just… I can’t explain to you the feeling, because for you to understand, you’d have had to experience everything I experienced throughout the whole journey.

“Every single day was dedicated to being better and improving myself, and putting myself in a better position than I was the day before. That was the focus and to do that every single day, for five-and-a-half months, and then to come on, it felt like it was actually a madness!

“For me to be back on the pitch in the Premier League and being able to play, this was a blessing from God. That was an amazing, amazing moment, and one that I won’t forget.”