Eintracht Frankfurt: 2021-22 UEFA Europa League Champions

Frankfurt have won their first European trophy for 42 years after overcoming Rangers 5-4 on penalties following a pulsating 1-1 draw in the UEFA Europa League final in Seville.

The first period was a half of two halves with both sides eager to seize the upper hand. The 40-year-old Allan McGregor repelled an early effort from Daichi Kamada and made a fine fingertip save to deny Ansgar Knauff as the Eagles had the better of the opening 20 minutes, before Joe Aribo curled just wide and John Lundstram's header was tipped over by Kevin Trapp as Rangers rallied.

Frankfurt started the second half on the offensive but were rocked when Tuta lost his footing trying to react to Djibril Sow's header and Aribo raced away to calmly slide Rangers in front. Oliver Glasner's men refused to panic – a sign of confidence from a team yet to taste defeat in the competition this season – and duly equalised when Filip Kostić's low cross was prodded past McGregor by Rafael Borré.

Trapp's brilliant extra-time save

Both sides continued to press for a winner in normal then extra time, but neither summoned the necessary guile or composure to break through and spare their fervent supporters the spectacle of a penalty shoot-out, Ryan Kent coming closest in the dying moments only for Trapp to produce the save of the match via an outstretched leg.

The Frankfurt goalkeeper would have the final say in the shoot-out too, saving from Aaron Ramsey to allow Borré the chance to seal the trophy for the German club and book them a first ever berth in the UEFA Champions League group stage.

Hankook Player of the Match: Kevin Trapp (Frankfurt)

Player of the Match: Kevin Trapp

A good performance over the 90 minutes, a great save at the end of extra time to keep Frankfurt in the game and a decisive penalty save in the shoot-out.

UEFA Technical Observer Panel

James Thorogood, Frankfurt reporter

A historic night for Frankfurt as they pick up their first major European trophy in 42 years to become the first German side to win this competition in the Europa League era. In an emotionally charged encounter that had all the hallmarks of a nervy final between two relatively inexperienced sides, it ultimately came down to who could hold their nerve in the shoot-out.

And what better way for Frankfurt to redeem themselves for their painful semi-final loss in 2018/19 as they triumphed on spot kicks to join Chelsea and Villarreal in winning the tournament with an unbeaten record. It is a night that will live long in the memories of both fans and players.

Alex O'Henley, Rangers reporter

The final brought heartbreak for Aaron Ramsey and Rangers 

The final brought heartbreak for Aaron Ramsey and Rangers

Getty Images

The cruelty and joy of penalty kicks. It wasn't to be for Rangers and ended in particular disappointment for Ramsey, whose miss proved decisive in the shoot-out. It's a case of so near, so far for the Light Blues, but they can be proud of a remarkable rollercoaster ride in which they beat two Bundesliga sides on the road to Seville.

Unfortunately, they couldn't do it a third time in the final and must now regroup for a Scottish Cup showpiece and the Champions League qualifiers next season.

Reaction 

Oliver Glasner, Frankfurt coach: "Unbelievable! It was the 13th game in Europe and we didn't lose one. What the guys have done today and this season, I don't have the words and I am not often lost for words."

'Proud' Glasner on Frankfurt glory

Kevin Trapp, Frankfurt goalkeeper: "We believed that we could do it, but you saw we had to dig deep for this win. We never gave up, we always believed. It was the most intense experience of our lives. This is not my night. It's everyone's night. It doesn't come down to one player; it comes down to a whole team."

Djibril Sow, Frankfurt midfielder: "We beat some of the biggest teams in the world on the way to this success. We knew today was going to come down to passion and commitment. We never gave up and now we're over the moon."

Van Bronckhorst reflects on final defeat

Giovanni van Bronckhorst, Rangers coach: "The players gave everything, but in the end it was a very tight game. It's a big disappointment; we were really so close to winning a trophy. When you win, you have memories that last forever – when you lose, it hurts."

James Tavernier, Rangers captain: "It's never nice to lose a game like that. I am proud of every single one of those lads in the dressing room and the journey we've been on. We just couldn't finish it off and we are all devastated."

Kenny Miller, BT Sport

"McGregor couldn't get near any of the penalties. It was an incredible standard, under severe pressure, for them to step up and execute as they did. The Rangers players have been excellent throughout their journey; they just fell short at the end. Trapp's had a big say in this game."

South American Europa League final goalscorers

Key stats

Frankfurt and Rangers became the 17th and 18th clubs to take part in the Europa League final. They were also the first finalists from Germany and Scotland respectively.

This is the first time the Europa League has been won by a team outside of Spain or England since 2010/11, when Porto defeated Braga.

Frankfurt are the first Bundesliga team to win the UEFA Cup/Europa League since 1997, when Schalke beat Inter on penalties.

Aribo is the only player to have appeared on all 15 Europa League matchdays this season (13 starts, two substitute appearances).

Frankfurt have scored at least one goal in each of their 13 Europa League matches this season.

This was the ninth UEFA Cup/Europa League final to go to extra time since the final was changed to a one-off fixture in 1998. Five of them have now gone to penalties.

Frankfurt will play in the Champions League for the first time next season – their only season in UEFA's premier club competition previous was in 1959/60, when they made it to the European Cup final.

The Eagles finished unbeaten in this season's competition (W7 D6) and became only the third team to go through the campaign without a defeat – after Chelsea in 2018/19 and Villarreal last season.

Line-ups

Frankfurt: Trapp; Tuta (Hasebe 58), Touré, N'Dicka (Lenz 100); Knauff, Sow (Hrustic 106), Rode (Jakić 90), Kostić; Lindstrøm (Hauge 70), Kamada; Borré

Rangers: McGregor; Tavernier, Goldson, Bassey, Barišić (Roofe 117); Jack (Davis 74), Lundstram; Kent, Wright (Sakala 74, Ramsey 117), Kamara (Arfield 90); Aribo (Sands 101)

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How a book spurred Long Beach State’s transformation into a volleyball powerhouse

How a book spurred Long Beach State’s transformation into a volleyball powerhouse

BY THUC NHI NGUYEN

MAY 3, 2022 5 AM PT

Long Beach State’s national championship trophies greet everyone who enters the school’s volleyball offices in Walter Pyramid. Alan Knipe, who has helped the men’s volleyball team put three gleaming prizes on the table a few feet away from his office door, may soon need to clear some more space.

Three years removed from back-to-back national championships, Long Beach State is on the cusp of another successful chapter. The top seed in the NCAA tournament at Pauley Pavilion this week, the Beach (20-5) begins the quest for its third national title in five years Thursday in the semifinals against UCLA or Pepperdine, which play in Tuesday’s quarterfinal.

After winning one NCAA championship in the first 47 years of its program, Long Beach State is now a perennial power. Beach won back-to-back championships in 2018 and 2019, ending a 27-year NCAA title drought for the program on the back of a vaunted senior class that included All-Americans TJ DeFalco, Kyle Ensing and Josh Tuaniga.

In the COVID-19 pandemic’s twisted reality, Long Beach State’s coronation as a men’s volleyball powerhouse feels like a lifetime ago. Two pandemic-interrupted seasons following the last title make it feel like the roster changed over in an instant, Knipe said. But changing from a veteran-laden team to a squad with just one senior hasn’t dampened expectations for the Beach.

“People don’t come here to play for second, right?” junior middle blocker Shane Holdaway said.

The championship repeat was the culmination of a rebuilding process that began in 2013 when Knipe returned from a three-season hiatus. After coaching the U.S. national team during the London Olympics, Knipe felt like a new a new coach.

The only person to be involved in all three of Long Beach State’s national titles, Knipe is as familiar as anyone with the program. He starred on the 1991 national championship as a player, moved to the bench as an assistant and took over the program in 2001. Spending almost all of his adult life in the same place made it difficult to make radical changes from within, Knipe said. The national team opportunity brought a fresh perspective.

One of the first things Knipe did to establish a new culture of trust, open communication and accountability was assign team reading, handing out copies of “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team,” a book that identifies things that plague even successful teams and how to address potential problems.

A junior on that team, assistant coach McKay Smith looked at the assignment with a skeptical eye. It only took a few pages for him to commit to turning the page on Long Beach State’s culture.

The book addressed how teammates can communicate, trust and confront conflicts together, setting a foundation for players and coaches who could then use valuable practice time to focus on on-court performance. The reading exercise has expanded to include different books for each class, including Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers” and “Legacy,” which focuses on the All Blacks, New Zealand’s national rugby team.

“Our culture is by design,” Knipe said. “We work at it. We build it. We talk about it.”

Each year, players present their takeaways from their books to the team. While the books can stay the same, Smith, who is in his fourth year as an assistant, notices how each group’s impressions change. It reminds the coaching staff of how important it is to embrace the current chapter of the program’s success without comparing it to seasons past.

“We’re not trying to be the 2019 team or the 2021 team or the 2023 team,” Knipe said. “We’re only trying to be the 2022 team.”

Knipe tries not to get ahead of himself when looking at the trajectory of his program, although he could be forgiven if he’s caught smiling at the prospect of building on the success of this year’s underclassmen. Setter Aiden Knipe, a redshirt sophomore, is playing in his first full season after the pandemic altered the beginning of his college career. The head coach’s son is third in the country in assists per set with 11.08.

Big West freshman of the year Alex Nikolov leads the Beach attack with 4.6 kills and 5.56 points per set, which rank third and second in the country, respectively. The son of former Bulgarian national team captain Vladimir Nikolov, Alex is, by his head coach’s estimation, a “generational volleyball player in college volleyball.”

While the talented 6-foot-8 outside hitter had opportunities to play professionally in Europe immediately after high school, Nikolov was interested in the unique combination of academics and athletics offered in the United States. He hadn’t heard of Long Beach State until about two years ago. He quickly learned that, despite its lack of international name recognition, it was a force in men’s volleyball.

The 18-year-old intends to keep Long Beach State at the top in the coming years.

“I came here to win four national championships,” Nikolov said with a smile.

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Kremlin Insiders Alarmed Over Growing Toll of Putin’s War in Ukraine

Kremlin Insiders Alarmed Over Growing Toll of Putin’s War in Ukraine

Some in the elite fear the invasion was a catastrophic mistake — but say the Russian president won't relent and is in no danger of losing power.

Bloomberg News
April 19, 2022, 9:01 PM PDT

Almost eight weeks after Vladimir Putin sent troops into Ukraine, with military losses mounting and Russia facing unprecedented international isolation, a small but growing number of senior Kremlin insiders are quietly questioning his decision to go to war.

The ranks of the critics at the pinnacle of power remain limited, spread across high-level posts in government and state-run business. They believe the invasion was a catastrophic mistake that will set the country back for years, according to ten people with direct knowledge of the situation. All spoke on condition of anonymity, too fearful of retribution to comment publicly. 

So far, these people see no chance the Russian president will change course and no prospect of any challenge to him at home. More and more reliant on a narrowing circle of hardline advisers, Putin has dismissed attempts by other officials to warn him of the crippling economic and political cost, they said.

Some said they increasingly share the fear voiced by U.S. intelligence officials that Putin could turn to a limited use of nuclear weapons if faced with failure in a campaign he views as his historic mission. 

To be sure, support for Putin’s war remains deep across much of Russia’s elite, with many insiders embracing in public and in private the Kremlin’s narrative that conflict with the West is inevitable and that the economy will adapt to the sweeping sanctions imposed by the U.S. and its allies. And public backing remains strong as the initial shock and disruption from sanctions has given way to a kind of surreal stability in Russia.

Still, more and more top insiders have come to believe that Putin’s commitment to continue the invasion will doom Russia to years of isolation and heightened tension that will leave its economy crippled, its security compromised and its global influence gutted. A few business tycoons have made veiled statements questioning the Kremlin’s strategy, but many powerful players are too fearful of the widening crackdown on dissent to voice their concerns in public.

The skeptics were surprised by the speed and breadth of the response by the U.S. and its allies, with sanctions freezing half of the central bank’s $640 billion in reserves and foreign companies ditching decades of investment to shut down operations almost overnight, as well as the steadily expanding military support for Kyiv that’s helping its forces to blunt the Russian advance.

Senior officials have tried to explain to the president that the economic impact of the sanctions will be devastating, erasing the two decades of growth and higher living standards that Putin had delivered during his rule, according to people familiar with the situation.

Putin brushed off the warnings, saying that while Russia would pay a huge cost, the West had left him no alternative but to wage war, the people said. Publicly, Putin says the “economic Blitzkrieg” has failed and the economy will adapt.

The president remains confident that the public is behind him, with Russians ready to endure years of sacrifice for his vision of national greatness, they said. With the help of tough capital controls, the ruble has recovered most of its initial losses and while inflation has spiked, economic disruption remains relatively limited so far.

Putin is determined to push on with the fight, even if the Kremlin has had to reduce its ambitions from a quick, sweeping takeover of much of the country to a grueling battle for the Donbas region in the east. Settling for less would leave Russia hopelessly vulnerable and weak in the face of the threat seen from the U.S. and its allies, according to this view. 

Turn It On Again

 

All I need is a TV show, that and the radio

Down on my luck again, down on my luck again

I can show you, I can show you some of the people in my life

I can show you, I can show you some of the people in my life

It's driving me mad just another way of passing the day

I, I get so lonely when she's not there

I, I, I, I

You're just another face that I know from the TV show

I have known you for so very long, I feel you like a friend

Can't you do anything for me, can I touch you for a while

Can I meet you another day and we will fly away

I can show you, I can show you some of the people in my life

I can show you, I can show you some of the people in my life

It's driving me mad, it's just another way of passing the day

I, I get so lonely when she's not there

I, I, I, I

Turn it on, turn it on, turn it on again

Turn it on, turn it on, turn it on again (I can see another face)

Turn it on, turn it on, turn it on again (I can see another face)

Turn it on, turn it on, turn it on again (I can see another face)

Turn it on, turn it on, turn it on again (I can see another face)

Turn it on, turn it on, turn it on again (I can see another face)

Turn it on, turn it on, turn it on again (I can see another face)

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This Boy

 

It seems this boy's bathed in ridicule

Ah, too forward, way too physical

It's time that I had another

I'm always wanting more if there's another one

Give me some more, I'll have another one

I'll have a slice of your mother

And this boy's so spectacular

Not a boy, but a wealthy bachelor

I want a car, I want a car, yeah

I want a car, I want a car, yeah

I see losers losing everywhere

If I lose, I'll only lose the care

That I might have for another

I am complete, invincible

If I have a one principle

Then it's to stand on you, brother

And this boy's so spectacular

Not a boy, but a wealthy bachelor

I want a car, I want a car, yeah

I want a car, I want a car, yeah

I wanna, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna

I wanna, wanna, wanna, wanna

Wanna, wanna, wanna, wanna

Wanna, wanna, wanna, wanna

Wanna, wanna, wanna, wanna

I want a car, I want a car, yeah

I want a car, I want a car, yeah

If I like cocaine, I'm racing you

For organic fresh echinacea

One kick's as good as another

If I'm tired, I'm tired of telling you

I'm never tired, I'm always better than you

Bye, boy, run to your mother

And this boy's so spectacular

Not a boy, but a wealthy bachelor

Oh yes, I am spectacular

Not a boy, but a wealthy bachelor

I want a car, I want a car, yeah

I want a car, I want a car, ah-ha

I want a car, I want a car, yeah

I want, I want, I want, I want

I want, I want, I want, I want!

Girls Got Rhythm

 I've been around the world

I've seen a million girls

Ain't one of them got

What my lady she's got

She's stealin' the spotlight

Knocks me off my feet

She's enough to start a landslide

Just a walkin' down the street

Wearing dresses so tight

And looking dynamite

Enough to blow me out

No doubt about it can't live without it

The girl's got rhythm (girl's got rhythm)

The girl's got rhythm (girl's got rhythm)

She's got the backseat rhythm (backseat rhythm)

The girl's got rhythm

She's like a lethal brand

Too much for any man

She gives me first degree

She really satisfies me

Love me till I'm legless

Aching and sore

Enough to stop a freight train

Or start the Third World War

You know I'm losin' sleep

I'm in too deep

Like a body needs blood

No doubt about it, can't live without it

The girl's got rhythm (girl's got rhythm)

The girl's got rhythm (girl's got rhythm)

She's got the backseat rhythm (backseat rhythm)

The girl's got rhythm

You know she moves like sin

And when she lets me in

It's like liquid love

No doubt about it, can't live without it

The girl's got rhythm (girl's got rhythm)

The girl's got rhythm (girl's got rhythm)

She's got the backseat rhythm (backseat rhythm)

The girl's got rhythm (girl's got rhythm)

You know she really got the rhythm (girl's got rhythm)

She's got the backseat rhythm (backseat rhythm)

Rock 'n' roll rhythm (rock n roll rhythm)

The girl's got rhythm!

You're The Reason I'm Leaving

 

Some granite wall

Numbs our bones, numbs our all

As we sit on skinny hands

Nothing to say, nothing at all

I don't know you and I don't want to

You're so awkward just like me

But I don't care

You're the reason I'm leaving

You're the reason I'm leaving

And by leaving, we don't stop living you know

I'd no idea that in four years

I'd be hanging from a beam

Behind the door of number ten

Singing "well, fare thee well"

Fare thee well

Fare thee well

I am leaving

Yes, I leave it all to you

You're the reason I'm leaving

You're the reason I'm leaving

And by leaving, we don't stop living you know

I'm the reason you're leaving

You're the reason I'm leaving

And by leaving, we don't stop living you know

As we ride along under an optimistic sun

The radio sings that "Everybody" song by REM

And here I am fighting fighting

Yes I'm fighting not to cry

And that's another reason

Why I ought to hate you like I do

Like I do, oh like I do

You're the reason I'm leaving (leaving alone)

You're the reason I'm leaving (leaving alone)

And by leaving, we don't stop living you know

I'm the reason you're leaving (leaving alone)

You are the reason you're leaving (leaving alone)

If we're leaving, we don't stop living you know!

Call Me

 

Call me when you're down

Call me when you need someone

Call me when it's rough

And you think that there's no one

Call me when you're down.

Love just for the understanding

Tender loving care is what we're demanding

Listen to the heart that's beating

Forget about lust and all misleading

Love, talk about me and you

My love just makes everything come true

Questions lies in the heavens and ground

It's up to me and I'll call you when I'm down

I will be true, too many ups and downs with you

I know what to say to you

So here's what I tell you

Call me when you're down

Call me when you need someone

Call me when it's rough

And you think that there's no one

But 'till you need someone to love

I will be searching for my love

I will, but I will be there for you

Sitting at a park, holding hands at the dark

With a love so strong to break my heart

Listen to your heart that's beating

Forget about fuss and all misleading

Love, summer, winter, spring or fall

Love is wishing that we had it all

Questions lies in the skies and ground

It's up to me and I'll call you when I'm down

I will be true, too many ups and downs with you

You see who I am to you

So this is what I tell you

Call me when you're down

Call me when you need someone

Call me when it's rough

And you think that there's no one

But 'till you need someone to love

I will be searching for my love

I will, but I will be there for you

I will be there for you

I will be there for you

I will be there for you

If you need someone

Call me when you're down

If you need someone

Call me when you're down

Call me when you're down.

Call me when you're down

Call me when you need someone

Call me when it's rough

And you think that there's no one

But 'till you need someone to love

I will be searching for my love

I will, but I will be there for you.