Latest news with #Torque
Yahoo
14-05-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Who is Watford's new head coach, Paulo Pezzolano?
Hired by one of Brazil's greatest players of all time, two spells with a club called Liverpool and played in China for a season – new Watford head coach Paulo Pezzolano possesses a varied and quite colourful CV. As a coach he has two league titles in South America to his credit, as well as a promotion in Spain. – a loan spell on the pitch with Mallorca in 2010, and his most recent role as head coach of La Liga side Real Valladolid. The vast majority of his 243 senior career appearances as a player came at Liverpool Montevideo, the Uruguayan Primera Division club in Pezzolano's home town. He made 132 appearances and scored 41 goals for the club that took its name because of the links between Montevideo and Liverpool, not least that coal ships would arrive in the Uruguayan port having left from Merseyside. Pezzolano had two spells at Estadio Belvedere, initially between 2008 and 2011, and then returning for a second stint between 2012 and 2016. In between, he did a bit of travelling: 17 games on loan at Spanish side Mallorca, a season with Zhejiang, the Chinese side formerly known as Hangzhou Greentown, and then a dozen games for Club Necaxa in Mexico. Gilligan and Robinson depart Watford Training ground work impressed the board His playing career started in Uruguay's Segunda Division with Rentistas in 2001 as an 18-year-old, before a very brief stay in Brazil with Atletico Paranaense. Pezzolano was back in Montevideo after less than six months, signing for Defensor Sporting in 2006 and helping them finish third in the Primera Division and reach the quarter-finals of the 2007 Copa Libertadores. His next move was to one of Uruguay's biggest and most successful clubs, Penarol, but he played just 13 games before his first move to Liverpool Montevideo. When his second spell there ended in 2016, he joined Segunda Division side Torque, where he scored eight times in 21 appearances. It was upon his retirement, at the age of 33 in November 2016, that he became Torque's manager. He led Torque to the second division title before leaving in 2017 to return to the club where had spent most of his time as a player, Liverpool Montevideo. After two years there, he left and went to Mexico, taking over at Pachuca who he led to the 2021 play-offs in the Liga MX. He left by mutual consent in November 2021, and a couple of months later was appointed as head coach of Brazilian Serie B Cruzeiro, who were owned by Brazilian legend Ronaldo. Under Pezzolano they reached the finals of the 2022 Campeonato Mineiro, and were promoted to Serie A. In April 2023, Pezzolano left Cruziero to take the manager's job at Spanish side Real Valladolid – also owned by Ronaldo. The La Liga side were in a bit of turmoil, with Ronaldo having sacked the club's sporting director and recruitment team on the eve of the season. Pezzolano couldn't save Valldolid from relegation when he was brought in, but Ronaldo stuck by him, and his loyalty was very much vindicated. The Uruguayan steered guided Valladolid back to La Liga at the end of the 23/24 season, finishing second in Segunda Division, only two points behind champions Leganes. Back in the top-flight, Pezzolano and Valladolid began the new season with a 1-0 success over Espanyol, but they didn't win again for eight games. In the middle of that sequence was a 7-0 thrashing at Barcelona – Raphina grabbing a hat-trick – prompting Pezzolano to say after the game: 'I want to apologise to the supporters and the city, they don't deserve it. We didn't compete today. It was pitiful. There's no other word, there are no excuses.' A 3-2 win away at Alaves in mid-October brought some respite, but Valladolid lost four of their next five and a 5-0 home trouncing by Atletico Madrid on November 30 brought Pezzolano's time at Estadio Jose Zorrilla to an end. The Uruguayan took charge of 16 league and cup games with Valladolid this season, winning three, drawing three and losing 10. They have not fared any better since he departed though, and are 15 points adrift at the foot of La Liga and will be relegated at the end of the season. In his time at Cruzeiro, he started by playing 4-2-2-2 but later switched to a 3-4-3/3-4-1-2 shape and largely stayed with that, earning a reputation for a brand of energetic and high-octane football. While in Spain with Valladolid, he tended to play 4-3-3, using the extra bodies in the centre of midfield positively with the aim of dominating the ball before picking off opponents as they tired. During his promotion season, Valladolid averaged the third-highest possession percentage of 55.6% in the Segunda Division.
Yahoo
13-05-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Watford appoint Uruguayan as their new head coach
Watford have appointed 42-year-old Uruguayan Paulo Pezzolano as their new head coach. The former Real Valladolid boss was a name that only entered the reckoning in the last 24 hours, but by lunchtime he was the bookies' favourite – though that hasn't been the greatest guide given the way the market has chopped and changed in the last few days. Pezzolano becomes the first Uruguayan to manage the Hornets, and at 42 is only seven years older than the man he succeeds, Tom Cleverley. He will become only the second Uruguayan to have been part of the playing and coaching staff at Vicarage Road, following defender Miguel Britos who played for the club between 2015 and 2019. Pezzolano began his coaching career at Uruguayan second division side Torque, the club where he spent his final season as a player before retiring. He led Torque to the second division title before leaving in 2017 to join Liverpool Montevideo, another club he had played for. After two years there, he left and went to Mexico, taking over at Pachuca who he led to the 2021 play-offs in the Liga MX. He left by mutual consent in November 2021, and a couple of months later was appointed as head coach of Brazilian Serie B Cruzeiro. The 42-year-old steered them to promotion to Serie A but little over a year after joining he left and became head coach of Real Valladolid. The man he replaced there, Jose Rojo Martin (known as Pacheta), was linked with being the next Watford boss both in January and in the last few days. After suffering relegation in his first season in Spain, Pezzolano guided Valladolid back to La Liga at the end of the 23/24 season. However, after only two league wins and one cup victory from 15 games this term, he was sacked following a 5-0 defeat to Atletico Madrid at the end of November. Most of his playing career as an attacking midfielder was spent in South America, and the bulk of that was in Uruguary. However, he did spend a short spell on loan with Spanish side Mallorca and also spent a season with Hangzhou Greentown in China. Understood to be a coach who adopts a high-intensity pressing style, Pezzolano likes possession football but his priority is efficiency. He has also become known for his willingness to progress players through the ranks at the clubs he has worked at, and gives youth a chance. That is a quality that may well have drawn Watford owner Gino Pozzo to him, as he seeks to turn the club back into promotion contenders after three seasons of mid-table mediocrity in the Championship.
USA Today
12-04-2025
- Sport
- USA Today
Sergio Garcia cuts ties with manager after two decades, wife Angela confirms
Sergio Garcia cuts ties with manager after two decades, wife Angela confirms AUGUSTA, Ga. – After more than 20 years with the same manager, Sergio Garcia has made a change. Garcia's decision to part ways with Carlos Rodriguez and Irek Myskow is about as stunning a player-agent split other than if Tiger Woods moved on from Mark Steinberg, but it turns out there is good reason. The change, which went into effect a couple of months ago, was made to avoid any conflict of interest due to their various involvements in different LIV teams, said Angela Garcia, Sergio's wife. 'Carlos Rodriguez is a wonderful guy and we have a wonderful relationship. But he's now the general manager of Torque, so it's a conflict of interest,' she said. Torque is a LIV team headlined by Joaquin Niemann, another client of Rodriguez, who is a longtime agent with the agency GSE. (Carlos Ortiz, Sebastian Munoz and Mito Pereira, fellow clients of Rodriguez, make up the remainder of the team.) Likewise, Garcia deemed it was inappropriate for Myskow to represent Garcia due to his role as the general manager of Fireballs, the team Garcia owns a stake in and serves as captain. There were some rumors at the Masters that Angela had stepped into the role of managing her husband's career, but the former Golf Channel broadcaster was quick to state that was false. Stepping into manage Sergio's affairs is Andrew DiLallo, who has a background in sports, including as senior vice president of sporting operations for Austin FC and had been working for the Fireballs team. He is based in Garcia's hometown of Austin. 'He's a great guy,' Angela said. 'You'd love him if you came to a LIV event and met him.' Asked about the change in his relationship with Sergio, Rodriguez said on Thursday, 'It's just something personal, so I don't want to talk about it.' On Friday, he added, 'We are still very close and I talk to the family all the time.' Angela added: 'We have a great relationship with Carlos and Erik and gave them both big hugs this week. We're just a big happy family on LIV. It's nothing other than it's a conflict of interest and we want to do the right thing.' According to the website Spotrac, Garcia, 45, earned more than $45 million during his career on the PGA Tour. He has earned $38 million on LIV Golf, including more than $6 million in individual earnings this season, since joining the new league in 2019.
South China Morning Post
22-03-2025
- Sport
- South China Morning Post
Asian Tour: LIV pair Reed and Ortiz face race to finish at International Series Macau
There will be a distinctly LIV Golf feel to the final round of the International Series Macau on Sunday, with 4Aces' Patrick Reed and Torque's Carlos Ortiz facing an 18-hole race to the finish. Advertisement Familiar with regularly battling it out for team and individual glory, the pair are tied for the lead on 16-under-par, three clear of Smash GC's Jason Kokrak and Germany's Dominic Foos. Ripper team member Lucas Herbert is alone in fifth, two strokes back at 11 under, with the top three earning places at this year's Open Championship at Royal Portrush. Reed began the day one ahead of his LIV rival, and a birdie on seven, combined those at holes three and four, put him four clear. But he dropped a shot at the 374-yard par-4, while Ortiz chipped in for eagle, and the Mexican Ortiz drew level with his first birdie of the day on 10. The pair traded blows on the back nine, with Ortiz ultimately coming out on top with a four-under 66, compared to Reed's 67. Patrick Reed lines up a putt on the 18th green during the third round of the International Series Macau. Photo: Asian Tour Ortiz said while his round was not the course-record equalling 61 of Friday, it was 'good overall'.
Yahoo
18-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Quali Streamlines Delivery of Agentic AI at Scale with NVIDIA AI Enterprise
New integrations lower the barrier to adoption for Agentic AI by automating management across development resources, including Large Language Models (LLMs), data services, GPU infrastructure, and more to deliver high-performing AI agents. AUSTIN, Texas, March 18, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Quali, a leading provider of platform engineering solutions for infrastructure automation and management, today announced its integration with NVIDIA AI Enterprise software, including NVIDIA NIM™ microservices and NVIDIA AI Blueprints, to simplify the creation and management of Agentic AI solutions. Agentic AI represents a transformational opportunity for today's enterprises, with implications across internal operations and customer experience. By leveraging NVIDIA NIM microservices and NVIDIA AI Blueprints included in the NVIDIA AI Enterprise software platform, the Quali Torque Software-as-a-Service platform simplifies the orchestration and management of each layer of the Agentic AI tech stack: accelerated infrastructure, cloud services and data pipelines, LLMs and AI models, and AI agents and applications. With Torque providing unified orchestration, lifecycle management, and cost optimization, each layer of the development stack seamlessly supports each other to ensure reliability, accuracy, and efficiency. To accomplish this, Torque manages the entire infrastructure lifecycle using Environments as Code (EaC)—a model that transforms cloud resources into fully managed, self-service environments supporting mission-critical operations, such as AI workloads, software development, demos, training, and more. Quali can deploy and manage the entire tech stack supporting Agentic AI solutions as a stateful, dynamic environment through the integration of NVIDIA technology. This approach cuts through complexity and automates routine tasks, enabling more organizations to adopt Agentic AI faster, scale more efficiently, and focus on innovation rather than infrastructure management. Key highlights of this release include: Easy-to-Use Modules of NVIDIA AI Enterprise & Other NVIDIA Resources: Torque creates reusable modules defining each component needed to deliver an AI agent, including NVIDIA accelerated compute, NVIDIA NIM microservices, and pre-trained models and data science frameworks included with NVIDIA AI Enterprise. This normalization enables no-code orchestration of each layer of the stack supporting the AI solution, thereby accelerating delivery and lowering the barrier to adoption of Agentic AI. AI-Driven Environment Design, Creation, & Reusability: Torque's AI Copilot leverages these reusable modules to design and generate new environment blueprints in response to user-submitted prompts. Additionally, Torque's graphical environment design tool allows users to drag-and-drop resources and set dependencies visually. As the user adjusts the design of the environment, Torque modifies the code in the environment blueprint file automatically, further reducing the need for complex coding to support the AI solution. Once complete, Torque saves this blueprint as a reusable file that can be deployed, maintained, and monitored continuously. Simplified Provisioning & Maintenance of Individual Layers of the Agentic AI Tech Stack: Torque executes the code to provision each layer of the AI tech stack, monitors the state of those resources continuously, and notifies users about anomalies, including infrastructure errors, configuration drift, and other unexpected updates. This allows Torque administrators to tailor the user experience to the people responsible for delivering each layer of the AI tech stack, enabling them to reconcile errors and other unexpected issues proactively. Streamlined Integration of Each Layer of the AI Tech Stack: Once provisioned as a managed environment in Torque, each layer of the AI tech stack can be published so other users can access it as an input supporting other layers of the stack. For example, a developer building an AI agent can select the live GPU clusters, cloud-based data services, and AI models they need from a simple pick list made available in Torque's provisioning experience. Torque leverages those inputs to provision the AI agent, while also enabling users to maintain the live environment supporting each layer of the stack. This provides a seamless experience that cuts through complexity and accelerates the delivery of full-stack AI agents. Automating Critical Tasks for AI Performance: Torque workflows can define and automatically execute routine tasks required to maintain high-performing AI solutions, such as training and data quality assurance. This eliminates manual work required for day-to-day maintenance, while also providing visibility for users to understand when these tasks were last executed, how effective they were, and other relevant information. Dynamic GPU Scaling in Response to Application Needs: As the various AI models supporting the agent transition through mission-critical phases, Torque automatically scales GPUs up and down. This provides adequate computing capacity to support even the most resource-intensive workloads like training, while scaling down capacity to prevent costly over-provisioning for less resource-intensive tasks like inference. 'Complexity has always been at the core of the problems we solve for our customers and partners,' said Lior Koriat, Quali CEO. 'As more organizations look to embrace AI, the ability to cut through complexity is the key to delivering the kinds of AI experiences that customers expect. We're thrilled to develop a streamlined approach for delivering impactful AI solutions leveraging NVIDIA AI, and we look forward to helping our community unlock these opportunities.' About Quali: Headquartered in Austin, Texas, Quali provides platform engineering tools to help enterprise technology and engineering teams accelerate and optimize the use of multi-cloud infrastructure. Global 2000 enterprises rely on Quali's solutions to democratize cloud access securely and efficiently by simplifying the experience of deploying application environments and enforcing cloud governance at scale. For more information, please visit and follow Quali on LinkedIn. Contact Information: Colin Neagle VP of Marketing Quali Colin.n@
