Latest news with #worldclass
South China Morning Post
4 days ago
- Politics
- South China Morning Post
People's Daily spells out PLA's mid-century goal, with the US as a benchmark
The People's Liberation Army must measure itself against the world's strongest military, a clear reference to the US, in its drive to beat the global competition, according to an official policy commentary detailing the PLA's goals by 2049. Advertisement The article published on Thursday in Communist Party mouthpiece People's Daily is one of the clearest explanations of Chinese President Xi Jinping's goal of 'building a world-class military by the middle of this century'. It said 'world-class' was defined by global top-tier indicators and China aimed to dominate the central stage of military competition and stay at the forefront of developments. 02:57 Shandong aircraft carrier moves into Taiwan response zone ahead of PLA drills Shandong aircraft carrier moves into Taiwan response zone ahead of PLA drills '[A world-class military] must match China's status as a global power, ensure comprehensive and effective protection of national security and have a strong international influence,' the article said. It said China must aim for the world's highest standards, 'not only in the areas of weapons and equipment, organisational structure and combat systems, but also in military theory, talent development and training qualities'. The Chinese military needed to see foreign peers as a benchmark – 'especially the most powerful military', a reference to American forces – to 'stand on equal footing with global powers and prevail in international competition', it added. Advertisement The article comes less than a month before the PLA will showcase its latest progress at a Victory Day military parade on September 3 marking the 80th anniversary of China's defeat of the Japanese invasion and the global triumph over fascism.
Yahoo
04-08-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Ousmane Dembele is the 2025 Ballon d'Or favourite - but he hasn't done enough yet to earn world-class status
GOAL's World-Class Club for 2025 has just been published - and there are six new members, including four players from treble-winning Paris Saint-Germain. Ousmane Dembele isn't one of them, though, and his exclusion will no doubt surprise - and maybe even anger - a lot of readers. After all, Dembele is the clear favourite to win this year's Ballon d'Or - and how could we not consider the 'best player in the world' this year a world-class player? Well, the devil lies not only in the detail of our definition of the very subjective term 'world-class' and the stipulations within our selection process - but also the duality of Dembele. As we all know, two seemingly conflicting statements can be simultaneously true - and particularly when it comes to one of the most contradictory characters in football, a fantastic but frustrating forward who has belatedly realised his potential and yet still has something to prove... 'Wasted' years Lionel Messi never had any doubts over Dembele's world-class potential. The winger was, as the Argentine pointed out all the way back in 2018, "a phenomenon on the field". The only problem was how Dembele conducted himself off it. There were worrying reports of ill-discipline even during his breakout season at Borussia Dortmund, while his behaviour at Barcelona became a near-constant cause for concern in Catalunya. Even accounting for the fact that he was just a teenager when he joined the Blaugrana, Dembele admitted himself that he "wasted" five years of his career at Camp Nou due to a total lack of professionalism. He was repeatedly late for team meetings, with his tardiness attributed to his fondness for playing video games until the early hours of the morning, while his diet was a disgrace for a professional athlete, which contributed to his incessant injury issues. One source told GOAL of countless fast-food cartons found at his house, while a healthy fish dish prepared by his former chef had been discarded. "It's a messy life," Michael Naya revealed in an interview with Le Parisien. "I've never seen alcohol, but he doesn't respect the rest periods at all. There's no structure around him." So, while Messi felt that the Frenchman had it in him to become "one of the best" players on the planet, the former Barcelona captain rather tellingly added that "it all depends" on Dembele. 'Didn't work as hard as I do now' There were times during his six-year stay at Camp Nou when it appeared as if Dembele had turned a corner; that he might actually repay Barca's initial investment and continued faith in him. During a good run of form under Xavi in September 2022, he insisted that he had seen the error of his ways. "The injuries came because, when I was [younger], I didn't work as hard as I do now," he told Sport and Mundo Deportivo. "If you want to be a great player, you have to work. Your talent is not enough. I didn't know that before, but now I see that it's essential to work hard on and off the pitch. "It's clear that if you don't work you can't enjoy football, you're not going to play much and you're going to get injured. Now, I'm stronger." 'Disappointed' Unfortunately, that particularly purple patch proved nothing more than a false dawn - one of many. And yet Barca continued to believe in Dembele. Club president Joan Laporta repeatedly argued that "with these types of geniuses, you have to look after them". "Dembele," the Catalan explained in an interview with Gerard Romero on Twitch, "deserves some special treatment" - and so he was given umpteen chances to get his act together, effectively becoming a regular in the last-chance saloon. And then he left, in highly acrimonious circumstances, by taking advantage of a clause in his contract that enabled him to leave for just €50 million (£43m/$57m) - half of which he would pocket himself, with the other half going to an blindsided Barcelona. Of course, the Blaugrana only had themselves to blame for previously agreeing to such conditions but it was hard not to feel a lot of sympathy for Xavi, who had always stood by Dembele. "I am a little disappointed with Dembele," the coach confessed in the summer of 2023. "He has decided to go to PSG. And there is nothing we can do." 'Worst game I've ever seen anyone have' Barca, though, really were better off without a €148m (£128m/$169m) signing who had never managed to score more than eight league goals in a single season for the club. "I like good players, but I prefer committed players," Laporta advisor Enric Masip told SPORT. "Dembele had already demonstrated his lack of commitment when he did not renew. It's very easy to kiss the crest when you score a goal or sell smoke on social media. It's legitimate to want to earn more, but when you are committed, you don't look at the money and you don't say one thing one day, and another the next. "So, I'd rather play a kid from La Masia or with Raphinha, who gives his all in every training session, than someone who gives you a performance of 9/10 and a 3/10 the next day." Masip's comments may have been motivated by bitterness, but his point about Dembele's maddening lack of consistency was perfectly valid - and gets to the heart of the Frenchman's exclusion from GOAL's World-Class Club because only now, at 28 years of age, is he delivering on a regular basis at the very highest level. Remember, we're talking about the biggest waste of money in Barcelona's history (which is really saying something), an attacker who has never scored a single goal at a major international tournament (despite representing France in four). Of course, Dembele is a World Cup winner, but that medal merely serves to underline the duality of Dembele, who only played two minutes during the knockout stages of Russia 2018 and produced a performance of such ineptitude in the final in Qatar four years later that he was hauled off before the break. "[Didier] Deschamps had to do something," former England international Stuart Pearce told talkSPORT at the time. "We were watching a car crash. Dembele was having the worst game I've ever seen anyone have." Explosion in 2025 It's not as if Dembele's productivity immediately increased upon his arrival in Paris either. He scored just three times during the 2023-24 Ligue 1 season, while he was directly involved in only three goals during PSG's run to the semi-finals of the Champions League. It's only this year - and we do mean this year, not this season - that he started performing on a weekly basis. Indeed, it's often forgotten that Dembele, much like PSG, only clicked in the Champions League on January 22, during the crucial come-from-behind win over Manchester City. He hadn't scored before that night and had been dropped for the matchday-two meeting with Arsenal for disciplinary reasons before being suspended for the matchday-six clash with Red Bull Salzburg after stupidly getting himself sent off against Bayern Munich a fortnight beforehand. Everything changed after the City comeback, though - not least due to Luis Enrique's decision to redeploy Dembele as a centre-forward, which was hailed by Montpellier boss Jean-Louis Gasset as "the idea of the century". It certainly paid off spectacularly for PSG, with Dembele going on to contribute eight goals to the Parisians' first-ever European Cup win, including crucial strikes at Anfield and the Emirates. Having also racked up more assists (six) than any of his team-mates during their triumphant Champions League campaign, it's easy to understand why Dembele is said to be leading the race for the 2025 Ballon d'Or - a glorified popularity contest nearly always won by goal-scorers. Former France international Ludovic Giuly even pointed out at the turn of the year that Dembele would become a contender if he could just add goals to his game. However, just as it would be incorrect to call Dembele PSG's most important player (Vitinha and Achraf Hakim, for example, are far more integral to how Luis Enrique's team operates), it would also be wrong to claim that he's proven himself 'world-class' on the back of six fruitful months. True greatness is measured over a far longer timeframe - as Dembele knows himself. The real test There was a lovely moment shortly after PSG's Club World Cup win over Inter Miami when Messi presented a delighted Dembele with not only his shirt, but also his shorts and the boots he'd worn during the game in Atlanta. Dembele even took to social media to express his joy at being reunited with his former Barcelona team-mate - or, as the Frenchman called him, "the greatest of all time". Messi was clearly happy to see Dembele too, and must have been thrilled to see how the talented teenager that lost his way at Camp Nou has finally found happiness at Parc des Princes. Dembele even admitted himself that while he played in some "amazing" sides at Barca alongside "the GOAT", Luis Enrique's "is the one I enjoy the most". The challenge now, though, for Dembele is to carry his fantastic form during the first half of 2025 into a World Cup year and finally make a major impact on the game's grandest stage. He's showcased his world-class credentials to thrilling effect over the past six months, but legitimate doubt remains over whether Dembele can deliver over an extended period of time. We know he has the talent to do so. But does he have the desire? As has always been the case, everything depends on Dembele.
BBC News
04-08-2025
- Sport
- BBC News
'Huge moment' as UK's tallest outdoor climbing wall opens amid £7m revamp
The UK's tallest outdoor climbing wall is opening as part of a £7m 18m (59ft) high and 35m (114ft) wide - the equivalent height of four double-decker buses - the wall is a new addition to 270 Climbing Park on the edge of the Cotswolds, between Cheltenham and Gloucester. Also boasting a 17m (55ft) indoor wall, its co-owner David Stevens calls the park a "truly world class destination" for climbers. The centre, which is opening later, will also feature Olympic standard bouldering walls and high ropes. Mr Stevens added: "This is a huge moment for 270 and for the UK climbing scene."We've created a truly world-class destination for climbers of all levels, from beginners to elite athletes. There's nowhere else in the country that combines this scale and variety of climbing and high ropes in one place."Ahead of its public opening, the outdoor wall has already hosted the European Military Climbing Championships 2025, which saw more than 60 of Europe's elite military climbers compete over three indoor area also features an International Federation of Sport Climbing (IFSC) Boulder Wall, built to international competition standards and permanently set to Olympic bouldering Mason, a climbing route setter, said: "It's great to finally see a facility in the south that can offer what we need for our sport all in one place."
New York Times
29-07-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
Some Kenyan Runners See Doping as a Path to Glory, and to Basic Sustenance
Thousands of feet above the Great Rift Valley that runs through East Africa, the small city of Iten, Kenya, calls itself the Home of Champions. It has long produced and attracted world-class running talent, its high altitude and red dirt roads a training ground for thousands. The town also has a far less laudatory reputation. It is a well-documented center of a doping crisis that shows little sign of being tamed. Runners come here for access to competition, coaching talent and the benefit of training in thin air, all to try to earn riches from running. Many Kenyans who try to join the elite endure cramped and dirty living conditions, little food and separation from their families in service of their ambitions. In a region where the average annual income is the equivalent of little more than $2,000 and the competition so intense, the potentially life-changing lure of banned substances, referred to locally as 'the medicine,' is obvious. A few thousand dollars in prize money or participation in a single overseas race can be the difference between runners and their families eating three meals a day and scratching around for the next bite. Ethiopia Uganda Iten Kenya Eldoret Nairobi Indian Ocean Tanzania 100 miles By The New York Times They calculate that doping is worth the risks not only of getting caught, but also of damaging their health and, in some cases, even dying. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
