The recent disappointing run of form from the 13-time Champions League winners has put Zizou’s place under threat. As per reports from Spanish publication, Marca, there are five main reasons as to why Zinedine Zidane could be heading for an exit.
Firstly, there is the discontinuity between the starting XI for Madrid’s matches. With players rotated in and out almost every week, there are solid doubts about Madrid’s strongest lineup. Furthermore, as far as team selection goes, is the case of Marcelo.
The Brazilian left-back is well past his prime and has been less than decent in all his outings for the club. Madrid have lost all ten matches that the defender has started, and Zidane just doesn’t seem to pick up on it.
Elsewhere, the transfers of Eden Hazard and Luka Jovic have proven to be unsuccessful. Considering the amount of money that the club paid for the two players, they are rightfully disappointed with the manager for his demands not paying off.
The selling of players like Sergio Reguilon, Achraf Hakimi and Marcos Llorente and not including them in his plans has also caused friction between the manager and the higher authorities.
Lastly, the case of the Frenchman sticking to the same tactics he used five years ago has made the players believe that a different approach would benefit them in playing better football and getting the results.
Speaking after the defeat to Shakhtar for a second time, Zidane confirmed that he would not be resigning. It is safe to note at this point, that Madrid are looking at former legendary striker Raul and former Spurs manager Mauricio Pochettino as potential replacements for Zidane.
As things stand, Real Madrid will drop down to the Europa League later this season.
The former Madrid midfielder has given a lot to the club both as a player and as a manager. Despite the dip in form, Madrid should consider his past glories and give him time to turn things around. The fact that the squad is plagued with new injuries every week is also doing the manager no favours.
So, while things are not dire for the coach just yet, a drop to the Europa League, or a continued disappointing run of performances could bring down the curtain on his second spell as Madrid manager. However, any decision regarding a change will take time to come through, if at all.
Joachim Low is highly criticized for the performance of Germany in recent times. Germany failed to qualify for the UEFA Nations League semi-finals. They were thrashed by Spain by a 6-0 scoreline, Germany’s heaviest defeat since May 1931. Germany finished in the second position in their UEFA Nations League group stage. Spain qualified for the next round from the same group. Some suggested replacing Low keeping in mind the upcoming EURO 2021.
But the German Football Association’s executives officially decided to keep faith in Joachim Low after the meeting on Monday after Low presented his plans.
The German FA stated, ‘A single game cannot and must not be a yardstick for the general performance of the national team and the national coach.’
‘Low informed those involved about his assessments, ideas and further plans. The members of the executive committee agreed that what counts is the high-quality work of the coaching staff, intact relationship between the team and the coach and a clear concept for the previous and future procedures.’
‘There is a firm conviction that Joachim Low and his coaching team will deliver successful games and results despite a challenging situation for everyone.’- they added in the statement.
Joachim Low has been the manager of Germany since 2006. This coming EURO will be his 7th major tournament. He has won the World Cup in 2014. Germany was also the runners up in the 2008 EURO and was 3rd in the 2010 World Cup. His contract with Germany ends after the World Cup 2022 in Qatar.
Greatness has followed Cristiano Ronaldo at all of the great clubs that he has played for. Ever since breaking through the ranks at the Sporting CP academy, Ronaldo has had the world at his feet, taking the world by storm under Sir Alex Ferguson at Manchester United.
The Portuguese superstar then moved to the biggest club in the world, Real Madrid and won it all with Los Blancos. When he left the Spanish capital, Ronaldo was the highest scorer in the club’s history and had managed to guide the club to every trophy available.
Yesterday, Ronaldo managed to score his 750th career goal as he tapped into an empty net following a cruising cross from Federico Chiesa from the right-hand side to double Juventus’ lead against Dynamo Kiev and seal qualification to the Round of 16 of the Champions League for good.
The 35-year-old has won the Champions League five times, four times with Real Madrid and once with Manchester United. He has also won the Ballon d’Or 5 times and is only behind Leo Messi, with 6 to his name.
𝟕𝟓𝟎 goals, 𝟕𝟓𝟎 happy moments, 𝟕𝟓𝟎 smiles in the faces of our supporters. Thank you to all the players and coaches that helped me reach this amazing number, thank you to all my loyal opponents that made me work harder and harder everyday. pic.twitter.com/ZuS4GDOzeh
Ronaldo scored 118 goals in 292 appearances for Manchester United, and, as mentioned above, is the highest goalscorer in Real Madrid history with 450 goals from 438 games for the club.
He has found the back of the net 5 times for his first professional club Sporting CP in 31 appearances, and 75 times for current club Juventus from 97 appearances.
Only three men have more career goals than Cristiano Ronaldo (750).
Ronaldo is Portugal’s highest goalscorer of all time, with 102 goals to his name. The closest to him in terms of the numbers is Pauleta with 47. In fact, Ronaldo is the second-highest goalscorer of all time when it comes to national teams, only behind former Iranian striker Ali Daei with 109.
And that record will soon be broken by Ronaldo as well. It is only a matter of time before the 7 goal deficit is achieved by CR7 and he becomes the highest goal-scorer for any national football team on planet earth.
The coronavirus pandemic has heavily impacted finances in football throughout Europe. However, Barcelona and Real Madrid are having arguably the most difficulty in dealing with the lack of finances pouring in.
Madrid recently announced their financial projections for the 20/21 season, which is set at an eye-watering €637 million. While the numbers might be staggering for the casual viewer, Madrid maintain that this projected figure is less than €300 million than the assumed figure if the pandemic didn’t hit.
In other words, had things been normal, and finances had not been impacted as badly as they were, Madrid would have had about a billion Euros to work with this season.
Los Blancos lost about €106 million in revenue, despite which, the club managed to settle the financial year with a profit of €313,000.
The club is currently working on renovating the Santiago Bernabeu stadium to increase its capacity for when fans are allowed back into stadia.
Barcelona, on the other hand, have not been holding up too well. While their fierce rivals managed to report a profit despite a major lack of income, the Catalonians reported a loss worth €97 million, in stark contrast to their projections of profit worth €11 million. The club reported a decrease in finances worth €203 million in 19/20.
As per the latest reports coming out of Barcelona, interim President Carlos Tusquets has confirmed that Barcelona players and other staff will not receive their payment for the month of January despite managing to agree on a wage reduction worth €200 million in gross total, including outgoing transfers.
Madrid’s players, on the other hand, are currently suffering a 10% pay cut and are still managing to pull through with running the club smoothly.
The financial management on Madrid’s side looks decent enough for the club to make it through the pandemic. However, the same cannot be said for the Blaugrana.
EA Sports has now officially revealed the Team of the Week 10 for the FIFA 21 Ultimate Team. It is headed by World Cup winning Frenchman, Antoinne Griezmanne. He has a 88 rated LW card.
Starting XI
GK: Pacheco – 86
RB: Aguilar – 82
CB: Romagnoli – 85
LB: Mendy – 84
RM: Raphinha – 84
CM: Fabian – 84
CM: Neuhaus – 82
CM: Skhiri – 82
ST: Iago Aspas – 86
ST: Martinez – 86
LW: Griezmann – 88
Substitutes and reserves
The starting XI player and some substitutes would be a great addition to your new FUT 21 squad. And, if you somehow end up getting a low-rated player, don’t worry as you can get a handsome amount of coins by selling them quickly.
The TOTW 10 players are in the squad from 2nd December and will be removed from packs at 5.59 pm GMT on 9th December, when TOTW 11 will come out.
Ahmedabad is all set to enter IPL in 2021 with another team as BCCI has called its annual meeting on 24th December for the entry of 1 or 2 franchises.
IPL 2021 is all set to welcome their 9th team from Gujarat as the BCCI has called up for their annual meeting on 24th December to discuss their entry. The entry of another team is still uncertain.
The major news is that Gujarat’s entry is almost final, as the Motera Stadium in Gujarat is being renovated recently and upgraded to a capacity of 110,000, making it the largest stadium as per the capacity.
According to The Hindu report, the full auction is being planned since “the BCCI has plans to add a ninth team” for the 2021 edition. The Sportstar report also stated that the BCCI will also try and offer stakes or a team to promoters of the now-defunct Kochi franchise as a compensatory measure. The BCCI owes more than Rs 5000 crore to Kochi promoters after a court-appointed arbitrator ruled against the board for wrongful termination.
Source- Asianet Newsable
BCCI president, Sourav Ganguly also hinted at a grand auction for IPL 2021. A few days ago, there was a report in The Hindu that a ninth team could be included in IPL 2021 as the BCCI looks to recover the losses that it incurred while hosting IPL 2020 in UAE. The ninth team will be based in Gujarat, in all probability.
Moreover, Adani and Goenka also showed interest in the ninth team. Other than Adani and Goenka, according to the reports, Mohanlal along with a business house based in Southern India and Salman Khan is also interested in owning an IPL team.
Although, BCCI is yet to announce officially Ahmedab looks certain to enter IPL as the 9th team. The final verdict will be given on 24th December after their annual general meeting.
EA Sports has officially revealed David Beckham as the cover star of FIFA 21 next-gen edition. David Beckham is one of the most popular and famous football players. His trademark freekicks are still fresh in the memory of all the football lovers.
Now, you’ll have the chance to play and score freekicks with David Beckham in FIFA 21. Beckham will be available in both FIFA Ultimate Team and Volta.
FIFA 21 is coming to PS5 and Xbox Series S and X on 4th December. David Beckham’s ICON will also be available from the same day, 4th of December.
EA Sports has now revealed the ratings of David Beckham’s ICON in FIFA 21. The base icon is 87 rated, while the mid icon is rated at 89. The prime Beckham icon has a rating of 92.
You can also get your hands on an untradeable, one-of-a-kind David Beckham to play in FUT or take Beckham back to the street as a Groundbreaker in VOLTA FOOTBALL. You just have to play FIFA 21 by 15th January 2021. The campaign will start on 15th December. The David Beckham item is a celebration of the legendary English midfielder’s LaLiga debut for Real Madrid in the 03/04 season.
“I’m so proud to be returning to EA SPORTS™ with my FIFA 21 Beckham Edition cover…Excited to be back on the pitch as an icon with some of my old teammates!” said Beckham.
This David Beckham item will be available for all FIFA 21 editions across all platforms.
FIFA 21 has already been globally released on 9th October. It somewhat matched the hype as EA Sports brought some changes demanded by the fans over the years.
The most notable feature of FIFA 21 is the Co-Op mode. You can play Division Rivals, Squad Battles and Friendlies with your friends.
The next-gen console, Sony’s PlayStation 5 and Microsoft’s Xbox Series S and X have also been released in November. FIFA 21 gave an option of Dual Entitlement which will allow you to upgrade the FIFA 21 from your old console to the next-gen consoles for free.
So, FIFA 21 will be coming to the PS5 and Xbos Series S and X on 4th December.
What to expect from FIFA 21 in the next-gen consoles?
Feel Next Level
PS5™ DualSense™ Haptics
Push-Pull Physics
Sights & Sounds
Move Next Level
Next Level Realism
Responsive Multi-Touch Animations
Off-Ball Humanization
See Next Level
GameCam
LiveLight Rendering
PreMatch Live
Big Goal Moments
Play Next Level
Lightning Fast Load Times
PlayStation Activities
Shared Progression
Most players who've purchased #FIFA21 on current gen consoles can now download & play the PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X|S version. Worldwide availability will follow as we ramp up towards official launch on December 4.
Many people have already got access to FIFA 21 on their next-gen consoles. EA Sports are gradually releasing the update and everyone will definitely get on 4th December on its worldwide release.
Qualcomm launched Snapdragon 865 in March of this year. Now, they have announced a better version of it which will be called Snapdragon 888. Earlier, Qualcomm was supposed to name this as Snapdragon 875. But, some people believe that the digit 8 is lucky as per the traditions, thus the name was later changed to Snapdragon 888. So, how is Snapdragon 888 better than Snapdragon 865? What is the difference between the two chips?
Manufacturing process
Snapdragon 865 was built on a 7nm manufacturing process but the Snapdragon 888 is built on a smaller size of the transistor of 5nm. This smaller size will benefit the latter by increasing the number of transistors and offering higher power efficiency.
CPU
The Snapdragon 865 has one Cortex-A77, three Cortex-A77, and four Cortex-A55. Whereas, Snapdragon 888 has one Cortex-X1, three Cortex A78, and four Cortex-A55. The Cortex A78 is considered to have 20% more power than the Cortex-A77. Thus, what we can infer from this is that Snapdragon 888 will be more powerful than Snapdragon 865. Also, Cortex-X1 might offer approximately 23% improvements over the Cortex-A78’s performance.
AI Engine
Snapdragon 865 offered only 15 TOPS or Tera operations per second. Snapdragon 888 goes a notch above and will offer 26 TOPS. This is the highest AI engine TOPS in any mobile device.
GPU
Older Snapdragon 865 will have the GPU Adreno 650 whereas the newer Snapdragon 888 possesses the GPU Adreno 660. This Adreno 660 is 35% better in terms of performance over the Adreno 650.
Of course, we really souped this thing up for gaming. The #Snapdragon 888 #5G provides unrivaled speed and stamina for elite gamers everywhere with the 3rd gen of #Snapdragon Elite Gaming, which delivers a 35% increase in GPU performance on top of the usual features it offers. pic.twitter.com/37np5nR7S4
The Snapdragon 888 beats Snapdragon 865 in the camera & image processing domain as well. The older version of SoC had Spectra 480 ISP. It can support a single camera of up to 200MP and a dual camera of up to 24MP. Snapdragon 888 will be having Spectra 580 ISP. It will support a single camera to the same level as Snapdragon 865 but it will offer up to double (48MP) support to the dual camera.
Finally, we built the #Snapdragon 888 #5G Mobile Platform to enable you to take pro-level photos and videos. With our new gigapixel ISP, you can capture photos and videos at 2.7 gigapixels per second, or 120 photos at 12 MP resolution in 1 second. 📷 💪 #SnapdragonSummitpic.twitter.com/QxnHk9npHl
Snapdragon 865 had only a single 5G SIM support, whereas, Snapdragon 888 will come up with dual 5G SIM support. The former used to offer 5G connectivity in the first slot and 2G/3G/4G connectivity in the second slot. The latter will offer the same but will also give an option of 5G connectivity in the second slot.
Okay, I am pretty late in making this article as in India, the laptop was available pretty late, and due to stock issues, I could not get it. Indeed it’s been almost 7 months since this gaming laptop has been launched; however, fortunately, I got hands-on with the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 powered by Ryzen 9 4900HS and RTX 2060 Max-Q.
The gaming laptop is indeed the best in 2020, and various reasons are supporting that, but it’s mainly because of the insane Ryzen 9 4900HS. Paired with an RTX 2060, the laptop gives great gaming performance and proves its worth for productivity and content creation.
Honestly, at first, seeing the laptop, I never felt this is a gaming one, as it’s so sleek, considering this to be a gaming laptop and Ryzen 9 in it. Overall design impressions and other views will be reserved for a full review, and this will be a performance benchmark article followed by a dedicated article on gaming benchmarks.
Performance
I knew the processor would be a beast and in India, the Ryzen 9 variant was not available at launch and did take some time to arrive. However, the prices and stocks issues have always remained a concern for the ROG Zephyrus G14 because of the heavy demand, thanks to the pandemic.
Having used a Ryzen 4000U series powered VivoBook Flip 14 laptop as a daily driver, I always wanted to test a Ryzen 4000H APU, and I did get to test the best one. The Ryzen 9 4900HS is an 8 core, 16 threaded processor with 3.0GHz base clock speed and up to 4.3GHz boost clock speed, drawing a lower 35W TDP.
It comes paired with 16 GB DDR4 3200MHz RAM and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 Max-Q 6GB GDDR6 GPU. This, on paper, is a sick combo that can not only excel in gaming as well as productivity, considering you get a 14-inch 120Hz FHD IPS-level panel with Adaptive-Sync technology and excellent colour accuracy.
One of the biggest things I hate about gaming laptops is they had been bulky for years now, and battery life is pretty bad. Thanks to AMD’s efficient chips, the ROG Zephyrus remains silent and cool during normal work or until you summon the performance mode for heavy tasks or plug-in the charger.
To get the best performance out of the laptop, use it while charging, or if you want to play or work without the charger, you use the silent mode to save battery life. Be it working or gaming, this laptop is excellent either way and although it’s costly but worth spending.
Benchmarks
The first thing you have to do is UPDATE THE BIOS, yes, its very important because the version with which comes you this performance:
Before BIOS update
Whereas updating to the latest BIOS takes the performance to:
After BIOS update
There is a huge difference in clock speeds as the processor stretches its arm to the maximum with sustained TDP, and you hear the fans are actually ramping up. So, I updated Windows 10 to the latest version, used the latest AMD and NVIDIA drivers for the tests.
Starting with Cinebench R20, we see the Ryzen 9 4900HS scoring around 4065 points in multi-core whereas scoring 468 points in single-core, having an excellent 8.69 MP ratio. This score beats even a desktop Ryzen 7 2700X or even a Core i9-10980HK as per this database.
Coming to Cinebench R15, we get a score of 1749 points which is indeed powerful as well beating the Core i9-10980HK comfortably.
On the Geekbench 5 side, we have a lucrative 7647 points in multi-core, which is absolutely incredible on a laptop! This score puts the ROG Zephyrus G14 with Ryzen 9 4900HS above the Core i7-9700K and just inches apart from the desktop Core i9-9900.
Drawing just 35W of TDP, this kind of performance is great, however, the single-core score is pretty similar to what I got with my Ryzen 7 4700U, this area needs improvement by AMD with Ryzen 5000.
The PCMark 10 scores also show the laptop as an excellent contender for productivity and content creation. Overall, it got a score of 5503 points which is brilliant for gaming as well as productivity, and in Productivity, it got a score of 7037 points, 8439 points in Essentials, and 7618 in content creation.
In GeekBench 5, the RTX 2060 Max-Q graphics got a score of 66991 points which is also pretty impressive and even better than a desktop AMD Radeon RX 5700 GPU.
In 3DMark FireStrike, we see an incredible score of 13,537 points that shows how powerful both the RTX 2060 and Ryzen 9 4900HS combo is. The graphics score I got was 14,508 points and a physics score of 20,053 points, making it one of the most powerful gaming laptops out there.
The scenario almost remains the same in 3DMark FireStrike Extreme, the laptop managing a whopping 6726 points. If you closely notice, the CPU performance is what really impressed me; with heavier loads, the Ryzen 9 4900HS doesn’t throttle, at all.
In 3DMark Time Spy, the laptop performs quite well putting up a score of 5801 points where the GPU was scoring 5503 points whereas the CPU was scoring around 8394 points.
Whereas in Time Spy Extreme, the ROG Zephyrus G14 puts up a respectable score of 2694, proving its worth in extreme test cases as well.
Last but not the least, I even tested the RTX 2060 Max-Q’s ray tracing capabilities in 3DMark’s Port Royal test, where the GPU shined with a score of 3136 points, proving you can use ray tracing on this mobile GPU.
To put this CPU to test I even tried HandBrake where I did these two rendering tests:
1080p low to high 2:30 min video in 45 seconds
720p low to 1080p high 3:30 min video in 1.58 seconds
Literally, the rendering speeds can leave you spellbound, so whether it’s gaming or productivity, indeed the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 with Ryzen 9 4900HS and RTX 2060 Max-Q is amazing! Soon, I will be posting the gaming benchmarks of the laptop for over 15 modern titles, so keep an eye here.
