Sam Kerr the Best Player in the World? Tell Us Something We Don't Know

Soccer Football - Women's World Cup - Group C - Australia v Brazil - Stade de La Mosson, Montpellier, France - June 13, 2019 Australia's Sam Kerr celebrates after the match REUTERS/Eric Gaillard
Soccer Football - Women's World Cup - Group C - Australia v Brazil - Stade de La Mosson, Montpellier, France - June 13, 2019 Australia's Sam Kerr celebrates after the match REUTERS/Eric Gaillard
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Sam Kerr the Best Player in the World? Tell Us Something We Don't Know

Soccer Football - Women's World Cup - Group C - Australia v Brazil - Stade de La Mosson, Montpellier, France - June 13, 2019 Australia's Sam Kerr celebrates after the match REUTERS/Eric Gaillard
Soccer Football - Women's World Cup - Group C - Australia v Brazil - Stade de La Mosson, Montpellier, France - June 13, 2019 Australia's Sam Kerr celebrates after the match REUTERS/Eric Gaillard

Across all the years I’ve watched Sam Kerr play football, there’s one moment that stands out as a true illustration of her character, as an example of why she’s been voted The Guardian’s Best Female Footballer of 2019.

It’s not a goal, or a back-flip celebration, or a gesture of kindness towards a fan. It’s a moment of failure. One of the biggest in her career, perhaps, and one that feels more significant in hindsight.

In July, at the Allianz Riviera stadium in Nice, Australia were knocked out of the World Cup by Norway. Kerr, whose name had become synonymous with goal scoring in the months leading into the tournament, had missed the Matildas’ first penalty. Her teammates soon followed, their shootout plan collapsing like a sandcastle whose foundations had crumbled and slid away beneath them.

The moment I remember, though, came fifteen minutes later. The stadium had largely emptied except for a few hundred Australia fans who’d gathered near the sideline to applaud their players, some of whom were farewelling their World Cup journeys for the last time.

But Kerr didn’t join them. She sat alone out in the middle of the pitch, her knees pulled up to her chest, her head hidden from view. She was the shape of defeat: the hunched, exhausted shoulders of someone who had been carrying something heavy for years, who’d done all she could but realized it still wasn’t enough.

That moment flooded back to me when Chelsea FC announced they’d signed Kerr on a two-and-a-half-year deal, likely making her the most expensive female footballer ever. And that announcement came while this failure was still fresh in our memories, when the eyes of the world were trained upon her and she’d fallen short, both of their expectations and of her own.

Sam Kerr has been The Sam Kerr of her respective teams for years. Sky Blue FC, Perth Glory, Chicago Red Stars, the Matildas — these teams have largely revolved around what the striker has offered them. Australian and American fans who’ve watched Kerr set goal-scoring records only to break them again the following season know that she has stood head-and-shoulders above most of her colleagues. But she’s had little to show for it by way of team success. Two championship finals without a trophy was her final contribution to the W-League and the NWSL before setting off for English shores.

It’s this remarkable rise that has resulted in years’ worth of backlash from fans and players alike when Kerr has been snubbed by international football’s top gongs. Her omission from global football’s most coveted awards has always felt like a glitch, a flaw in the voting system itself; a consequence, perhaps, of European and World Cup myopia. To the Australian and American audiences who have watched her since her meteoric rise began in 2016, Kerr has always been destined for greatness, the kind of player about whom clichés are written. She’s the big fish in the small pond, if that pond also included habitual World Cup winners and Fifa Player of the Year recipients.

Europe may not be a bigger pond, but it is a different one, and one stocked with increasingly larger fish. Like her penalty in France, the whole world will be watching if she sinks or swims. And that is the point: the whole world, not just one half of it, will be watching Sam Kerr. And they’ll be watching her in her prime, in a team where she may no longer be the one relied upon to do the heavy lifting — no longer required to be The Sam Kerr. Or maybe she will. It’s as if her growing list of statistics and awards — the back-to-back Golden Boots, the MVPs, the ESPYs and Asian Player of the Years — couldn’t be believed on paper, so she had to go there and show them herself; to plant herself firmly within Europe’s field of vision, almost daring them to continue ignoring her.

But this acknowledgment by a leading European organization before she’s even set foot on the continent is itself a demonstration of why she’s there: Kerr is a player who transcends the barriers that have kept women’s football clustered and on the periphery. Her top spot also signals a shift by global football’s media towards its female athletes and the systems that have kept some less visible than others. That may, in time, become her greatest contribution to the sport.

For now, the team titles that have remained conspicuously elusive are now on the horizon, and the individual awards — though she’s perhaps too modest to admit it — are suddenly, temptingly, within reach. This is a moment for a player who missed a World Cup penalty for Australia, but who is determined not to fall short of expectations again.

Because she did eventually lift her head out of her hands on that pitch in Nice. She turned and gave that stadium one last, steely look before standing up and moving on. That, more than the goals or the records, showed us who Sam Kerr is: a player who now carries a great weight on her shoulders, who stumbles for a moment, but who does not allow herself to buckle. She was already one of the best footballers to ever play the game, whether she scored that penalty or not. And now, as she stands on the shore of a new era, Sam Kerr finally has her chance to prove it.

(The Guardian)



Motorcycling-Double Dakar Winner Sunderland Chasing Round the World Record

Rallying - Dakar Rally - Prologue - Alula to Alula - Alula, Saudi Arabia - January 5, 2024 Red Bull GASGAS Factory's Sam Sunderland in action during the prologue stage REUTERS/Hamad I Mohammed/File Photo
Rallying - Dakar Rally - Prologue - Alula to Alula - Alula, Saudi Arabia - January 5, 2024 Red Bull GASGAS Factory's Sam Sunderland in action during the prologue stage REUTERS/Hamad I Mohammed/File Photo
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Motorcycling-Double Dakar Winner Sunderland Chasing Round the World Record

Rallying - Dakar Rally - Prologue - Alula to Alula - Alula, Saudi Arabia - January 5, 2024 Red Bull GASGAS Factory's Sam Sunderland in action during the prologue stage REUTERS/Hamad I Mohammed/File Photo
Rallying - Dakar Rally - Prologue - Alula to Alula - Alula, Saudi Arabia - January 5, 2024 Red Bull GASGAS Factory's Sam Sunderland in action during the prologue stage REUTERS/Hamad I Mohammed/File Photo

Double Dakar Rally motorcycle champion Sam Sunderland is gearing up to ride around the world in 19 days, a record bid that the Briton expects to be mentally more challenging than anything he has done before.

The bid, launched on Thursday, targets a record of 19 days, eight hours and 25 minutes set in 2002 by Kevin and Julia Sanders for the fastest circumnavigation of the globe by motorcycle.

To beat the feat, which is no longer recognised by Guinness World Records because of the dangers involved, the 36-year-old will have to ride 1,000 miles every day and on public roads across Europe, Türkiye and into the Middle East, Reuters reported.

A flight will take him on to the Australian outback, New Zealand and the Americas. From there, he and the Triumph Tiger 1200 go to Morocco and loop back through Europe to Britain.

What could possibly go wrong?

"I don't think you can ride around the world and cover that many miles a day without having a few hiccups along the way," Sunderland told Reuters with a grin.

"When I try and compare it to the Dakar it's going to be probably, in some sense, tougher. Not physically but mentally.

"In the Dakar you've got a heap of adrenaline, you're super focused, things are changing quite often which makes you have to react. And this is like: 'Right, those are your miles for the day, get them done'. It's more like a mental fatigue."

 

ONE DIRECTION

 

The target time excludes ocean crossings but the journey, starting in September, must go one way around the world and start and finish at the same location on the same machine.

Two antipodal points must be reached on a journey through more than 15 countries and 13 time zones. The Dakar rally covers 5,000 miles over two weeks.

"I was trying to put it into perspective for my mum the other day, and my mum lives in Poole in the south of England, and I was like 'Mum, it's like you driving up to Scotland and perhaps halfway back every day for 19 days'," said Sunderland.

"I'm on the bike for around 17 hours (a day). I set off at 5 a.m. and arrive around 10, 11 p.m. most nights. So definitely later into the day you feel that sort of mental fatigue setting in, and to stay focused and stimulated is not that easy.

"But at least I don't have dunes and mountains to deal with and other riders in the dust, and hopefully not getting lost either."

"I need to behave, let's say, I need to follow the rules of the road and be a good boy with it," said Sunderland, who announced his retirement from professional racing last year.

Sunderland will have a support crew of six travelling behind by car, for security and assistance, but the Red Bull-backed rider expects to be well ahead.

He also hopes his bid will have a positive effect.

"In the news today, it's all sort of doom and gloom in the world, with all the wars going on," he said. "And I think it's quite nice to show people that you can still get out there and experience the world for what it really is."