Iran’s Hossein Vafaei on Sunday said that the Crucible Theatre venue for the World Snooker Championship “smells really bad,” and the tournament could learn from China where players are “treated like stars.”
Vafaei lost his first-round clash 10-5 to former champion Judd Trump and lashed out at the conditions at the arena in Sheffield, England, which has hosted the event since 1977.
“Everything’s so bad — if you ask me if I want to come back here, I would tell you no way,” Vafaei said.
Photo: AFP
“Forget the history, you want to go somewhere really nice as a player. You walk round the Crucible and it smells really bad. You go to other countries and everything is shiny, but here it’s completely different,” he said.
“The practice room — do you see anything special? I feel like I’m practicing in a garage,” Vafaei added.
World No. 1 Ronnie O’Sullivan has already suggested the world championship should be moved to Saudi Arabia or China when the existing deal expires in 2027.
“Look at the China venues, how fantastic they treat the players, a red carpet and an opening ceremony,” Vafaei said. “The players are treated like stars, but here no one looks after the players, before and after the match no one cares who you are.”
The World Snooker Tour said in a statement that “the Crucible is a historic venue and there are limitations given the size of the backstage areas.”
“We work with the Crucible to make it as welcoming as possible for players,” it said.
The qualifying round of the World Baseball Classic (WBC) is to be held at the Taipei Dome between Feb. 21 and 25, Major League Baseball (MLB) announced today. Taiwan’s group also includes Spain, Nicaragua and South Africa, with two of the four teams advancing onto the 2026 WBC. Taiwan, currently ranked second in the world in the World Baseball Softball Confederation rankings, are favorites to come out of the group, the MLB said in an article announcing the matchups. Last year, Taiwan finished in a five-way tie in their group with two wins and two losses, but finished last on tiebreakers after giving
North Korea’s FIFA Under-17 Women’s World Cup-winning team on Saturday received a heroes’ welcome back in the capital, Pyongyang, with hundreds of people on the streets to celebrate their success. They had defeated Spain on penalties after a 1-1 draw in the U17 World Cup final in the Dominican Republic on Nov. 3. It was the second global title in two months for secretive North Korea — largely closed off to the outside world; they also lifted the FIFA U20 Women’s World Cup in September. Officials and players’ families gathered at Pyongyang International Airport to wave flowers and North Korea flags as the
For King Faisal, a 20-year-old winger from Ghana, the invitation to move to Brazil to play soccer “was a dream.” “I believed when I came here, it would help me change the life of my family and many other people,” he said in Sao Paulo. For the past year and a half, he has been playing on the under-20s squad for Sao Paulo FC, one of South America’s most prominent clubs. He and a small number of other Africans are tearing across pitches in a country known as the biggest producer and exporter of soccer stars in the world, from Pele to Neymar. For
Coco Gauff of the US on Friday defeated top-ranked Aryna Sabalenka 7-6 (7/4), 6-3 to set up a showdown with Olympic champion Zheng Qinwen in the final of the WTA Finals, while in the doubles, Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching was eliminated. Gauff generated six break points to Belarusian Sabalenka’s four and built on early momentum in the opening set’s tiebreak that she carried through to the second set. She is the youngest player at 20 to make the final at the WTA Finals since Denmark’s Caroline Wozniacki in 2010. Zheng earlier defeated Wimbledon champion Barbora Krejcikova of the Czech Republic 6-3, 7-5 to book
RSS