Tag: Federer

For quite some time, People had been dying to see that vintage Roger Federer smile that comes on his face only when he wins a title. He had last smiled in that fashion in June 2013 and finally, after about 9 months, he did so again yesterday when he got better of Tomas Berdych of Czech Republic in the final match of the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championship.

Federer would have been very confident going into the match against Berdych as he had unexpectedly defeated the no. 2 player in the world Novak Djokovic in the semi final, but, his confidence was not translating into performance at the start of the match. He mistimed quite a lot of shots in the opening set and as a result, he lost it.

But, he showed his ‘never say die’ attitude in the second and the third set and achieved the glory.

This was the 78^th singles title won by Federer. Now, he is at the third position in the all time list of the players who have had the most number of singles title under their belt.

Speaking in the post match interview, Federer said, “In the last few tournaments, I had not been able to produce my best performance in the big matches, but, in this tournament, I did so. It really feels wonderful to win a title after a while.”

“It’s always good to win because that gives you points and thus, the luxury of withdrawing from some of the tournaments. You can sort out your schedule once you win a big tournament like Grand Slam.”

Federer is currently not even in top 5 in the world rankings. He has just got 2950 points which is a lot lesser than what the top ranked player Rafael Nadal has got.

Yesterday was a memorable day for the tennis legend Roger Federer. Not because he won something big and created history, it’s because the Swiss football club FC Basel pulled off a big upset as they got better of Chelsea in a Champions League encounter at Stamford Bridge.

Now, if you are thinking what the relationship between Federer and FC Basel is, let me tell you he is one of the most passionate fans of this football club. He hardly misses any game that Basel plays and yesterday was really a special day for him. He expressed his delight on Twitter after Basel’s victory.

The Swiss maestro wrote on his Twitter account, “It was a great day for all the FC Basel Fans. I am feeling glad.”

Chelsea was the hot favourite to win this game and their start was up to the expectations. They were the ones who took the lead and they maintained that lead till the 70^th minute, but, they seemed to have taken it a bit too easy towards the end and ended up conceding 2 goals in the last 20 minutes which secured Basel’s win.

When Chelsea had faced Basel at St. Jakob Park in the first leg of the Europa League semi final last season, Federer had predicted the outcome of the game. He had said that it would be a tight game, but, Basel would pull it off by 2-1. That prediction proved to be wrong at that time, but, it eventually proved to be true after a gap of 5 months.

The stand-out performers for Basel in yesterday’s game were Marco Streller and Mohamed Salah. Both these players scored one goal each.

FC Basel’s next Champions League game is against Schalke 04 on 1^st of October.