Les rideaux sont tombés lundi 20 mai sur la 28 ème édition du Tournoi de l'Espoir National. Cette compétition destinée au jeunes joueurs de tennis (filles et garçons), de 12 à 18 ans a tenu ses promesses et comblé les attentes.
Au total une soixantaine de participants venus de presque tous les départements du pays ont pris part à la compétition. Ce mini championnat qui donne l'occasion aux meilleurs de confirmer leurs talents et leurs niveaux a également permis aux techniciens et encadreurs fédéraux de constater la bonne progression du niveau des jeunes talents du tennis bénininois. Les meilleurs ont été récompensés avec les cordages, les ballons de tennis et médailles.
Ainsi à l'issue de la compétition plusieurs ont confirmé. C'est le cas de HONFOGA Eleaza chez les 18 ans et moins filles et Gandonou Beni chez les 18 et moins garçons.
Les résultats
12 ans et moins filles
HONFOGA Gisele bat KOUAGOU Tena 3/6 6/2 6/3
12 ans et moins Garçons
BEBO Juvenal bat ALLOWAKINNOU Ivan 6/2 6/4
18 ans et moins filles
HONFOGA Eleaza bat HONVOU Djemila 6/1 6/2
18 ans et moins Garçons
GANDONOU Beni bat BECOUDE Precieux 5/7 6/0 7/5
Ça se suit depuis quelques jours maintenant. Ce mardi, c'est au tour du Portugal et de l'Angleterre d'annoncer leurs différentes listes de joueurs convoqués pour disputer l'Euro 2024 en Allemagne.
Roberto Martinez, sélectionneur du Portugal a dévoilé ce mardi sa liste de 26 joueurs sélectionnés pour l'Euro 2024. Dans un groupe portugais de grande qualité, on retrouve également Cristiano Ronaldo, Ruben Dias, Pepe, Bruno Fernandes, Rafael Leao ou encore Joao Félix.
La liste du Portugal pour l'Euro 2024 :
Gardiens : Diogo Costa (FC Porto), José Sà (Wolverhampton), Rui Patricio (AS Rome).
Défenseurs : Danilo Pereira (PSG), Ruben Dias (Manchester City), Antonio Silva (Benfica), Gonçalo Inàcio (Sporting CP), Pepe (FC Porto), Nuno Mendes (PSG), Diogo Dalot (Manchester United), Joao Cancelo (FC Barcelone), Nelson Semedo (Wolverhampton).
Milieux : Joao Palhinha (Fulham), Joao Neves (Benfica), Ruben Neves (Al-Hilal), Vitinha (PSG), Bernardo Silva (Manchester City), Bruno Fernandes (Manchester United), Otàvio (Al-Nassr).
Attaquants : Rafael Leao (Milan AC), Joao Félix (FC Barcelone), Pedro Neto (Wolverhampton), Diogo Jota (Liverpool), Francisco Conceiçao (FC Porto), Gonçalo Ramos (PSG), Cristiano Ronaldo (Al-Nassr).
De son côté, Gareth Southgate s'est passé de Jadon Sancho et de Marcus Rashford. Découvrez la liste des Three Lions d'Angleterre :
Gardiens : Dean Henderson (Crystal Palace), Jordan Pickford (Everton), Aaron Ramsdale (Arsenal), James Trafford (Burnley).
Défenseurs : Jarrad Branthwaite (Everton), Lewis Dunk (Brighton), Joe Gomez (Liverpool), Marc Guéhi (Crystal Palace), Ezri Konsa (Aston Villa), Harry Maguire (Manchester United), Jarrel Quansah (Liverpool), Luke Shaw (Manchester United), John Stones (Manchester City), Kieran Trippier (Newcastle), Kyle Walker (Manchester City).
Milieux : Trent Alexander-Arnold (Liverpool), Conor Gallagher (Chelsea), Curtis Jones (Liverpool), Kobbie Mainoo (Manchester United), Declan Rice (Arsenal), Adam Wharton (Crystal Palace).
Attaquants : Jude Bellingham (Real Madrid), Jarrod Bowen (West Ham), Eberechi Eze (Crystal Palace), Phil Foden (Manchester City), Anthony Gordon (Newcastle), Jack Grealish (Manchester City), Harry Kane (Bayern Munich), James Maddison (Tottenham), Cole Palmer (Chelsea), Bukayo Saka (Arsenal), Ivan Toney (Brentford), Ollie Watkins (Aston Villa).
Pour rappel, le Championnat d'Europe de Football (Euro 2024) démarre le 14 juin pour prendre fin le 14 juillet.
J.S
C'est la grosse bombe qui secoue le monde du football ce mardi 21 Mai 2024. Toni Kroos, milieu de terrain allemand évoluant au Real Madrid, a annoncé qu'il prendra sa retraite professionnelle juste après l'Euro 2024.
En fin de contrat avec le Real Madrid, Toni Kroos va mettre un terme à sa carrière cet été. Pourtant, les rumeurs ces derniers jours faisaient croire que le joueur allemand allait prolonger son contrat d'un an avec le Real Madrid. Finalement, Kroos a décidé de partir et de raccrocher les crampons à 34 ans.
Le Madrilène a annoncé sa décision dans une lettre adressée aux fans du Real Madrid cet été sur les réseaux sociaux. "Après 10 ans, à la fin de la saison, ce chapitre (au Real Madrid) s'achève. (...) Cette décision signifie que ma carrière de footballeur professionnel se terminera cet été, après le Championnat d'Europe. Comme je l'ai toujours dit, le Real Madrid est et sera mon dernier club. Je suis heureux et fier d'avoir trouvé le bon moment pour prendre ma décision. Mon ambition a toujours été de terminer ma carrière au plus haut niveau", a-t-il écrit.
Toni Kroos, une carrière à 33 trophées
Lors de son passage au Bayern (2007-2014), Toni Kroos a remporté trois championnats d'Allemagne, une Ligue des Champions, trois Coupes d'Allemagne, une Supercoupe d'Allemagne, une Supercoupe de l'UEFA et un Mondial des clubs. Au Real Madrid, il a étoffé de manière spectaculaire son palmarès. Arrivé à l'été 2014, Kroos a remporté quatre championnats d'Espagne, quatre Ligues des Champions, cinq Coupes du Monde des clubs, quatre Supercoupes de l'UEFA, une Coupe d'Espagne, quatre Supercoupes d'Espagne. 32 titres auxquels il faut ajouter la Coupe du monde remportée avec l'Allemagne en 2014. Kroos restera l'un des plus grands milieux de sa génération.
J.S
Credit: Johan Ordoñez/AFP via Getty Images
By Inés M. Pousadela
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, May 21 2024 (IPS)
Regional experts called it Panama’s most important election since the 1989 US invasion that deposed de facto president General Manuel Noriega. Panamanians went to the polls amid high inflation and unemployment, with a stagnating economy. Endemic corruption was also high on their long list of concerns, along with access to water, education and a collapsing social security system.
The winner, conservative lawyer José Raúl Mulino, was a stand-in for former president Ricardo Martinelli, disqualified from running due to a money laundering conviction. Martinelli remains popular regardless and managed to transfer his popularity to his less charismatic substitute. For those who backed Mulino, nostalgia for the economic stability and growth that marked Martinelli’s pro-business administration seemed to outweigh his proven record of corruption.
On the face of it, the election results seemed to demonstrate the primacy of economic considerations in voters’ minds, with hopes for growth trumping corruption fatigue. But that’s not the whole story.
Free, fair and uncertain
On 5 May, Panamanians went to the polls to elect a president and vice-president, 71 National Assembly members, 20 Central American Parliament deputies and local representatives.
The elections were undoubtedly clean and transparent, with integrity guaranteed by the participation of civil society in the National Scrutiny Board. Results were announced quickly and all losing candidates accepted them. But the pre-voting context was far less straightforward. Until the very last minute the now president-elect wasn’t sure he’d be allowed to run.
Mulino served as security minister in Martinelli’s government between 2009 and 2014. Ten years later, largely unknown to the electorate, he entered the race as Martinelli’s running mate for Achieving Goals (Realizando Metas, RM), a party Martinelli founded in 2021.
In July 2023, Martinelli was convicted of money laundering and sentenced to 10 years in prison, making him ineligible to run. He appealed, but the Electoral Tribunal didn’t make a final decision on his disqualification until March. To avoid jail, he sought asylum in the Nicaraguan embassy in Panama City. Mulino took his place, but his presidential candidacy was also challenged. For two months, he became the centre of attention as the Electoral Tribunal and Supreme Court debated whether he could ran. The positive court ruling came on 3 May, just two days before voting. Mulino also received a lot of help from Martinelli, who campaigned for him online while holed up in the Nicaraguan embassy.
A fragmented vote
Eight candidates contested the presidency, a five-year position with no possibility of a second consecutive term. With no runoff, a fragmented vote was likely to produce a winner with far less than half the vote. Mulino’s winning total of 34.2 per cent wasn’t unusual: two previous presidents received similarly low shares, including the outgoing centre-left president, Laurentino Cortizo of the Democratic Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario Democrático, PRD).
Mulino’s closest competitor, on 24.6 per cent, was Ricardo Lombana, a centre-right anti-corruption outsider. In third place was Martin Torrijos, another former president and Martinelli’s immediate predecessor, now distanced from his original party, the PRD, and running on the ticket of the Christian democratic People’s Party (Partido Popular, PP). Fourth was Rómulo Roux, of the centre-right Democratic Change (Cambio Democrático, CD), the party Martinelli founded and used as a vehicle for the presidency, but which he abandoned in 2020 amid leadership disputes.
The parties that once dominated the political landscape fared badly. The Panameñista Party didn’t even have a presidential candidate; instead, its leader joined Roux as his running mate. The PRD, which led three of the last six governments, fell below six per cent.
Independents on the rise
In 1998, Martinelli’s CD was the first to challenge the dominance of traditional parties. Later changes to the electoral law allowed independent candidates to stand. Their growing prominence reflects widespread dissatisfaction with traditional parties and the political class.
In the 5 May congressional elections, independent candidates won more seats than any political party – 20, up from just five. Mulino’s new RM party took 14 seats. The PRD lost a whopping 22, retaining only 13. The new composition of the National Assembly speaks of a thirst for renewal that doesn’t match the choice for corruption and impunity the presidential results might suggest.
Spotlight on the economy
For the three decades before the pandemic, the Panamanian economy grew by around six per cent a year, helped by income from the Panama Canal and construction and mining booms. But then challenges started piling up. The economy slowed down. Jobs disappeared. Inflation rose.
Activity in the Panama Canal has been severely affected by the impacts of climate change, with a drop in water levels. Drought has also reduced access to drinking water in some regions. Meanwhile an unprecedented rise in the numbers of migrants travelling through the Darién Gap, the treacherous stretch of jungle at the border with Colombia, has stretched the resources of the humanitarian assistance system.
Mulino campaigned on promises to improve the economy by attracting investment, developing infrastructure and creating jobs. He pledged to improve access to safe water and promised to ‘shut down’ the Darién Gap.
Mulino’s voters may have accepted the bargain he appeared to offer – prosperity in exchange for impunity – but many more people voted against him than for. He was able to win because the vote against was so fragmented. The number of independents who entered Congress is just one of many indicators of widespread dissatisfaction with politicians like him.
Mulino will have to deliver on his promises to attract investment and create jobs. He’ll need to reduce inequalities and deal with growing insecurity, the situation in the Darién Gap and a pensions system on the brink of insolvency. Last but not least, he’ll need to strengthen institutions and tackle corruption – which begs the question of what he’ll do about Martinelli.
The challenges are many and great, and Mulino won’t have anything close to a legislative majority. The National Assembly is so fragmented that a high-level deal with one or two parties won’t be enough. Mulino seemed to recognise this on election night when he called for national unity and said he was open to dialogue and consensus. This was a first step in the direction he should keep following.
Inés M. Pousadela is CIVICUS Senior Research Specialist, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.
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Written by Kamil Baranik, Micaela Del Monte, Silvia Kotanidis and Hendrik Mildebrath.
This briefing discusses the issue of the ‘Europeanisation’ of the ballot papers in Member States ahead of the 2024 European Parliament elections. The European Parliament has made two recent attempts at electoral reform seeking to ‘Europeanise the European elections. The second of these – still to be agreed with the Council – seeks to align electoral rules across the EU Member States. With the 2024 European elections imminent, it is useful to take a closer look at the rules as they currently stand.
The focus of this briefing is the notion of the ‘Europeanisation’ of the electoral ballot in its narrowest sense, namely whether ballot papers used in each Member State for the European Parliament elections can include the logos and/or names of the European political parties to which the respective national political parties are affiliated.
This exploration of the issue of the visibility of European political parties on the ballot papers for European elections is broken down into three parts. The first is the rationale behind and progress in the ‘Europeanisation’ of the European electoral process, with a particular focus on reforms geared towards showing the affiliation of national parties to European political parties on the ballot paper. The EU institutions have taken several initiatives intended to inject mutual European features into the national political processes ahead of the elections to the European Parliament. The second is a discussion of the data on European features of national ballot papers for the 2014 and 2019 European Parliament elections. The third part analyses the current state of ballot papers in all Member States, i.e. those applicable to the 2024 European elections, examining the extent to which Member States allow or forbid the visibility of European political party logos and/or names on the ballot paper for the European elections. This last section includes a synopsis of the similarities and differences between Member States.
Read the complete briefing on ‘‘Europeanising’ the electoral ballot‘ in the Think Tank pages of the European Parliament.
Le Bénin s'est s'incliné pour son premier match de la Coupe d'Afrique des Nations Scolaire U15 à Zanzibar en Tanzanie. Les Guépards U15 ont perdu 1-2 face à la Guinée.
Tôt ce mardi matin, le Bénin jouait la Guinée pour son premier match de la CAN Scolaire U15 2024. Face aux Champions d'Afrique en titre, les Guépards ont perdu. La Guinée l'a emporté grâce à un pénalty transformé à la toute dernière minute de jeu. Le score de la partie est de 2 buts à 1. A noter que le but béninois est signé du capitaine Abdoul Bariou ASSANI.
Au total sept équipes prennent part à cette compétition.
Logé dans le groupe B aux côtésde l'Afrique du Sud, la Guinée, et la Libye, le Bénin a encore des chances de qualifications pour la suite de la compétition.
Rappelons que pour la 1ère édition qui s'est déroulée en Afrique du Sud, le Bénin avait fini quatrième.
J.S
Groupe A : Tanzanie, Sénégal, Ouganda.
Groupe B : Afrique du Sud, Bénin, Guinée, Libye.