■ Baseball
Yankees eye `Little Matsui'
The New York Yankees are keeping a close eye on Seibu Lions shortstop Kazuo Matsui, widely regarded as the next Japanese player who could make the transition to the major leagues. John Cox, the Yankees' director of Pacific Rim scouting, was in the stands on Friday as the Lions defeated the Orix BlueWave 7-4 in Kobe. Matsui, who will officially become a free agent on Aug. 24, connected for his 23rd homer of the season -- a game-tying solo shot in the top of the third. Scouts from five major league teams, including the Boston Red Sox, have attended Seibu games this season. The 28-year-old Matsui, known as "Little Matsui," currently has a .294 batting average along with 126 hits and 53 RBIs for the second-place Lions.
■ Soccer
Fabien Barthez defended
Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson came to the defense of goalkeeper Fabien Barthez on Friday, saying the French international is being unfairly criticized. "The criticism Fabien is getting at the moment is a bit unfair, and I don't like it," Ferguson told the club's official TV station. Barthez was United's first-choice 'keeper for most of last season, but Ferguson replaced him with Roy Carroll after a quarterfinal loss to Real Madrid in the Champions League. Barthez was also in goal for United's only preseason loss this summer -- a 3-1 defeat to Sporting Lisbon -- and made a blunder against Stoke in a reserve game Wednesday. A Marc Goodfellow lob hit the crossbar, bounced off Barthez's head and went into the net. American goalkeeper Tim Howard is expected to start Saturday when United plays Bolton as the Premier League season begins. "There is something wrong when you start having a go at someone for conceding the kind of goal he did on Wednesday," Ferguson said. "It was an absolute freak. It is purely because of who he is."
■ Boxing
Jesus Chavez wins decision
Jesus "El Matador" Chavez won a unanimous 12-round decision over Sirimongkol Singmanassuk to take the WBC Super Featherweight Title on Friday night. Two judges scored the bout 117-11 and another had it 118-110. Chavez (40-2, 28 KOs) controlled the fight from the outset, outpunching Singmanassuk with a flurry of shots to the head in the first two rounds. Singmanassuk (43-2, 26 KOs) of Thailand tried to use his counter-punching style to offset the aggressive Chavez but his punches landed few and far between. Both fighters weighed in at the maximum allowed 59kg.
■ Soccer
Ranieri not optimistic
Chelsea manager Claudio Ranieri said Friday his star-studded team wasn't good enough to win the Premier League this season, even though the club has spent more than P?70 million (US$111 million) on players over the summer. "Only a stupid man would think that we can win the title this season," he said. Earlier in the offseason, Ranieri suggested Chelsea would be in position to win the league in two years. He expects defending champion Manchester United, runner-up Arsenal and fifth-place Liverpool to compete for the top spot. "An intelligent man would know that there are three big teams -- Manchester United, Liverpool and Arsenal -- who are settled and have been around for years. It's impossible to compare us with them. We have only just started building here, and there is a big difference between them and us."
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier