English soccer's biggest prize could be staying in US hands.
After Malcolm Glazer's Manchester United wrested the Premier League title away from Chelsea's Russian owner Roman Abramovich last season, Liverpool's Tom Hicks and George Gillett have opened their wallets to bring the trophy down the road to Anfield this season.
Hicks and Gillett, who own baseball and hockey franchises and bought control of Liverpool last season, have given manager Rafael Benitez the funds to make 16 new player signings since the Reds finished third last term and lost to AC Milan in the Champions League final.
Benitez has brought in Spanish star Fernando Torres, Dutch international Ryan Babel and Ukraine's Andriy Voronin to join a strikeforce which already features Dutch star Dirk Kuyt and England's Peter Crouch.
Liverpool, who won the Champions League in 2005, are now more determined than ever to win the English league for the first time since 1990 -- before the Premier League began.
"The squad has improved, the manager has been backed with good money and he's spent it well and now it's time for the players to deliver," team captain Steven Gerrard said. "The Premier League, that's the one. That's our main priority."
Glazer, who also owns the NFL's Tampa Bay Buccaneers, will be out to stop Liverpool and has given Manchester United's veteran Scottish manager Alex Ferguson millions to spend to strengthen an already impressive squad lineup.
United have finally acquired England midfielder Owen Hargreaves from Bayern Munich as well as captured Portuguese forward Nani and Brazilian Anderson. Ferguson has so far been frustrated by a contract dispute in his bid to get Argentina striker Carlos Tevez from West Ham.
"The top four have all done a bit of buying and added to their squad," Ferguson said. "Chelsea have a big, strong squad, so you don't expect much change there and both Arsenal and Liverpool were over 20 points behind us last season. They won't want to be 20 points behind us again."
Chelsea, with the biggest spending power of all since Abramovich bought the club three years ago, have been comparatively modest in the transfer market compared with previous years. But the Blues have still brought in Claudio Pizarro from Bayern Munich, Florent Malouda from Lyon and Tal Ben Haim from Bolton.
"Our rivals have strengthened but so have we," Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho said. "I don't think it's going to be who spends the most money who wins the league. That has never been the case. It's always been who has the fighting spirit, togetherness and which of the big players had the better season."
"Cristiano Ronaldo had a good season last year and was the main reason United won the league. This year we need two or three important players in attack to come up with the goods and that's what we'll be trying to do," he said.
Arsenal, reportedly the target of a possible takeover by US businessman Stan Kroenke, has settled for Brazilian-born Croatian striker Eduardo da Silva after reluctantly selling Thierry Henry to Barcelona.
If the transfer dealings are a guide, Liverpool and Manchester United appear to have the most ambition of the traditional four big contenders, suggesting their rival US owners will be fighting it out for the title next May.
But they are not the only big spenders.
The clubs in the world's richest soccer league now have even more cash to spend thanks to a huge hike in TV revenue, attracting more overseas investment. There could even be a strong and long overdue challenge from Manchester City.
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