AC Milan are raring to strike back at Boca Juniors in the Club World Cup opening today with Ronaldo, back from injury, ready to join playmaker Kaka and fellow goal-machine Filippo Inzaghi.
Both Milan and Boca, Argentina's most crowned club who defeated the Italian side in the 2003 Intercontinental Cup final, have left behind disappointments in their home leagues to face other continental champions here.
Despite advancing to the Champions League knock-out rounds, Milan are currently languishing 11th in the Serie A, while Boca have just lost the battle for the Argentine league title to Lanus.
"I have a burning desire to win the Club World Cup, especially with it being my second crack at this title," Kaka said. "I haven't forgotten our defeat to Boca Juniors."
Boca midfielder Alvaro Gonzalez said: "It would be very nice to win this competition, especially to compensate people for the support they gave us when things didn't turn out well."
The annual tournament, in its third year under the current format, kicks off with a play-off between Iran's Sepahan and Waitakere United of New Zealand. Milan and Boca are seeded in the semi-finals set for the middle of next week.
"This time, my teammates and I will be hugely motivated to see things work out right for us," said the 25-year-old Kaka, who won France's prestigious Ballon d'Or award for best player of the year on Sunday.
Kaka admitted the Club World Cup is seen as a "bonus" in Europe below the Champions League although it is the "most important title" in his native Brazil.
"Things are different this year," he said. "In brief, we're 100 percent focused on the job in hand and we want that Cup."
Europe's best have been shamed by Brazilian sides in the Club World Cup, which merged the traditional Intercontinental Cup featuring European and South American champions and a one-off club world championship in 2000.
Sao Paulo beat Liverpool 1-0 in 2005 and Internacional defeated Barcelona by the same score last year. In the 2000 tournament, Corinthians beat fellow Brazilian side Vasco da Gama.
Boca coach Miguel Russo said before his team's departure for Tokyo that he could not wait for the Club World Cup "because I see that the team is in good shape."
Milan coach Carlo Ancelotti said: "This World Cup is the main objective of the season. We'll try to bring home another Cup, to cap off a very positive year."
In the 2003 final, the Argentines beat the Rossoneri 3-1 on penalties after a 1-1 draw in 120 minutes.
Tunisia's Etoile Sahel will clash with Mexico's Pachuca here on Sunday for the right to face Boca in the semi-finals.
On Milan's side of the tournament, the winners of the Sepahan-Waitakere play-off will face Asian champions Urawa Reds of Japan in the quarter-finals.
Sepahan, the AFC Champions League runners-up, are taking the berth reserved for the hosts.
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