Five-time Brazilian champions Flamengo are in talks with AC Milan about acquiring striker Ronaldo.
Flamengo vice president Kleber Leite said AC Milan directors have authorized the club to approach Ronaldo, who is in Brazil on vacation and for treatment of an injury.
"This is not a marketing maneuver," Leite said in Wednesday's editions of the O Globo newspaper. "It's a negotiation I've been conducting for the past three days, without sensationalism. I've talked twice with [AC Milan official] Leonardo and Ronaldo."
PHOTO: AP
The Italian club denied on its Web site that a transfer has been discussed.
"AC Milan denies that it started a negotiation with Flamengo for the transfer of Ronaldo," it said. "It denies also having authorized the Brazilian team for an eventual deal with the soccer player."
Leite said both parties appeared interested in a possible deal, but stressed that nothing had been agreed yet.
"These talks were conceptual only," he said. "We haven't talked about salaries or transfer fees. We just started to negotiate."
Leite admitted that Flamengo would be unable to match Ronaldo's salary in Europe, and said both parties would need "to adjust the difference between both markets."
Ronaldo, 31, has previously said he wants to play for Flamengo sometime in his career. His contract with Milan ends in June next year, but injuries have limited his playing time since he signed in January.
Flamengo team physician Jose Luiz Runco, who recently examined Ronaldo, said the player's recent injuries were not serious enough to hinder a transfer, Leite said.
Leonardo, a former Flamengo player who now works for Milan, confirmed to local media that he talked to Leite, but said he didn't expect a deal anytime soon.
Ronaldo, who twice won FIFA's player of the year award, led Brazil to the 2002 World Cup title in South Korea and Japan. He also was a member of the Brazil squad that won the 1994 title in the US.
Flamengo won seven of their last nine matches this season to finish third in the Brazilian league, earning a spot in next year's Copa Libertadores, Latin America's premier club competition.
"It would be an excellent signing," Flamengo coach Joel Santana told Radio Brasil. "A player of this quality would be a great gift for our fans for the 2008 season."
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