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■ BASKETBALL

Maccabi replace coach

Israeli basketball champions Maccabi Tel Aviv have replaced coach Oded Kattash after a disappointing start to the season. Kattash will be replaced by Maccabi general manager Tzvika Sherf, a veteran Israeli coach who also heads the national team. "The club needs a change," Kattash said in a statement. Kattash, a star player for Maccabi whose career was cut short by a knee injury, got the coaching job after only two years' experience. "Perhaps we erred in picking an inexperienced person," club vice chairman David Federman told Channel 10 TV. Despite loading up with expensive foreign contract players, the team has lost several games in Euroleague competition and, unusually for Maccabi, also lost three local league games. Longtime Maccabi chairman Shimon Mizrahi insisted that Kattash left of his own accord. "He was not fired or told to quit," Mizrahi said.



■ SOCCER

Player suffered heart failure

Motherwell captain Phil O'Donnell died of heart failure, the club said on Tuesday. "The post-mortem revealed that Phil had suffered left ventricular failure of the heart," Motherwell team doctor Robert Liddle said in a statement by the Scottish Premier League team. The 35-year-old midfielder collapsed on Saturday as he was about to be substituted at Fir Park during Motherwell's 5-3 league victory over Dundee United. O'Donnell was treated on the field for about five minutes and then carried off on a stretcher and taken by ambulance to a nearby hospital, but the club later announced his death. His funeral will take place tomorrow. Motherwell's next two league matches have been postponed, while yesterday's game between Glasgow rivals Celtic and Rangers was also called off as a mark of respect for O'Donnell.



■ FOOTBALL

A.J. Smith signs extension

A.J. Smith has signed a five-year contract extension to serve as general manager of the San Diego Chargers, the playoff-bound National Football League (NFL) club announced in San Diego on Tuesday. The deal is reportedly worth US$11 million, which would give the 58-year-old executive the third-highest average salary in the NFL for his job. "By re-signing and extending our key, core players, we now have one of the league's most stable rosters. Those efforts have helped us build a young team that's winning now and built for success for years to come," Chargers president Dean Spanos said. Smith, the Chargers' general manager since 2003, built a team that went 14-2 last season but lost in the first round of the playoffs.



■ ATHLETICS

Sun Yingjie plans comeback

A Chinese long-distance runner who tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs has registered for a marathon this weekend in what would be her first race after a two-year suspension, a race official said yesterday. Sun Yingjie, who won bronze in the 10,000m at the 2003 Paris World Championships, failed a urine test for the testosterone derivative androsterone at the Chinese National Games in 2005. Her two-year ban was upheld despite a civil court's ruling that another athlete spiked her drink with the drug. She has registered for the Xiamen International Marathon on Saturday in southern China, said an official in the race's competition department, surnamed Chen, who refused to give her full name. Chen said she didn't know if Sun planned to race.
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