Zimbabwe's Benjani Mwaruwari found himself marooned in no-man's land on Friday after his proposed deadline-day transfer from Portsmouth to Manchester City hit the buffers.
Benjani, the third top scorer in the Premier League with 12 goals, has found himself unwanted by both clubs.
The Press Association claimed that City officials got cold feet on the £7.6 million (US$15.1 million) transfer, after the player turned up several hours late having missed two flights to Manchester and tried to abort the deal.
Portsmouth, however, claim the paperwork had all gone through and that the 29-year-old should be a City player.
They were hoping to use the fee to cover the cost of bringing in England striker Jermain Defoe from Tottenham, a deal they secured in the last minutes of the transfer window on Thursday.
The Premier League are investigating, but a decision will now have to wait until tomorrow.
"If Benji is back we'll just have to see where we go with that one. He's a good player and we didn't want to lose him but we had to try to balance the books," Portsmouth boss Harry Redknapp said.
ALVES PROTEST FILED
AFP, THE HAGUE, NETHERLANDS
Dutch top flight outfit AZ 67 Alkmaar are to file a protest with FIFA over the contract Brazilian Alfonso Alves has signed with English Premier League side Middlesbrough, insisting they have a claim on the player.
"We have a totally valid contract with Alves and we want to make that clear with FIFA. FIFA will then judge what should happen," said Alkmaar spokesman Klaas Wilting, who did not rule out legal action.
"The contract we have is clear: Alves must come to Alkmaar," he said, adding that "you can't sign two contracts."
Alves was playing for another Dutch side, Heerenveen, but was to have moved on to Alkmaar after signing a contract with them.
However, on Thursday, the Dutch Football Federation gave the player the green light to join Boro as he was no longer registered with Heerenveen and not registered with Alkmaar either.
He has signed a four-year deal with Middlesbrough with reports indicating a fee in the region of 16 million euros (US$23.7 million).
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