■ SCOTLAND
Things look grim for Gretna
Gretna’s future looked in doubt on Tuesday after the club resigned from the Scottish Football League (SFL). Heavy debts had forced the club into financial administration in March. Gretna shot from non-league soccer to the top flight between 2002 and last year and reached the 2006 Scottish Cup final. Gretna have been struggling to survive since owner Brooks Mileson fell ill in March and was forced to withdraw his financial support. The club was deducted 10 points while being forced to let players go and was relegated from the Scottish Premier League to Division One. Gretna were demoted to the third division by the SFL after the club could not guarantee it could complete another season in the first division.
■BULGARIA
Debts cost CSKA dear
Champions CSKA Sofia were refused permission to compete in next season’s Champions League by governing body UEFA on Tuesday because of unpaid debts. The decision provoked a violent reaction from CSKA fans, who booed and pelted club president Alexandre Tomov with plastic glasses and bottles during a press conference. “CSKA Sofia has not received its permit from UEFA to compete in European club competitions,” anounced Krassin Krastev, who works for the licensing committee of the Bulgarian soccer federation. While the club, who were due to compete in the Champions League third qualifying round, have appealed to UEFA to extend their deadline, Tomov having announced that the debts could be paid off by today, they had yet to get a response. They also risk being demoted to the Second Division according to the executive director of the national soccer federation Borislav Popov, who said that the club owed money to the Government and banks for the past three years and that wages and transfer fees had not been settled.
■ENGLAND
Villa promote kids’ charity
Aston Villa are forgoing a lucrative shirt sponsor to promote a children’s charity.The Premier League club has followed the lead of FC Barcelona’s free tie-up with UNICEF. Villa will publicize the work of Acorns children’s hospices in central England on its claret and blue jerseys after a multimillion dollar deal with an Internet gaming company expired. “Yes, the shirts have monetary value, but they also have emotional value to fans and this is something to give back to them,’’ said Duncan Riddle, the club’s head of community relations. Villa are the first Premier League club to shun a lucrative sponsorship deal. “Real credit must go to Aston Villa for being the first Premier League club to use their shirt sponsorship to highlight their charity partnership with Acorns,’’ Premier League chief executive Richard Scudamore said.
■GERMANY
Massive win triggers probe
A suspicious 54-1 win in a weekend lower-league match in the Cologne area is to be probed, local news reports said on Tuesday. Rheinkassel-Langel II claimed the controversial win over DJK Loewe II which earned them promotion into a higher tier on goal difference from Germania Nippes II, whose 10-0 win at Ditib-Tuerk II turned out to be in vain. Germania were 37 goals ahead of Rheinkassel before the final round. But Rheinkassel made up the deficit, with 41 of the 54 goals scored in the second half alone. “This is a shame. Such a result cannot stand. Anyone involved in football must have doubts,” said local soccer official Hermann-Josef Schmitz who announced an investigation.
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