Liverpool boss Rafael Benitez admitted on Friday that he was mystified by the latest hamstring problem to be suffered by star Spanish striker Fernando Torres.
Torres faces at least three weeks out after picking up the injury in the 1-0 Champions League victory over Marseille at Anfield on Wednesday.
He has already missed five weeks of the campaign with a similar complaint.
PHOTO: AFP
“Clearly because he has been injured before it’s a concern,” Benitez said. “We are working with the medical staff, trying to analyze the reason why and trying to prevent it happening again. He was sharp, so it was a surprise. It was the end of the game. We just need to do exercises and check the balance of the player.”
Benitez, whose side face West Ham United in the English Premier League tomorrow, added that there are no guarantees as to when Torres will be back in the team.
“I was with him and the physios and he’s already working. But it always depends on the player,” he said. “It’s a blow, especially because we lost him before and we’ve been talking about the understanding between him and Robbie Keane, and him and Steven Gerrard. It’s important not to put too much pressure on it and for him to keep working.”
Torres will definitely miss tomorrow’s match and probably the fixtures against Blackburn Rovers, PSV Eindhoven and Hull City.
The Reds have already coped without their star striker this season, recording victories over Manchester United and Chelsea in his absence. Benitez is confident his squad can once again prove themselves.
“We have Keane and when we bought him it was with the idea that he can score goals. We also have Dirk Kuyt, David Ngog and Ryan Babel,” the manager told the club’s Web site.
“Hopefully they can score enough goals and we can talk about Fernando in three weeks’ time. We have shown enough quality and character without him and hopefully we can do it again,” Benitez said.
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