Brazilian star Ronaldo’s return to action after a 13-month knee injury layoff was marred by an ugly media scrum following Wednesday’s Copa Brasil game that left the 32-year-old nursing a black eye.
The three-time world player of the year entered the action as a substitute in the 68th minute and was loudly cheered by most of the 30,000 fans who packed Itumbiara’s Juscelino Kubitschek Stadium in central Brazil.
He survived his 23 minutes intact in Corinthians’ 2-0 win but was then injured by a microphone as around two dozen reporters and cameramen surrounded him on the pitch for interviews at the end of the game.
BADLY BRUISED
Pictures showed Ronaldo being struck as he was escorted off and one showed him with a badly bruised and swollen right eye. Following the incident, he left the stadium without talking to the media.
“He had a good debut, moved well and tried a few dribbles,” Corinthians coach Mano Menezes told reporters.
Last February, Ronaldo ruptured a tendon in his left knee in a Serie A game playing for AC Milan against Livorno and later left the Italian club.
He joined Corinthians in December in a surprise move and has taken nearly three months to reach match fitness.
Ronaldo was involved in another off-field controversy last week when he was fined by the club for arriving late at the team hotel after a day off.
Corinthians were already 2-0 ahead when Ronaldo came on, Chicao and Andre Santos having scored either side of halftime.
FAVORITE SHIRT
Wearing his favorite number nine shirt, Ronaldo had only a few touches of the ball in an unspectacular debut. It was his first game for a Brazilian club since leaving Cruzeiro in 1994.
The former Barcelona, Real Madrid, PSV Eindhoven and Inter Milan player had previously suffered two serious injuries to his other knee and many observers speculated that he would not recover from the latest setback.
Even before the latest injury, he had been suffering from a loss of form and weight problems and had not played for Brazil since his much-criticised performance at the 2002 World Cup.
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