■ENGLAND
Gerrard signs new deal
Liverpool manager Rafael Benitez on Thursday saluted skipper Steven Gerrard’s contract extension, claiming it would serve to bolster the team’s renewed push for silverware. Gerrard in April agreed a deal to stay at Anfield until 2013, completing the formalities after returning from his summer holiday to begin pre-season training. Dirk Kuyt, Fernando Torres, Daniel Agger and Yossi Benayoun have also penned new deals. “We have spent this summer trying to secure the players we have,” Benitez said. “It’s really good to keep Kuyt, Torres, Agger, Benayoun and Steven. They are the here and now of the club and for the future it is really good. We are really pleased. We have a lot of good players who want to stay, to win and compete.”
■MOROCCO
Lemerre out of a job
Roger Lemerre’s departure as Morocco coach was made official on Thursday, ending weeks of speculation over the future of the French manager. Lemerre leaves a year into his four-year contract after a resolution on pay-off terms was reached with the Morocco Football Federation, spokesman Abdelah Ghellam told reporters. Lemerre, who won the European Championship with France in 2000 and four years later achieved a unique double by guiding Tunisia to the Africa Cup of Nations trophy, took over Morocco a year ago with a mandate to secure World Cup qualification. However, after an easy passage through the first phase of the preliminaries, Morocco have struggled in their final-round group, picking up two points from their first three matches.
■ENGLAND
Aurelio injures his knee
Liverpool defender Fabio Aurelio could miss the start of the season after injuring his knee on holiday and requiring a cartilage operation. “He was injured playing with his son and was really disappointed because he was enjoying the summer,” Liverpool manager Rafael Benitez told reporters on Thursday. “He had the operation — he has had a problem with his cartilage — so he will be one month, maximum two months, not six months like I see in the press.” The 29-year-old Brazilian fullback was a regular last season, making 33 appearances.
■ITALY
Marchionni joins Fiorentina
Juventus winger Marco Marchionni agreed to join Fiorentina on Thursday, opening the way for Arsenal target Felipe Melo to move in the opposite direction. “Florence was always my first choice,” Marchionni told reporters after initially rejecting Fiorentina’s offer which threatened the player plus cash deal involving Brazil midfielder Melo. If Melo completes a move to Turin he will join up with compatriot and former Werder Bremen playmaker Diego, who was being unveiled on Juve’s first day of pre-season training on Thursday. Diego will wear No. 28 because Alessandro Del Piero holds his preferred No. 10 shirt.
■SPAIN
Pennant signs for Zaragoza
Liverpool winger Jermaine Pennant completed his switch from Anfield to promoted Spanish side Real Zaragoza on Thursday on a three-year deal. The 26-year-old, who played in the 2007 Champions League final, said he had snubbed offers from other clubs to play in Spain. “I wanted to come to Spain. I had offers from other important clubs in Europe, but I wanted to sign for Real Zaragoza,” Pennant, who played 163 matches in three seasons at Liverpool, told the club’s Web site. “I want to get started and do well in the championship.”
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