■GREECE
Ex-AEK owner gets jail term
Former AEK Athens owner Makis Psomiadis was sentenced to four years in jail by an Athens court on Tuesday for fraud. Psomiadis, a current shareholder in rival Greek Super League club Nea Kavala, and two of his cousins were given four-year jail sentences for defrauding 11 million euros (US$16.03 million) from AEK’s accounts. The court ruled that Psomiadis, a former tabloid newspaper and nightclub owner, had recorded several invoices in AEK’s accounts for construction work at their training ground between July 2001 and January 2003 that was never carried out. Psomiadis is currently free while considering an appeal to another court. Psomiadis was handed a 12-year prison sentence in October 2002 for forgery but was freed one week later on health grounds after producing evidence he was suffering from tuberculosis.
■FIFA
Robben Island to play host
FIFA’s executive committee will hold its next meeting on South Africa’s once infamous Robben Island on Dec. 3, the governing body’s president Sepp Blatter said on Tuesday. “Holding it on Robben Island is a historic matter,” Blatter told a news conference after Tuesday’s executive committee meeting in Rio de Janeiro. Robben Island is where former president Nelson Mandela was held for 18 of the 27 years he was imprisoned by the apartheid regime that ruled South Africa. Among the issues to be decided at the meeting will be the seeding for the 2010 World Cup finals.
■COLOMBIA
Two fans die in clashes
Two fans died in separate clashes with hooligans, officials said on Tuesday. Fans of clubs Deportes Tolima and Deportivo Cali clashed on the way back from their teams’ away matches. Some Cali hooligans chased three Tolima fans, one of whom fell down a ravine, said Colonel Israel Robayo, police commander in the province of Tolima. Several Cali fans were arrested. Meanwhile, Bogota police said fans of local clubs Millonarios and Independiente Santa Fe clashed in a western neighborhood of the city, where one was stabbed to death.
■BRUNEI
FIFA suspends association
The Football Association of Brunei Darussalam (BAFA) has been suspended by FIFA for government interference in its affairs, soccer’s world governing body said yesterday. “It started with a decision by the Brunei authorities to dissolve BAFA and to replace it with a new federation in December 2008,” FIFA said in a statement. The suspension, which applies globally, means Brunei and its clubs are unable to take part in international competitions. One Brunei club, DPMM, plays in Singapore’s S-League, but will no longer be allowed to do so. The suspension will only be lifted when BAFA is reinstated by the government.
■SPAIN
Guardiola cleared of doping
Barcelona coach Pep Guardiola has been cleared in a long-running doping saga, the Italian Olympic Committee said in a statement on Tuesday. Guardiola served a four-month ban for failing tests for nandrolone while a Brescia player in 2001 but in May the Italian soccer federation finally upheld his appeal. Italy’s anti-doping prosecutor challenged the decision but a tribunal has now ruled in Guardiola’s favor. “The issue has been put to bed and that’s that. The good thing is that it’s over and we can look forward,” Guardiola told a news conference after Barca’s 2-0 Champions League win over Dynamo Kiev.
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