■ITALY
Earrings to be auctioned
Media reports say authorities are planning to auction off diamond earrings seized from Diego Maradona as part-payment of the former Napoli star’s unpaid tax bill. The earrings were confiscated by tax authorities last year while Maradona was in an Alpine resort in northern Italy. The Bolzano tax police in charge of the operation at the time put the value at 4,000 euros (US$5,770). Italian newspaper La Repubblica and others said on Tuesday that the auction would take place on Jan. 14, probably in Bolzano. Local police could not immediately confirm the reports. Italian authorities say the former soccer great, currently coach of Argentina, owes almost 30 million euros in unpaid income tax. The debt dates to the 1980s when Maradona played for Napoli.
■GERMANY
Matthaus to divorce
Former international and World Cup-winning skipper Lothar Matthaus has split from his fourth wife Liliana and is set to enter divorce proceedings after just a year of marriage, the Bunte tabloid reported on Tuesday. “I don’t like the word divorce, but I am going to consult with lawyers,” 1990 World Cup star Matthaus said. “I have the impression Liliana is subject to some bad influences,” the former Bayern Munich and Inter star said. Former model Liliana, 22, met Matthaus at the Munich beer festival in 2007 and the pair rapidly became a couple, but she left the family home early last month while insisting nobody else was involved. “Sunday evening she came to see me saying she still loved me and that she missed me, but that she needed time to think,” said Matthaus, who tied the knot with Liliana on New Year’s Day last year in Las Vegas. Matthaus, who has yet to shine as a coach, has regularly had his colorful life pored over by the media. He was married to first wife Sylvia from 1981 to 1992, Swiss second wife Lolita from 1994 to 1999 and then was with Serbian Marijana from 2003 to 2007.
■AUSTRIA
England to train in Austria
Fabio Capello’s England squad will travel to Austria for a training camp at altitude prior to the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, the camp’s organizer said on Tuesday. “We have organized the camp in conjunction with the English Football Federation,” said Nikolaus Pichler, a representative of the IFCS company which organizes training camps for professional teams in the region of Styria. “The team manager, Fabio Capello, [will] be there with the team in Irdning, which he is already familiar with. He has already visited here with other teams, such as AS Roma and Real Madrid.” The exact dates of England’s stay will be announced soon, added Pichler, who said he is negotiating with two other national teams interested in setting up camp in Styria. Serbia and South Korea have already booked stays for the end of May and the beginning of June.
■INDIA
Two players arrested
A top Indian soccer club was embroiled in an embarrassing controversy yesterday after two Nigerian players were accused of molesting a female flight attendant. The players, along with the rest of the Churchill Brothers squad, were on their way to Kolkata from Goa when the alleged incident took place, local media reported. The team was offloaded during a stop-over in Mumbai, where the police arrested Nigerian strikers Odafa Onyeka Okolie and Felix Chimaokwu, as well as team manager Mario Soares on charges of molestation, the Hindustan Times said. They were later released on bail ahead of their match in Kolkata today.
Taiwanese world No. 1 women’s doubles star Hsieh Su-wei on Saturday overcame a first-set loss to win her opening match at the Madrid Open. Top seeds Hsieh and partner Elise Mertens of Belgium, with whom she last month won her fourth Indian Wells women’s doubles title, bounced back from a rocky first set to beat Asia Muhammad of the US and Aldila Sutjiadi of Indonesia 2-6, 6-4, 10-2. Hsieh and Mertens were next to face Heather Watson of the UK and Xu Yifan of China in the round of 16. Thirty-eight-year-old Hsieh last month reclaimed her world No. 1 spot after her Indian
EYES ON THE PRIZE: Armed with three solid men’s singles shuttlers and doubles Olympic champions, Taiwan aim to make their first Thomas Cup semi-final, Chou Tien-chen said Taiwanese badminton star Tai Tzu-ying yesterday quickly dispatched Malaysia’s Goh Jin Wei in straight sets, while her male counterpart Chou Tien-chen beat Germany’s Kai Schaefer, as Taiwan’s women’s and men’s teams won their Group B opening rounds of the TotalEnergies BWF Thomas and Uber Cup Finals in Chengdu, China. World No. 5 Tai beat Goh 21-19, 22-20 in a speedy 33 minutes, her fourth straight victory over the world No. 24 shuttler since they first faced each other in the quarter-finals of the 2018 Malaysia Open, where Tai went on to win the women’s singles title. Malaysia followed up Tai’s opening victory
Chen Yi-tung (陳奕通) secured a historic Olympic berth on Sunday by winning the senior men’s foil event at the 2024 Asia Oceania Zonal Olympic Fencing Qualifiers in United Arab Emirates. Chen defeated Samuel Elijah of Singapore 15-4 in the final in Dubai to secure the only wild card in the event, making him the first male Olympian fencer from Taiwan in 36 years and only the sixth Taiwanese fencer to ever qualify for the quadrennial event. The last appearance by a Taiwanese male fencer at the Olympics was in 1988, when Wang San-tsai (王三財) and Cheng Ming-hsiang (鄭明祥) competed in Seoul. The
Rafael Nadal on Tuesday lost in straight sets to 31st-ranked Jiri Lehecka in the fourth round at the Madrid Open, while Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei advanced to the semi-finals in the women’s doubles. Nadal said that he was feeling good about his progress following his latest injury layoff. Nadal called it a “positive week” in every way and said his body held up well. “I was able to play four matches, a couple of tough matches,” Nadal said. “So very positive, winning three matches, playing four matches at the high level of tennis. I enjoyed a lot playing at home. I leave here with