■PERU
The U’s headaches worsen
Being bottom of Peru’s first division is one of several problems besetting champions Universitario, including a four-match suspension for coach Juan Reynoso for insulting a referee. Universitario have also been banned by the ADFP, which groups the 16 top-flight clubs, for favoring a different airline from the one which sponsors the championship and provides teams with air travel to matches. Reynoso was suspended by the Peruvian Football Federation for insulting the referee in Tuesday’s 2-1 defeat by Sporting Cristal, who scored a controversial winner after a player appeared to handle the ball. “The U,” as they are popularly known, said they would appeal against the ADFP suspension. The champions struck a deal with Star Peru to fly them to away matches and wore the airline’s logo on their shirts in Tuesday’s game. The ADFP has a deal with LAN Peru, a subsidiary of Chile’s LAN.
■ENGLAND
Tug-of-war over Donovan
Everton wants to keep US midfielder Landon Donovan beyond his 10-week loan period, but Los Angeles Galaxy coach Bruce Arena says he doesn’t intend to give an extension. Donovan has made an impact in the English Premier League, winning praise from club manager David Moyes and the Goodison Park fans, who have started a Facebook campaign to keep him. Donovan, who was Everton’s player of the month for January, has two games remaining with Everton in the current loan deal: against Hull City today and at Birmingham City on Saturday.
■FRANCE
Minister rips into Domenech
Sports Minister Rama Yade waded into the row over the fate of national team coach Raymond Domenech on Friday, saying he deserved the boot after Les Bleus’ disastrous showing in Euro 2008. “We should have replaced the coach after the fiasco at Euro 2008 and judged him on those bad results,” Yade told a French radio station, two days after France lost 2-0 to Spain in a friendly match. “It is a shame to see this poor style of play. We’ve got some great individual players, but the manager has been so far unable to shape a team.” France went into Euro 2008 as one of the favorites, but suffered the embarrassment of being dumped out in the first round and finished bottom of their group.
■MOROCCO
Missing defender surfaces
Trouble-prone defender Youssef Rabeh has resurfaced in his native Morocco after going missing in Russia and then threatening to quit the game. The prolonged saga over the 24-year-old’s future finally appears over after he signed for Moghreb Tetouan, the Moroccan club said yesterday. Rabeh went missing from his new Russian club Anzhi Makhachkala’s training camp in Turkey last month only two weeks after joining from Bulgarian champions Levski Sofia. In another twist, Rabeh subsequently broke his silence and announced that he was hanging up his boots.
■ENGLAND
O’Neill pans Wembley pitch
Aston Villa boss Martin O’Neill on Friday added his voice on Friday to the mounting criticism of Wembley’s playing surface after Sir Alex Ferguson blamed the pitch for the injury to striker Michael Owen. O’Neill, whose side were beaten by Ferguson’s team in the League Cup final last weekend, said: “It looked like a rock concert had been held on it the night before. It is very poor for a national stadium. There is really no excuse for it.
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