ARGENTINA
River Plate go for broke
Relegation-threatened River Plate went for broke against Colon on Sunday, but the gamble of playing three central strikers in the second half almost backfired on the Argentine giants, who had to fight back from a goal down to draw 1-1. The solitary point was not enough to give desperate River some breathing space as they battle to improve their poor three-season average and keep their heads above the drop zone. River are just above the bottom four with two matches to go in the Clausura championship, but should they slip into the zone they would face a playoff against a second-division side. With his team having made little headway in the first half, River coach J.J. Lopez took off two midfielders at halftime and sent on center forwards Mariano Pavone and Gabriel Funes Mori to join Leandro Caruso in a three-pronged spearhead. The decision appeared to have backfired dramatically when wily 38-year-old striker Esteban Fuertes, the oldest active player in the Argentine top flight, put Colon ahead just before the hour-mark, side-footing past goalkeeper Juan Pablo Carrizo. However, with nine minutes left River snatched an equalizer, “Tank” Pavone passing to Funes Mori in front of goal and when the youngster missed the ball it ran loose to Caruso, who blasted it home.
FIFA
Warner’s ‘tsunami’ on hold
Suspended FIFA vice president Jack Warner has backed down for legal reasons from his threat to reveal the content of e-mails with the ruling body’s president Sepp Blatter. Warner had promised a “football tsunami” would follow his suspension by FIFA’s ethics committee last week, but on Sunday he produced little more than a gentle Caribbean breeze. In a brief speech on Sunday, Warner reiterated his innocence, but said he would not be making public the e-mails after discussions with his lawyers. “I had plans to speak to you today a bit more on this matter, but the best legal advice I received has suggested that I do not do so at this point in time and that advice I am going to respect,” he said.
BRAZIL
Notorious fan brain dead
Rosinery Mello do Nascimento, a Brazilian fan who achieved notoriety after triggering the greatest scandal in Chilean soccer, has been left brain dead after suffering an aneurysm, her family announced on Sunday. In 1989, do Nascimento, then aged 24, attended a Chile v Brazil qualifier for the 1990 World Cup at Rio de Janeiro’s Maracana Stadium. During the match she hurled a firework from the stands which landed near Chile goalkeeper Roberto Rojas. The Chile team surrounded their goalkeeper, before quitting the pitch, declaring that Rojas had been injured when the firework exploded. The referee stopped the match. Television pictures later showed that Rojas’ injuries were self-inflicted. He was subsequently banned for life. Then-manager Osvaldo Aravena and then-team doctor Daniel Rodriguez were also banned from the game.
AZERBAIJAN
Vogts pelted with loo paper
German veteran Berti Vogts, the national team coach, was pelted with toilet paper at a press conference in Baku on Sunday by journalists angry about recent results. The journalists — some of whom also gave Vogts a pitcher used for post-toilet washing in the mainly Muslim country — demanded the German’s resignation after the team’s Euro 2012 qualifier defeat to Kazakhstan on Friday. Despite the insults, Vogts said he did not intend to quit ahead of Azerbaijan’s match with Germany today.
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