AFRICA
Cameroon lose in Kinshasa
Cameroon were defeated 1-0 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo on Sunday as they launched a bid to win the All-Africa Games title a record fourth consecutive time. Mutombo Kazadi from local club Vita scored the only goal in Kinshasa midway through the second half of a final round, first-leg qualifier at the 80,000-seat Martyrs Stadium. The country that emerges victorious after the return match on July 9 in Yaounde will join seven others at the quadrennial multi-sport championships which Mozambique host during September. A waterlogged Nyayo National Stadium pitch prevented Kenya and Uganda playing in Nairobi and the match was rescheduled for noon yesterday. Nigeria came from behind to defeat Ghana 3-1 in Benin City on Saturday and South Africa defeated Zimbabwe 2-0 in Daveyton, while the fixture between Guinea and Senegal was put back a week.
CAMEROON
Song fined for blanking Eto’o
Arsenal midfielder Alexander Song has been fined for refusing a reconciliatory handshake from Samuel Eto’o, reflecting continuing divisions in the Cameroon team. Song was fined 1 million francs (US$2,160) after a disciplinary hearing of the Cameroon Football Federation, state radio reported at the weekend. Song had been charged along with Eto’o and Tottenham Hotspur defender Benoit Assou Ekotto, who did not attend the hearing. Song, who has not played for his country since a bust-up with captain Eto’o during the World Cup last year, had refused to shake hands with the African Footballer of the Year when the two met ahead of an Africa Cup of Nations qualifier against Senegal earlier this month. Eto’o was found not guilty at the hearing of missing a training session and showing indiscipline during the Senegal match when he disputed a substitution made by coach Javier Clemente. Assou Ekotto was given an official warning for missing the match without explanation.
JAPAN
Usami signs for Bayern
Highly rated teenager Takashi Usami has signed for Germany’s Bayern Munich, J-League club Gamba Osaka said yesterday, the striker vowing to become the new Arjen Robben. The 19-year-old Usami, called up for Japan’s senior squad for the first time earlier this month, is expected to make the switch permanent if his six-month loan deal is successful. “I was worried about leaving the team during the [Japanese] season, but chances like this don’t come along every day,” Usami told a press conference. “I decided it was the right thing to do to take on this big challenge. To be honest it still hasn’t sunk in.”
SPAIN
Rivalry left ‘wounds’: coach
Coach Vicente del Bosque says the intense rivalry between Real Madrid and Barcelona has left “wounds” on the national team which won last year’s World Cup that need to be healed. The two clubs — who supplied the bulk of Spain’s lineup at the tournament in South Africa — were involved in a series of spiky exchanges before their series of four matches in 18 days in April and last month. Real coach Jose Mourinho was handed a five-match ban by UEFA after he made allegations of favoritism toward Barcelona following Real’s 2-0 defeat in the first leg of their Champions League semi-final. “We will have to heal the wounds as soon as possible. The clashes have left their mark because there are people who use the Madrid-Barcelona rivalry to divide and disengage,” Del Bosque said in an interview published in the Barcelona-based daily La Vanguardia.
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