ITALY
‘La Viola’ down Genoa
Fifth-placed ACF Fiorentina beat struggling Genoa 1-0 on Thursday to move into contention for a UEFA Champions League place in Serie A. Manuel Pasqual, the Tuscan club’s captain, scored in the 14th minute with a lob over former Fiorentina goalkeeper Sebastien Frey following a perfectly placed long pass from defender Gonzalo Rodriguez. With 18 points, Fiorentina moved to within a point of fourth-placed SS Lazio. Defending champions Juventus lead with 28 points, followed by Inter (24), SSC Napoli (22) and Lazio (19). Genoa remain fifth from the bottom with nine points.
BRAZIL
Neymar not expecting award
FIFA world player of the year nominee Neymar expects Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo and Andres Iniesta to be the main contenders for the award later this year. Brazil striker Neymar, who is among the 23 finalists picked for the Ballon d’Or award, said on Thursday he is having a terrific year with Santos, but does not expect to make the final three-player list announced by FIFA later this month. Neymar says “there are a many great players today” who could finish ahead of him. The 20-year-old striker says he thinks Messi should win the award because “he is ahead of everybody else,” with Ronaldo “close behind.” It is the second year in a row that Neymar has made the 23-player list. He won the Puskas Award for the most beautiful goal last year.
GERMANY
Leverkusen get court date
Bayer 04 Leverkusen are challenging UEFA at the Court of Arbitration for Sport after being fined for breaking anti-doping rules. The court said it would hear the appeal on Nov. 30. A verdict is expected several weeks later. UEFA fined Leverkusen 25,000 euros (US$32,350) in January for repeated failures to say where its players were available to provide doping samples. UEFA’s appeal panel upheld the sanction in March. Champions League and Europa League clubs must file accurate and updated details of players’ whereabouts. UEFA rules state that “club violations are recorded and accumulated over five years, with each violation being treated more seriously than the last.” Leverkusen played in the UEFA Champions League last season and were eliminated by Barcelona in the round-of-16. They are in the UEFA Europa League this season.
ENGLAND
City eye Japanese teen
Premier League champions Manchester City are set to take Japanese wunderkind Hideki Ishige to England to run the rule over the midfielder, his club Shimizu S-Pulse said. However, contrary to Japanese reports, City have yet to make an offer to sign the Asian Youth Player of the Year. The teenager has shone in recent months and has been key to Shimizu’s march to the Nabisco Cup final today, as well as their late surge in the league. Although Shimizu team manager Afshin Ghotbi wants to keep the 18-year-old within his ranks, he is also keen to give Ishige experience of a spell at City. “If you want to build top-class players, you have to give them various experiences and opportunities to see first hand what the world level is about, and what better experience for Ishige than to train with the first team of Manchester City, the champions of England, and have [manager Roberto] Mancini see him first hand and train with some of the top players in the world,” Ghotbi said to Japan’s Kyodo News. Ishige is set to spend time with City in January.
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
A soccer jersey carrying a national map including disputed Western Sahara has become a hot commodity in Morocco after a diplomatic dispute with Algeria. Retailers said RS Berkane jerseys have been flying off the shelves after a Confederation of African Football (CAF) Cup match against Algerian club USM Alger was canceled last month over the jerseys. “We are overwhelmed by the influx of messages and requests,” said Brahim Rabii, representative of the official RS Berkane jersey distributor. Algeria broke off diplomatic relations with Morocco in 2021, partly over the issue of Western Sahara. The former Spanish colony is largely controlled by Morocco, but claimed