Real Madrid goalkeeper and captain Iker Casillas will miss their Champions League last-16 tie against Manchester United after being ruled out for up to 12 weeks following surgery on his left hand on Friday.
The nine-times Euro Cup champions reacted swiftly by signing their former ’keeper Diego Lopez from Sevilla FC as cover, the Andalusian club said on their Web site.
“The operation has gone well,” said Miguel Del Cerro, the doctor who carried out the surgery on Casillas.
“The recovery period is eight to 12 weeks,” he told reporters after having inserted two screws in the ’keeper’s hand.
Spain’s No. 1 was injured during the Copa del Rey quarter-final second leg against Valencia on Wednesday when defender Alvaro Arbeloa accidentally kicked his hand while trying to clear the ball.
Jose Mourinho’s side went on to win the tie 3-1 on aggregate, setting up a semi-final against archrivals and holders Barcelona.
Casillas will also miss both legs of the Cope del Rey clasico. The first game is on Wednesday and the return will be on Feb. 26 or Feb. 27, ahead of the weekend La Liga meeting between Spain’s two biggest clubs.
The ’keeper will also be unavailable to Spain manager Vicente del Bosque when the world and European champions play Uruguay in a friendly on Feb. 6.
Lopez, 31, came up through the youth ranks at Real and was No. 2 to Casillas in the first team for two seasons between 2005 and 2007 before moving to Villarreal.
He was sold to Sevilla when Villarreal were relegated last season, but has struggled to secure a place in the starting line-up.
Lopez will be valued for his Champions League and international experience, having been a member of the Spain squad on several occasions.
According to media reports, he has agreed a three-and-a-half year deal with Real for a transfer fee of about 3.5 million euros (US$4.72 million).
Mourinho surprisingly dropped Casillas for the league games on either side of the mid-season break, a move which proved extremely unpopular among home fans. Reserve ’keeper Antonio Adan made two starts in his place.
In the second game, Adan was sent off, Casillas was restored to the starting line up and since then, Real’s defense has improved.
The equalizer conceded by Adan against Valencia on Wednesday was the first goal scored against Real in five matches.
The longer-than-expected recovery time for Casillas adds to the problems facing Mourinho after a turbulent week in which Angel Di Maria and Fabio Coentrao picked up suspensions that rule them out of the Copa del Rey first leg, along with Sergio Ramos.
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