ENGLAND
McDermott gets the boot
Reading sacked manager Brian McDermott yesterday as the Premier League strugglers look to breathe new life into their bid to avoid relegation. McDermott led Reading into the top-flight as Championship winners last season, but he has paid the price for failing to lift the Royals away from the bottom three. A 2-1 home defeat against fellow strugglers Aston Villa on Saturday proved the final straw for Reading owner Anton Zingarevich and just 48 hours later the club released a statement confirming McDermott had been dismissed. “Reading Football Club has announced today the departure of manager Brian McDermott,” a statement on the club’s Web site read. “Owner Anton Zingarevich wishes to place on record his thanks to Brian who had achieved great success with the club since taking over as manager in December 2009. Brian gained promotion to the Premier League last year for only the second time in the club’s history thanks to a remarkable run at the end of last season. However, in our current situation, owner Anton Zingarevich felt that a change was necessary.” Whoever takes over at the Madejski Stadium will have to work quickly to save Reading, who are currently second bottom of the table with just five wins from their 29 league games this season.
SPAIN
Granada, Zaragoza draw
Granada ended a run of three successive defeats to grab a 0-0 draw at fellow strugglers Real Zaragoza in La Liga on Monday, leaving both sides mired in the battle to avoid relegation. The visitors had a couple of chances to score through Odion Ighalo, but there was little else to separate the sides in a contest short on inspiration and littered with misplaced passes. Granada stayed 16th on 27 points with 11 games left in the season. Zaragoza, yet to win this year, are 17th with 26 points, two ahead of the relegation places.
ITALY
Conte confident after hearing
Juventus coach Antonio Conte said he was absolutely certain he would face no further action after being interrogated by the Italian Football Federation (FIGC) Disciplinary Commission over a match-fixing scandal on Monday. The 43-year-old was accompanied by three lawyers as he answered questions over a Serie B match in the 2008-2009 season involving the side he coached at the time, Bari, against Salernitana. According to the justice authorities in Bari there are suspicions the match was fixed. However, Conte, who earlier this season served a four-month suspension for failing to disclose knowledge of match-fixing during his time at Siena in the 2010-2011 season, was adamant he would not be facing further questioning or charges over the game. “I believe I have clarified everything,” Conte said. “Am I afraid of being charged? Absolutely not.”
CHINA
Tension high ahead of game
Heightened security was due to be deployed yesterday for a Japanese team’s match in Nanjing, where the worst atrocities of the invasion of China by Japan’s Imperial Army took place. Tensions were expected to be high on the pitch for the AFC Champions League game between Japan’s Vegalta Sendai and China’s Jiangsu Sainty. It is thought to be the first senior men’s soccer game involving a Japanese team in Nanjing, where invading troops launched a brutal massacre in 1937. “The players have privately said ‘We all know the significance of facing a Japanese team at home in Nanjing,’” said the jiangsu.china.com Web site, the online mouthpiece of the local government.
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