LA LIGA
Modric extends contract
Croatian midfielder Luka Modric has extended his contract with Real Madrid by one season until 2018, the La Liga giants said on Wednesday. The 28-year-old Modric, capped 78 times by Croatia, has been with Real since 2012, playing 106 matches and scoring six goals over the past two seasons. The former Tottenham Hotspur playmaker has been part of a Real squad that won the 2012 Supercopa; the Copa del Rey and Champions League last season; and the UEFA Super Cup last week.
PREMIER LEAGUE
City re-sign Dzeko until 2018
Manchester City striker Edin Dzeko on Wednesday signed a new four-year contract that will keep him at the Premier League champions until at least 2018. The Bosnia international’s previous deal had only 10 months to run and manager Manuel Pellegrini’s determination to keep the striker was fully justified by his performance as City beat Newcastle United 2-0 on Sunday. “I’m really happy here at City — it’s a second home to me so it was an easy decision to stay for the long-term,” Dzeko told the City Web site.
NIGERIA
Fire guts federation’s HQ
The Nigerian Football Federation (NFF), riven by in-fighting and sanctioned by FIFA, suffered a fresh blow on Wednesday after fire gutted its headquarters. The blaze at the two-story building in Abuja, known as the Glass House, broke out as staff arrived for work, a reporter said. Flames took hold from an office on the upper floor and spread quickly before firefighters arrived. Federation technical director Emmanuel Ikpeme said the blaze appeared to have started in the office of a senior accounts manager. “We thought it was something that could be contained by the fire extinguisher, but before we knew it, the fire spread to the general secretary’s office and from there, there couldn’t be any control,” he said. “You can imagine, most of the NFF’s sensitive and important documents of the NFF are in the secretary-general’s office and for the fire to destroy the accountants’ office is very sad.”
PREMIER LEAGUE
Man U worries Scholes
Manchester United great Paul Scholes has said he is scared about the club’s future and believes they could spiral into decline in the same way Liverpool did in the 1990s. Scholes, who played for United throughout his career and won 11 Premier League titles, says the club need to sign five top players to arrest the slump that saw them fail to qualify for the UEFA Champions League last season. United finished seventh in the Premier League in May and began the latest campaign under new manager Louis van Gaal with a 2-1 defeat to Swansea City on Saturday. “I am scared for United. Genuinely scared they could go into the wilderness in the same way Liverpool did in the 1990s,” Scholes said in the Independent yesterday. “Let me be clear: I am sick of having to criticize the club to which I gave my life as a footballer, but United need to arrest their decline.”
PREMIER LEAGUE
FA probe Mackay’s conduct
Preferred candidate Malky Mackay is out of the running to take charge of Crystal Palace after the Football Association opened an investigation into the Scot’s conduct during his time at Cardiff City, the Daily Mirror and Daily Mail reported. Both papers said the FA are looking into a series of text messages sent between Mackay and Crystal Palace director of soccer Iain Moody when they worked together at Cardiff. The papers also said that Moody was expected to resign.
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