Former Brazil striker Romario was named player-coach of Vasco da Gama on Thursday, two days after announcing he had failed a dope test while playing for the team in October.
Romario, who blamed a hair loss treatment after testing positive for the banned substance finasteride, will be in charge of Vasco for the opening games of next season, club president Eurico Miranda told reporters.
The 1994 World Cup striker, still playing at the age of 41, has been provisionally suspended until Dec. 18, when Brazil's disciplinary tribunal is due to hear the case.
Miranda said Romario's role would be restricted to coaching if the tribunal extends the ban.
Vasco are due to play two friendlies in Dubai in January before taking part in the Carioca championship, one of the regional tournaments which kick off the Brazilian season in mid-January.
Romario replaces Valdir Espinosa, who quit after the season ended on Sunday.
"Romario will be player and coach until the end of the Guanabara Cup [the first half of the Carioca tournament]," Miranda said. "That is definite. Maybe he will continue a while longer. If the tribunal maintains the suspension, he will go to Dubai as coach. But I think the ban will be overturned."
"We'll speed up the tests, we'll accelerate our defense to try to help the tribunal to schedule [the trial]. That's what Romario wants," Paulo Reis, Vasco's vice president for legal affairs, told the Globo media Web site G1.
Finasteride is on the World Anti-Doping Agency's banned list because it can mask use of anabolic steroids. But Vasco asked the Brazilian soccer confederation to test the urine sample with a reagent available in Europe that would reveal whether Romario used steroids.
"The urine is still in the laboratory," Vasco physician Pedro Valente said on Thursday in an interview with the Rio de Janeiro newspaper O Globo. "Test it to find out if the finasteride masked anabolic steroids."
Taiwan’s Tai Tzu-ying on Saturday crashed out of the BWF All England Open Badminton Championships in Birmingham, with South Korea’s Se Young-an denying the world No. 3 Tai a chance at a fourth All England title. In a replay of their semi-final showdown last year, the world No. 2 Se again beat Tai, saving four match points in a thrilling deciding game to prevail 17-21, 21-19, 24-22. Tai won the women’s singles title in Birmingham in 2017, 2018 and 2020. In the three times the two superstars faced each other prior to Saturday, Tai, 22, had only come out on top once, when
California-born Lars Nootbaar had never played for Japan before the World Baseball Classic, but he has become so popular in his adopted country that sales of pepper mills have shot up in tribute to his trademark celebration. The 25-year-old outfielder — the first player born outside Japan to represent the country at the tournament — mimics twisting a pepper mill after each hit to show he wants to “grind out” a win for his team. The celebration has become a smash hit during Japan’s games in Tokyo, with Nootbaar’s teammates jumping on the bandwagon and fans bringing pepper grinders to the stadium. Nootbaar
LAST ONE STANDING: The world No. 3 was the only Taiwanese left in the tournament, while there were upsets in the men’s singles and the women’s doubles Taiwanese badminton ace Tai Tzu-ying on Thursday defeated Thailand’s Busanan Ongbamrungphan 21-19, 21-12 to reach the quarter-finals of the BWF All England Open in Birmingham. Tai, the world No. 3, needed only 40 minutes to close out the round-of-16 matchup at the Utilita Arena. In the opening game, the Taiwanese shuttler established an early 10-5 cushion, before an aggressive Ongbamrungphan fought her way back into the tie, winning nine straight points to take a 10-14 lead. The pair traded the lead to bring the scores to 18-19, but Tai held her nerve to close out the first game. After a 2-2 tie early in
When Taiwan lost to Cuba 7-1 at the World Baseball Classic (WBC) on Sunday, it was an opportunity missed. A win would have sent the team to the quarter-finals in Tokyo. Instead, the loss gave Taiwan a 2-2 record, the same as the other four teams in Pool A, but they finished last because of tiebreakers. So, was the team’s performance a success or a failure? The 2-2 record would suggest somewhere in between, but two baseball experts, National Taiwan Sport University (NTSU) associate professor Kung Jung-tang and veteran commentator Tseng Wen-cheng, gave Taiwan’s WBC performance a resounding thumbs-up. “The team’s offensive showing was
RSS