■NETHERLANDS
Alkmaar go six points clear
Moroccan forward Mounir El Hamdaoui’s 15th goal of the season helped AZ Alkmaar beat FC Utrecht 2-0 to move six points clear at the top of the Dutch league on Friday. AZ, seeking their first title in 28 years, have not conceded a goal at home since Aug. 31 and extended their unbeaten run to 14 matches. Striker Ari set up El Hamdaoui in the eighth minute and Demy de Zeeuw netted the second in injury-time off a fast counterattack. AZ Alkmaar have 38 points. Ajax are next with 32, two ahead of FC Twente. Today, defending champions PSV Eindhoven takes on Feyenoord, while UEFA Cup hopefuls Twente play Willem II. Also, NEC Nijmegen host ADO The Hague and Ajax travel to De Graafschap.
■ENGLAND
Santa Cruz looks for move
Blackburn Rovers striker Roque Santa Cruz has admitted that he would consider leaving the Premier League outfit if “a bigger club came in for me” during next month’s transfer window. New Blackburn boss Sam Allardyce has insisted he wants the 27-year-old Paraguay forward to stay at Ewood Park, but speculation is growing linking him with Manchester City, the club of his former boss Mark Hughes. “Everybody knows my opinion [regarding a possible transfer]. I am happy at Blackburn, but also I want to keep improving my football and remain ambitious,” Santa Cruz told BBC radio on Friday. “My contract with Blackburn is clear and for that I need to continue with the club. But I am looking to again play in a big side that is in Europe and trying to win their league.”
■SCOTLAND
Darcheville to leave Rangers
Rangers striker Jean-Claude Darcheville will join French team Valenciennes on Jan. 1, the Scottish Premier League club revealed on Friday. Darcheville, 33, has opted to leave Ibrox after making just 10 appearances for Walter Smith’s side this season. The former Bordeaux star, who has scored 16 goals in all competitions for Rangers, admits it was hard to turn his back on the Glasgow outfit. “It is a difficult moment for me to leave Rangers, because I played for a year and a half here and I was very happy in Glasgow,” Darcheville told the Rangers Web site.
■SPAIN
Xavi signs Barca extension
Barcelona midfielder Xavi Hernandez, voted the best player at Euro 2008, on Friday signed an extension to his contract that will keep him at the club until 2014. “The new deal means that the Barca midfielder will be staying at the club until at least 30 June, 2014, four years more than his original contract, which was due to run out in 2010,” the club said in a statement. His buyout clause has been set at 80 million euros (US$111 million), Barcelona said in a statement. It did not mention the player’s salary, but Spanish media have said he stands to earn 7.5 million euros a year.
■ROMANIA
Becali transcripts released
Anti-corruption prosecutors on Friday made public transcripts of tapped telephone conversations of the owner of top Romanian side Steaua Bucharest, Gigi Becali, accused of corruption. The transcripts allege that Becali offered cash sums of several thousand euros to players from five clubs as an incentive when playing Steaua’s title rivals Cluj. In the conversations, Becali is heard talking to the main shareholder of Universitatea Craiova, Adrian Mititelu, about “sorting out the Cluj problem” and providing a “case” — presumed filled with cash — for players of Cluj’s city rivals Universitatea Cluj.
North Korea’s FIFA Under-17 Women’s World Cup-winning team on Saturday received a heroes’ welcome back in the capital, Pyongyang, with hundreds of people on the streets to celebrate their success. They had defeated Spain on penalties after a 1-1 draw in the U17 World Cup final in the Dominican Republic on Nov. 3. It was the second global title in two months for secretive North Korea — largely closed off to the outside world; they also lifted the FIFA U20 Women’s World Cup in September. Officials and players’ families gathered at Pyongyang International Airport to wave flowers and North Korea flags as the
Taiwan’s top table tennis player Lin Yun-ju made his debut in the US professional table tennis scene by taking on a new role as a team’s co-owner. On Wednesday, Major League Table Tennis (MLTT), founded in September last year, announced on its official Web site that Lin had become part of the ownership group of the Princeton Revolution, one of the league’s eight teams. MLTT chief executive officer Flint Lane described Lin’s investment as “another great milestone for table tennis in America,” saying that the league’s “commitment to growth and innovation is drawing attention from the best in the sport, and we’re
Coco Gauff of the US on Friday defeated top-ranked Aryna Sabalenka 7-6 (7/4), 6-3 to set up a showdown with Olympic champion Zheng Qinwen in the final of the WTA Finals, while in the doubles, Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching was eliminated. Gauff generated six break points to Belarusian Sabalenka’s four and built on early momentum in the opening set’s tiebreak that she carried through to the second set. She is the youngest player at 20 to make the final at the WTA Finals since Denmark’s Caroline Wozniacki in 2010. Zheng earlier defeated Wimbledon champion Barbora Krejcikova of the Czech Republic 6-3, 7-5 to book
For King Faisal, a 20-year-old winger from Ghana, the invitation to move to Brazil to play soccer “was a dream.” “I believed when I came here, it would help me change the life of my family and many other people,” he said in Sao Paulo. For the past year and a half, he has been playing on the under-20s squad for Sao Paulo FC, one of South America’s most prominent clubs. He and a small number of other Africans are tearing across pitches in a country known as the biggest producer and exporter of soccer stars in the world, from Pele to Neymar. For
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