Impoverished former giants America have been drawn to meet last year’s champions, Once Caldas, in Colombia’s Clausura soccer championship quarter-finals in a season when they could be relegated.
America, who used to be rich on the back of drugs cartel money, scraped into the last eight after beating Deportes Tolima 4-1 away over the weekend to finish eighth in the Clausura table.
However, the four-time Copa Libertadores finalists, who have struggled in the lower reaches of the first division since the turn of the century, also face a promotion/relegation playoff.
America, Colombia’s Red Devils, will meet the second division runners-up, who are yet to be decided, in two legs of a playoff once their championship campaign is over.
The Clausura knockout rounds start this weekend with America at home in the first leg on Saturday. If they win the Clausura, which ends just before Christmas, the promotion/relegation playoff will be staged in the last week of next month.
“For a big team like America, it’s shameful to play the promotion/relegation [playoff] because this team can go for bigger things,” coach Wilson Piedrahita was quoted as saying on the independent soccer Web site www.colombia.com/futbol. “At the moment, I’m more interested in the team remaining in the first division.”
Relegation in Colombia is decided by a team’s average points over three seasons and America are second-bottom of this table, which is different from the -championship standings, meaning they have ended up in the playoff.
The Cali-based team will be without defender Andres Cadavid until next season after he got an eight-match ban for a second bad tackle in the championship, this time on Uruguayan Jose Luis Tancredi of Millonarios, who suffered a broken leg.
Cadavid was also fined 635,400 Colombian pesos (US$325) and America face costs including Tancredi’s medical and hospital bills and potential loss of bonuses.
However, they did have their fears allayed that a ruling by the league’s governing body Dimayor might put title holders Atletico Nacional, winners of the Apertura in the first half of the season, into the knockout rounds at their expense.
Dimayor docked Deportes Quindio three points after their coach Fernando Castro gave instructions from behind the bench while serving a suspension during the recent 2-1 win over Nacional, but the points were not handed to their opponents.
America, who reached the Copa Libertadores final three years in a row from 1985 to 1987 and again in 1996, have won 13 Colombian league titles, a national record they share with Millonarios, but only one since 2002.
America were placed on the so-called Clinton List in the 1990s because of their connections with Cali drugs cartels.
Their assets in the US were frozen and other companies were ordered not to do business with the club, plunging them into economic crisis.
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
RSS