BRAZIL
Ancelotti joins national team
Real Madrid’s Italian coach Carlo Ancelotti is set to become the first foreigner in almost 60 years to coach Brazil’s national team, Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF) president president Ednaldo Rodriguez said on Tuesday. Ancelotti, 64, has a season remaining on his contract with Real, which he has said he would like to honor, would take over Brazil in time for the Copa America in the US from June next year. The CBF had earlier announced that Fluminense coach Fernando Diniz would take charge of the team for the coming year. “This guy [Diniz] is a coach who has a nice style of play,” Rodriguez told CNN Brazil. “His style is similar to the coach who will assume the role at the Copa America, Ancelotti.”
LA LIGA
Scandal haunts Osasuna
UEFA yesterday removed Spanish club CA Osasuna from the UEFA Europa Conference League, because former club officials were implicated in fixing matches a decade ago. Osasuna said in a statement that it would appeal the ruling at the Court of Arbitration for Sport. By finishing seventh in La Liga last season, Osasuna earned a place in the playoff round of the third-tier European club competition. UEFA’s verdict lifts eighth-place Athletic Bilbao into the competition instead. Osasuna officials who are no longer with the club were implicated in fixing matches between 2012 and 2014. However, UEFA’s competition rules state that teams implicated in fixing any game played since April 2007 can be removed from the next competition for which they qualify.
BRAZIL
Neymar fined US$3.3m
Brazilian soccer star Neymar was fined about 16 million reals (US$3.3 million) for contravening local environmental rules during renovations at his mansion in the city of Mangaratiba outside Rio de Janeiro. Mangaratiba City Hall said in a statement on Monday night that it had issued four fines. “Among the dozens of infractions that were noticed at the player’s property are the start of an unauthorized construction which requires environmental control; capture of a river course and detouring it without authorization; moving rock and sand; suppressing vegetation without authorization and non-compliance of an embargo,” the statement said. A city hall document said that the latter charge is related to Neymar’s decision to swim in the artificial lake despite local authorities showing up to forbid him from that area due to environmental consequences.
BRAZILIAN SERIE A
Luan hurt in fan attack
Midfielder Luan was attacked by angry fans in Sao Paulo, Sport Club Corinthians Paulista said on Tuesday. Local media reported that the 30-year-old Luan, an Olympic gold medalist with Brazil in 2016, sustained minor injuries after he was assaulted at a party he threw for about 10 guests in a hotel. “Corinthians received with sadness and indignation the information that our athlete Luan was assaulted by alleged fans in the early hours of this Tuesday morning,” the club said in a statement. “After another repugnant case of violence, Corinthians regrets the current moment of intolerance that dominates Brazilian soccer.” Luan, once regarded as one of the best players in South America, joined Corinthians in 2020, but has not delivered for the club. Many fans want him to leave.
Shohei Ohtani and Clayton Kershaw on Friday joined their Los Angeles Dodgers teammates in sticking their fists out to show off their glittering World Series rings at a ceremony. “There’s just a lot of excitement, probably more than I can ever recall with the Dodger fan base and our players,” manager Dave Roberts said before Los Angeles rallied to beat the Detroit Tigers 8-5 in 10 innings. “What a way to cap off the first two days of celebrations,” Roberts said afterward. “By far the best opening week I’ve ever experienced. I just couldn’t have scripted it any better.” A choir in the
After fleeing Sudan when civil war erupted, Al-Hilal captain Mohamed Abdelrahman and his teammates have defied the odds to reach the CAF Champions League quarter-finals. They are today to face title-holders Al-Ahly of Egypt in Cairo, with the return match in the Mauritanian capital, Nouakchott, on Tuesday next week. Al-Hilal and biggest domestic rivals Al-Merrikh relocated to Mauritania after a power struggle broke out in April 2023 between the Sudanese army and a paramilitary force. The civil war has claimed tens of thousands of lives and displaced more than 12 million people, according to the UN. The Democratic Republic of the Congo-born Al-Hilal
The famously raucous Hong Kong Sevens are to start today in a big test for a shiny new stadium at the heart of a major US$3.85 billion sports park in the territory. Officials are keeping their fingers crossed that the premier event in Hong Kong’s sporting and social calendar goes off without a hitch at the 50,000-seat Kai Tak Stadium. They hope to entice major European soccer teams to visit in the next few months, with reports in December last year saying that Liverpool were in talks about a pre-season tour. Coldplay are to perform there next month, all part of Hong Kong’s
Shohei Ohtani, Teoscar Hernandez and Tommy Edman on Thursday smashed home runs to give the reigning World Series champions the Los Angeles Dodgers a 5-4 victory over Detroit on the MLB’s opening day in the US. The Dodgers, who won two season-opening games in Tokyo last week, raised their championship banner on a day when 28 clubs launched the season in the US. Dodgers manager Dave Roberts shuffled his batting lineup with all four leadoff hitters finally healthy as Ohtani was followed by Mookie Betts, then Hernandez and Freddie Freeman in the cleanup spot, switching places with Hernandez. “There’s a Teoscar tax to
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