Sporting briefs

Hamburg: Dutchman Martin Jol will take over as Hamburg coach next season and has signed a contract through June 2010, the Bundesliga club announced yesterday. The 52-year-old was sacked as coach of Tottenham in October after the English side won just one of their opening 10 matches in the Premier League and slipped to third from bottom. Jol will replace compatriot Huub Stevens, who is stepping down at the end of the season and will take over at Dutch champions PSV Eindhoven.

Brazil refs: Three Brazilian referees have been dropped after making mistakes in matches at the weekend, the head of the Brazilian confederation's refereeing department said. Gutemberg de Paula Fonseca, Ricardo Marques Ribeiro and Wallace Valente will not be considered for the next round of Brazilian championship games.

Rochemback: Brazilian midfielder Fabio Rochemback is returning to Portuguese league runners-up Sporting on a three-year contract, the player told reporters after a meeting with the club management. The 26-year-old, whose three-year contract with English Premier League club Middlesbrough ends next month, played for Sporting between 2003 and 2005.

Yaya Toure: Barcelona's Ivory Coast midfielder Yaya Toure will be out of action for between six and eight weeks after surgery on a slipped disc, the Primera Liga club's medical staff said. Ricard Pruna told a news conference Toure had sustained the injury at the Africa Cup but a course of injections had enabled him to continue playing after the problem was diagnosed in March.

Prison sentence: A supporter who racially abused Valenciennes captain Abdeslam Ouaddou during a Ligue 1 match at Metz in February was handed a three-month suspended prison sentence. The 38-year-old Metz fan was also given a three-year stadium ban and fined €27,000 by a Metz court.

Arabian tours: Barcelona are to play a friendly against Al Ittihad in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia on May 26, the Primera Liga club said. The season finishes next weekend. Spanish champions Real Madrid will be in the same country on May 20 to play Al Nasr in Riyadh, in a match to celebrate the career of three-times Asian player of the year Majed Abdullah.

Laudrup: Getafe coach Michael Laudrup will be moving on at the end of the season, his agent Bayram Tutumlu was quoted as telling Globo FM by the Spanish media. "I told president Angel Torres to look for a new coach a month ago," he said. "The Sevilla offer is the best option but there are various countries interested in him."

Charity match: Around 30,000 people were in the Sanchez Pizjuan on Tuesday night to watch Sevilla take on an international all-star team in the inaugural "Champions for Africa" game, which had been organised by Frederic Kanoute in conjunction with UNICEF. Money raised will go to help construct a children's home in Bamako, Mali.

In England: Championship promotion play-off SF (second leg) Hull City vs Watford 4-1 (agg. 6-1).

Serie B: Treviso vs Grosseto 2-1.