Sporting briefs

Sahin: Real Madrid have reached an agreement to sign Turkish midfielder Nuri Sahin from Borussia Dortmund for six seasons, the Spanish club said. The 22-year-old was under contract until 2013, but Dortmund’s bosses had said they may lose him once the season ends on May 14. He has scored six goals this season to help put Dortmund on route to win its first Bundesliga title since the 2001/02 season.

McInnes: St Johnstone manager Derek McInnes is in talks with Brentford and is considering taking over as coach at the London third division side for next season. The highly-regarded McInnes, who has been in charge at McDiarmid Park since 2007 and who again steered the Perth side to safety in the Premier League this year, said that he had spoken to Brentford officials.

Brighi: Roma midfielder Matteo Brighi will be out for several weeks after fractusing his shin in last weekend’s 0-0 draw with Milan at the Olympic Stadium. Brighi was hurt in a collision with Gennaro Gattuso of Milan in the first half. He will miss tomorrow’s Italian Cup semi-final, second leg, against Inter.

Ref kicked: CAF chiefs will hold a meeting after an African Cham-pions League fixture in Tunisia was abandoned because of a crowd invasion. TV showed a Club Africain player pushing the Malian referee after a penalty appeal was rejected in a third round game against Al-Hilal. Several fans then ran on to the pitch and the match officials were kicked as they tried to flee.

Rio stalker: A woman found guilty of stalking Rio Ferdinand was jailed for 10 weeks yesterday. Susanne Ibru, 38, was also put on a restraining order for 10 years after last month being convicted of harassing the United defender. Judge Nicholas Sanders said he was “concerned” by Ibru’s behaviour since she had been in custody.

Halilhodzic: Coach Vahid Halilhodzic said he was sacked by a Dinamo Zagreb official while the Croatian champions claimed he had stepped down. Halilhodzic claimed he clashed with the club president Zdravko Mamic during the 1-0 win over Zapresic .

UEFA U-17: England vs Serbia 3-0; Denmark vs France 1-0 (England, France in semi-finals).

Golf: Tiger Woods’s tumble down the rankings continued as he slipped to eighth place behind England’s Paul Casey who moved up one. Woods lost his top status to another En-glishman, Lee Westwood on October 31 and, with his long win-less streak extending, he has gra-dually slipped further down the table. Europe now has six of the top seven players in the world, with only Phil Mickelson in fourth spot break-ing their stranglehold.

Rugby Union: The Melbourne Rebels said they had lost confidence in Danny Cipriani and have dropped him from an upcoming tour after more revelations of late-night revelry from the English star. Cipriani’s future with the Australian franchise looks at the end after officials said there was further evidence of his “off-field breaches of the team’s behavioural standards.” The England fly-half has been left out of the Rebels’ squad, which leaves today for a two-match Super 15 tour to South Africa.

Basket, NBA: Dallas Mavericks ended Los Angeles Lakers’ reign late Sunday, sweeping the two-time defending champions out of the play-offs with a 122-86 Western Conference second-round victory. Jason Terry tied an NBA post-season record with nine three-pointers and the Mav-ericks equalled another play-off mark with 20 three-pointers as they wrapped up the best-of-seven series in the minimum four games. The Mavericks have endured a series of early play-off exits since losing the 2006 NBA final.

Tennis: France’s Gilles Simon piled more clay court misery on American Andy Roddick to advance to the second round of the Rome International tournament yesterday. Simon came away 6-3, 6-3 winner against the no. 12 seed and next meets either Argen-tine Ignacio Chela or American John Isner. For Roddick it was a second first round clay-court exit in as many weeks after falling a week ago at the Madrid Open.