Vieira: Manchester City midfielder Patrick Vieira has again been left out of France's squad by Raymond Domenech for next week's friendly against European champions Spain. The 33-year-old played only one friendly game for France last year, a 1-0 defeat to Nigeria in June, and Domenech said time was running out for him to make France's squad for this year's World Cup. "He's not back at his best yet. Every player still has two and a half months to show he's in good shape and able to play for France," Domenech said.
Portsmouth: Portsmouth have started the process of going into administration and this will be completed in the High Court, a spokesman for the Premier League club's owner confirmed yesterday. Pompey's Hong Kong-based owner Balram Chainrai and his fellow investors had been in London continuing talks with representatives of four different groups interested in buying the club, but these proved unsuccessful.
Laporta: Barcelona president Joan Laporta will next week visit refugee camps in Rwanda which the club's foundation and the UN have been financing for the past two years. Laporta will visit the camps at Gihembe, Kiziba, Nyabiheke, which are home to a combined population of over 35,000 people, on Wednesday and Thursday, the European champions announced on their website.
Ronaldo: Nike will pay Real Madrid star Cristiano Ronaldo six million euros per year until 2014 under a new sponsorship deal it has reached with the Portuguese winger. The 25-year-old earned 4.5 million euros under his previous contract.
England: England will meet Japan in the Austrian city of Graz on May 30 in their last warm-up before the World Cup in South Africa from June 11-July 11. The friendly will conclude England's two-week altitude training camp at the Austrian ski resort of Irdning from May 17-29.
MotoGP: Reigning MotoGP world champion Valentino Rossi set the fastest pace of the pre-season testing yesterday in Malaysia. The Italian set a lap time of two minutes 1.068 seconds, half a second slower than his best time of 2:00.518 set last year. The second-fastest time was set by Ducati rider Casey Stoner at 2:01.219 followed closely by Andrea Dovizioso of Honda at 2:01.631.
Doping: Major League Baseball is planning to begin blood testing of minor league players for the banned substance human growth hormone (HGH) later this year, anti-doping sources told Reuters. Major League Baseball (MLB) said it was consulting experts on the issue "concerning immediate steps for our minor league drug programme" but a source familiar with the plans said he understood the tests would definitely be implemented.
Basketball: Dirk Nowitzki scored 31 points to guide the Dallas Mavericks to a 101-96 win over the Western Conference-leading Los Angeles Lakers on Wednesday. The German finished the game strongly with 13 points in the fourth quarter, while Jason Terry totalled 30 points as the Mavericks (37-21) rolled to their fifth win in a row. "We knew they were going to keep coming. Our defence won us the game," Nowitzki told reporters.
Golf: World number one Lorena Ochoa was tied in a four-way lead at four-under par in the first round yesterday at the 1.3-million-dollar HSBC Women's Champions tournament in Singapore. Joining Ochoa at the top of the leaderboard after carding 68 was US veteran Cristie Kerr, fellow American Angela Stanford and South Korea's Park Hee-Young. Japan's Ai Miyazato was one shot behind at three-under par.