Wes Brown: Manchester United defender Wes Brown became the second England player yesterday to retire from international football, dealing another worrying snub to coach Fabio Capello. Just hours after Blackburn goalkeeper Paul Robinson said he was quitting, Brown, who was left out of the squad to face Hungary at Wembley on Wednesday, also called time on his international career.
Olympiakos: Spanish coach Ernesto Valverde has agreed to return to troubled Greek side Olympiakos. Valverde, who was sacked by Villarreal in January, led Olympiakos to the Greek league and cup double last year, but his one-year contract was not renewed because of a financial disagreement with the club.
Degen: Liverpool yesterday confirmed that Philipp Degen has joined Stuttgart on loan until the end of the 2010-11 season. Stuttgart boss Christian Gross, once manager of Tottenham, said: “I know Philipp very well and rate him highly both as a football player and as a person.”
Mourinho: Real Madrid coach Jose Mourinho has conceded that his new club will not be able to prise Ashley Cole away from his former side Chelsea. Mourinho has been strongly linked with Cole since taking over at the Bernabeu this summer but the Portuguese says the Londoners have closed the door to a possible move. “We thought about him because he’s a good player. But when a coach says ‘no’ it’s no, and we have to accept that,” Mourinho said.
Porto: Porto beat Benfica 2-0 in Saturday night’s Portuguese Super Cup. Jorge Rolando and Radamel Falcao grabbed the goals for the Portuguese Cup holders in the traditional season curtain-raiser.
Friendlies: LA Galaxy vs Real Madrid 2-3; Beijing Guoan vs Barcelona 0-3; Hoffenheim vs Sunderland 3-1; Mainz vs Malaga 2-0; Dundee Utd vs Wigan 1-3.
In France: Montpellier vs Bordeaux 1-0.
Horse racing: Zenyatta won the 300,000-dollar Clement L. Hirsch Stakes to improve to 18-0 on Saturday. The six-year-old mare, with jockey Mike Smith in the irons, defeated Rinterval in the 1 1/16-mile race. Zenyatta won the Hirsch for the third straight year. She was first by a head last year in the tightest finish of her career, while in 2008 she won by a length. It was her fourth Grade One victory of the year, to go with triumphs in the Vanity Handicap, the Apple Blossom on dirt at Arkansas’ Oaklawn Park and the Santa Margarita Handicap.
Tennis: Two-time Grand Slam champion Svetlana Kuznetsova beat fifth-seeded Flavia Pennetta 6-4, 6-0 to reach the final of the 700,000-dollar San Diego Open final. The Russian will be playing in her first WTA final since a victory in Beijing last October, and she’ll face the same opponent as she did then: Agnieszka Radwanska. The Pole, the fourth seed, defeated Daniela Hantuchova 6-4, 6-2 to earn her first trip to a final since Beijing 10 months ago.
Boxing: Cornelius Bundrage stopped hometown favourite Cory Spinks in the fifth round to capture the International Boxing Federation light-middleweight crown in an all-American title bout. Referee Mark Nelson stopped the bout just 88 seconds into the fifth round, giving mandatory challenger Bundrage his first world title and improving his record to 30-4 with his 18th victory inside the distance. Southpaw Spinks, the former undisputed world welterweight champion, fell to 37-6 with his third loss in four fights.
Athletics: Australian distance runner Ben St Lawrence warmed up for October’s New Delhi Commonwealth Games with victory in the City to Surf mass fun run yesterday. St Lawrence, who is entered for the 5,000m in New Delhi, finished the 14-kilometre race from Sydney City to Bondi Beach in 41 minutes and five seconds. He beat last year’s winner Michael Shelley with Jeff Hunt third in the 40th running of the race, which attracted a record field of 80,000 runners.