Cha Du-ri: Celtic manager Neil Lennon fears South Korea defender Cha Du-ri will be sidelined for several weeks with an ankle injury. Cha was injured in his first day of training with Celtic after returning from international duty at the Asian Cup.
Ballack: Injury-plagued Michael Ballack suffered another blow yesterday as he was sent to hospital for an MRI scan on his knee. The 34-year-old Ballack has battled with his fitness since an ankle injury in May ruled him out of the World Cup only for the ex-Chelsea star to then fracture his leg in September.
Hajduk: Croatia’s Hajduk Split yesterday marked their 100th anniversary. The club was founded by four Split students studying in the Czech capital Prague inspired to institutionalise football in their hometown where the game was already rather popular. Hajduk Split have won 18 league titles.
No regrets: St Pauli’s Mathias Lehmann insists he has no regrets about falling to the ground to provoke a red card for B. M’gladbach’s Igor de Camargo in Saturday’s Bundesliga clash. Lehmann collapsed to the floor before the referee showed De Camargo the red card. St Pauli won 3-1. “He came over to me and made contact. Of course, I accepted the gift,” said Lehmann.
Guardiola: Barcelona coach Pep Guardiola had no complaints after his side’s 16-match winning run in the league was ended with a 1-1 draw at Sporting Gijon on Saturday. Guardiola said: “When a run like that comes to an end you value it even more, because we have won at grounds like this. I have no complaints. We go all around Spain showing people who we are and that is already enough.”
Novellino: Livorno owner Aldo Spinelli confirmed that the experienced Walter Novellino will be the new coach of the Serie B club. Novellino will replace Bepi Pillon who was unable to avoid the team’s fifth successive defeat on Saturday when Livorno went down 2-0 to strugglers Portogruaro. “We have sorted everything out already,” Spinelli said. “On Monday (today) Novellino will hold his first training session. It was all planned out.”
B. M’Gladbach: Bundesliga bottom side Borussia Moen-chengladbach sacked their coach Michael Frontzeck yesterday, 24 hours after their 3-1 German league defeat at St Pauli. ‘Gladbach are seven points from safety at the foot of the table and 46-year-old Frontzeck, who has been in charge for 18 months, was shown the door after his side have won just 14 of their 56 league matches under him.
Tennis: Daniela Hantuchova won her fourth WTA singles title yesterday with a crushing 6-0, 6-2 victory over Italy’s Sara Errani at the Pattaya Open, Thailand. The number-four seed took just one hour and 16 minutes to beat Errani, breaking serve six times to end a more than three-year title drought. The leggy Slovak did not lose a single set on her path to victory, knocking out defending champion Vera Zvonareva in a stunning straight sets semi-final win. It was Hantuchova’s first WTA title win since Linz in October 2007.
Rallying: Finland’s Mikko Hirvonen powered his Ford Fiesta to victory in the Rally of Sweden yesterday, the opening event in the World Championship. Norwegian Mads Ostberg at 6.5 seconds and Finland’s Jari-Matti Latvala at 34s finished second and third respectively to secure a podium sweep for Ford. Hirvonen was repeating his 2010 win in the only rally on the calendar staged entirely on snow. This was the 13th WRC win for the driver who twice finished runner-up to Sebastien Loeb in the title race, in 2008 and 2009.
Racing: The freak deaths of two racehorses as they walked around the paddock before the first race at Newbury on Saturday was likely caused by a faulty underground electricity cable. Fenix Two and Marching Song were about to be mounted on the far side of the parade ring when they fell to the ground and died. Speculation from the connections of the stricken horses was that they may have suffered from some form of electric shock and while it has not yet been confirmed as the definite cause, an underground cable has been found.
Athletics: A Japanese-based Kenyan trio, led by Bedan Karoki, made a clean sweep of podium in the men’s 12,000-metre race at the Chiba international cross country yesterday. Karoki clocked 33 minutes 58 seconds ahead of Martin Mukule in 34:22 and third-placed Charles Nyandarua 34:29. The men’s 4,000m and the women’s 8,000m were dominated by Japanese runners. Takahiko Onishi marked 11:32 to win the men’s 4,000m and Hitomi Niiya recorded 25:53 in the 8,000 event.