MADRID (AFP) – Villarreal playmaker Robert Pires insists he will harbour neither pity nor nostalgia when he seeks to sink former club Arsenal in their Champions League quarter-final first-leg on Tuesday.
“I didn’t come here (to Spain) on holidays, I came here to win a title,” said the 35-year-old Frenchman, who spent six seasons at Arsenal before joining Villarreal in June 2006.
Pires has something of an axe to grind as during the 2006 Champions League final against Barcelona Arsenal coach Arsene Wenger substituted him after ‘keeper Jens Lehman was sent off before the Catalans came from behind to win 2-1.
“It killed me,” remembers Pires, who won two Premiership titles and two FA Cups during his time in North London.
Worse still Wenger then off-loaded Pires to Villarreal, saying he could no longer guarantee the delicate right-sided midfielder a place in his side.
The two factors make for painful memories as Pires eyes revenge in the home-leg at Villarreal’s El Madrigal stadium on Tuesday, his first game against Arsenal since being ditched.
“He (Wenger) called me and asked me how I was and I told him not to worry, that this was one game for which I’d be really ready for, physicaly fit for,” said Pires, who said he still has a few friends in the Arsenal dressing room.
The plot for the last-eight clash is further thickened by the fact Arsenal beat Villarreal in the 2006 semi-final, a clash Pires remembers as a lucky win for the Gunners.
A defeat which also remains an open wound at Villarreal, according to the 1998 World Cup and Euro 2000 winner Pires.
Known as the ‘Yellow Submarine’ due to their yellow strip Pires feels Villarreal, currently fourth in the Spanish championship, have the necessary artillery to take the Gunners down this time.
“We’ve got one of the best squads in Spain,” he explained.
Back in 2006 Arsenal won the home leg 1-0 before surviving a missed penalty to draw 0-0 in Spain and set up the final against Barcelona in Paris, where however the Gunners ran out of luck.
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WIGAN, England (AFP) – Wigan Athletic midfielder Cho Won-Hee will miss the remainder of the English Premier League season after injuring calf muscles while on international duty with South Korea last week.
Cho was kicked in the leg during his country’s friendly against Iraq in Seoul on March 28 and aggravated the injury in the World Cup qualifying derby win over North Korea four days later.
Wigan physio Dave Galley said on Monday: “We scanned the injury as soon as Won-Hee returned to us last week, and we can confirm he has a grade three tear of two of his calf muscles.”
The injury now means Cho, who signed for Wigan as a free agent last month after letting his contract with Suwon Blue Wings expire, is unlikely to make his Latics debut this season.
Calf problems such as his usually take six to eight weeks to heal and there are only seven weeks left in the English season.
“This is very frustrating for me,” said Cho. “I was so desperate to show the manager and the fans what I can do. But I will now have to work my hardest to get fit.”
Wigan boss Steve Bruce, whose team are eighth in the table, added: “It’s unfortunate for the lad because he was so willing and has shown a terrific attitude.
“But our team are working on him and we will do everything we can to get him back as soon as we can.”
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MANCHESTER, England (AFP) – Sir Alex Ferguson resumed his mind games with Liverpool boss Rafael Benitez after Manchester United’s dramatic 3-2 win over Aston Villa enabled his side to reclaim the leadership of the Premier League.
Ferguson still has an opportunity to collect five trophies this season now that United have one a point lead at the top of the table with a marvellous morale boost ahead of Tuesday?s Champions League quarter-final first leg against Porto.
But the United manager is more interested in stirring up trouble for his closest challengers for the Premier League title, in response to Benitez’s query over whether United can handle the pressure after Liverpool beat Fulham on Saturday.
Ferguson has turned the heat back onto Benitez and, in a deliberate move to intensify further the rivalry between Liverpool and Chelsea ahead of their Champions League quarter-final on Wednesday, has claimed that two-legged affair is also a contest to determine who will challenge United for the title.
Liverpool are still viewed as the leading contenders but Ferguson encouraged Chelsea, four points off top spot having, in common with Benitez’s men, played one more game than United.
“Everyone is screaming that Liverpool are our challenge,” Ferguson said. “But I think whoever wins between Liverpool and Chelsea in the Champions League will be our biggest threat because of the effect it will have on them.
“It is an emotional fixture. There are never a lot of goals and it’s very, very tight and whoever wins that will take a big step forward.”
Whatever the outcome of that domestic battle, Ferguson also believes his side deserve to claim an 18th English title, because of the adventurous manner they have adopted all season, even during Sunday’s win over Villa when they were without Wayne Rooney, Dimitar Berbatov, Rio Ferdinand, Nemanja Vidic and Paul Scholes.
Former Lazio youth team striker Federico Macheda’s winning goal three minutes into stoppage time provided a late show to better Liverpool’s against Fulham 24 hours earlier while putting a huge dent into Villa’s own hopes of Champions League qualification.
Ferguson believes the adventurous ethos at Old Trafford, exemplified by his bringing 17-year-old Macheda off the bench, made United the more worthy title winners ahead of Chelsea and Liverpool.
“At 2-2 I was thinking gamble,” he said of a match where Cristiano Ronaldo equalised to make it 2-2 with 10 minutes left after headers from John Carew and Gabriel Agbonlahor had put the visitors on course for victory following the Portugal winger’s opener.
“Winning is the name of the game at this club,” Ferguson said. “We play the right way and we deserved to win, even if we took some risks. Risks are part of football and this club is built on that.
“It has been around a long long time and I love the thrill of it myself.
“Yes we defend poorly at times and we defended poorly for the goals but there is always a goal threat in us.
“You think we will score a goal and it is a great boost for us to come from behind and secure a great win.
“We are the top of the table and that is where we want to be in terms of points,” said Ferguson of a win which followed league defeats at the hands of Liverpool and Fulham.
“We have had a little blip but we have recovered to win with seven or eight players out, four or five of our very top team.
“These young players are prepared to go to the very end. They deserve great credit for that. Through that (Villa) result, the season could change for us.”
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South Korea has rejected claims by North Korea that it poisoned its players before last week’s 2010 World Cup qualifier in Seoul, as tensions mounted over the North’s long-range rocket launch on Sunday.
Kim Joo-sung, (South) Korean Football Association (KFA) international affairs chief, said the accusations were politically motivated and baseless.
“The statement sets a high political tone, not about the sport itself. There’s no need to respond to it,” Kim was quoted as saying by South Korean news agency Yonhap on Monday.
“If an accident happens during training or transit, and it affects the match, the host country should take responsibility for the accident. But matters related to hotels or the food are the responsibility of the visiting team.”
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STUTTGART, Germany (AFP) – Jens Lehmann’s dream of returning to international football and playing in next year’s World Cup looks unlikely to be fulfilled, Germany goalkeeping coach Andreas Koepke said Monday.
“It is unnecessary to really think about it,” Koepke, who coaches the national team’s goalkeepers, told the Stuttgart Zeitung.
“It would send out the wrong signal to our younger goalkeepers.”
Former Arsenal goalkeeper Lehmann, 39, won the last of his 61 caps against Spain in the 1-0 Euro 2008 final defeat in Vienna and signed for Bundesliga side Stuttgart soon after.
And he announced his international retirement last August.
But having signed a year’s extension to his contract on Friday, which will keep him in the Bundesliga until the summer of 2010, Lehmann has said he would like to resume his international career.
“I said after Euro 2008 that there should be no plans with me in mind, because I will only play on one more year,” said Lehmann.
“But that situation has changed now. If there is a need for me and I am good enough, that would be an incentive for me.”
But while neither Leverkusen’s Rene Adler nor Hanover’s Robert Enke have made Germany’s Number One shirt their own is his absence, Lehmann has been far from flawless this season.
He was at fault in his side’s 2-1 win at Bochum on Saturday when he caught a corner, but then accidentally carried the ball over his own goal-line.
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MADRID (AFP) – Florentino Perez, the favourite to win June elections for Real Madrid president, has reached an agreement with AC Milan to sign Brazilian star Kaka, a newspaper reported Monday.
Real will pay 60 million euros (80 million dollars) for the midfielder under the accord Perez reached during a meeting with AC Milan vice-president Adriano Galliani on March 16, sports daily Marca reported.
But possible offers from Chelsea and Manchester City, who are both interested in the 2007 FIFA World Player of the Year, could complicate the Brazilian international’s transfer to Real, the newspaper added.
Kaka, who turns 27 later this month, is under contract with Milan through 2013.
Perez is also interested in signing Spanish international midfielders Xabi Alonso, 27, from Liverpool and Cesc Fabregas, 21, from Arsenal, it said.
Perez served as Real president between 2000 and 2006 when the Spanish giants signed a series of big name players such as Portugal’s Luis Figo and England’s David Beckham, earning the club the nickname the “Galacticos”.
The elections for Real president will be held either on June 7 or 14.
Perez has not yet said if he intends to stand in the election but Spanish media are certain of his return and polls show he is the big favourite.
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SEOUL (AFP) – South Korean football officials on Monday ridiculed North Korean claims that its footballers were poisoned by Seoul before losing a World Cup qualifier last week.
“The North’s claims are groundless,” Park Il-Ki, a Korea Football Association (KFA) official, told AFP.
“The North’s team stayed at a hotel they chose during the game in Seoul. They had only food that their team doctor checked out. Their claims are really far-fetched. How can we be responsible?”
The North’s football body on Sunday accused Seoul of poisoning northern players who lost the April 1 match 1-0. The South’s victory puts it in the driving seat in Asian Group B.
North Korea before the game asked for a postponement, saying three players had fallen ill because of the food they had been served.
World football governing body FIFA ordered that the game go ahead as scheduled.
In Sunday’s statement, the North urged FIFA to review the match.
It said the food poisoning “was a product of a deliberate act perpetrated by adulterated foodstuff” and also blasted the Omani chief referee for disallowing a goal by the North Koreans.
“The match… turned into a theatre of plot-breeding and swindling,” the statement said.
Park said the KFA decided not to issue any statement in reply because such individual tit-for-tat responses do not conform to FIFA rules.
Kim Joo-Sung, the KFA’s international affairs department chief, told Yonhap news agency that matters related to hotels or food are the responsibility of the visiting team.
As to the dispute over the goal, Kim added: “North Korea can lodge an objection with FIFA and wait for a decision.”
The North’s statement came as the rest of the world was preoccupied with its controversial long-range rocket launch.
It took aim at South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak, who is reviled by the North for his firmer line on cross-border relations.
“It is as clear as noonday that it (the conduct of the match) was a product of the Lee Myung-Bak group’s moves for confrontation with the DPRK (North) and a deliberate behaviour bred by the unsavoury forces instigated by it,” the statement said.
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LUXOR, Egypt – Trinidad & Tobago will face host Egypt, Paraguay and Italy while the United States will have to take on Germany, Cameroon and the Korea Republic in the first round of the Under-20 World Cup later this year.
CONCACAF U-20 champion Costa Rica will have to play against Brazil, the Czech Republic and Australia in Group E in Port Said, while Honduras will play against the United Arab Emirates, South Africa and Hungary in Group F in Alexandria.
Trinidad will play in Group A which will be based in the Egyptian capital of Cairo, while the USA will be based in Suez in Group C.
The other two groups for the September 24-October 16 tournament will consist of Nigeria, Venezuela, Spain and Tahiti in Group B in Cairo, while Ghana, Uzbekistan, England and Uruguay will comprise Group D in Ismalia.
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SAINT-MARC, Haiti – Eliphene Cadet scored in the 12th minute and Vaniel Sirin added another in the 71st to lead Tempete FC to a 2-0 victory over Alpha United on Sunday and complete a 3-1 aggregate victory in the first round of the Caribbean Club Champions Cup.
The second-leg result completed the first round and sent the Haitian side to a meeting against the Greenbay Hoppers of Antigua. Tempete managed a 1-1 draw in the first leg thanks to a second-half own-goal and will adfance to the second-round series on April 13 and April 20.
Besides Tempete-Greenbay, Inter Mongoe Tapoe of Suriname will face San Juan Jabloteh of Puerto Rico, which had a bye into the second round, and W Connection of Trinidad will take on SA Cavaly of Haiti.
The second-round winners will advance to single-game semifinals along with the Puerto Rico Islanders on May 15 in Trinidad, with the final and third-place game in Trinidad two days later.
The CFU Club Champions Cup will qualify three teams for next season’s CONCACAF Champions League.
CFU Club Champions Cup
Results and Schedule
First Round
First Leg
Wednesday, March 18
Bath Estate (Dominica) 0, W Connection (Trinidad) 5
CSD Barber (Netherlands Antilles) 1, Inter Moengo Tapoe (Suriname) 3
Saturday, March 21
Alpha United (Guyana) 1, Tempete FC (Haiti) 1
Sevilla FC (Puerto Rico) 3, Greenbay Hoppers (Antigua) 3
Sunday, March 22
SA Cavaly (Haiti) 5, SV Britannia (Aruba) 0
Second Leg
Wednesday, March 25
W Connection (Trinidad) 12, Bath Estate (Dominica) 1
(W Connection advances on 17-1 aggregate)
Inter Moengo Tapoe (Suriname) 0, CSD Barber (Antigua) 1
(Inter advances on 3-2 aggregate)
Sunday, March 29
Greenbay Hoppers (Antigua) 2, Sevilla FC (Puerto Rico) 0
(Greenbay advances on 5-3 aggregate)
SV Britannia (Aruba) 0, SA Cavaly (Haiti) 1
(Cavaly advances on 6-0 aggregate)
Sunday, April 5
Tempete FC (Haiti) 2, Alpha United 0 (Guyana)
(Tempete advances on 3-1 aggregate)
Second Round
First Leg: April 13
Second Leg: April 20
*San Juan Jabloteh (Trinidad) vs. Moengo Tapoe (Suriname)
*Greenbay Hoppers (Antigua) vs. Tempete FC (Haiti)
*W Connection (Trindad) vs. SA Cavaly (Haiti)
*hosts first leg
Semifinal winners and the Puerto Rico Islanders will be drawn for single-game semifinals after the second round is complete. The semifinals will be played May 15 in Trinidad, which also will stage the final and third-place match two days later.
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German media have already decided that Grafite’s brilliant 77th-minute solo goal in Wolfsburg’s 5-1 win over Bayern Munich on Saturday is the goal of the year.
He somehow managed to elude five Bayern players before scoring with a cheeky backheel.
It may seem a bit early to be choosing the “Tor des Jahres” with nine months left in 2009 but even the normally reserved public TV broadcast “Das Aktuelle Sportstudio” proclaimed it “the most spectacular goal in Bundesliga history”.
The electrifying goal has featured in German newscasts all weekend.
Grafite’s goal, coming two days after his 30th birthday, also served as a fitting metaphor for the season as it helped Wolfsburg jump to the top of the Bundesliga in front of Hamburg SV, Hertha Berlin and Bayern.
The small club from the northern town made famous by the Volkswagen factories have now won eight of their nine matches since the winter break (the only blemish a draw at Cologne) after ending the first half of the season back in ninth place and nine points behind Bayern.
It is hard to get enough of the Brazilian’s magical 12-touch goal, which was his second of the match and 20th in the Bundesliga this season, putting him alone at the top of the scoring charts.
Grafite first beat Bayern’s Andreas Ottl and Christian Lell on the left and then dodged lunging goalkeeper Michael Rensing before duping compatriot Breno and Philipp Lahm with the quick backheel just as he appeared to be dribbling away from danger.
“Grafite makes record-champs Bayern look like fools,” read Kicker.de’s headline.
Wolfsburg coach Felix Magath said: “You only get one goal like that in a lifetime.”
Grafite, whose father died in October, was his usual modest self afterwards.
“I had my 30th birthday a few days ago so this was a nice present.”
PHOTO: VfL Wolfsburg’s coach Felix Magath (L) shakes hands with Grafite during their Bundesliga match against Bayern Munich, April 4, 2009. REUTERS/Thomas Bohlen
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