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Man vs Machine
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Nasri, bonuses, federation in Euro storm
England’s culture was once the envy of the world — now it’s dust
Kvitova overcomes a nervy start
Wimbledon groundsman eyes Olympic challenge
Hitting the nets big achievement for me: Yuvraj
Sania-Rushmi, Somdev get wild cards for Olympics
Germany won’t practise penalties
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Man vs Machine
Gniewino, June 26 Eliminating the Portuguese, who have only beaten their Iberian neighbours once in seven competitive games, would give Spain a chance to become the first nation to win back-to-back continental titles with a World Cup in between. Casillas believes former World Player of the Year Ronaldo has still not quite reproduced the form that helped Real win La Liga for the first time in four years last season. “His season at Madrid was incredible in terms of the way he played, the goals and the records," the 31-year-old, known in Spain as "Saint Iker" thanks to his miraculous saves, was quoted as saying in Monday's Marca sports daily. “I don’t think that right now he is at his best level," he added. A fired-up Ronaldo has been peppering opposition goals with shots in Portugal's four Euro 2012 outings and Casillas said he will have to be wary of any deviation in the air due to the peculiar way Ronaldo strikes the ball. “The ball does something strange,” he told Marca, adding that those being used at Euro 2012 did not bend and swerve as much as the "Jabulani" used at the World Cup two years ago. "It doesn't quite reach those extremes but if you give it a good whack it always swerves in a deceptive way," he said. "I'll have to be on my guard." Spain's last competitive meeting with the Portuguese came at the 2010 World Cup, when they won a close encounter 1-0 thanks to a second-half David Villa strike. Spain struggled to penetrate Portugal's defence in that match in Cape Town but the introduction of towering striker Fernando Llorente early in the second half changed the game. Llorente, whose strength and height were too much for the Portuguese centre backs, could be an option on Wednesday if the game follows a similar pattern, defender Gerard Pique said. "He used his power in the air to great effect and fought like a lion," Pique told Reuters in an interview at Spain's training base in Gniewino, northern Poland, on Monday. "He could be an option for Wednesday and he is training very, very well," added the 25-year-old. "He is one of the players who has yet to feature but for sure he will get his chance and that could be against Portugal." Pique knows Ronaldo and fellow winger Nani from his time at Manchester United and said it would be wrong for Spain to think Portugal were a one-man team. "Nani is a player with a lot of quality in one-on-one situations," he said. "He can pop up on the right or the left and is a born goalscorer with a powerful shot. We will have to use all the weapons in our arsenal to stop him and Ronaldo." The winners of Wednesday's game will meet Germany or Italy in Sunday's final in Kiev. — Reuters
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Nasri, bonuses, federation in Euro storm
Paris, June 26 His behaviour at Euro 2012, which included two outbursts at journalists and being deemed by several team-mates as a disruptive influence, is the reason why the squad's 100,000 euros $125,000) a player bonuses are now under the scanner. Nasri has also put at risk sponsorship money paid to the French Football Federation (FFF) based on independent polling about the behaviour and popularity of "Les Bleus" during major competitions. The FFF had already seen each sponsor reduce its contribution by two million euros after the 2010 World Cup, which saw players go on strike and then exit at the first stage, and a threat of a 20 percent reduction if the team's popularity dipped more. The results of the latest poll are unlikely to make happy reading for either the French football authorities or the players. L'Equipe estimates that with FFF president Noel Le Graet up for re-election in December, he will want to make an example of Nasri and the Manchester City star could face a ban of up to two years, ruling him out of the next World Cup finals. Aside from Nasri, other players are also seen as having sullied the team's image. Most players snubbed the handful of fans who turned out in the rain at Le Bourget airport to welcome the team home. The majority hardly managed a wave and instead got into their pre-booked taxis and left. Subsequent revelations about the size of the bonuses further turned public opinion against them in France, with the fires stoked by several politicians. — AFP
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England’s culture was once the envy of the world — now it’s dust
James Lawton We could dwell for a moment on the ludicrous delay of the Football Association in appointing Fabio Capello's successor Roy Hodgson, giving him such scant time to prepare for international football's second-most important tournament. We can rage again about the grotesque imbalance between the money-dripping Premier League's boasting that it is the best in the world while supplying to the national team a pitifully slim stock of adequate players. Yet wherever we go we come back to the same starting point. We just cannot cut it at the highest level. We cannot make great footballers and when they happen, in the fashion of Paul Gascoigne or Rooney, we are clueless about the right kind of competitive discipline to impose. This maybe brings us to still another withering statement about England's long decline from the front rank of football nations. It is to a question posed by an elderly Italian on a tram carrying him away from the Olympic Stadium, in Rome. It was 35 years ago and the day another England team had been pushed a little further off the road to the World Cup in Argentina in 1978 by an Italian team that had looked - as the latest one did here in Sunday night's quarterfinal - embarrassingly superior. "What," asked the old Italian, "has happened to the English football player? I have always thought of him as a god since as a young man I saw England beat my country 4-0 in Turin in 1948. Italy had a great tradition - already two World Cups - but we could not live with England on that day. Where have such players gone?" The question had a fresh poignancy on Sunday night when Andrea Pirlo operated in another dimension to those of his England counterparts, Steven Gerrard and Scott Parker. Pirlo was a master and Gerrard might have been just another guileless pupil. Each of the four semifinalists will this week parade players plainly on top of their careers and their talent. We will see the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo, Andres Iniesta, Mesut Ozil and Pirlo - and what would England have had to offer in the unlikely event of their surviving Sunday's shoot-out? It would have been a malfunctioning Rooney. The old Italian touched a sore that shows no sign of healing when he invoked the names of those England players who were so unplayable all those years ago in Turin, destroying an Italian team which contained seven members of a great Torino side. So if it isn't the genes, what is it, this collapse of a culture which was once the envy of the world as it clamoured for coaching help from the home of the game? It has a lot to do with the lost years that came with the FA coaching dictatorship of Charles Hughes, an ex-schoolteacher who patronised the professionals and offered, as his pièce de résistance, the theory of POMO — position of maximum opportunity. This was based on his theory that the Brazilians had gone wrong. They were not sufficiently direct. A requirement of POMO was the long ball - midfielders wore yellow bibs and one instruction was to hit the frontmen and "miss the Canaries". On Sunday night, of course, a canary called Andrea Pirlo sang a sweet and haunting song that mocked so much of the recent history of English football. — The Independent
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Kvitova overcomes a nervy start
London, June 26 She looked sluggish around the court and her greater power was frequently misdirected, but she saved two break points to avoid going a double break down and then won five games in a row to claim the opening set. The second was more straightforward as the Czech broke in the opening game and then closed out the match following a short rain delay to set up a second round clash against Britain's Elena Baltacha or Italy's Karin Knapp. Sania Mirza wins in doubles India's Sania Mirza and her American partner Bethanie Mattek-Sands notched up a straight-sets victory and advanced to the second round of the women's doubles competition at the Wimbledon here today. The 13th seeded Indo-US pair defeated Russia's Alla Kudryavtseva and American Sloane Stephens 6-4 6-2 in one hour and 24 minutes at the All England Club here. The duo will take on the winner of the match between Serbia's Jelena Jankovic and France's Virginie Razzano and French duo of Stephanie Foretz Gacon and Kristina Mladenovic, in the second round. Sania and Bethanie converted five of the 13 break points, while their rivals broke two of the 10 opportunities that came their way. The Indo-US combo took 44 minutes to wrap up the first set after converting two of the three break point chances. — Agencies
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Wimbledon groundsman eyes Olympic challenge
London, June 26 "It is a challenge but I am surrounded by a team that knows what it's doing," Stubley, bathed in sunshine as he sat courtside contemplating the luscious green swathes, told reporters on Tuesday. —
Reuters
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Hitting the nets big achievement for me: Yuvraj
Bangalore, June 26 I felt happy, really good to be in the nets," Yuvraj, recovering from the treatment for cancer, said after a training session here. "And it was not a bad session, for the first time after about six months. I got tired after about 15 minutes but I am sure every day will be a better day," he told reporters. Hoping to make a comeback to international cricket with the Twenty20 World Cup in September, Yuvraj yesterday batted for the first time after undergoing chemotherapy in the US for a rare germ cell cancer earlier this year. "The target is the T20 World Cup, and hopefully, I will be able to come just before that," reiterated the 30-year-old left-hander, who has not appeared in any form of the game since last November when he was diagnosed with the disease. — PTI
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Sania-Rushmi, Somdev get wild cards for Olympics
New Delhi, June 26 Sania was handed a wild card along with veteran Rushmi Chakravarthy while Asian Games gold medallist Somdev Devvarman was given a wild card entry in the men's singles event. Sania's wild card entry will now turn the spotlight on a miffed Leander Paes who is yet to take a final call on his participation following the selection row over the men's doubles team. In a compromise formula worked out by AITA, Paes was forced to play with 206-ranked Vishnu Vardhan. Paes had however not given his nod to the compromise deal, raising speculations on whether the veteran tennis player would indeed carry out his threat of boycotting the Games. The two wild card entries meant India will be fielding its largest ever tennis contingent in the Olympics. All India Tennis Association has received a letter from International Tennis Federation (ITF) President Francesco Ricci Bitti, stating that wild card applications for Sania and Somdev have been accepted. Sania hits out at AITASania Mirza, who got a wild card entry for the Olympics, today indicated she has no problem in partnering Leander Paes in the mixed doubles event in London but hit out at the AITA for using her as a "bait" in the selection row. "As an Indian woman belonging to the 21st century, what I find disillusioning is the humiliating manner in which I was put up as a bait to try and pacify one of the disgruntled stalwarts of Indian tennis," Sania said in a statement in an apparent reference to Paes. Sania hit out at the way she was "offered in compensation to partner one of the feuding champions purely in order to lure him into accepting to play with a men's player he does not wish to play with!" "This kind of blatant humiliation of Indian womanhood needs to be condemned even if it comes from the highest controlling body of tennis in our country," she added. — PTI
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Germany won’t practise penalties Gdansk: Ahead of Thursday's semifinal against Italy, goalkeeping coach Andreas Kopke has said Germany will not be taking too many spot-kicks. Germany face the Azzurri on Thursday for a place in Sunday's final. "It is nearly impossible to "practise" penalty shoot-outs in training, it doesn't yield much, because you can't simulate the psychological pressure," said Kopke. — Reuters
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Where do we start - again - on the latest breakdown in England's ability to compete seriously against grown-up football nations?
As always there is a dismaying range of options, including the fiasco of Wayne Rooney, who was welcomed as a saviour when it was soon clear he was really a half-fit parody of a world-class performer who had quite brainlessly damaged his team's chances by getting himself banned from the first two games.
Petra Kvitova overcame a nervy start to the defence of her Wimbledon title to book her place in the second round with a 6-4, 6-4 win over Uzbekistan's Akgul
Amanmuradova. The Czech fourth seed returned to Centre Court where she beat Maria Sharapova to lift the Rosewater Dish 12 months ago, but looked far from a defending champion when she was broken in the second game by the world number 96.
