Random news from around the globe 2012 [R]

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The Dutch Cup replay between Ajax Amsterdam and AZ Alkmaar on Jan. 19 will be watched by a crowd of children only, Ajax said on Tuesday.

The last-16 match was abandoned on Dec. 21 shortly before halftime after a fan invaded the pitch and attacked Alkmaar keeper Esteban.


Esteban retaliated and was sent off but his red card was rescinded and Ajax were forced to replay the game in an empty stadium.

Ajax last week asked the Dutch football association (KNVB) to allow women and children to attend the match but the ruling body decided that only the latter would be permitted because of a national law of comparable treatment for men and women.

DaMarcus Beasley's current club goes through some problems...

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Former [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] striker Salvador Cabanas is set to make a professional comeback two years after almost being killed when he was shot in the head in a [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] City bar in January 2010.

Cabanas, who missed the 2010 [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] in [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] where he was expected to shine for Paraguay, was shot in the head in the bathroom of a Mexico City bar during an argument with an alleged drugs dealer, who was arrested last year.

After weeks in a Mexico City hospital where doctors decided against removing the bullet, which is still in his head, Cabanas continued his recovery in a clinic in Buenos Aires before returning home to Paraguay.

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The state prosecutor’s office in Dortmund says Subotic and three others are
under investigation after a 21-year-old woman filed a complaint saying she was
the victim of sexual assault following a private party at the Serbian’s
residence.

Subotic spent part of his youth growing up in Salt Lake City and played for
the U.S. Under-17 and Under-20 teams. But after coach Thomas Rongen left him off
the roster for the 2007 Under-20 World Cup, he switched allegiance to Serbia,
part of the Yugoslav nation when he was born in Banja Luka in 1988.

Pretty neat...

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Notts County are delighted to announce that the specially commissioned
150th Anniversary shirt has been chosen as the design for next season's
first team home kit.

The limited edition shirt, manufactured by Fila, is based on the club's
traditional black & white stripes worn so proudly over the years.
The shirt incorporates the names of season ticket holders who purchased
their tickets for the 2011-12 season early

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Whoa.

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gwar0127 wrote:

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FIFA called on the global football community to assist Tuesday and
said it will donate $250,000 to the families of the victims of last
week's riot at a football match which resulted in 74 deaths.

World football's governing body said in a statement the sum would be paid into a charity account opened by Al Ahly on Sunday.

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The German Bundesliga is on
track to set a new attendance record this season after average
figures per game topped 44,000 for the first half of the 2011/12
campaign, the German football league (DFL) said on Tuesday.

The first division had set a seventh consecutive spectator
record in the previous season (2010/11) with 42,101 people per
league game, making it the top league in the world by
attendance.

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One of the World Cup’s oldest mysteries finally may be solved after
claims were made this week of a sinister plot involving mass corruption,
government interference and torture.

Argentina’s 1978 triumph against Peru long has been suspected of
involving dirty tricks by the Argentinean political dictatorship led
by Jorge Videla that held power at that time. For more than 30 years
questions have been asked about the controversial 6-0 win that clinched
Argentina’s place in the final, where they beat the Netherlands 3-1.

This week former Peruvian senator Genaro Ledesma said a deal was struck
between Peru’s then-president Francisco Bermudez and Videla, whereby
Argentina would be allowed to win the game by at least the four-goal
margin it needed to avoid elimination.

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How popular is soccer? Popular enough to bring financial markets to a halt, it seems. A [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
(pdf) from the European Central Bank finds that during the 2010 World
Cup, the number of stock trades plunged an average of 45 percent in
countries whose teams were playing at the time. (A goal caused a further
5 percent drop.) “We conclude,” write Michael Ehrmann and David-Jan
Jansen, “that stock markets were following developments on the soccer
pitch rather than in the trading pit.”

Hahaha...another day, another revelation of Dirty Jack Warner's dealings!

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Former FIFA vice president Jack Warner has been asked to
explain what happened to aid that never arrived in Haiti after being donated
following a 2010 earthquake.

Trinidad and Tobago’s soccer federation said Warner, its former special
adviser, controlled a bank account in its name that was set to receive $750,000
pledged by FIFA and South Korean soccer leader Chung Mong-joon toward soccer
rebuilding projects.

Haitian officials told The Sunday Times in Britain that they have received
only $60,000, and FIFA said it has frozen all funding to Trinidad and Tobago
until it gets answers.

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The global soccer players’ union is backing a campaign to
change FIFA’s laws of the game to allow Islamic women to wear hijabs.

Soccer’s rules-making panel outlawed hijabs for safety reasons in 2007, and
will consider lifting the ban at a March 3 meeting in England.

The dispute was highlighted when Iran’s women team forfeited 2012 Olympics
qualifying matches last year.

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The inaugural edition of
India’s Premier League Soccer (PLS), featuring World Cup winner
Fabio Cannavaro and former France international Robert Pires,
has been postponed because of a lack of venues, organisers told
Reuters on Wednesday.

The six-team competition, modelled on the successful Indian
Premier League (IPL) Twenty20 cricket tournament, was slated for
a March 24 start in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal but
the organisers said they could not secure the stadiums owned by
the state government.

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Napoli's startling 3-1 upset of Chelsea in the Champions League last
Tuesday accomplished three important things. It put a formal timestamp
on the moment everyone realized that Serie A had caught up to the
Premier League.¹ It launched a thousand "Andre Villas-Boas DeathWatch" columns, to the point that [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
became a vital resource for soccer journalists. And it cemented
Napoli's status as the coolest club in Europe and the default answer to
the question, "If you're an American looking to get into European
soccer, which team should you support?"

Seriously, if you're a fan in search of a club, how do you not consider Napoli at this point? Not only are the Azzurri
not English — meaning you won't be lumped in with the 40 trillion bros
who picked a Premier League club because that's what everyone else was
doing — and not only are they a fun, overachieving young team, they're
also, and this is putting it mildly, a sky-wide constellation of the
elements that make sports amazing. They're perennial underdogs who come
packaged with a glorious history. They're the agony object of a
furiously loyal and continually heartbroken fan base,²
but within living memory they've also been the trophy-winning home of
the greatest soccer player in the world. They're a team of crazy highs
and pulverizing lows — basically the entire sports-fan experience in its
most extreme and operatic form, all compressed into one club in a
terrifying and fascinating city on a gulf at the foot of a volcano.
Really, you'd rather root for Arsenal?

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In a fresh blow the stricken club, the Scottish Football
Association said Rangers faced a charge of bringing the game
into disrepute over their financial affairs.

Following an inquiry into the club, the FA said it did not
consider club chairman and majority shareholder Craig Whyte to
be a “fit and proper person” to be involved in the game.

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Lionel Messi made more history on Tuesday, breaking Barcelona's team
record for career goals, with his hat-trick against Granada helping him
surpass Cesar Rodriguez on Barca's all-time list.


Messi's club goal total is now up to 234, an astronomical number for a player who is just 24 years old.

The link also has a video montage of all 234 Messi goals for Barca.

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[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.],
68, who since 1983 has managed eight different national teams — from
Mexico in 1983 to Iraq in 2009 — insists he is done coaching. Not that
he’s stuck to that same vow in the past. But the so-called miracle
worker of global soccer is enjoying his new job as, well, it’s not
entirely clear. When asked what he does in Qatar, Bora flashes an impish
grin and replies: “I don’t have a role. Only I share my experience.”

That’s
not exactly true. Officially, Bora’s an adviser at Aspire Academy,
whose facilities he has just been flaunting, a sporting institute for
Qatar’s elite young athletes. Unofficially, he’s a jack of all trades
for Qatari sport — consultant, goodwill ambassador, and indefatigable
salesman.

It’s in this last role that Bora thrives. He settled in
Qatar in 2009 to serve as “bid ambassador” for its successful campaign
to host the [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
and counts helping the sleepy emirate of 1.7 million people upset a
field of the United States, Australia, Japan and South Korea among his
finest accomplishments. “I’m very happy,” he said, beaming about the
experience. “I joke with the people. They ask me: ‘Bora how you explain
this?’ This is easy: my team always wins.”

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Here is what [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
had to say, in the press conference after the game, when asked why he
had waited on the pitch to speak to the referee Damir Skomina following [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]'s
3-0 defeat of Milan at the Emirates last month, the one that wasn't
quite enough to repair the damage of the 4-0 defeat in the first leg at
San Siro.

"I was not happy with the referee because he gave them
many free-kicks in the centre of the park," the Arsenal manager said.
"Every time a player went down it was a free-kick to them. The [Milan]
players sensed that very quickly on the pitch and used it well."

And here is what the manager of [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.],
Vítor Pereira, had to say about Mario Balotelli being subjected to
racial abuse, ie monkey noises so loud they were picked up by viewers
watching on television, when substituted late in the game Manchester
City won 2-1 at the Estádio do Dragão in February. "I think there might
have been a misunderstanding," Pereira and other club spokesmen
insisted. "The crowd were chanting Hulk, Hulk, Hulk."

Hard to know
why they would do that in the 78th minute of a game when the Porto
striker had just been switched from the centre of the attack to the
wing, but that is not the point at issue. The point at issue is that [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
(£33,100) fine for his conduct regarding Mr Skomina, and ordered to
serve a three-match touchline ban in Europe. Whereas Porto, for what
appears a much graver offence even without the club excuses that
insulted everyone's intelligence, [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.].