Soccer-Lyon must sell and Gomis could go, says president

PARIS, Jan 11 (Reuters) - Olympique Lyon need to continue cutting their payroll and are in talks to sell top scorer Bafetimbi Gomis, president Jean-Michel Aulas said on Friday.
Lyon, who have not taken part in the Champions League this season for the first time since 2000, already sold top players Hugo Lloris, Aly Cissokho and Kim Kallstrom during the last transfer window in a bid to cut costs.
They have still managed to challenge Paris St Germain and lie second in the Ligue 1 standings, level on points with their rich rivals, but are the only French club listed on the stock exchange and have yet to comply with financial constraints.
Aulas confirmed that Argentine full back Fabian Monzon, who signed from Nice in the off-season, has joined Brazilian side Fluminense on loan for six months.
Other players will leave in January.
"There will definitely be other moves during the winter transfer window," the club's owner told reporters.
"The ideal solution would be a big transfer (...) Otherwise, a couple of players will leave on loan.
"Our strategy is to cut the payroll. The club has to be well run ... so we will stick to our strategy, whatever the (sporting) price will be."
Lyon have been in talks with several clubs who have shown interest in France striker Bafetimbi Gomis, who has scored 11 goals in 19 league appearances so far this term.
"It will speed up in the last 15 days of the window," Aulas said, suggesting Lisandro Lopez's departure could be an option if Gomis was to stay at the club.
The Argentine striker has asked to relinquish the captain's armband.
Aulas also confirmed that Turkish side Besiktas have made an offer for France forward Jimmy Briand.
Lyon, eliminated as French Cup holders in the last 64 round when they lost on penalties at third tier Epinal last weekend, visit 19th-placed Troyes on Saturday.

Read More..

Soccer-Bulgaria keeper Stoyanov returns home to Ludogorets

SOFIA, Jan 11 (Reuters) - Bulgaria goalkeeper Vladislav Stoyanov has headed home to join champions Ludogorets after three years with Moldova's most successful club Sheriff Tiraspol.
"I want to win everything with Ludogorets," Stoyanov told a news conference on Friday. "I return to the Bulgarian championship more mature and more experienced, with many matches in European competitions."
Stoyanov, 25, became Ludogorets's third new signing during the Bulgarian league's mid-season break after Serbian midfielder Nemanja Milisavljevic and Colombian midfielder Sebastian Hernadez.
Ludogorets, who won their maiden league title last year, top this term's standings with 38 points from 15 matches.

Read More..

Soccer-Boss Appleton joins Blackburn after 66 days at Blackpool

LONDON, Jan 11 (Reuters) - Blackburn Rovers appointed Michael Appleton as manager on Friday with the 37-year-old leaving Blackpool after 66 days in charge.
Indian-owned Rovers, Premier League champions in 1995 but relegated from the top flight last season, confirmed the news on Twitter having sacked Henning Berg last month after 57 days.
Blackburn are 13th in the Championship (second tier), one place above north west rivals Blackpool who were in the Premier League two years ago.
Both clubs have seen long-running supporter unrest towards their respective owners while Blackpool fans on internet message boards slammed former Portsmouth boss Appleton for a perceived lack of loyalty after such a short stint in charge.

Read More..

Canadian Ryder Hesjedal leads 2013 Garmin-Sharp-Barracuda cycling team

Canadian Ryder Hesjedal leads a 2013 Garmin-Sharp-Barracuda team that will be without the suspended Tom Danielson, David Zabriskie and Christian Vande Velde until March.
Hesjedal, named the Canadian Press male athlete of the year this week, is the defending Giro d'Italia winner.
"We had our strongest season in the history of the team in 2012, with our first Grand Tour win at the Giro, and we'll be looking to build on that success in 2013,” Jonathan Vaughters, CEO of Slipstream Sports which runs the cycling team, said in a statement Friday announcing the squad.
Danielson, Zabriskie and Vande Velde are serving six-month suspensions after providing information to the U.S. Anti-Doping-Agency about the use of performance-enhancing drugs on Lance Armstrong's former team.
Slipstream called the 2013 team its youngest roster ever, with new faces Rohan Dennis, Caleb Fairly, Lachlan Morton and Steele Von Hoff.
Dennis was Australia's under-23 road race and time trial national champion in 2012. A former track cyclist, he finished fifth in the 2012 Tour Down Under.
Fellow Australians Morton and Von Hoff and American Fairly are graduates of Slipstream’s developmental program.
Veteran Nick Nuyens, winner of the 2011 Tour of Flanders, also joins the team.
---
2013 Team Garmin-Sharp-Barracuda Roster
Jack Bauer, Tom Danielson, Thomas Dekker, Rohan Dennis, Caleb Fairly, Tyler Farrar, Koldo Fernandez de Larrea, Nathan Haas, Ryder Hesjedal, Alex Howes, Robbie Hunter, Andreas Klier, Michel Kreder, Raymond Kreder, Martijn Maaskant, Dan Martin, David Millar, Lachlan Morton, Ramunas Navardauskas, Nick Nuyens, Jacob Rathe, Sebastien Rosseler, Peter Stetina, Andrew Talansky, Christian Vande Velde, Johan Vansummeren, Steele Von Hoff, Fabian Wegmann, David Zabriskie.

Read More..

Cycling champion Wiggins knighted in UK New Year Honours

LONDON (Reuters) - Bradley Wiggins, the first Briton to win the Tour de France cycling race, has been knighted in a special United Kingdom New Years Honours list which acknowledges the success of the home team at the 2012 London Olympics.
Just over a week after winning the Tour, Wiggins won a gold medal in the Olympic time trial, one of 65 medals collected by the British team who finished third in the medals table behind the United States and China.
Ben Ainslie, the most decorated yachtsman in Olympic history with gold medals in four consecutive Games, is also knighted as are David Brailsford, the performance director of British cycling and David Tanner, the performance director of British rowing. All four can now be addressed as "Sir".
Cyclist Sarah Storey, who won four gold medals at the Paralympics, has been made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.
London Olympic gold medalists Jessica Ennis (athletics), Mo Farah (athletics), Katherine Grainger (rowing), Victoria Pendleton (cycling) and David Weir (wheelchair athlete) were named Commanders of the Order of the British Empire (CBE).
Sebastian Coe, the chairman of the London organizing committee, is awarded a Companion of Honour (CH) on the main honors' list.
There were also awards for Olympic men's tennis champion and U.S. Open winner Andy Murray and Olympic women's boxing gold medalist Nicola Adams among others.

Read More..

Olympics, elections and horsing around in odd 2012

LONDON (Reuters) - Presidential preening, golden Olympic gaffes, a royal windfall for a skydiving British queen on her diamond jubilee and the endless end of days marked the odd stories in 2012 which pranced across the news in Gangnam Style.
The year opened with a tale that flocks of magpies and bears had been spotted in mourning for North Korea's "Dear Leader", Kim Jong-il who died in December 2011 and was succeeded by his 20-something son Kim Jong-un.
Winter weather was so cold in Brussels that the Manneken-Pis, a bronze statue of a young boy urinating had to stop peeing because of sub-zero temperatures.
There was slightly warming news about Mondays in Germany, where crematoriums are struggling to adapt to an increasingly obese population and a boom in extra-large coffins.
"We burn particularly large coffins on Monday mornings when the ovens are cold," one crematorium said.
In March Polish media reported that kite surfer Jan Lisewski fought off repeated shark attacks and overcame thirst and exhaustion in a two-day battle of survival on the Red Sea with just his trusty knife as protection.
"I was stabbing them in the eyes, the nose and gills."
In other animal news, dairy cows across the world mourned the loss of "Jocko", the world's third most-potent breeding bull and Yvonne the German cow who evaded helicopter searches and dodged hunters landed a film deal: "Cow on the Run".
A Nepali man who was bitten by a cobra snake bit it back and killed the reptile after it attacked him in his rice paddy.
"I could have killed it with a stick but bit it with my teeth instead because I was angry," Mohamed Salmo Miya said.
A scathing resignation letter of a Goldman Sachs executive published in the New York Times inspired a sheaf of online spoofs, including Star Wars villain Darth Vader.
"The Empire today has become too much about shortcuts and not enough about remote strangulation. It just doesn't feel right to me anymore," Vader wrote in a published letter.
Austerity in Europe saw a once-thriving Greek sex industry become the latest victim of the country's debt crisis with Greeks spending less on erotic toys, pornography and lingerie.
But lust appeared to be in the rudest of health elsewhere.
Turkish emergency workers rescued an inflatable sex doll floating in the Black Sea and a German disc jockey vowed to press charges against a woman who locked him in her apartment and ravaged him for hours until he rang the police.
"She was sex mad and there was no way out of the flat," Dieter S. told police.
@ROYALFETUS
Britain's Queen Elizabeth celebrated her 60th year on the throne with Diamond Jubilee celebrations that saw a 1,000-ship rain-sodden flotilla sail down the River Thames, a massive party in front of Buckingham Palace, street parties across the country and a spoof incarnation of her majesty on Twitter.
"OK, fire up the Bentley. Let's rock," tweeted "Elizabeth Windsor", the comic online alter ego of the British monarch in a typical tweet from the spoof Twitter account @Queen_UK, a virtual monarch with a razor-sharp wit and a penchant for gin.
And Twitter positively exploded with spoof royal accounts later in the year when Elizabeth's grandson William and his wife Kate announced she was pregnant with a future monarch.
"I may not have bones yet, but I'm already more important than everyone reading this," was the tweet from @RoyalFetus.
Leadership and change was a theme which ran through a year in which socialist Francois Hollande defeated incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy and Mimi the clown to become French president, Vladimir Putin was elected Russian president again and U.S. President Barack Obama won re-election over Republican Mitt Romney.
Amid the tight election race, Obama met a gaffe-prone Romney for an exchange at a charity dinner ahead of the November poll, where America's first black president poked fun at Hollywood actor Clint Eastwood for lecturing an empty chair as if it were Obama during the Republican convention.
"Please take your seats," Obama told the crowd, "or else Clint Eastwood will yell at them."
"THE MODFATHER"
Sporting news was dominated by the London Olympics during the summer, where the opening ceremony included a vignette of Queen Elizabeth being escorted by James Bond before apparently skydiving into the Olympic stadium for her arrival.
"Good evening Mr. Bond," was her only line.
Olympic embarrassments were few, but they began early with organizers forced into apologies for displaying the South Korean flag on a video screen for North Korea's women's soccer team.
British cycling sensation Bradley "the Modfather" Wiggins became the first Briton to win the Tour de France, sparking a craze among fans for cutout cardboard sideburns modeled on his own and shouting "here Wiggo" as he raced to Olympic gold.
London's eccentric and loquacious Mayor Boris Johnson fell rather awkwardly silent when he got stuck dangling from a zip wire, waving two Union flags in drizzling rain.
Olympic chiefs urged youthful athletes to drink "sensibly".
But there was anything but restraint for Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt, who declared an early night at one point only to be photographed later with three members of the Swedish women's handball team. Early one Sunday morning Bolt also dazzled dancers at a London night club with a turn in the DJ booth.
"I am a legend," Bolt shouted out to a packed dance floor from the decks with his arms raised in the air.
Towards the close of the year, tens of thousands of mystics, hippies and tourists celebrated in the shadow of ancient Maya pyramids in southeastern Mexico as the Earth survived a day billed by doomsday theorists as the end of the world.
"It's pure Hollywood," said Luis Mis Rodriguez, 45, a Maya selling obsidian figurines and souvenirs.
Finally, a chubby, rapping singer with slicked-back hair and a tacky suit became the latest musical sensation to burst upon the world from South Korea, via a YouTube music video that has been seen more than a billion times.
Decked out in a bow tie and suit jackets varying from pink to baby blue, as well as a towel for one sequence set in a sauna, Psy busts funky moves based on horse-riding in venues ranging from playgrounds to subways.
The video by Psy has been emulated by everyone from Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei to students at Britain's elite Eton College, gurning politicians, spotty teens and embarrassing dads worldwide.
"My goal in this music video was to look uncool until the end. I achieved it," Psy told Reuters.

Read More..

Stomach bug knocks Nadal from Australian Open

Just when Rafael Nadal had recovered from a knee injury, a stomach virus has delayed his return to tennis by a couple of months.
Nadal announced Friday he will miss next month's Australian Open and probably won't play again until the end of February. The Spaniard said he needs time to recover from the virus that already prevented him from coming back this week at Abu Dhabi.
Nadal has been sidelined since June with a knee injury, which forced him to miss the London Olympics and U.S. Open. He had planned to rejoin the ATP tour at the Qatar Open in Doha next month before the Jan. 14-27 Australian Open, but pulled out of both.
"We just hope he gets better quickly and we see him back on the tour as soon as possible," Australian Open tournament director Craig Tiley said. "Tennis fans across the world have been missing him."
While he is expected to recover from the virus in time for the year's first Grand Slam tournament, Nadal and his team said he wouldn't have the proper preparation for a five-set event.
Nadal stressed that his decision had nothing to do with the tendinitis in his left knee. That injury prompted him to take a break following a second-round loss to then 100th-ranked Lukas Rosol at Wimbledon in June.
"My knee is much better and the rehabilitation process has gone well as predicted by the doctors," Nadal said in a statement from his hometown of Manacor on the island of Mallorca. "But this virus didn't allow me to practice this past week and therefore I am sorry to announce that I will not play in Doha and the Australian Open."
The former No. 1 hopes to return at a tournament in Acapulco, Mexico, starting Feb. 27. He left open the possibility of playing at an earlier tournament if his recovery went well.
"As my team and doctors say, the safest thing to do is to do things well and this virus has delayed my plans of playing these weeks," Nadal said. "I always said that my return to competition will be when I am in the right conditions to play and after all this time away from the courts I'd rather not accelerate the comeback and prefer to do things well."
Nadal's doctor, Angel Ruiz-Cotorro, said in the same statement that the player needed at least a week to recover from the virus. That ruled him out for the Qatar Open, which starts Jan. 2.
Nadal's coach and uncle, Toni Nadal, said going straight to a five-set tournament after being sidelined so long was "not appropriate."
"It is simply not conceivable that his first event is a best-of-five sets event," he said in a statement. "He wouldn't be ready for that."
Nadal's knee injury prevented the 11-time Grand Slam winner from defending his Olympic singles gold medal at last summer's games, where he was supposed to be Spain's flag-bearer in the opening ceremony. He also had to pull out of the U.S. Open and Spain's Davis Cup final against the Czech Republic, which his teammates lost without him.
Nadal, ranked No. 4, won the Australian Open in 2009. Last year, he lost to top-ranked Novak Djokovic in a title match that lasted 5 hours, 53 minutes, the longest recorded Grand Slam final.

Read More..

Tennis-Distracted Williams sounds ominous warning in season opener

BRISBANE, Dec 30 (Reuters) - An angry and impatient Serena Williams overcame blustery conditions at the Brisbane International on Sunday in an ominous beginning to her only tournament before her charge at a 16th major title at the Australian Open next month.
The American threw her hands in the air, shook her head, gesticulated towards her coach and stomped her feet in petulant protest - but that did little to help compatriot Varvara Lepchenko who suffered a 6-2 6-1 first round defeat.
Howling with frustration in her first match since winning the WTA Championships at Istanbul in October, lacking rhythm in swirling winds on Pat Rafter Arena, Williams still delivered enough booming serves and punishing groundstrokes to prevail in a formidable if cantankerous display.
The reigning Wimbledon, Olympic and U.S. Open champion told reporters a calendar-year grand slam was very much on her mind at the start of the season.
Williams held all four major titles in the so-called Serena Slam of 2002-2003 but the holy grail of professional tennis is to win the Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon and U.S. Open tournaments in the same calendar year.
The American claimed world number one Victoria Azarenka and number two Maria Sharapova, and perhaps a few fringe-dwellers, were eyeing off a near-impossible feat not achieved since Steffi Graf's unbeaten run through 1988.
"I think whoever wins the Australian Open will have that same thought," Williams said.
"I think there is no way that Victoria or Maria or maybe some other players don't have that same thought. I think I definitely feel that way."
Both Azarenka and Sharapova are in a red-hot Brisbane field with Williams. Of the world's top 10, only Agnieszka Radwanska and Li Na are missing.
The predictability of her defeat of Lepchenko was matched by the level of emotion surrounding Australian wildcard Jarmila Gajdosova's victory on the opening day.
HIGH EMOTION
Playing her first tournament since the passing in September of her mother, also named Jarmila, and with her world ranking having plummeted from a career high of 25 to 183 in the last 18 months, Gajdosova roared home from a one-set deficit to stun Italy's world number 16 Roberta Vinci.
Gajdosova wept after a 4-6 6-1 6-3 triumph that set up a second-round showdown against French Open champion Sharapova.
"There have been a lot of things happening in my life," Gajdosova said.
"As you all know, my mom passed away in September. It's been a difficult time. First Christmas, as well, without her. My dad is here. My brother and his wife and son. It was my first match in front of them and my first match in Australia, after a long time, without my mum."
Sixth-seeded Czech Petra Kvitova recovered from a pre-tournament asthma scare to defeat Spain's Carla Suarez-Navarro 6-3 6-4.
Kvitova has been gasping and wheezing in Brisbane's humid weather and revealed one of her recent attacks had been her worst in three years.
The 2011 Wimbledon champion was unaware she was asthmatic until she nearly collapsed during an event in New York in 2009.
"I was playing a tournament in the Bronx and after about five minutes I had to sit down and relax and have a drink because I just couldn't move and I couldn't play," she wrote in a column for the Courier-Mail newspaper.

Read More..

Distracted Williams sounds ominous warning in season opener

BRISBANE (Reuters) - An angry and impatient Serena Williams overcame blustery conditions at the Brisbane International on Sunday in an ominous beginning to her only tournament before her charge at a 16th major title at the Australian Open next month.
The American threw her hands in the air, shook her head, gesticulated towards her coach and stomped her feet in petulant protest - but that did little to help compatriot Varvara Lepchenko who suffered a 6-2 6-1 first round defeat.
Howling with frustration in her first match since winning the WTA Championships at Istanbul in October, lacking rhythm in swirling winds on Pat Rafter Arena, Williams still delivered enough booming serves and punishing groundstrokes to prevail in a formidable if cantankerous display.
The reigning Wimbledon, Olympic and U.S. Open champion told reporters a calendar-year grand slam was very much on her mind at the start of the season.
Williams held all four major titles in the so-called Serena Slam of 2002-2003 but the holy grail of professional tennis is to win the Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon and U.S. Open tournaments in the same calendar year.
The American claimed world number one Victoria Azarenka and number two Maria Sharapova, and perhaps a few fringe-dwellers, were eyeing off a near-impossible feat not achieved since Steffi Graf's unbeaten run through 1988.
"I think whoever wins the Australian Open will have that same thought," Williams said.
"I think there is no way that Victoria or Maria or maybe some other players don't have that same thought. I think I definitely feel that way."
Both Azarenka and Sharapova are in a red-hot Brisbane field with Williams. Of the world's top 10, only Agnieszka Radwanska and Li Na are missing.
The predictability of her defeat of Lepchenko was matched by the level of emotion surrounding Australian wildcard Jarmila Gajdosova's victory on the opening day.
HIGH EMOTION
Playing her first tournament since the passing in September of her mother, also named Jarmila, and with her world ranking having plummeted from a career high of 25 to 183 in the last 18 months, Gajdosova roared home from a one-set deficit to stun Italy's world number 16 Roberta Vinci.
Gajdosova wept after a 4-6 6-1 6-3 triumph that set up a second-round showdown against French Open champion Sharapova.
"There have been a lot of things happening in my life," Gajdosova said.
"As you all know, my mom passed away in September. It's been a difficult time. First Christmas, as well, without her. My dad is here. My brother and his wife and son. It was my first match in front of them and my first match in Australia, after a long time, without my mum."
Sixth-seeded Czech Petra Kvitova recovered from a pre-tournament asthma scare to defeat Spain's Carla Suarez-Navarro 6-3 6-4.
Kvitova has been gasping and wheezing in Brisbane's humid weather and revealed one of her recent attacks had been her worst in three years.
The 2011 Wimbledon champion was unaware she was asthmatic until she nearly collapsed during an event in New York in 2009.
"I was playing a tournament in the Bronx and after about five minutes I had to sit down and relax and have a drink because I just couldn't move and I couldn't play," she wrote in a column for the Courier-Mail newspaper.
"I still feel really uncomfortable when I'm in this sort of hot and humid weather and it was at practise on Friday that I started to feel a bit similar to what I did in The Bronx.

Read More..