A round-up of today's other stories in brief
Fletcher's playing career hanging in the balance
Darren Fletcher’s career is hanging in the balance after Alex Ferguson confirmed the Manchester United midfielder has still to launch a comeback from his chronic bowel complaint. After months of struggle to combat a mystery virus, United eventually came clean over the extent of Fletcher’s problem in December.
At the time, Scotland manager Craig Levein expressed hope his skipper would be fit to lead his country into their 2014 World Cup qualification campaign.
However, that is not going to happen, with Ferguson revealing yesterday the 28-year-old has not even attempted a return to training yet.
But, whilst he continued to express hope for his fellow countryman, there was little in Ferguson’s assessment of the situation that suggested Fletcher could win his fitness fight.
“Darren has not started training with us,” he said. “Obviously he has got challenges and we are happy to be patient with him. But he won’t be starting the season.
“It is unfortunate because he is such a magnificent professional and such a nice lad.”
Blatter faces calls to step down
Sepp Blatter faced calls for him to step down as president of Fifa following his admission that he knew his predecessor, Joao Havelange, pocketed “commissions” for awarding Fifa’s 2002 and 2006 World Cup TV contracts to the marketing company ISL.
In official statements on Fifa’s website, Blatter acknowledged he was “P1”, the unnamed Fifa official revealed in a Swiss court document to have known a one million Swiss franc (€832,698) payment from ISL was for Havelange. Under Blatter’s presidency, Fifa did nothing to sanction Havelange, or Ricardo Texeira, the executive committee member, who between them were alleged to have received 41 million Swiss francs (€34.2m) from ISL.
The document revealed Fifa made strenuous efforts to have the prosecutions stopped, then did not make public what had happened, which has prompted Sylvia Schenk, senior advisor on sport for the anti-corruption organisation Transparency International, to argue that Blatter’s position is now untenable.
Guardian Service
Forest announce departure of manager Cotterill
Nottingham Forest have announced the departure of their manager, Steve Cotterill, days after new owners took control of the club.
The Al-Hasawi family, formed of the Kuwaiti-based businessmen Fawaz, Abdulaziz and Omar, agreed terms to buy the late Nigel Doughty’s controlling stake of the club and they have acted swiftly to make changes at the City Ground as they look to pursue a “long-term vision”.
The former Tottenham manager Harry Redknapp has ruled out taking over.
A number of other names remain in the frame, including former Birmingham boss Alex McLeish, ex-Wolves manager Mick McCarthy, Peterborough’s Darren Ferguson and former Forest player Roy Keane.
Uefa not for budging
Uefa have announced they will continue with additional assistant referees in the Champions League and Europa League next season – but not goal-line technology.
The International FA Board (Ifab) gave their approval to the extra assistants, one next to each goal, to be used in competitions following an experimental period.
Ifab also gave the go-ahead to goal-line technology but, with Uefa president Michel Platini a firm opponent, the systems will not be used in European competition for the foreseeable future.
Uefa will continue with the use of additional assistant referees from the play-off matches of the coming season’s Champions League, and the group stage of the Europa League.
Carlisle shocked at level of racism still encountered
Players’ union chairman Clarke Carlisle has been shocked by the level of racism still encountered by some black and Asian footballers. Carlisle, the chairman of the Professional Footballers’ Association, fronts a BBC documentary called Is Football Racist?, to be aired on Monday night.
He believes big improvements have been made since his playing career began but during filming his eyes were opened to the problems still posed by racism, including highly-gifted South Asian players being denied opportunities because of their ethnicity, the limited opportunities open to black managers, open displays of racism in Poland and England players refusing to speak out on the subject for fear that it might harm their careers.
Carroll may be used in swap for Dempsey
Fulham hope to use Liverpool’s interest in Clint Dempsey to drive an audacious swap deal for Andy Carroll, which would feature a cash adjustment, as they also completed the free transfer of Hugo Rodallega from Wigan Athletic.
Dempsey, who scored 23 goals in all competitions last season, has 12 months to run on his Fulham contract and he is keen to move to a bigger club. Brendan Rodgers, the Liverpool manager, appears prepared to let Carroll go and the striker has also attracted the interest of West Ham United and Newcastle United, his former club.
Fulham would have to give Liverpool around €11.4 million on top of Dempsey, but the deal for Rodallega, who has signed a three-year contract, has strengthened their options following the departures of Andy Johnson and Pavel Pogrebnyak.
Meanwhile, the English Premier League have agreed a €152 million three-year deal with title sponsors Barclays. The extended agreement will run for three seasons from 2013/14 to the end of the 2015/16 season. Guardian Service
