Nigeria Content Online

Former
FA chairman David Triesman has accused FIFA executive committee members
Jack Warner, Ricardo Teixeira, Nicolas Leoz and Worawi Makudi of asking
for favours in return for their votes for England’s 2018 World Cup bid.

Triesman was giving
evidence to a British parliamentary inquiry into the reasons why
England failed in its bid to secure the finals which were awarded to
Russia last December.

He said Warner, of
Trinidad and Tobago, asked for £2.5 million to be “channelled through
me” for a school while Paraguayan Leoz requested a knighthood.

Teixeira asked him
“What can you do for me?” and Thai Makudi wanted control of the
television rights for a proposed Thailand v England friendly.

“I will take my evidence to FIFA,” Triesman said.

‘Shocking accusation’

FIFA president Sepp
Blatter responded to Triesman’s comments. “I was shocked but one has to
see the evidence,” Batter told a news conference in Zurich.

“There is a new
round of information, give us time to digest that and start the
investigation by asking for evidence on what has been said.

“I repeat, we must
have the evidence and we will react immediately against all those in
breach of the ethics code rules.” Blatter said the executive committee
members were not elected by the same Congress as him.

“They are coming from the others (other confederations), so I cannot say that they are all angels or all devils,” he said.

Meanwhile, further shock claims were highlighted by MPs at the culture, media and sport committee in the House of Commons.

Tory MP Damian
Collins said that evidence submitted by the Sunday Times, which the
committee will publish, claimed that FIFA vice-president Issa Hayatou
from Cameroon and Jacques Anouma from the Ivory Coast were paid $1.5m
(£917,000) by Qatar.

Collins said: “The
Sunday Times’ submission, and this is to be published by us later,
claims that $1.5million was paid to FIFA executive committee members
Issa Hayatou and Jacques Anouma who went on to vote for Qatar.” FIFA’s
ethics committee last year banned two other executive committee members
after a Sunday Times investigation into World Cup bidding.

Collins said the submission claimed Qatar specifically employed a fixer to arrange deals with African members for their votes.

Red
Bull champion Abdul Aziz Turki Al Faisal was the pride of all Saudis in
particular and Arabs in general with his world class victory.

Achievements are
recognised indeed by their size and importance on the global scene, and
this is exactly the kind of achievement achieved by Abdul Aziz, the
first Saudi to take part in the GT3 European championship. His
historical victory added the element of pride to his athletic career
and wining an international medal in the name of his country.

Abdul Aziz won the
championship title in the first GT3 European championship round
organized in the Algarve international circuit in Portugal. He came
first with his co-pilot Edward Sandstroem on a BMW Z4 on the Need for
Speed Schubert team. With this success, Abdul Aziz Al Faisal became the
first Saudi to participate and win a GT3 European Championship Race.

The team’s
happiness was completed when Csaba Walter and Claudia Huertgen of the
same team came in second after the Graff Racing team on a Mercedes-Benz
SLS AMG driven by Mike Parisy and Philippe Giauque was penalized for
violating the stopping rules. Third place went to the Faster Racing DB
motorsport team also driving a BMW Z4. With that BMW won the first
three places in the launch of the GT3 European championship.

Car was a breeze

After his victory, Red Bull champion Abdul Aziz expressed his feelings saying:

“When I came into
the race, I did not know if the car I had just over taken was from the
competitor’s team. I then asked the engineers on the radio, and as soon
as they informed me that it was one of our competitiors’, I increased
my speed. There wasn’t a lot of pressure; the car was easy to drive.

Edward did a good
job in maintaining the tires and he had to advance from the start. As
for me, I brought the car to the finish line. The problem in such races
is that you don’t know your position. I used the radio a few times to
check my position and to see if I needed to move forward, the answer
was ‘no, just keep your position’. I suffered from the cars lagging
behind since they were not moving aside so I can overtake them when the
blue flag was raised, I worried about their moves. In reality, I drove
the car to the finish line.” “This victory is very important for the
Gulf region and especially for KSA where car racing is growing rapidly.
It’s a new sport that started in 2004 with the Formula 1 in Bahrain. I
competed for 2 years in the Porsche GT3 Middle East championship,
winning the title last year and coming in second, this year. In fact,
my participation in this international championship is a very important
step. Frankly the victory was quite unexpected. But we have a great
team and great colleagues as well as a highly performing car”, he added.

Excellent performance

Edward Sandstroem,
the Red Bull champion’s co-pilot and member of the Need for Speed
Schubert team, said: “I am very happy to be a member of this team
especially with the presence of my colleague Abdul Aziz Al Faisal and
his excellent performance during the race. I am also very happy with
the results we achieved especially at the beginning of the season. The
car is better than last year when we struggled a lot and our journey
was hard if it were not for the tires that had helped us a lot. Now
it’s easier because we have all the factors for success. I thank the
Schubert team which has exerted a lot of effort. Now we have a stronger
car than last year, and we have become on the same level with other
cars, so we are able to compete for the title”.

Former
Greek sprinters Kostas Kenteris and Katerina Thanou received suspended
jail sentences for staging a motorcycle crash to avoid a doping test
before the 2004 Athens Olympics, court officials said on Tuesday.

The Sydney 2000
Olympic medallists and their coach Christos Tzekos were accused of
staging a crash on the eve of their home Games.

Kenteris, 37 and Thanou, 36, were each sentenced to 31 months in jail as the much delayed trial finally came to a conclusion.

“The crash never happened,” one of the judges said.

Tzekos, the only one of the trio present in court, was sentenced to 33 months in jail.

Two witnesses who
gave testimonies were sentenced to seven and 15 months in jail
respectively while the doctors who testified received sentences of
between six and eight months.

All the sentences
were suspended pending appeals. Court officials said all the guilty
parties intended to appeal, adding that the appeals would be heard
within 10 days.

Big scandal

The trial, which
took years to start after frequent postponements, began in January and
suffered several delays due to the absence of witnesses.

Kenteris, the 200
metres gold medallist at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, and 100 metres
silver medallist Thanou were acquitted of doping charges in a Greek
athletics federation probe in 2005.

The International
Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) appealed the verdict at the
Court of Arbitration for Sport. They settled out of court in 2006 and
subsequently admitted only to anti-doping rule violations, essentially
serving out their unofficial two-year suspensions.

The 2004 scandal, widely regarded as the biggest at an Olympics
since Canadian Ben Johnson lost his 100 metres gold medal in Seoul in
1988 after a positive doping test, cast a huge cloud over the Athens
Games for the host country.

REUTERS

After
achieving promotion to World Cricket League Division 6 from Division 7
last week in Botswana, the national cricket team are back in South
Africa preparing for another assault on promotion.

The ICC Africa T-20
Division 2 tournament will bat off in Johannesburg on Saturday, 14 May
2011. Nigeria came second behind Kuwait in the just concluded Division
7 tournament that took place in Gaborone. The Nigerian lost two matches
and they were both to Kuwait. The player cum coach of the team, Sean
Philips said afterwards that Nigeria has an array of talented cricket
players and he was not surprised at the good performance and subsequent
promotion.

Philips said: “I
think when the players first arrived in South Africa for our training
camp ahead of this tournament they didn’t really have the ambition but
with the pre-tournament games these guys got some belief and that’s
what we bought to the tournament.

“We lost two games
this tournament – both to Kuwait – but the rest of their games the guys
really stood up and wanted to go to Malaysia. We achieved the goal we
set and I’m very proud of them.”

New challenge

After that comes
the challenge of qualifying for Division 1 in South Africa and that
challenge begins on Saturday with a match against Mozambique.

But Philips said
the team will continue to improve as the players want to make the
country proud. “I am pleased that we are creating such a vibe in
Nigeria about our performances. It really inspires the team to doing
well.

“The sudden
improvement is due to this squad working extremely hard to achieve
their goals. I am sure everyone agrees that there is exceptional talent
in Nigeria.

My job is to use the mind to access that talent. That is why we are improving”, he concluded.

The top two
qualifiers from this tournament will proceed to the ICC – Africa T20
division one tournament which is scheduled to be held in Entebbe,
Uganda. This division one tournament will take place in mid July 2011.

Teams that will be battling for promotion with Nigeria are Tanzania,
Botswana, Ghana,Swaziland, Sierra Leone, Mozambique, Malawi and Rwanda.

France coach Laurent Blanc has been cleared of any wrongdoing by the Sports Ministry’s investigation into the racism row that has shaken French football, Sports Minister Chantal Jouanno said on Tuesday.

Blanc attended a meeting in November at which members of the French football federation (FFF) discussed the idea of enforcing limits on black and Arab players in youth academies.

“There is nothing leading to say that Laurent Blanc is backing discriminatory practices,” Jouanno told a news conference.

“Laurent Blanc was attending this kind of meeting for the very first time. He did not have any project (to limit the number of Black and Arab players), no fixed opinion.”

Jouanno added that the investigation did not find enough evidence to launch a judicial procedure although she reiterated that racial quota enforcement was illegal in France.

“There is no element, no accumulation of evidence that leads us to believe there was discrimination,” she said. “There are not enough grounds to refer it to the prosecutor’s office.”

Federation technical director Francois Blaquart, who used the word ‘quotas’ in the November meeting, has been suspended pending the inquiry and a separate federation probe is also looking into the issue.

Jouanno said she did not have the authority to sanction the technical director, but would ask the FFF to launch an audit into Blaquart’s responsibilities.

The FFF will present its investigation’s findings at a news conference later on Tuesday with Blanc still not totally in the clear.

The coach has been slammed by former team mates from the multicultural 1998 World Cup-winning France side but others such as then captain Didier Deschamps and influential French great Zinedine Zidane have backed Blanc to stay on.

REUTERS