Football - Inzaghi hints
he might leave Milan in January
Veteran Milan forward Filippo Inzaghi has hinted he might leave the defending Serie A champions in the January transfer window. Inzaghi signed a new one-year deal in May but has played just 34 minutes this season. The 38-year-old Inzaghi says "if I continue to feel important there won't be problems, otherwise we'll see what happens in the next two months." Inzaghi has made nearly 300 appearances for Milan since joining from Juventus in 2001, helping the club win two Serie A and two Champions League titles. Coach Massimiliano Allegri left Inzaghi out of his original Champions League squad but can make three changes for the knockout stages.
Overath resigns as
Cologne president
Wolfgang Overath stepped down as president of Bundesliga club Cologne yesterday. Overath took office in 2004 and his current term was due to expire in 2013. He said last week that he would not run again. Two of his deputies also resigned from the board. The 68-year-old is a former Cologne player who won the World Cup in 1974 with West Germany. Overath told a club members' assembly that the "work load had become too great" in recent months. He said he was leaving the club in a good situation. Cologne is 11th in the Bundesliga.
Italy supports fight
against organised crime
The Italy national team trained yesterday on a pitch that was confiscated from a crime syndicate to show support for the fight against organised crime. Cesare Prandelli's team were welcomed onto the pitch by around 1,000 spectators. The initiative was organised by Libera – an association that coordinates the fight against organised crime. Libera president Luigi Ciotti says, "the fight against the mafia happens on the ground, but above all in Rome, in parliament." Italy normally trains in the town of Coverciano on the outskirts of Florence but were instead in the small Calabrian town of Rizziconi. Calabria's 'Ndrangheta crime syndicate is today considered more powerful than the Sicilian mafia and has become one of the world's biggest cocaine traffickers.
Player dies during
fifth-tier Belgian game
Fifth-tier Belgian club Merksem S.C. says one of its players has died during a match. Merksem says Bobsam Elejiko collapsed during the Provincial 1 game against F.C. Kaart yesterday and attempts to resuscitate the Nigerian-born Belgian were unsuccessful. The cause of death was not immediately clear. Merksem says in a statement on its website that "we express our condolences to the Elejiko family during this difficult time." The 30-year-old Elejiko had previously played for Westerlo and Antwerp among other teams. The match was abandoned after Elejiko's death.
Motorsport - Vettel unable to match Schumacher’s record
Formula One world champion Sebastian Vettel span out of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix at the first corner yesterday and was forced to retire for the first time this season. The 24-year-old Red Bull driver appeared to pick up a puncture in his right rear tire and slid off the track. He managed to limp back to the pits but his team was unable to repair the damage. With one race remaining in Brazil, Vettel will now be unable to match Michael Schumacher's record of 13 wins in a season. Vettel's last retirement was at the Korean Grand Prix last year. He was the only driver to have finished all the previous 17 races in 2011.
Rugby - SARU expresses sorrow
at reports player shot dead
The South African Rugby Union says it is shocked and dismayed at reports that former Springboks flanker Solly Tyibilika was killed in a bar shooting. It was reported in South Africa that Tyibilika, 32, had been shot and killed in a poor township on the outskirts of Cape Town yesterday. A police spokesman confirmed a man in his early thirties died after two men entered a bar and "randomly shot" at customers. Police would not yet release the name of the victim. SARU President Oregan Hoskins called Tyibilika "a trailblazer" among black players and says "if the reports are correct, to lose him so suddenly and in this brutal manner is very distressing. The casual disregard for life in our society is shocking."