SOCCER WORLD

In June, TAG agreed to buy Bologna in a deal valued at $28 million, which would have made it the first Serie A team to be fully owned by a foreign group. Bologna was just promoted to Italy’s top division after dropping out three years ago.

The deal was scheduled to be completed Wednesday, but Bologna president Alfredo Cazzola and minority owner Renzo Menarini announced that they had rejected the American fund’s request to extend the deadline by 20 days.

“We did not take this latest request into consideration. We don’t support it and we don’t accept it,” Cazzola told Bologna’s Web site. “Therefore, we are here to announce that our contract with TAG Partners has concluded in an irrevocable manner.”

Cazzola and Menarini said they would continue to control the club and invest more money to keep the team in Serie A.

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Barcelona striker Samuel Eto’o is considering an offer to join Uzbek soccer club Kuruvchi, he said at a news conference today in the capital, Tashkent.

“At a meeting with the heads of your club, I very quickly found a common language with them, and our views on the development of football coincide on all main points,” Eto’o said in remarks posted on Kuruvchi’s Web site. “On my return to Barcelona, I plan, starting on Saturday, to consider the offers I’ve received, including the one from Kuruvchi.”

Barcelona had “no knowledge” of an approach for Eto’o from a team in Uzbekistan, team spokesman Jose Miguel Terez said by telephone yesterday. The Cameroon striker is due to report back for preseason training on July 19, he added.

The Uzbek club announced July 14 it was signing Eto’o and that it had agreed a deal under which some members of Barcelona’s management team would come to Tashkent to train the team.

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Forbes Services Thunder will get a glimpse at the strength of their major Lachlan Soccer rivals this Sunday as they take on league leaders Cowra 1 at Cowra.

Sunday marks the completion of the round robin and Forbes can leapfrog Cowra into top spot with a victory.

The sides are set to meet at least twice more this season as LASA splits into divisions ahead of semi-finals and finals.

Parkes Rovers and Tichborne Tigers will make up the rest of the top division.

While Thunder can sneak into top spot, a loss would leave them vulnerable to Rovers, who host struggling Condobolin in the last round.

Tichborne may also move up a notch with two games in hand, against League Jets and Commercial Saints, the latter of whom forfeited to Condobolin last round. Divisions will be created after Sunday’s games with the top four teams in division one, the next four teams in division two and the remaining five sides making up third grade.

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In 2005, Crum transferred to Southern Utah University in Cedar City, a Division I school with no men’s soccer team. He intended to finish a business degree — and to play hoops.

“It’s hard turning down free money,” Crum said of his decision. “It’s hard to make the choice of the road less traveled. And I like being a striker, I do have a scorer’s mentality. But in basketball, you can have a bigger effect on the game more often than in soccer, and I really like that. I just think I was supposed to be a basketball player. It’s my destiny, I guess.”

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Naming Friday the 13th as the date for your wedding could be seen as tempting fate.

It has certainly proved unlucky for footballer Michael Chopra and model Heather Swan.
Within hours of tying the knot last month, their marriage was on the rocks.

And yesterday Miss Swan, who starred in the ITV2 show WAGs Boutique, told friends they had split up.

She has already kicked the Sunderland striker out of the £1million home they shared with their five-month-old son.

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17 July 2008 Zagreb _ The shares of Hajduk Split, the first Croatian soccer club to be offered for sale, will be available to buyers next month, the club said on Wednesday.

“The club has been given approval by a sports ministry commission for the sale of its shares. After a part of the stock is transferred to the city of Split, we will offer shares to our supporters, probably in about three weeks, and then the remaining stock to the public,” Hajduk’s spokesman told the Reuters news agency. He could not give more details but Croatian media reported that Hajduk’s total base capital was estimated at some 260 million kuna (€32.5 million). Some 16,000 members of the Hajduk supporters’ association will be able to buy a total of 162,070 shares worth 81 million kuna (€11.2 million).

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