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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BAHRAIN’s national soccer team received a major financial aid yesterday when the Prime Minister Shaikh Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa ordered the allocation of BD1.2 million for the team’s preparations for the upcoming 2010 World Cup qualifying round. General Organisation for Youth and Sports president Shaikh Fawaz bin Mohammed Al Khalifa delivered the good news to the members of the team during a training session last night at the Bahrain Football Association grounds in Riffa.

Shaikh Fawaz said the amount will be benefited for the team’s two-week training camp in Austria which starts tomorrow.

At the camp, Bahrain will play against several European clubs as part of their preparations for the final qualifying round which gets underway on September 6. Among top teams whom Bahrain will face are Bundesliga side Schalke, Stoke City of the English Premiership and Czech Republic’s Sigma Olomouc.

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But for the fact that many of these matches were sell-outs in more intimate soccer specific stadiums, this number could have been much higher. How impressive is this stat? This number is about a 1,000 fans shy of the combined average of the gate that the Houston Dynamo and D.C. United have drawn on the road this year.

Last year’s fixture in New York was the highest attended stand-alone game in MLS history and contributed to the Galaxy’s league-high road attendance average of 28,035. With a visit at the Red Bulls this weekend, that number for this year will surely climb higher. Already, Red Bull has sold 42,000 seats for Saturday’s game, almost triple the average of their home gate to date.

The pre-sale of tickets in New York is mirroring the turnout last year to the point that the New Jersey Sports & Exposition Authority is prepared to once again staff the game like a NFL event.

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The club will be making its third trip to Minden next week, when it will take on a skeleton crew of the Douglas High boys soccer team Monday at 7 p.m. and Thursday at 7 p.m. at Douglas High School.It’ll be mostly kids coming back for their senior year and maybe a couple guys from last year state runner-up team, Douglas soccer coach Milko Vasquez said. They usually bring a talented team from Germany, but we had a pretty good team last year too, so hopefully well give them a good game.That’s all you can ask for.Admission is free for both games.Minden will be the third stop on the German club’s tour, following Redlands, Calif., and Yosemite. The club will head to San Bruno, Calif. after spending a week touring Carson Valley and the outlying area.Their itenerary hasn’t really changed much over the years, Christen said.

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A Santa Barbara soccer club is ready to take on the world at an International soccer tournament in Norway. For a second straight year, the Santa Barbara United will be participating in the world’s largest youth soccer tournament that features 1,500 teams representing 30 countries. The 13-14 year-old girls will be the only team representing the United States and along with playing in some intensely competitive games against teams like Kenya and China, the girls will also get the chance to learn about other cultures and make long-distance friendships. The team is still looking for donations to help fund the once in a lifetime trip. If you’re interested in helping out, you contact Melinda Staveley at 805-448-3484. .

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