BRAZIL DEFENDER ALVES OUT OF WORLD CUP WITH KNEE INJURY
SAO PAULO: Brazil’s Paris St-germain defender Dani Alves will miss the World Cup due to a knee injury which requires surgery and he could be out of action for up to six months.
Alves, who plays for French champions Paris St-germain, limped off near the end of Tuesday’s French Cup Final win over third-tier Les Herbiers.
The Brazilian team doctor, Rodrigo Lasmar, flew to Paris to examine the player and decided surgery was necessary after diagnosing an injury to his right anterior cruciate ligament.
“It is clear that the Daniel Alves’s call up for the period of preparation, friendlies and consequently the World Cup, is impossible,” the Brazilian Football Confederation CBF said. Brazil will play warm-up matches against Croatia on June 3 and Austria seven days later, before kicking off their World Cup campaign on June 17 against Switzerland.
The five-times world champions will then play Costa Rica and Serbia in Group E.
Alves, 35, is one of the squad’s most experienced players with 107 caps.
His absence in Russia will be a blow to Brazil coach Tite, who values not just his technical ability but also his effect on the dressing room, where he is one of the most popular players.
The right back, who is a fine crosser of the ball, is expected to be out for up to six months and Brazil’s players past and present expressed their support for Alves.
“I am so sad to hear this. Footballers hate missing games but I know first-hand that missing World Cup games is the worst feeling,” Pele, who was forced out of the 1962 and 1966 World Cup tournaments because of injury, said on twitter. Manchester City’s and
of Corinthians are among the players most likely to replace Alves when Tite announces his 23-man squad for the finals on Monday. MUSCAT: The Minister of Sports Affairs, Shaikh Saad bin Mohammed al Saadi presided over the meeting of the Sports Technical Committee of the Council of Arab Ministers for Youth and Sports in Cairo, Egypt.
The recommendations of the working team formed by the Sports Technical Committee and the proposals presented by Palestine, Jordan and Egypt were reviewed during the meeting.
The meeting also discussed holding of scheduled sports events in Lebanon during the next term and the report of the Union of Arab National Olympic Committees (UANOC) on the Arab games.
BERLIN: German football supremo Reinhard Grindel and politicians on Saturday urged ruling body Fifa and its President Gianni Infantino to make sure that investigative journalist Hajo Seppelt is given a visa to attend the upcoming World Cup in Russia.
It was revealed on Friday that German Seppelt, whose reporting helped uncover wide-ranging doping practices in Russia, was denied a visa by Russian authorities as persona non grata for the June 14-July 15 tournament.
“Fifa has declared how important it rates freedom of press. I have full faith that Fifa will make use of its influence so that Mr Seppelt can report from Russia without restrictions,” German Football Federation (DFB) President Grindel said in a statement.
Dagmar Freitag, who chairs Germany’s parliamentary sports committee and is also a member of the foreign affairs committee, said: “I am curious how Mr Infantino will react now. After all, Fifa is claiming that it wants to enable journalists to travel to the World Cup.”
Fifa said late on Friday it has accredited Seppelt for the tournament and that it was “getting more information from the Russian authorities regarding his visa process through the Local Organising Committee.
“Generally speaking, the freedom of the press is of paramount importance to Fifa and we always aim to provide media representatives with the best possible conditions for coverage of all Fifa events,” Fifa said.
Freitag, in a Facebook post, called Russia’s visa denial “not only completely unjust but downright scandalous.”
The ARD television network said on Friday that awardwinning Seppelt, who has reported on doping since 2009, was denied the visa.
He helped uncovered wide-ranging doping in Russian athletics through whistleblowers which led to the ongoing suspension of Russia’s athletics federation. Further reports by him and other media as well as probes by the World Anti-doping Agency and International Olympic Committee led to the suspension of Russia for the 2018 Winter Games in Pyeongchang.