CORNER KICKS
Five things happening around the world:
1 Now that David Beckham has bought a 13,000-square-foot, $22-million home in Beverly Hills, he can turn his attention to winning the Spanish league championship with Real Madrid.
Or perhaps not.
Beckham faces a likely suspension this weekend after getting his 11th yellow card in 19 games. He should have been suspended earlier when he reached 10 yellows, but was let off the hook by the Spanish federation.
That prompted Sevilla Coach Juande Ramos to complain loudly of unfair treatment.
“In European football, the rules are serious,” he said, “but in Spain it is a joke. Everybody else has to obey the rules, so I don’t understand why Real Madrid don’t have to do the same.”
Beckham then helped Real defeat Sevilla, 3-2, but was yellow-carded with six minutes to play and it is difficult to see how the federation can fail to suspend him from Sunday’s match against Espanyol.
With five games remaining, Barcelona leads with 65 points, Real is second with 63, Sevilla third with 61 and Valencia fourth with 59.
2 Fulham, which paid Major League Soccer and the New England Revolution $4 million for U.S. midfielder Clint Dempsey last fall, has been repaid in full.
Dempsey’s goal in a 1-0 road win over Liverpool assured the London club of remaining in the English Premier League and not being relegated. That, according to the Boston Globe, means Fulham will get its $60-million share of a new $3-billion TV package and another $40 million in ancillary benefits.
“I haven’t really felt I have been able to contribute too much, so Saturday was payback time,” Dempsey told reporters.
3 Diego Armando Maradona has been released after spending more than two weeks in various Argentine clinics. On a television show Monday night, he lashed out at those who had hinted he was near death when first admitted.
“I don’t know why people want to think I’m dead,” he said. “I was hospitalized for hepatitis. I am not a drunk. Maybe that day I was. This can happen to anybody.”
4 The planned July tour of Asia by new English champion Manchester United might have to be canceled or rescheduled after complaints from the Asian Football Confederation that United’s visit to Tokyo, Seoul and Kuala Lumpur clashed with the Asian Cup, which features 16 national teams.
5 Jorge Valdano, who won a World Cup playing for Argentina in 1986 and later coached Real Madrid, has lashed out at Rafael Benitez, the Spanish coach of Liverpool, and Jose Mourinho, the Portuguese coach of Chelsea. Both men, he claimed, are killing the game by stifling creativity, free expression and inventiveness in their players.
“Neither Mourinho nor Benitez made it as a player,” Valdano wrote in an article for Spain’s Marca newspaper. “That has made them channel all their vanity into coaching.”
Liverpool has advanced to the European Champions League final against AC Milan and Chelsea will play Manchester United in the English F.A. Cup Final at Wembley.
-- GRAHAME L. JONES
