Esteqlal Hoping for Lead Extension

Malavan Eying Top Spot

Sports Desk

In the 16th round of Iran’s Premier League (IPL), popular club Persepolis in an away match will meet Malavan at Anzali’s Takhti Stadium on Wednesday.
The capital-based club has collected 20 points to stand 10th in the 18-team league table.
The Reds have hired Reza Haqiqi of Fajr Sepasi and hope the morale boost of his signing along with Ali Karimi’s nomination for the prestigious Asian Player of the Year will help them to overcome fully motivated Malavan.
Persepolis signed the 23-year old player on an 18-month contract. Haqiqi started his career with Payam in 2006. He has been a member of Iran U-20 and U-23 teams. He has also made three appearances for Iran football team.
By changing the head coach and good plays, Malavan is second behind the league pacesetter Esteqlal.
Malavan knows that the full three points of the home game will help them to bridge the gap. Malavan is also hoping that Esteqlal, which is scheduled to shake hands with Foulad at Tehran’s Azadi Stadium, lose point to take first place spot. Esteqlal’s win in this home game will guarantee its half-season championship.
Title holder Sepahan also will play against Damash at Isfahan’s Fouladshahr Stadium.
Sepahan is fourth in the IPL standings with 24 points.
The other games of this round are as follows:
Naft Abadan vs Zob Ahan
Sepasi vs Paykan
Saba vs Rah Ahan
Gahar vs Mes
Naft Tehran vs Saipa
Teraktorsazi vs Aluminum

Tevez Banned From Driving

Manchester City footballer Carlos Tevez has been banned from driving for failing to provide information when he was stopped for speeding in Lancashire.
The Premier League striker was stopped by police for breaking the speed limit in Morecambe on 28 March.
He had been in the town playing in a reserve team game, BBC wrote.
Tevez, from Prestbury in Cheshire, was given an interim ban by Lancaster magistrates. He will have the length of his suspension set in December.
The striker’s solicitor Gwyn Lewis told the court Tevez accepted he had not provided identification, which carries a punishment of six penalty points, and as a result was liable for disqualification, due to the “totting up procedure”.
The court agreed with a request from Mr Lewis to impose a temporary ban on the striker, who did not attend court, until a second offence of failing to produce a full UK driving license was dealt with.
The striker’s car--a Porsche Panamera - was impounded in Manchester on 15 November when he was unable to produce the document.
As a driver from outside the European Union, Tevez is allowed to drive in the UK for 12 months on his Argentine driving license but is then required to apply for a provisional license and pass the British theory and practical driving tests.
Sentencing for both offences will take place at Lancaster Magistrates on 20 December.

Ferrari: Alonso Deserved Title

Ferrari boss Stefano Domenicali believes Fernando Alonso, rather than eventual title winner Sebastian Vettel, was the driver who most deserved to become World Champion this year.
After a season of battling against the odds in generally inferior machinery compared with the Red Bull and McLaren in particular, Alonso ultimately came up just four points short (owing to Vettel’s superior win tally) of ending his six-year wait for his third world championship title at Interlagos on Sunday, Sky Sport reported.
Afterwards Alonso described his own campaign, in which he finished on the podium 13 times in 20 races, as his greatest ever, while rating Ferrari’s performance as a whole given what they had to work with as a “ten”.
His team boss was equally complimentary towards the driver and pointed to the two races where Alonso was involved in collisions at the first corner, Belgium and Japan, where the title was ultimately lost.
“We are proud of him,” Domenicali told reporters. “We are very disappointed because I think that the one who deserved the championship was really him.
“It’s a shame because after such a long season that we really fight in all conditions, we raced in 18 races not 20 - and being second by three points for that is a lot.
“But that’s the way it is.”
Reiterating the point later on, Domenicali added: “Once again I watch the facts. Zero points in two races, so we have done what we have done with 18 races. The others have had 20. These are facts not words.”
The Ferrari chief agreed with Alonso’s assessment that the season had been the 31-year-old’s best in F1 to date but said the team would try to make sure that, after two final race heartbreaks in the Spaniard’s three seasons at the team, they turned the situation round in 2013.

Contador Wants ‘Zero Tolerance’ On Drugs

Alberto Contador has called for doping cheats to be hit hard as his Saxo-Tinkoff team’s future hangs in the balance.
The Spaniard was previously banned for two years and stripped of two grand tour titles for a positive test for Clenbuterol despite proclaiming his innocence, Eurosport reported.
The Saxo-Tinkoff rider told TV2 in France, “For cycling, it should be zero tolerance... it is clear that there is no place for cheaters.”
He added that he considers it an injustice that he had his 2010 Tour de France and 2011 Giro d’Italia titles taken from him.
“I worked according to the regulations and they said that the victory is not mine--it’s an injustice,” he said.
Riders returning from doping bans will not contribute to their team’s points tally for two years, which has left Saxo-Tinkoff’s future as a WorldTour team in danger after many of Contador’s points were nullified.
The Danish team is vying with Argos-Shimano for the final license.
“I would love to do the Tour obviously,” said Contador. “I missed it this year. But if I only find out two months before, then I won’t [be there].
“I need enough time to prepare. Otherwise I won’t be a part of it.”

Parker Scores as Spurs Beat Raptors

Tony Parker called it was a game that ‘’could have gone either way.’’ But with a perfect performance in the second overtime, Parker made sure his San Antonio Spurs came out on top.
Parker scored six of his 32 points in the second OT, Tim Duncan had 26 and the Spurs beat Toronto 111-106 Sunday, their fourth straight victory over the Raptors, AP wrote.
Duncan said no one was more vital to San Antonio’s win than Parker, who made all three shots he took in the second overtime and topped 30 points for the second straight game.
‘’He’s our closer and he has been that way for the last couple of years,’’ Duncan said. ‘’He steps up and makes big shots for us. That’s what we ask him to do and he’s delivered for us.’’
Manu Ginobili scored 15 points, Danny Green had 13 and Boris Diaw 11 as the Spurs won their third straight and improved their NBA-best road record to 7-1.
‘’We take pride in winning on the road,’’ Ginobili said.
Parker made jump shots on consecutive possessions with less than 1 minute, 15 seconds to go in the second overtime as the Spurs held on.
‘’We had to work hard for this one,’’ Parker said.
Spurs coach Gregg Popovich agreed, not that he was happy about it.
‘’In a lot of ways, (Toronto) played better than we did,’’ Popovich said. ‘’They destroyed us on the boards. For most of the meat of the game they just threw it up there, missed it and they’d go get it again. That kept them in the ballgame. We did a better job in the overtimes defensively and on the boards, and that got us over the hump.’’
DeMar DeRozan led Toronto with 29 points, while rookie Jonas Valanciunas had 22. Kyle Lowry scored 20 points and Ed Davis had 15 points and 14 rebounds for the Raptors, who have lost their past three games by a combined seven points.

Women Sitting Volleyball in Iran

Iran will host the Asian women sitting volleyball championship without Islamic dress, hijab. According to IRNA, announcing this, Mahmoud Khosravivafa said, “The first edition of Women championship will be held in special places.”
Asked about the time of the event, the head of Iran’s Paralympic Federation also said, “The event will be held in 2014 but the exact time and the venue of the event has not been decided yet.”
Khosravivafa said that during the 2010 Asian Games in Guangzhou, the proposal for holding the event was approved. Iran finished third in the 2010 Asian Games.

Iran’s U-16 Victorious

Iran routed India in the first game of the 2012 Asian U-16 Women’s Football Championship in Colombo, Sri Lanka.
According to IRNA, Iranian squad beat India 5-2. Mahtab Banaei and Zahra Ahmadizadeh scored 2 goals each and Amineh Borazjani scored one.
In another game, Uzbekistan thumped Sri Lanka with 6 goals.
Iran’s next task will be against Uzbekistan on Wednesday.

Van der Vaart Ruled Out For Three Weeks

Hamburg SV will be without playmaker Rafael van der Vaart for at least three weeks after the Dutch international tore a muscle in their 2-0 defeat by Fortuna Dusseldorf, the club said on Monday.
Van der Vaart, who returned to Hamburg this season, has helped lift the northern club off bottom spot in the Bundesliga and back into contention for a European place, Reuters reported.
“Tests on Sunday morning showed that it was indeed a muscle tear. He is expected to be out for three weeks,” the club said in a statement.
Hamburg will also miss Son Heung-min for Tuesday’s home league game against third-placed Schalke 04 with the South Korean, who has already scored six goals this season, suffering a muscle strain against Dusseldorf on Friday.
Hamburg, the only Bundesliga club never to have played in the second division since the top flight was introduced in 1963, are in 10th place on 17 points with Schalke on 24.

FIFA Names Brazil’s WCup Mascot

FIFA has given the mascot for the 2014 Brazil World Cup a name which organizers say transmits a message of environmental awareness.
According to Reuters, almost half of the more than 1.7 million people who voted in an online poll chose Fuleco ahead of ‘Zuzeco’ and ‘Amijubi’.
The mascot is a three-banded armadillo, which is an endangered species in Brazil.
The tradition of a World Cup mascot dates back to 1966, when a lion named ‘World Cup Willie’ was chosen for the tournament in England.
Since then, the mascots have ranged from two German boys ‘Tip and Tap’ in 1974, to ‘Pique’ the chili pepper in Mexico in 1986, and ‘Zakumi’ the leopard, who represented the tournament in South Africa in 2010.
The yellow and blue armadillo was chosen in September and huge inflatable versions were set up in Brazil’s 12 host cities. However, authorities were forced to take them down or increase security in at least three cities after vandals attacked them.
Fuleco is expected to make an appearance in Sao Paulo this week at the draw for the 2013 Confederations Cup. The draw for the World Cup warm-up competition takes place next Saturday.

Kubica Crashes Out of Rallye du Var

Robert Kubica’s domination of the Rallye du Var came to an abrupt end when he crashed on the penultimate stage.
Although the incident left their Citroen C4 WRC on fire, both Kubica and co-driver Emanuele Inglesi escaped unhurt, AutoSport reported.
Prior to the accident, Kubica had been on course for a commanding victory in the toughest event of his comeback so far.
He had quickly pulled out a two-minute lead over former World Rally Championship and Intercontinental Rally Challenge frontrunner Freddy Loix’s Peugeot 307.
When Loix retired on Saturday, Kubica’s advantage grew to over five minutes back to his mostly Super 2000 opposition. He was 5m48s clear with two stages to go when he crashed.
Kubica’s exit handed victory to Cedric Robert. Audi Le Mans driver Romain Dumas claimed second in a Porsche 996, with S2000 WRC champion Craig Breen recovering from early delays to claim third for the Sainteloc Peugeot squad that ran his IRC program.

2nd Spell at Spartak

Former Russia international Valery Karpin will begin his second coaching spell at Spartak Moscow after being named the club’s caretaker boss on Monday.