http://www.AfricaUpdates.com AfricaUpdates EN-US www.AfricaUpdates.com AfricaUpdates http://www.AfricaUpdates.com/ 2010-09-02 13:07 KAYSERI, Turkey — Olimpio Cipriano scored 30 points as Angola rallied from a 10-point deficit late in the game to stun Germany 92-88 in overtime at the basketball World Championship. The result means Angola (2-2) advances to the second round, while Germany (1-3) was eliminated. Joaquim Gomes added 16 points for Angola and Miguel Lutonda had 13. Jan Jagla led Germany with 23. AfricaTeam http://www.AfricaUpdates.com/ 2010-09-02 12:32 A Fifa technical report claims African teams fared badly during the World Cup owing to late appointments of foreign coaches. The Fifa technical Study Group (TSG) comprised of among others our own Jomo Sono, Zambia’s Kalusha Bwalya and Frenchman Gerard Houllier. The group covered all the matches and filed reports on wide-ranging issues during the tournament, including offering their unique and exclusive views in informative columns, picking out and commenting on the highlights of the day’s games. The TSG has been present at every FIFA competition for the last 40 years. The group’s thoughts on Africa concluded that the timing of some of the appointments was Africa’s downfall. Five of the six African teams were knocked out in the group stage with only Ghana reached the quarter-final stage. “Five of the six African teams had foreign coaches, most of whom were either brought on board at short notice or only for the World Cup finals. The coaches’ chances of success were limited by the fact that they often did not fully identify with the African culture, mentality and lifestyle or knew too little about these factors,” the report notes. In fact, Nigeria hired Lars Lagerback at the end of March, barely three months before the start of the tournament in June. Furthermore, the report claims that the staging of the Africa Cup of Nations during the same year as the World Cup probably had a negative effect on the Africans. “Another issue is the staging of the Africa Cup of Nations in the same year as the World Cup. The difficulty resides in keeping players motivated and fit for two such major competitions. Two tournaments of this stature within six months of each other imposes an extreme mental burden on the players, particularly due to the great pressure to perform to which the players are also exposed their clubs,” the report argues. The report further claims South Africa lacks faith in youth as opposed to their counterparts, Ghana and that could have been one of the differences between the two teams. “Ghana’s ongoing youth and development work was clearly in evidence, with five members of the team that won the Fifa U20 World Cup in 2009 making their squad, two of whom were regulars, with another player starting three matches. "The fact that youth football is viewed differently in South Africa than in Ghana was demonstrated by the fact that none of the players used by South Africa at the U20 World Cup in Egypt were selected for the senior squad,” it says. Tiyani wa ka Mabasa Kick Off AfricaTeam http://www.AfricaUpdates.com/ 2010-08-27 19:50 Caster Semenya suffered the first defeat of her comeback from an 11-month gender investigation at Friday night’s Diamond League final in Brussels but the questions continued about the circumstances of her return. The South African teenager, making her Diamond League debut, ran a curiously passive race to finish third in the 800 metres, though her time of 1 min 59.65 sec was still an improvement on her winning time at the ISTAF meeting in Berlin last Sunday. Victory and the overall Diamond Trophy went to Kenya’s Janeth Jepkosgei, whom Semenya beat into second place at last summer’s World Championships, in 1 min 58.82 sec, with Russia’s European champion, Mariya Savinova, taking second place. Britain’s Jenny Meadows, the world bronze medallist, was fifth. But Jemma Simpson, who finished a tired ninth, reiterated some of the remarks she made in Berlin six days ago when she criticised the lack of information that has been provided by the International Association of Athletics Federations to explain their decision to allow Semenya to return to action. “One of the issues with some of us is that no one really knows what the outcome [of the gender inquiry] is,” said Simpson. “She’s just been allowed to come back on the scene and we’re expected to just get on with it. “It’s fair to an extent but I think but we just want a level playing field out there. I know it’s really none of our business but it would be nice to be reassured more than anything.” Tyson Gay claimed the overall prize of £25,000 for the 100 metres, one of 16 athletes to be anointed last night, with a victory in 9.79 sec. His time was just 0.01 sec outside the 2010 world-leading mark he set at Crystal Palace. Gay had predicted he was in the form to beat his American record of 9.69 sec though he was put under pressure by a false-start scare and then a lightning-quick start by his US rival, Nesta Carter, who finished second in a personal best of 9.85 sec. Stephanie Twell leapt to fourth place in the all-time British 5,000m rankings, taking more than 24 seconds out of her lifetime best with a time of 14 min 54.08 sec. She finished 11th in a top-quality race won by Kenya’s Vivian Cheruiyot in 14-34.13. Tom Lancashire also set a personal best of 3 min 33.96 sec to finish fifth in the 1500m. Asbel Kiprop made it another Kenyan victory in 3 min 32.18 sec. Dai Greene produced his best Diamond League performance of the season to finish second behind American world No 1 Bershawn Jackson in a 400m hurdles field featuring four of the top six men in the world this year. The Welshman made light of the cool conditions to clock 48.26 sec, the second fastest time of his career. AfricaTeam http://www.AfricaUpdates.com/ 2010-08-27 01:32 Fans of Lokomotiv Moscow displayed a clearly racist banner over the weekend thanking West Bromwich Albion for taking Osaze Odemwingie off their hands. The banner, which read 'Thanks West Brom' had a banana in the middle, suggesting that the English Premier League side had taken a monkey off their hands. It is a banner which is sure to cause outrage in Nigeria, and reinforce feelings within the country that Russia remains a deeply racist stronghold. Odemwingie holds dual Russian and Nigerian citizenship, but that has not prevented him from being the target of this racist abuse. The banner has led Russian journalist Alex Tretyak to suggest that the roots of Odemwingie's lack of goals at Lokomotiv may lie deeper. "Odemwingie already managed to score his first goal in England, hinting at the fact that his goal-scoring drought in the "Locomotiv" was connected not with him, but the problem is to look deeper," Super Sport AfricaTeam http://www.AfricaUpdates.com/ 2010-08-27 01:13 Former World Cup defender Austin Eguavoen will continue as caretaker coach of Nigeria for one more match while the country's football federation seeks a permanent replacement for Lars Lagerback. The Nigerian Football Federation said on Thursday that Eguavoen, who competed for the country at the 1994 and 1998 World Cups, would be in charge for the opening 2012 African Nations Cup qualifier against Madagascar next weekend. Eguavoen was also coach earlier this month when Nigeria lost 2-1 to South Korea in a friendly in Suwon. Nigeria, the last African soccer power to decide on a new coach ahead of Nations Cup qualifying, are negotiating with former international Samson Siasia, the coach of their Olympic team, the federation said. Lagerback, the Swedish coach who took charge of Nigeria's recent World Cup campaign in South Africa, turned down an offer to stay on in the job. Nigeria have left out fullbacks Taye Taiwo of Olympique Marseille and Elderson Echiejile of Braga from their squad for the match against Madagascar on Saturday, Sept. 4 in Abuja. A 26-man squad was picked by the federation's technical committee and sees a return for Chelsea midfielder John Obi Mikel who missed the World Cup through injury. Eurosport AfricaTeam http://www.AfricaUpdates.com/ 2010-08-18 20:01 JOHANNESBURG Too small for cricket and missing suites for rugby, the stadiums that cost South Africa more than $1 billion for this year’s World Cup already are in danger of turning into white elephants. Both rugby and cricket are more commercially successful than soccer in South Africa, and both sports need to move into the new stadiums—built and renovated for Africa’s first World Cup—to stay financially healthy. South African Rugby Union president Oregan Hoskins told members of parliament in Cape Town on Tuesday that there had been no discussions between Durban city officials and rugby representatives before the $400 million, 70,000-capacity Moses Mabhida Stadium was built, and now it did not have enough suites to accommodate the local suite holders for the Sharks rugby team. Hoskins said that the Sharks, who compete in the annual Super Rugby competition and the domestic Currie Cup—and who could offer near year-round use of the stadium—would have a “massive problem” moving into it now. “What we are discussing today should have been discussed before we built the stadiums,” Hoskins said. “It is tragic for us as a nation that we have to act in reverse.” The situation in Cape Town is just as bad, according to Hoskins, because of the deteriorating relationship between the local Western Province rugby union and the Green Point Stadium operators. The South African Press Association quoted Western Province Rugby president Tobie Titus as saying that on the advice of an independent financial adviser, Western Province Rugby was staying at its current stadium, Newlands. So the picturesque Green Point Stadium, set in the shadow of the famous Table Mountain, could now be rarely used while costing more than $6 million a year just to maintain. Cricket South Africa chief executive Gerald Majola added that the fields at the stadiums were too small to host cricket games, and blamed that on the failure of cities to consult cricket authorities before construction. Hoskins said the positive hype generated by the monthlong World Cup hid some of the problems the stadiums are now facing. “In 2007, before the new stadiums were built, I wrote to the minister of sport and said I foresaw major problems coming and I asked for the intervention of the ministry,” Hoskins told the committee. “Unfortunately, we were all taken up by the soccer World Cup and in the hype we forgot we should have been talking to each other.” “We want to use the new stadiums,” Hoskins said. “We want to take the game to the people, but these issues are going to stand in our way in a big way.” In July, South African Football Association chief executive Leslie Sedibe acknowledged before the same parliamentary committee that his sport faced a major challenge to keep the stadiums in use and profitable—largely due to traditionally low ticket prices charged at local matches and the high cost of running the world class arenas. Sedibe’s observation came just 10 days after the World Cup ended, and after South Africa spent an estimated $1.3 billion building and upgrading the 10 stadiums used for the tournament. It was hoped rugby and cricket would help out. Yet even as the world champion South African rugby team prepares to play its first international match at the 94,000-seat Soccer City in Johannesburg, the venue for the World Cup final, the assessments of Hoskins and Majola cast doubt on the stadiums’ long-term future. Majola said Cricket South Africa had been forced to seek special permission from the International Cricket Council to host a Twenty20 game between South Africa and India at the Moses Mabhida Stadium early next year, but it was a one-time agreement and the playing surface was still too small for major games. He also pointed to a lost opportunity for cricket to move to World Cup stadiums in the northern cities of Rustenburg, Polokwane and Nelspruit, which are likely to struggle because of their remote locations and lack of major sports teams nearby. “Historically, our game had not been played in some of the areas where some of stadiums were built,” Majola said. “We saw an opportunity, but unfortunately we were not part of the designs of the stadiums. “Unfortunately, we are compelled by the size of fields. When these fields were built, we were not part of that.” South Africa World Cup Stadiums Green Point Stadium Location: Cape Town, Western Cape province Capacity: 70 000 seats Durban Stadium Location: Durban, KwaZulu-Natal province Capacity: 70 000 seats Ellis Park Stadium Location: Johannesburg, Gauteng province Capacity: 62 000 seats Soccer City Location: Johannesburg, Gauteng province Capacity: 94 700 seats Free State Stadium Location: Bloemfontein (Mangaung municipality), Free State province Capacity: 45 000 seats Nelson Mandela Stadium Location: Port Elizabeth (Nelson Mandela Bay municipality), Eastern Cape province Capacity: 46 000 seats Mbolela Stadium Location: Nelspruit, Mpumalanga province Capacity: 43 589 seats Peter Mokaba Stadium Location: Polokwane, Limpopo Capacity: 45 264 seats Royal Bakofeng Stadium Location: Rustenburg, North West province Capacity: 44 530 seats Loftus Versfeld Stadium Location: Pretoria (Tshwane municipality), Gauteng province Capacity: 49 365 seats Ap Yahoo News kunlunsf http://www.AfricaUpdates.com/ 2010-08-18 12:04 By Rukmini Callimachi DAKAR, Senegal — On a rectangle of dirt separating two arms of a congested highway, a game of soccer is under way just as it is every day in cities throughout Africa. Not far away, a team of coaches from the NBA is trying to expand the continent's options. For the eighth consecutive year, and the first time in Senegal, coaches from the NBA are mentoring 60 of Africa's best players during the annual Basketball Without Borders camp, hoping to raise the profile of a sport that lags far behind soccer across much of the continent. "We are here and we are making an investment in Africa," said Senegalese native Amadou Gallo Fall, the NBA's vice president of development in Africa. "There are 6-foot-8 soccer players out there that don't know that there is another sport where their height is actually a positive. "Our goal is to see more kids bouncing than kicking the ball." In Senegal, however, there are so few basketball courts that NBA officials say most cities and towns outside Dakar can consider themselves lucky if they have even one. Many players practice dunks with a soccer ball because basketballs are scarce and expensive. Despite the lack of resources, the NBA says Africa has one of the globe's greatest reserves of untapped talent. Since 1984, 25 players from Africa have made it to the NBA five times more than from China, which was considered the next talent pipeline after Yao Ming's meteoric rise, according to NBA senior vice president of basketball operations-international Kim Bohuny. And last year, a count performed by The Associated Press found more than 170 African players at U.S. colleges, junior colleges and universities during the 2008-09 season. "We're just starting to tap into that potential," Bohuny said. This year, the 60 players from 22 countries represent a cross-section of the challenges faced by those attempting to play basketball on a continent where soccer is not only the most popular sport but also a way out of poverty. For years, one of the largest billboards in Dakar featured Senegal striker El Hadji Diouf in an ad for Tigo, a major cell phone provider. Barefoot boys throughout the city play in alleyways, on highway medians and on the beach in the hopes of being discovered by a scout and getting a chance at a better life. Cedric Amegah, a lanky teenager from Burkina Faso who attended the camp, said his parents are constantly trying to reorient him toward soccer. "When me and my friends go to shoot hoops, our parents are always saying, 'No. Don't play basketball. Play soccer,'" he said. Among the messages that the NBA camp is hoping to project is that basketball can be just as lucrative. On the opening day of the camp last Thursday, the players and officials that took turns at the podium were walking examples of success, such as the 7-foot-2 Dikembe Mutombo, originally from Congo, who is considered one of the league's greatest defensive players of all time. He used his NBA earnings to finance a $29 million hospital in Kinshasa, the Congolese capital where he grew up. Other NBA players at the clinic included Charlotte Bobcats center DeSagana Diop, who grew up in a gritty Dakar suburb where the only place to practice was a sandy court that made it nearly impossible to dribble, and Memphis Grizzlies center Hasheem Thabeet of Tanzania, the second pick in the 2009 draft. Yet for the young players attending this year's camp, perhaps the most convincing proof of the opportunities that lie ahead are the NBA players who were discovered at past Basketball Without Borders camps. They include Luc Mbah a Moute, who understood only a few words of English when he attended the first NBA camp held in Africa in Johannesburg in 2003. Mbah a Moute, a native of the French-speaking part of Cameroon, used the contacts he made at the camp to win a scholarship to the Montverde Academy in Florida and then went on to UCLA before being drafted by the Milwaukee Bucks. Hoping more and more Africans will get that chance, the NBA has opened its first permanent office in Africa, based in Johannesburg, in March. Chukwudi Maduabum, a 19-year-old Nigerian who is just shy of 7 feet, said his first sport was soccer but every year as he got taller, his long limbs got progressively more in his way until he was tripping over the other players. Still it was hard to leave his favorite sport. "I got taller and taller. And then it didn't work out anymore," Maduabum said. "And then I found basketball." Because it is still relatively difficult for boys to take up basketball in the land of soccer, Fall said those who do often end up doing playing it with passion. He points to his own struggle to learn the game as an example. In the regional capital of Kaolack, in central Senegal where his family lived, Fall said there was a single hoop, and it was inside a walled compound. The then-teenager would scale the wall to get inside and only had a limited amount of time to practice before a guard came running. Each time he was beaten with a stick and yet he kept coming back for more. Fall went on to play center for the University of the District of Columbia, then spent 12 years as director of player personnel for the Dallas Mavericks. "I'm a scout at heart and I'm telling you the potential here is greater than anywhere in the world," Fall said. "There is a Michael Jordan in every neighborhood waiting to be discovered." USA Today AfricaTeam http://www.AfricaUpdates.com/ 2010-08-16 21:55 Ghanaian moving to Italy, but for who? Ghana World Cup 2010 star Kevin-Prince Boateng is on the verge of completing his transfer to Milan, according to the Serie A club. A statement on the official Milan website rather confusingly said the 23-year-old had signed for Genoa from Portsmouth, but that they were keen on still wrapping up a deal. "Kevin Prince Boateng was present at Milanello today," said a statement. "The Ghana player is owned by Genoa and is waiting for an agreement between Milan and Genoa which will enable the player to train and play friendlies with the Rossoneri." The Portsmouth midfielder joined up with his new team-mates on Monday at the Milanello traning ground, taking the opportunity to familiarise himself with coach Massimiliano Allegri and the squad even though the move has not been made official yet. Boateng is expected to undergo his first training session tomorrow and could very well feature in the Trofeo Berlusconi pre-season match against Juventus on Sunday night. No financial details or terms of the contract have been released, but there should be more news in the near future as the deal is expected to be announced as official in the coming hours. Portsmouth are yet to confirm any switch Goal A statement on the official Milan website rather confusingly said the 23-year-old had signed for Genoa from Portsmouth, but that they were keen on still wrapping up a deal. "Kevin Prince Boateng was present at Milanello today," said a statement. "The Ghana player is owned by Genoa and is waiting for an agreement between Milan and Genoa which will enable the player to train and play friendlies with the Rossoneri." The Portsmouth midfielder joined up with his new team-mates on Monday at the Milanello traning ground, taking the opportunity to familiarise himself with coach Massimiliano Allegri and the squad even though the move has not been made official yet. Boateng is expected to undergo his first training session tomorrow and could very well feature in the Trofeo Berlusconi pre-season match against Juventus on Sunday night. No financial details or terms of the contract have been released, but there should be more news in the near future as the deal is expected to be announced as official in the coming hours. Portsmouth are yet to confirm any switch Goal AfricaTeam http://www.AfricaUpdates.com/ 2010-08-16 21:30 Nigeria forward Peter Odemwingie claims he has signed a contract with West Bromwich Albion and will join the promoted side on Tuesday. Peter Odemwingie's Nigeria side did not impress in South Africa Odemwingie, 29, looks poised to join Roberto Di Matteo's side from Lokomotiv Moscow despite interest from Greek club Panathinaikos. "Most likely I will join on Tuesday," Odemwingie said. "I've already signed a contract. They have been left to negotiate among themselves and then my dream of playing in the English Premier League will come true. "I opted for West Brom because for a long time I've wanted to play in England. But I thank Panathinaikos for their interest. They are a big club." Odemwingie made two appearances at the World Cup finals as Nigeria exited at the group stage. He joined Lokomotiv from Lille in 2007. AfricaTeam http://www.AfricaUpdates.com/ 2010-08-16 20:57 By Ryan Hudson • Aug 16, 2010 3:09 PM EDT You don't often see taunting in road races, especially with a distance of just seven-miles (an "11.3k", if you will). But then again, you don't often have world-class runners sprinting for the finish line, which is exactly what happened in Sunday's 38th Falmouth Road Race. Gebre Gebremariam of Ethiopia edged Kenya's Wilson Chebet by just one second (winning in 32:20 ... yeah, that's a 4:37-mile pace), but had plenty of time to remind Chebet of who was winning the race. "Swagga on a hundred, thousand, trillion" (Picture via Globe's Dina Rudick) AfricaTeam