Sports Round-up: Tour de France, MLB, Football

Lots of things happened over the past few days and weeks. First and most important, the Tour de France had its first doping case this year. German rider Patrick Sinkewitz was tested positive for Testosteron while staying at a training camp with his Team T-Mobile in June. Sinkewitz had to drop out of this year's tour because of a crash with a spectator after a stage in the Alps. Although it is only the A-test and the B-est has yet to be opened chances are he will be suspended for at least two years and he will be the first rider to pay a fine of his complete one-year salary.
This being just the facts right now a huge discussion is going on in Germany on how to handle this case. German public television stations ARD and ZDF who covered the Tour dropped out immediately. Now the private broadcaster SAT1 is showing the stages. You always have to keep in kind that while there were no German doping cases German broadcasters were always pointing the finger at everyone else for their weak approach on doping. ARD at one point was also one of the sponsors of then Team Telekom. When a number of riders from the 1990s Team Telekom admitted using performance-enhancing drugs in May this year it caused a huge storm and even back then their were voices demanding that ARD and ZDF should not broadcast live coverage of the Tour de France. The interesting thing will be to wait and see what will happen during the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. It has to be expected that there will be cases of drug abuse and then we will see what German publich television will do. If they decide to pull out of the broadcasting this will be a huge blow to sports in Germany. Especially the disciplines that don't get that much of media coverage like track & field.
Meanwhile there were news that the Danish cycling union suspended the current Tour de France leader Michael Rasmussen because he missed four tests for doping. He is still on the peleton of the Tour but nobody knows what will happen over the next few days. He performed unexpectedly well in yesterday's "contre la montre" still clinging to a one minute lead over Australia's Cadell Evans.


In Major League Baseball the Boston Red Sox are losing some of their double digit lead over the New York Yankees in the American League East. With Curt Shilling out of their rotation the turned to left hander Kason Gabbard who pitched extremly well. Yesterday he held the Chicago White Sox to just one run and three hits over 7 innings. The Red Sox went on to win 11-2.
Boston was struggling a bit over the past weeks. Their pitching seemed to be okay but their offense wasn't really helping them.


Elsewhere the Chicago Cubs closed the gap to leaders Milwaukee Brewers in the National League Central.
The one thing that the whole of the baseball community on America seems to be interested in right now is when Barry Bonds will hit his Homeruns No. 755 and 756. Yesterday Fox was switching to Milwaukee for all of his at-bats but it didn't really pay off since he struck out, grounded out and was intentionally walked. San Francisco nevertheless who 8-0 with their starter Tim Lincecum pitching eight shut-out innings.

In Football David Beckham made his first appearances for Los Angeles Galaxy in a friendly against Chelsea FC. I didn't really follow this but it seems to have been a rather disappointing performance.
In Germany the League Cup, a completely useless competition before the start of the season, kicked off yesterday. Noone really understands the rules of the competition. In the past the champion of last year, the cup winner and the places 2-5 of last season took part, this year it seems the winner of last year's 2nd division season is allowed to play. So Karlsuher SC, the 2nd division champions played against Schalke 04 and lost by only 0-1.


The 2nd match that day at Düsseldorf was played between FC Bayern Munich and SV Werder Bremen. This was especially interesting because it was the first match in which Miroslav Klose was playing against his former club. The row over Klose was thrilling all of Germany during the summer break and after the deal was done there were some harsh words from his former team mates in Bremen. Midfielder Torsten Frings e.g. said that "Miro wanted to play for a european top club and now he is in Munich". Bremen lost the match 1-4 which might have its reasons in Diego, Naldo, Owomoyela, Hunt and Almeida not being able to start for them. Bayern meanwhile only had Luca Toni on the disabled list. this reminds me of the 95/96 season when the Bayern Munich team was considered to be the dream team of German football winning the first 7 matches of the season. Their coach was Otto Rehagel who came with a superb record to Munich. But in the end they lost the championship to Borussia Dortmund who went on to dominate the league for another year. So it will be interesting to follow this season.


In the AFC Asian Cup Japan won the rematch against Australia who defeated them in last year's World Cup group match. japan clinched the victory by beating the Aussies in a penalty shoot out 4-3. John Aloisi put Australia up 1-0 and Takahara Naohiro equalized. So Japan are still in for the title. If they win it this would be their third time in a row.

What to do when the domestic leagues take a break?

Summer can be one of the most boring seasons during the whole year since there are almost no football matches taking place. Fortunately there are international competitions elsewhere to get one over the summer. In South America the Copa América is on at the moment with Brazil and Argentina playing the final on Sunday. In Canada the U20 World Cup has entered the knock out stages. And in Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and Vietnam the AFC Championship has kicked off last weekend.

Now all of those competitions are hard to follow since the matches are started either in the middle of the night or during lunch break so it's almost impossible to catch a complete match. Fortunately there are replays on TV so I was able to get a glimpse at some matches.


In Canada I was very impressed by the performance of the japanese team who came out on top of their group after the first stage. The match against Scotland was brilliant, their passing und ranning play with their wonderful technique was a pleasure to watch. The USA also played some nice matches, but they ran into trouble when the played against South Korea who play a similar style as Japan does. Brazil also looked fine but lost their first match against Poland which was the surprise of the tournament.
Meanwhile Japan lost their 2nd round match against the Czech Republic 5-6 after penalties. They led the Czech 2-0 after 70 minutes but lost it in the closing minutes after two penalties and were taken to extra time. That ended scoreless so they had to find a winner on a penalty shoot out which the Czech Republic won.
Surprisingly the Austrians also advanced to the quarterfinals. The senior team who will be the co-hosts of next year's Euro Championship have been the laughing stock of European football for the past few years. And now the U20 team is having a great campaign at the World Cup. Interesting.
This is the match-up in the 2nd round:

Austria - Gambia 2:1
USA - Uruguay 2:1 a.e.t.
Spain - Brazil 4:2
Japan - Czech Republic 5:6 a.p.
Chile - Portugal
Zambia - Nigeria
Argentina - Poland
Mexico - Congo


A little bit down to the south in Venezuela the oldest international competition, the Copa América is taking place. Brazil, who are the defending champions, started poorly into the tournament by losing 0-2 against Mexico, but they got up on their feet again and with a grand performance by Robinho in the quarterfinal against Chile the stormed into the final where they will meet their archrivals from Argentina. The Albiceleste hasn't lost a match in their campaign and kicked Mexico out of the competition in the semifinal (3-0), a rematch of last years World Cup 2nd round match-up and what I still consider to be one of the best matches of the 2006 World Cup. Mexico certainly had one of the top players in their squad. Nery Castillo, who play for a Greek club, left his mark on the scene, especially with his goal against Brazil.
Apart from the matches Chile caused some concern when their players celebrated to hard and where caught a little bit off guard in their match against Brazil. Perhaps they should have waited with their celebrations until after the tournament.
The final will take place on Sunday.


And last but definetely not least the Asian Championship has started last Saturday. This year there are four co-hosts for the tournament with Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia and Thailand. Defending champions Japan started their campaign with a disappointing 1-1 draw against Qatar. Striker Takahara Naohiro said after the match that the team left out too many chances.
An interesting fact is that Australia is taking part in this year's competition looking for more fitting opponents, something they don't have with their Oceanian Federation. They also drew their first match against Oman 1-1.
It's hard to make any predictions on who will win the whole thing. Japan's coach Osim has complained that the J-League didn't give him enough time to prepare for the Championship. China made it to an emotional final against Japan in the last tournament and started their campaign with a convincing win over Malaysia (5-1) but I'm not sure of their actual strength. Iran could be in there as well. There are a lot of teams I never even heard any results of. Co-hosts Vietnam started with a 2-0 win against the United Arabian Emirates. So this could be an interesting competition.

And on Monday the Uefa U19 Championship will kick off in Austria. So there should be enough football ver the next weeks. Thank god, we're saved...