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Captain Aaron Ramsey has said he would turn his back on playing for Great Britain at the Olympics if he felt it would affect Wales' standing as an independent football nation. This is your new blog post. Click here and start typing, or drag in elements from the top bar.
The Arsenal midfielder and Tottenham winger Gareth Bale have been pictured posing in the blue Team GB supporters' shirt, and both players have spoken of their desire to be involved in coach Stuart Pearce's squad for the Games.

The Football Association of Wales, and their Scottish and Irish counterparts, do not want their players to be selected as they fear it may lead to a loss of their independent status with Fifa, although they would have no legal basis on which to prevent the players being involved.

Welsh supporters' groups have also voiced their disapproval at the players being used to promote the shirt.

But Ramsey, who along with Bale was today named in Gary Speed's squad for the friendly against Norway, has moved to reassure fans he would not turn out in London next year if it were harmful to Welsh identity on the international stage.

The 20-year-old posted on his official Twitter feed: ''Relax everyone, there is absolutely no way I would play in the Olympic team if it was going to affect Wales identity as an individual nation!''

 
The Football Association have decided to appeal against the three-match ban that threatens to rule Wayne Rooney out of the entire Euro 2012 group phase.

They have informed Uefa of their intention and now have six days to put together a case to go before European football's governing body.

"We will be appealing against the three-match suspension Wayne Rooney received following the recent Euro 2012 qualifier in Montenegro," said an FA spokesman.

"We received written reasons for the red card on Tuesday afternoon and we were given until midnight tonight to respond."

Speaking after scoring in Manchester United's Champions League win over Otelul Galati at Old Trafford, Rooney admitted his blatant kick at Miodrag Dzudovic was "stupid".

However, Rooney also claimed the punishment, which would scupper his chances of featuring in the tournament at all should England fail to reach the knockout phase, was "a bit harsh".

 
Owner Frank McCourt reached an agreement with Major League Baseball on Tuesday night to sell the Los Angeles Dodgers, along with Dodger Stadium and the surrounding real estate, a decision that brings to end not only a six-month legal battle with baseball commissioner Bud Selig but also a 7½-year ownership that was simply never embraced by the team's fan base.
A joint statement said there will be a "court-supervised process" to sell the team and its media rights to maximize value for the Dodgers and McCourt. The Blackstone Group LP will manage the sale.

The announcement comes as the Dodgers and MLB were headed toward a showdown in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware at the end of the month as mediation between both sides was ongoing.

McCourt and Selig have traded barbs since MLB took control of day-to-day operation of the team in April over concerns about the team's finances and the way it was being run. McCourt filed for bankruptcy protection in June after the league rejected a 17-year TV contract with Fox, reported to be worth up to $3 billion, that he needed to keep the team afloat. Selig noted that almost half of an immediate $385 million payment would have been diverted from the Dodgers to McCourt.

McCourt apparently realized a sale of the team he vowed never to give up was in his best interest and that of the fans.

"There comes a point in time when you say, 'It's time,'" a person familiar with the situation who requested anonymity because details of the negotiations had not been made public told The Associated Press. "He came to that realization at the end of today."

McCourt purchased the Dodgers from NewsCorp in February 2004 for the price of $420 million, largely on borrowed funds. Based on various media reports, the team is expected to fetch somewhere between $800 million and $1.2 billion this time.

There was no immediate timetable for the sale of the team, but such things typically take several months to complete. It also wasn't immediately clear how this will affect the Dodgers' offseason player moves. General manager Ned Colletti said more than a month ago that McCourt already had given him a player-payroll budget for 2012 and seemed to hint that figure was higher than it had been for 2011, but the team being put up for sale could change that.

McCourt's decision comes at the end of a long legal battle to hold onto the team, this even as home attendance plummeted by 21 percent this season -- there was strong evidence to suggest many fans stayed away as a protest against McCourt's continued ownership of the club. But it became fairly clear last week, when Kevin Gross, the federal bankruptcy judge overseeing the team's case, agreed to delay the next hearing until Nov. 29, that the sides were nearing a settlement, one that could only end with McCourt finally agreeing to put the team up for sale.

McCourt's purchase of the team almost eight years ago was met with widespread skepticism on the part of the local media and the Dodgers fan base. McCourt, his wife Jamie and their four sons moved to Los Angeles from their home in the Boston area to run the team. What followed was a level of on-field success the storied Dodgers had never experienced during their six-year run under NewsCorp -- the Dodgers reached the playoffs four times in McCourt's first six years and in 2008 won a postseason series for the first time in 20 years -- but also a series of public-relations gaffes and missteps on the part of the McCourts and a staggering number of personnel changes both in the baseball and business departments.

The beginning of the end may have come on the eve of the team's ill-fated 2009 National League Championship Series appearance against the Philadelphia Phillies, when news broke that Frank and Jamie McCourt had separated and were likely headed for divorce. That divorce, which eventually became the most expensive in California history, quickly devolved into a fight over whether Jamie McCourt had a legitimate claim to half the team, a claim that ultimately resulted in a recent divorce settlement in which Frank McCourt agreed to pay his estranged wife a reported $130 million by next spring in exchange for her dropping her claim to partial ownership.

The fact the process dragged on for so long contributed to the widely held belief, rightly or wrongly, that the divorce had become so expensive and such a drag on McCourt's finances that he no longer could afford to put enough money into the player payroll to put a competitive team on the field, a notion that only gained steam when the Dodgers got off to a slow start in 2011.

As the former couple fought over ownership of the team, the Dodgers' home opener against the rival San Francisco Giants kicked off a year of even worse publicity. A Giants fan, Bryan Stow, was nearly beaten to death in the parking lot. Stow's family has sued the Dodgers and his attorney said medical bills could reach $50 million.

In the outpouring of public sympathy, attention focused on cutbacks in security at Dodger stadium and fans turned their animosity toward Frank McCourt. Scores of police were dispatched to patrol the stadium after the attack.

Meanwhile, Selig announced in April that MLB was taking over operations of the club and appointing a trustee -- he eventually tabbed former Texas Rangers president Tom Schieffer for that role -- to oversee all of the Dodgers' finances. However, McCourt responded to that opening salvo by Selig by filing for bankruptcy a few weeks later, meaning Gross was now in charge of the team's finances and MLB no longer was in control.

Dodgers attorneys claimed Selig deliberately starved the club of cash and destroyed its reputation in a bid to seize control of the team and force its sale.

"As the commissioner knows and as our legal documents have clearly shown, he approved and praised the structure of the team about which he belatedly complains," the team said in a statement.

The team was asking Gross to approve an auction of the team's television rights as the best path to exit bankruptcy. But the league wanted to file a reorganization that called for the team to be sold.

The bitter legal battle finally came to an end Tuesday night, when McCourt finally made a decision that had seemed inevitable for months, if not years, to almost everyone but himself. It wasn't immediately clear what led McCourt to finally concede defeat in that battle -- although Gross' hesitation to grant McCourt's request that he be allowed to auction off the team's television rights in order to generate immediate revenue can't be discounted as a major contributing factor.

All that is clear is that the battle finally is over now, and McCourt officially is on his way out, paving the way for the Dodgers' third ownership change in the past 15 years since the O'Malley family, which had moved the team to Los Angeles from Brooklyn in 1958, sold the club to NewsCorp in 1998.

Tony Jackson covers the Dodgers for ESPNLosAngeles.com. Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.

 
AC MILAN star Antonio Cassano will have to undergo heart surgery after falling ill last weekend.
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Cassano, 29, was taken to hospital shortly after his side's 3-2 win at Roma on Saturday.

The Italy international was said to have suffered impaired vision and had problems talking and moving.

A statement from the Italian champions read: "The player will undergo a small surgical cardiological intervention in the coming days and the recovery time will be better defined after the surgery, but it will probably be a few months."

The incident caused Cassano to suffer insufficient blood flow to the brain, causing "ischemic cerebral damage" but no lasting damage has been detected.

His Milan team-mates unveiled a shirt bearing his name after scoring in Tuesday's 1-1 draw at BATE Borisov which secured the Italians' place in the knockout stages of the Champions League.

Forward Zlatan Ibrahimovic, chief executive Adriano Galliani and coach Massimiliano Allegri all visited Cassano at the Policlinico di Milano where he was being treated on Wednesday.

Galliani said: "Antonio is in a good condition, the lad is fine but I'm not a doctor.

"I was very, very worried. His career is not at risk. The doctors say he will need a few months, not too many.

"I don't want to say too much at this stage, maybe in four, five or six months he will be in conditions to play.

"He has told me that he's upset because he had been playing well."

Cassano recently stated football has left him exhausted and revealed he intends to quit the game in 2014.


 
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Chelsea are set to recruit the Porto manager André Villas-Boas, according to reports in Portugal, and the coach has accepted the offer to work in London.

Villas-Boas will earn €5m (£4.4m) a season, the exact salary José Mourinho earned at the west London club, according to Jornal de Notícias. Chelsea will also pay the €15m (£13.2m) release clause in the manager's contract. Maisfutebol reported on Monday that Porto are just waiting for Chelsea to deposit the €15m before officially announcing the departure of their manager.

However, in a statement to the Portuguese Securites Market Commission on Monday lunchtime, Porto said that they have not received an offer which meets the release clause. Chelsea made no comment on the situation on Monday morning.

Villas-Boas has already informed Porto of his decision to leave for the English club, a source linked to the process told the Agência.

On Sunday the Porto president Pinto da Costa said "if a club pay the €15m and if he wants to leave, FC Porto can't do anything about it".

Apparently, Villas-Boas is now willing to leave the "dream job" (a reference to how Da Costa described his position at Porto) to re-join the club where he worked with Mourinho.

Villas-Boas led Porto to the domestic double and Europa League success last term and Chelsea are looking to fill the vacancy created by the sacking of Carlo Ancelotti.

Chelsea's owner, Roman Abramovich, may leave €45m in the coffers at Porto's Dragão stadium in total, moreover. According to A Bola, he also wants to take the Colombian forward Falcao to London as a sweetener for Villas-Boas's signature.

Chelsea have also been in negotiations with Guus Hiddink about returning to the club he briefly managed in 2009. Chelsea have been considering the Dutchman for either the coach's job or the sporting director role – should he take on the latter then there would also be room for Villas-Boas to take a position at the club.

However, his agent, Cees van Nieuwenhuizen, felt the Dutchman would be wary of taking the director of football role. "One hundred per cent we have never discussed that, and I know Guus has not given it a thought for one second. He has a tough enough challenge trying to qualify Turkey for the Euros. And if he does that then he will be going to the finals next year. And if he doesn't then it will probably end with Turkey in November."


 
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MIAMI: Demar Phillips scored twice in the second half to lift Jamaica to a 2-0 victory over 10-man Guatemala on Friday, a victory that secured Jamaica's spot in the Gold Cup quarter-finals.

In the night's second Group B match, Carlos Costly scored three times and Jerry Bengston twice as Honduras rallied from an early deficit to thump Grenada 7-1 and boost their chances of advancing.

Honduras now have four points and are second to Jamaica in the group. A point would be enough for them to reach the knockout stage, but Honduras could win the group with a victory over leaders Jamaica on Monday.

In a game featuring little in the way of offensive fireworks, Phillips
broke through for Jamaica in the 65th minute, collecting a ball from Keammar Daley and dribbling toward the left side of the penalty area.

He beat defender Jonathan Lopez then slotted a shot past Guatemalan keeper Ricard Jerez.

Phillips added the insurance goal in the 78th minute. By then, Guatemala had been reduced to 10 men when Cristian Noriega received a second yellow card for a foul on Dane Richards in the 70th minute.

The victory gave Jamaica a maximum six points from their first two matches in the North and Central America and Caribbean regional championship.

The winners of the tournament earn a spot in the 2013 FIFA Confederations Cup.

The second match of the night was, in contrast, a goal festival.

Clive Murray gave Grenada their first ever Gold Cup goal as he put the
Spice Boys ahead in the 19th minute.

Honduras soon took control, however, as Costly and Bengston combined for three goals in 10 minutes to put them 3-1 up.

Bengston equalised in the 26th minute and Costly put Honduras ahead a minute later. Bengston's second goal made it 3-1 in the 36th.

Costly struck again in the 66th and 71st, Walter Martinez scored with three minutes remaining and Alfredo Mejia scored Honduras' final goal in the 90th minute.

For Honduras, it was a welcome show of attacking power after a 0-0 draw with Guatemala.

The tournament continues on Saturday with Group C action in Tampa, Florida.

The United States will take on Panama, both going into the contest with three points, and Canada will face Guadeloupe.

While Mexico have booked their quarter-final berth in Group A with two convincing wins, the team remained in turmoil on Friday, a day after Mexican football authorities provisionally suspended five players who tested positive for banned drug clenbuterol in a May 21 test during a pre-tournament training camp.

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