Real Madrid reached the Champions League knockout stage for the 25th successive year with a comfortable win against Sheriff Tiraspol in Moldova.

David Alaba opened the scoring with a free-kick that deflected beyond goalkeeper Giorgos Athanasiadis.

Toni Kroos added a second before the break, firing in off the crossbar, while Karim Benzema then made it three.

It means Real Madrid are through with a game to spare, as are Inter Milan, who beat Shakhtar Donetsk earlier.

Edin Dzeko scored twice after the break in a 2-0 win for the Italians, who visit Real Madrid in the final group game – with only which team qualifies as winners still to be determined.

Carlo Ancelotti’s side, who lost the reverse fixture against Sheriff, top the group on 12 points, two above Inter.

Nigeria’s Wahid Enitan Oshodi has been elected as the Executive Vice President of the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) at the Annual General Meeting (AGM) held on Wednesday November 24 in Houston, Texas, in the United States.

From the 136 votes casted, Oshodi polled 116 which is the 85.29% of the total vote to emerge top among the 14 candidates that vie for the office of the Executive Vice Presidents.

Oshodi is the second Nigerian to be elected to the world body after Segun George and he will serve along seven other Executive Vice Presidents elected at the AGM.

Sweden’s Petra Sorling became the first woman to be elected as President of ITTF. She clinched the office of the 95-year-old international federation unopposed having been nominated by the Swedish Table Tennis Association and accepted by all the 226 member associations across the world.

Egypt’s Alaa Meshref was reelected into the Executive Committee (EC) of ITTF. It is the first time Africa will have two representatives in the EC. Other elected Vice Presidents are Graham SYMONS (AUS), Alaor AZEVEDO (BRA), LIU Guoliang (CHN), Roland NATRAN (HUN), Masahiro MAEHARA (JPN) and Khalil AL-MOHANNADI (QAT)

The new president of the ITTF and the eight elected Vice Presidents will join the ITTF Athletes Commission Chair Zoran Primorac of Croatia and IOC Member Ryu Seungmin of Korea Republic to form the complete ITTF Executive Committee (EC).

From his humble start as Chairman, Lagos State Table Tennis Association (LSSTA) and following his exceptional performance in that post,  Oshodi  was appointed Commissioner for Sports in Lagos State under Governor Babatunde Fashola (2011-2015).  He also served as the President of the Nigeria Table Tennis Federation (NTTF) from 2013-2017 and was later appointed as the Chairman of the Nomination Committee of ITTF.

Earlier this year, Oshodi was elected as the Deputy President of African Table Tennis Federation (ATTF). He is an engineer and a lawyer.

The Press Conference and draws for the 2021 Lagos SWAN Cup will take place today at the Secretariat of the association inside the National Stadium complex by 10:00am.

The mandatory ceremony heralding the annual event according to the SWAN Week Committee Chairman, Femi Solaja, the committee has perfected all plans for an unforgettable SWAN Cup.

“We are ready for another edition of the Lagos SWAN Cup after weeks of intensive planning. We will have some of our sponsors on ground where they will tell us what they have for us”.

Ten teams have already registered for the week-long football event with seven people set to participate in the scrabble event.

Fourteen people will participate in table tennis with exciting prizes up for grabs.

“We need to thank the Exco of the body for their unflinching support to ensure that we organise a hitch free SWAN Cup, Dinner and Award Night for our members.”

• ‘I train under a new promoter, manager now’

World Boxing Federation (WBF) champion, Nigeria’s Onoriode ‘Godzilla’ Ehwarieme, has started his professional career in the United States of America on a sound note.

Ehwarieme, known as ‘Knockout Specialist,’ with 17 KOs in 18 fights, left Nigeria for the United States last weekend for a fight against America’s heavyweight boxer, Rodolzo Damahi Lewis.

The six round bout, which held in South Carolina, saw the Nigerian triumphing with a knockout. It took Ehwarieme less than two minutes to floor the American, Lewis, who hails from the State of Denver.

Ehwarieme stated that victory against his American opponent has boosted his confidence once again.

“It’s just six round bout, and the fight is like starting afresh here in the United States. I now work with a new promoter, Jessise Rabinson. He is also my trainer.”

Ehwarieme won the heart of Nigerian boxing enthusiasts two years ago through his historic victory over Argentina’s Ariel Baracamonte in a World Boxing Federation (WBF) Intercontinental heavyweight title fight in Lagos.

During the fight held on December 28, 2019, Ehwarieme needed just one minute and 60 seconds to knock out the visiting Argentine boxer, Ariel Baracamonte at GOtv Boxing Night 20 to pick up the WBF Intercontinental heavyweight title in style. Before then, Ehwarieme, a native of Oghara, Delta State, had recorded 17 knockout victories in 18 fights.

However, Ehwarieme lost to Zhan Kozzobutskiy of Kazakhstan in a World Boxing Association (WBA) International heavyweight fight held in Hamburg, Germany, in February this year.

D’Tigress will face France, China, and Mali in Group B of their 2022 FIBA Women’s World Cup qualifiers billed for February 10 to 13 at the Ranko Žeravica Sports Hall, Belgrade, Serbia.

The World Cup is billed to hold from September 22 to October 1 2022 in Australia with a total of 12 teams.

Australia and the United States have already qualified for the competition as hosts and Olympic champions, while a total of 16 countries will slug it out in four groups for the final 10 slots.

The top two teams qualify automatically for the competition while the two best losers in the groups will join the World Cup train.

D’Tigress will open their encounter at the qualifiers against China on February 10 before slugging it out with France on February 11. Their final game comes up against Mali who they defeated in the final of the 2021 Afrobasket Women’s Championship in Cameroon.

Nigeria and Mali both qualified for the qualification playoffs after finishing first and second at the 2021 Afrobasket.

Nigeria had an impressive performance at the 2018 World Cup  in Spain where they became the first African country to reach the quarter-finals of the World Cup. The team after their opening group game loss to Australia bounce back to record wins over Turkey and Argentina to qualify out of the group stage.

They beat Greece in the qualification round before losing to eventual champions, the US in the quarter-final.

Former FIFA president Josep Blatter considered that the award of the 2022 World Cup to Qatar “was a big mistake”.

According to Spanish publication, AS, the former FIFA boss under whose regime the 2022 World Cup was awarded turned to blame the former president of France, Nicolas Sarkozy as the person who influenced FIFA members to vote for Qatar.

There is great influence of Qatar in French football as even the PSG is owned by a Qatar business man.

Blatter was reported to have remarked that Nicolas Sarkozy was the one who intervened for the emirate to achieve that competition.

“He was disappointed by the victory of Qatar,” Blatter said in an interview published this Sunday in the online edition of the French daily Le Monde. Blatter, who was forced to resign on June 2, 2015 by a corruption scandal, four days after being re-elected as FIFA president, believes that Sarkozy convinced then-UEFA president Michel Platini to support him.

Qatar and not the United States, as they had agreed up to that point. To this was added that on that occasion two World Cups were attributed to a blow, that of 2018, which fell on Russia – which was also chosen by Spain and Portugal in a joint candidacy – and that of 2022, for which the favourite was the United States. but Qatar finally stayed.

Blatter pointed out that there were many questions about the Qatari World Cup, such as the size of the country or the dates on which the competition should be held, since it is too hot in summer. 

“I thought that so much danger would not jeopardize our agreement in principle to attribute the two World Cups to Russia and the United States,” he said. 

But Sarkozy’s intervention, he added, “changed everything,” according to the former FIFA president, who does not rule out that “money circulated” throughout that operation, without directly accusing anyone. 

“In decisions as important as the attribution of a World Cup it is very possible that the money circulates and that someone puts it in his pocket,” said Blatter, that it considered that the investigation opened by FIFA to detect it was not “sufficiently strict”. 

“Without Sarkozy’s last-minute intervention on Platini, Qatar would never have had the World Cup,” said the former FIFA president, who linked this support to the purchase of PSG by a sovereign wealth fund of the emirate and to “major economic activities between Qatar and France “. 

“It is the first time that a political intervention changes a great decision in football,” he said, while reiterating that “on the social and climatic level it was a great mistake to give the World Cup to Qatar.”