Quadri Aruna

Africa number one, Quadri Aruna, on Sunday escaped an early scare in the men’s singles of the WTT Singapore Smash taking place at the Singapore Sports Hub’s OCBC Arena.

Set up against a familiar opponent in Germany’s Ruwen Filus and that match was a classic battle between attack and defence but it was Aruna that scraped over the line, taking the match 3-2 (14-12, 6-11, 11-3, 6-11, 11-9).

For the two veterans of the global scene, it was always going to be a nail-biter. Going into the match the head-to-head stood at one win each.

But that was only part of the story. It was a topsy-turvy fight for dominance as the duo exchanged games right to the very end.

The deciding game came with all the drama with the German veteran taking a commanding lead at the change of ends.

It was then that the tides reversed and fortune went back in the way of the Nigerian superstar.

The win ensured that Aruna roared his way to the round of 32.

“It was 5-1 (to him), and then 7-2, and suddenly I won five points in a row.

That was a very good comeback and I was focusing because six or seven years ago I experienced almost the same situation against him and I knew it was not over until it’s over.

“I kept my cool, I kept playing and, in the end, he made a few errors and that made a big difference,” Aruna admitted.

The African champion added: “It’s not just that he was a tough opponent, we were together in the same team (in the German Bundesliga) for about two years and he knows me very well.

“I believe it was 50-50 before the game and as we have seen, it was 11-9 in the fifth game.”

With the coin flip going Aruna’s way, he will now face French teenager Alexis Lebrun who edged out China’s Yuan Licen in the round of 64.

The first African casualty at the Singapore Smash was Egypt’s Omar Assar who was beaten by Portugal’s Tiago Apolonia 3-0 in the round of 64 while his compatriots – Hana Goda and Mariam Alhodaby also tasted defeat against their German and Japanese opponents.

Alhodaby, the 2021 African champion was set up against world number six and Japanese national champion Hina Hayata and it was the Asian star that won 3-1 (11-3, 9-11, 11-9, 11-6).

Apart from Aruna, the other surviving African in the competition is Dina Meshref of Egypt who edged out home girls with a 3-1 win in the first round.

Real Madrid’s Vinicius Junior (left) reacts as he receives a yellow card during a match between Real Madrid CF and FC Barcelona.

Real Madrid will join the complaint filed on Friday by Spanish prosecutors against Barcelona and two of the LaLiga club’s ex-presidents over alleged payments to a company owned by a senior refereeing official to influence match results, the club said on Sunday.

The European and Spanish soccer champions called an urgent board meeting to discuss alleged attempts by arch rivals Barcelona to influence referees and decided to take legal action for what they called “serious accusations” by prosecutors.

“Real Madrid express their deep concern about the seriousness of the facts and reiterate their full confidence in the action of the justice and have agreed that, in defence of their legitimate interests, they will join the complaint as soon as the judge takes up the case,” the club said in a official statement.

Barcelona allegedly paid more than 7.3 million euros (S$10.49 million) between 2001 and 2018 to firms owned by Jose Maria Enriquez Negreira, who was vice-president of the refereeing committee of the Spanish football association from 1993-2018.

Prosecutors allege that under a secret agreement and “in exchange for money”, Negreira favoured Barcelona “in the decisions taken by referees in the games played by the club, as well as in the results of the competitions”.

A senior Barcelona official told Reuters on Friday that the club had expected the prosecutors’ complaint and described it as “nothing more than an absolutely preliminary investigative hypothesis”.

The official said the club “will fully cooperate with the investigation by all means necessary” and “reiterate that they have never bought any referee nor have tried to influence any official’s decisions”.

In a statement last month, Barca denied wrongdoing, saying they had simply paid an external consultant who supplied them with “technical reports related to professional refereeing”, calling it “a common practice among professional football clubs”.

The complaint focuses on the 2.9 million euros paid between 2014 and 2018 and alleges that Barcelona – with the help of former presidents Sandro Rosell and Josep Maria Bartomeu – reached a “confidential verbal agreement” with Negreira.

It accuses the club, Rosell, Bartomeu, Negreira and two other former Barcelona officials of corruption in sports, unfair administration and falsehood in mercantile documents.

The Nigeria Football Federation has joined entire football family to express deep sorrow over the death on Monday morning of former Nigeria defender and an accomplished Head Coach of the Senior Women’s National Team, Super Falcons, Pa Ismaila Mabo. He was 80.

Reports said Mabo died in the early hours of Monday after a protracted illness.

“The death of Pa Ismaila Mabo came to me as a huge shock. Again, we have lost a great man and an accomplished trainer-of-trainers in the Nigeria Football fraternity, and my heart goes out to his immediate family and the other loved ones he has left behind.

“Mabo laid down a big marker for other coaches when he steered the Super Falcons to the quarter-finals of the FIFA Women’s World Cup in the USA in 1999. Yet, he was simple, humble and humane. We will miss him, but we are consoled that he left giant footprints in the sands of time and pray that God will grant him eternal rest,” President of NFF, Alhaji Ibrahim Gusau said on Monday.

A gifted central defender, Ismaila Mabo started as a schoolboy international with the Nigeria academicals team that broke the chain of Ghana’s constant whipping of Nigerian teams, when they defeated Ghana’s academicals 1-0 in Accra on 13^th February 1966. It was the first time any Nigerian team would defeat a Ghanaian football team on Ghanaian soil.      

Six days later, the Nigerian boys again defeated their Ghanaian counterparts 2-1 in Lagos. His team-mates included Peter ‘Baby’ Anieke, Tony ‘World 2’ Igwe, the illustrious Sam Garba Okoye and Eyo Essien. 

After that accomplishment, Mabo joined Mighty Jets of Jos and was part of that club’s famous squad of the late 1960s and 1970s. He also featured for the senior national team, making his debut in a 1972 Africa Cup of Nations qualifying match against Congo in Brazzaville on 22^nd November 1970. 

Mabo would later go into coaching, and was in the dug-out as Head Coach when the Super Falcons defeated North Korea 3-2, lost to USA and defeated Denmark 2-0 to reach the quarter-finals of the FIFA Women’s World Cup in 1999. The team stretched Brazil at that quarter-final stage before losing by a golden goal in extra time in Washington DC on July 1, 1999.