tito Vilanova dies at 45
Barcelona: Tito Vilanova, the coach who succeeded Pep Guardiola at Barcelona and won the Spanish league title in his only season in charge, died Friday following a long battle with throat cancer. He was 45. Vilanova, who has battled a recurring tumor in a saliva gland, was admitted to a local hospital in Barcelona last week. He reportedly had emergency surgery on Thursday. “It is with sadness that Barcelona must announce that Francesc ‘Tito’ Vilanova has died today at the age of 45,” Barcelona said in a statement on its website. “The death of our former coach occurred this afternoon when he could not overcome this disease which he had battled since 2011.” Vilanova first became ill in November 2011, while still an assistant to Guardiola, and took a leave of absence after undergoing surgery. The soft-spoken Vilanova returned and took over from Guardiola the next season, when he led Barcelona to the Spanish league title with a record-tying 100 points. Vilanova had a second tumor removed in December 2012 and traveled to New York several times during the season to receive further treatment before returning to the sidelines.
‘Football growth in ne crucial’ New Delhi: He has teamed up with actor John Abraham to bag the Guwahati franchise in the Indian Super league and larsing Ming Sawyan says it is of paramount importance to take football in the northeast to next level for overall development of the sport in the country. “Our aim is to take football to the next level in northeast. That will help in the overall development of the sport in India,” Ming told PTI.
Archers’ flop show continues
Kolkata: Continuing their flop show, Indian archers on Friday exited from the team events of both recurve and compound sections of the Archery World Cup Stage I in Shanghai. The Indians will return empty-handed from the season-opener if the compound mixed pair of Abhishek Verma and Jyoti Surekha Vennam lose the bronze play-off against their French opponents on Saturday. The Indian men’s recurve team of Viswash, Jayanta Talukdar and Rahul Banerjee failed to make use of their top billing as the trio lost to the Japanese 0-6 in the quarters.
Medal-less day for Wrestlers
New Delhi: Indian grapplers failed to grab any medal on the third day of the Senior Asian Wrestling Championship in Astana, Kazakhstan with Navjot Kaur and Sakshi Malik losing their respective bronze medal bouts on Friday. Kaur lost to Bin Yang of China in the bronze medal bout of the women’s 69kg freestyle. Earlier, the Indian had lost to eventual gold medal winner Sara Dosho of Japan in the semifinals.