Today in Football

*Shinji Kagawa hit a brace and Keisuke Honda added another as Japan downed South Korea 3-0 in Sapporo. Players wore black armbands in honour of former Japanese international Naoki Matsuda, who died a week ago, and observed a minute's silence.







*Tottenham's home match with Everton on Saturday has been postponed as the clean-up continues following the riots in London. The north London area was the epicentre of the violence which spread to other English cities and forced an emergency debate today in the House of Commons.



*Cesc Fabregas' move to Barcelona looks set to be finalised by the weekend. Arsenal are also negotiating to transfer Samir Nasri to Manchester City, leaving the Gunners three weeks to replace their best two players before the transfer deadline.



*Jack Warner ally Lisle Austin has been banned from football for a year by FIFA. The CONCACAF official was involved in the crazy in-fighting in May after Chuck Blazer shopped Warner and Mohamed Bin-Hammam for bribery. Austin 'fired' Blazer without authority, leaving CONCACAF to issue a press statement contradicting its acting president, who was subsequently dismissed. When Austin went to the Bahamian court to get his job back, FIFA isolated him.



*The FIFA U-20 World Cup in Colombia has reached the quarter-final stage. Cameroon, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Egypt, England, Guatemala, Saudi Arabia and South Korea fell by the wayside in the second round.



QF lineup: Brazil v Spain, Mexico v Colombia, France v Nigeria, Portugal v Argentina



*Jurgen Klinsmann's first game in charge of the USA ended in a 1-1 draw with Mexico in front of 30,000 in Philadelphia, World Champions Spain lost 2-1 to Italy in Bari and Germany beat Brazil 3-2 in Stuttgart.







*UEFA EURO 2012 qualifier - Northern Ireland 4:0 Faroe Islands



*International Friendlies (selected results) -



Italy 2:1 Spain

Germany 3:2 Brazil

Japan 3:0 South Korea

USA 1:1 Mexico

France 1:1 Chile

Ivory Coast 4:3 Israel

Norway 3:0 Czech Republic

Portugal 5:0 Luxembourg

Russia 1:0 Serbia

Wales 1:2 Australia

Turkey 3:0 Estonia

Scotland 2:1 Denmark

Austria 1:2 Slovakia

Albania 3:2 Montenegro

Tunisia 4:2 Mali

Belarus 1:0 Bulgaria

Liechtenstein 1:2 Switzerland

Poland 1:0 Georgia

Ukraine 0:1 Sweden

Eire 0:0 Croatia

Honduras 2:0 Venezuela

Costa Rica 0:2 Ecuador

Senegal 0:2 Morocco

South Africa 3:0 Burkina Faso

China 1:0 Jamaica



(c) Sean O'Conor & Soccerphile



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