Golf : Three-day golf grand final showdown begins

The Matchplay Championship, one of Europe's largest amateur golf tournaments, will crown its new winners next week as competitors from across the UK and Ireland assemble at The Els Club, Dubai, for the three-day grand final showdown starting on Tuesday. It ends on Thursday.

After entering the tournament for just £25 (Dh150) at www.matchplaychampionship.co.uk, a diverse array of golfers will stake their claim for the title, having booked their place in the field by virtue of their success in the matchplay qualifying rounds and Regional Final last month. With Sky Sports filming the action throughout the week, they will have the chance to shine in front of a TV audience.

"There have been some unbelievable performances to get this far, including the team of Army Captains John Donaldson and Jon Sheard, who as recently as last year were out in Afghanistan," commented John Woosey, Managing Director of the JRW Group, which promotes the Matchplay Championship.

Football : Attacking football came out on top, says Guardiola

Barcelona coach Pep Guardiola praised his team for reaching the Champions League final and believes it is a victory for their style of attacking football against bitter rivals Real Madrid. The Catalan side came through with a 3-1 aggregate victory after two stormy matches.

It was always going to be an extremely difficult task for Real to turn around their 2-0 defeat at home but they started with the intention to attack. It was in the second half when they looked most dangerous, though, that Barca went ahead through Pedro Rodriguez. Real kept going and equalised through Marcelo but it was only a consolation.

"Football is coming home and I would like to congratulate my players for reaching the final," said Guardiola, who was a player in the 1992 side which won Barca's first ever European Cup at the legendary Wembley stadium.

"Of course it is the new Wembley and so it is not going to be as special going back there. It is a chance for us to show our way of football, to keep hold of the ball and move it around as quickly as possible."

Barca could now play Manchester United who hold a 2-0 lead over Schalke going into their return leg and it would be a repeat of the 2009 final. "We will be watching the game tomorrow (Wednesday) but it looks like it will be Manchester who go through.

"Manchester continue to be in the final stages of the competitions and reach the final. But we have the same desire, we will look to find their weak point and then attack," explained Guardiola.

The Barca trainer refused to comment on the contentious decision by the referee to rule out a goal for Real's Gonzalo Higuain due to a supposed foul by Cristiano Ronaldo.

"Everyone is free to think what they want and analyse it. You cannot say one person is right or another. We feel like we have eliminated an excellent side and one of the keys to our success is our humility. The players keep going and working hard," he added.

Real Madrid assistant coach Aitor Karanka remained adamant that the contest was decided in the first leg by the dismissal of Pepe.

Football : Johnson admits Manchester City performed below par !!!!

Manchester City midfielder Adam Johnson has admitted the expensive Eastlands team should have mounted a serious challenge for the Premier League title.

City need just one win from their remaining four games to secure a place in next season's Champions League and have the chance to win their first trophy for 35 years when they face Stoke in the FA Cup final on Saturday.

City owner Shaikh Mansour Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Deputy Prime Minister of UAE and Minister of Presidential Affairs, would have expected a more sustained bid for the title.

Johnson said: "I'm disappointed that we are not in there. Personally, I think we should be and a lot of neutral people think we should be with the squad we have. But there was a couple of iffy results which we should have won."

Since a 3-0 drubbing by Liverpool at Anfield, City have won their last three games, the first of them the momentous FA Cup semi-final triumph over Manchester United.

Sunday's defeat of West Ham took them seven points clear of Tottenham in the battle for the final Champions League place.

"At the start of the season we wanted to be top two and having been in the top four all season we want to keep pushing," Johnson said. "We might yet finish even higher than fourth. We've just got to keep going. But that result at Liverpool didn't mean we thought Spurs could catch us. We knew we still had a few points on them and we've pushed that gap to seven, which is massive for us."

Johnson, 23, grew up watching Newcastle's European exploits, and cannot wait for a first taste of the Champions League. "I remember Barcelona [when Newcastle won 3-2 in 1997] and those nights — Faustino Asprilla and people like that," the winger said. "Those were the nights when I was growing up as a kid. Obviously, night matches were a bit special for me. I can't remember if I was allowed to stay up, or maybe I was just in the bedroom with my door locked. I remember the 3-2 game, Gillespie set a few up with crosses."

Cricket : Money is not the reason for Sourav Ganguly's return to cricket !!!!!!

Sourav Ganguly will not be playing for money but to prove he is still "good enough" in this form of cricket, according to a top official of Sahara Pune Warriors.

In a dramatic decision which was the talking point in Indian cricketing circles on Tuesday, the IPL debutants announced that they were signing up the former Indian captain who went unsold in the last auction.

Director of the Pune franchise, said they had been in touch with the retired international for the last couple of days, but could only confirm him as a replacement for the injured medium pacer Ashish Nehra.

"The fees did not figure prominently in our discussion as he would be paid on a pro-rata basis for the remaining matches," he said.

Ganguly, who played for Kolkata Knight Riders for the first three seasons of IPL, told the media in Kolkata: "I was approached by them yesterday [Monday] and I've confirmed about my availability to them. I am leaving for Mumbai and the details will be announced there." Dismissing any speculation about change in captaincy, the Pune official said Ganguly will be purely be in the capacity of a player while Yuvraj Singh and Graeme Smith will continue to be the captain and vice-captain, respectively.

"The decision to play him or not rests completely with the team management. He is joining the side [in Navi Mumbai] and will train with the coach and support staff. I don't think he will be playing in our next match [against Mumbai Indians]," Sarkar said.

The move is, however, seen in some quarters as a desperate move by the IPL debutants, who are languishing at the bottom of the table with six consecutive losses from eight games and are also hamstrung by injuries.

"In the last four matches, we have lost from winning positions. We were also done in by injuries to four key players. Angelo Mathews, the Sri Lankan all-rounder was ruled out, Australian Twenty20 vice-captain Tim Paine and South African skipper Graeme Smith too are injured while Ashish Nehra too was battling with injury.

"We waited for Nehra's fitness report before getting the BCCI green signal," Sarkar said.

Incidentally, after Ganguly went unsold in the auctions last January, Subrata Roy, the Chairman of Sahara Group, had expressed interest in the possibility of taking him on board even in the capacity of a "mentor" — an idea that did not meet with the approval of the team's Australian coach Geoff Marsh