SOCCER
New England’s Matt Turner will likely be sidelined for a couple more weeks by an ankle injury, raising the possibility the United States will be without its top two goalkeepers when World Cup qualifying resumes on March 24 at Mexico.
Revolution Coach Bruce Arena said during a news conference Tuesday that Turner was injured during a practice game at Los Angeles FC. New England said it was during a closed-door scrimmage that took place Feb. 9.
“A foot/ankle injury,” Arena said. “Timeframe, probably a couple of weeks from now he’ll be available.”
The 27-year-old Turner, who has agreed to to a summer transfer to Arsenal, has not played a competitive match since Feb. 2, when the United States beat Honduras 3-0 at St. Paul, Minnesota.
Turner missed New England’s Feb. 26 opener at Portland and Saturday’s match against Dallas, and he will not be available for Wednesday’s CONCACAF Champions League quarterfinal first leg against Mexico’s Pumas.
He has supplanted Manchester City’s Zack Steffen as the top U.S. goalkeeper in World Cup qualifying, starting 8 of 11 matches.
Steffen has not played for Manchester City since Feb. 5 and has not dressed since Feb. 9 due to back and shoulder injuries.
CHAMPIONS LEAGUE: Whatever hope Salzburg had of overcoming Bayern Munich was extinguished by Robert Lewandowski scoring a hat trick in 11 minutes.
It was game over by the time Lewandowski’s third hit the net in the 23rd minute to make it the quickest hat trick at the start of a league match.
A second leg that started at 1-1 was tilted 4-1 in Bayern’s favor by the striker’s scoring masterclass. The final was 7-1 and gave Bayern an 8-2 aggregate win to reach the quarterfinals. Thomas Muller scored two and Serge Gnabry and Leroy Sane each one.
At least Salzburg avoided complete humiliation of not scoring with Maurits Kjaergaard netting for the Austrian team in Bavaria.
In the other Round of 16 game, Liverpool relied on its 2-0 victory at Inter Milan to advance after losing 1-0 at Anfield.
MEXICO: Mexico’s soccer federation said it will ban clubs of rowdy fans known as “barras” from attending away matches after a huge weekend brawl among soccer fans that left over two dozen people injured, three of them critically.
The federation and top-division league owners announced that the host team in Saturday’s match, Queretaro, will have to play home matches without fans for one year after stadium security was shown to be inadequate.
The Queretaro team’s fan club, or “barra,” will be banned from attending even local games for three years. The team’s owner will be required to sell his stake in it and the current team management will be banned from the league for five years.
The federation also levied a fine of about $70,000, and ruled the Saturday match – which had been tied 1-1 when the fighting broke out – to be a 3-0 win for the opposing team, Atlas from the city of Guadalajara.
UKRAINE: Amid a shutdown of domestic soccer during the invasion by Russia, FIFA agreed to Ukraine’s request to postpone the national team’s World Cup qualifying playoff in Scotland in two weeks’ time.
FIFA also awarded Poland a bye through its playoff semifinal against Russia that was also scheduled on March 24. That decision will be tested by an urgent Russian appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport against a FIFA ban on its national teams.
FIFA said it will now organize the Scotland-Ukraine game in June during the next fixture dates protected for national teams.
The delay became likely when the Ukraine Premier League shut down after the Russian military invasion on Feb. 24.
MEDIA
ESPN: Dick Vitale is winning his battle with cancer.
The longtime ESPN college basketball analyst said in a Twitter post that his latest PET scan showed no signs of cancer.
Vitale revealed on Oct. 20 that he would be undergoing six months of chemo to treat lymphoma, a type of blood cancer.
BASKETBALL
WNBA: Indiana has traded center Teaira McCowan to the Dallas Wings in a deal that gives the Fever four first-round picks in the the next WNBA draft.
The Fever got the fourth and sixth overall picks from the Wings in the deal. Indiana already has the No. 2 and 10 picks, and would be the first WNBA team to make four first-round selections in the same draft if it keeps and uses all of them.
Along with McCowan, a 25-year-old Texas native, the Wings got the seventh overall pick in the upcoming draft. The WNBA hasn’t yet announced a date for the draft. The season begins May 6.
SWIMMING
UKRAINE: Most members of the Ukrainian women’s synchronized swim team arrived in Rome after fleeing the war in their homeland with Italian help.
Ten athletes and two coaches traveled in a bus provided by the Italian swimming federation from the Ukraine-Hungarian border to Rome.
Italian swimming officials greeted the athletes, who will continue their training at Italian Olympic facilities in Ostia, a seaside suburb of the Italian capital, as they prepare for the European Aquatics Championships to be held in Rome in August.
BASEBALL
SOUTH KOREA: Kwang-hyun Kim has left the St. Louis Cardinals and will return to South Korea on a record four-year contract.
The left-handed pitcher will rejoin his old club, which is now known as the SSG Landers, in the Korean Baseball Organization.
The club issued a statement saying the deal was worth up to 15.1 billion won ($12.3 million) over four seasons and was the largest contract in the league’s history.
Kim pitched for the SK Wyverns, as the Landers were previously known, from 2007 to 2019 before joining the Cardinals on a two-year contract. The 33-year-old Kim became a free agent after the 2021 season.
TENNIS
BNP PARIBAS OPEN: Novak Djokovic was placed in the men’s draw, although it remains to be seen whether the second-ranked player will be allowed to enter the United States.
Djokovic isn’t vaccinated against COVID-19. The U.S. requires visitors to be vaccinated to enter the country. Additionally, tournament officials have said everyone at Indian Wells must be fully vaccinated to be on site.
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