The Latest: Professional Fighters League cancels season
The Latest on the effects of the coronavirus outbreak on sports around the world:
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The Professional Fighters League has canceled its upcoming season because of the coronavirus pandemic and plans to resume in spring 2021.
The mixed martial arts promotion was expected to begin competition in May. The competition format includes a regular season, a postseason and a championship event, making it unique in MMA. Last year, the promotion staged six regular-season events, three playoff events and a championship event on New Year’s Eve.
CEO Peter Murray says the PFL will pay its fighters a monthly cash stipend to help support them and their families throughout 2020.
The 2021 season will be distributed on ESPN platforms in the U.S. and to 160 countries by the league’s international media partners. The PFL said it will produce new programming across ESPN and PFL platforms for the rest of this year.
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The Spanish government says it has reached a deal with the country’s soccer league and federation for teams to return to practice.
The government has not provided a timetable or given any other detail about when practice would resume. It says it will depend on the evolution of the coronavirus pandemic and on decisions by health authorities.
The government says strict protocols will have to be followed when teams begin training again. The Spanish league and the federation have created health protocols for the return to training.
The league says the competition is not expected to resume until the end of May at the earliest and games will be in empty stadiums at first.
Government officials and the presidents of the league and the federation met for nearly eight hours this weekend.
The government says the league and the federation have agreed to use part of the money from soccer television rights to help other sports in Spain. It says they will also create a contingency fund of 10 million euros ($10.8 million) to aid more vulnerable athletes.
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Contingency planning for the men’s Twenty20 World Cup will be among the topics for discussion when the heads of the top cricketing nations hold a specially convened meeting this week about the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the sport.
The chief executives of the International Cricket Council’s 12 full members and three associate representatives also will discuss the rescheduling of series, the program of future tours and the key factors behind the resumption of international cricket on Thursday’s conference call.
The T20 World Cup is scheduled for Oct. 18-Nov. 15 in Australia. It is cricket’s biggest global tournament this year and hasn’t yet been called off.
ICC chief executive Manu Sawhney says the organization is continuing to “take advice from experts and authorities” about the T20 tournament.
Sawhney says there is a need to “share knowledge and … build a deep understanding of what it will take to resume international cricket.”
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The president of the German soccer federation says resuming league play will not mean taking resources away from healthcare workers amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Fritz Keller writes in Kicker magazine “we guarantee that resuming play ... will not cause a burden for the healthcare system.”
He adds that “there will be no use by sportspeople of testing capacity which would be missed elsewhere.”
No top league games have been played since March 11.
The German league has been more bullish than other major European competitions about the chances of resuming in May or June with widespread coronavirus tests for players. That push is partly driven by fears that several clubs face financial collapse without TV and sponsorship money.
German state and local officials could potentially veto games in their areas. Keller says unified rules for soccer around the country would help clubs “quickly and without bureaucracy.”
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Manchester City striker Sergio Aguero has been using some of his spare time in lockdown to teach British kids how to speak Spanish.
The Argentina international has been signed up by the BBC as part of its home-schooling initiative while educational establishments are closed during the coronavirus pandemic.
Aguero is teaching kids how to count in Spanish. His lessons became available on a day kids in Britain would have usually returned to school after the Easter holidays.
Aguero says “it’s a tough time for children at the moment, and also for parents trying to keep them focused on their education from home.”
Aguero hasn’t played a competitive match since March 8 because soccer is shut down in England and across most of the world during the outbreak.
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