Hertha Berlin’s team bus has been shot at on the eve of a German Cup match. The Bundesliga club say  the bus was fired at by a motorcyclist in Bielefeld in north-west Germany but added that no-one was injured. Hertha are staying near Bielefeld before their first-round tie with German second division side Arminia Bielefeld on Monday night. Only the driver was on board at the time of the shooting and police are now investigating. The vehicle was travelling from the team hotel to pick the players up from Bielefeld Central Station. Hertha say the motorcyclist had overtaken the bus and threatened the driver “with his fist”, before turning and pointing a gun at the bus and the driver. Pictures from the club show the windscreen of the bus with a bullet hole. Hertha chief executive Michael Preetz said: “We are deeply shocked and hope that the perpetrators will be caught. Luckily our bus driver got off with a fright.” Arminia Bielefeld tweeted:  “We are shocked by the attack on the team bus from HerthaBSC.”

Xherdan Shaqiri is having medical at Stoke City ahead of his proposed move from Inter Milan, report Sky Sport News. The winger was at the Britannia Stadium on Sunday to watch Stoke’s Premier League defeat to Liverpool. Stoke had agreed a club record fee of £12m for the Swiss international but they withdrew the offer in July after he failed to respond to their deadline.

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Barcelona striker Neymar has been diagnosed with mumps and could miss the start of the season. The Brazil international is expected to be out for two weeks and will miss the European Super Cup against Sevilla on Tuesday and the Spanish Super Cup against Athletic Bilbao on 14 and 17 August. He could also miss the league opener against Athletic Bilbao on 23 August. Neymar, 23, scored 39 goals last season as Barcelona won the treble.

The Sierra Leone Football Association (SLFA) said a programme of year-ending competitive domestic fixtures would be drawn up after the ban on football and other sporting activities in the country was lifted. President Ernest Koroma lifted the ban after the number of recorded ebola cases in Sierra Leone went down. The suspension was put in place a year ago to stop the spread of the outbreak in the country – one of three nations, along with Guinea and Liberia, most severely hit by the disease. The SLFA welcomed the lifting of the ban. “This will now provide us with an opportunity to carry out football related activities in the country which is the primary function of the FA,” the head of SLFA competitions, Sorie Ibrahim Sesay, told BBC Sport. “Our clubs can now go into full scale training sessions. “The SLFA will soon come out with a calendar of activities in playing local competitions to climax the 2015 calendar year,” Sesay added.

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