
Leeds goalkeeper Kiko Casilla has been banned for eight games and fined £60,000 for racist comments made to Charlton winger Jonathan Leko.

Leeds goalkeeper Kiko Casilla has been banned for eight games and fined £60,000 for racist comments made to Charlton winger Jonathan Leko.

Manchester City defender Aymeric Laporte is expected to be out of action for up to a month with a hamstring injury, says manager Pep Guardiola. Laporte, 25, was forced off in the first half of Wednesday’s Champions League win at Real Madrid – having made just eight appearances this season. “He has a hamstring injury. Three weeks out more or less – a month,” Guardiola said on Friday. “Unfortunately this happens after four or five months out.” Laporte returned in City’s 1-0 Premier League victory over Sheffield United in January, following surgery on a knee injury in August 2019.

China’s three-time Olympic champion Sun Yang has been banned for eight years for missing a doping test in September 2018. The 28-year-old was initially cleared of wrongdoing by FINA, the swimming federation, in January 2019. Following an appeal by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), the decision has been overturned. An eight-year ban was imposed on Sun because this was his second offence. He had served a three-month suspension in 2014 for taking prohibited stimulant Trimetazidine. Sun told China’s Xinhua news agency that he plans to appeal against the decision.

FIFA is set to discuss whether to prevent domestic league games being played in another country. A Stakeholders’ Committee, meeting in Zurich on Thursday, will debate whether to recommend making an amendment to the rules of football’s world governing body. The idea of a ’39th Game’ was first mentioned by Premier League chief executive Richard Scudamore in 2008 but was eventually shelved due to widespread opposition within the game. However, the concept of matches being played abroad has been taken up more recently by Spain’s La Liga, who have twice in the last two seasons been denied the chance to host official matches in the USA. The committee itself can only advise the 37-member FIFA Council which would ultimately make any decision to block overseas matches.

Double amputee Blake Leeper has launched an appeal to run at the Tokyo Olympics after he was banned from competing by World Athletics. Leeper runs with prosthetic blades and qualified for the 2019 World Championships but was not allowed to compete while his case was reviewed. He has now appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) to aim to qualify for Tokyo. Paralympian Oscar Pistorius won a similar appeal in 2008.

Istanbul Basaksehir vs Copenhagen
Olympiakos vs Wolves
Rangers vs Bayer Leverkusen
Wolfsburg vs Shakhtar Donetsk
Inter Milan vs Getafe
Sevilla vs Roma
Eintracht Frankfurt or RB Salzburg vs Basel
LASK vs Manchester United
The matches are set to be played on 12 and 19 March.