Beckham for Milan

Italian club AC Milan have confirmed that former England captain David Beckham will join the club on loan during the January transferwindow. . Beckham, who plays for LA Galaxy, will join the seven-time European champions during the off-season break.Milan seem to have taken over from Real Madrid in opting for a policy of signing many players in recent seasons, except that whereas the Spanish champions signed the likes of Ronaldo, Zinedine Zidane, Luis Figo and Beckham when they were playing their very best. In the last two years Milan have signed Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, Andrei Shevchenko and now Beckham, but all four players seem to be far from their best. Ronaldo seemed to be overweight and unfit during his brief and unsuccessful stint with AC Milan.

Golden ball favourites

Manchester United's ace winger Cristiano Ronaldo and FC Barcelona's forward Lionel messi are the most likely conntenders to win this year’s Golden Ball, awarded to Europe’s top player. Ronaldo finished second to AC Milan midfielder Kaka last year, while Messi was third. Kaka was again among the 30 nominees but looking at his performance there is slim chance he will win.The Portugese winger had scored 42 goals in all competitions to help United win the Premier League title and the Champions League last season.

Raman appointed as CEO

The Governing Council of the twenty20 Champions League which is to be held from the 3rd of December to the 10th have appointed Sundar Raman as the Chief Executive Officer and Dhiraj Malhotra as the Tournament Director. Sundar Raman is currently the Chief Operating Officer of the Indian Premier League (IPL) and has been working on Champions League ever since the IPL concluded. He will take on this responsibility in addition to his role with IPL. Dhiraj Malhotra, an ex-army officer, was also the Tournament Director for IPL and has been with the International Cricket Council for the last three years. He has worked on the inaugural T20 World Cup in South Africa in 2007 as well as the World Cup in the West Indies held earlier.He has also worked on various Champions Trophies and Under 19 World Cups.

Ganguly,Tendulkar awarded

Sachin Tendulkar, who during the recently concluded Mohali test match against Australiabroke Brian Lara's record to become the highest run-getter in Test cricket and Sourav Ganguly, the fourth Indian batsman to cross the 7000-run mark, werefelicitated during the prize distribution ceremony of the test match. Retired Punjab Governor General,SF Rodrigues presented a trophy to Tendulkar while the secretary of theBCCI,Niranjan Shah, handed another trophy to Ganguly after India won the second Test by 320 runs at the PCA ground.

Dcput on sale

Just a month after Indian Premier League (IPL) champions Rajasthan Royals decided to go public, owners of the struggling Deccan Charges team - Deccan Chronicle Holdings and M Group - have decided to put the franchisee on sale.The DC Holdings board of directors over the past one week has met, deliberated and decided to disinvest either fully or partly the stake in the franchisee. The enterprise value of Deccan Charges is $200m which includes the franchisee fee of $107m to the IPL. The Deccan Chargers have had issues with their team combination and the support staff and had unceremoniously replaced VVS Laxman with Adam Gilchrist as the captain.

Pujara-New kid on the block?

From what I have heard,triple tons don't happen everyday, but Cheteshwar Pujara seems to have made a habit of it now. The elegant Saurashtra right-hander scored his second consecutive triple century in the West Zone leg of the National U-22 tournament on Monday which has brought the limelight on him. While against Mumbai, Pujara batted for 539 minutes and played 379 balls, against Maharashtra, he had scored 386 off 696 minutes. However, Debu Mitra, the Saurashtra coach who has groomed Pujara for the past four seasons, feels that much like Dravid, it's Pujara's defence which makes him such a good player. The chairman of the national selection committee, K Srikkanth, too, pointed out that they are following Pujara with a lot of interest.Pujarawas the Man-of-the-Series in the 2006 U-19 World Cup.

Kenyon in Goa

Peter Kenyon,the chief executive officer of English side-chealseaKenyon arrived in Goa and was received by AIFF secretary Alberto Colaco whobelieved that the visit would hopefully help cement a relationship with the English Premier League giants. Colaco also said that there's no agenda involved but talks will be held on the overall development of the game in the country. The world's highest paid CEO's visit is aimed at understanding Indian football and to develop the relationship between Chelsea and the AIFF. Senior national team coach Bob Houghton, who cut short his visit to Kolkata to be in Goa for the meeting, met Kenyon along with AIFF officials and those from the Bharti Group to chart out a comprehensive development programme. Chelsea were the first major team to sign an agreement with the Asian Football Confederation as official football development partner of AFC's Vision China project.