IFB

Los Angeles Lakers superstar Kobe Bryant is teaming up with Nike and soccer stars Didier Drogba, Andrei Arshavin, Clint Dempsey, Denilson, Marco Materazzi, Javier Mascherano, Fabio Cannavaro, and tennis star Maria Sharapova to help millions of people with AIDS.

Bryant and the other athletes are encouraging people and fans worldwide to participate in Nike’s “Lace Save Lives” campaign. The funds from the imitative will help to fight AIDS in Africa and help people already affected by AIDS live longer and fuller lives.

Men believed to be rebels opened fire on the bus carrying the Togolese football national team at the African Cup of Nations in Angola, while on their way to Cabinda province.

At least six people including two football players were injured and luckily Togolese superstar Emmanuel Adebayor was not among the injured. Center back Serge Akakpo and Goalkeeper Obilale Kossi were among the players hurt.

The English Premier League club Everton FC has formally announced Friday that United States forward Landon Donovan will be joining the Merseyside club on a short-term loan deal from MLS club Los Angeles Galaxy.

This is one story everyone in soccer circles in the United States already knew before it broke today that America’s best talent Donovan was on his way to the English Premier League to play a two-and-a-half-month loan deal that will start in January and end around mid-March.

The FIFA World Cup draws in South Africa has come and gone, the world focused on the city of Cape Town as world class athletes from all over, celebrities and top government officials were anticipating all the different teams they would face and what group they would be placed in for the FIFA World Cup.

An event such as the World Cup only comes once every four years and due to it's magnitude, any event for what might be considered minute thing surrounding it is always huge.

Los Angeles Galaxy forward Landon Donovan was handed the captain’s armband this MLS season by coach Bruce Arena. It was supposed to be his somewhat last hurrah after lashing out at David Beckham’s commitment to the team in Grant Wahl’s recently released book, The Beckham Experiment.

On Sunday Donovan, acclaimed as a penalty specialist for the United States men’s national team and at his club level, banged his penalty kick high over the bar against upstart Real Salt Lake; a team that qualified for the 2009 MLS playoffs on the final day of the regular season.

The two most respected African soccer nations at the moment, Ivory Coast and Ghana will face each other in Group B during the group stages of the 2010 African Cup of Nations in Angola.

The competition will take place from January 10 till 31 and matches will be played in Luanda the capital city along with Benguela, Cabinda and Lubando provinces.

French captain Thierry Henry has said that a replay of the France versus Ireland game would be a fair solution to his now famous hand ball controversy which occurred on Wednesday. But don’t expect FIFA to consider that option since the sport’s governing body has moved on after rejecting the Irish appeal.

Henry had handled the ball, whether inadvertently or not, before knocking the ball to defender William Gallas who scored France’s equalizer that earned the French a 2-1 aggregate win and send’s the disappointing Les Blues to the World Cup in South Africa.

For the first time in the history of the competition, Ghana, with 10 players, became the first African team to win the U-20 World Cup, held in Egypt, as they defeated South American champions Brazil 4-3 in sudden death penalty-kick shootout.

With the game finishing 0-0 in regulation and also extra time, as both teams failed to break the deadlock, it had to be decided on penalty-kicks with numerous dignitaries watching at the stadium in Cairo. Ghana’s Emmanuel Agyemang-Badu scored the winning penalty that sent the entire stadium with 67,814 fans into hysteria.

Just as he was turning out to be one of the point men for the United States Men’s National team, forward Charlie Davies was involved in a single car accident in the early hours of Tuesday morning on the George Washington Parkway in Washington, D.C.

Reports have it that there were three passengers in the car and one person was killed while Davies and the other passenger were rushed to the hospital. According to the Los Angeles Times, The U.S. Park Police identified the passenger who died in the ghastly accident as a female, Ashley J. Roberta, a 22-year-old from Phoenix, Md.

Only the top performers are chosen and the final three for the 2009 Honda Player of the Year Award which honors the best US national team soccer player is out.

The three players are Landon Donovan who is the all-time leading scorer in US Soccer, Tim Howard one of the best goalkeeper’s in the world today and young Jozy Altidore arguably the most expensive player sold by MLS standard when he joined Spanish giants Villarreal in the summer of 2008.

A panel of 221 sports journalist selected the final three players and the winner of the award will be announced on Oct. 20.