Chelsea back in EPL top 4 after beating Bolton 3-0

Chelsea produced a stirring second-half performance to beat Bolton 3-0, lifting the team back into the English Premier League s top four and easing some of the pressure on manager Andre Villas-Boas. David Luiz, Didier Drogba and Frank Lampard scored after the break to end Chelsea s five-match winless run in all competitions that had left Villas-Boas  job under threat. The victory, only the London club s third in 11 Premier League matches, sees it climb provisionally above Arsenal into fourth place. Bolton stayed in the relegation zone and is without a victory over Chelsea since 2003.

Federer beats Lopez to reach Dubai quarterfinals

Federer beat Feliciano Lopez of Spain 7-5, 6-3 on Wednesday to reach the quarterfinals. The Swiss star broke the 15th-ranked Lopez in the final game to settle a tight opening set. The second set was more routine, Federer breaking the Spaniard to lead 5-3 and closing out the match with a volley winner from the net. Federer, who was beaten in the Dubai final last year by top-ranked Novak Djokovic, faces Mikhail Youzhny after the Russian beat the out-of-form Mardy Fish of the United States 6-2, 7-6 (0).

European clubs sign “less football” deal with Uefa

European football clubs on Tuesday announced a deal with UEFA to cut the number of international fixtures, which they complain can overload players, but FIFA, which has the final say, questioned their stance. The European Club Association (ECA), which groups 201 sides from all 53 UEFA member nations, said that it had backed moves to cut the annual number of international matches from the current 12 to nine. “The agreement with UEFA is a major breakthrough for European club football. With this agreement, UEFA clearly recognises the importance of clubs and the significant contribution they make to the success of national team football,” ECA and Bayern Munich chief Karl-Heinz Rummenigge said in a statement. The announcement came after an ECA general assembly in the Polish capital Warsaw, a fitting venue for debate given that the country is poised to host the European Championship in June along with neighbouring Ukraine. The deal foresees the end of August friendly matches and the introduction of rules allowing the release of each player for international duty for no more than one tournament per year. It also calls for a push to ensure that all the globe’s international championships end by mid-July and for the Africa Cup of Nations to start as early as possible in January. Releasing players for that tournament, whose 2012 edition ran from January 21 to February 12, can hinder clubs in European leagues, notably those without a winter break. The ECA-UEFA deal, valid from June 1 to May 30, 2018, also covers injury insurance for European clubs’ players on international duty. It will also bolster their share of profits from the European Championship, which are awarded as recognition of their contribution to the quadrennial tournament. Under an existing deal, the clubs can expect a total 55-million-euro ($74m) slice from Euro 2012. That will be “substantially increased” at Euro 2016 in France, the ECA said. While lauding European football’s governing body, the ECA has been at loggerheads over the calendar with UEFA’s global counterpart FIFA, the ultimate arbiter. “The situation remains unsatisfactory in relation to FIFA,” Rummenigge said. That sparked a terse statement by FIFA, which said it was “surprised” and took Rummenigge to task for boycotting talks on the issue. FIFA said that stance made it “very difficult for progress to be made in discussions with the European clubs”, and underlined that it had called a global meeting on the issue on March 5. “FIFA remains, as always, willing to discuss with ECA on these topics, as it does with all other stakeholders in the world football community,” it said. “FIFA would like to recall that the international dates and the international match calendar have to be applied on a worldwide basis and that this calendar is ultimately regulated by FIFA, as football’s world governing body.”

Australia dump Saudi Arabia out of World Cup contention

Australia scored three goals in five whirlwind minutes to come back from behind and dump Frank Rijkaard’s Saudi Arabia out of 2014 World Cup qualification in Melbourne on Wednesday. Australia trailed 2-1 at half-time but hit back with three second-half goals to run out 4-2 winners, as Oman leapfrogged the Saudis to claim the second Group D qualifying spot. Oman’s 2-0 home win over Thailand took them past the lavishly-funded Saudis into the March 9 draw for the final round of Asian group qualifiers. Saudi Arabia will miss out on their second straight World Cup finals campaign after qualifying for four consecutive tournaments from 1994 to 2006. The Saudis rocked the home side, scoring twice in the opening half and controlling possession, but Australia emerged stronger after German coach Holger Osieck’s half-time team talk. The road to Brazil has not been altogether smooth for Australia – they lost in Oman in November and were lucky to scrape a win against Thailand four days later – and skipper Lucas Neill admitted Saudi Arabia caught them off guard on Wednesday. “It wasn’t the best of first-half performances, we knew the Saudis would come at us, but it was a great response and a good talk at half-time and passing the ball around quickly in the second half opened them up a little bit,” Neill said. “It’s March 9 now and then we can look ahead and we can really focus in on what we have to do to get to Brazil, the games are going to get tougher than this and we’re going to have to be at our best.” Young midfielder Salem Al-Dossari put the Saudis in front in the 19th minute with a brilliant goal, controlling the ball and eluding three defenders before unleashing a strike that beat Fulham goalkeeper Mark Schwarzer. Australia gradually got more possession and equalised two minutes before half-time when the recalled Mark Bresciano put Alex Brosque clear and the Shimizu S-Pulse striker beat Waleed Abdullah from close range. But the Socceroos paid for slack marking in first half injury time when Hassan Fallatah’s cross found Nasser Alshamrani, who put the Saudis ahead for a second time. Neill had a headed equaliser – which would have been his first international goal – flagged offside on 63 minutes, though replays suggested he was in line with the last defender as the ball was whipped into the box. But the home side did finally equalise in the 72nd minute when the impressive Brosque laid on a ball for Harry Kewell to sidefoot home his 17th international goal. The hosts then netted twice in quick succession to lead 4-2, with Brosque glancing home a Brett Emerton cross and Emerton scoring after an assist from the outstanding Bresciano to leave Rijkaard shaking his head in disbelief. Former Blackburn Rovers midfielder Emerton, 33, has now scored in four World Cup qualifying campaigns.