Mido banished

EGYPTIAN striker Mido will not feature for Ajax for the rest of the season after another dispute with the club.

He has been dropped to the Amsterdam club's reserve side for the foreseeable future, just three days after he was handed a reprieve by coach Ronald Koeman.

Ajax said in a statement last Friday that Koeman and technical director Leo Beenhakker had taken the decision after comments made by Mido after last week's Champions League game against Arsenal.

The 19-year-old, who is the Dutch champions top scorer, was recalled to Ajax's first team after apologising to Koeman and the squad after several disputes with the club's management.

Before then he had been relegated to the youth team after Koeman said he was not giving 100 per cent in training and his attitude was "wrong". Koeman was also angered when Mido failed to turn up to meet sponsors earlier this month.

Tiger title

TIGER WOODS beat Ryder Cup team-mate David Toms in the 36-hole final of the WCG- Accenture Match Play Championship in California. Victory at the La Costa course means Woods now has a full set of World Golf Championship titles.

Woods has played in 13 WGC events since they were introduced in 1999 and has won seven of them, earning nearly $8 million.

Woods was five up after 19 holes but Toms pulled back the deficit to lie just one hole down with three to play before finally losing out at the 35th hole.

Sixth seed Toms struggled in the morning session, managing only a three-over-par 75 to Woods' 71 to reach the halfway stage four down. Woods birdied the 19th but Toms fought back at the next, holing from 30 feet while the top seed missed from six. At the long 21st, Toms made a 10-footer while Woods, on in two, three-putted.

Woods birdied to win the 24th but after only two bogeys in his first 102 holes, he had two in the next two and when Toms birdied the 29th, the gap was only one. Woods birdied the 31st, but Toms replied in kind two holes later. But at the 35th hole, Toms landed in rough short of the green and could only chip to the fringe while Woods got up and down from a bunker to clinch victory.

In the all-Australian third place play-off Adam Scott beat Peter Lonard with a nine-foot birdie putt on the last after being six-up after eight.

Khaliq survives

JAWAID KHALIQ retained his IBO welterweight title with a stunning victory over South African Jan Bergman on Saturday. Nottingham's Khaliq recovered from two knockdowns to record the most impressive win of his career a minute into the seventh round in Carnival City. The 32-year-old won with a technical knockout after sending Bergman crashing to the canvas for the third time.

The referee immediately called in the ringside doctor to examine a cut to Bergman's eye. After he decided Bergman was unable to see properly, the fight was declared over.

On the same bill, Suffolk's David Starie lost his Commonwealth super-middleweight title in a shock points defeat to Andre Thysse. Starie was lucky to survive for the full 12 rounds and could have no real complaints about the unanimous decision of the three judges.

Thysse only turned professional aged 30 and will be 34 next month. But the South African made nonsense of the supposed gulf in class between the two men.

Starie was knocked down twice in the ninth round and was saved by the bell. The part-time firefighter recovered his composure to narrowly take the next round, but was again clinging on desperately at the end of the 11th. The verdict comfortably went the way of Thysse and means Starie faces a long road back to another shot at a world title.

One last shot

SWISS cyclist Alex Zuelle is to retire at the end of the year but intends to have one last crack at wearing the Tour de France leader's yellow jersey.

The former world time-trial champion and two-time winner of the Tour of Spain announced his decision to quit at the end of the third stage of the Tour of Valencia. Zuelle wants to end his career on a high and hopes to take the yellow jersey in the prologue of this year's Tour de France which falls on his 35th birthday.

"Eleven years ago on my birthday I took the yellow jersey for the first time, and this year the prologue falls on my birthday," he said. The prologue, a short time trial which begins the three-week event, is probably Zuelle's best chance of a stage victory.

Zuelle will bow out after 13 years in the saddle which have been both successful and controversial. Having started his career with the Spanish team Once he switched to Festina in 1998 where he was involved in one of the sport's biggest doping scandals. The Festina team were expelled from the Tour de France during the affair and Zuelle was banned for seven months after admitting taking the performance enhancing drug EPO. He made a comeback with Spanish team Banesto before moving to Team Coast. He finally won his home race, the Tour de Suisse, last year.

Kenya backed

TANZANIA'S Sports Minister Juma Kapuya has given his support to his Kenyan counterpart, Najib Balala, for disbanding the KFF in the aftermath of an under-17 age cheating scandal.

FIFA is threatening to ban Kenya from international competition as rules strictly prohibit political interference in football federations.

But Kapuya told BBC Sport at the Tanzania Information Service offices in Dar es-Salaam last Friday that Balala deserved FIFA's support. "Age cheating is threatening the future of our football," Kapuya said. "For us, we have left the matter to FAT (the Tanzania FA) but they are doing nothing. The Kenyan minister had evidence and he acted rightfully to help his country's football. But I have surprisingly learnt that FIFA intends to ban them. Why?" he asked.

He added that he felt FIFA was actually damaging the game in taking action against Kenya. "I thought FIFA should be the first to support anyone doing something for the good of the game, but now they are doing the contrary. FIFA is just FIFA."

Tanzania itself was last year accused of playing overage players in their under-20 side.