Sports Shorts: First female coach of major men's team leaves job

Helena Costa, the first woman to be appointed coach of a men's team in the top two divisions of European football, has quit before taking charge of French club Clermont.

"Helena Costa has decided not to keep her commitments to Clermont and she will therefore not be the club's coach next season," the Ligue 2 club's president, Claude Michy, said in a statement on Monday.

"This is a sudden and disappointing decision."

Portuguese Costa, 36, had previously coached the Iran women's national team and scouted for Scottish Premier League club Celtic.

No woman had come as close as Costa to coaching a top men's professional team in Europe.

Carolina Morace was appointed coach of Serie C1 (third division) club Viterbese in Italy in 1999. She resigned after two matches, citing media pressure.

Roma have had two women chairpersons, Rosella Sensi and Flora Viola, and in Switzerland Gisela Oeri was president of FC Basel for five years from 2006.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, France had Nelly Viennot as the first woman to be assistant referee in an elite match. Viennot also served as assistant referee in Champions League games.

Referee Bibiana Steinhaus officiates in German second division games. She is the first female referee in Bundesliga 2 and the first to have been a referee in the German Cup.

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Ivory Coast midfielder Yaya Toure hit out at ManchesterCity, claiming his club denied him compassionate leave at the end of the Premier League season to be with his brother, who was dying of cancer.

Ibrahim Toure died of the disease aged just 28 in Manchester last Thursday, while his brothers Yaya and Kolo were at the World Cup finals in Brazil.

"At the end of the season, I wanted to stay four or five days with my brother before flying to prepare the World Cup with Ivory Coast," Yaya Toure wrote in a column in France Football magazine.

"But City did not wish to grant me those few days. I went to celebrate the title in Abu Dhabi while my brother was dying in his bed.

"Fortunately, Kolo was at his bedside. Afterwards, I regretted that I had not insisted. However, (City) executives knew that I was suffering."

The Premier League champions said they had no comment to make on the 31-year-old's remarks.

Toure has had a complicated relationship with City, his agent saying last month that the player could leave the club over a birthday snub.

City, however, released a video in which Toure was shown being presented with a birthday cake on the plane taking the team to Abu Dhabi.

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Medical records purported to be those of Michael Schumacher have been offered for sale and officials are investigating the theft, his agent said, one week after the seven-time Formula One champion came out of a coma.

The German driver, who suffered severe head injuries in a ski accident in the French Alps in December, was transferred from Grenoble in France to a Swiss medical centre on June 16.

"For several days stolen documents and data have been offered for sale," Sabine Kehm, managing director of Michael Schumacher's offices in Geneva, said in a statement on Monday.

"The offeror claims them to be the medical files of Michael Schumacher. We cannot judge if these documents are authentic.

"However, the documents are clearly stolen. The theft has been reported. The authorities are involved," added Kehm.

Criminal charges and damages would be sought against anyone involved in the illegal sale or publication of his confidential records, she said.

A spokeswoman for the University Hospital of Lausanne (CHUV) in western Switzerland, where the German is being treated in the neurological rehabilitation unit, said she had "no comment" on the case.

The centre treated former Zairean dictator Mobutu Sese Seko for cancer in the mid-1990s and last year its forensic scientists analysed the remains of the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat for traces of poison.

Schumacher, the most successful Formula One driver of all time, has had several brain operations since his accident in the resort of Meribel.

His wife Corinna and two teenage children live in the family home midway between Geneva and Lausanne.