Sauber's legal dispute with Formula One driver Giedo van der Garde remains unresolved, with a further court hearing scheduled for Saturday.

The Supreme Court of the state of Victoria in Australia had ordered Sauber to honor the Dutch driver's contract this season despite having signed drivers Marcus Ericsson and Felipe Nasr instead.

Carlo Ancelotti will remain as coach of Spanish giants Real Madrid for the foreseeable future after being given a resounding vote of confidence by club president Florentino Perez.

Despite a rocky start to 2015, Perez addressed a hastily-convened press conference on Thursday to dispel all doubts about the under-fire coach's future.

Zimbabwe was thrown out of 2018 World Cup qualifying on Thursday for failing to pay its national team coach.

FIFA's disciplinary committee said it took the action "as a result of the non-payment of an outstanding debt" by Zimbabwe's football federation to coach Jose Claudinei Georgini.

Exiting the Champions League was painful for Jose Mourinho but there was no sense of injustice. The Chelsea manager was uncharacteristically restrained, with no attempt to excuse an abject performance against a Paris Saint-Germain side reduced to 10 men for most of Wednesday's game.

Chelsea lacked defensive organization and attacking resolve against the French league's second-place team. And Mourinho was left questioning the mental strength of his players, who have forged a five-point lead in the Premier League but couldn't beat a team shorn of striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic after half an hour.

Bayern Munich wingers Arjen Robben and Franck Ribery have both been ruled out of Saturday's visit to Werder Bremen in the Bundesliga with minor knocks.

The club says Robben has a "clamped nerve" and Ribery has an ankle injury. Both players were substituted during Bayern's 7-0 Champions League rout of 10-man Shakhtar Donetsk on Wednesday.

The Japanese football association has formally approved the appointment of Vahid Halilhodzic to become national team coach.

The hiring of the 62-year-old Bosnian was agreed upon at a meeting of the JFA's executive board on Thursday.

FIA race director Charlie Whiting says Formula One's governing body has no deadline on completion of an investigation into the cause and effects of Fernando Alonso's accident in preseason testing which has forced him to miss this weekend's season-opening race.

Alonso's McLaren team says the Spaniard suffered concussion and will skip the Australian Grand Prix to prevent the risk of serious secondary concussion in Melbourne.

On the eve of perhaps the most telling two days in the Formula One season, several drivers bravely talked up their chances of challenging Mercedes, while fearing that Friday's practice session at the Australian Grand Prix and Saturday's qualifying were likely to show the silver cars remain in a class of their own.

Analysis of preseason lap times suggested Mercedes was around a second a lap faster than its nearest rivals — a giant margin by F1 standards — and driver Nico Rosberg did not bother trying to play down his team's advantage when asked Thursday about the preparations for the new season.

Bayern Munich cruised into the quarterfinals of the Champions League after a 7-0 win over Shakhtar Donetsk with the visitors losing a defender to the fastest red card in the competition's history.

Thomas Mueller notched two goals, while Jerome Boateng, Franck Ribery, Holger Badstuber, Robert Lewandowski and Mario Goetze added one apiece as the German champions matched its biggest home win.

Chris Paul had 33 points and nine assists, and J.J. Redick added 25 points as the Los Angeles Clippers beat Oklahoma City 120-108 on Wednesday, ending the Thunder's seven-game home winning streak.

DeAndre Jordan had 18 points and 17 rebounds for the Clippers, who are fighting for a top-four seed in the Western Conference playoffs. Oklahoma City is battling to merely make the field and fell a half-game behind the New Orleans Pelicans in the race for the final playoff spot.