Beaten Euro 2012 finalists Italy were held to a disappointing 2-2 draw by Bulgaria, but Didier Deschamps got his career as France coach off to a winning start as European qualification for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil got under way on Friday.

Argentine-born striker Pablo Osvaldo scored a brace in only his third game for Italy, but the Azzurri were pinned back by goals from Stanislav Manolev and Georgi Milanov in their Group B match.

Mercedes team chief Ross Brawn on Friday said he had not ruled out the possibility of former seven-times world champion Michael Schumacher taking a management job with the team next year.

Brawn, besieged by questions about Schumacher's future amid speculation that the German may be poised to retire for a second time, said he had an open mind.

Her life in an overcrowded Palestinian refugee camp is beset by street fights, power cuts and grinding poverty, but for a few days this week 11-year-old Rayan is enjoying star treatment -- on the football pitch with a Manchester City academy coach.

"When I play football, I forget all about my problems," Rayan says with a smile before hitting the dusty pitch on the outskirts of Beirut where Alan Dixon of the Manchester City Football Academy is running training sessions.

Defending champion Novak Djokovic stormed into a sixth successive U.S. Open semifinal on Thursday with a breathtaking 6-2, 7-6 (7/3), 6-4 demolition of 2009 winner Juan Martin Del Potro.

The second-seeded Serb is bidding to win a sixth Grand Slam title and is now the comfortable tournament favorite following the elimination of world number one Roger Federer.

Spain's David Ferrer rallied in the fifth set to outlast Serbian Janko Tipsarevic and advance to the U.S. Open semifinals on Thursday after a marathon battle that lasted four hours and 31 minutes.

Fourth seed Ferrer matched his best Grand Slam showing by reaching the final four on the Flushing Meadows hardcourts with a 6-3, 6-7 (5/7), 2-6, 6-3, 7-6 (7/4) victory over the eighth seed.

She was the first person he called after he got the call. And Cheryl Miller will be on stage to present her brother, Reggie, when he is inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.

It's an honor that can only go to a previous inductee.

Sydney FC has received an instant boost from its signing of Italian football great Alessandro Del Piero, with huge numbers of fans logging on to its ticketing websites and fan forums on Thursday.

The interest was so high that the A-League club extended its deadline for club membership renewals by 48 hours, hoping to cash in on the arrival of the former Italy and Juventus forward and recoup some of the reported $4 million it will pay the 37-year-old over two seasons.

On an emotion-filled afternoon that morphed into a shocker of an evening, Andy Roddick and Roger Federer both bid farewell to Flushing Meadows.

Roddick is leaving for good, a moment he knew would come this week.

Alberto Contador held on to his advantage after making an audacious break to win the 17th stage of the Spanish Vuelta on Wednesday and take the overall lead from Joaquin Rodriguez.

The two-time Tour de France champion drew on his experience by making a gutsy dash more than 50 kilometers (31 miles) from the finish and nothing but mountain to climb to the finish atop the Fuente De.

About 300 angry fans stormed the headquarters of Egypt's Football Association in Cairo on Wednesday, protesting a decision to resume league games next month before bringing to justice perpetrators of a deadly stadium riot.

The February 1 riot, in which 74 people were killed, erupted in the city of Port Said on the Mediterranean, where Al-Ahly, Egypt's most popular team, played the home team Al-Masry in a league game. Al-Masry won, 3-1.