LONDON, 20 May 2004 — West Ham United will face Crystal Palace in an all-London first division playoff final at the Millennium Stadium this month after a 2-0 win over Ipswich Town on Tuesday night put them through 2-1 on aggregate.
West Ham have the chance to bounce straight back into the Premier League after second-half goals from midfielder Matthew Etherington and defender Christian Dailly gave them a deserved victory in a tough battle with their Suffolk visitors.
Ipswich, who were relegated from the premier league in 2002, had finished the season in fourth spot, a point and a place behind West Ham. But the East London team always had the upper hand in front of their own raucous supporters.
West Ham took control after a goalless first half in which Steve Lomas clipped the Ipswich bar with a fierce first-time effort and Town’s goalkeeper Kelvin Davis made impressive saves from a Bobby Zamora header and a long-range Dailly drive.
Olympic Threat for Football Lifted
In Paris, fears that football might be thrown out of the Athens Olympics receded yesterday when sources said FIFA chief Joseph Blatter and World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) President Dick Pound had struck a deal in their row over doping.
“We’ve broken the deadlock. A joint statement is being prepared which allows FIFA to sign the WADA code,” the source told AFP.
Blatter had raised the possibility of soccer being withdrawn from the Athens Games over his objection to automatic two-year bans in the case of a positive test.
He wants cases treated individually.
Pound had been demanding that FIFA accept the code “as it is or not at all”.
Talks between FIFA and WADA have been going on for the past 15 months and an “agreement on basics” has been reached with the position of both sides moving closer over the past few weeks, the FIFA source said.
International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge has said that any federation that does not sign the WADA code could not compete in the Olympics, which start on August 13.
Just two of the 28 Olympic sports, FIFA and the International Cycling Union (UCI), have not yet signed the code.
Pleat to Stand Down at Spurs
In London, David Pleat will step down as director of football and a board member of Tottenham Hotspur at the end of July, the Premier League club said yesterday.
Spurs also confirmed the appointment of Frank Arnesen, technical chief at PSV Eindhoven, as sports director from July 1 in a shake-up designed to give the club a continental style of management.
