Sporting briefs

King's Cup: Spain's King's Cup final between Sevilla and Atletico Madrid will be staged at Barcelona's Nou Camp stadium on May 13 or 19. If Atletico win their Europa League semi-final against Liverpool, the domestic Cup decider will be on May 19.

Spain: Spain have agreed to play friendlies against Saudi Arabia, South Korea and Poland ahead of the World Cup. The European champions take on the Saudis (May 29) and South Koreans (June 3) in Innsbruck before meeting Poland in Murcia on June 8.

Japan: Japan coach Takeshi Okada has ordered his players to use oxgyen tanks ahead of the World Cup to build up their high-altitude resistance. Local media reported that Okada, whose team play two of their Group E games at more than 1,000 metres above sea level in South Africa in June, would ask his players to use the aparatus daily.

River Plate: Crisis club River Plate sacked coach Leonardo Astrada on Monday in a bid to stop the rot that could lead them into a battle to avoid relegation next season. Astrada's team have scored no goals in their last five matches.

Boateng: Germany defender Jerome Boateng is set to join Manchester City from Bundesliga club Hamburg for €12.5 million. The 21-year-old is under contract at Hamburg until June 30, 2012, but the Hamburger Abendblattes reported the transfer is set to go through.

Rasmussen: Celtic's Danish striker Morten Rasmussen received a one-match ban for elbowing Kilmarnock defender Frazer Wright in his side's Scottish Cup quarter-final win at Rugby Park last month. Rasmussen will miss Celtic's Premier League visit to Dundee United on April 25.

Torres: Liverpool will have to wait until later in the week to discover the full extent of Fernando Torres's knee injury after the Spain striker was examined by a specialist. Torres missed Sunday's 0-0 draw against Fulham.

Basketball: Men's League - Luxol vs Siġġiewi 69-43. Women's League - Depiro vs Luxol 31-52.

Basket, NBA: Kobe Bryant will sit out Los Angeles Lakers' final two regular season games due to an injured finger. Bryant has played most of the year with the finger fracture but is still averaging 27 points per game, helping the Lakers into the play-offs as the West's top seed. He played against Portland Trail Blazers on Sunday after missing the previous two games with a knee ailment.

Athletics: Jamaican sprint king Usain Bolt and Chinese star hurdler Liu Xiang will headline the Shanghai meet of the IAAF Diamond League circuit on May 23. The outing will be the first on the newly-launched 14-meet Diamond League for Bolt, the world and Olympic 100m and 200m champion, and world record holder in each event (9.58 and 19.19 respectively). The Diamond League gets under way on May 14 in Doha and culminates in Brussels on August 27.

Swimming: Reigning Olympic 100m freestyle champion Alain Bernard, of France, announced his intention to prolong his career until the London Games in 2012. "I've decided. I've spoken a lot with Denis (Auguin, his coach). We've reached an agreement on a strategy that will take us up to London," said Bernard, who will be 29 by the time of the 2012 competition.

Rugby: A New Zealand Maori rugby team was instructed by a government minister to throw a game against South Africa in 1956 to prevent All Blacks sides from being banned from touring the country. Muru Walters, a fullback in the 1956 team, said the then Minister of Maori Affairs Ernest Corbett had told the players to lose the match "for the future of rugby". The directive from Corbett, who died in 1968, had "ripped the guts out of the spirits of our team", Muru said, and the Springboks went on to win 37-0 in Auckland.