Spanish Segunda B club Villanovense's Copa del Rey match against Barcelona on Wednesday "will mean for Villanovense the equivalent to a marketing campaign" worth more than €46M ($48.9M), according to a study by marketing firm Acceso. The study indicates that the club would have to invest €46M to gain the media attention it has received during its two-leg matchup against Barcelona. The club received more than 84,735 mentions between Oct. 16 and Nov. 30 (AS, 12/1). ... Serie A side AS Roma supporters "infuriated by their team's faltering form let the players know how they feel Tuesday... by presenting them with carrots." Around 50 supporters "turned up at the Trigoria training ground with boxes of the vitamin-packed vegetable." A banner "helped to explain the coded meaning" of the unusual gift: "Bon Appetit Rabbits." In Italian, the word for rabbit, coniglio, "is synonymous with coward" (SPORT24, 12/1). ... Japan's top tier football league, the J.League, "will not punish a teenage student who has apologized for sending racist messages to Gamba Osaka striker Patric because the incident happened outside a stadium." The Brazilian was sent the messages on Twitter "after scoring the third goal in Gamba's 3-1 extra time win over Urawa Red Diamonds in the J.League championship semifinal on Saturday" (JAPAN TODAY, 12/1). ... The Mauritanian FA has been "forced to deny" that the country's President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz "ordered a penalty shootout in the 63rd minute of the Super Cup final out of boredom." Abdel Aziz was in attendance to watch the final between FC Tevragh-Zeina and ACS Ksar which "was abruptly called to a halt with the score level at 1-1, to the astonishment of the rest of the crowd, before the referee signaled for a shootout" (London GUARDIAN, 12/1).
