A psychiatrist can't transform players into Johan Cruyff or Diego Maradona, but the England staff are confident Dr. Steve Peters will help the team be ready for the World Cup.

England manager Roy Hodgson confirmed on Tuesday he will use the sports psychiatrist in the lead-up to the tournament in Brazil.

A group representing Europe's football clubs presented a study Tuesday that defends football's current transfer system, which the international footballers' union wants to overhaul.

"We wanted to have a picture of the situation to explain it from inside the industry. We found out the actual transfer system is working," AC Milan director Umberto Gandini said.

Barcelona defender Carles Puyol has decided to leave the club at the end of the season, preferring to take some time off after several injury-filled seasons and putting his football future in doubt.

The 35-year-old Puyol has spent his entire career with Barcelona, debuting in 1999. But he has made only 12 appearances this season after returning from a long-term knee injury in October.

Per Mertesacker and Tomas Rosicky have signed new contracts with Arsenal.

The Premier League club did not reveal the length of the deals but manager Arsene Wenger said both internationals "have committed their futures to the club."

Toshiba Corporation (TOKYO:6502) today announced new additions to its lineup of enterprise performance hard disk drives (HDD), the AL13SXB series and the self-encrypting AL13SXQ series, which are suitable for mission-critical enterprise applications. Sample shipping will start from the middle of March.

The AL13SX series offers capacities up to 600GB [1], the largest-class storage capacity [2] in a 15,000 RPM 2.5-inch design, double the maximum capacity of previous generation drives [3]. The drives provide lower latency and power savings compared with legacy 3.5-inch 15,000 RPM 600GB models.

Germany begins its World Cup preparations in earnest with Wednesday's friendly against Chile in Stuttgart.

Coach Joachim Loew has been at pains to focus his players' attention on the World Cup with 99 days to go. Preparations to date have been far from ideal, with key players injured, returning from injury or simply not in form. Chile is also gearing up for the tournament in Brazil. Here are five things to know ahead of the teams' seventh meeting:

Newcastle manager Alan Pardew is facing a long stadium ban after being charged Monday by the English Football Association with improper conduct for headbutting an opposing player during a Premier League match.

Pardew has already been sanctioned by Newcastle, accepting a formal warning and a 100,000 pound ($168,000) fine following his confrontation with Hull midfielder David Meyler on Saturday.

Miami's LeBron James scored a career-high and franchise-record 61 points to lead the hosts to a 124-107 win over Charlotte on Friday, moving the Heat back within two games of NBA Eastern Conference leader Indiana.

James made 22 of 33 shots from the field, including his first eight 3-point attempts. His career best had been 56 points in 2004-05 for Cleveland against Toronto.

A Cairo court banned Tuesday the Palestinian Hamas movement from operating in Egypt, tightening the noose around the militant rulers of the blockaded Gaza Strip amid a crackdown on Islamists.

The emergency court's decision to also seize Hamas's assets, ahead of a final ruling, was in response to a private citizen's petition to designate it as a terrorist group.

A Philadelphia television news reporter covering the aftermath of a snowstorm in New Jersey has gotten pelted by snow from a passing plow.

WTXF-TV's Steve Keeley was blasted with a wall of snow from the plow Monday morning while reporting live from the side of a road in Woodstown.