SYDNEY, April 17 - Birmingham City's Trinidad and
Tobago striker Dwight Yorke has signed to play for Sydney in
the new Australian A-League, which kicks-off in August.
Sydney chief executive Andy Harper told Australian
television on Sunday that the 33-year-old former Manchester
United forward had agreed terms with his club, but would not
reveal how much the player would be paid.
"Suffice to say that he's come here for a lot less money
than he could have made in the Middle East, and I think that
speaks volumes for exactly what he wants to achieve out of this
move," Harper said.
"He could quite easily have gone (elsewhere) for a great
deal more money and retired even wealthier."
Yorke is the English Premier League's seventh all-time top
goal scorer with 122 goals but has not played for Birmingham
City since January and the club is happy to let him go.
The striker's signing comes two months after Sydney
announced they had hired former German World Cup winner Pierre
Littbarski as their coach in the eight-team A-League.
The old competition was scrapped after the government
called for the entire board of Soccer Australia to be sacked
and replaced.
The board had long been criticised for the way it ran the
sport but the push for change intensified after FIFA reversed
its decision to award Oceania an automatic place in the 2006
World Cup.
The new board, made up of some of Australia's richest and
most powerful businessmen, set about restructuring the sport
and developing a constitution and one of their main aims is to
ditch Oceania and join the Asian Football Confederation.