The World Cup's all-time leading scorer left Madrid for AC Milan on Tuesday, returning to Italy's Serie A for a reported $9.73 million transfer fee. The 30-year-old Brazil striker will join Milan until 2008 — the same length as the remainder of his contract at Madrid."My heart's breaking but life goes on," Ronaldo told reporters in Madrid. "I'm a great Madrid fan. I'm not so sure about the coach.""I know that Ronaldo is Milan's," Capello said. "I wish him good luck, that he does what he used to be able to do, that is be a great player."Ronaldo hasn't been picked to play by Capello since a Jan. 7 defeat at Deportivo La Coruna."I want to thank all the fans who supported me, all my teammates who were with me, all the coaches I've had — except one," Ronaldo said. "I wasn't wanted, and as I'm a professional and I love soccer, I had to find another solution."Ronaldo's departure marks the end of Madrid's project of signing the world's best players — who earned the nickname "Galacticos."Luis Figo left for Inter Milan in 2005, Zinedine Zidane has retired and David Beckham will be leaving for the Los Angeles Galaxy after the season. While the policy helped Madrid financially, it proved a flop on the field as the powerhouse team failed to win a major trophy since 2003 — its worst drought since the early 1950s.The three-time FIFA player of the year is returning to the city where he spent five years with AC Milan's rival, Inter Milan.Ronaldo had agreed to terms with Milan last week and passed a medical test on Friday. Milan striker Ricardo Oliveira reportedly will move to Madrid on loan as part of the deal.Ronaldo, who didn't visit Madrid's training ground Tuesday to bid farewell to his teammates, won't be able to play for Milan in this season's Champions League because he already has appeared for Madrid in the competition.Ronaldo didn't play his first match this season until October, following an operation on his left knee. Since then, he has scored one league goal in seven appearances, mostly as a substitute, and missed another month with a left knee injury.

Serena Williams relied on her greatest attribute to reach the Australian Open semifinals.

"I am the ultimate competitor," the former No. 1 player said.

Williams overcame an error-strewn first set and a back-and-forth deciding set Tuesday to beat 16th-seeded Shahar Peer 3-6, 6-2, 8-6.

"I feel awesome. I'm excited to be out here ... I'm just so happy to be back out here competing," she said after breaking the 19-year-old Peer to finish the match in 2 hours, 34 minutes.

Andy Roddick beat longtime friend and former housemate Mardy Fish 6-2, 6-2, 6-2, making only four unforced errors in the first of the men's quarterfinals.

He could next meet top-ranked Roger Federer, who was playing No. 7 Tommy Robredo in a later quarterfinal.

Roddick beat Federer in an exhibition match before the season's first major, but has lost 11 of their 12 head-to-heads on the ATP Tour.

He would like another chance.

"I would love to play Roger," Roddick said. "I've lost to him a bunch of times. He's a great player, but I feel like I am improving a lot right now."

Don't count Williams out. She said critics should not have knocked her when she was down.

Coming into the season's first major ranked No. 81 after injuries ruined 2006, Williams has won five consecutive matches for the first time since capturing the last of her seven Grand Slam singles titles here in 2005.

"I've got plenty left in the tank," she said. "Definitely ready to create some more carnage."

She made 49 unforced errors and had only 30 winners. But in the end, her experience counted most. Williams converted five of her six break-point chances and fended off 10 of Peer's 13.

Williams next plays 17-year-old Nicole Vaidisova, who beat fellow Czech Lucie Safarova 6-1, 6-4 to reach her second Grand Slam semifinal.

"It's great for Czech tennis to have two in the quarterfinals, one in the semis," the 10th-seeded Vaidisova said. "Of course you don't want to play your friend, but I'm just happy to get through."

The 10th-seeded Vaidisova was the highest-ranked player into the quarterfinals on the bottom half of the draw after Safarova upset defending champion Amelie Mauresmo and Peer ousted No. 3 Svetlana Kuznetsova.

Vaidisova is 0-1 in Grand Slam semifinals, losing to Kuznetsova at the last French Open.

Williams has reached the semis 11 times in majors, and gone on to the finals nine times.

After just two matches at a warmup tournament, Williams' condition was called into question. Yet it was the 25-year-old American who held it together as the match wore on against Peer.

Her win over fifth-seeded Nadia Petrova in the third round was her first over a top 10 player since her last Australian title and she was showing signs of her old form in a straight-sets fourth-round win over 11th-seeded Jelena Jankovic.

What this quarterfinal lacked in skill - the two players combined for 83 unforced errors to 50 winners - it made up for in drama.

Pockets of Israeli fans cheered Peer on every point, while Williams' cheering section was just as vocal.

Williams was sluggish early in sunny but mild conditions and fell behind 3-0 quickly in the first set as Peer went for everything.

But Williams took advantage when Peer lost focus in the second set, when she had only two winners. Serving at 2-2, 15-30, she double-faulted, then committed six consecutive unforced errors.

Williams, urging herself on with shouts of "Come on!" and slaps to her thigh, took the last four games of the set, smacking three of her 11 aces in one game when facing break points.

But the problems continued. Williams faced break points in five of her seven service games in the deciding set. She broke Peer to jump ahead 3-1, only to see the Israeli tie it up at 4-all.

Williams fended off five break points in her next two service games, and Peer flinched for the last time while serving at 6-7.

In the changeover, Williams quickly flicked through a notebook. Whatever she read must have helped. She came out and won it on her first match point when Peer curled a backhand wide.

Top-seeded Maria Sharapova downed No. 22 Vera Zvonareva 7-5, 6-4 Monday and will play another all-Russian match in the quarterfinals after 12th-seeded Ana Chakvetadze beat No. 8 Patty Schnyder 6-4, 6-1.

No. 4 Kim Clijsters and three-time champion Martina Hingis will meet in the quarters here for the second straight year. Clijsters ended Hingis' remarkable comeback in her first major after three years on the sidelines last year, when the former No. 1 player started with a ranking of No. 341.

Rafael Nadal finally got to see how he holds up against a guy who can also beat Federer in a match that started late Monday and finished well after midnight.

He outlasted the 19-year-old Andy Murray, twice rallying from a set down to win 6-7 (3), 6-4, 4-6, 6-3, 6-1 and reach the quarterfinals.

"It was a very, very, very important match for me, very tough," Nadal said. "Andy was playing at an unbelievable level. He's very smart on court, for sure."

Nadal, who has been ranked No. 2 to Federer every week since July 2005, had to fend off 10 break points in the last two sets.

Federer lost only five of 97 matches last year: Nadal was responsible for four of those - all in finals - and Murray pulled an upset at Cincinnati that ended the Swiss star's 55-match winning streak in North America.

Murray said his narrow loss to Nadal was the best he's ever played, even better than his upset over Federer.

Nadal next faces No. 10 Fernando Gonzalez, who beat fifth-seeded James Blake 7-5, 6-4, 7-6 (4).

Language is mankind's most common method of communication, but it also can be a verbal wall that separates us when we do not understand the words uttered by others.

	Ouma

Kassim "The Dream" Ouma speaks English, but, just as Panamanian great Roberto Duran -- who knew enough words to make himself understood in that unfamiliar tongue if he so chose but insulated himself behind his native tongue -- the Ugandan's thick, African-accented speech enables him to slip behind a screen of inaccessibility when he'd prefer to keep his thoughts to himself.

So, what's the Samia equivalent of No hablo ingles?

"Kassim speaks very good English if he takes his time," Ouma's manager-translator, Tom Moran, said of the former IBF junior middleweight titlist who will challenge middleweight champion Jermain Taylor on Saturday night in Taylor's hometown of Little Rock, Ark. "I always tell him at press conferences to take a deep breath and go slowly."

"The problem with Kassim, more than anything, is that he has a tendency to speak very fast. He's wound up so much, it's just a release of energy. He wants to go on to the next thought as quickly as possible. And when he gets into uncomfortable areas, he has a tendency to go even faster."

It might be inferred that the largest chunk of the 27-year-old Ouma's past has been an uncomfortable area. Recriminations are everywhere, rife with visions of blood and death that swirl around him and invade his sleep nightly. "The Dream?" Ouma's life is in many ways an ongoing nightmare that has him in its clutches and shows no signs of loosening its terrible grip.

	Taylor

When you have experienced the horror that Ouma (25-2-1, 15 KOs) has as a child soldier in Uganda's civil war, the prospect of sharing a ring with even such a big, strong and talented fighter as Taylor (25-0-1, 17 KOs) doesn't seem quite so daunting. Maybe that's why Ouma, who now lives in West Palm Beach, Fla., has temporarily turned over the unwelcome chore of public relations to Moran, who doesn't like apologizing for his fighter's sudden reticence. But, hey, in any language a man has to do that which is in accordance with his own conscience.

"Talking is not going to win this fight," Moran said. "Focusing on this fight and doing everything he can to win it means more to Kassim than words. Kassim has one shot at it. This is the fight of his life, or least the boxing match of his life. He realizes that.

"His attitude is, 'I'm going to do what I have to do to beat Jermain Taylor.' He said, 'Uncle Tom' -- he calls me that -- 'you deal with everything else.'"

"All right, I'm dealing with it. We don't need to talk about Jermain. Let Jermain think whatever he wants. Let the public think whatever it wants. The only thing that matters is what Kassim does against Jermain on fight night."

There will be a film crew in Alltel Arena continuing its work on a feature-length documentary about Ouma's remarkable, tragic life. If the project, which expects to finish shooting in February, is to have an upbeat ending, Ouma will have to upset Taylor and, through his lobbying efforts in Washington, D.C., gain diplomatic relief from the virtual death sentence that awaits him should he return to Uganda.

But even if all the chips fall exactly right, it will take more than having his hand raised in victory against Taylor, and official permission to visit his homeland, to grant Ouma meaningful relief from his burden.

"No matter how happy he seems at any given moment, the sadness he feels never goes away," Moran said. "We were at the gym a couple of weeks ago and someone asked if he was going to watch the documentary on child soldiers in Uganda that was going to be on the Discovery Channel. Kassim's demeanor changed, just like that. 'I lived it,' he said. 'I don't have to watch it.'

"The thing is Kassim has to learn to realize that he was a victim then and he's a victim now. He has to learn to let go of the guilt for the decisions he had to make in order to survive. I really believe he has massive issues of post-traumatic stress that he's dealt with as best he could. But the memories are never far from the surface, and almost anything can dredge those memories up."

In Ouma's case, those memories are like scars upon his psyche. He was just 6 years old when rebels stormed into his grade school in Busia, Uganda, in 1984 and abducted all the boys. Ouma and his frightened classmates were herded into the back of a garbage truck and driven into the bush, where they were forced to fight with the guerrillas.

Handed an AK-47 that was larger than he was, Ouma suddenly found himself a kadogo in Yoweri Museveni's rebel army.

The first day, Moran relates, the adult soldiers told the children that "there's no more mommies and daddies now" and that "if you cry something's going to happen to you."

Some of the kids cried and, true to their word, they did not live long enough to fathom the high cost of their tears. Ouma was even ordered to shoot one of his friends, or run the risk of suffering the same grisly fate. Simultaneously terrified and repulsed, he complied.

"Can you imagine?" Moran said, aghast that such atrocities can exist and be forced upon the youngest and most vulnerable members of even a violent society. "This is what Kassim has locked up inside him.

"When he finally is ready to agree to it, I hope to get him some professional help so that he can learn to forgive himself. He made a conscious decision as a child to do things, terrible things, which no one should ever have to do. He feels responsibility and guilt for, well, still being alive. That's what torments him and he can't let go of."

As in boxing, there usually are winners and losers in life. Museveni's guerrillas seized power in 1986, but then there were new rebels to challenge their stranglehold in the country. Ouma's forced conscription continued. In what can only be described as an ironic twist, Ouma got to lay down his submachine gun when he put on a pair of boxing gloves and joined Uganda's national team.

"If I didn't fight [with guns and bombs], I would have been killed," Ouma once said. "That is why boxing comes naturally to me."

But as he grew older and learned bits and pieces about the world that lay beyond Uganda's borders, Ouma began to dream of turning professional in a golden land of freedom known as the United States.

The impossible dream began to come into focus in 1998 when the Ugandan army boxing team competed in the World Military Boxing Championships in San Antonio, Texas. Ouma walked away one night and kept going, eventually making his way to Virginia. He left behind his wife, his two children and the father he said was later beaten to death in retaliation by members of the very army Ouma had been served in.

Not that his new life in America was noticeably easier than the one he had left behind in Uganda. For a time, Ouma was homeless; he eventually got a minimum-wage job delivering fliers for a pizza shop.

Ouma asked around until he got directions to a local boxing gym and the door to his true calling. Not long afterward, he was on his way to West Palm Beach to become a sparring partner for leading junior middleweight contender Zab Judah.

Only three months after he arrived in this country, Ouma had his first pro bout, a first-round knockout of Napoleon Middlebrooks on July 10, 1998, in Fort Lauderdale. Two months after that, he married an American woman -- the union lasted less than a year -- and he was granted political asylum.

Even those close to Ouma wondered if he had become too satisfied, too comfortable, to retain the drive that had stamped him as something special. Philadelphia's J Russell Peltz, who with Golden Boy Promotions co-promotes the ever-smiling Ugandan, suggested that Ouma had made the fateful mistake of presuming victory and had trained accordingly.

"I think Kassim thought he was Superman," Peltz said at the time. "I think he had questionable out-of-the-ring activities in the weeks leading up to the Karmazin fight.

"He had 25 people in his hotel room every night. He was staying out late. I tried telling myself that it'd be all right, that Kid Gavilan used to party before every fight. But 30 seconds into the first round, I could tell that Kassim wasn't himself."

Moran, however, said Ouma entered the ring that night a much troubled young man. Having his friends around was his way of attempting to counteract the pain.

"Kassim doesn't want to make excuses, so I won't make excuses for him," Moran said. "Karmazin beat him on that particular night, all right? But Roman Karmazin did not beat the best Kassim Ouma. Not even close. Put it this way: Kassim's body was in Las Vegas, but his mind was in Africa."

Ouma has pieced together a four-fight winning streak since the Karmazin debacle, the last victory a 10-round, unanimous decision over the previously undefeated Sechew Powell on Aug. 5 in Madison Square Garden, to gain his shot at Taylor. But once again his thoughts are dark and foreboding. Death has followed him from Uganda to America, and its repercussions are no less fearful here than they were there.

"Encountering death in this country ... I guess that's something he wasn't quite prepared for," Moran said. "For this fight, he's wearing green trunks with a butterfly patch in honor of my sister, who he called his Mommy Patti [Simkanin].

"My family's become extremely close to Kassim, but my sister was particularly attached to him. She looked out for him almost as a mother would.
"I had to tell him the day after the Sechew Powell fight that Patti's cancer had come back. She thought she had beaten it, but then they told her that there was nothing that could be done, that it was only a matter of days before she passed. When I told him she wasn't going to live, we both cried our eyes out. But when he went to see her, I think she gave him inspiration and strength by the way she was facing what she had to face."
At 5-foot-8, Ouma looks almost puny standing next to the 6-1 Taylor. Bernard Hopkins, the longtime former middleweight champion who twice lost close decisions to Taylor, has said Ouma has to be "better than perfect" to leave Little Rock with the title in his possession.
But Ouma is nothing if not determined. He has grown up too fast and too hard while losing pieces of his soul to the madness that human beings can create for themselves and for others. Not even another world championship is likely to make Ouma whole, or to rid him of the nightmares of a stolen childhood.
Until something better comes along, though, it's at least another step in the healing process.
"Hopefully, the last scene in the documentary will be of Kassim as a world champion going back to Africa, and maybe even Uganda," Moran said. "We have been lobbying Congress to have his situation resolved through diplomatic channels.
"Three days after Kassim won the junior middleweight title from Verno Phillips, an army spokesman in Uganda said if he ever came back, he'd be arrested for desertion. Kassim knows that the punishment for desertion is execution. He knew exactly what that guy was saying."

They relied on a stout defense, a jury-rigged offense and a pinch of serendipity to reach the Bowl Championship Series title game Monday night.

But in a 41-14 mauling of top-ranked Ohio State, the No. 2 Gators left little to chance.

Led by the brilliance of the senior quarterback Chris Leak, the boundless creativity of the offensive coordinator Dan Mullen and the dominance of defensive end Derrick Harvey, Florida stunned college football by blowing the undefeated Buckeyes off the field.

The victory completed one of the most unlikely runs to the national title in recent college football history. Coach Urban Meyer’s Gators grinded through the regular season with a collection of close victories, and they would not have made it here if Southern California had not been upset by U.C.L.A. on the regular season’s final day.

But once they got here, the Gators (13-1) appeared undaunted. The victory secured their second national title in football, and it made Florida the first university to hold football and men’s basketball national titles at the same time.

The Buckeyes (12-1) had the country’s top defense, the Heisman Trophy winner in quarterback Troy Smith, and the nation’s No. 1 ranking from the start of the season.

But this game proved to be a microcosm of their season, starting with a bang and ending with a thud. Ted Ginn Jr. returned the game’s opening kickoff 93 yards for a touchdown. From that point, though, almost nothing went right for the Buckeyes.

Ohio State, which had not played since Nov. 18, set up Florida’s first two touchdown drives with personal foul penalties, set up the next two with turnovers and never got Smith in rhythm.

Smith finished the game 4 of 14 for 35 yards, with an interception, and he had minus-29 yards rushing on 10 attempts. Ohio State had trailed after halftime just once during the regular season, and the Buckeyes never looked comfortable trying to scrape back from the 20-point halftime deficit.

“They moved the ball down the field all season on tape,” Florida cornerback Ryan Smith said, “but when they saw our front four, they couldn’t do anything about it.”

Troy Smith said: “Not everything in life is going to go the exact way you want it. I don’t have any regrets, though. I really don’t. We came out and fought. We came up short.”

With all that dominance, there were a few dollops of good fortune for Florida. The oft-ridiculed place-kicker Chris Hetland, who had made only 4 of 13 field-goal attempts all season, knocked in first-half kicks from 42 and 40 yards. Also aiding Florida was a first-quarter ankle injury to Ginn, who said he was injured celebrating his touchdown. Ginn did not play the final three quarters and was on crutches in the second half.

But history will best remember the lopsided tenor of the game, which Leak set by leading near-flawless touchdown drives of 46, 34 and 71 yards on Florida’s first three possessions. Leak’s accuracy — he completed his first nine passes and 25 of 36 for 212 yards and a touchdown — combined with the ingenuity of Meyer’s spread offense, led to the offensive onslaught.

Leak entered Florida as one of the nation’s top high school recruits and was the starter midway through his freshman season. He had an up-and-down career, though, and he was forced to endure boos from the fans in Gainesville this season.

On Monday, he lived up to his advance billing.

“He was unbelievable,” said Mullen, the offensive coordinator. “This is what he came here for. He came here to win championships, and that’s what he did tonight.”

Ryan Smith said: “A lot of people don’t realize he’s in the best league, playing against the best defense. He played great tonight.”

Three different players lined up at quarterback in Florida’s first eight offensive snaps. The Gators used reverses, pitches to wide receivers and draw plays to keep Ohio State off balance.

Florida’s four first-half touchdowns showcased its offensive diversity, as the Gators picked apart a defense that led the nation in scoring defense, allowing 10.4 points a game.