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SAO PAULO, Brazil -- UEFA has relaxed Champions League sanctions imposed on Manchester City and Paris Saint-Germain for overspending after accepting a request from players union FIFPro. Evan Engram Jersey . UEFA said Wednesday that the champions of England and France only have to include five home-trained players in their 21-man squads next season instead of the expected eight. Only one of the five players needs to be trained by the club itself. The other four can have been trained at another club within Man Citys or PSGs home country. The UEFA ruling allows clubs to rely more on expensively signed players instead of promoting its own young players. Gianni Infantino, UEFAs general secretary, said it accepted FIFPros request made last month in Lisbon, Portugal. City and PSG were fined 60 million euros ($82 million) spread over three years. They are required to limit their Champions League squads to 21 instead of 25 senior players after violating UEFAs financial fair play rules. "We looked at it and it was felt appropriate there for the number (of home-grown players) to be proportionally reduced as well," Infantino said. UEFA said no appeals were filed in the cases of nine clubs which violated financial fair play rules in the first round of sanctions announced last month. New York Giants Jerseys .C. -- The Steve Smith era in Carolina is over. Custom New York Giants Jerseys . On the day after Billy Horschel posted his 12th straight round in the 60s, won his second straight tournament against a world-class field and picked up an additional $10 million bonus as the FedEx Cup champion, Watson was kicking back in his seat at a Kansas City Royals game. http://www.authenticnygiantspro.com/Carl-banks-giants-jersey/ . You can see all the action on TSN2 beginning at 7:30pm et/4:30pm pt. Chicago won two of three games during its stay at the United Center. The club began the homestand with a 5-1 win over Pittsburgh on March 1 and fell to Colorado on Tuesday before posting another blowout win in Thursdays tilt against Columbus.There is nothing less appealing about the NBA than its predictability. At the start of any season, anyone with the slightest basketball IQ can identify roughly half-a-dozen teams that have a true chance of winning a championship. That team that no one saw coming raising the Larry OBrien Trophy at the end of the season? Well, it never happens. And while there are always surprises from year-to-year, teams that rocket up the standings over the course of a season or two without a major overhaul are rare. Its a sport where it can be a very long and hard road going from being really bad to being very good, especially if youre a team that isnt lucky enough to land a superstar, one of those players who can turn a teams fortunes almost with his presence alone. All of which makes the Toronto Raptors turnaround over the course of a little more than 12 months that much more amazing. Two seasons ago this week, the Raptors were 4-15 after 19 games. A year ago, they were 7-12. Right now, they are 15-4, best record in the Eastern Conference. Things like that just dont happen in the NBA, where success follows the obvious movement of talent around the league. The NBA is the easiest league to determine who will be good and who will be bad at the start of a season. And at the start of last season, there was no shortage of those predicting the Toronto Raptors would be very bad, and for quitte a while. Michael Strahan Jersey. . It would be years by the time they next made the playoffs, and by then, there would be hardly anyone from this roster still on it. Maybe Jonas Valanciunas. The Raptors would have to tank a season or two or three and hope to land one of those generational talents around whom they could build for better times. None of that happened. And yet here are the Raptors, having defied almost every rule of the universe when it comes to how the NBA works, suddenly being recognized as one of the better teams in the NBA, the best Toronto team ever, and an apparent legitimate contender to represent the East in an NBA Final next spring. Think about all the counterintuitive qualities of this team: - It went from bad to good without anyone seeing it coming - It did so over the course of essentially one season - It has no superstar player Some may be ready to suggest Kyle Lowry has become an NBA superstar, although even that notion itself is counterintuitive since NBA players rarely blossom into superstars in their late 20s. The whole thing is part genius, part accident, part chemistry and part smarts. It took luck and timing and a special group of players who dont see themselves as too good to be playing in Toronto. But somehow its worked and we continue to be treated to the kind of phenomenon that is ever so rarely witnessed in the NBA. ' ' '