MANCHESTER, United Kingdom – Manchester United have signed Henrikh Mkhitaryan from Borussia Dortmund, the Premier League giants announced on Wednesday.

Mkhitaryan, 27, has penned a four-year deal with United with the option to extend the contract for a further year, the club announced in a statement.

“I am very proud to join Manchester United, this move is a dream come true for me,” Mkhitaryan told United’s website after joining for a fee worth a reported £26 million ($34 million, 30 million euros).

“I am excited to play for a club with such an illustrious history and hope to be part of it for a long time,” the Armenia playmaker added.

“I am thankful for the trust the club and Jose Mourinho have put in me.

“Finally, I believe playing for such a great club honours my father’s memory, and the inspiration and drive he gave to me when I was young.” Mkhitaryan, whose father Hamlet was also a footballer, scored 41 goals in 140 appearances for Dortmund after joining them from Shakhtar Donetsk in 2013.

He is Armenia’s most successful player and has scored a record 19 goals in 59 appearances for his country.

Mkhitaryan is United’s third pre-season signing and follows both Ivory Coast defender Eric Bailly and star striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic to Old Trafford.

“Henrikh is a very talented footballer who has been in such prolific form for both his club and his country,” said United manager Mourinho.

“He is a real team player with great skill, vision and also has a good eye for goal. I am delighted he has chosen to sign for United,” the Portuguese added.

“I believe he will make an impact on the team very quickly as his style of play is suited to the Premier League. We are all looking forward to working with him.” United finished fifth in the Premier League last season, 15 points behind shock champions Leicester City, and failed to qualify for the Champions League.

That prompted the club to sack Dutch manager Louis van Gaal and replace him with former Chelsea boss Mourinho.

BARCELONA – Barcelona star Lionel Messi will appeal and vowed to clear his name after a court in Spain on Wednesday sentenced him and his father to 21 months in jail for tax fraud, the player’s lawyers said.

The prison sentences are likely to be suspended as is common in Spain for first offences for non-violent crimes carrying a sentence of less than two years.

The Argentine’s lawyers feel an appeal would eventually succeed in persuading the court that Messi and his father have behaved correctly, the player’s representatives told AFP in a statement.

“The most recent laws from the supreme court on the matter that concerns us would seem to prove the argument of the defence,” Messi’s lawyers Enrique Bacigalupo and Javier Sanchez-Vera asserted.

Earlier Wednesday, the Barcelona court had found the Argentina international and his father Jorge Horacio Messi guilty of using companies in Belize, Britain, Switzerland and Uruguay to avoid paying taxes on 4.16 million euros of Messi’s income earned from his image rights from 2007-09.

The income related to Messi’s image rights that was allegedly hidden includes endorsement deals with Danone, Adidas, Pepsi-Cola, Procter & Gamble and the Kuwait Food Company.

The court found Messi and his father, who has managed his son’s affairs since he was a child, guilty of tax fraud and ruled that for each of those three years they should serve a sentence of seven months.

Messi, 29, a five-time world player of the year winner, was also fined 2.09 million euros while his father was fined 1.6 million euros.

They can appeal the decision to Spain’s Supreme Court and that is what the pair’s lawyers indicated on Wednesday they would, saying they felt confident an appeal would succeed.

Messi told the court during the four-day trial that wrapped up on June 4 that he trusted his father with his finances and “knew nothing” about how his wealth was managed.

Prosecutors had asked for Messi to be absolved, arguing there was no evidence that the player was aware of how his income was managed.

The state attorney representing tax authorities in the trial, Mario Maza, said he found it unlikely that Messi knew nothing about the situation.

“There is no deliberate ignorance here, it’s fraud and that’s all there is to it, because he didn’t want to pay his taxes,” he said.

“It’s like a crime boss. At the very top is the bigwig who doesn’t want to know about the details.” The court agreed, arguing in its ruling that Messi “had decided to remain in ignorance”.

“Despite all the opportunities available to the player to show interest in how his rights were managed, he did not,” the court added.

The court said if the player was not punished, “ordinary” citizens could conclude that it was better to “not show interest” in their tax obligations.

Messi’s tax fraud trial has taken place against a backdrop of simmering voter anger over steep cuts to health and social spending, as the government struggles to bring Spain’s public deficit down.

The player and his father made a voluntary payment of 5.0 million euros – equal to the amount of the alleged unpaid taxes plus interest – in August 2013 after being formally investigated.

After the court delivered its verdict, Barcelona issued a statement “giving all its support to Leo Messi and his father”.

“The club, in agreement with the government prosecution service, considers that the player, who has corrected his position with the Spanish tax office, is in no way criminally responsible with regards to the facts underlined in this case,” it added.

Messi is Barcelona’s all-time leading goalscorer.

His verdict comes just six months after a Spanish court handed Barcelona’s Argentine midfielder Javier Mascherano a one-year suspended sentence for tax fraud.

He was found guilty of avoiding paying taxes on 1.5 million euros of income related to his image rights.

Barcelona in June agreed to pay a 5.5-million-euro fine in a deal with prosecutors that sees the club avoid trial on tax evasion charges over its signing of Brazilian striker Neymar from Santos in 2013.

Last week Spanish authorities disclosed that Brazilian international defender Dani Alves owes 1.3 million euros in overdue taxes and late payment fines.

Alves left Barcelona in June after eight seasons to join Italian side Juventus.

LYON, France – Love him loathe him, there is no denying Cristiano Ronaldo delivers when it matters most.

Just over five weeks after he struck the decisive penalty shoot-out kick to win the Champions League final for Real Madrid against city rivals Atletico, Ronaldo scored one goal and created another to send Portugal into the Euro 2016 final with a 2-0 victory over Wales.

The game had been billed as the “Battle of the Galacticos” with Ronaldo up against his Welsh Real Madrid team mate Gareth Bale.

The close focus on the pair was not only because Real had spent more to bring Bale from Tottenham Hotspur in 2013 than they had to sign Ronaldo from Manchester United four years earlier and not just due to the constant speculation that the two are not exactly close friends.

Both Ronaldo and Bale are more than just key players for their national sides – they are the fulcrum of everything they try to do in their attacking play, the source for goal-scoring and goal-creation. Without them, and neither team would have probably reached the last four of this competition.

The unified, and entirely predictable, message from both camps before the game was that the encounter in the Stade de Lyon would be about “eleven v eleven” and not “Ronaldo v Bale”.

But that did not stop the world’s focus being on the two players and which one would shine the most.

The answer, after 90 minutes, was pretty clear.

Ronaldo scored his country’s opening goal in the 50th minute with a superb header and three minutes later it was his low shot which was turned in by Nani to make it 2-0 and leave Wales with too much to do.

Bale had done more work, had more shots on target and been more of a threat in the opening half – he fired over the bar after a smartly-worked corner and got to the byline where his dangerous, low cross was not far away from Andy King, sliding in at the near post.

SPRINTED DEEP The best moment from Bale came when, wide inside his own half, he lured Danilo into an ill-advised challenge, floated past him and then sprinted deep into Portuguese territory before unleashing a low drive that was, however, too close to keeper Rui Patricio.

But it was Ronaldo who delivered the killer blows.

After the two goals, Bale began to drift deeper, searching for the ball from his defenders as he tried to be the playmaker as well as the attacking threat.

Without the sorely missed suspended midfielder Aaron Ramsey’s creative touch and incisive running, which King could not replicate, Bale really had too much to produce.

While he never stopped trying to deliver it, he was reduced to speculative long-range efforts in the latter stages which barely troubled Patricio.

Ronaldo, in contrast, played in front of a well-organised Portuguese midfield and was free to roam the front-line with his partner Nani another threat to keep the Welsh defence alert.

And that was, ultimately, what allowed Ronaldo to do what he does best – be a danger in and around the penalty area.

Now the inevitable Ronaldo narrative will turn to the man who he is so often compared with – Lionel Messi.

The Barcelona striker, like Ronaldo, has famously failed to win a trophy with his country, his latest failure coming last month in the Copa America.

Expect it to be denied, but make no mistake, Ronaldo would love nothing more than to get one up on Messi.