saco-indonesia.com, Prestasi apik Brendan Rodgers di Liverpool rupanya telah mulai mendapatkan pengakuan dari pihak klub. Manajer yang pernah menangani Swansea itu disebut oleh The Mirror akan segera mendapatkan kesepakatan kontrak baru dari pemilik klub, John Henry.

Rodgers saat ini telah berhasil membawa Liverpool naik ke puncak klasemen sementara dan telah memiliki peluang besar untuk bisa menjadi juara Premier League musim 2013/14 atau mengamankan tempat di Liga Champions.

Kontrak Rodgers juga masih tersisa 18 bulan, namun Liverpool telah dilaporkan tak akan menunggu lama menyusul untuk memperpanjang kontrak manajer utama mereka, yang kabarnya juga sempat diincar oleh Tottenham Hotspurs.

Andai memang negosiasi berjalan dengan mulus dan Rodgers telah menerima segala persyaratan yang ada, maka ia juga akan mendapat peningkatan gaji mencapai 2 juta poundsterling per tahun.

Hal ini juga merupakan bentuk komitmen klub untuk dapat mempertahankan kerangka tim, usai sebelumnya telah berhasil memperpanjang kontrak penyerang top mereka, Luis Suarez.

Editor : Dian Sukmawati

BEIJING (AP) — The head of Taiwan's Nationalists reaffirmed the party's support for eventual unification with the mainland when he met Monday with Chinese President Xi Jinping as part of continuing rapprochement between the former bitter enemies.

Nationalist Party Chairman Eric Chu, a likely presidential candidate next year, also affirmed Taiwan's desire to join the proposed Chinese-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank during the meeting in Beijing. China claims Taiwan as its own territory and doesn't want the island to join using a name that might imply it is an independent country.

Chu's comments during his meeting with Xi were carried live on Hong Kong-based broadcaster Phoenix Television.

The Nationalists were driven to Taiwan by Mao Zedong's Communists during the Chinese civil war in 1949, leading to decades of hostility between the sides. Chu, who took over as party leader in January, is the third Nationalist chairman to visit the mainland and the first since 2009.

Relations between the communist-ruled mainland and the self-governing democratic island of Taiwan began to warm in the 1990s, partly out of their common opposition to Taiwan's formal independence from China, a position advocated by the island's Democratic Progressive Party.

Despite increasingly close economic ties, the prospect of political unification has grown increasingly unpopular on Taiwan, especially with younger voters. Opposition to the Nationalists' pro-China policies was seen as a driver behind heavy local electoral defeats for the party last year that led to Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou resigning as party chairman.