■PORTUGAL
Sporting win again
Helder Postiga and Leandro Romagnoli scored for Sporting Lisbon in their 2-0 defeat of Belenenses to continue their perfect start to the league on Saturday. Postiga set Sporting on their way to its third straight win with a shot in the 34th minute after Yannick Djalo had headed on Marat Izmailov’s cross. Sporting sealed their victory when Romagnoli sent Belenenses goalkeeper Julio Cesar the other way to convert a 51st-minute penalty. Sporting lead the league with nine points, three points ahead of Nacional, the other team in the league to have taken maximum points so far.
■FRANCE
Lyon remain undefeated
Ederson’s successful penalty helped Lyon beat lowly Le Havre 1-0 and maintain their unbeaten start to the French league on Saturday. The Brazilian midfielder converted from the spot in the 45th minute after defender Nicolas Gillet fouled striker Frederic Piquionne. Lyon’s fifth win of the season moved them onto 16 points after six rounds. Lyon finished the match with 10 men after winger Sidney Govou was sent off in the 66th for a second yellow card. In Saturday’s other matches, it was: Grenoble 0, Bordeaux 1; Lille 3, Auxerre 2; Lorient 1, Caen 1; Toulouse 2, Sochaux 1; Nantes 2, Valenciennes 0, and Nice 2, Le Mans 2.
■THE NETHERLANDS
PSV lose for first time
AZ Alkmaar handed champions PSV Eindhoven their first defeat of the Dutch league season on Saturday with a 1-0 home win. Alkmaar, without a point up until Saturday, dominated but had to wait until eight minutes from time when Mounir El Hamdaoui set up Maarten Martens to settle the match. Early leaders Groningen made a dreadful start at Heracles Almelo when Oluwafemi Ajilore was sent off in the second minute for a foul. Striker Bas Drost put Heracles ahead early in the second half but Petter Andersson equalized from close range to salvage a point five minutes before time. Groningen are top with seven points after three matches, one more then ADO Den Haag who traveled to Graafschap Doetinchem yesterday. PSV are third, also on six. Arch rivals Feyenoord and Ajax, respectively eighth and ninth with three points, were due to meet yesterday in Rotterdam. At the bottom Vitesse Arnhem and Sparta Rotterdam collected their first point of the season in a 1-1 draw. Ricky van Wolfswinkel opened the scoring for Vitesse in the 50th minute but Charles Dissels replied on 72.
■JAPAN
Antlers hand out life ban
Kashima Antlers have banned a supporter for life after he hit an opposition player with a flagpole, the club said yesterday. The unidentified man stretched the pole out of the stands and clubbed Alex, a Brazilian midfielder for Kashiwa Reysol, as he prepared for a corner kick on Saturday. Alex was not injured in the incident. The match ended in a 1-1 draw. “We informed the person about an indefinite ban from watching all of our matches in the stands,” the team said in a statement. Some 70 police later came out to break up a scuffle between rival fans. There were no arrests. “I want to offer a deep apology,” team president Kazumi Ohigashi said, admitting the incident hurt the league’s image. It was the latest crowd trouble to mar the 15-year-old J-League. In June, the league fined Asian champions Urawa Reds ¥20 million (US$186,250) for failing to prevent a brawl involving thousands of rival fans. Japan has no tradition of sports hooliganism.
The qualifying round of the World Baseball Classic (WBC) is to be held at the Taipei Dome between Feb. 21 and 25, Major League Baseball (MLB) announced today. Taiwan’s group also includes Spain, Nicaragua and South Africa, with two of the four teams advancing onto the 2026 WBC. Taiwan, currently ranked second in the world in the World Baseball Softball Confederation rankings, are favorites to come out of the group, the MLB said in an article announcing the matchups. Last year, Taiwan finished in a five-way tie in their group with two wins and two losses, but finished last on tiebreakers after giving
North Korea’s FIFA Under-17 Women’s World Cup-winning team on Saturday received a heroes’ welcome back in the capital, Pyongyang, with hundreds of people on the streets to celebrate their success. They had defeated Spain on penalties after a 1-1 draw in the U17 World Cup final in the Dominican Republic on Nov. 3. It was the second global title in two months for secretive North Korea — largely closed off to the outside world; they also lifted the FIFA U20 Women’s World Cup in September. Officials and players’ families gathered at Pyongyang International Airport to wave flowers and North Korea flags as the
For King Faisal, a 20-year-old winger from Ghana, the invitation to move to Brazil to play soccer “was a dream.” “I believed when I came here, it would help me change the life of my family and many other people,” he said in Sao Paulo. For the past year and a half, he has been playing on the under-20s squad for Sao Paulo FC, one of South America’s most prominent clubs. He and a small number of other Africans are tearing across pitches in a country known as the biggest producer and exporter of soccer stars in the world, from Pele to Neymar. For
Coco Gauff of the US on Friday defeated top-ranked Aryna Sabalenka 7-6 (7/4), 6-3 to set up a showdown with Olympic champion Zheng Qinwen in the final of the WTA Finals, while in the doubles, Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching was eliminated. Gauff generated six break points to Belarusian Sabalenka’s four and built on early momentum in the opening set’s tiebreak that she carried through to the second set. She is the youngest player at 20 to make the final at the WTA Finals since Denmark’s Caroline Wozniacki in 2010. Zheng earlier defeated Wimbledon champion Barbora Krejcikova of the Czech Republic 6-3, 7-5 to book
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