Napoli moved joint second in Serie A on Saturday following a 3-0 home romp against Lecce to go level on points with Juventus and AC Milan.
Napoli, whose only two scudettos came in the halcyon days of Diego Maradona in 1987 and 1990, bolstered their dreams of having a say in this season’s title race with an early Marek Hamsik penalty, before Slovakian midfielder Michele Pazienza made it 2-0 shortly before the break.
Argentine striker German Denis bagged the third midway through the second half to wrap up the points and take Napoli onto 30 points from 16 games — four ahead of Fiorentina, who have a game in hand.
PHOTO: AP
In Saturday’s other game, Bologna thanked a Marco Di Vaio hat-trick as they whipped Torino 5-2 to end a run of five draws.
Di Vaio moved joint top of the goal charts with Diego Di Milito of Genoa as Bologna exited the drop zone and Torino dropped into the bottom three instead.
Torino were twice in front through Simone Barone and then Ignazio Abate, after substitute Sergio Volpi had equalized.
Di Vaio then bagged his treble — one from the spot — after Marco Bernacci had also got on the scoresheet with another penalty.
New Taipei Kings guard Jeremy Lin on Friday was named the Taiwan Professional Basketball League’s (TPBL) Player of the Month, the first domestic player to win the award, while the Hsinchu Toplus Lioneers are to welcome their third head coach in less than a year. Lin averaged 22 points, 5.4 rebounds and 6.6 assists over five games in October and last month, helping the Kings to second in the standings with a 4-2 record as of Friday. The Kings last night defeated the Lioneers 96-78 to move level with the top-of-the-table Formosa Dreamers (5-2), while in the night game, the New Taipei
Taiwan on Wednesday finished with 15 medals at the World Taekwondo Poomsae Championships in Hong Kong, taking home four gold, five silver and six bronze medals across the age group divisions. Taiwan ranked third on the medal table after South Korea with 17 golds and the US with eight golds at the five-day competition. “Your athletes have proven themselves as the best in the world,” World Taekwondo president Choue Chung-won said at the closing ceremony of the martial art contest that was attended by a record 1,727 athletes from around the world. On the first day of the competition at the Hong Kong
TO NO AVAIL: The Denver Nuggets’ Serbian center Nikola Jokic surpassed his 53-point performance in the 2023 Western Conference semi-finals against Phoenix The Washington Wizards withstood a 56-point explosion from Denver star Nikola Jokic to beat the Nuggets 122-113 on Saturday and snap their 16-game NBA losing streak. Jokic, who won his third NBA Most Valuable Player (MVP) award last season, posted a career scoring high — surpassing a 53-point performance in game four of the 2023 Western Conference semi-finals against Phoenix and a 50-point regular-season best against Sacramento in 2021. The Serbian big man added 16 rebounds and eight assists, but it was all to no avail as Washington, buoyed by 39 points from Jordan Poole, won for the first time
Taiwan’s Lin Cheng-jing won a bronze medal in the clean and jerk in the women’s under-49 kg division at the 2024 IWF World Weightlifting Championships in Bahrain on Saturday. Lin won her first medal at a World Weightlifting Championships for lifting 107kg in the clean and jerk in her weight class, 2kg more than Rosegie Ramos of the Philippines. However, Ramos won bronze for the combined lift after topping Lin by 5kg in the snatch. Ri Song-gum of North Korea won gold in the division’s combined lift with a total of 213kg, while Xiang Linxiang of China took silver with
RSS