Tottenham Hotspur on Monday surged to the top of the Premier League as Son Heung-min and James Maddison sealed a 2-0 win against Fulham.
Ange Postecoglou’s side extended their unbeaten start to nine league games thanks to Son’s opener and Maddison’s first goal at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium since his close-season move from Leicester.
Tottenham leapfrogged Manchester City, Arsenal and Liverpool to go two points clear at the top of the table.
Photo: AP
Fulham are the only team to beat Tottenham this season, knocking them out of the League Cup on penalties in August.
However, they avenged that loss by recording a third successive league victory to strengthen their unexpected title challenge.
“They are both quality players. They are both leaders at the club,” Postecoglou said of Son and Maddison. “They work hard for the team and it is a credit to them.”
The north Londoners’ superb start to Postecoglou’s debut season have awoken dreams of the club’s first top-flight title since Bill Nicholson’s 1961 double winners.
While that ambitious target might yet prove beyond Tottenham, who have not won a major trophy since 2008, the Australian has undoubtedly had a huge impact on a club that was in turmoil when he arrived from Celtic.
A toxic combination of Tottenham’s poor results and dour displays under Antonio Conte last term, combined with Harry Kane’s close-season move to Bayern Munich, left many expecting another year of turmoil.
Yet Postecoglou has astutely guided Tottenham to calmer waters, winning over doubters with his down-to-earth personality and attacking game-plan.
Monday’s victory gave Postecoglou the record for most points gained by a new manager in their first nine Premier League matches, with his 23 surpassing the mark previously held by Mike Walker and Guus Hiddink.
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
Taiwan’s top table tennis player Lin Yun-ju made his debut in the US professional table tennis scene by taking on a new role as a team’s co-owner. On Wednesday, Major League Table Tennis (MLTT), founded in September last year, announced on its official Web site that Lin had become part of the ownership group of the Princeton Revolution, one of the league’s eight teams. MLTT chief executive officer Flint Lane described Lin’s investment as “another great milestone for table tennis in America,” saying that the league’s “commitment to growth and innovation is drawing attention from the best in the sport, and we’re
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
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
RSS