SOCCER
San Marino end victory wait
San Marino, the world’s worst team according to the FIFA rankings, made history on Thursday by beating Liechtenstein 1-0 in the UEFA Nations League to claim their first-ever competitive win. The tiny country of about 30,000 people, surrounded by Italy, came into the match at their San Marino Stadium looking for a first win of any sort since beating Liechtenstein in a friendly in 2004. Liechtenstein had a goal disallowed for a tight offside in the first half before San Marino pounced on a defensive error to grab the winner in the 53rd minute through Nicko Sensoli. Aged 19, he had not been born when the team who sit 210th and last in the world rankings last won a game The whipping boys of international football had been building up to this having claimed draws in friendly matches against Seychelles, Saint Lucia, and Saint Kitts and Nevis over the past two years. They are in the three-team Group 1 of the bottom tier League D in the UEFA Nations League, with Gibraltar their other opponents.
RUGBY
Fiji into Pacific semis
Fiji booked their place in the Pacific Nations Cup semi-finals yesterday after holding off Tonga to claim a convincing 50-19 win in Nuku’alofa. The visitors finished as Group A winners and would play either Japan or the United States in Tokyo on Saturday next week.
Samoa also went through to the semis as Group A runners-up, which would also be played in the Japanese capital. Almost 100 years to the day since Fiji and Tonga first met in a Test match, Fiji rushed out to an early lead with three tries in the opening 11 minutes. However, a yellow card for Fiji’s Adrea Cocagi — later upgraded to a 20-minute red — turned the tide midway through the first half as Tonga scored three tries to draw level.
Fiji dug in and their quality showed in the second half, eventually running out comfortable winners.
CYCLING
Berrade wins stage 18
Spaniard Urko Berrade soloed to victory on Thursday at the 18th stage of the Vuelta a Espana in the Basque Country as Australia’s Ben O’Connor held the overall race leader’s red jersey with three days to go.
Berrade, 26, gave his Kern Pharma team their third stage win of this year’s race, powering over the line in his home region four seconds ahead of Swiss Mauro Schmid. Another Kern Pharma rider Pau Miquel crossed the line in third.
In a group of pursuers far from the race lead, O’Connor, riding for the Decathlon-AG2R La Mondiale team, held his five-second advantage on Slovenian three-time champion Primoz Roglic. Berrade was part of a first peloton of about 40 riders who took off early in the medium mountain stage more than 179.5km from Vitoria-Gasteiz to Maeztu. The rider from Pamplona proved strongest in the closing stages, sealing his first victory to add to teammate Pablo Castrillo’s two stage wins. “For our small team, this Vuelta was very important. It’s a dream what’s happening to us,” said Berrade of his delight at winning “the stage closest to home, with all my family watching me, friends.” Today is to feature another decisive mountain top finish before the final time trial in Madrid tomorrow.
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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