It was a fine first win for Leicester City manager Ruud van Nistelrooy, and perhaps one final defeat for West Ham United manager Julen Lopetegui.
Leicester marked Van Nistelrooy’s first match in charge of the team by surging to a 3-1 win over Lopetegui’s West Ham in the English Premier League on Tuesday. Van Nistelrooy, the former Manchester United striker, is back in English soccer this time as a manager, with Leicester taking something of a gamble on the Dutchman after his brief and impressive spell as interim manager at Manchester United this season following Erik ten Hag’s departure.
He faces the tough task of keeping Leicester, one of the top candidates for relegation, in the top division. For that to happen, he is likely to need goals from Jamie Vardy — and the 37-year-old former England international delivered immediately.
Photo: Reuters
Nine years after breaking Van Nistelrooy’s record for scoring in consecutive games, Vardy scored the first goal of the Dutchman’s tenure at Leicester by beating the offside trap and slotting home a finish with less than two minutes gone.
Morocco midfielder Bilal El Khannouss supplied the pass for Vardy’s goal and scored himself with a low shot in the 61st minute to make it 2-0. Patson Daka added a third for Leicester in the 90th minute, before a stoppage-time consolation by West Ham substitute Niclas Fullkrug.
“We are very happy with the new manager,” El Khannouss said of Van Nistelrooy. “He arrived two days ago, and there’s a new dynamic in the group.”
Photo: Reuters
Van Nistelrooy praised the “spirit and energy” in his team.
“The foundation for us going forward is everyone working their socks off, fighting for every inch and defending together,” he said. “We can look further then, and they did that in an unbelievable way.”
This dismal result for West Ham came three days after their 5-2 thrashing at home by Arsenal, which piled more pressure on Lopetegui early in the former Spain and Real Madrid coach’s first season with the London club.
Photo: Reuters
West Ham’s disgruntled traveling fans chanted: “You’re getting sacked in the morning” toward Lopetegui during the second half — even if his team dominated large parts of the game, but only had one goal to show from 31 shots.
“We’re very frustrated, but in the same way I can say nothing about the players — they fight until the end,” Lopetegui said. “It’s not easy to explain football some days.”
West Ham have lost seven of their 14 games so far and are in 14th place in the 20-team league, one spot above Leicester.
Crystal Palace won for just the second time in the league this season, beating relegation rivals Ipswich Town 1-0 to pull clear of the bottom three.
Jean-Philippe Mateta scored the goal in the 59th minute. Palace’s only other league victory was against Tottenham Hotspur in October.
While Ipswich stayed in next-to-last place, Palace moved three points above the relegation zone.
Much of the focus ahead of the game was on the teams’ captains, Sam Morsy of Ipswich and Marc Guehi of Palace, during another round when the Premier League was celebrating LGBTQ+ inclusion in its campaign to promote equality and diversity.
For the second straight game, Morsy chose against wearing a rainbow armband issued to the captain of each of the 20 teams in the league. He has made the decision “due to his religious beliefs,” Ipswich said.
Guehi did wear the rainbow armband, but defied Football Association (FA) rules by writing a religious message on the item. The message read: “Jesus loves you” — using a heart sign instead of the word “loves.”
During the match against Newcastle United on Saturday, Guehi wrote “I love Jesus” — and was later contacted by the FA for acting in contravention of its regulations.
Shohei Ohtani and Clayton Kershaw on Friday joined their Los Angeles Dodgers teammates in sticking their fists out to show off their glittering World Series rings at a ceremony. “There’s just a lot of excitement, probably more than I can ever recall with the Dodger fan base and our players,” manager Dave Roberts said before Los Angeles rallied to beat the Detroit Tigers 8-5 in 10 innings. “What a way to cap off the first two days of celebrations,” Roberts said afterward. “By far the best opening week I’ve ever experienced. I just couldn’t have scripted it any better.” A choir in the
The famously raucous Hong Kong Sevens are to start today in a big test for a shiny new stadium at the heart of a major US$3.85 billion sports park in the territory. Officials are keeping their fingers crossed that the premier event in Hong Kong’s sporting and social calendar goes off without a hitch at the 50,000-seat Kai Tak Stadium. They hope to entice major European soccer teams to visit in the next few months, with reports in December last year saying that Liverpool were in talks about a pre-season tour. Coldplay are to perform there next month, all part of Hong Kong’s
Shohei Ohtani, Teoscar Hernandez and Tommy Edman on Thursday smashed home runs to give the reigning World Series champions the Los Angeles Dodgers a 5-4 victory over Detroit on the MLB’s opening day in the US. The Dodgers, who won two season-opening games in Tokyo last week, raised their championship banner on a day when 28 clubs launched the season in the US. Dodgers manager Dave Roberts shuffled his batting lineup with all four leadoff hitters finally healthy as Ohtani was followed by Mookie Betts, then Hernandez and Freddie Freeman in the cleanup spot, switching places with Hernandez. “There’s a Teoscar tax to
Marcus Rashford’s first goals for Aston Villa on Sunday inspired a 3-0 win against Preston North End that sent his side into the FA Cup semi-finals for the first time in 10 years. Rashford struck twice in the second half at Deepdale to end Preston’s stubborn resistance before Jacob Ramsey wrapped up Villa’s long-awaited return to the last four. Villa are to face Crystal Palace — 3-0 winners at Fulham on Saturday — in the semi-finals at Wembley Stadium in London. Revitalized since joining Villa on loan from Manchester United during the January transfer window, Rashford is beginning to show the form that
RSS