Celtic striker John Hartson missed a last-minute penalty as Rangers lifted the Scottish League Cup for a record 23rd time on Sunday with a 2-1 victory over their fierce Glasgow rivals at Hampden Park.
Danish forward Peter Lovenkrands, who has a habit of scoring against Celtic, grabbed what proved to be the winner as Alex McLeish's side retained the trophy they won last season in dramatic fashion.
Lovenkrands, who scored twice in Rangers' 3-2 Scottish Cup final win over Celtic last season, created Rangers' first goal, scored by Argentine Claudio Caniggia after 23 minutes and 12 minutes later swept home the second from a Michael Mols pass.
PHOTO: AP
Swedish striker Henrik Larsson headed one back from a corner for Celtic after 57 minutes.
In England, meanwhile, Steven Gerrard set up two goals and scored the winner as Liverpool beat Tottenham 3-2 in the Premier League Sunday, its first win at White Hart Lane in seven years.
Liverpool manager Gerard Houllier kept faith with the team which drew 1-1 at Celtic in the UEFA Cup on Thursday. That meant Senegalese striker El Hadji Diouf, who faces an UEFA and police inquiry for allegedly spitting at a fan during that match, kept his place.
Also Sunday, Robbie Fowler scored his first Manchester City goal as the Blues beat Birmingham 1-0. Gianfranco Zola and Mario Stanic scored as Chelsea beat West Bromwich Albion 2-0.
Defending champion Arsenal slipped up in its bid to win back-to-back titles, losing 2-0 to Blackburn on Saturday.
Arsenal has 63 points, two more than Manchester United, although the Reds must go to Highbury in April for what could be the league decider. Newcastle is third with 58 points, followed by Chelsea (51), Everton (50), Liverpool (49) and Blackburn (46).
A goalkeeping blunder from Liverpool's Jerzy Dudek helped Tottenham's Argentine defender Mauricio Taricco score his first goal for Spurs in the 49th minute.
Taricco hit a low drive from 25m which Dudek dropped and the ball dribbled over the line.
Two minutes later, Michael Owen scored his 21st goal of the season to equalize from a Gerrard cross.
Emile Heskey, who overcame a hamstring injury to play, headed Liverpool's second in the 72nd minute, from Gerrard's accurate pass.
Gerrard made it 3-1 ten minutes later, taking the ball against the run of play to score 20m past Tottenham 'keeper Kasey Keller.
Spurs scored a consolation goal three minutes from time through Teddy Sheringham.
In Manchester, Fowler's 72nd minute strike, from an Ali Benarbia curling cross, was his first for City since he moved from Leeds on Jan. 30.
``In his first couple of games Robbie needed fitness and today he needed a goal -- and he deserved it today,'' Manchester City manager Kevin Keegan said.
``It was going to take something out of the ordinary to win it and Robbie supplied it.''
At West Bromwich, Zola's 58th-minute strike ended the resistance of Albion, which is almost certainly set to be relegated.
Mario Stanic had headed the Blues into a 38th-minute lead from Graeme Le Saux's corner.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier