Promotion favorites West Ham and Leicester played to an ill-tempered 0-0 draw, while Leeds and Ipswich won on the opening day of the Football League Championship season.
Leicester's Dion Dublin, a former England player, was given a red card in the 18th minute for kicking Rufus Brevett. Brevett was handed a yellow card and picked up another yellow in the 85th minute.
PHOTO: AFP
"It was much ado about nothing," Leicester manager Micky Adams said of Dublin's dismissal. "We started the game well and were looking quite dangerous, so it was a big blow for us."
West Ham striker Marlon Harewood was stopped twice by 'keeper Ian Walker while Leicester was down to 10 players.
"I think we had two or three good chances to win the game, and we didn't take those," West Ham manager Alan Pardew said.
Leicester was relegated last season, while West Ham dropped two seasons ago. The London club lost last season's playoff final to Crystal Palace.
Leeds, also relegated in 2003-2004, downed Derby County 1-0, and Ipswich, which lost to West Ham in the first round of the playoffs, beat Gillingham 2-1.
The top two in the division advance automatically, and one of the next four goes up through the playoffs.
The English Premier League season begins Aug. 14.
Rangers, a distant second to Celtic last season, played to a 0-0 draw against Aberdeen in the season opener.
Rangers signed five internationals in the offseason but couldn't unlock the defense of Aberdeen, which finished second last in 2003-2004. Danish winger Peter Lovenkrands came closest, hitting the crossbar in the 82nd minute and seeing another shot cleared off the line by defender Phil McGuire.
When Michael Ballack and Sebastian Deisler both scored in Bayern Munich's 2-0 win over Hamburger SV in their Bundesliga opener, it was as Bayern envisioned when they signed them three years ago.
Newly promoted FC Nuremberg beat FC Kaiserslautern 3-1, while Borussia Dortmund's season got off to a rocky start when it fell unexpectedly to Wolfsburg 2-1 behind two goals by Germany forward Thomas Brdaric as the Bundesliga's 42nd season went into full swing.
It was a German plan to groom Ballack and Deisler together to lead a winning 2006 World Cup effort. And while Ballack emerged as the country's most acclaimed player, his younger teammate was derailed by knee operations and a bout of depression, and they rarely shone at the same time at Bayern.
The Bundesliga season got off to a strange start on Friday when the first match between defending champion Werder Bremen and Schalke was delayed for 65 minutes by a power blackout.
Bremen won the matchup of title hopefuls 1-0.
Dortmund, coming off a messed up season, started the same way as it dominated Wolfsburg but lost 2-1. By the final whistle, the club drew boos from the 71,000 at Westfalenstadion.
Ernesto Chevanton scored two minutes into his debut as Monaco beat newly-promoted Saint-Etienne 1-0 in first division matches.
The Uruguay striker collected a ball on the edge of the penalty area, span past his marker and planted the ball into the bottom corner.
But Paris Saint-Germain's season got off to a disappointing start with a 2-1 defeat away at Rennes.
Midfielder Olivier Sorlin and Swiss striker Alexander Frei scored early in the first-half for Rennes.
A sumo star was born in Japan on Sunday when 24-year-old Takerufuji became the first wrestler in 110 years to win a top-division tournament on his debut, triumphing at the 15-day Spring Grand Sumo Tournament in Osaka despite injuring his ankle on the penultimate day. Takerufuji, whose injury had left him in a wheelchair outside the ring, shoved out the higher-ranked Gonoyama at the Edion Arena Osaka to the delight of the crowd, giving him an unassailable record of 13 wins and two losses to claim the Emperor’s Cup. “I did it just through willpower. I didn’t really know what was going
The US’ Ilia Malinin on Saturday produced six scintillating quadruple jumps, including a quadruple Axel, in the men’s free skate to capture his first figure skating world title. The 19-year-old nicknamed the “Quad god,” who is the only skater to land a quadruple Axel in competition, dazzled with an array of breathtakingly executed jumps starting with his quad Axel and including a quadruple Lutz in combination with a triple flip and a quadruple toe loop in combination with a triple toe. He added an unexpected triple-triple combination at the end to earn a world-record 227.79 in the free program for a championship
Shohei Ohtani’s interpreter is being criminally investigated by the IRS, and the attorney for his alleged bookmaker said Thursday that the ex-Los Angeles Dodgers employee placed bets on international soccer — but not baseball. The IRS confirmed Thursday that interpreter Ippei Mizuhara and Mathew Bowyer, the alleged illegal bookmaker, are under criminal investigation through the agency’s Los Angeles Field Office. IRS Criminal Investigation spokesperson Scott Villiard said he could not provide additional details. Mizuhara, 39, was fired by the Dodgers on Wednesday following reports from the Los Angeles Times and ESPN about his alleged ties to an illegal bookmaker and debts well
MLB on Friday announced a formal investigation into the scandal swirling around Shohei Ohtani and his former interpreter amid charges that the Los Angeles Dodgers superstar was the victim of “massive theft.” The Dodgers on Wednesday fired Ippei Mizuhara, Ohtani’s long-time interpreter and close friend, after Ohtani’s representatives alleged that the Japanese two-way star had been the victim of theft, which was reported to involve millions of dollars and link Mizuhara to a suspected illegal bookmaker in California. “Major League Baseball has been gathering information since we learned about the allegations involving Shohei Ohtani and Ippei Mizuhara from the news media,” MLB