New coach Jose Mourinho won the Italian Super Cup on his competitive debut for Inter Milan on Sunday when the Serie A champions beat Cup-holders AS Roma on penalties after a thrilling match ended 2-2 at the San Siro.
Captain Javier Zanetti scored the decisive spot-kick as Inter won the shoot-out 6-5 after Francesco Totti and Juan missed for Roma. Montenegro forward Mirko Vucinic took the game to extra time in the 90th minute when he headed Roma level from a corner just seven minutes after 18-year-old striker Mario Balotelli thought he had won it for Inter with a cool finish after the ball filtered through the Roma defence from a goalkick.
Roma’s Daniele De Rossi equalized for the visitors just before the hour mark after Ghana midfielder Sulley Muntari, who joined Inter from English club Portsmouth last month, opened for the champions in the 18th minute.
Inter went into the season’s curtain-raiser looking to avenge May’s 2-1 defeat to Roma in the Italian Cup final, the last game of Mourinho’s predecessor Roberto Mancini before he was sacked despite having won a third consecutive Serie A title, and a 1-0 loss in the Super Cup last year.
They started brightly. Striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic missed a great chance in the sixth minute, firing wide from close range after skilfully controlling a Muntari pass with his chest and shaking off Brazilian marker Juan.
There was more danger in the Roma area in the following minutes, with Chilean midfielder David Pizarro having to dive in with a desperate challenge after Daniele De Rossi’s attempt to head away a cross found Ibrahimovic and the Swede hitting another good opportunity wide after a smart ball from Luis Figo.
Roma struggled to muster a response to Muntari’s goal and Brazilian full back Maicon created headaches for their defense with a series of fine crosses, one of which Figo nodded narrowly past the far post.
Ibrahimovic was guilty of selfishness after the break, blasting a shot in to Mexes’ legs when Figo was free to his left, and captain Javier Zanetti forced a save out of Roma keeper Doni with a powerful shot from outside the area.
But then De Rossi leveled with a venomous right-footed strike from 30m out at the end of one of Roma’s first truly fluid moves.
The rest of the game was more evenly balanced, with Balotelli and Vucinic providing a thrilling end to regulation time. Balotelli brought some fine saves out of Doni in extra time with two freekicks and a curling shot but the score remained unchanged.
Roma captain Totti, who came off the bench in the 86th to make his first competitive appearance since injuring his knee in April, missed a chance to win the game when he hit his penalty over the bar with the shoot-out score at 4-3 after Dejan Stankovic had crashed his penalty against the crossbar.
It was the third consecutive year that the sides met in the Super Cup, with Roma’s win last year coming after Inter prevailed 4-3 in 2006.
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