CHAMPIONS LEAGUE
Liverpool struggled to advance past Standard Liege 1-0 to reach the Champions League group stage on Wednesday.
Dirk Kuyt scored the only goal of the two legs in the 28th minute of added time, just two minutes before the game would have headed to penalties.
Meanwhile, Greek champions Olympiakos suffered a shock exit, beating Anorthosis Famugusta 1-0 but losing 3-1 on aggregate.
Among the teams also advancing to the group stage were Arsenal, Atletico Madrid, Fiorentina and Marseille.
Arsenal, already leading 2-0, dispatched FC Twente 4-0, while Marseille beat Brann 2-1 to round off a 3-1 aggregate victory.
Atletico overcame a 1-0 first-leg deficit to rout Schalke 4-0, and Fiorentina relied on a 2-0 first-leg victory to advance as they were held 0-0 at Slavia Prague.
“We knew it was a difficult team to play against,” Liverpool boss Rafael Benitez said. “They played good on counterattack. It was difficult, but we were playing better than in the first leg.”
Olympiakos failed to overcome a 3-0 defeat to Anorthosis two weeks ago.
Anorthosis coach Temuri Ketsbaia said he hoped his team would “just play and have fun” in Europe’s most prestigious competition.
Arsenal denied former England manager Steve McClaren a successful return to home soil with Dutch side Twente.
Samir Nasri put the Gunners ahead in the 27th, while William Gallas, Theo Walcott and Nicklas Bendtner scored in the second half to seal a 6-0 aggregate victory.
Atletico were in danger of being eliminated after a first-leg defeat in Gelsenkirchen two weeks ago but had little trouble seeing off Schalke in the second leg.
The Spaniards burst into life in the 14th when Sergio Aguero opened the scoring. Diego Forlan then gave Atletico the overall lead in the 51st. Luis Garcia clipped home Atletico’s third in the 82nd and Maxi Rodriguez slotted in a fourth from the penalty spot five minutes later.
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