■NETHERLANDS
Ajax’s title hopes falter
Ajax’s Dutch league hopes faltered in a 1-0 home defeat against SC Heerenveen on Saturday. AZ Alkmaar have 47 points, Ajax 41 and FC Twente 40. Danijel Pranjic gave Ajax goalkeeper Maarten Stekelenburg no chance with a 59th-minute left-footed free-kick from 20m. Referee Roelof Luinge, handling his 508th league match, dismissed Ajax defender Thomas Vermaelen in the 47th minute for a last-man foul on Roy Beerens. Vermaelen’s red card was Ajax’s fifth this season. “We made it difficult for ourselves, but we still have to play 14 matches. Anything can happen,” Ajax coach Marco van Basten said. Struggling in front of goal since Klaas-Jan Huntelaar’s recent move to Real Madrid, Ajax’s strikers rarely threatened Heerenveen goalkeeper Brian Vandenbussche. Gabri could have earned his side a draw in the 84th minute off an Urby Emanuelson through-ball, but Vandenbussche got to the ball first. Vitesse Arnhem won only their fourth game of the season, demonstrating their determination to clear the relegation zone in a 2-0 win over Willem II. Mads Junker and Ricky van Wolfswinkel were on target for Vitesse. Last-place FC Volendam picked a morale-boosting point at NAC Breda when Rowin van Zaanen scored in the 70th minute to cancel out Joonas Kolkka’s 64th-minute opener. Elsewhere, Gonzalo Garcia scored in the 75th minute to give FC Groningen a 1-0 win at ADO The Hague.
■GREECE
Larissa beat OFI, stay fifth
Stelios Giannakopoulos marked his return to the Greek league after a six-year stint in the English Premier League with two goals to lead his new team Larissa to a 2-1 away win over OFI on Saturday. It was the first game in Greece for the 34-year-old winger who also has 77 caps for the Greek national team. The win ensured Larissa retained fifth place in the standings with 30 points, 18 behind league leaders Olympiakos. Zdravko Popovic put OFI ahead in the 81st minute, two minutes before Giannakopoulos leveled with a header. In the second minute of injury-time, Giannakopoulos headed in his second goal from close range to secure Larissa’s seventh win in 20 games. Elsewhere, Aris Thessaloniki beat crosstown rivals Iraklis 1-0.
■PORTUGAL
Benfica win 1-0, go top
Benfica beat last-place Rio Ave 1-0 to gain the provisional lead in the Portuguese league on Saturday. Substitute Pedro Mantorras collected Oscar Cardozo’s flick-on to score a 70th-minute winner that kept Benfica unbeaten at the Stadium of Light, while handing Rio Ave their fifth straight loss. Benfica lead the standings with 33 points after 16 games, two points better than Sporting and FC Porto. Elsewhere, Trofense continued their good run against the top three after holding Sporting to 0-0. The bottom-of-the-table club have already beaten Benfica and drawn at Porto this season.
■ENGLAND
Latics agree fee for N’Zogbia
Newcastle United’s unsettled French midfielder Charles N’Zogbia could be on his way to Wigan Athletic after the Premier League clubs agreed a fee. The 22-year-old said he would never play for Newcastle again after his name was mispronounced by team manager Joe Kinnear during a post-match television interview after the 2-1 defeat by Manchester City on Wednesday. “We have agreed a fee with Newcastle and it’s up to us now to convince the boy Wigan is the place to come and enjoy himself, kick-start his career,” Wigan boss Steve Bruce said.
Taiwanese world No. 1 women’s doubles star Hsieh Su-wei on Saturday overcame a first-set loss to win her opening match at the Madrid Open. Top seeds Hsieh and partner Elise Mertens of Belgium, with whom she last month won her fourth Indian Wells women’s doubles title, bounced back from a rocky first set to beat Asia Muhammad of the US and Aldila Sutjiadi of Indonesia 2-6, 6-4, 10-2. Hsieh and Mertens were next to face Heather Watson of the UK and Xu Yifan of China in the round of 16. Thirty-eight-year-old Hsieh last month reclaimed her world No. 1 spot after her Indian
EYES ON THE PRIZE: Armed with three solid men’s singles shuttlers and doubles Olympic champions, Taiwan aim to make their first Thomas Cup semi-final, Chou Tien-chen said Taiwanese badminton star Tai Tzu-ying yesterday quickly dispatched Malaysia’s Goh Jin Wei in straight sets, while her male counterpart Chou Tien-chen beat Germany’s Kai Schaefer, as Taiwan’s women’s and men’s teams won their Group B opening rounds of the TotalEnergies BWF Thomas and Uber Cup Finals in Chengdu, China. World No. 5 Tai beat Goh 21-19, 22-20 in a speedy 33 minutes, her fourth straight victory over the world No. 24 shuttler since they first faced each other in the quarter-finals of the 2018 Malaysia Open, where Tai went on to win the women’s singles title. Malaysia followed up Tai’s opening victory
Chen Yi-tung (陳奕通) secured a historic Olympic berth on Sunday by winning the senior men’s foil event at the 2024 Asia Oceania Zonal Olympic Fencing Qualifiers in United Arab Emirates. Chen defeated Samuel Elijah of Singapore 15-4 in the final in Dubai to secure the only wild card in the event, making him the first male Olympian fencer from Taiwan in 36 years and only the sixth Taiwanese fencer to ever qualify for the quadrennial event. The last appearance by a Taiwanese male fencer at the Olympics was in 1988, when Wang San-tsai (王三財) and Cheng Ming-hsiang (鄭明祥) competed in Seoul. The
Rafael Nadal on Tuesday lost in straight sets to 31st-ranked Jiri Lehecka in the fourth round at the Madrid Open, while Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei advanced to the semi-finals in the women’s doubles. Nadal said that he was feeling good about his progress following his latest injury layoff. Nadal called it a “positive week” in every way and said his body held up well. “I was able to play four matches, a couple of tough matches,” Nadal said. “So very positive, winning three matches, playing four matches at the high level of tennis. I enjoyed a lot playing at home. I leave here with