Midfielder Leandro Benitez scored twice as Estudiantes of Argentina reached the Club World Cup final with a 2-1 win over eight-man Pohang Steelers of South Korea on Tuesday.
Steelers had three players sent-off, including captain Hwang Jae-won and goalkeeper Shin Hwa-yong, in the second half.
“We could have achieved more in this competition, but football gives us situations that are very bitter and this today was the case,” Pohang’s Brazilian coach Sergio Farias told a news conference.
“The result doesn’t reflect what we saw on the field and was made worse by the failures by the referee. I’m not talking about a conspiracy, but the failures of the referee,” he said, referring to Italian Roberto Rosetti.
Estudiantes coach Alejandro Sabella said: “Perhaps [Rosetti] whistled in favor of Estudiantes’ superiority ... but in general, he applied FIFA regulations to send off [the players] correctly.”
Benitez put Estudiantes ahead in first-half stoppage time when he slipped the offside trap to get behind Hwang at a free kick and steered the ball gently with his head inside the near post.
He increased Estudiantes’ lead eight minutes into the second half before Brazilian striker Denilson pulled one back in the 71st when the Korean side were already down to 10 men, Hwang having been sent off for a second booking after a body check on wing Maxi Nunez.
Midfielder Kim Jae-sung was sent off in the 72nd minute for a foul on Juan Sebastian Veron, his second yellow, and ’keeper Shin got a straight red 12 minutes from time for a foul on Nunez outside his box as both raced for a long ball out of the Estudiantes half. Denilson took over between the posts.
In Saturday’s final, South American champions Estudiantes will meet the winners of yesterday’s semi-final between title favorites Barcelona and Atlante of Mexico.
Benitez scored his second goal when Enzo Perez lobbed over the ’keeper and Benitez’s shot from the left, which Kim Jae-sung failed to block, went in off the far post.
Denilson, scorer of both goals in Pohang’s 2-1 win over TP Mazembe of DR Congo in their quarter-final, scored in the 71st minute when he latched onto a poor clearance in the Estudiantes box to beat goalkeeper Damian Albil from close range.
Estudiantes almost scored an early goal in the sixth minute when Shin failed to hold a long range shot from Rodrigo Brana and the lurking Mauro Boselli hit the post with an overhead kick. Benitez then blasted the rebound over.
The Argentine side gradually slid back into their more natural counter-attacking style as the Steelers became more daring and had a couple of shots on target that Albil held comfortably.
Pohang right-back Choi Hyo-jin spoilt a good chance for an equalizer in a fast counter-attack down the right, attempting a shot from a tight angle that went over when it would have been better to pulll the ball back into the middle.
Estudiantes right-back Clemente Rodriguez could have scored a third goal for Estudiantes in the dying minutes but his shot came off the post.
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