An exquisite finish by Nani helped send Manchester United back to the top of the English Premier League table after a 3-1 win over Tottenham Hotspur at Old Trafford yesterday.
Following a drab first half, Ryan Giggs opened the scoring from the penalty spot, but United looked set for a frustrating afternoon after Ledley King powered in a 70th-minute equalizer.
Nani’s wonderful finish, however, made it 2-1 10 minutes from time, before Giggs sealed the points with his second penalty-kick.
PHOTO: AFP
Just as the sudden return of Wayne Rooney from injury lifted United in their recent Champions League game with Bayern Munich, his surprise absence from this game left the team subdued.
The England striker, who only returned from an ankle injury last week, was missing after suffering a groin strain in training on Thursday.
It was left to Dimitar Berbatov to lead the attack against his former club, yet the Bulgarian endured another frustrating afternoon as he failed to find the target for the sixth successive game.
Both teams have produced some cracking entertainment this season and this was an eagerly-awaited showdown between two of the league’s in-form clubs.
Yet the high-stakes clash was a dull affair for half an hour, Tottenham enjoying plenty of possession, but doing little with it, while United looked anything but title contenders.
Tottenham were living dangerously as they invited United to attack them and United’s pressure finally paid off when Benoit Assou-Ekotto upended Evra inside the penalty area.
Former Monaco full-back Evra had vomited on the pitch at the start of the second half, but it was Tottenham who were feeling sick when Giggs kept his composure to beat Gomes from the penalty spot in the 58th minute.
Yet United’s lead lasted just 12 minutes as King stunned Old Trafford after taking advantage of sloppy defending to power home the equaliser.
Nani came to the rescue with a wonderful 80th-minute finish to restore his side’s advantage and Tottenham’s hopes of stealing a point faded when Giggs kept his cool to make it 3-1.
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