Goals from Wesley Sneijder and Samuel Eto’o helped Inter defeat Sampdoria 2-0 and move second in Serie A on a Sunday that saw Udinese hit seven at Palermo and fourth-placed Lazio lose at Cagliari.
Sneijder opened the scoring with a 73rd-minute free kick in a bruising game with chances at both ends before Eto’o settled the matter with the final kick to take Inter one point above Napoli and within two of Milan.
Lazio went down 1-0 in Sardinia but the day’s biggest shock of the day came in Sicily where Palermo were trounced 7-0 by Udinese.
Photo: EPA
Palermo president Maurizio Zamparini was furious with his coach after the match. “[Delio] Rossi has a one per cent chance of staying with Palermo”, he told reporters. “You can bet on it.”
In Genoa, Inter had the better of the opening exchanges. Andrea Ronacchia fired wide and Houssine Kharja headed over before Sneijder had Samp goalkeeper Gianluca Curci scrambling to save a vicious free kick, all inside 15 minutes.
However, the home side gradually began pressuring the Inter defense, Andrea Poli firing against the upright on 41 minutes.
Inter had Julio Cesar to thank for keeping the scores level after he saved from the onrushing Maccarone but Sneijder finally broke the deadlock with a free kick on 73 minutes. The Dutchman almost did the trick again 10 minutes later, striking the post, before the always dangerous Eto’o cut inside from the left and doubled the lead deep into injury time.
Earlier on Sunday, Lazio dropped precious points on the leaders at Cagliari, an own goal from Andre Dias five minutes before halftime settling a tight contest in favor of Roberto Donadoni’s side.
In Palermo, Alexis Sanchez hit four while Antonio Di Natale bagged a hat-trick.
With the home side reduced to nine men after an hour, the scoreline could well have reached double figures if Francesco Guidolin’s side had not taken their foot off the gas.
Zamparini all but confirmed Delio Rossi would be sacked.
“The team is broken. He’s ruined my Palermo”, he said after the match. “I told him to sort out the defense and he hasn’t. He left out [Ezequiel] Munoz, our best defender. You can’t go on like this.”
A second-half brace from Amauri helped struggling Parma to a 2-2 draw at sixth-placed Roma.
At the bottom of the table Lecce came back from two goals down to snatch a point at Brescia, while a late penalty from Luis Jimenez saw Cesena beat Chievo Verona 1-0.
In Sunday’s early kick off, Catania beat Genoa 2-1.
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