Russian champions Zenit St Petersburg began the defense of their title with a hard-earned 1-0 win over Terek Grozny on Sunday as the new league season kicked off at the weekend amid uncertainty over its format.
No matter how they perform this year, Zenit will keep their crown for the next 15 months after Russian soccer bosses decided to break away from a traditional March-November format to a calendar more in line with the rest of Europe, extending the current season to the end of May next year.
While fans across the country try to get to grips with the changes, Russian FA chief Sergei Fursenko said the new format should help leading Russian clubs become more competitive in Europe.
For big spenders Zenit, whose annual budget is reported to exceed US$160 million, such a move could not come soon enough after they were hammered 3-0 by Dutch side Twente Enschede in the Europa League on Thursday.
However, Luciano Spalletti’s team shrugged off their European woes with an early goal by Serbian striker Danko Lazovic just enough to beat the hard-working Chechen side who made headlines in the off-season by hiring former World Player of the Year and Dutch international Ruud Gullit as coach.
CSKA Moscow also rebounded from a Europa League defeat as Sergei Ignashevich scored twice in four minutes either side of the interval to power last year’s runners-up to a 2-0 win against debt-ridden Amkar Perm.
Terek’s southern neighbors Anzhi Makhachkala were also in the news last month after signing former Brazil fullback Roberto Carlos.
The 2002 World Cup winner, however, had a quiet Russian league debut as Anzhi were held to a 0-0 home draw by top flight newcomers FK Krasnodar on Saturday.
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