Mexico and Ecuador, warming up for regional tournaments, played to a 1-1 draw in Seattle, Washington, on Saturday in a friendly international soccer match that drew 50,305 fans to Qwest Field.
Michael Arroyo’s 37th-minute strike gave Ecuador the draw, after Jorge Torres Nilo opened the scoring for Mexico in the seventh minute.
Arroyo’s shot from just outside the penalty area was one of Ecaudor’s few scoring chances.
Photo: AFP
Mexico gave themselves more opportunities, but manager Jose Manuel de la Torre said his team need to be able to convert more of their chances.
“When a team defends well, for instance, there is very[little] space, and with that, there were going to be few opportunities,” De la Torre said. “We had to be more effective, and we had to convert. We had a few of those opportunities, but we could not convert them into goals.”
The corner that led to Mexico’s goal was set up when Aldo de Nigris’ shot was batted away by Ecuadoran keeper Maximo Banguera.
Hector Moreno sent the corner across the penalty area, and Torres Nilo found the net for what Ecuador coach Reinaldo Rueda called a “surprising goal.”
“There were some surprising moments at the beginning of the game, especially that surprising goal, and we had to make it up,” Rueda said. “Maybe the first few minutes, we were not focused on a set-piece play.”
Mexico gave themselves a string of chances in the final 20 minutes, and de la Torre was pleased in general with what he saw from his team as they prepare to defend their title in the North and Central America and Caribbean region’s Gold Cup, which will be held in the US next month.
“It’s good to have these preparation games,” de la Torre said. “We see how teams are playing, but more than anything, players need to be ready for any circumstances that show up on the field.”
Mexico will play one more friendly against New Zealand in Denver, Colorado, on Wednesday before opening their Gold Cup campaign on June 5 against El Salvador.
Ecuador are preparing for South America’s Copa America that begins in early July in Argentina. They’ll play a friendly against Canada on Wednesday in Toronto.
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