Arsenal and Olympique de Marseille set aside their poor league form so far this season with valuable home wins in their Champions League group matches on Wednesday.
Arsenal edged Greek side Olympiakos 2-1, while Marseille, who have just one league win all season, pulled off an impressive 3-0 victory at home to German champions Borussia Dortmund.
Marseille top group F with six points from their two matches, while Arsenal are second on four.
Elsewhere, champions Barcelona eased to a 5-0 win away at BATE Borisov, while AC Milan — who grabbed a last-gasp 2-2 draw with Barca in their opening group match — overcame Czech debutants Viktoria Plzen 2-0 at the San Siro.
Chelsea looked like they were on their way to making it two wins from two as they took a 1-0 lead away at Valencia, veteran midfielder Frank Lampard scoring an excellent goal, his 20th in the competition.
However, Valencia forced a deserved draw four minutes from time as Salomon Kalou, who had just come on for Lampard, was penalized for handball and Roberto Soldado made no mistake from the spot.
Lampard said that he liked nothing more than a challenge, having found his position under scrutiny after losing his starting place in recent games.
“Yes, it’s tough when you lose your place, but it’s happened to me before and I have always risen to such a challenge,” the 33-year-old said.
Lampard’s performance earned praise from Chelsea manager Andre Villas-Boas, who had reacted angrily on Tuesday at a question as to whether he had a future at the club.
“It was a good performance from Lampard and there is nothing more to say,” the Portuguese coach said. “He is one of the best players in our squad and I was very happy with him. The team worked well collectively and individually, and so I was very happy.”
Arsenal made a roaring start against Olympiakos, easing into a 2-0 lead thanks to goals by 18-year-old Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain — the third-youngest scorer for Arsenal in Champions League history — and Andre Santos.
However, some dreadful Gunners defending allowed Olympiakos back into the match six minutes later as David Fuster made them pay.
Oxlade-Chamberlain, whose father, former England international Mark Chamberlain, was in the crowd, said he had reveled in playing at such a high level just months after playing in League One.
“It was a really good experience,” he said. “It’s a big step up, but I want to play at the top level and I have plenty more time to play in the Champions League. It’s my first time in the Champions League and I’m glad we’ve achieved three points.”
Marseille owed their victory to Ghanaian star Andre Ayew, who scored a double, the first a fine shot from the edge of the box and the second a penalty.
Loic Remy netted in between for Didier Deschamps’ side.
“To have six points after two games is good,” Marseille coach Deschamps told Canal+. “In the last two seasons, we had zero points [after two games], but to qualify you need a minimum of 10.”
“We’ve made a good start, but we’re not there yet,” he said.
Barcelona had wrapped up the three points by halftime as they outclassed their Belarusian hosts.
The hosts hardly helped their cause with an own-goal to make it 1-0 and their goalkeeper Alyaksandr Gutor dropping the ball onto Lionel Messi’s head for their third.
The Argentine maestro added another early in the second half with a rasping drive to make it 14 goals in 10 matches this season.
Milan had made heavy weather of the first half against their Czech opponents, but goals by Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Antonio Cassano in the second half gave them the breathing space they required.
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