Olympique de Marseille put a trying week behind them in the best possible fashion on Sunday night, with a 3-0 victory at home to Paris Saint-Germain that put a sizeable dent in their archrivals’ title hopes.
OM’s Champions League ambitions were compromised by a loss to Olympiakos in the middle of last week, before Andre-Pierre Gignac was dropped over a row with coach Didier Deschamps, but they stopped the rot to condemn PSG to a third league loss.
Loic Remy broke the deadlock early on and with PSG’s expensively assembled team floundering in defense and toothless in attack, Marseille took full advantage through second-half goals from Morgan Amalfitano and Andre Ayew.
Photo: EPA
“I’m thinking about our supporters, who had lots of anger, but who I think will have really enjoyed tonight,” Deschamps said. “After the disappointment of Wednesday, producing this performance against a team second in the league is a huge satisfaction.”
Defeat for PSG kept them in second place and allowed Montpellier to hold on to the top spot in Ligue 1, while Marseille climbed one place to ninth, seven points below the top three.
The away side had started brightly at Stade Velodrome, but Marseille took the lead from their first sight of goal in the ninth minute.
Cesar Azpilicueta was given time to cross from the right wing and his center was met by an imperious downward header from Remy, who claimed his seventh goal of the season.
PSG’s only chance of note in the first half saw Mohamed Sissoko drill a 25-yard half-volley against the post with Steve Mandanda beaten.
OM lost Remy to an ankle injury, but they were given few problems by PSG, whose record signing Javier Pastore struggled to impose himself, delighting the home fans with some uncharacteristically clumsy touches.
The Argentine was taken off before the hour, along with a furious Kevin Gameiro, but their replacements, Mathieu Bodmer and Mevlut Erding, had been on the field for a matter of minutes before the hosts doubled their lead.
Amalfitano picked Blaise Matuidi’s pocket in midfield and then gathered a pass from Remy’s replacement, Jordan Ayew, before finding the bottom-left corner with an unerring drive.
PSG’s misery was complete in the 83rd minute, with Amalfitano crossing for Andre Ayew to find the net with a header that flicked off defender Marcos Ceara before trickling past Salvatore Sirigu.
“They have something that we don’t — that grit, that rage, that ability to do damage in 50-50s,” PSG coach Antoine Kombouare said. “We’ve lost six points, but we’ve only played 15 games, we’re second and the important thing will be our capacity to react.”
Earlier, Lisandro Lopez scored his first goals since his return from an ankle injury sustained in August as Olympique Lyonnais salved their own Champions League heartache with a 3-0 win at Auxerre that saw them reclaim fifth place.
Tuesday’s 0-0 draw with Ajax practically extinguished OL’s Champions League hopes, but they recorded their first win since the end of last month via a brace from Lisandro and a late Michel Bastos strike.
In the day’s other afternoon kick-off, Lorient climbed above AS Saint-Etienne into seventh place by beating second-bottom OGC Nice 1-0 thanks to a 63rd-minute penalty by Arnold Mvuemba.
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