POLAND
Slask Wroclaw claim title
Slask Wroclaw on Sunday won one of the tightest title races in recent history, bringing the trophy to their southwestern city for the first time since their debut title in 1977. Slask wrapped up their impressive run in the 16-club Ekstraklasa with a 1-0 win away to last season’s champions Wisla Krakow, who finished the season in seventh place. Their 51st-minute scorer was Rok Elsner, a Slovenian and French dual citizen who signed for Slask in 2010, and who had previously failed to find the net this season. Slask notched up 56 points over the season, just one ahead of runners-up Ruch Chorzow, who beat Lechia Gdansk 2-1 away. With 53 points, meanwhile, Legia Warsaw secured Poland’s third berth in European competition after beating Korona Kielce 1-0 away thanks to a 64th-minute goal from teenager Rafal Wolski. Last week, rising star Wolski earned his first senior call-up from Poland manager Franciszek Smuda for the Euro 2012 host nation’s squad.
NETHERLANDS
Feyenoord finish in second
Feyenoord earned a Champions League berth on Sunday after beating SC Heerenveen 3-1 in the final round of the Dutch league. Otman Bakkal, Sekou Cisse and Elvis Manu scored as Feyenoord finished second, one spot in front of PSV Eindhoven, who beat last-placed Excelsior Rotterdam 3-1. That defeat relegated Excelsior. Heerenveen and PSV will feature in the Europa league next season. Ajax, who secured their 31st league title on Wednesday last week, beat Vitesse Arnhem 3-1 with Andre Ooijer scoring in his last game before retiring. Dmitry Bultkin and Jan Vertonghen also found the net. Steve McClaren’s Twente will play Waalwijk in the playoffs for a Europa League spot after losing at VVV-Venlo 4-2. AZ Akmaar secured their Europa League spot with a 1-0 win over Groningen, while RKC Waalwijk lost 3-2 at NAC Breda. De Graafschap will participate in the relegation playoffs against lower division side Den Bosch after beating ADO The Hague 5-3.
BELGIUM
Anderlecht claim 31st title
RSC Anderlecht celebrated their 31st Belgian league title on Sunday after a 94th-minute penalty secured a 1-1 draw at home to nearest challengers Club Brugge KV. Anderlecht trailed to a 71st-minute tap-in from Maxime Lestienne, but won a penalty in stoppage-time when Michael Almeback was judged to have pushed Dieumerci Mbokani, allowing Guillaume Gillet to level with the final kick of the match. With two games left to play, Anderlecht have an unassailable seven-point lead over Brugge in the title playoffs. Anderlecht secured a qualifying spot for next season’s Champions League, but the race for second continues.
UKRAINE
Shakhtar retain the cup
Reigning champions Shakhtar Donetsk won their eighth national cup when they beat city rivals Metalurg 2-1 after extra-time in Kiev on Sunday. Brazilian midfielder Alex Teixeira put Shakhar into the lead in the 23rd minute when he lobbed the ball into the net over Metalurg goalkeeper Alexander Bandura, but Metalurg’s Nikolai Morozyuk pulled the scores level in the 69th minute with a well-struck free-kick, helped on its way by a slight ricochet. However, Shakhtar defender Alexander Kucher scored the winning goal in the 104th minute, sending home a rebound after Bandura parried a powerful shot by Yaroslav Rakitsky.
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