Big-spending Paris Saint-Germain continued their shaky start to the Ligue 1 season when they were held to a 0-0 draw at AC Ajaccio and had Ezequiel Lavezzi sent off, before the floodlights failed for several minutes on Sunday.
PSG, expected to ease to the title, were missing new signings Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Thiago Silva, who are not fully fit, but they still had the best chances before Argentine Lavezzi was dismissed on the hour for a two-footed jumping tackle.
Jeremy Menez had a gilt-edged opportunity, but his effort was saved amid PSG pressure, while Eduardo hit the post with a classy strike for the Corsicans, relegation contenders last term.
Photo: Reuters
With the game already into stoppage-time, the floodlights at the modest Stade Francois-Coty suddenly went out, leaving fans and players standing about wondering what was going on as the referee chatted with Ajaccio officials.
Eventually the lights came back on and the teams played out the remaining few minutes with no incident.
Paris Saint-Germain coach Carlo Ancelotti, sent to the stands before the blackout for kicking a bottle in disgust, also saw his side draw their opener the previous weekend when former AC Milan forward Ibrahimovic spared their blushes with a late leveler at home to Lorient.
Olympique de Marseille and Andre-Pierre Gignac endured a torrid time last season, but the burly frontman finally came good with the first goal in a 2-0 win over Sochaux-Montbeliard at the Stade Velodrome.
Rod Fanni sealed the win late on as the southerners racked up a second straight league win under new coach Elie Baup.
“It’s good for our confidence. It’s a good start to the season. It has been a while since OM started a season like this,” Gignac told reporters after scoring following a 54th-minute corner and having other chances.
Girondins de Bordeaux, the 2009 champions who were just as anonymous as 2010 winners Marseille last term, also made it a maximum six points when Poland midfielder Ludovic Obraniak netted his second of the season in a 1-0 victory over Stade Rennais.
Henri Saivet missed a penalty midway though the first half, but Obraniak fired in 15 minutes from time for the hosts.
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