Juventus manager Antonio Conte enjoyed a winning return to the touchline on Sunday as the Serie A leaders celebrated the end of his four-month ban with a 1-0 victory against UC Citta di Palermo.
Stephan Lichtsteiner scored early in the second half of a game in which both teams struggled on a difficult pitch that cut up badly following a hailstorm at halftime.
AC Milan continued their revival with a third league victory in a row, coming from behind to win 4-2 at Torino with Robinho, Antonio Nocerino, Giampaolo Pazzini and Stephan El Shaaraway scoring the goals.
Delfino Pescara 1936 beat Genoa 2-0 in a clash of two teams stuck in the relegation zone and two goals from Gonzalo Bergessio gave Catania their first away win of the season, 3-1 against AC Siena.
Second-placed SSC Napoli were to play third-placed Inter in yesterday’s evening game.
Juve’s win — their 12th in 16 league games — took them on to 38 points and ensured they will finish the weekend top of the table.
Palermo playmaker Fabrizio Miccoli had a first-half goal disallowed for being offside before Switzerland fullback Lichtsteiner settled the match following a clever back-heel by Mirko Vucinic five minutes after the restart.
The hosts, who are 17th, had Michel Morganella sent off for a second bookable offense in the 75th minute.
Milan lost midfielder Nigel de Jong to injury in the 21st minute and Torino went ahead seven minutes later when Antonio Nocerino’s dreadful back-pass was intercepted by Mario Santana, who ran into the box and rounded Marco Amelia to score.
Brazilian forward Robinho leveled from a tight angle five minutes before halftime and Nocerino made amends for his blunder after the interval when he headed in a rebound after Jean-Francois Gillet parried the ball into his path from El Shaaraway’s cross.
Pazzini scored the third, despite Torino claims that he had committed a foul in the process, and El Shaaraway tapped in from close range after a mistake by Gillet for his 13th goal of the season.
Rolando Bianchi headed one back for Torino as Milan climbed to seventh with 24 points.
Slovakia midfielder Vladimir Weiss set up both Pescara goals in the second half, the first for Elvis Abbruscato and the second for Ante Vukusic.
Pescara moved up to 18th with 14 points, two more than their opponents, who are 19th in the 20-team table.
In another relegation battle, AC Chievo Verona scored twice in the last quarter of theie match at Cagliari to win 2-0 despite being on the back foot for most of the game.
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