LOSC Lille Metropole beat Olympique de Marseille 1-0 on Tuesday with a late goal from Nolan Roux to consolidate second place in the French league and put pressure on leaders Paris Saint-Germain (PSG).
Roux scored his sixth goal this season by heading a cross from Florent Balmont into the bottom corner in the first minute of stoppage-time, while Lille goalkeeper Vincent Enyeama kept an 11th straight clean sheet in the league. Lille pulled within a point of PSG and is nine points clear of Marseille.
“I’m sorry for those who will say: again a 1-0 victory,” Lille coach Rene Girard said. “Football is about defending and attacking. We did attack since we scored a goal. We’re efficient. We don’t dominate by creating 20 chances per game, but we step up when it matters.”
Photo: AFP
AS Monaco earned a third straight victory by defeating OGC Nice 3-0 to stay in third place, one point behind Lille, while Nantes edged Valenciennes 2-1 to move provisionally into fifth place.
Florian Thauvin was booed by the crowd at Stade Pierre Mauroy every time he touched the ball. The Marseille forward went on strike this summer to obtain a transfer from his former club, Lille.
Lille tested Marseille goalkeeper Steve Mandanda with long-range strikes from Ronny Rodelin in the fifth minute and Balmont in the 14th.
Photo: AFP
Hopwever, Andre-Pierre Gignac was the most threatening player in the first half, forcing Enyeama to punch away his cross-shot in the 17th. The Marseille striker then rolled away from Lille defender Simon Kjaer to be clean through on goal in the 24th, but Enyeama denied him.
The Lille goalkeeper frustrated the visitors in the second half, stopping a close-range effort from Gignac in the 54th, a drive from Thauvin and a volley from Gignac in the 63rd.
Marseille lost France playmaker Mathieu Valbuena and Dimitri Payet to injuries in the 72nd minute and the 78th, respectively. Payet picked up a left-calf strain, whereas Valbuena suffered a left-shoulder injury that will sideline him for at least four weeks.
Photo: AFP
“We should have scored and taken the lead,” Marseille coach Elie Baup said. “Conceding that goal in stoppage-time really hurts. It’s unfair given the game we had.”
Monaco played without Colombia striker Radamel Falcao, who is recovering from a thigh injury. However, it hardly mattered as Monaco converted their first two scoring chances.
Colombia midfielder James Rodriguez put Monaco ahead with a curling shot from a tight angle in the fifth minute, before striker Emmanuel Riviere outjumped the Nice defense in the 23rd to meet a cross from Anthony Martial and send a looping header inside the far post for his seventh goal this season.
Monaco goalkeeper Danijel Subasic protected his team’s lead by stopping a low volley from Nice winger Valentin Eysseric in the seventh minute and tipping around the post a low drive from Argentine striker Dario Cvitanich in the 26th.
Riviere then wasted two good chances. The Monaco striker sent a chip over the bar in the 38th minute and lost his balance with the goal at his mercy, after beating Nice goalkeeper Luca Veronese in the 56th.
However, Monaco substitute Lucas Ocampos put the result beyond doubt by stealing the ball from Nice defender Mathieu Bodmer and dribbling past Veronese to slot into an empty net in the 89th.
“We had the match under control,” Monaco coach Claudio Ranieri said. “I asked my players to play aggressively, but also to keep calm.”
Jose Saez gave Valenciennes the lead with a lob in the 52nd minute before Nantes forward Alejandro Bedoya leveled with a long-range strike that deflected off defender Benjamin Angoua in the 59th.
Valenciennes goalkeeper Nicolas Penneteau saved a penalty from Filip Djordjevic in the 72nd minute after the Nantes striker was fouled by Angoua. Nantes substitute Fernando Aristeguieta scored the winner by volleying home a corner in the 89th.
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