Athletic Bilbao climbed back above Villarreal into fourth place in La Liga after Ibai Gomez struck twice in a 4-2 comeback win at home to struggling Real Valladolid on Monday.
Oscar Gonzalez stabbed the ball in from close range to give the visitors a surprise 15th-minute lead at a rain-soaked San Mames Barria, while Valladolid goalkeeper Diego Marino kept Bilbao at bay until midway through the second half with a host of fine saves.
The 23-year-old Spain youth international, a product of Villarreal’s academy, was unable to prevent Gomez leveling with a clinical finish from a tight angle in the 65th.
Photo: AFP
Substitute Oscar De Marcos fired Bilbao ahead with a close-range header 10 minutes later, before Gomez completed his double in the 82nd with another low strike and Ander Herrera nodded a fourth with four minutes to go.
Valladolid substitute Valdet Rama then lashed the ball into the roof of the net in added time after a run through the home defense.
Bilbao, who visit Atletico Madrid in the quarter-finals of the Copa del Rey Cup tomorrow, have won nine of their 11 league games at their new stadium this season and drawn two.
Photo: AFP
Monday’s victory lifted them back above Villarreal, who won 2-0 at home to UD Almeria on Sunday, into the fourth spot that would earn them a berth in the Champions League qualifiers next season.
The Basque club have 39 points from 20 matches, while Villarreal are fifth on 37.
Real Sociedad are sixth on 33 after drawing 2-2 at Getafe on Sunday, while Valladolid are third-from-bottom on 16.
“We are on a very good run at home,” Gomez told broadcaster Cuatro. “We have often fallen behind, but managed to turn the game around and that counts for a lot.
“The team is in good shape and we are maintaining our intensity for the whole 90 minutes, which is very important,” he added.
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