SERIE A
Torino rally to beat Verona
Torino came from behind to win 3-1 at Hellas Verona in Serie A on Monday and boost their chances of qualifying for Europe. Torino moved level on points with Verona and sixth-placed Parma, three points behind Inter, who occupy the last Europa League qualifying spot. Verona took the lead 10 minutes from halftime after Cesare Bovo fouled Juanito Gomez and Luca Toni converted the resulting spot-kick. Ciro Immobile leveled immediately after the restart with his 13th goal of the season, although there were suspicions of offside. Highly rated midfielder Alessio Cerci put Torino in front with a superb volley from Omar El Kaddouri’s pass four minutes later. El Kaddouri sealed the match on the hour, slotting Cerci’s through-ball into the bottom left corner from just outside the area.
LA LIGA
Sociedad edge Malaga 1-0
Carlos Vela scored early and Real Sociedad hung on to claim a narrow win at Malaga on Monday and move in on La Liga’s last Champions League qualifying spot. The Mexican striker continued perhaps the best season of his career by guiding Jose Angel Valdes’ cross into the area past goalkeeper Willy Caballero with his left foot, as the visitors went ahead after 10 minutes at the La Rosaleda. The Basque side maintained the momentum following Malaga’s sloppy start, with the Andalucians failing to conjure up much in attack. Sociedad join Villarreal on 40 points to sit just three back of Athletic Bilbao in the race to clinch the last spot in Europe’s top-tier competition. Malaga sit 17th, three points above the drop.
LA LIGA
Police seek tear gas culprit
Spanish police have still not been able to shed any light on who threw a tear gas canister onto the pitch in Saturday’s La Liga match between Villarreal and RC Celta de Vigo and have appealed to the public for information. “A hooligan cannot be allowed to blacken the name of the fans of @VillarrealCF,” police said on Twitter. “We are looking for the person responsible for this act of madness,” they added, posting a YouTube link to footage of the incident and a telephone number for the public to call in information. Celta were leading 1-0 at El Madrigal with about three minutes left when the canister landed near the visitors’ goal and began spewing out a thick cloud of white smoke. The players, some of whom were clearly suffering the effects of the gas, retreated inside the stadium and fans quickly left the ground. The match was restarted about 30 minutes later in an almost empty arena and Celta’s Nolito made it 2-0 from a free-kick in the 90th minute.
BUNDESLIGA
Hamburg contract Slomka
Bundesliga strugglers SV Hamburg on Monday signed Mirko Slomka as their coach until 2016, as they seek to avoid what would be their first-ever relegation from the top flight. Slomka has penned a two-year contract and will be Hamburg’s third coach this season. The club fired Thorsten Fink in September last year and Bert van Marwijk last weekend. Slomka now faces the unenviable task of inspiring a squad low on morale. “It’s going to be about sorting out the tactical and technical abilities of the team. That’s what we’re going to have to work on in the next few days,” he said in his first press conference. “We’ll do everything we can to tug the club free of the situation it is in.” Slomka said he had given little thought to what happens if his rescue mission fails. “I’m not dealing with the issue of the second division, but it would be naive not to give it any thought,” he said. “I am just assuming we will stay in the league.”
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