Fans jeered Olympique de Marseille throughout their 3-1 Ligue 1 victory over rock-bottom AC Ajaccio despite a hat-trick from Andre Ayew.
It was the 1993 European champions’ first win since the end of February, but it was not enough to lift them above sixth place as they remain six points off a European qualification spot ahead of the weekend matches.
Despite Ayew giving the hosts a third-minute lead with a delectable lob, fans vented their anger throughout the game following last month in which Marseille picked up just two points out of a possible 15 — the worst record in the league.
Photo: AFP
Fans unfurled banners telling the players and officials to “take responsibility” and accusing them all of “destroying in one season a club built over many years.”
This result, though, at least ended a run of successive 1-0 home defeats against strugglers OGC Nice and Stade Rennes.
Despite the lack of home support, Marseille were dominant, and Ajaccio goalkeeper Guillermo Ochoa at times kept his side in the match with saves against Ayew and Saber Khelifa.
Fans chanted for coach Jose Anigo to quit and became increasingly hostile and restless when forward Andre-Pierre Gignac headed wide with the goal at his mercy.
Ayew doubled Marseille’s advantage with a powerful header from Dimitri Payet’s cross on the hour mark, but within a minute Ivory Coast forward Junior Tallo had pulled a goal back, although from a position that appeared at least 2m offside.
With 15 minutes to play, Ayew settled the nerves with his hat-trick goal from Brice Dja Djedje’s cross.
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