English Premier League side Hull City recovered from the loss of an early away goal to beat Slovakian upstarts AS Trencin 2-1 and qualify for the Europa League playoffs on Thursday.
Hull, who qualified for European competition for the first time in their long history after losing to Arsenal in last season’s FA Cup final only managed a 0-0 draw in last week’s first leg in western Slovakia and that left them vulnerable to the concession of an away goal in the return.
Trencin, runners-up in the Slovakian top flight last season, stunned their hosts at the KC Stadium when giant forward Tomas Malec opened the scoring inside two minutes.
That left Steve Bruce’s side needing to score twice without reply to progress, but Egyptian Ahmed Elmohamady equalized just before the half-hour mark and substitute Sone Aluko netted the winner with 10 minutes remaining.
“You’re always worried when there’s 15 minutes to go, and you’re thinking about all the hype and euphoria, but you’re about to fall at the first hurdle,” Bruce said. “But we’ve stuck at it and, not for the first time, we’ve seen them do it. It’s been difficult, but we’ve got through it and let’s enjoy the draw tomorrow [Friday].”
Meanwhile, Celtic are now Scotland’s only surviving representative in European competition after Aberdeen and Scottish Cup holders St Johnstone were both knocked out on Thursday.
Aberdeen put up a brave fight against Real Sociedad at Pittodrie, but went down 3-2 on the night to the Spanish side to lose 5-3 on aggregate.
Meanwhile, the prolific Stevie May scored as St Johnstone drew 1-1 away to Spartak Trnava in Slovakia, but a 2-1 defeat in last week’s first leg cost them dear.
Celtic comprehensively lost 6-1 on aggregate to Polish champions Legia Warsaw in the UEFA Champions League third qualifying round, but their opponents were later eliminated for fielding an ineligible player.
Elsewhere, PSV Eindhoven, Torino and Olympique Lyonnais were among the teams to progress to the playoffs, although German Bundesliga outfit FSV Mainz 05 were surprisingly ousted by Greek club Asteras Tripolis, losing 3-1 on the night to go out 3-2 on aggregate.
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