Valencia continued their solid start to the season and climbed to second in La Liga when recent Spain recruit Paco Alcacer set them on their way to a 3-0 win at Getafe on Monday.
Forward Alcacer, who scored on his competitive Spain debut in this month’s 5-1 Euro 2016 qualification victory over Macedonia, fired Valencia ahead in the seventh minute at Getafe’s Coliseum Alfonso Perez in the Madrid suburbs.
Midfielder Andre Gomes made it 2-0 in the 20th minute.
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Striker Rodrigo had an eventful second half when he netted a 72nd-minute penalty, before earning a second yellow card and getting sent off a minute later.
The victory lifted Valencia into second place after four matches, level on 10 points with Sevilla and two behind early leaders Barcelona, the only team with a 100 percent record.
Four-time World Player of the Year Lionel Messi starred as Barca scored a thumping 5-0 win at Levante UD on Sunday, while champions Atletico Madrid have eight points in fourth following Saturday’s 2-2 draw at home to RC Celta de Vigo.
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Real Madrid are seventh on six points after they hammered hapless RC Deportivo de La Coruna 8-2 on Saturday to help the stuttering European champions put consecutive La Liga defeats behind them.
Hopes are high at Valencia, who failed to qualify for Europe last season, that a takeover by Singapore billionaire Peter Lim will help the club put years of financial woes behind them, transforming them into genuine challengers in domestic and continental competition.
Lim’s purchase of the club is close to completion, although reports in Spain have said talks with Valencia’s main creditor, Bankia, have broken down.
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
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