Cristiano Ronaldo scored his 71st Champions League goal as Real Madrid recorded a club record-equaling 15th consecutive win by beating FC Basel 1-0 in Switzerland in the Champions League on Wednesday.
The Portuguese superstar converted a Karim Benzema cutback 10 minutes before halftime at the St Jakob-Park as the reigning European champions, who had already qualified for the last 16, secured first place in Group B with a fifth win in five games.
Ronaldo’s goal allowed him to move level with former Madrid striker Raul as the tournament’s second-top scorer of all time, three behind Lionel Messi, who broke the record with a hat-trick for Barcelona against APOEL on Tuesday.
Photo: Reuters
And the goal secured their 15th consecutive victory in all competitions, a sequence that began with a 5-1 defeat of Basel at the Santiago Bernabeu in September.
Carlo Ancelotti’s men have therefore equaled the record that was set by Miguel Munoz’s team in 1960-1961 and then matched three seasons ago under Jose Mourinho.
“We played to our usual level, we defended well, stayed concentrated and at the end the most important thing was the victory,” Ancelotti said. “I’m happy to have equaled this record [15 straight wins], it’s good for the club and for the players.”
Meanwhile, Basel, who had won their previous two home games, fought admirably with 17-year-old Cameroonian forward Breel Embolo proving a real handful, and despite the defeat they know that a draw with Liverpool at Anfield in a fortnight will take them through to the knock-out stage.
Ancelotti believes they have the ability to do that.
“Right now I think Basel are better than Liverpool. The Swiss side have good fitness and are well-organized,” he added. “It won’t be easy at Anfield, but the Swiss have a little advantage.”
Basel’s Portuguese coach Paulo Sousa said he thought his team could have got more out of the game, but said he was confident about progressing.
“I’m disappointed because I think we deserved more from this match,” he said. “When Ancelotti says we have an advantage on Liverpool, I think he has a point.”
Ancelotti gave Keylor Navas his Champions League debut in goal in place of Iker Casillas and handed a start at right-back to Alvaro Arbeloa with Dani Carvajal absent due to illness.
However, James Rodriguez, Gareth Bale, Benzema and Ronaldo all started in attack and it was the latter two who combined to break the deadlock in the 35th minute after a closely fought opening to the game.
Benzema was the architect with a superb run in from the left to the byline, from where he cut the ball back beyond the reach of goalkeeper Tomas Vaclik for Ronaldo to score.
Ronaldo might have moved another goal closer to equalling Messi’s record early in the second period, but his fizzing free-kick was turned around the post by Vaclik.
Bale also crashed a shot off the woodwork but it was not always a comfortable evening for the visitors, with Shkelzen Gashi slicing a shot high and wide for Basel from a great position after fine work by captain Fabian Frei, the shot striking the hand of Sergio Ramos on its way through.
And the exciting Embolo held off Raphael Varane before attempting to round Navas, only for the Costa Rican goalkeeper to narrow the angle well and make a terrific save to turn the ball around the post, but Basel’s performance gave them plenty of reason to be optimistic ahead of that crunch trip to Liverpool.
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