Spectacular long-range strikes by midfielders Jordan Henderson and Philippe Coutinho earned Liverpool a 2-1 victory over Manchester City on Sunday that seriously compromised the English Premier League champions’ title defense.
After Henderson’s fine 11th-minute opener had been canceled out by Edin Dzeko at Anfield, Coutinho curled home in sumptuous fashion from outside the area to enhance Liverpool’s hopes of UEFA Champions League qualification.
City now lie five points behind leaders Chelsea, who have a game in hand due to their involvement in the League Cup final, and manager Manuel Pellegrini admitted that the odds were against his side retaining their title.
Photo: Reuters
“It was a close game, but Liverpool won because they scored two beautiful goals,” he said. “It is three points less with one game less. Of course it is difficult to reach the top of the table if you lose three points, but we must keep going and try to return to our normal performance and see where it takes us.”
Both teams had gone into the game on the back of European disappointments, but whereas City’s display suggested their 2-1 Champions League loss to Barcelona had not been fully digested, Liverpool showed no ill-effects from their penalty shootout defeat at Besiktas in the Europa League.
Liverpool only returned from Istanbul in the early hours of Friday morning and manager Brendan Rodgers said their performance against City was testament to the dedication of his players.
“I have to take my hat off to the players,” said Rodgers, whose side are on an 11-game unbeaten streak in the league. “They restricted a top team to just one shot on target and deserve all the praise they will get.”
Rodgers made four changes to the team that had come unstuck in Istanbul, with Daniel Sturridge among those who dropped to the bench, and saw his side take the lead in the 11th minute.
Henderson gathered a pass from Raheem Sterling, shifted the ball inside City captain Vincent Kompany and then curled an exquisite shot into Joe Hart’s top-left corner from outside the box.
However, City reacted quickly and after Sergio Aguero had hit the post, they drew level in the 25th minute when Aguero set up strike partner Edin Dzeko to beat Simon Mignolet from 10 yards.
A frenetic first half gave way to a more circumspect second period, but Coutinho gave the hosts victory with 15 minutes to play when he wriggled inside from the left flank and arced a shot past Hart from 25 yards.
It was his second stunning goal in a week, following his early strike in last weekend’s 2-0 win at Southampton, and echoed his winning goal from Liverpool’s 3-2 win over City in last season’s corresponding fixture.
Victory took Liverpool up to fifth place, two points behind Manchester United, who occupy the fourth and final Champions League berth, and three points below Arsenal, who climbed to third by beating Everton 2-0.
Olivier Giroud had been one of the villains of Arsenal’s shock 3-1 loss at home to Monaco in the Champions League in mid-week, missing a succession of chances, but he atoned with the opening goal at the Emirates Stadium.
The France striker struck six minutes before half-time, steering Mesut Ozil’s right-wing corner home with an adroit right-foot volley, and Tomas Rosicky sealed victory late on with a deflected shot.
“We were focused. It was a mentally determined performance,” said Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger, whose side now trail City by four points.
“You could see we suffered on Wednesday night against Monaco and that was still in our mind, but we were patient. That got us a good chance and we got a good win today,” he added.
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