Manchester City, buoyed by the return of Yaya Toure, will look to seal a spot in the UEFA Champions League knockout stage when they travel to Borussia Moenchengladbach today to play a team struggling for form.
Toure, banned by coach Pep Guardiola following comments by his agent about the manager, returned from a three-month exile to score both goals in City’s 2-1 English Premier League win at Crystal Palace on Saturday.
Guardiola’s decision to restore the Ivory Coast international has further boosted spirits, already high with the team just a point behind leaders Chelsea in the league.
Photo: AP
“His personality and his quality are there to see,” Guardiola said.
“He can play many positions. We now have one more man that can help us achieve our targets this season,” he said.
“With this intensity, we’re going to play in the Champions League,” said the Spaniard, whose team would advance with a win or a draw.
City, who routed ’Gladbach 4-0 at home in September, are in second place in the group on seven points, three ahead of the German side, and can wrap up qualification with victory.
A draw will be enough if Celtic lose at home to Barcelona in the other Group C fixture.
Barcelona are top with nine points, with Celtic in last place on two.
The German side, who also lost at home to City last season, would secure third spot and UEFA Europa League action if they draw and Celtic lose.
They still have an outside chance of a top-two finish, but their final group match is away at Barcelona.
However, Moenchengladbach are stuck in a rut, having failed to win any of their past six Bundesliga matches in which they have scored just one goal.
Their last victory in any competition dates back to last month in the DFB Pokal.
Coach Andre Schubert, who still has the backing of club bosses, but was jeered following Saturday’s 2-1 home loss to Cologne, will be without suspended Christoph Kramer and Julian Korb, as well as the injured Patrick Herrmann.
“We are just not scoring goals,” Moenchengladbach captain Lars Stindl said. “We are missing the final touch up front and some luck, but we must forget everything, put everything behind us and keep together so that we can improve.”
“Wednesday’s match is completely different under different conditions,” he said. “We want to play a good home game, secure third place early. That is our big goal and we believe in our chances. We know what we are capable of.”
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