Canada on Friday advanced to their first quarter-final since 2009 after playing to a scoreless draw with Honduras in the final Group A match of the 2017 CONCACAF Gold Cup tournament.
Canada and Honduras moved on to the quarters, where they join Group A winner Costa Rica — who advanced with a dominating 3-0 victory over winless French Guiana earlier on Friday.
Both Canada and Costa Rica went unbeaten in the group stage.
Photo: AP
Costa Rica finished with two wins and a draw for seven points ahead of Canada who had one victory and two draws for five points.
Canada have been the surprise team so far in the Gold Cup, getting an offensive spark from teen phenom Alphonso Davies. They also have excellent goalkeeping and more depth on their roster than previous Gold Cup teams.
Davies, who was the first player this tournament to score three goals, did not start on Friday due to an ankle problem, but he was inserted into the lineup by head coach Octavio Zambrano.
Canadian goalkeeper Milan Borjan got the shutout as he backed up his 10-save game against Costa Rica earlier with another solid performance.
Honduras advanced to the quarters, despite failing to score a goal in the group stage.
Their only win came as a result of French Guiana having to forfeit a game after defiantly playing former France international Florent Malouda, who had earlier been ruled ineligible for the tournament.
French Guiana were also fined an undisclosed amount and ex-Chelsea star Malouda was slapped with a two-game suspension that included a stadium ban.
In another bold move that might result in further discipline, Malouda arrived on the team bus and television cameras appeared to show him watching the game from an undisclosed location inside the stadium.
Taiwanese world No. 1 women’s doubles star Hsieh Su-wei on Saturday overcame a first-set loss to win her opening match at the Madrid Open. Top seeds Hsieh and partner Elise Mertens of Belgium, with whom she last month won her fourth Indian Wells women’s doubles title, bounced back from a rocky first set to beat Asia Muhammad of the US and Aldila Sutjiadi of Indonesia 2-6, 6-4, 10-2. Hsieh and Mertens were next to face Heather Watson of the UK and Xu Yifan of China in the round of 16. Thirty-eight-year-old Hsieh last month reclaimed her world No. 1 spot after her Indian
EYES ON THE PRIZE: Armed with three solid men’s singles shuttlers and doubles Olympic champions, Taiwan aim to make their first Thomas Cup semi-final, Chou Tien-chen said Taiwanese badminton star Tai Tzu-ying yesterday quickly dispatched Malaysia’s Goh Jin Wei in straight sets, while her male counterpart Chou Tien-chen beat Germany’s Kai Schaefer, as Taiwan’s women’s and men’s teams won their Group B opening rounds of the TotalEnergies BWF Thomas and Uber Cup Finals in Chengdu, China. World No. 5 Tai beat Goh 21-19, 22-20 in a speedy 33 minutes, her fourth straight victory over the world No. 24 shuttler since they first faced each other in the quarter-finals of the 2018 Malaysia Open, where Tai went on to win the women’s singles title. Malaysia followed up Tai’s opening victory
Chen Yi-tung (陳奕通) secured a historic Olympic berth on Sunday by winning the senior men’s foil event at the 2024 Asia Oceania Zonal Olympic Fencing Qualifiers in United Arab Emirates. Chen defeated Samuel Elijah of Singapore 15-4 in the final in Dubai to secure the only wild card in the event, making him the first male Olympian fencer from Taiwan in 36 years and only the sixth Taiwanese fencer to ever qualify for the quadrennial event. The last appearance by a Taiwanese male fencer at the Olympics was in 1988, when Wang San-tsai (王三財) and Cheng Ming-hsiang (鄭明祥) competed in Seoul. The
Rafael Nadal on Tuesday lost in straight sets to 31st-ranked Jiri Lehecka in the fourth round at the Madrid Open, while Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei advanced to the semi-finals in the women’s doubles. Nadal said that he was feeling good about his progress following his latest injury layoff. Nadal called it a “positive week” in every way and said his body held up well. “I was able to play four matches, a couple of tough matches,” Nadal said. “So very positive, winning three matches, playing four matches at the high level of tennis. I enjoyed a lot playing at home. I leave here with