Ciro Immobile was on Monday sent off as 10-man SS Lazio crashed to a 3-1 Serie A defeat against Torino in Rome.
Italy international Immobile saw red just before the break for a head-butt aimed at Torino defender Nicolas Burdisso.
The defeat ended Lazio’s hopes of joining city rivals AS Roma in fourth.
“I can analyze the first half, because the match was decided by the referee,” an angry Lazio coach Simone Inzaghi said. “It was the most difficult break for me since I’ve been coach. It wasn’t right.”
Andrea Belotti and Immobile both rattled the woodwork in the first half before tempers flared following a blatant Iago Falque hand-ball in the penalty area. A furious Immobile, angered at Lazio not being awarded a penalty, jerked his head toward Burdisso in a face-to-face between the rivals.
The Lazio player was sent off after the referee consulted the video assistant referee (VAR).
“Immobile’s sending off? I don’t care. That’s what VAR is there for,” Torino coach Sinisa Mihajlovic said. “I want to talk about the match, because I’m proud of my boys, we deserved these three points because we were superior.”
All four goals were scored in the second half, with Alex Berenguer opening after 54 minutes and Venezuelan Tomas Rincon adding a second 10 minutes later after a solo break from midfield through the Lazio defense.
Simone Edera sealed the win on 73 minutes.
Luis Alberto pulled a goal back to give a glimmer of hope to the hosts, who played the entire second half without Immobile, their top scorer.
The win moves Torino up from 12th to eighth, with Lazio, who have a game in hand, staying fifth, eight points behind leaders Inter.
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