Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger on Thursday praised midfielder Aaron Ramsey’s composure after the Welshman scored twice in his side’s 4-1 home win over CSKA Moscow in their UEFA Europa League quarter-final first leg.
Ramsey and France international Alexandre Lacazette each scored twice in a blistering first half for the Gunners, who are the top scorers in the competition this season with 27 goals.
Asked about Ramsey’s second goal, a sweetly struck side-footed lob over CSKA goalkeeper Igor Akinfeev, Wenger told reporters: “He’s a much better finisher nowadays.”
Photo: AP
“He’s calmer the way he finishes — you see he is composed,” he said. “It’s the decisionmaking that is right. He didn’t try to smash it. He took in information before he got the ball and what he decided to do was because of where the ’keeper was. It’s not so much the technical movement, it’s making the right decision at the right moment.”
The Frenchman also expressed his hope that Ramsey, who has 18 months left on his contract, would remain at Arsenal.
“We want him to stay and he will be an important player for the future of the club — he is an important player for me and for the club,” he said.
Wenger added that Arsenal must remain focused for the second leg in Moscow on Thursday next week if they are to progress in the Europa League, which is almost certainly Arsenal’s only route into the UEFA Champions League next season.
“We have to go there with the right focus and try to win the game,” he said. “We need to keep our feet on the ground, be humble and try to do our job well.”
CSKA Moscow manager Viktor Goncharenko was left ruing his decision to try to play an attacking game at the Emirates Stadium.
“They outperformed us greatly. It’s not a great result for us,” Goncharenko told reporters. “We played very open football, but playing open football against Arsenal was a great disaster.”
Arsenal are likely to have to beat the might of Atletico Madrid to end their season on a high as the favorites for the competition eased past Portugal’s Sporting 2-0 in the first leg of their quarter-final.
Koke put the 2011-2012 winners ahead in the Spanish capital after just 22 seconds and Antoine Griezmann’s 24th goal of the season put Diego Simeone’s men on the brink of a fifth European semi-final in his seven seasons in charge of the club.
Elsewhere, SS Lazio edged a six-goal thriller 4-2 against Red Bull Salzburg as all four home sides took an advantage into the second leg.
RB Leipzig lead French giants Olympique de Marseille 1-0 after Germany international striker Timo Werner got the only goal for the Bundesliga side.
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
A soccer jersey carrying a national map including disputed Western Sahara has become a hot commodity in Morocco after a diplomatic dispute with Algeria. Retailers said RS Berkane jerseys have been flying off the shelves after a Confederation of African Football (CAF) Cup match against Algerian club USM Alger was canceled last month over the jerseys. “We are overwhelmed by the influx of messages and requests,” said Brahim Rabii, representative of the official RS Berkane jersey distributor. Algeria broke off diplomatic relations with Morocco in 2021, partly over the issue of Western Sahara. The former Spanish colony is largely controlled by Morocco, but claimed