Liverpool yesterday extended their perfect start to the season as goals from Georginio Wijnaldum and Roberto Firmino ensured the Premier League leaders punished Tottenham Hotspur 2-1.
Jurgen Klopp’s side avenged last season’s 4-1 thrashing at Tottenham with a large helping hand from their error-prone hosts.
Wijnaldum opened the scoring late in the first half after a mistake from Tottenham goalkeeper Michel Vorm.
Photo: AFP
Firmino wrapped up Liverpool’s fifth successive win soon after the interval, when the Brazil forward tapped in after more sloppy defending and another Vorm misjudgement.
Erik Lamela got one back for Tottenham in stoppage-time, but it was too late to rescue an undeserved draw.
The mature display was a statement of intent by Liverpool, who have made their best start since 1990-1991 as they chase a first English title since 1989-1990.
Not for the first time this season, the Reds triumphed through hard work, a superbly drilled defense and opportunistic finishing, rather than replicating the kind of swaggering play that took them to the Champions League final last season.
However, Klopp will not be complaining after securing a rare away victory at one of their top six rivals, proving they are likely to be the biggest threat to champions Manchester City.
For Tottenham, it was a dispiriting second successive defeat that served as a major blow to their own title ambitions.
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