West Ham United manager Manuel Pellegrini on Sunday said the 3-1 victory at Everton that moved his side off the foot of the English Premier League table was the perfect way to celebrate his 65th birthday.
Pellegrini’s new side played some fine, flowing soccer as they picked up their first points of the season on Merseyside.
“I was not worried about my birthday today — I just wanted to win the game. It was the best gift my players could give me,” Pellegrini said. “We believe in what we are doing and we are not going to change. I said last time after we lost I will accept advice, but I was not going to change what we are doing.”
Photo: Reuters
Andriy Yarmolenko put West Ham in command with two goals inside the first 31 minutes on his first Premier League start, with the Ukraine international taking time to settle in England prior to his brace at Goodison Park.
“I know what the Premier League is and Andriy didn’t arrive here ready to play in the Premier League,” Pellegrini said. “He has a lot of quality, he has demonstrated that, but he needs more work. We preferred to work with him a couple of weeks and when I saw he was ready, he needed to demonstrate his quality. I think that today he did that.”
The only negative questions Pellegrini was forced to answer were to do with forward Lucas Perez, who, according to broadcaster Sky Sports, refused to warmup to come on as a substitute in the second half.
“I called Lucas to get ready to play, but Antonio was already ready so played as I needed to make the change,” Pellegrini said. “I don’t have any problem with the player.”
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