Lille OSC were on Friday quick out of the blocks after the Ligue 1 winter break, overcoming a late sending off to beat Stade Malherbe Caen 3-1 and consolidate second place behind Paris Saint-Germain.
Ivory Coast international Nicolas Pepe was at the heart of this 11th league success of the season, scoring in the eighth minute and setting up Rafael Leao and Brazilian Luiz Araujo to complete a cozy win.
Pepe’s 13th goal of the campaign drew him level in the Ligue 1 scoring charts with PSG’s Kylian Mbappe.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Caen got a late consolation five minutes into additional time from Chad striker Casimir Ninga.
Lille finished a man down after Zeki Celik’s foul on Ninga when the Caen striker was faced with an open goal with seven minutes of regulation time remaining.
Lille took to the pitch in Normandy without France under-21 international leftback Fode Ballo-Toure, who signed for Thierry Henry’s strugglers AS Monaco on Thursday.
The game was moved forward 24 hours as local authorities prepare for the ninth weekend of the “yellow vest” movement protests.
Lille are now on 37 points, 10 adrift of champions PSG, who were yesterday scheduled to play at Amiens and hoping to bounce back after their shock Coupe de la Ligue loss to En Avant de Guingamp in midweek.
Also dumped out of the Coupe de la Ligue this week were Olympique Lyonnais, who were on Friday held 1-1 at home by Stade de Reims.
Pablo Chavarria put the visitors into the lead in the first half, with Bertrand Traore wrong-footing Reims goalkeeper Edouard Mendy on 70 minutes to level.
Lyon remain in third, four points behind Lille, with a game in hand.
LA LIGA
AP, MADRID
Forward Raul de Tomas on Friday scored a hat-trick to lead Rayo Vallecano de Madrid to a 4-2 win over RC Celta de Vigo, boosting their chances of escaping La Liga’s relegation zone.
After he curled in a free-kick in the fourth minute, Celta equalized through defender Nestor Araujo and took the lead in the 18th through striker Maxi Gomez’s penalty.
De Tomas made it 2-2 in the 37th after a video review overturned an initial offside call, and then volleyed home a pass in the 77th.
Substitute Bebe netted the fourth in stoppage-time.
De Tomas, 24, came up through Real Madrid’s youth teams. He last season scored 24 goals for Rayo in the second division to help them earn promotion back to the top flight.
He now leads Rayo — a small Madrid-based club — with eight league goals this campaign.
Rayo have won three matches in a row and are in 18th place.
“We had been playing well, but not getting the results to show for it. Now our work is paying off,” De Tomas said. “The teams ahead of us now know that Rayo is in the fight.”
A sumo star was born in Japan on Sunday when 24-year-old Takerufuji became the first wrestler in 110 years to win a top-division tournament on his debut, triumphing at the 15-day Spring Grand Sumo Tournament in Osaka despite injuring his ankle on the penultimate day. Takerufuji, whose injury had left him in a wheelchair outside the ring, shoved out the higher-ranked Gonoyama at the Edion Arena Osaka to the delight of the crowd, giving him an unassailable record of 13 wins and two losses to claim the Emperor’s Cup. “I did it just through willpower. I didn’t really know what was going
The US’ Ilia Malinin on Saturday produced six scintillating quadruple jumps, including a quadruple Axel, in the men’s free skate to capture his first figure skating world title. The 19-year-old nicknamed the “Quad god,” who is the only skater to land a quadruple Axel in competition, dazzled with an array of breathtakingly executed jumps starting with his quad Axel and including a quadruple Lutz in combination with a triple flip and a quadruple toe loop in combination with a triple toe. He added an unexpected triple-triple combination at the end to earn a world-record 227.79 in the free program for a championship
Shohei Ohtani’s interpreter is being criminally investigated by the IRS, and the attorney for his alleged bookmaker said Thursday that the ex-Los Angeles Dodgers employee placed bets on international soccer — but not baseball. The IRS confirmed Thursday that interpreter Ippei Mizuhara and Mathew Bowyer, the alleged illegal bookmaker, are under criminal investigation through the agency’s Los Angeles Field Office. IRS Criminal Investigation spokesperson Scott Villiard said he could not provide additional details. Mizuhara, 39, was fired by the Dodgers on Wednesday following reports from the Los Angeles Times and ESPN about his alleged ties to an illegal bookmaker and debts well
MLB on Friday announced a formal investigation into the scandal swirling around Shohei Ohtani and his former interpreter amid charges that the Los Angeles Dodgers superstar was the victim of “massive theft.” The Dodgers on Wednesday fired Ippei Mizuhara, Ohtani’s long-time interpreter and close friend, after Ohtani’s representatives alleged that the Japanese two-way star had been the victim of theft, which was reported to involve millions of dollars and link Mizuhara to a suspected illegal bookmaker in California. “Major League Baseball has been gathering information since we learned about the allegations involving Shohei Ohtani and Ippei Mizuhara from the news media,” MLB