CHAMPIONS LEAGUE
Marcos Senna’s spectacular freekick sparked Villarreal to a 1-0 victory over Celtic in their Champions League clash on Tuesday on a night that also saw Spanish rivals Real Madrid chalk up a 2-1 win away at UEFA Cup titleholders Zenit St Petersburg.
While Villarreal trail Manchester United on goal difference in their group, former United striker Ruud van Nistelrooy was on the mark in Real’s hard-earned win over their Russian opponents to give the Spaniards their best start to a Champions League campaign in five years.
The man that Manchester United hope will match up to van Nistelrooy’s scoring exploits, Dimitar Berbatov, scored his first goals for United since his multimillion pound move from Spurs with a double in their 3-0 win over Danish side Aalborg, coached by former Arsenal boss Bruce Rioch.
Arsenal rebounded from their 2-1 humiliation by Hull on Saturday to thrash former Champions League winners Porto 4-0 with two of the men most criticized for the Hull defeat, Robin van Persie and Emmanuel Adebayor scoring a brace apiece.
Italian giants Juventus also had a striker to thank for saving them as Vincenzo Iaquinta notched up a double as they came from 2-0 down to draw 2-2 with Belarusian debutants BATE Borisov.
Senna showed the same sort of form he had done during Spain’s triumphant march to the Euro 2008 title earlier this year as his freekick deservedly gave Villarreal victory.
“Getting the three points was the most important thing tonight but we can’t relax because if you go to sleep in this competition the other teams end up above you,” the Brazilian-born midfielder said. “We dominated the second half but had to wait for the goal. Fortunately my free-kick went in.”
Real were fortunate to come away from Russia with all three points as Senna’s fellow Euro 2008 winner Iker Casillas conceded.
“In the end we suffered more than we should have done,” the keeper said.
United’s easy win came at a cost with Paul Scholes and Brazilian fullback Rafael — preferred to Wes Brown — picking up injuries but Berbatov was delighted to at last have got off the mark.
“I knew they would come sooner or later but I’m happy it was today [Tuesday]. I helped the team to win and that is the most important thing,” he said.
Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger had promised wholsesale changes after the Hull defeat but in the end he didn’t make many and he was ecstatic at the manner in which his side responded.
“It is the response I wanted. Maybe it was our most complete performance this season,” Wenger said. “We could have scored a few more but most important was to win and respond in a convincing way.”
“I didn’t make many changes because I didn’t want to give a feeling that you punish one player more than another. Sometimes you have to give a team a chance to respond quickly,” he said.
For Juventus coach Claudio Ranieri his side’s first-half performance against BATE was well summed-up.
“It was a nightmare,” he said.
In other games Fiorentina drew 0-0 with Steaua Bucharest, Bayern Munich drew 1-1 with Lyon and Fenerbahce drew 0-0 with Dynamo Kiev.
The US’ bid for a fourth consecutive CONCACAF Nations League title came to a stunning end as they fell 1-0 to Panama after a stoppage-time goal from Cecilio Waterman on Thursday in Inglewood, California. Despite dominating possession, the US struggled to break down a resilient Panama side for long periods. Panama spent the bulk of the match defending, but pounced on a giveaway by the US before substitute forward Waterman sent a shot from the right side of the area to the bottom left corner late in stoppage time. Up next for Panama in tomorrow’s final is to be Mexico, who beat
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Armand Duplantis will be among the reigning Olympic champions adding star power to the world indoor championships this weekend when the Chinese city of Nanjing hosts the first major global athletics meet since the Paris Games last year. The three-day event was originally slated for 2020 and faced multiple postponements due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but Nanjing’s Sports Training Center would finally welcome more than 570 athletes for the start of the showpiece today. One of the main attractions would be pole vaulter “Mondo” Duplantis, who soared 6.27m to break the world record for a staggering 11th time in Clermont-Ferrand last
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