AS Saint-Etienne beat defending champion Montpellier Herault 4-1 to move up to fourth place in the Ligue 1 on Saturday.
Montpellier had found a bit of form to win their previous two league games, but they fell quickly behind to striker Brandao’s goal, before Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, with his 11th of the season, and winger Yohan Mollo made it 3-0 before halftime.
Winger Remy Cabella pulled a goal back early into the second half, before the match was interrupted because of heavy snow.
“I won’t dispute the fact that these were borderline playing conditions, but I will savor this win. We scored four goals and beat the defending champions,” Saint-Etienne coach Christophe Galtier said. “I wish to praise the attitude shown by my players, the way in which they played.”
When the players resumed, midfielder Mathieu Bodmer added the fourth goal in his first appearance since joining on loan from league leaders Paris Saint-Germain.
Les Verts have won four straight league games and their next two matches are away to struggling Stade de Reims and AS Nancy-Lorraine.
Montpellier coach Rene Girard said the game should have been called off midway through the second half.
“I told the referee what I thought. I find it scandalous,” Girard said.
Elsewhere, fifth-placed OGC Nice were held to a 1-1 home draw by Lorient and sixth-placed Girondins de Bordeaux lost 1-0 at AC Ajaccio.
In Saturday’s other matches, it was AS Nancy-Lorraine 1, Stade de Reims 2; ES Troyes AC 0, Sochaux-Montbeliard 0; and Valenciennes 2, Stade Brestois 29 1.
Ajaccio have been hard to beat in recent weeks and the Corsican side settled the match with a goal from midfielder Ricardo Faty in the 31st minute.
Meanwhile, leftback Lucas Mareque gave Lorient the lead with 15 minutes left, but Nice salvaged a point thanks to midfielder Valentin Eysseric’s 82nd-minute goal.
Nancy had won their previous two games to give them hope in the relegation scrap and they took the lead through centerback Sebastien Puygrenier in the 29th minute, but fellow strugglers Reims hit back with second-half goals from midfielders Floyd Ayite and Odair Fortes to move out of the relegation zone.
ANFIELD BLUES: Kylian Mbappe arrived at Anfield on a run of 21 goals in 17 games, but he managed just three attempts in the match, none of them hitting the target Kylian Mbappe has been nearly unstoppable this season, but he hit a roadblock in their UEFA Champions League match at Anfield on Tuesday. For the second year running, the Real Madrid forward had a night to forget at Merseyside as Liverpool won 1-0. Mbappe looked a shadow of the player who has been tearing defenses apart all season. “We were lacking that threat in the final third,” said Madrid coach Xabi Alonso, without naming Mbappe individually. The FIFA World Cup winner for France rarely looked capable of finding a breakthrough against a Liverpool team who have been so defensively fragile for much of the
LOCAL SUCCESS: In the doubles, Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei and Jelena Ostapenko of Latvia defeated Italians Sara Errani and Jasmine Paolini in straight sets Elena Rybakina on Monday punched her ticket to the WTA Finals last four with an impressive 3-6, 6-1, 6-0 victory over second seed Iga Swiatek in round-robin play in Riyadh. After cruising past Amanda Anisimova in her opener on Saturday, Rybakina claimed her second win of the week to guarantee herself top spot in the Serena Williams Group. Anisimova on Monday rallied back from a set and a break down to triumph 4-6, 6-3, 6-2 in her all-American battle with seventh seed Madison Keys, who has been eliminated from the competition. “Madi was playing so well, it was quite a battle out there,”
For almost 30 minutes, Vitomir Maricic did not take a breath. Face down in a pool, surrounded by anxious onlookers, the Croatian freediver fought spasming pain to redefine what doctors thought was possible. When he finally surfaced, he had smashed the previous Guinness World Record for the longest breath-hold underwater by nearly five minutes. However, even with the help of pure oxygen before the attempt, it had pushed him to the limit. “Everything was difficult, just overwhelming,” Maricic, 40, told reporters, reflecting on the record-breaking day on June 14. “When I dive, I completely disconnect from everything, as if I’m not even there.
An amateur soccer league organized by farmers, students and factory workers in rural China has unexpectedly drawn millions of fans and inspired big cities to form their own, raising hopes China can grow talent from the ground up and finally become a global force. The nation of 1.4 billion people has about 200 million soccer fans, more than any other country, but it has failed to build world-class teams, partly due to a top-down approach where clubs pick players from a very small pool of prescreened candidates. The professional game is marred by a history of fixed matches, corruption, and dismal performances,
RSS