SOUTH KOREA
Stielike gets coach job
South Korea have hired former Germany international Uli Stielike as the new coach of the national soccer team, the Korea Football Association (KFA) announced yesterday. Stielike, who played 42 times for West Germany and has managed Switzerland and the Ivory Coast, has been given a contract through the 2018 World Cup in Russia. The KFA said Stielike would arrive on Monday, in time for the country’s friendly against Uruguay. Former international Shin Tae-yong and two other local coaches were taking charge of a home friendly against Venezuela yesterday. Stielike replaces Hong Myung-bo, who resigned in July after the country’s first-round exit from the World Cup.
SWEDEN
Ibrahimovic sets record
Captain Zlatan Ibrahimovic struck twice in a 2-0 friendly win over Estonia on Thursday to become Sweden’s all-time leading scorer with 50 goals. The Paris St Germain striker netted a thumping left-footed volley from a corner after three minutes before breaking Sven Rydell’s tally of 49 goals, which had stood since 1932, in the 24th minute with another fine effort. Ibrahimovic swept home Seb Larsson’s cross to claim the record in spectacular style in his 99th appearance for Sweden. The 32-year-old was given a rapturous ovation by the 15,421-strong crowd in the Friends Arena when he left the field just after the hour mark.
BELGIUM
Australia go down
Dries Mertens and Axel Witsel were on target as Belgium marked their first international against Australia by winning their friendly in Liege 2-0 on Thursday. Belgium, beaten by Argentina in this year’s World Cup quarter-finals in Brazil, were the better side in a match of relatively few chances. The opening goal in the 18th minute came when Mertens beat Australia goalkeeper Mat Ryan somewhat fortuitously from a narrow angle after Kevin De Bruyne had struck the bar. Witsel made it 2-0 in the 77th minute, cracking a left-foot shot from the edge of the penalty area into the top corner of the net.
ALGERIA
Broos quits Kabylie job
Belgian coach Hugo Broos has quit Algerian club JS Kabylie after last month’s death of a player killed when a projectile was thrown from the stands, media reported on Thursday. Broos resigned after the death of Albert Ebosse on Aug. 23, but returned to the post days after, only to decide again to leave after two months in the job, Belgian daily La Derniere Heure reported. Cameroon forward Ebosse was struck on the head by an object allegedly thrown from a section of the ground containing his team’s fans as the players left the field after a 2-1 defeat by USM Alger in Tizi Ouzou and died of a head trauma. “Aggressiveness is permanent in Algeria, but that day it was like the Apocalypse. They will never find the culprit, because the infrastructure is at best flawed. There was not even a Red Cross team on hand for the game,” Broos had previously told the newspaper. Algeria suspended all soccer last weekend in memory of Ebosse, closed JSK’s stadium in Tizi-Ouzou and banned the club from playing matches at home this season. The 24-year-old Ebosse, who had netted in the match, was the leading scorer in the Algerian league in this year’s season with 17 goals. Confederation of African Football president Issa Hayatou reacted by calling for member associations to act strongly against fan violence and for the perpetrators of this incident to be dealt with in the strongest possible terms.
TIGHT GAME: The Detroit Pistons, the NBA’s second-best team, barely outlasted the Washington Wizards, who fell to an NBA-worst 1-10 with their ninth consecutive loss Cade Cunningham’s triple double, Daniss Jenkins’ three-pointer at the buzzer and Javonte Green’s overtime dunk lifted Detroit past Washington 137-135 on Monday, stretching the Pistons’ win streak to seven games. In an unexpected thriller, the NBA’s second-best team barely outlasted a Wizards club that fell to an NBA-worst 1-10 with their ninth consecutive loss. “We knew how big this game was for us,” Jenkins said. “We wasn’t going to let nothing stop us from getting this W.” Cunningham made 14-of-45 shots and 16-of-18 free throws for a career-high 46 points, and added 12 rebounds, 11 assists, five steals and two
With a hat-trick on Wednesday, Victor Osimhen moved atop the UEFA Champions League scoring table, with the Nigeria striker netting all three goals in Galatasaray’s 3-0 victory over Ajax in Amsterdam. Osimhen moved to six goals this season in Europe’s elite club competition, one more than Harry Kane, Kylian Mbappe and Erling Haaland. The Istanbul club signed Osimhen to a permanent deal from SSC Napoli in the summer for a record transfer fee in the Turkish League reportedly worth US$86 million. The 26-year-old striker needed less than 20 minutes to complete his first hat-trick in the competition. He headed in the opener in the
LIKE FINE WINE: Thirty-eight-year-old Djokovic won his 101st title of his career in Athens, becoming the oldest tournament winner since Ken Roswell, 44, in 1977 Elena Rybakina on Saturday clinched her biggest title since Wimbledon in 2022, defeating world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka 6-3, 7-6 (7/0) at the WTA Finals in Riyadh. The world No. 6 put on yet another serving masterclass and was at her returning best as she became the first Kazakh and the first player representing an Asian country to lift the WTA Finals singles trophy. Having gone 3-0 in round-robin play, Rybakina earned a record US$5.235 million and would finish the year ranked No. 5 in the world. “It’s been an incredible week, I honestly didn’t expect any result, and to go so far,
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