SOCCER
Palmeiras fans to ‘die happy’
Thousands of Palmeiras fans on Saturday night ignored social distancing rules to gather at different points across Sao Paulo to celebrate their team’s victory in the Copa Libertadores. Breno Lopes scored a stoppage time header that gave Palmeiras a 1-0 win over Santos and their first Libertadores win since 1999. The result at Rio’s Maracana stadium was greeted with delirious celebrations in Palmeiras’ home city of Sao Paulo. Thousands partied on the streets around the club’s stadium the Allianz Parque, even after police closed some streets to try and prevent large gatherings. Few people wore masks as they let off fireworks and danced and chanted into the night. “If I die today then I’ll die happy,” a fan Gabriel Firmino said. “Palmeiras is my life, I’ll die happy with Palmeiras as champions.”
SOCCER
Supporters attack Marseille
Olympique de Marseille accused their own fans of “barbarism” after angry supporters on Saturday afternoon forced their way into the club’s training complex, hours before a Ligue 1 home game against Stade Rennais. Three hours before kickoff, the league postponed Marseille’s evening match at Stade Velodrome — about 13km from the training ground — deeming it unsafe to hold the game with tensions so evidently high. “An unjustifiable frenzy of violence put those present on site in danger (players, staff, security staff, employees). Thefts were carried out and vehicles were damaged,” Marseille said in a statement. The club estimated the number of people involved at “a few hundred,” and put the damage at “several hundred thousand euros.” Earlier on Saturday, a video posted by local newspaper La Provence showed a tree burning outside the complex’s entrance, amid reports that people were throwing flares and trying to force their way in. The supporters were seen carrying banners calling for unpopular club president Jacques-Henri Eyraud to leave.
FOOTBALL
Lions trade Stafford for Goff
The Detroit Lions are trading quarterback Matthew Stafford to the Los Angeles Rams in exchange for quarterback Jared Goff, a person with knowledge of the deal said on Saturday. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the deal has not been completed and would not become official until the start of the new league year on March 17. ESPN first reported the swap, which would include the Rams’ first-round picks in 2022 and 2023 along with their third-round pick this year.
SOCCER
Real Madrid trip up
Thibaut Courtois’ impressive penalty save was not enough to keep an error-prone Real Madrid from stumbling again in their La Liga title defense. Real Madrid on Saturday lost 2-1 at home to Levante UD in a match that the defending champions played with 10 men from the eighth minute when defender Eder Militao was sent off. With the score level at 1-1 in the second half, Courtois stopped Roger Marti’s penalty. However, Courtois could not deny Marti in the 78th minute when the forward received a pass after a smart team move executed after a corner-kick and rifled the ball home. Second-placed Real Madrid’s first loss in 10 rounds left them seven points adrift of front-runner Atletico Madrid, who have two more games still to play.
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