Leicester City manager Brendan Rodgers on Saturday hailed the “historical achievement” of his side in beating Chelsea 1-0 to lift the FA Cup for the first time in the club’s 137-year history.
Youri Tielemans’ sensational winner was witnessed by 22,000 fans at Wembley.
The largest crowd for a sports event in England since the COVID-19 pandemic hit 14 months ago were treated to a goal worthy to win any trophy, as the Belgian midfielder blasted into the top corner on 63 minutes.
Photo: Reuters
Five years after the Foxes stunned the Premier League’s giants to become champions, Leicester have claimed English football’s other prestigious trophy at the fifth time of asking.
Four times they had previously lost the final, but the last of those was 52 years ago.
“It’s a historical day for the football club,” Rodgers said. “Winning the FA Cup for the first time. I’m so happy for the players and supporters. They’ve lost four finals and now a fifth time we’ve managed to do it for them.”
A historic week for Rodgers’ men could get even better as they are on the verge of sealing a place in next season’s Champions League.
The sides meet again in three days’ time at Stamford Bridge in a pivotal clash to decide who secures a top-four finish in the Premier League.
Rodgers suggested his side were the neutrals favorites as they aim to upset the applecart of the Premier League’s “big six” once more.
Chelsea were among the clubs to sign up to the failed, quasi-closed European Super League project last month, along with Manchester City, Manchester United, Liverpool, Tottenham Hotspur and Arsenal.
“The success of this team and club is getting to positions like this and competing. The so-called bigger clubs are expected to win, but our success is competing and if we can perform like today we can go and win,” Rodgers added.
“After everything that has happened this year, I’m sure there were people hoping from a neutral perspective that we could go on and upset the odds,” he said.
Chelsea need a quick response after losing for just the fourth time in 27 games since Thomas Tuchel replaced the sacked Frank Lampard in January.
The Blues also have a Champions League final to look forward to against Manchester City in two weeks, but could end the campaign without silverware or a place in Europe’s premier club competition next season.
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