Davide Frattesi on Monday fired Inter one step closer to the Serie A title with his last-gasp winner in their 2-1 comeback victory at struggling Udinese.
Italy midfielder Frattesi poked home the decisive goal in the fifth minute of stoppage-time in Udine to maintain Inter’s 14-point lead at the top of the table with seven matches left in the season.
Inter looked to be heading for a draw as they toiled to add to Hakan Calhanoglu’s penalty, scored nine minutes after halftime, which leveled Lazar Samardzic’s freak deflected opener for Udinese.
Photo: Reuters
“We absolutely don’t think we’ve won it yet. We have other matches to play and we need to go out and get it,” Frattesi told Sky Sport. “I’m really happy, it’s a really big win towards [what] we need to do. You can’t win every match 4-0, [so] it’s important that you also manage to win the tough matches.”
AC Milan are Inter’s closest challengers and Monday’s victory ensured that the champions-elect could seal their 20th Scudetto in a hotly anticipated derby with their local rivals in a fortnight’s time.
Claiming the league crown with a sixth straight derby win would be revenge for Calhanoglu who is detested by Milan supporters after switching sides of the northern Italian city three years ago.
“In all honesty I don’t like talking about the other side from where I came,” Calhanoglu said. “I respect them and I have a good relationship with the players. What happened in my first year here is history. I’m concentrated on my teammates because they’re fantastic... That’s what matters.”
Meanwhile, Udinese are in a desperate fight for survival as they are two points above the relegation zone and have to face Napoli, Roma and Bologna before the end of the season.
Taiwanese world No. 1 women’s doubles star Hsieh Su-wei on Saturday overcame a first-set loss to win her opening match at the Madrid Open. Top seeds Hsieh and partner Elise Mertens of Belgium, with whom she last month won her fourth Indian Wells women’s doubles title, bounced back from a rocky first set to beat Asia Muhammad of the US and Aldila Sutjiadi of Indonesia 2-6, 6-4, 10-2. Hsieh and Mertens were next to face Heather Watson of the UK and Xu Yifan of China in the round of 16. Thirty-eight-year-old Hsieh last month reclaimed her world No. 1 spot after her Indian
EYES ON THE PRIZE: Armed with three solid men’s singles shuttlers and doubles Olympic champions, Taiwan aim to make their first Thomas Cup semi-final, Chou Tien-chen said Taiwanese badminton star Tai Tzu-ying yesterday quickly dispatched Malaysia’s Goh Jin Wei in straight sets, while her male counterpart Chou Tien-chen beat Germany’s Kai Schaefer, as Taiwan’s women’s and men’s teams won their Group B opening rounds of the TotalEnergies BWF Thomas and Uber Cup Finals in Chengdu, China. World No. 5 Tai beat Goh 21-19, 22-20 in a speedy 33 minutes, her fourth straight victory over the world No. 24 shuttler since they first faced each other in the quarter-finals of the 2018 Malaysia Open, where Tai went on to win the women’s singles title. Malaysia followed up Tai’s opening victory
Chen Yi-tung (陳奕通) secured a historic Olympic berth on Sunday by winning the senior men’s foil event at the 2024 Asia Oceania Zonal Olympic Fencing Qualifiers in United Arab Emirates. Chen defeated Samuel Elijah of Singapore 15-4 in the final in Dubai to secure the only wild card in the event, making him the first male Olympian fencer from Taiwan in 36 years and only the sixth Taiwanese fencer to ever qualify for the quadrennial event. The last appearance by a Taiwanese male fencer at the Olympics was in 1988, when Wang San-tsai (王三財) and Cheng Ming-hsiang (鄭明祥) competed in Seoul. The
A wine merchant who blind tasted a different glass of wine at each mile of the London Marathon on Sunday has said he feels “honored” his challenge went viral on social media, as he surpassed his fundraising target. Tom Gilbey, nicknamed “the wine guy,” sampled 25 glasses of wine during the race, stopping to guess the drink’s grape variety, country of origin and vintage at each mile. A video he posted on TikTok has amassed more than 3.2 million views. He had his first sip at about 9:30am, shortly after the race began. Gilbey said he aimed to raise £2,000 (US$2,487) for Sobell