Worldwide Sports News
Sunderland moved three points clear at the top of the Championship with a 2-1 win at Luton.
Carlton Morris’s first-half strike was controversially ruled out for offside and the home side were left to rue other missed chances when the visitors took the lead early in the second half.
Continue reading...Super League expanding to 14 teams as early as 2026 appears to be looming after the publication of IMG’s gradings on Wednesday led to Wakefield being readmitted into the competition for 2025 in place of London Broncos, who have been demoted to the Championship.
Rugby league clubs agreed last year to replace conventional promotion and relegation with a gradings system that measured clubs in a variety of on- and off-field metrics. The 12 clubs with the highest ranking would be admitted to Super League, with the gradings reviewed every year.
Continue reading...Leeds moved up to second in the Championship as two goalkeeping blunders by Watford’s Daniel Bachmann helped them to a 2-1 win at Elland Road. The Austria goalkeeper was at fault for both Leeds’ goals as they raced into a 2-0 lead inside the opening seven minutes through Largie Ramazani and Brenden Aaronson.
Kwadwo Baah pulled one back for Watford, who were much improved in the second half, but Leeds held on for back-to-back home wins in the space of five days. Daniel Farke’s side extended their unbeaten league run to six matches and have now lost one of their first 11, while Watford slipped to a fifth straight league defeat on the road.
Continue reading...Code-hopper Joseph-Aukuso Suaalii is being thrust straight into the big-time after being named in the 34-man Wallabies squad for spring tour of the UK fresh out the NRL having not played a game of rugby since he was a schoolboy star.
A surprise signing from Genoa, the striker has immediately integrated in Bergamo thanks to his manager’s brilliance
Mateo Retegui is not afraid to make a snap decision. When Roberto Mancini phoned to ask if he would consider representing the Italian national team last March, the striker “didn’t have to think about it. I just said yes right away”. Born and raised in Argentina, he had never lived in Italy nor did he speak the language, yet within days he marked his international debut with a goal against England in Naples.
A choice that shifted his whole life’s trajectory. Twenty-three years old and playing for Tigre on loan from Boca Juniors, Retegui was hardly at the forefront of most European scouts’ minds. He scored 23 goals across all competitions in 2022, yet domestically there were doubts as to his ceiling. His parent club had declined their option to bring him back at the end of the year, while the Argentina manager Lionel Scaloni was indifferent to Retegui declaring for Italy.
Continue reading...Hull City’s head coach, Tim Walter, revealed that the referee Robert Madley apologised to him for his inadvertent role in Sunderland’s winner that helped the Black Cats to return to the top of the Championship table.
Wilson Isidor’s third goal in four matches, in which the on-loan Zenit St Petersburg striker ran half the length of the field and lifted the ball over Ivor Pandur, sealed a 1-0 win for Sunderland at MKM Stadium.
Continue reading...The courage with which he faces his diagnosis is typical of a man who engages with life in his own way, with perspective
At a certain age, joked Sir Chris Hoy in October 2011, you don’t even buy green bananas. The throwaway remark was intended to underline the complexities and unpredictabilities of being a “senior” athlete – Hoy was then 35, seemingly blessed with eternal youth – but it seems grimly apposite in the light of the Scot’s announcement that he has terminal cancer and may have only between two and four years to live.
There has been universal warmth and admiration for the way Hoy has dealt with his diagnosis, revealed publicly in an interview with the Sunday Times. An upcoming memoir, All That Matters, will go into further detail, along with relating the multiple sclerosis diagnosis of Hoy’s wife, Sarra. The unflinching courage shown by Hoy, the acknowledgment of the tremendous difficulty of processing and communicating what has happened to their family, underlines that here is a remarkable human being, who engages with life – and death – in his own way, with a humbling degree of perspective.
Continue reading...After Hoy’s announcement that he has terminal cancer, we look back at some of the career highlights that made him a household name
Continue reading...New Zealand secured their first Test victory in India since 1988, chasing down 107 to record an eight-wicket win on the final day of a rain-interrupted series opener.
New Zealand’s triumph was achieved without their injured batting mainstay Kane Williamson, and Tom Latham, their captain, was grateful to Rachin Ravindra for stepping into the breach.
Continue reading...After clinching MLS playoff berths with regular-season-ending wins on Saturday, CF Montreal and Atlanta United will square off in the Eastern Conference’s wild-card match on Tuesday.
The winner of the contest in Montreal draws a tough assignment in East’s quarter-finals: a best-of-three series against Lionel Messi and Inter Miami, who set the league’s single-season point record. A hat-trick from Messi lifted Miami past the New England Revolution on Saturday, giving Miami a 22-4-8 mark, good for 74 points.
Continue reading...Spain’s Marc Márquez has recovered from a nightmare start in which a mosquito infiltrated his visor to claim a sensational fifth Australian Motorcycle Grand Prix victory. Having fallen back to 13th after wheel-spinning off the start line, the six-time world MotoGP champion produced a flawless ride and finally overtook his countryman Jorge Martín with four laps to go at Phillip Island on Sunday.
Martín fought back in a tense sprint to the finish line but the experienced Márquez held him off to close the gap on Martín and the Italian Francesco Bagnaia at the top of the world championship standings.
Continue reading...Lionel Messi and Inter Miami have put together the best regular season in Major League Soccer history.
Messi had three goals and an assist in the second half alone, Luis Suárez had a pair of first-half goals and Inter Miami beat the New England Revolution 6-2 on Saturday night, finishing the season with an MLS-record 74 points – one more than the Revolution had in 2021.
Continue reading...Wayne Rooney bemoaned a “difficult” afternoon after watching from the stands as his Plymouth side were hammered 5-0 at Cardiff.
Michael Obafemi spurned a glorious chance for Plymouth early on, and it was all downhill for the visitors after that, with goals from Alex Robertson, Rubin Colwill, Anwar El Ghazi, Callum Robinson and Chris Willock. Ibrahim Cissoko was sent off five minutes before the break after reacting to an incident with Perry Ng.
Continue reading...Jürgen Klopp has been criticised by fans of his former club Mainz for his decision to join the energy drinks company Red Bull and oversee its network of clubs. Mainz supporters held banners during their team’s Bundesliga game against Leipzig – a Red Bull-backed club – in which they addressed their former hero.
“Have you forgotten everything we gave you?” asked one huge banner behind one of the goals, referring to Klopp’s tearful farewell speech when he left the club after 18 years as a player and coach in 2008.
Continue reading...The country boy from Lacken who is now a world-class No 8 on enjoying captaincy, a fascination with psychology and his penchant for hot yoga
It will be another six months before Andy Farrell finally has to choose his British & Irish Lions captain for the 2025 expedition to Australia. Plenty of time for the landscape to change and, theoretically, for one or two surprise contenders to emerge from the shrubbery. Until, that is, you sit down with the staggeringly impressive Caelan Doris and realise there is little need for Farrell to look anywhere else.
A bold prediction? Hardly. It is not rocket science that a world-class player with the universal respect of his peers, a university degree in psychology and a warm smile might just fit the bill. Ireland have produced some illustrious Lions captains in the pro era, from Brian O’Driscoll to Paul O’Connell and Peter O’Mahony, and another top-drawer candidate lurks quietly in the wings.
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