Real rekindle last-16 hopes with 3-2 win over Inter

Real Madrid boosted their chances of reaching the Champions League knockout stages after a late winner by substitute Rodrygo gave them a 3-2 home victory over Inter Milan in an absorbing Group B clash on Tuesday (Nov 3).

The result left Real, winners of a record 13 titles in Europe’s premier club competition, level on four points with Shakhtar Donetsk, one point behind leaders Borussia Moenchengladbach and two ahead of bottom placed Inter.

* Ferran Torres, Gabriel Jesus and Joao Cancelo were on target as Manchester City made it three wins out of three in Champions League Group C with a 3-0 win over Olympiakos at the Etihad Stadium on Tuesday. The result leaves City three points clear of Porto at the top of the group, and a single point in the return fixture on Nov 25 would secure progress for City to the knockout stage.

* Greek second seed Stefanos Tsitsipas was knocked out of the Paris Masters in the second round when he was beaten 7-6(4) 6-7(6) 7-6(3) by Frenchman Ugo Humbert on Tuesday. Top seed Rafa Nadal starts his campaign on Wednesday with a second-round encounter with fellow Spaniard Feliciano Lopez.

* Bayern Munich came from behind to crush RB Salzburg 6-2 with two goals from Robert Lewandowski on Tuesday, stretching their record winning run in the Champions League to 14 consecutive games and leading their group by five points after three games.

* Liverpool striker Diogo Jota netted his first hat-trick for the club as they thrashed Atalanta 5-0 with a blistering performance in the Champions League on Tuesday to go five points clear at the top of Group D after three straight wins. Atalanta’s mauling was the worst home defeat ever suffered by an Italian side against an English team in European competition and means Liverpool will qualify for the last 16 with a victory in the reverse fixture on Nov 25.

* Ajax Amsterdam scored after 47 seconds as they shrugged off disrupted preparations to beat Denmark’s Midtjylland 2-1 away on Tuesday for their first win in Champions League Group D.

* Porto beat Olympique de Marseille 3-0 in Group C on Tuesday, inflicting a record 12th consecutive defeat in the Champions League on the French club and leaving Andre Villas Boas’s team on the brink of elimination. Marseille’s last win in Europe’s premium club competition came in 2012, when they beat Inter Milan 1-0 in the first leg of their last-16 tie.

* Argentine soccer great Diego Maradona will undergo surgery for a subdural haematoma, a blood clot on the brain, his personal physician told reporters on Tuesday, after he was admitted to hospital a day earlier.

* Chelsea manager Frank Lampard said Christian Pulisic’s hamstring injury is not serious but the American winger will miss Wednesday’s Champions League match at home to Stade Rennais. Pulisic, who had returned in early October from a two-month injury layoff, pulled up his hamstring during the warm-up for the match at Burnley on Saturday, with Timo Werner replacing him on the left wing in Chelsea’s 3-0 victory at Turf Moor.

* Primoz Roglic reclaimed the Vuelta a Espana overall lead when he won the 13th stage, a 33.7km effort ending with a 1.8km climb up to the Mirador de Ezaro at an average gradient of 14.8% on Tuesday. The Slovenian looked nothing like the rider who lost the Tour de France yellow jersey on the final time trial, crushing the pedals in the last ascent to clock 46 minutes, 39 seconds and beat American Will Barta by just one second.

* Schalke 04 ended their 22-match winless run that stretched back to February with a 4-1 victory over amateurs Schweinfurt on Tuesday in a postponed German Cup first-round match.

* Paris St Germain forward Kylian Mbappe will miss Wednesday’s Champions League clash against RB Leipzig due to a hamstring problem, the French champions said on Tuesday. Mbappe, 21, sustained the injury during Saturday’s 3-0 Ligue 1 victory against Nantes and was withdrawn towards the closing stages of the match.

* Australian all-rounder Shane Watson retired from all forms of cricket on Tuesday, drawing the curtain on an injury-plagued career which he managed to extend by reinventing himself as a journeyman Twenty20 specialist. Watson ended his test career in 2015 and quit international cricket the next year, surrendering in his battle against a litany of injuries that bedevilled his career.

Source: Nhan Dan Online