Unlikely hero Eric Maxim Choupo-Moting insisted he was not ready to go home after coming off the bench to fire Paris St Germain into the Champions League semi-finals in dramatic style.
The former Stoke striker broke Atalanta hearts as the Ligue 1 outfit struck twice at the end to secure a 2-1 win over Atalanta in the competition’s first one-off quarter-final at the Estadio da Luz in Lisbon.
Choupo-Moting told BT Sport: “It was all in all a crazy game, a tough game, a tough opponent and think we showed such a good morale until the last second.
“We believed in ourselves. It wasn’t easy because we had some good occasions. They played a great game, an unbelievable game, but we had some occasions and unfortunately didn’t score.
“When I came on, I thought to myself, ‘We can’t lose, we can’t go home like that’. I was confident in myself, confident in the team and then the rest is a little history of Paris.”
PSG looked to be heading out of the competition in which they have fallen short so often in the recent past as the game reached its 90th minute with Atalanta leading through Mario Pasalic’s first-half strike.
But where star man Neymar had previously misfired as a series of earlier chances went begging, defender Marquinhos stabbed home a late equaliser to pave the way for Choupo-Moting to snatch victory in the third minute of added time.
The win set up a last four showdown with either RB Leipzig or Atletico Madrid and kept alive their hopes of winning the title for the first time.
Choupo-Moting said: “It seems like a long time that we (have) never won the Champions League. With such a team, you have to have this ambition. It’s such a big club.
“We will give everything in the next game and continue to believe. Football has its stories.
“We have won already four titles this season, but the most important is this one. We really believe in ourselves and we did it today.
“Everybody knows we have individual top quality but we wanted to show it also as a team and it is a big step today against a very good opponent.
Atalanta’s adventure could hardly have come to a more heartbreaking conclusion but midfielder Marten de Roon admitted he and his team-mates will soon be able to look back on the campaign with pride.
He told www.uefa.com: “At this moment, it’s quite painful. Tomorrow, I will be proud of our team and club, but at this moment, I feel disappointment.
“We played a good first half where we made if difficult for Paris, we put them under some pressure and had some minor chances.
“In the second half, we sat a little deeper. You have to defend with 11 men and we did it so well until this unfortunate moment in the last minute.”
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Former Ohio State Urban Meyer said what many are thinking after the Big Ten and Pac-12 announced the postponement of fall sports: The conferences might as well have used the word « canceled » at least for football. In an interview with the Big Ten Network, Meyer gives college football « no chance » of playing in the spring. [more]
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Two of the biggest conferences in college sports cancelled their fall seasons on Tuesday. The move is about a fear of player power rather than Covid-19On the night of Sunday 9 August, in the birth of an alliance between WeAreUnited, a faction of players threatening to withdraw their labor without improved working conditions, and WeWantToPlay, a group lobbying to be allowed to play, college football players across the US declared that they want to play this season, but they want to play on the condition that they “ultimately create a college football players association.”As Hunter Reynolds of the University of Michigan and College Athlete Unity (CAU) told us: “We all want to play the sports that we have been practicing our whole lives, we simply want to do it in an environment that is as safe as possible. And I think the union talks are something that has been discussed since Northwesterners tried unionizing years ago.” Within 12 hours, reports swirled that the Big Ten was cancelling its fall season and most of the other Power Five conferences – the largest and richest in college sports – were considering following suit.What happened?Let’s rewind. College sports’ governing body, the NCAA, and the members of the Power Five have had since March to cancel the college football season. Instead, they compelled thousands of players back on to campus for workouts over the spring and summer, exposing them to the threat of Covid-19, a virus that has to date killed more than 160,000 Americans and 730,000 people worldwide. Yet, despite numerous outbreaks of Covid-19 in football programs across the US, by early August, much of the Power Five remained committed to preserving the season. Until, this week, when suddenly they didn’t. While our understanding of the virus has not changed significantly over the past few weeks, one important variable has: football players across the nation have boldly mobilized for increased control over their working conditions.Cancelling the season has less to do with athletes’ safety and more to do with anxieties over the organization of collegiate athletes en masse. As UCLA defensive lineman Otito Ogbonnia, a leading member of WeAreUnited and signatory of a recent letter to PAC-12 commissioner Larry Scott told us, “It’s hard to guess what someone else is thinking, but it seems like the conferences basically decided to succumb to all the challenges of the virus and now they are faced with the threat of a union or players association.”It has long been clear that the cancellation of the football season is a crucial and necessary decision. As one SEC player who asked to remain anonymous told us, “Most everyone I know seems to be playing a game of chicken. Everyone is too scared to actually say it isn’t safe or doesn’t make sense to play, and I feel like those that think football continuing on is safer for them are just falling into a false narrative set up by the schools.” He added, “you want us to go into an all SEC schedule? You’ve got to be high. Whether that be of narcotics, power, or greed … you’re telling us to invest in a season that’s a house of cards that comes with even more risk to us personally.”Despite this, the mostly white NCAA, college athletics directors and coaches have required the majority Black workforce to soldier on for the last several months. As a result we have seen a series of inspiring movements of player leadership and organization. Take, for example, the Big Ten’s College Athlete Unity group, who have more than 1,000 members fighting for changes in the working conditions of athletes within a system that continues to exploit them. Or there is the even more radical PAC-12 WeAreUnited group, who courageously set out a series of demands to protect scholarship and walk-on athletes – effectively laying the foundation for a labor strike in college football. By working together to collectively generate demands, and by consistently arguing for a seat at the table, BigTenUnited and WeAreUnited both gesture towards the promise of a union in college football.This is not the first time unionization has arisen in college football. Between 2013 and 2015 the Northwestern University football team attempted to unionize led by then-quarterback Kain Colter. Yet, the scale this time is profoundly different: thousands of athletes across the country are demanding the basic rights long denied them. That even has Colter himself excited, “College athletes throughout the nation have empowered themselves to demand proper protections and workplace conditions amid the Covid-19 pandemic,” he said on Tuesday night. “They have stood up to powerful money interests who seem determined to have college football continue without regard to the health of the athletes. These actions have taken a tremendous amount of strength, courage, and solidarity; I greatly admire them for it.”Moreover, CAU, BigTenUnited and WeAreUnited are eliciting support from media, academics, and even contingent faculty unions at large universities such as Duke and UCLA. Rather than go it alone, a challenge that Colter himself has suggested was fatal in Northwestern’s drive, we are seeing college players call for massive reform in the NCAA – beginning with the right to fair representation. As UCLA player Ogbonnia explained to us, “It’s not easy to get everyone on the same page, but we have a responsibility to come together as a labor movement to make things better for each other and the players who will come after us. We are only asking for the most basic rights that every person in this country deserves.”In response to demands from BigTenUnited, WeAreUnited and WeWantToPlay, and as news broke that the PAC-12 and Big Ten conferences are cancelling sports this fall, what was a week ago improbable suddenly seems inevitable. The college football season is likely to be cancelled. But why now?Rumblings suggest that the real motivation behind the impending decision to cancel is a fear of athlete organization. This is confirmed by PAC-12 Commissioner Larry Scott’s unwillingness to negotiate with student organizers over their admittedly “eye opening” health concerns. For Power Five schools accustomed to having their pockets lined with unpaid athletic labor, the threat of the virus pales next to the specter of a labor movement.But, the cancellation of the season is also a serious blow to player organization since it eliminates the leverage of a potential labor action (for now). Power Five athletic directors know this and any cancellation of the season at this point – after months of living with Covid-19 and just weeks before the season is set to begin – cannot and should not be confused with a concern for players’ health. Football programs have made it abundantly clear this summer that they view the lives of college football players with callous disregard. Although clearly there are other factors schools are weighing such as liability issues, the sudden urgency suggests a union-busting imperative has tilted the scales towards cancelling.What we are witnessing is a shift in tactics that varies across conferences. The thought for each likely goes something like this: if the season is preserved, athletes will undoubtedly get sick (the SEC confirmed as much in a leaked call with player reps). When that inevitably occurs it gives players more leverage to push back, thus simultaneously gaining momentum as a union and ensuring athletic departments cede on important issues. Is it any surprise that the SEC, the conference with the fewest labor rumblings, is also reportedly the least inclined to cancel despite “sobering” medical advice from doctors? As the Big 12, ACC, and SEC plow forward, it appears their calculation is that the risks of labor uprising are outweighed by the revenue to be reaped. In the PAC-12 and Big Ten, on the other hand, where WeAreUnited and BigTenUnited were born, the analysis seems to have tilted in the other direction. It’s pretty clear what is happening: in the latter two conferences, the very health and safety concerns that catalyzed this movement are now being deployed to dismantle it.Cancellation is not a union-busting tactic unique to college football. Indeed, Walmart has reportedly shuttered stores in California to prevent workers from unionizing. Kumho Tire threatened closure to prevent employees from forming a union in 2017. Vacation company Sandals was accused of the tactic in 2016. There also exists a long history of companies that have also used the threat of closure or termination of operations to bulldoze unionization efforts. The PAC-12 and Big Ten are taking a page out of this union-busting playbook.In response, the WeAreUnited and WeWantToPlay alliance is a strategy to counter by building strength in the court of public opinion. Reynolds told us that “after seeing the public perception of the different movements,” they decided to “come together and let people know that all the messages were the same, they were just being conveyed in different ways.”The challenges of sustaining solidarity in the face of cancellation will be immense. College football is an exceptional labor environment in part because of the inherent attrition in the enterprise. Players do not play long enough to develop the kinds of deep solidarity often necessary for labor organizing. There is pressure to maximize performances while they can in order to catch the eyes of professional scouts. These structural dynamics militate against labor activism and solidarity and the cancellation of the season will only attenuate the rare spirit of collective action that has formed.Counterintuitive as it feels, then, it is now more than ever that CAU, WeAreUnited, and the nascent movement of players across the US need to double down on organizing, deepening the ties that will bind them for the next confrontation. Like Kain Colter before them, the current generation of leaders like Jevon Holland, Andrew Cooper, Treyjohn Butler, Hunter Reynolds, Benjamin St-Juste, Jake Curhan and countless others need to focus on building the solidarity required to challenge their union-busting employers.Now is also the time for the rest of us to have their backs. They’re going to need help, and they deserve it. * Nathan Kalman-Lamb, Derek Silva, and Johanna Mellis are co-hosts of The End of Sport podcast
Membership has its limitations. The University of Nebraska strenuously objects to the Big Ten’s decision not to play football this fall. Nebraska still wants to play. The Big Ten won’t allow it. Via Sports Business Daily, Big Ten Commissioner Kevin Warren said that Nebraska can’t pursue a fall 2020 schedule after the Big Ten decided [more]
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Former UFC fighter Paige VanZant made a surprise move on Wednesday when she inked a deal with Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship instead of Bellator MMA, as many had expected. The news was first reported by ESPN.She said her new contract with BKF is a four-fight exclusive deal.VanZant fought the final bout of her UFC contract on July 123, losing via a first-round armbar to Amanda Ribas at UFC 251 in Abu Dhabi. The bout was VanZant’s first fight in a year and a half because she had been dealing with several injuries.Though VanZant was one of the UFC’s brightest stars when she first entered the Octagon, winning her first three bouts, she managed just a 2-4 record over the final six bouts of her tenure.Moving over to BKFC, VanZant will forego mixed martial arts to focus on her boxing, which includes a move to American Top Team in Florida. She hopes to fight for BKFC as soon as November. »It was an amazing contract, an amazing opportunity, » VanZant told ESPN. « I also feel like it’s not a move backwards for me. It’s a lateral move to a new opportunity, a new challenge, a brand new sport. I really have sparked a brand new passion for it and especially for striking in general. »And, on top of that, I feel like I still have this stigma in MMA that I’m just a pretty face, and what a way to prove to be people that’s not the way I see myself at all. »VanZant, however, insists that she hasn’t necessarily made a permanent move away from MMA. »I don’t know that I am done with MMA, » VanZant said. « I know momentarily I am. I still have a huge passion for MMA, and I just recently relocated to Florida to train with American Top Team. Obviously, they are one of the best MMA gyms in the world. Right now, my sole focus is boxing, but in a few years I could go back to MMA or I could just be making so much doing this bare knuckle boxing that I don’t do anything else. »* * *TRENDING > Check out Sean O’Malley’s blistering knockout of Eddie Wineland (UFC 252 free fight)* * *https://www.instagram.com/p/CDzNrMtHURd/
Well, this sure is a fine way for tennis to herald its return after the pandemic-caused hiatus: Serena Williams vs. Venus Williams. The siblings meet each other for the 31st time when they take the court at a WTA tournament in Kentucky on Thursday. »It’s so special, » Venus said.
We already have controversy in Game 1 of the Bruins’ Stanley Cup Playoff series with the Hurricanes thanks to a failed Carolina challenge on a Boston goal.
Yankees star Aaron Judge was out of the lineup Wednesday night because of tightness in his lower body and it was uncertain whether the oft-injured slugger would return for the start of a weekend series against Boston. »I hope so but that’s, in a lot of ways, a long way from now, so let’s just kind of get through today, » manager Aaron Boone said before New York hosted Atlanta. Judge began the day leading the majors with nine home runs and tied at the top with 20 RBIs for the AL East leaders.
A team is going to reach the Western Conference playoffs with a losing record for the first time in 23 years, which ordinarily would not be exciting news. On Thursday, four teams – Portland, Memphis, Phoenix and San Antonio – will finally decide which two clubs get spots in the play-in series to determine the No. 8 seed in the West playoffs. Portland and Memphis control their fates, while Phoenix and San Antonio must win and get help.
The Big Ten will not have a fall football season, but one Big Ten team might. Nebraska released a statement shortly after the Big Ten’s announcement making clear that the Cornhuskers are still hoping to play football in the fall. « We are very disappointed in the decision by the Big Ten Conference to postpone the [more]
The Pittsburgh Penguins had a specific vision last summer when they examined the rubble of a first-round sweep at the hands of the New York Islanders. General manager Jim Rutherford, coach Mike Sullivan and his staff then spent the offseason revamping a team it believed would be good enough to return to the Stanley Cup. The Penguins were outplayed by the seemingly overmatched Montreal Canadiens in the qualifying round, losing the best-of-five series in four games.
NBA champion Jeremy Lin demanded better protection in the Chinese Basketball Association after he needed hospital treatment and temporarily lost his hearing following the Beijing Ducks’ semi-final defeat. The 31-year-old complained of an array of injury problems after the Guangdong Southern Tigers edged the Ducks 88-85 for a hard-fought 2-1 series win, ending Lin’s first season in China. Lin, who last year became the first Asian-American to win the NBA championship with the Toronto Raptors, was left bent double on court after his buzzer-beater missed, and appeared emotional following the defeat.
Jason Garrett wasn’t interested in sitting around for a year after the Dallas Cowboys didn’t renew his contract as their head coach after 10 years in charge. Speaking to reporters on Tuesday for the first time since he was hired in January, Garrett refused to discuss his final days in Dallas. »I was just so fortunate to have been able to play football in the National Football League for 15 years and now I have been coaching since then.
Former Packers Hall of Fame QB Brett Favre weighed in with his opinion on Aaron Rodgers potentially joining the Bears.
SOURCE: https://www.w24news.com