Syrians returning home from europe

A disappointing game was settled 10 minutes after the interval as the in-form Nigerian striker slotted at the second attempt after good work by Jamie Vardy.

* Mason Greenwood continued his fine run of form with a second-half brace which helped Manchester United to a 3-1 home win over Burnley in the Premier League on Sunday and kept them on course for a top-four finish.

* Arsenal substitute Eddie Nketiah struck deep into stoppage time to cancel out Josh Maja’s second-half penalty in a 1-1 draw with relegation-threatened Fulham in the Premier League on Sunday.

* Sevilla came from behind to win 2-1 at Real Sociedad on Sunday (Apr 18) and stay in contention for an unlikely La Liga title bid.

* Borussia Dortmund striker Erling Haaland scored twice in four minutes on Sunday, ending his seven-game goal drought in all competitions, to help his team to a 4-1 win over Werder Bremen in the Bundesliga and revive their hopes of a top four finish.

* Juventus slipped to a last-gasp 1-0 defeat at Atalanta on Sunday as Gian Piero Gasperini’s side leapfrogged the champions into third place in the Serie A standings. Juve, missing Cristiano Ronaldo due to injury, struggled to break down the in-form hosts without their Portuguese talisman and were forced to defend for much of the second half against Serie A’s top scorers.

* Christian Eriksen’s first league goal of the season earned Inter Milan a 1-1 draw at Napoli on Sunday (Apr 18), moving the league leaders nine points clear at the top of the Serie A standings.

* AC Milan secured a first home Serie A win for over two months with a nervy 2-1 victory over Genoa on Sunday to boost their hopes of a top-four finish.

* Paris St Germain stayed in the hunt for a fourth successive Ligue 1 title after Mauro Icardi scored in the dying seconds of stoppage time to secure a dramatic 3-2 win over St Etienne on Sunday.

* Miami will host a Formula One race from next year as part of a 10-year-deal announced by the sport and local organisers on Sunday (Apr 18). The grand prix at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, home of the Miami Dolphins NFL team, will be a second Formula One race for the United States in addition to the one in Austin, Texas.

* Yamaha’s Fabio Quartararo claimed a second consecutive MotoGP victory after leading almost from start to finish at the Portuguese Grand Prix on Sunday as six-times world champion Marc Marquez finished seventh in his first race in nine months.

* Twelve of Europe’s most powerful clubs announced the launch of a breakaway European Super League on Monday (Apr 19) in a potentially seismic shift in the way football is run. Six Premier League teams – Liverpool, Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester City and Tottenham – are involved, alongside Real Madrid, Barcelona, Atletico Madrid, Juventus, Inter Milan and AC Milan.

* Paris St Germain ended Olympique Lyonnais’ five-year reign as European champions as they progressed to the women’s Champions League semi-finals on away goals after securing a 2-1 win on Sunday.

* Roger Federer will kickstart his claycourt campaign at next month’s Geneva Open as he steps up his preparations for the French Open, the 39-year-old Swiss wrote on Twitter on Sunday. After missing more than a year following two knee operations, Federer returned on Tour at last month’s Qatar Open, where he suffered a quarter-final defeat by Georgia’s Nikoloz Basilashvili.

Twelve of Europe’s top football clubs announced on Sunday they were launching a breakaway Super League in the face of widespread opposition from within the game and beyond.

The move, which has been heavily criticised by soccer authorities and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and French President Emmanuel Macron, sets up a rival to UEFA’s established Champions League competition.

Six clubs from England’s Premier League — Manchester United, Manchester City, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur feature among the founding members, along with Spain’s Real Madrid, Barcelona and Atletico Madrid and Italy’s Inter Milan, Juventus and AC Milan, the organisation, called Super League, said in a statement.

The league plans to launch “as soon as practicable” and the founding clubs will be given 3.5 billion euros ($4.19 billion) “to support their infrastructure investment plans and to offset the impact of the COVID pandemic”, the statement said.

“We will help football at every level and take it to its rightful place in the world. Football is the only global sport in the world with more than four billion fans and our responsibility as big clubs is to respond to their desires,” said Real Madrid president Florentino Perez, the new founding chairman of the Super League.

The league plans to add three more teams as founder members and then run a 20-team midweek league with five teams qualifying annually “based on their achievements in the prior seasons”.

A women’s Super League competition is also planned to be launched after the men’s league is up and running, the statement said.

The format of the competition would be two groups of 10 playing home and away fixtures with the top three in each group qualifying for the quarter-finals. A play-off involving fourth and fifth placed teams will complete the final eight.

Juventus president Andrea Agnelli, vice-chairman of the new league, said the move would secure the long-term future of the game.

“Our 12 founder clubs represent billions of fans across the globe and 99 European trophies. We have come together at this critical moment, enabling European competition to be transformed, putting the game we love on a sustainable footing for the long-term future, substantially increasing solidarity, and giving fans and amateur players a regular flow of headline fixtures that will feed their passion for the game while providing them with engaging role models.”

FIFA and UEFA condemned the plans, with Europe’s governing body saying it would ban any club involved from playing in its domestic league.

The new plan was announced the day before UEFA meets to discuss a new expanded format for the Champions League.

Three Vietnamese people who recently returned from abroad have tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, raising the total number of patients in the country to 2,784, the Ministry of Health reported on Sunday evening.

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According to the ministry’s report, the newly-reported patients include two men and a woman aged between 23-51 who returned from Japan, Angola, and the US. They were sent to quarantine areas in Khanh Hoa, Hoa Binh, and Bac Ninh provinces upon arrival and are now being treated at local hospitals and healthcare centres.

With these new infection cases, the number of Covid-19 patients in Vietnam has increased to 2,784, including 910 locally-transmitted cases reported since the new outbreak started in Hai Duong on January 28.

As of 6 pm on April 18, a total of 2,475 Covid-19 patients had recovered and been discharged from hospital. There have been 35 deaths, most of them being the elderly with serious underlying diseases.

At present, over 40,000 people who had close contact with Covid-19 patients or returned from virus-hit areas are being monitored at hospitals, quarantine facilities, and at home.