Soccer: Arsenal advances to FA Cup final, leaves Man City without a prize
Pep Guardiola’s first season in English soccer with Manchester City will end without a trophy.
He’s even facing a battle just to qualify for the Champions League.
Alexis Sanchez’s extra-time goal earned Arsenal a 2-1 victory over City in the FA Cup semifinals at Wembley Stadium on Sunday.
While Arsenal can look forward to an FA Cup final against Chelsea next month, City’s unravelling season will now be defined by finishing in the top four of the Premier League.
With five league games to go, that’s far from certain.
City lies in fourth place and is now just one point ahead of city rival Manchester United, which made light of the absence of injured striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic in winning 2-0 at Burnley in the Premier League on Sunday.
City hosts United in a derby on Thursday that assumes huge impor- tance for two teams which were expected to be challenging for the title this season, not scraping into the top four.
Guardiola won at least one trophy — often many more — in each of his seasons with Barcelona (2008-2012) and Bayern Munich (2013-16), but he’s found it harder at City, where he arrived as the most coveted coach in world soccer.
City was eliminated from the Champions League by Monaco at the last-16 stage, while Guardiola gave up on winning the Premier League back in January.
Kante named top player: Chelsea midfielder N’Golo Kante has been voted the player of the year by his fellow professionals, collecting the award at a ceremony on Sunday that honoured David Beckham’s contribution to English football.
The 26-year-old Kante has some way to go to match Beckham’s six Premier League titles with Manches- ter United, but he is closing in on the rare achievement of collecting England’s top prize with two different clubs.
Kante, a five-foot-six force in midfield, secured his move to Chelsea last July after his tackles, interceptions and tireless box-to-box running helped 5,000-1 outsider Leicester win the title for the first time. Chelsea has also benefited from Kante running its midfield, with the London side four points out in front with six games remaining.
Kante topped the PFA poll ahead of Chelsea teammate Eden Hazard, the 2015 recipient, and a quartet of strikers: Arsenal’s Sanchez, Everton’s Romelu Lukaku, Manchester United’s Ibrahimovic and Tottenham’s Harry Kane.
Messi leads Barca: Lionel Messi scored his 500th career goal for Barcelona to give the Catalan club a dramatic 3-2 win over 10-man Real Madrid in the last minute of El Clasico on Sunday, blowing the Spanish league title race wide open.
Messi netted his milestone goal — his second of the night — with a low left-footed shot from inside the area after a cross by Jordi Alba two minutes into stoppage time.
The two rivals are level at the top on 75 points. Barcelona leads on the head-to-head tiebreaker but Madrid has six games left — one more than Barca.