AZ Alkmaar upset Lazio in ECL
ROME, March 8, (AP): Dutch club AZ Alkmaar rallied from a goal down to upset Lazio 2-1 in their Europa Conference League round-of-16 first leg on Tuesday.
Lazio, which beat Serie A leader Napoli last weekend, took the lead in the 18th minute with a strike from former Spain forward Pedro Rodríguez, playing in a face mask after breaking his nose.
The visitors, who have lost just one of their last 12 games in all competitions, recovered from a slow start and Vangelis Pavlidis netted the equalizer shortly before halftime.
Defender Milos Kerkez scored in the winner in the 62nd minute.
“This was a bit of a fluke result because we created a lot of chances and conceded from both of theirs,” Lazio coach Maurizio Sarri said. “The string of missed chances tonight is too long.”
AZ coach Pascal Jansen added, “I’m not surprised because I know what my team can do.”
The rest of the matches in the third-tier Europa Conference League will take place on Thursday with the return leg on March 16.
Lazio’s match was on Tuesday because Roma will play at home in the Europa League on Thursday in same stadium.
Jurgen Klinsmann has arrived to start his job as head coach of South Korea’s national team and immediately set a target of ending an Asian Cup drought that has stretched for more than 60 years.
The 58 year-old Klinsmann, who won the 1990 World Cup as a player and then coached his native Germany to the semifinals in 2006 before guiding the U.S. men’s team to the second round of the 2014 World Cup, was hired by the Korea Football Association late last month.
South Korea has not been continental champion since 1960 and has already qualified for the 2023 tournament, which has been delayed until next January.
“The goal is to win the Asian Cup,” Klinsmann, whose contract runs until the end of the 2026 World Cup, told reporters after arriving at Incheon International Airport on Wednesday. “When the offer came, I was proud and honored to accept. I have visited Korea several times and it is a good country, with good people and a good team.”
The Asian Cup will take place in Qatar, where the Koreans reached the second round of the World Cup last December under Portuguese coach Paulo Bento.
Major League Soccer will keep on pushing the sport’s international rules-makers to allow a trial of temporary substitutes for players suspected of concussions.
The International Football Association Board, which decides rules, said Saturday that it will continue with trials of permanent substitutions for players suspected of head injuries. MLS and England’s Premier League proposed having injured players be assessed for a longer period and have the potential to rejoin the match.
SOCCER
“We strongly believe in the benefits of conducting the trial and welcome the opportunity to share the data and learnings from such a trial with the global soccer community,” MLS said in a statement Tuesday. “The proposed temporary concussion substitution protocol was developed with MLS’s medical advisers and would allow club medical professionals to conduct a structured offfield evaluation of players suspected of sustaining a concussion.”
The MLS Players Association has criticized the IFAB, which includes four representatives from FIFA and one each from the governing bodies of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
MLS said it will work with the Premier League, the French league, the MLS union, the international union FIFPRO and the World Leagues Forum to push the IFAB to trial temporary substitutes.
“In the meantime, we will continue to evaluate our options as we work with our players and clubs on implementing our current MLS head injury/concussion evaluation and management protocol,” the league said.