Villa fight back for 3-all draw
Two late goals edge club closer to Champions League
Substitute Jhon Duran was a late saviour for Aston Villa yesterday, scoring twice in the last five minutes against Liverpool to grab a remarkable 3-all home draw and edge his team closer to next year’s Champions League.
Watched by Villa fan Tom Hanks, who was in the ground in a claret tracksuit top, Villa played their part in a thrilling match in front of a packed house that Liverpool coach Jurgen Klopp described as “rocking”.
A win would have confirmed a place in the English Premier League top four for Unai Emery’s side and a place in the European Cup for the first time since 1983.
But the home side went behind in the second minute with a bizarre own goal from goalkeeper Emiliano Martinez, and although Youri Tielemans equalised soon after, goals from Cody Gakpo and Jarell ●uansah put Liverpool in the driving seat.
Until Duran’s appearance after 79 minutes.
The Colombian scored in the 85th and 88th, the second an astonishing lob executed on the run that sent Villa and their supporters wild with joy.
“We created chances but we didn’t score,” Tielemans told broadcaster Sky Sports.
“We got the draw and fought right until the end and that’s the most important thing. Unfortunately, we couldn’t score more, we felt like we deserved more in the first half. It’s unlucky but we’ll take the draw.”
Villa remained in fourth place, five points ahead of Tottenham.
Villa have one game left to play and Tottenham has two, starting with today’s visit by league leader Manchester City.
The top four qualify for the Champions League. Liverpool are third, 14 points clear of Villa.
The atmosphere was electric at kickoff but the power was quickly sapped for the home side when Liverpool had the ball in the back of the net after just 62 seconds.
Harvey Elliott’s cross from the right took a deflection and the wrong-footed Martinez fumbled the ball into his own net.
It took the home side just 15 minutes to recover.
Ollie Watkins did well on the left flank and cut the ball back for the unmarked Youri Tielemans to slam home from around 16 meters.
Liverpool regained the lead but only after a lengthy VAR review.
Luiz Diaz fed Joe Gomez on the overlap and his low ball across goal was turned in by Cody Gakpo.
Jarell ●uansah made it three early in the second half when he headed home a cross from Elliott to bag his first league goal.
And then it was Duran Duran when the Colombian slotted home from just outside the box and then scored that astonishing lob.
“Jhon Duran is a special player,” Emery said on Sky Sports. “He was very clinical and today was important for him.”
The Aston Villa players will tune into today’s Spurs-man City game.
Anything other than a Spurs win means Villa are into the Champions League.
“There are some of us that have never been close to the Champions League in our life,” Villa captain John Mcginn said. “We’ll have our Man City tops on tomorrow.” —AP
Jimmy Dunne, one of the architects behind the PGA Tour’s stunning reversal to strike a deal with the Saudi backers of LIV Golf, abruptly resigned yesterday from the PGA Tour board with a letter that expressed frustration at the lack of progress that no longer included his input.
Dunne, a power broker on Wall Street and in golf circles, was not included on the PGA Tour Enterprise’s new “transaction subcommittee” that will be handling the direct negotiations with the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia.
Dunne and Ed Herlihy, an attorney specializing in mergers and acquisition and chairman of PGA Tour Inc., were whom PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan leaned on when he first met with Yasir Al-rumayyan, the PIF governor, that led to the June 6 agreement.
The immediate result of the deal was an end to antitrust lawsuits neither side wanted and had already cost the PGA Tour in the neighbourhood of $50 million (NZ$83M). The tour has since brought on Strategic Sports Group as a minority investor in a deal initially worth $1.5 billion.
“As you are aware, I have not been asked to take part in negotiations with the PIF since June 2023,” Dunne said in his letter to the board first obtained by Sports Illustrated.
“Since the players now outnumber the independent directors on the board, and no meaningful progress has been made towards a transaction with the PIF, I feel like my vote and my role is utterly superfluous,” he wrote.
The tour, feeling pushback and resentment for the secrecy behind the June 6 deal, appointed Tiger Woods to the board with no term limit. The board now has six player directors — Woods, Patrick Cantlay, Jordan Spieth, Webb Simpson, Adam Scott and Peter Malnati — and five independent directors.
Dunne is the second independent director to resign following the June 6 announcement. Randall Stephenson, former AT&T chairman, resigned in July over objections to the agreement with the Saudis.
Mcilroy resigned from the board in November, and player directors appointed Spieth to finish his term.
The move signals the tour in a state of disarray as it tries to work out a deal with PIF and start the process of unifying a sport that has been divided since LIV launched in June 2022.
The June 6 agreement included a deadline to complete a deal by the end of 2023. By then, the tour had private equity suitors and LIV Golf signed reigning Masters champion Jon Rahm and eventually Tyrrell Hatton.
Dunne said along with the lawsuits being dismissed — often overlooked as a key point in the agreement with PIF — the agreement did not contain an exclusivity clause that allowed players “a full range of options to seek outside investors.”
“That resulted in a multi-billiondollar commitment from the Strategic Sports Group,” Dunne wrote.
“I believe that history will look favourably on this outcome and the very real opportunities now afforded the tour.”
Monahan and the player directors eventually met with Al-rumayyan for the first time in March, though there has been no clear progress on any deal — PIF as a minority investor or how to bring back the best players together more than four times a year at the majors.
“It is crucial for the board to avoid letting yesterday’s differences interfere with today’s decisions, especially when they influence future opportunities for the tour,” Dunne wrote. “Unifying professional golf is paramount to restoring fan interest and repairing wounds left from a fractured game. I have tried my best to move all minds in that direction.”
—AP