The Toronto Raptors season in one word
The pandemic-hit NBA season has been a struggle for the Toronto Raptors, a cruel and humbling experience for players and fans alike.
Sharks forward Patrick Marleau passed Gordie Howe to become the NHL's all-time games played leader on Monday night.
The NHL's leading scorer buried the winner with under five minutes to go in regulation Monday on a jaw-dropping individual effort as Edmonton defeated Montreal 4-1.
Tampa Bay Lightning forward Alex Killorn crushed two members of the Carolina Hurricanes in 25 seconds, and completed the Gordie Howe hat-trick.
The spring of Steph continues.
With 13 assists on Monday night, Chris Paul moved past Magic Johnson into fifth on the NBA's all-time assists list
Beckham's comments were ironic, though, coming from the co-owner of a club in a closed league.
Toronto will be without puck retrieval specialist and versatile forward Zach Hyman due to a sprained MCL.
Brown suffered the assault during Houston's road trip in Florida to face the Magic and Heat.
The latest occupant of John Tortorella's famed doghouse is none other than Max Domi. Congrats!
Alexander Edler will not be available to the decimated Vancouver Canucks roster.
Tom Brady and Tie Domi were kickin' it again this weekend as the sports world's most unexpected friendship continues to blossom before our eyes.
With four games upcoming against the lowly Red Wings, stacking some Dallas Stars on your fantasy hockey roster this week is a no-brainer.
Twelve top European soccer clubs have agreed to establish the "Super League," a new elite competition that has left soccer fans angry and confused about the future of the world's most popular sport.
A battle between two London rivals, and two Serie A powers fighting for European qualification highlight this week's slate.
Get news, analysis, memes and more delivered to your inbox the morning after every Raptors game.
Zamar Kirven is facing capital murder charges after he allegedly killed two of his former teammates while they slept early Sunday.
MADRID — As Real Madrid kept winning European title after European title, club president Florentino Pérez never stopped working on a side project he believed was a perfect fit for the Spanish powerhouse. Pérez kept at it, constantly working behind the scenes to gather support. He was even accused of using rival club Barcelona to play along to help make it a reality. This side project, the controversial Super League, is finally materializing after Madrid and 11 other clubs announced its creation on Sunday. The breakaway competition would include only the elite clubs in European soccer and would compete directly with the UEFA-run Champions League. Pérez, the Super League's founding chairman, said Tuesday the new competition comes to “save soccer” and is being created because the coronavirus pandemic left clubs in a dire financial situation, on the verge of being extinct if nothing is changed. But the Super League idea existed way before the pandemic hit, and before soccer was about to “die,” as Pérez put it. “We have been working on this for the last two or three years,” Pérez said in an interview on Spanish television program El Chiringuito de Jugones. “Now the pandemic has led us to a situation that we can no longer endure.” The wealthy Spanish businessman is seen as one of the competition's masterminds, along with Juventus president Andrea Agnelli and the American owners of Premier League clubs Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester United. Pérez said he was picked as the competition’s founding chairman because he is the one who “started” the idea. It was Pérez who some believe was behind one of the first public mentions about the new competition last year — one made by none other than the outgoing president of rival Barcelona. Spanish league president Javier Tebas, one of the most outspoken critics of the new league, said at the time that it was Pérez who prodded Josep Bartomeu to talk publicly about the new competition in an effort to give it more credibility. In the speech in which he announced hi resignation as club president last October, Bartomeu mentioned that Barcelona would be part of the Super League. His unexpected reference to the new league on his last day on the job, without any elaboration, attracted widespread attention at the time. “Bartomeu was directed by Florentino, that is what I believe,” Tebas told The Associated Press at the time. “This (league) has been a dream of the Real Madrid president. ... He has worked for this for a long time, this is nothing new. But it is a big mistake because he doesn’t understand its financial consequences.” Pérez said Tuesday that when he talked to new Barcelona president Joan Laporta recently it was easy to convince him because he understood that the new league is something that can help soccer and the clubs. More concrete plans for the new competition were first leaked in January and only re-emerged this weekend. The proposal of the new competition attracted widespread criticism, with leagues, clubs, players, governments and fan groups saying the rebel clubs were making a self-serving decision that would only benefit an elite group. Pérez and Madrid were involved in a similarly controversial breakout in basketball nearly two decades ago, when the club was among those that broke ties with the international federation and became founding members of Euroleague Basketball, currently the top league in Europe. “We want to do the same thing that happened in basketball,” Pérez said. “We want that same model in soccer. We want to own our destiny. But with total solidarity. If there is a lot of money, we want it to be shared with everyone. This is not about the rich against the poor." Pérez also was believed to help influence the inclusion of Atlético Madrid among the founding members of the new soccer competition. According to Spanish media outlet Vozpópuli, Atlético was added in part because of the support of Pérez, who helped convince the other members about its importance. Pérez, a businessman from the construction sector who Forbes says has a net worth of more than $2 billion, last week began his sixth term as Madrid president. He helped the club recover from its own financial problems when he first arrived in 2000, leading Madrid to 26 titles, including five European Cups and five Club World Cups. Now he feels it’s soccer in general that needs his help. “We want," Pérez said, "to save soccer, really.” ___ More AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports ___ Tales Azzoni on Twitter: http://twitter.com/tazzoni Tales Azzoni, The Associated Press
A look at what’s happening in European soccer on Tuesday: ENGLAND Chelsea can climb above Leicester and West Ham and into third place in the Premier League with a win against Brighton at Stamford Bridge. The race for Champions League qualification has been muddied, however, by the creation of a breakaway Super League that contains six English teams — including Chelsea — as signatories. If the Super League is launched as early as next season, finishing in the Premier League's top four this season is irrelevant for Chelsea as the London club would not be involved in the Champions League. Brighton is six points clear of the relegation zone with two games in hand over Fulham, which is in third-to-last place. GERMANY Schalke will drop out of the Bundesliga for the first time since 1991 if it loses at Arminia Bielefeld. The former Champions League contender has been stuck at the bottom of the table all season and relegation could soon be confirmed. Bayern Munich can cruise closer to a ninth consecutive title as it hosts Bayer Leverkusen. Second-placed Leipzig is seven points behind as it visits Cologne. Eintracht Frankfurt is still on track to qualify for the Champions League in fourth but its campaign is in danger of faltering after back-to-back losses. Hosting Augsburg offers a chance for Frankfurt to recover its momentum. FRANCE First-division Montpellier and second-tier front-runner Toulouse look to avoid slipping up at fourth-tier sides and reach the French Cup semifinals. Montpellier is eighth in Ligue 1 and chasing a Europa League spot while Toulouse is on course for promotion to the top flight. Both sides have won the cup, with Montpellier raising it for the second time in 1990 when former France coach Laurent Blanc was among the scorers. Toulouse's only success dates to 1957. Toulouse is at Rumilly Vallieres while Montpellier makes a 100-mile (160-kilometre) trip to Canet-en-Roussillon, which caused a big upset by knocking out Marseille. ITALY Fiorentina is in a training retreat ahead of the match at Hellas Verona after a poor run of results that has left it perilously close to the relegation zone. Fiorentina has won only one of its past eight matches and the 3-1 defeat to Sassuolo on Saturday left it just five points above the bottom three. The club announced after the match that it was imposing a media silence and the team went into a training retreat on Sunday. Verona has lost five of its past six matches to see its European dreams vanish but it remains comfortably mid-table. ___ More AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports The Associated Press
MONTREUX, Switzerland — The breakaway Super League would set back the development of the women's game in Europe, UEFA's head of women's soccer said Tuesday. The 12 clubs which announced they would set up a Super League on Sunday say they have plans to launch a women's competition “as soon as practicable after the start of the men’s competition.” Nadine Kessler, who is in charge of women's soccer at UEFA, said the closed league would hinder efforts to build a sustainable, professional women's game across the continent. “Only a small proportion of players unfortunately have full-time professions and guaranteed access to top-class facilities,” she wrote in a post on Twitter. “We do not only need more clubs, but a better balance between those clubs, so that more than just a few standout players can thrive on it.” All 12 Super League clubs have women's teams but only two — Arsenal and Barcelona — have ever reached a Women's Champions League final, though others like Chelsea and Manchester City are growing fast. Instead, the giants of the women's game are clubs which have been shut out of the Super League like Lyon and Wolfsburg, Kessler's former club. If the Super League launches “all the great steps made in recent years, including the hardship of many players gone before, for our game to become a profession across Europe, will have less of a chance of becoming reality,” Kessler wrote. There could also be a clash of branding. The existing top division in England is called the Women's Super League. ___ More AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports The Associated Press
LIVERPOOL, England — Everton described the move by six Premier League clubs to join a breakaway Super League as “preposterous arrogance” on Tuesday and urged them to reconsider their decision for the good of the game. Everton’s nine first division league titles is the fourth most in the history of English soccer, and the club from Merseyside was considered part of the country’s elite in the 1980s and early 1990s. It is not among the current “Big Six” in England — Manchester United, Liverpool, Manchester City, Chelsea, Arsenal and Tottenham — who have become founding members of a proposed Super League that is threatening to rip up the structures of the European game. In a strong statement from the club’s board of directors, Everton said it is “saddened and disappointed” to see the six clubs act in their own interests during a pandemic and tarnish the reputation of the Premier League. “At this time of national and international crisis — and a defining period for our game — clubs should be working together collaboratively with the ideals of our game and its supporters uppermost,” the statement read. “Instead, these clubs have been secretly conspiring to break away from a football pyramid that has served them so well.” Everton said the six clubs “appear intent on disenfranchising supporters across the game — including their own” by their actions and reminded their owners of the positions they hold as custodians of the English and wider game. “The backlash is understandable and deserved — and has to be listened to,” Everton said. “This preposterous arrogance is not wanted anywhere in football outside of the clubs that have drafted this plan.” Everton’s majority owner, British-Iranian businessman Farhad Moshiri, has spent heavily in recent years in an effort to push the team, which is managed by Carlo Ancelotti, into the group stage of the Champions League for the first time. The club is hoping to move into a new stadium by the start of the 2024-25 season. Everton’s reaction comes on the day the Premier League holds a meeting of the 14 clubs not involved in the proposed Super League to discuss how to respond to the breakaway league. The Premier League has already condemned the proposals as an attack on the "principles of open competition and sporting merit which are at the heart of the domestic and European football pyramid.” ___ More AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports The Associated Press