Young, senior Saudi female fencers crowned in Kingdom Fencing Championship

LONDON: Premier League leaders Manchester City travel to Chelsea on Sunday with Erling Haaland in ominous form as Arsenal and Tottenham seek to recover from their first defeats of the season.

LONDON: Gareth Southgate said the door was still “100 percent” open for Raheem Sterling after leaving the Chelsea forward out of England’s squad for their final Euro 2024 qualifiers. Southgate, whose side are already assured of their place in the tournament in Germany next year, named a 25-man group on Thursday for a home match against Malta on November 17 and a trip to North Macedonia three days later. Sterling, who has 82 caps and 20 goals for England, has not played for the national team since last year’s World Cup in Qatar, where England reached the quarter-finals. “The door is 100 percent open not only for Raheem but for other players,” said Southgate. “There’s no doubt about that. “We don’t need to know about his quality, his personality.

BERLIN: Record-breaking Stuttgart striker Serhou Guirassy said England captain Harry Kane’s arrival in Germany has “pushed a lot of strikers in the Bundesliga to raise their level to try and compete with him.” Guirassy, who scored a record 14 goals in the opening eight league matches this season before injuring his hamstring, told English newspaper The Guardian in an interview published Thursday he relished the competition. “It’s something big to be competing with Harry Kane, who is a world-class striker.” Despite his blistering start, Guirassy is not currently atop the Bundesliga goalscoring charts, after the Guinean’s injury allowed Kane to overtake him. Kane has 15 league goals since joining Bayern Munich from Tottenham in the summer, having played two more matches than Guirassy. Last season, Niclas Fuellkrug and Christopher Nkunku shared the Torjaegerkanone, the award given to the top goalscorer, with each scoring 16 goals, indicating how dramatic the turnaround has been. Guirassy, who scored 11 league goals in total last season, credited a more mature game understanding as the reason for his boosted output, while trying to “learn from the best.” “When I was younger, I liked to run everywhere on the pitch but I’ve learned about myself.

SALE, Morocco: World Cup semifinalist Morocco will start their qualifying campaign for the 2026 tournament with a newly-recruited France Under-21 player named in the squad for the first time Thursday. Sofiane Diop, a midfielder with French league leader Nice, was picked by coach Walid Regragui for the scheduled games at home to Eritrea next Thursday and in Tanzania on Nov. 21. The 23-year-old Diop was born in France and has family ties to Morocco and Senegal.

RIYADH: The organizing committee of the Saudi Games 2023 has announced that tickets to the nation’s largest sporting event are now available.

Hong Kong: Cameron Smith produced an opening round 7-under par 63 in the Hong Kong Open, living up to his aim of channeling the frustration of a disappointing LIV Golf Jeddah last month.

RIYADH: Reports have emerged of a dressing room bust up between sacked Al-Ittihad boss Nuno Santo and star striker Karim Benzema during the club’s 2-0 AFC Champions League defeat to Air Force Club of Iraq on Monday.

RIYADH: Saudi Arabian coach Abdulhakeem Al-Tuwaijri has signed a contract to coach the first team of Bosnia’s Zeljeznicar Club by the Future Falcons Program, which is affiliated with the Saudi Arabian Football Federation. This step is part of FFP’s goals to develop national coaches and administrators, opening doors for them to work in Europe, as well as training and developing young players for national teams, said a media statement on Tuesday. This marks Al-Tuwaijri’s first experience as a head coach for a first-team in Europe. The 44-year-old coach began his journey in Europe with the Saudi FFP as an assistant coach, later becoming the coach for the team. He then moved to Slavia Prague in the Czech Republic as an assistant coach for the reserve team and eventually became an assistant coach for the first team. His journey led him to the Bosnian club as the head coach for the first team this season, reflecting his progress in Europe. Having won the Bosnian league championship eight times, Zeljeznicar is considered one of the major clubs in Bosnia and they have also won the country’s cup six times and the Bosnian Super Cup three times. They also reached the semifinals of the European Cup in the 1984/1985 season.