List of All Articles with Tag 'port'

Willi Castro had his first career multi-homer game, Matt Wallner homered amongst his career-high four hits, and the Minnesota Twins held off the Toronto Blue Jays 9-7 on Saturday

Alex Palou is the pole sitter and IndyCar points leader headed into the Indianapolis 500

Roberto De Zerbi hopes to help goalkeeper Jason Steele gain England recognition after claiming Lewis Dunk’s international recall is a comparable achievement to Brighton qualifying for the Europa League. Seagulls skipper Dunk has been included in Gareth Southgate’s squad for next month’s Euro 2024 qualifiers against Malta and North Macedonia, having been in international exile since his debut in November 2018. The 31-year-old has been rewarded for his key role in Albion’s sixth-placed Premier League finish. Former Middlesbrough, Blackburn and Sunderland keeper Steele has also been instrumental during a remarkable season at the Amex Stadium after dislodging Robert Sanchez as first choice in early March. Brighton head coach De Zerbi believes the 32-year-old is capable of joining Dunk in the national team set-up to compete with the likes of Jordan Pickford, Aaron Ramsdale, Nick Pope and Sam Johnstone. “It’s great news,” the Italian said of Dunk’s call-up. “I think it’s maybe the same big news like Europa League because to help one of our players to achieve a target so important, so prestigious is a proud (moment). “We have to be proud – not only the coaches but the players – for one player. “We will work in the next season to help Jason Steele to achieve the same target of Lewis Dunk because he has the quality to achieve one target so important. “In my vision, in my idea, Jason Steele is a top keeper. It’s difficult to find another keeper of this level. “I study football 24 hours per day but it’s very hard to find another keeper with this quality.” Steele, a former England Under-21 international who represented Great Britain at the London 2012 Olympics, had never played in the top flight until last term. He has registered six clean sheets and one assist during the past three months, having been preferred to Sanchez due to his ability to play out from the back. Steele joined the Seagulls in June 2018 – on the back of suffering successive relegations to League One with Blackburn and Sunderland – and had to wait more than three years for his league debut. “Football is nice because the past is not important,” said De Zerbi. “I have to analyse the present and sometimes the potential in the future but the past is not important. “You can change your life in one day, if you believe in yourself and you believe in work. “And I told him the same: ‘Jason, you have to think you can change. I give you the possibility to change your life, to change your career and you have to believe in yourself because I help you and you help me and you help the team’.” Brighton complete an unforgettable campaign at Aston Villa on Sunday after cementing their Europa League spot with Wednesday evening’s 1-1 draw at home to champions Manchester City. De Zerbi, who succeeded Graham Potter in September, feels Albion can progress significantly next term. “I am looking forward to working in pre-season because I think we can improve in a lot of things,” he said. “We have played not more than 70 per cent and we have another 30 per cent of improvement.” Read More Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live Rob Edwards relieved to hear skipper Tom Lockyer is doing okay after Luton win Pep Guardiola has no concerns about ‘scoring machine’ Erling Haaland I am on my phone all the time – David Moyes finds it difficult to switch off

David Moyes admits he finds it impossible to switch off during the close-season. The West Ham boss is resigned to losing captain Declan Rice this summer and will be inundated with calls from agents suggesting replacements. “I am the exact opposite of switching off, I am on my phone all the time, there’s recruitment and things going on,” said Moyes. “When you talk about the job as a manager, it is so full on. I am sure there are some managers who say ‘no problem and I’ll put my phone away’. I have never been like that, I am always on my phone and available. “I am getting 400 different names put to me every day, a lot of them you don’t know, some of them you do know and some of them you go, ‘I quite like him’. “When you are doing nothing, the agents start to get busy and that’s when it becomes a difficult time as a manager to switch off.” Moyes can at least relax in the knowledge West Ham are safe from relegation ahead of Sunday’s trip to Leicester, who are still in the drop zone. The Hammers also have a Europa Conference League final against Fiorentina in Prague to look forward to next month. “I hope to be playing plenty of golf, just trying to recover as it’s been a real difficult year for the club and myself,” added Moyes. “I think we’ve been a good side, but we’ve maybe not shown that we are a good side that often this year. “But I just see it as a huge achievement for the whole of West Ham as a football club, to be in a European final. “I don’t know if I would have said this when I came back to the club three years ago, you wouldn’t have believed me at all. The supporters were probably thinking that as well. If I wasn’t at West Ham, I would have said ‘you’re off your head’. “Maybe the draw in Europe has been a bit kinder to us – but that’s part of being in the cup competitions.” Read More Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live Rob Edwards relieved to hear skipper Tom Lockyer is doing okay after Luton win Roberto De Zerbi wants to help Jason Steele follow Lewis Dunk into England squad Pep Guardiola has no concerns about ‘scoring machine’ Erling Haaland

Leicester boss Dean Smith knows he will have fulfilled a “big ask” if he can guide his side to Premier League survival on Sunday. The Foxes must beat West Ham at the King Power Stadium and hope Everton do not win against Bournemouth if they are to avoid relegation to the Championship. Smith was parachuted into an eight-game SOS mission following Brendan Rodgers’ sacking at the beginning of April but has recorded just one victory from his first seven games and accepts that his side have not done as well as he thought they would. The 52-year-old has experience of producing the great escape as he led Aston Villa to seven points from their final four games of the 2019/20 season to beat the drop and says something similar would be required. Smith said: “When you first come in you look at games and I looked at Man City, Liverpool and Newcastle and knew they were going to be tough to get points out of. I expected us probably to win our home games and nick points away from home, with probably the exception of Liverpool. “We are a few points short of where I expected to be and that’s why it has come down to the last one. “This would be a very proud day if we do it, but we have to win our game and rely on other results. Each escape will have its own merits, the one at Villa with four games to go was seven points. That in itself was a big ask, this has been a big ask and hopefully we can do it.” It is only two years ago since Leicester were winning the FA Cup and fighting for Champions League qualification, but they have dropped quickly after having to balance the books in the league. And Smith says that shows just how tough the league can be for those outside the traditional ‘big six’. “This league is precarious. You’ve got to have really good models now to stay in the league,” he said. “You look at Brighton and Brentford, two really good models of clubs, one I know very well because I worked there. “It is hard. You need the finance behind it but it’s not just about finance as you can see in Brentford’s case. “There are many different ways to stay in the league but it’s a real tough league. Very quickly you can go and lose two or three games on the spin. All of a sudden that just drains the confidence of players.” Read More Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live Rob Edwards relieved to hear skipper Tom Lockyer is doing okay after Luton win Roberto De Zerbi wants to help Jason Steele follow Lewis Dunk into England squad Pep Guardiola has no concerns about ‘scoring machine’ Erling Haaland

Rob Edwards’ delight at Luton ending their 22-year wait for Premier League football was nothing compared to the relief he felt at the news captain Tom Lockyer was all right. Saturday’s Sky Bet Championship play-off final went the distance at a packed Wembley, where the Hatters rallied after their skipper’s worryingly collapse early on. Jordan Clark put Luton into a deserved lead that Coventry midfielder Gustavo Hamer cancelled out in the second half, with the match ending 1-1 after 90 minutes and extra-time. Joe Taylor saw a winner ruled out just before spot-kicks, with Fankaty Dabo’s sudden-death miss sealing a 6-5 shoot-out triumph that propelled Luton back into the top-flight for the first time since 1992. The dramatic triumph means the Hatters will welcome Manchester City and Co just nine years after facing the likes of Salisbury and Hyde in the Conference Premier. Luton boss Edwards said: “I felt a bit numb. I just made sure I shook Mark’s hand and his staff. “I don’t want to be that guy that just starts running off and celebrating before I’ve seen the other manager. “I just felt very numb. I still do. It hasn’t sunk in quite yet. It might take a few days, but it’s great. It does feel good. “It was mixed because of Locks (Lockyer), that’s why I couldn’t really go for it celebrating.” This is a day that will live long in the memory of anybody connected to Luton, whose players held a Lockyer shirt throughout the celebrations. The Hatters captain collapsed when running back to defence in the early stages of the final, leaving the field on a stretcher and being taken to hospital for tests. Luton confirmed Lockyer was “responsive and talking to his family”, with his dad posting an image of him in a hospital bed celebrating the shoot-out win. Edwards cried with delight when he saw that image and hopes to soon celebrate with the much-loved skipper. “If we can we will (see him in hospital),” he said of Lockyer, who is expected to be kept in overnight. “But I don’t want to get in the way and if I’m not allowed then I won’t. “If I’m allowed I would love to go and see him, but then I think we’re so tight as a group that I’m not sure if 40-odd people are allowed to go and see him in hospital. “We will have to check on that, but I’m just so thankful that he’s OK because that’s all that matters. “I wasn’t really able to enjoy any celebration at the end because all I cared about was Locks.” As for Coventry, it was a heartbreaking end to a memorable season. Bottom of the table in October and taken over at the start of the year, boss Mark Robins was agonisingly close to leading the Sky Blues from League Two to the top flight. “Firstly, congratulations to Luton because once the game is over and done with you’ve got to congratulate the winners,” the long-serving Coventry boss said. “They’ve come out on top today, however tight the game may have been. “Congratulations to them and their supporters. I think they have been outstanding all season and good luck to them moving forward. “I think for us, certainly the opposite of their joy is pain. “You certainly feel a bit of pain, but once that pain starts to dissipate in however long it takes for it to go, we’ve got to reflect on what an unbelievable achievement it’s been just to even be here today in a play-off final. “The division is very, very tough as we all know and unfortunately we couldn’t make that next step.” Read More Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live Roberto De Zerbi wants to help Jason Steele follow Lewis Dunk into England squad Pep Guardiola has no concerns about ‘scoring machine’ Erling Haaland I am on my phone all the time – David Moyes finds it difficult to switch off

Paris Saint-Germain clinched a record 11th French league title after drawing 1-1 at Strasbourg to move four points of second-place Lens with one game left

Champions League finalist Inter Milan has secured a spot in next season’s competition by beating Atalanta 3-2 in Serie A

Zach McKinstry homered in a three-run seventh as the Detroit Tigers rallied to beat the Chicago White Sox 7-3

The Denver Nuggets knew they had all the ingredients for this run to the NBA Finals last summer when Jamal Murry and Michael Porter Jr. were regaining their health, Nikola Jokic was coming off another MVP season and Aaron Gordon was stepping up his game

Isiah Kiner-Falefa hit a game-ending single with one out in the 10th inning as the New York Yankees beat the San Diego Padres 3-2

Emma Hayes credited the togetherness of her players as the driving force behind Chelsea’s fourth successive Women’s Super League title following a 3-0 victory over Reading. Chelsea sealed the trophy courtesy of goals from Guro Reiten and a Sam Kerr double. And Hayes admitted the fear of losing galvanised Chelsea, who added to their FA Cup trophy they won against Manchester United earlier this month. “The fear of losing drives me more than the will to win,” Hayes said. “This year we knew we had to grind and dig out results, sometimes when maybe we didn’t create as many chances. It’s just unbelievable character from the players. “This feels like a victory for the team because my staff have carried me in so many ways this season, especially when I was unwell. I think the team has carried each other. When senior players didn’t play as much, other seniors picked them up. “In the second part of the season we saw our newer players start to bear fruit and we found different ways to win, and you have to, it can’t look the same all the time. “When you are always chasing the whole year, it almost felt like the pressure wasn’t on us in so many ways because we were never in the front position for long. We’ve had different experiences being in first and second and to be honest with you we like being in both of them.” Hayes labelled Reiten as one of the world’s best players after the winger set up Kerr to make it 1-0 before getting on the scoresheet herself in the 42nd minute to double Chelsea’s lead. The Norwegian has been instrumental for the Blues this season having picked up 20 league goal contributions and filling the boots of Fran Kirby and Pernille Harder who have had injury-stricken campaigns. “She’s my player of the season,” Hayes added. “She’s grown up, she’s exceptional in this team, she’s got an unbelievable mind, very wise. “She’s funny and witty but most importantly she has an eye for a pass that is second to none. She doesn’t even need to see where Sam (Kerr) moves, she just gets half a yard and is always going to deliver it to her. “Guro Reiten needs to be recognised as one of the best players in the world because she is.” Reading manager Kelly Chambers conceded her side failed to show enough fight throughout the campaign, which resulted in their relegation. She said: “The frustrating thing for me was we hadn’t done enough of that this season, having that fight, spirit and that work ethic, intensity. We were able to do that today but if we were able to that in other games it might have looked completely different. “We can’t use any excuses, at the end of the day we haven’t been good enough in moments this season that potentially would have kept us up.” Read More Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live Oliver Kahn and Hasan Salihamidzic sacked by Bayern hours after Bundesliga win Premiership title just the start for Saracens – Owen Farrell Chelsea make it four in a row as Reading’s relegation is confirmed