Liverpool’s hopes of remaining unbeaten for an entire Premier League season were ended in sensational style by a rampant Watford at Vicarage Road. Ismaila Sarr scored twice while captain Troy Deeney added a third in a sparkling second-half display from the hosts as Liverpool’s run of victories was brought to a shuddering halt. The Reds had won their past 18 Premier League games and another at Vicarage Road would have made history as the longest winning run in the English top flight. But they never got going against a Watford side who were superb from start to finish.

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Leeds goalkeeper Kiko Casilla has been banned for eight games and fined £60,000 for racist comments made to Charlton winger Jonathan Leko.

Manchester City defender Aymeric Laporte is expected to be out of action for up to a month with a hamstring injury, says manager Pep Guardiola. Laporte, 25, was forced off in the first half of Wednesday’s Champions League win at Real Madrid – having made just eight appearances this season. “He has a hamstring injury. Three weeks out more or less – a month,” Guardiola said on Friday. “Unfortunately this happens after four or five months out.” Laporte returned in City’s 1-0 Premier League victory over Sheffield United in January, following surgery on a knee injury in August 2019.

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China’s three-time Olympic champion Sun Yang has been banned for eight years for missing a doping test in September 2018. The 28-year-old was initially cleared of wrongdoing by FINA, the swimming federation, in January 2019. Following an appeal by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), the decision has been overturned. An eight-year ban was imposed on Sun because this was his second offence. He had served a three-month suspension in 2014 for taking prohibited stimulant Trimetazidine. Sun told China’s Xinhua news agency that he plans to appeal against the decision.

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FIFA is set to discuss whether to prevent domestic league games being played in another country. A Stakeholders’ Committee, meeting in Zurich on Thursday, will debate whether to recommend making an amendment to the rules of football’s world governing body. The idea of a ’39th Game’ was first mentioned by Premier League chief executive Richard Scudamore in 2008 but was eventually shelved due to widespread opposition within the game. However, the concept of matches being played abroad has been taken up more recently by Spain’s La Liga, who have twice in the last two seasons been denied the chance to host official matches in the USA. The committee itself can only advise the 37-member FIFA Council which would ultimately make any decision to block overseas matches.

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Double amputee Blake Leeper has launched an appeal to run at the Tokyo Olympics after he was banned from competing by World Athletics. Leeper runs with prosthetic blades and qualified for the 2019 World Championships but was not allowed to compete while his case was reviewed. He has now appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) to aim to qualify for Tokyo. Paralympian Oscar Pistorius won a similar appeal in 2008.

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Istanbul Basaksehir vs Copenhagen

Olympiakos vs Wolves

Rangers vs Bayer Leverkusen

Wolfsburg vs Shakhtar Donetsk

Inter Milan vs Getafe

Sevilla vs Roma

Eintracht Frankfurt or RB Salzburg vs Basel

LASK vs Manchester United

The matches are set to be played on 12 and 19 March.

A man has been arrested after Manchester City boss Pep Guardiola’s emails were allegedly hacked. Manchester police say investigations are ongoing but a 30-year-old has been released after being questioned. The Sun newspaper claims to have spoken to an IT contractor who says the emails contained players’ contact details and information on transfer talks. It’s claimed Guardiola was targeted in 2017 with the man attempting to sell details for £100,000.

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Football fans in Nigeria are in for a big thrill as Samuel Eto’o Fils, one of Africa’s greatest football legends has arrived in Lagos for the launch of the 2020 edition of Castle Africa 5s, the continental leg of the Trophy 5-A-Side developmental football tournament. Eto’o arrived in Lagos yesterday and was received by the Trophy Lager team in company of International Breweries management and members of the sports media.

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Liverpool say they are seeing sustained growth across all areas of the club after announcing a pre-tax profit of £42m and increased turnover for last season which saw them win their sixth European Cup. In the club’s annual financial accounts for the year to May 31, 2019, published on Thursday, Liverpool announced that turnover had increased by £78m to £533m, with media revenue increasing by £41m to £261m. Commercial revenue was also up by £34m to £188m and match revenue increased by £3.5m to £84m. The club spent a record £223m on Alisson, Fabinho, Naby Keita and Xherdan Shaqiri during this period, with players including Danny Ings and Dominic Solanke leaving Anfield.

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Few journeys to the top of professional football can compete with the story of Alphonso Davies – the Bayern Munich youngster who starred against Chelsea in the Champions League on Tuesday. Born in a refugee camp in Ghana in 2000, his parents had fled fighting in the second Liberian civil war. They then moved to Canada as refugees when the player was five years old. Davies joined the Vancouver Whitecaps youth set-up in 2015 at the age of 14, before making his MLS debut a year later, and his big break came in the summer of 2018. That was when European giants Bayern agreed a Major League Soccer record £9.84m fee to sign the player the following January – and the teenager quickly found himself rubbing shoulders with superstars.

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Bayern Munich striker Robert Lewandowski will miss the second leg of their Champions League tie against Chelsea after being ruled out for four weeks with a leg injury. The Poland international assisted two Serge Gnabry goals and scored a third as Bayern won 3-0 at Stamford Bridge in the first leg on Tuesday.

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Tottenham Hotspur midfielder Dele Alli has been charged by the Football Association over a post on social media about coronavirus. Alli, 23, put a video on Snapchat in which he joked about the outbreak and appeared to mock an Asian man. He later deleted the post and released a new video on Chinese social media platform Weibo to apologise, saying: “I let myself down and the club.”

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Glasgow Rangers backed up last week’s stunning comeback by producing a poised performance to dump Sporting Braga out of the Europa League and reach the last 16. Ryan Kent’s calm, breakaway finish coupled with a strong defensive display means the Ibrox side are in the last 16 in European competition for the first time since 2011.

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Manchester City’s appeal against their two-year ban from European club competition has been registered by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). The Premier League champions were also fined 30m euros for serious breaches of UEFA’s financial regulations. City chief executive Ferran Soriano has said the breaches are simply not true. CAS says “it is not possible” to say when the matter will be resolved. CAS arbitration procedures involve an exchange of written submissions between the parties while a panel of arbitrators is convened to hear the appeal.

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Former Chelsea defender Celestine Babayaro has said that while he welcomes ex-players being involved in Nigeria coaching set-up he questions Joseph Yobo’s credentials. His comments come after his former international team-mate and ex-Everton star Yobo was appointed as assistant coach of the Super Eagles two weeks ago. Babayaro, who won an Olympic gold medal with Nigeria at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, said any such appointment must be backed by requisite qualifications. The duo were in the Nigeria squad at both the 2002 World Cup and two years later at the Africa Cup of Nations in Tunisia.

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Five-time Grand Slam champion Maria Sharapova is “saying goodbye” to tennis at the age of 32. In an article written for Vogue and Vanity Fair, Sharapova said her body “had become a distraction” after a struggle with shoulder injuries. The Russian won her first Grand Slam at Wimbledon in 2004 aged 17 and completed the career slam – all four major titles – by winning the French Open in 2012. In 2016, she served a 15-month ban after testing positive for meldonium.

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Former Olympic 1500m champion and three-time world champion Asbel Kiprop says he is turning his back on athletics to try motorsport. Kiprop won gold at the Beijing Olympics in 2008 but is serving a four-year doping ban imposed in April 2019.

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Manchester City winger Raheem Sterling has been cleared to play in the Champions League last-16 tie against Real Madrid on Wednesday. Manager Pep Guardiola confirmed the news at his media conference ahead of the game at the Bernabeu. The England forward has been out since suffering a hamstring injury in the 2-0 defeat to Tottenham on February 2 but is in line to return in Spain. Guardiola said: “Raheem is fit. His physical condition and regeneration is amazing. He said he could have played against West Ham and Leicester but the doctor said it was too soon. But that was a good sign.”

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