Manchester City’s Sergio Aguero scores his team’s first goal during a 2-0 win over Crystal Place in a Premier League game on Saturday in London. Catherine Ivill/Pool via Associated Press
SOCCER
Manchester City moved within three points of reclaiming the Premier League title by beating Crystal Palace 2-0 on Saturday thanks to goals from Sergio Aguero and Ferran Torres, players at the opposite ends of their careers at the club.
Aguero, who is leaving City at the end of the season after 10 years, scored his record-extending 258th goal for the club by controlling a pass from Benjamin Mendy and powering a shot off his laces into the roof of the net in the 57th minute.
Just 84 seconds later, Torres scored the 10th goal of the 21-year-old Spain winger’s debut season at City by curling home a low, left-footed finish from the edge of the area.
• Kai Havertz’s majestic brace tightened Chelsea’s grip on a top-four finish in the English Premier League as the Blues deepened Fulham’s relegation worries with a 2-0 win at Stamford Bridge.
The Germany forward doubled his league tally for the campaign with a goal in each half in an exemplary exhibition of play in the “false nine” role.
Fourth-placed Chelsea opened up a six-point gap on West Ham in fifth after its third win in four matches. West Ham’s game in hand is at Burnley on Monday.
ITALY: Inter Milan won at last-placed Crotone 2-0 to give it a chance to clinch the Serie A before the weekend ends.
Inter moved 14 points clear of Atalanta with four games to play. If Atalanta doesn’t win at Sassuolo on Sunday, Inter will clinch its first title since 2010.
Crotone was relegated.
Christian Eriksen scored midway through the second half on a play begun with a backheel flick from fellow substitute Alexis Sanchez. Four minutes after the subs went on, Romelu Lukaku took Sanchez’s creative pass and left it for Eriksen to score with a drive that deflected in off a defender.
Achraf Hakimi sealed it for Inter by finishing off a counterattack in stoppage time.
MLS: Carles Gil had an assist and scored his first regular-season goal since 2019 to help the New England Revolution beat Atlanta United 2-1 in Foxborough, Massachusetts.
Gil, after VAR review, converted from the penalty spot in the 53rd minute to give New England a 2-1 lead. The 28-year old scored 10 goals in his first MLS season, the last of which came on September 25, 2019, before missing most of last season while recovering for Achilles surgery. He returned in July last season and had two goals and three assists in four playoff games.
• Eloy Room made three saves for the Columbus Crew in a scoreless draw with Montreal in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
Bradley Wright-Phillips put one in the net for the Crew (0-0-2) in the 85th minute but was called offside.
• Los Angeles FC’s Corey Baird and the Houston Dynamo’s Tyler Pasher scored within a couple minutes in a 1-1 tie in Houston.
Baird opened the scoring for LAFC (1-0-2) with a left-footed shot in the 55th minute. At the end of the build-up, Mark Anthony Kaye and Latif Blessing made the passes in the 18-yard box that created the opening on the left side for Baird.
Pasher quickly leveled it for the Dynamo (1-1-1) with a close-range finish of Fabrice-Jean Picault’s cross in the 57th.
AUTO RACING
INDYCAR: Scott Dixon had another dominating victory at Texas Motor Speedway, winning the first of two races on consecutive days in Fort Worth, Texas.
Dixon passed Chip Ganassi Racing teammate and polesitter Alex Palou at the start of the third lap and went on to lead 206 of 212 laps for his 51st career victory, his fifth at the high-banked, 1 1/2-mile track.
The 40-year-old New Zealander finished .2646 seconds ahead of countryman Scott McLaughlin, a 27-year-old IndyCar rookie in his first oval race.
TRUCKS: Kyle Busch blew a restart in overtime that should have cost him a race he’d dominated at Kansas Speedway. Given a second chance, Busch corrected his mistake and earned the 61st Truck Series win of his career.
It was the fifth straight victory for Kyle Busch Motorsports, and manufacturer Toyota has won all seven races this year. Busch has won twice.
Busch won the first two stages and led a race-high 59 of the 140 laps. He got beat by Ross Chastain when the race first went to overtime as Busch struggled to get his Tundra through the gears.
Chastain sailed past Busch and pulled Zane Smith with him as Busch plummeted into traffic. But a spin deeper in the field brought out the caution, set up a restart for a second overtime and gave Busch another chance.
He restarted in the second row behind Chastain and Smith, darted to the top, pulled around to the front of the field and drove to the win by .665-seconds over Chastain. He did his customary bow with the checkered flag to the limited spectators permitted in the grandstands.
TENNIS
MADRID OPEN: Ashleigh Barty and Iga Swiatek, the two most recent champions of the French Open, will meet in the last 16, in Madrid.
They won their second-round matches on Saturday to set up the first-time meeting.
The top-ranked Barty needed three sets to beat 80th-ranked Tamara Zidansek. Barty struggled with her first serves, but she compensated by striking nine aces and saved nine break points to outlast Zidansek 6-4, 1-6, 6-3. That took her win streak on clay to 13 matches after claiming the Stuttgart title last week.
Swiatek brushed aside Laura Siegemund 6-3, 6-3 for the Pole’s ninth win in a row on clay.
MUNICH OPEN: Nikoloz Basilashvili set up a meeting with Jan-Lennard Struff in the fina in Munich by winning two matches.
Basilashvili was leading 5-4 in his quarterfinal with Norbert Gombos when it was suspended on Friday due to rain. The Georgian served out the first set on Saturday and broke Gombos once in the second for a 6-4, 6-4 win.
He then blew away Casper Ruud 6-1, 6-2 in the semifinals, breaking the Norwegian five times.
Ruud, too, was playing his second match of the day after beating John Millman 6-3, 6-4. Their quarterfinal was suspended on Friday following the first set.
Basilashvili heads into his second tour final of the season after winning the Qatar Open in March. He has a 4-2 career record in finals, with two of those wins on clay.
Struff made his first tour final after ending a seven-match losing run in semifinals by stopping in-form qualifier Ilya Ivashka 6-4, 6-1. Struff recovered from 3-1 down in the first set, winning 11 of the next 13 games.
AUTO RACING
FORMULA ONE: Valtteri Bottas took pole position for the Portuguese Grand Prix in Portimao, Portugal and denied Mercedes teammate Lewis Hamilton a record-extending 100th Formula One pole.
Bottas clinched the 17th of his career and a much-needed one after he crashed in the last race and scored no points.
“It’s a good feeling to be on pole, it’s been quite a while,” Bottas said. “I’ve worked very hard this week.”
He was .007 seconds ahead of Hamilton and .34 ahead of Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, making him the third different pole-sitter in three races. Hamilton and Verstappen earned the others.
Hamilton is aiming for his 97th win on Sunday, while Bottas goes for his 17th victory, and Verstappen his 12th.
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