Lorenzo Insigne finished off a slick move in the 90th minute to give Napoli a late 1-0 win over Liverpool on Wednesday.
Insigne’s effort capped a dominant performance against the misfiring Reds and vaulted the host into first in Group C with four points.
Liverpool also lost Naby Keita to an apparent back injury early in the first half. The bustling Guinean midfielder, who started his sixth match for his new club Wednesday, required a stretcher to leave the pitch.
Jurgen Klopp’s men are now three matches without a win after claiming victory in each of their first seven fixtures of the campaign.
Napoli monopolized the majority of the chances at the Stadio San Paolo, while Liverpool tried to preserve a point. The visitors posed little, if any, attacking threat, failing to register a single shot on target in a Champions League match for the first time since February 2006.
Liverpool were forced to scramble just to stay in the match, with Joe Gomez and Virgil van Dijk each denying Insigne in the second half. And they were left thanking the gods when Dries Mertens rattled a close-range shot off the crossbar in the 82nd minute.
But Insigne gave the host a deserving win in the final stages of regular time, stretching to get a foot onto Jose Callejon’s excellent pass before celebrating with Napoli’s rabid supporters.
GREEN BAY, Wis. — A week after missing five kicks, Mason Crosby kicked the game winner for the Green Bay Packers.
Yes, that Mason Crosby.
The same one who missed four field goals and an extra point in a loss at Detroit. This time, Crosby kicked a 27-yard field goal as time expired to give the Packers a 33-30 comeback victory over the San Francisco 49ers on Monday Night Football at Lambeau Field.
It was Crosby’s fourth field goal of the night. He was good from 29, 39 and 51 yards before the game winner. He also made all three of his extra points for a perfect night.
“It’s very apropos,” Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers said. “What he went through last week and the team to stick with him, and the guys to kind of wrap our arms around him and encourage him the way we do for our teammates was great. And then he responded. The crowd was very encouraging. I was trying to figure out at first if it was kind of a sarcastic cheer, but I felt like it was a pretty heartfelt encouragement after he made four field goals and three extra points. Obviously very happy afterwards and we were very happy for him.”
Eight days earlier in Detroit, Crosby was surrounded by cameras in the visitor’s locker room after the Packers’ loss to the Lions and he said: “I don’t get this much attention unless it’s really bad or extremely good.”
The crowd around him was even bigger in the victorious home locker room at Lambeau Field.
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Mason Crosby expresses his thoughts on his game-winning field goal and how it feels to bounce back after missing five kicks against the Lions.
“Gosh, just so thankful for the Packers organization and my teammates just sticking with me knowing I’ve bounced back a lot in my career,” said Crosby, a 12-year veteran. “I had no days like last week, but this is a special one. This is one of my better days. And to be able to go out there and perform the way I did after last week [was great]. Did a lot of soul-searching this week and made sure I really locked in on my preparation, and it paid off.”
Crosby said he appreciated Rodgers and the offense making the game winner a “chip shot,” as he called it.
He said the more nerve-racking kick was the extra point to tie the game at 30 after Rodgers hit Davante Adams for a 16-yard touchdown with 1:55 left.
“The extra point to tie the game was the one that I was a little more amped up for, making sure I knocked that through,” Crosby said. “But that last one was just kind of muscle memory. The snap came, I felt like I was pretty quick on it and everything was perfect. The protection was great. I felt guys kind of diving in front of me right after, but I was in the zone. It’s special whenever it all comes together that way, and I’m just so thankful for the week of work I had and the guys, how much they never wavered from how they felt about me. To be able to come through like this after a week like I had last week is pretty special.”
An interception by Kevin King with 1:07 left gave the ball back to Rodgers. An illegal contact penalty on 49ers cornerback Richard Sherman wiped out a third-down sack that would’ve killed the drive. Rodgers scrambled on his gimpy left knee for 21 yards, hit Adams for 8 and then rookie Equanimeous St. Brown made a stellar sideline catch for 19 yards, followed by another one to Adams for 19 to set up the game winner.
“That last drive there was unreal,” Crosby said. “The chemistry that this locker room has, everyone is always bringing each other up, trying to make sure that we have each other’s back. Like I said, the guys never wavered from how they felt about me as a man and as a football player. They knew that I worked really hard this week to make sure that I would come through if I was called on this week for this game. Like I said, I’m tired. I’m glad we have the bye week and [I’m] ready to keep moving forward.”
The Packers enter their bye week at 3-2-1 and have four of their next five on the road, beginning at the Rams and at the Patriots. But at least they’re on an emotional high thanks in part to Crosby.
“That’s exactly the way you want to see it end,” Packers coach Mike McCarthy said. “Frankly I wish he didn’t need to kick as many field goals as he did tonight, but yeah definitely, that was a big bounce-back game for Mason and really for our football team. We needed that win.”
And Crosby needed those kicks.
“This week was a grind,” said Crosby, who has made 83.4 percent of his field goals since his career-worst year of 63.6 percent in 2012. “It was one of the tougher weeks of my career just making sure that I didn’t overreact, overanalyze everything. I really did a great job of just locking in and making sure I had good tempo and I kind of just flushed last week and made sure that if I was called upon again this week I was going to come through. Honestly, I had a 51-yarder tonight. When I’m going out there, I was just thankful for another opportunity to hit a kick and felt just really solid with my performance.”
The Maltese Super Cup might be worth a watch if Valletta FC succeed in their quest to sign eight-time Olympic gold medalist Usain Bolt.
Days after scoring his first professional goals for the Central Coast Mariners in Australia, Bolt has a chance to play in Europe following news that Valletta FC have offered the Jamaican a two-year contract in a bid to enhance their chances of competing in the Champions League, according to Stephanie Brantz and Tom Hamilton of ESPN FC.
“A champion is always welcome and at Valletta FC we believe nothing is impossible,” managing director and CEO Ghasston Slimen said.
Slimen added that the club hopes to secure Bolt’s services in time for the 32-year-old to be available to compete in the Maltese Super Cup against Balzan on Dec. 13
Bolt’s agent, Tony Rallis, hinted that his client had an offer on the table from a club that had recently been taken over by new owners whose objective is to compete in the Champions League.
Valetta FC have won the Maltese Premier League in five of the last eight seasons, but the club has failed to advance beyond the European tournament’s second qualifying round – most recently losing to Albanian side Kukesi in the first round of Champions League qualifying on away goals before failing to reach the Europa League when it lost to Bosnia’s Zrinjski Mostar.
Bolt, who previously expressed a desire to play for his favorite club, Manchester United, and trained with Bundesliga outfit Borussia Dortmund, opened his professional scoring account with an impressive goal Saturday before doubling his tally thanks to a defensive gaffe.
Despite his impressive display, Central Coast Mariners CEO Shaun Mielekamp wasn’t ready to guarantee a future for Bolt at the club, saying, “it’s too early to tell” whether he would be offered a permanent contract.
FOXBOROUGH, Mass. — The New England Patriots would have liked to finish more decisively what they started in Sunday night’s 43-40 victory over the Kansas City Chiefs — a game they won at the final gun with a 28-yard Stephen Gostkowski field goal.
But the end result was still pretty sweet, as these are the types of games — with just one punt between the teams and a tense finish in which clutch plays needed to be made down the stretch — that can build championship mettle.
“I think we’ve got a lot of clutch players. I think we have no problem grinding it out,” quarterback Tom Brady said. “That’s what the football season’s all about.”
Even better for the Patriots: By improving to 4-2, and dropping the Chiefs to 5-1, it keeps them out of what could have been too deep of a hole from which to recover for possible home-field advantage in the AFC playoffs.
Of course, that’s a long way away.
The Patriots prevailed with a last-second field goal in an impressive back-and-forth contest that had the atmosphere of a playoff game. Jim Rogash/Getty Images
They head to Chicago having learned a lot about their team.
Coach Bill Belichick has said that two of the most important characteristics of his best squads are mental toughness and the ability to rise up in the crucial situations to make winning plays. The 2018 Patriots showed Sunday night they are capable of that.
“That was a great job by our players and coaching staff. Just battling for 60 minutes. We talked about that all week,” Belichick said. “In the end, we were able to just do a little bit more, do enough. I’m really proud of the way we competed all the way through — from the opening kickoff to the final kick. It’s a great effort. I thought we went out and played hard. I think we deserved it.”
The Patriots led 24-9 at halftime, which at their home stadium is one of the most ironclad locks in professional sports. Since Brady took over as the starter in 2001, the Patriots are 95-1 in the regular season at home when leading at the half.
The lone loss came to the Chiefs (in the 2017 season opener), and in a stunning second-half turnaround Sunday night, it looked as if the Chiefs were ready to do it again.
A Patriots defense that forced two turnovers in the first half suddenly became vulnerable to the big play after halftime. Uncharacteristic decision-making from Brady led to a strip sack that Kansas City quickly turned into a third-quarter touchdown.
“I don’t think we’ve seen our best. We can all play a lot better,” Brady said. “And that’s what we plan to do.”
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Tom Brady floats the ball deep to Rob Gronkowski for a 39-yard gain, setting up Stephen Gostkowski for a 28-yard field goal to win the game.
But the Patriots showed fortitude in overcoming the slippage — a clutch play with the game on the line as old reliable Rob Gronkowski reeled in a 39-yard catch to set up the winning field goal as time expired — in what was a playoff-type environment.
“I’ll keep throwing to him in the biggest moments,” Brady said of Gronkowski, whose big catch was the 500th of his career. “We talked about competing for 60 minutes, and that’s what it took — right down to the last three seconds.”
In doing so, the Patriots improved to 94-2 at home with Brady as a starter when they get a double-digit lead.
“A lot of us had been expecting that all week, knowing that’s a high-powered offense,” Patriots receiver Josh Gordon said. “We had one of our own, so we were expecting to take it the full length of the game.”
Everything you need this week:
