Sports

AMMAN — The national football team lost to Uzbekistan 1-0 on Thursday in the second of three friendlies scheduled this month as part of their training agenda for the 2019 Asian Cup qualifiers.

Jordan held Iraq to a goalless draw this week and following the match in Taskhent, the squad will host the Lebanese team on November 15 with coach Abdullah Abu Zam’eh underlining that the friendlies would help boost “cohesiveness and help improve the national team’s FIFA ranking”.

CLEVELAND — Dennis Schroder scored a career-high 28 points as Atlanta handed reigning NBA champion Cleveland its first loss of the season, 110-106 on Tuesday.

Cleveland (6-1) cut a 96-81 deficit early in the fourth quarter to 101-97 on LeBron James’ basket with 3:14 to play. The Hawks scored the next six points, but 3-pointers by James and Kyrie Irving made it 106-103 with 48 seconds left.

Kent Bazemore scored 25 points while Paul Millsap added 21. Dwight Howard, who received four stitches for a bloody lip in the first half, had 17 rebounds.

Kyrie Irving led Cleveland with 29 points. Kevin Love added 24 while LeBron James, who scored two points in the first half, had 23.

Nets 119, Timberwolves 110

Brook Lopez scored 26 points as Brooklyn kept Minnesota winless on the road.

Trevor Booker added 15 points and Sean Kilpatrick had 14 for the Nets.

Andrew Wiggins scored a career-high 36 points for the Wolves, making a career-best six 3-pointers. Karl-Anthony Towns had 21 points, but scoring was not the problem for Minnesota.

Grizzlies 108, Nuggets 107

Marc Gasol scored on an inbounds pass from Vince Carter at the buzzer to lift Memphis.

Gasol had 19 points for the Grizzlies, who had lost two straight, while Zach Randolph added 16.

Emmanuel Mudiay had 23 points and Danilo Gallinari added 21 for the Nuggets.

Trail Blazers 124, Suns 121

Damian Lillard scored 38 points, including key free throws in the waning seconds, as Portland edged Phoenix.

CJ McCollum added 33 points for the Blazers, who have won three straight. Portland led by as many as 18 points early in the game but the Suns threatened down the stretch.

Lillard hit a 3-pointer with 6:45 left that put Portland in front 101-95. Eric Bledsoe made a free throw to pull Phoenix within 115-114 with just under a minute left, but he missed the second attempt that would have tied it and Lillard scored a layup on the other end.

Bledsoe finished with 31 points and Devin Booker had 23.

Mavericks 109, Lakers 97

Harrison Barnes scored 31 points and Seth Curry added 23 as Dallas won its second straight game.

JJ Barea had 18 points, seven rebounds and eight assists for the Mavericks, who beat the Lakers for the 11th consecutive time. Dallas forced 17 turnovers and held the Lakers off down the stretch, scoring 10 straight points midway through the fourth quarter to take control.

Jordan Clarkson scored 22 points and Nick Young had 20 as the Lakers’ three-game winning streak ended.

Lou Williams scored 15 points for Los Angeles, which rallied from an 11-point deficit in the second half before failing to execute in the final minutes.

Kings 102, Pelicans 94

DeMarcus Cousins had 11 of his 28 points in the fourth quarter for Sacramento, which never trailed in defeating winless New Orleans.

It was the second straight victory for the Kings (4-5), who were 1-7 in their first eight games last season,

Rudy Gay had 21 points and Aaron Afflalo added 15 for the Kings, who had dropped six straight games to New Orleans, dating to 2014.

Kings point guard Darren Collison had nine points in his first game this season. 

Anthony Davis had 34 points and eight rebounds for the Pelicans, who have started the season with eight straight losses, matching the 2004-05 team for the worst start in franchise history. Rookie guard Buddy Hield had 12 of his 14 points in the fourth quarter and E’Twaun Moore added 13.

AMMAN — The national football team plays Uzbekistan on Thursday in the second of three friendlies scheduled this month as part of their training agenda for the 2019 Asian Cup qualifiers.

Jordan held Iraq to a goalless draw this week and following the match in Taskhent, the squad will host the Lebanese team on the 15th with coach Abdullah Abu Zam’eh underlining that the friendlies would help boost “cohesiveness and help improve the national team’s FIFA ranking” which dropped 18 places to 104th in the latest table.

Jordan is now at it’s the lowest ranking of 2016 and dropped out of the Asian top 10 after unimpressive results last month losing to the Moroccan second tier team 2-1 and holding Oman 1-1 after three earlier results in which they held Bahrain 0-0, Lebanon 1-1 and lost 3-2 to Qatar. 

AMMAN — After a two-year absence, the popular Aqaba Speed Test, the fifth round of the Speed Test Championship kicks off on Friday with over 70 drivers from Palestine, Egypt and Jordan. The last Speed Test event held in Aqaba was in 2013 when Husam Salem won the round since in 2014 the event was cancelled due to the tragic death of driver Bilal Jnoun, who was run over by a horse while checking the track on foot.

This Friday’s event will also be missing Ahmed Zidan who passed away last month from a heart attack.  Currently Mohammed Tayseer is topping the standings with 78 points, followed by Ayman Najjar with 62 points and Yazan Qatan with 48 points. Othman Naseef, Jordan Motorsport CEO told The Jordan Times that Aqaba has always been a fan magnet for such events.

“The Aqaba speed event has always attracted a lot of drivers and fans who enjoy watching their favourite drivers showing their skills and at the same time enjoy the fair weather of Aqaba,” he said. “We have worked hard to secure the safety of both drivers and fans and we hope that everyone will be enjoying their time,” he added. 

BELO HORIZONTE, Brazil — Lionel Messi is back from injury, just the tonic Argentina needs in Thursday's World Cup qualifier against Brazil.

Messi missed Argentina's last three qualifying matches with an injured left knee, and the results showed with draws against Peru and Venezuela, and a 1-0 loss against Paraguay.

"He [Messi] is extremely intelligent and has a great finishing skill, so we have to do double marking on him whenever we can," Brazil midfielder Renato Augusto said. "We have to close the gaps for all Argentina players, and we have to remove Messi's passing angle whenever he has the ball."

Thursday's match takes place in the same stadium where Brazil was humiliated two years ago in a 7-1 loss to Germany in the World Cup semifinals. But this time, the hosts will be focusing on containing Messi.

"It's impossible to stop the ball from reaching Messi because he will start floating around to get it," Renato Augusto said. "We need to take him out of his comfort zone."

Argentina striker Lucas Pratto, who plays for Brazilian club Atletico Mineiro, said the Brazilians fear Messi.

"They know that Leo is very tough. They are a little scared," Pratto told Argentine newspaper Ole. "Or maybe more than a little."

Messi scored in a 1-0 victory over Uruguay in September in the only match he's played under Argentina coach Edgardo Bauza.

Argentina, World Cup runners-up two years ago against Germany, is five points behind group leader Brazil. The Argentines need points Thursday and next week in a difficult match against Colombia.

Brazil leads qualifying with 21 points, followed by Uruguay with 20 and Ecuador and Colombia with 17. Chile and Argentina have 16 points each.

The top four teams qualify automatically for the World Cup. The fifth-place team could advance through a play-off.

Tite will count on striker Neymar and right back Dani Alves for any new strategy to deal with Messi.

"[Brazil] has to do what it has been doing," winger Douglas Costa, "regardless of Argentina”.

Two years on from 7-1

Two years after they suffered a humiliating 7-1 defeat by Germany in the World Cup semi-final, Brazil return to the same Belo Horizonte Stadium charged with overcoming that bitter memory and their toughest rivals Argentina.

The five times world champions face their neighbours in a World Cup qualifier on Thursday and memories of the mauling by the Germans at the Mineirao Stadium add extra spice to what is one of world football's great rivalries.

"The scars are going to remain but we can only change what happens from now on," midfielder Renato Augusto told reporters after joining up with his teammates in the central Brazilian city.

Brazil have overcome one major psychological barrier in recent months, when their under-23 team, including overage players Renato Augusto and Neymar, beat Germany at the Maracana stadium to win the Olympic gold medal for the first time.

Renato Augusto, who plays for Beijing Guoan said the players discussed the 7-1 match before that game and admitted there was no avoiding it before facing Argentina.

Seven members of the Brazil squad were in the Mineirao that fateful July day in 2014, two (Marcelo and Fernandinho) starting the match and another two (Paulinho and Willian) finishing it.

"We can't put more pressure on those that were there," Renato Augusto.

"A win would be good to take the weight off a bit. We discussed it at the Olympics and obviously now that the game is at the Mineirao it will be back again. But we have to look to the future and not to the past."

Nevertheless, the past can also serve as an incentive for a team that has struggled in recent years.

Brazil have never lost a home World Cup qualifier and they have won three, and drawn one of their four previous games against Argentina at the Mineirao.

Perhaps more importantly, they come into this game having won all four qualifiers since Tite replaced Dunga as coach in June and they are top of the 10-team standings.

Argentina's recent record, meanwhile, is almost the opposite, with just one win in four since coach Edgardo Bauza took the reins in August.

They are sixth in the table, with the top four qualifying automatically and the fifth-placed side going into a play-off with a team from Oceania.

Brazil will be without Real Madrid midfielder Casemiro but are otherwise at full strength.

SWANSEA, Wales — Even after Manchester United’s four-match winless run in the Premier League ended, Jose Mourinho was not happy — turning on players who missed Sunday’s 3-1 victory at Swansea.

“There is a difference between the brave, who want to be there at any cost, and the ones for whom a little pain can make a difference,” Mourinho said.

“We have players with problems,” he added. “I have friends in other sports and they play at the highest level at other sports, and how many times do they play when not 100 per cent? I have a friend that is a big tennis player. He tells me he remembers more the time he plays with pain than the time he plays without any pain and that’s what I mean. To compete you have to go to the limit.”

Asked about players not being prepared to play through pain, Mourinho replied: “It’s a cultural thing for some. That’s not my culture.”

Mourinho did not name the players he was aiming his comments at but he had discussed two ahead of the game in south Wales where Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s double and Paul Pogba’s volley secured the win.

“Chris Smalling doesn’t feel he can play 100 per cent with his pain and Luke Shaw this morning told me he was not in condition to play,” Mourinho said.

United is sixth, three points behind Tottenham, which drew 1-1 at Arsenal.

And if Mourinho thinks he has problems, he should look at the plight of Swansea, which is only off the bottom due to Sunderland having an inferior goal difference.

Bob Bradley, the first American manager in the Premier League, has quickly discovered just how hard it will be keeping Swansea in the top flight. Swansea’s 10-game winless sequence marks their worst run since being promoted to the Premier League in 2011, with Bradley collecting only one point in the four games since he replaced the fired Francesco Guidolin.

Swansea is probably the opposition that any stuttering team would choose to play right now.

Hit by injury and suspensions, Mourinho made five changes from the side held by Burnley in their previous league game while the manager watched from the stands due to his touchline suspension.

Phil Jones and Michael Carrick made their first league starts of the season and captain Wayne Rooney returned after being out of the starting line-up since September 18.

United was on the front foot from the start and Pogba rewarded that superiority with a fine 15th-minute strike. Pogba chipped a pass into Rooney’s path and, although Mike van der Hoorn beat Ibrahimovic to his lay-off, the world’s most expensive player had followed up the play to unleash a 20-yard volley for his second league goal.

Marouane Fellaini almost doubled United’s lead with another volley but the second goal soon arrived.

Rooney fed Ibrahimovic from the left and he shrugged off Ki Sung-yueng to send a low drive past goalkeeper Lukasz Fabianski.

It was the 25,000th goal since the Premier League’s inception in 2012 and the 400th of Ibrahimovic’s career — ending a goal drought in the league which stretched back over 10 hours.

“I’ve been a bit unlucky in recent games but it’s just working hard and it comes,” the 35-year-old Swede said.

Ibrahimovic only had to wait until the 33rd minute for his next goal with Rooney again the provider, the Swede powering through Angel Rangel’s timid tackle to fire high past Fabianski.

“We’ve given up goals where the starting points for those goals are not teams with flowing moves putting 15 passes together and playing right through us and dissecting us,” Bradley said. “We give up goals where we feel we’re in decent shape, and then a ball gets put up there and somehow we come out second best and the next thing you know we’re scrambling to put out a fire.”

The mood became ugly among Swansea supporters as they turned on board members who sold their shares in July to the American investors — Steve Kaplan, a minority owner and executive vice chairman of the NBA’s Memphis Grizzlies, and Jason Levien, a part-owner of DC United.

“If the fans are angry with us at halftime I understand,” Bradley said. “In the first half, we didn’t do enough to win them.”

The only bright moment for the hosts came when Van der Hoorn escaped the attentions of Pogba and Jones to head in a consolation in the 69th minute.

LAS VEGAS — Floyd Mayweather Jr. stopped by to see an old foe, and Manny Pacquiao tried his best to give him a show.

With Mayweather watching intently from a ringside seat, Pacquiao dropped Jessie Vargas in the second round and bloodied his face Saturday night on his way to a lopsided decision that gave him a piece of the welterweight title once again.

Pacquiao won on all three ringside scorecards — 118-109, 118-109 114-113 — to take the piece of the title Vargas won in his last fight. The AP scored it 119-109 for Pacquiao.

“Not bad,” Mayweather said, giving Pacquiao a thumbs up after the fight.

It was vintage Pacquiao at times, even though he could not stop Vargas like he desperately wanted to. And with Mayweather at ringside it certainly will stir talk of a second fight between the boxers who went at it last year in the richest fight ever.

That, of course, would depend on Mayweather coming out of retirement and Pacquiao being able to fight while still attending to his duties as a senator in the Philippines. Mayweather did not answer questions about a possible return to the ring shouted at him by writers at ringside.

“I invited him to be here tonight,” Pacquiao said, saying “we’ll see” when asked if the two could meet again.

Pacquiao pressed the fight from the opening bell, trying to score a knockdown. He looked as if he would when he caught Vargas with a straight left that put him on the canvas, but Vargas got up quick and fought the distance.

“I feel I could do more but every round I tried to knock him out,” Pacquiao said.

Just before the bell rang to start the fight, Pacquiao smiled and waved a fist at Mayweather. He clearly wanted to impress Mayweather, who won their first fight easily.

But Pacquiao, who has not knocked out an opponent in seven years, was not going to stop the younger Vargas in his hometown. Vargas had difficulty dealing with Pacquiao’s speed, but was more than willing to trade punches to try and lure him into a brawl.

In the eighth round he succeeded at doing that, hitting Pacquiao with a big right and punching his gloves together as if to tell him to stand and fight. Pacquiao went right back after him and they traded punches before staring at each other when the bell sounded to end the round.

“Fighting Manny Pacquiao is like playing a very fast game of chess,” Vargas said. “You have to be alert at all times, there are a lot of punches coming in. He was very fast and he was very sharp.”

Vargas was cut over the right eye by an accidental clash of heads in the eighth, and blood trickled into his eye but it did not seem to be a factor.

The taller Vargas landed some good right hands of his own, but they were infrequent and he rarely followed up on them. Still, they were enough to keep Pacquiao away at times and offset some of his advantage with speed.

“I didn’t want to be careless,” Pacquiao said. “I was very careful to go inside because I know he will counter me.”

Pacquiao was credited with landing 147 of 409 punches to 104 of 562 for Vargas. Pacquiao also was given a 101-70 advantage in power punches.

Mayweather took a ringside seat alongside his daughter to watch the man who helped make him untold millions when they fought in 2015. Mayweather won that fight, and Pacquiao’s performance was largely panned, though he claimed to have an injured shoulder.

Pacquiao, fighting in his 22nd title fight in a pro career that stretches back to 1995, trained at night in the Philippines in the weeks leading up to the fight so he could tend to his day job as a newly elected senator. With the senate out of session, he was back in a more familiar place, with a crowd of some 16,132 nearly filling the UNLV campus arena to watch him take on Vargas, who was in only his second title bout.

Pacquiao improved to 59-6-2, while Vargas fell to 27-2.

AMMAN — Jordan lost 7-1 to Australia on Sunday in its second match at the Asian Football Confederation U-19 Women’s Championship 2017 qualifiers in Nanjing, China. With only the top team from the four groups moving to the championship in China in 2017, Jordan had a tough task needing to beat Group A leaders Australia who are heavily favoured after they scored a 16-0 win over the Northern Marianas Islands in their opening match. Jordan came in second in the group after beating the Northern Mariana Islands 4-0.

LONDON — Manchester United hoped Jose Mourinho would provide a quick-fix.

Hire the manager renowned as a “serial winner” and the stupor of the fleeting David Moyes and Louis van Gaal eras would vanish.

There’s little sign of that.

If anything, results and performances suggest the record 20-time English champions are regressing. Even Mourinho calls his team “fragile”.

With five losses in his opening 16 games, Mourinho has made a worse start than Alex Ferguson’s two immediate successors who never came close to winning the Premier League or Champions League.

Under Mourinho, United is even a diminished force in the second-tier Europa League. A 2-1 loss to Fenerbahce on Thursday left United third in its group with only six points out of a possible 12.

Although Mourinho has previously expressed his disdain for UEFA’s Thursday night competition, the Portuguese coach does not expect his team to slacken. There’s pride on the line, if little prestige.

“Our problem started in our global attitude,” Mourinho said, berating his team for treating for the game like a friendly.

The only encouraging moment in Turkey for United was Wayne Rooney ending a goal drought of almost three months — a moment of personal satisfaction, certainly for the 31-year-old captain. But there is little evidence Rooney, so ineffective for Mourinho, will provide any potency on Sunday at Swansea.

Rooney’s only goals this season have come against the Turkish league’s fifth-place team and Bournemouth. No team of any might has felt threatened by the presence of the fading Rooney.

While Rooney symbolises some of United’s shortcomings, the burden of the blame should not rest on the striker.

There are clearly deeper flaws when the team goes through October without winning a single Premier League game, drawing three times and losing once on Mourinho’s humiliating return to Chelsea.

And in those four games, United has scored only once — failing even to find a way past promoted Burnley last weekend to drop to eighth in the league.

“Sometimes teams don’t score goals because of their philosophy, because the team isn’t aggressive enough and doesn’t risk enough,” Mourinho said.

Zlatan Ibrahimovic hit the ground running with four goals in four games after signing amid great fanfare in July, but since then the 35-year-old forward has looked his age by netting only once in 11.

“Some players in our attacking areas lack confidence,” Mourinho said. “They’re not sharp and getting the chances that they can.”

And the treatment room is getting crowded, too.

Centre backs Eric Bailly and Chris Smalling were joined on the injury list on Thursday by Paul Pogba, who limped off with a thigh injury.

Not that Pogba, the world’s most expensive player, has been looking like a 105-million-euro ($117 million) midfielder since rejoining the club in August.

Then there’s another of Mourinho’s signings: Henrikh Mkhitaryan. The Armenian played the last 30 minutes of the loss in Turkey after two months out of the team. But the attacking midfielder is a shadow of the player who scored 23 goals and set up another 32 last season for Borussia Dortmund.

“He has to do more, it is as simple as that,” Mourinho said. “We have big expectations in the club. We have lots of players for these positions and he has to play better than [Juan] Mata, he has to play better than [Jesse] Lingard, he has to play better than [Anthony] Martial.

“[Mkhitaryan] has to play better than them. It is as simple as that. Every manager in the world wants to win matches... I am no different.”

But something has changed with the two-time Champions League-winning coach, who is exhibiting the sullen and downbeat demeanour only seen later in his reigns at Chelsea, Inter Milan or Real Madrid.

United should have read the warning signs.

Maybe last season at Chelsea — when a title-winning team tumbled into the lower-reaches of the Premier League — was not a blip.

Can the 53-year-old Mourinho still find a way to innovate and rejuvenate United in the way Juergen Klopp has turned Liverpool into a title contender again or Mauricio Pochettino has refreshed Tottenham?

Sunday’s trip to south Wales offers the perfect platform to halt United’s four-match run without a win in the league against a Swansea side winless in nine and second-from-last.

Mourinho will certainly have a good seat to evaluate his team in Swansea, after being banned from the touchline for two separate offences towards referees. But the view from the directors’ box might not be pretty, based on recent displays.

AMMAN — Jordan plays Australia on Sunday in their second match at the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) U-19 Women’s Championship 2017 qualifiers in Nanjing, China.

With only the top team from each group moving to the championship in China in 2017, Jordan has a tough task needing to beat Group A leaders Australia who are heavily favoured after they scored a 16-0 win over the Northern Marianas Islands in their opening match. Jordan is second in the group after beating the Northern Mariana Islands 4-0.

The top four teams of the 2015 AFC U-19 Women’s Championship — champions Japan, North Korea, South Korea and China — received a direct qualification to the tournament leaving the 14 teams above to battle it out in the qualifiers. The winner from each group (total four teams) will qualify to the finals (eight teams in total).

The participating nations are:

Group A: Australia, Jordan and Northern Mariana Islands.

Group B: Uzbekistan, Chinese Taipei, Hong Kong and Tajikistan.

Group C: Thailand, Myanmar, Palestine and Kyrgyzstan.

Group D: Iran, Vietnam and India.

Also on Sunday, Iran and Vietnam play for the qualifying berth from Group D after India were eliminated. Uzbekistan became the first side to qualify for the AFC U-19 Women’s Championship after topping Group B while Group C will play its matches starting December 20.

Jordan had qualified as the only Arab team in 2007, but in 2014, Jordan was eliminated in qualifiers for the 2015 AFC U-19 Women’s Championship. 

Similarly, this year, the U-16  women’s national football team failed to advance past Group A qualifiers for the 2017 AFC U-16 Women’s Championship. The team also failed to qualify in 2015 after qualifying in 2013.

The U-17 team participated in the Kingdom’s inaugural appearance in the U-17 World Cup where they lost in the first round.