Liverpool stay perfect, Barcelona win 9-goal thriller, and Japan’s Suzuki makes MLB history

Liverpool beat Lille 2-1 on Tuesday to maintain their perfect record in this season’s Champions League and clinch qualification for the last 16, while Barcelona produced a stunning comeback to beat Benfica 5-4 in a classic to secure their own place. The Anfield side are the only team with a maximum 21 points from seven matches in this new, expanded competition and they now know they will skip next month’s play-offs and head straight to the last 16 in March. Mohamed Salah gave Liverpool the lead, and the visitors then had Aissa Mandi sent off just before the hour mark. Jonathan David did equaliser for Lille, but Harvey Elliott’s shot took a wicked deflection on its way in to give Liverpool the points. “We’re happy that we are top eight. That’s the only thing that tells me something, because this league table doesn’t tell you anything,” said Slot when asked about being through to the last 16. Raining goals in Lisbon The biggest drama, however, came in the rain in Lisbon, where Barcelona trailed 4-2 with 12 minutes to go, but somehow recovered to win 5-4. Greek striker Vangelis Pavlidis scored a hat-trick in the first half-hour for Benfica, including a penalty, while Robert Lewandowski netted from the spot for Barca, who were 3-1 down at the interval. Raphinha pulled it back to 3-2 when a clearance by the goalkeeper ricocheted back off the Brazilian’s head and in, but a Ronald Araujo own goal midway through the second half appeared to have secured the win for the Portuguese side. However, another Lewandowski penalty on 78 minutes gave Barcelona renewed hope, and Eric Garcia headed in the equaliser on 86 minutes, before Raphinha ran away to settle an incredible game. Suzuki, CC Sabathia, Wagner honoured Ichiro Suzuki became the first Japanese player chosen for baseball’s hall of fame, falling one vote shy of unanimous when he was elected on Tuesday along with CC Sabathia and Billy Wagner. Suzuki received 393 of 394 votes from the Baseball Writers’ Association of America. Sabathia was on 342 ballots and Wagner on 325, which was 29 more than the 296 needed for the required 75 per cent. Suzuki came to Major League Baseball from Japan as a 27-year-old in 2001 and joined Fred Lynn in 1975 as the only players to win AL Rookie of the Year and AL MVP in the same season. He was a two-time AL batting champion and 10-time All-Star and Gold Glove outfielder, hitting .311 with 117 homers, 780 RBIs and 509 stolen bases with Seattle (2001-12, 2018-19), the New York Yankees (2012-14) and Miami (2015-17). He’s perhaps the best contact hitter ever, with 1,278 hits in Nippon Professional Baseball and 3,089 in MLB, including a season-record 262 in 2004. His combined total of 4,367 exceeds Pete Rose’s MLB record of 4,256. AI can be the judge The X Games will experiment judging halfpipe runs this week in Aspen using artificial intelligence, the cutting-edge technology that could someday play a role in the way subjectively judged sports are scored. Using Google Cloud tools including Vertex AI, CEO Jeremy Bloom thinks the experiment has potential to change the game on halfpipes, then maybe on slopestyle courses, skating rinks and anywhere a judge is used to score a contest. “Part of subjective sports, we see it all over the place, is that even at their best, humans can get it wrong,” said Bloom, who was a freestyle skier at two Olympics. “Sometimes getting it wrong has huge implications. What if we could give judges superpowers and they could see things they couldn’t see with the human eye, and this technology could help inform them?” At the last Winter Games in Beijing, the sport narrowly avoided a potential scandal in the men’s halfpipe final. Japan’s Ayumu Hirano landed the most difficult trick in the sport – a triple cork – but was ranked behind another rider who didn’t do the trick after two rounds. Had Hirano not pulled off the trick again on his third round, his score from the previous round wouldn’t have been enough for the gold medal he eventually won. Breaking the glass ceiling Haas have appointed Laura Mueller as the first female race engineer in Formula One, and the team said she would be working with French driver Esteban Ocon this year. Race engineer is a very visible role in F1 since they’re on the radio to drivers during races and those messages are broadcast. Haas was seventh in the constructor standings last year and has a new lineup with Ocon and Ollie Bearman. Mueller was promoted from her role as performance engineer. The German has been with Haas since 2022. “She’s a pretty determined character,” Ayao Komatsu, the Haas team principal, was quoted as saying on the F1 website. “And then she’s very hard working. Her work ethic is really, really good.”

Liverpool stay perfect, Barcelona win 9-goal thriller, and Japan’s Suzuki makes MLB history

It’s back to European football this week, and battle to make the last 16 is heating up. Elsewhere, Ichiro Suzuki enters baseball hall of fame

Raining goals in Lisbon