Spanish Legend Raul signed off on an illustrious career as the former Real Madrid striker helped New York Cosmos claim the NASL title with a 3-2 victory against Ottawa Fury. After 16 years in La Liga with Los Blancos, Raul had playing stints with Schalke 04 in the Bundesliga and Qatari side Al Sadd before moving to the Cosmos at the end of the 2014 season. A Gaston Cellerino hat-trick secured the Cosmos their seventh league title to bring down the curtain on the 38-year-old icon's 21-year career in which he won 22 trophies.
Culled from Daily mail.
Rosberg wins from pole as world champion Hamilton's wait for victory in Brazil goes on
The pall of Paris reached across to Sao Paulo, where, with black armbands and a minute's silence, Formula One paid its respect to the victims of the terrorism attack. But the game went on. It was not much of a contest, alas. Nico Rosberg won the Brazilian Grand Prix, the penultimate round of the championship, from pole position to guarantee him second place in the World Championship.
It was not much of a contest, alas. Rosberg’s second successive victory came from pole position. It guaranteed him second place in the World Championship, with only the race in Abu Dhabi a fortnight hence remaining.
Lewis Hamilton, who started one place back, finished one place back. Sebastian Vettel, who started third, finished third.
This was hardly classic Brazil. In the rain, this place spills over with excitement. The fervour on the last day of a season can be electric here. Neither applied to Sunday's fare.
Rosberg got away cleanly and defended his lead into the first corner. For a few minutes Hamilton was close on his tail.
It took five laps for the German to open up a second’s lead. But Hamilton had feared that it would be hard to chase the leader in the middle part of the lap and so it proved. Yes, Hamilton sometimes got within a second of Rosberg, but then he fell back. They followed each other in on their pit stops. Dull.
Thwarted by the lack of opportunities on the Interlagos track, Hamilton appealed to his team for a different strategy. It was not forthcoming. He said afterwards: ‘It would be good if you could do a bit of overtaking here. I just couldn’t get close enough to Nico, so it was relatively boring following in a tow.
‘There was one time when I was all over him. I had the fastest lap so I had the pace. It would be great to do something different from just, “You are in lap 15, you are in lap 16”, but to have some option to see how it plays out. To take the risk.
‘But the team do so many strategic simulations and they pick the best two.’
it would have been intriguing to see Hamilton move to a different strategy, but it was a no-brainer for Mercedes to keep their drivers comfortably first and second by the safest means, and that is what they did.
To have done otherwise could also have caused an injustice, as Rosberg said: ‘Would it be fair for the person who is second to win just because of the luck of doing the much faster strategy?
‘It should be Lewis against me, and not the luck of the strategy that decides the result.’
Mercedes at least got what they wanted: Rosberg’s win being enough to deliver him second in the table.
It was not, however, high on the list of Hamilton’s priorities judging by his comments before the race. Toto Wolff had said Hamilton was ‘absolutely aware’ that Mercedes wanted to ensure Rosberg finished runner-up.
Going into the race, the German was 21 points ahead of Vettel, his only rival for the position. But Hamilton was not so sure about Wolff’s outlook. ‘No-one in the team has told me that, so in terms of “I know that”, that is not really the case,’ he said. ‘We are racing as far as I am concerned.
Culled from Daily mail
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