Lazio routs Sassuolo 6-2 to stay top of Serie A, humiliating cup exits for Arsenal and Espanyol

Lazio saw two penalties saved but still managed to rout 10-man Sassuolo 6-2 to remain top of Serie A on Tuesday.

Espanyol suffered a shock loss at fourth-tier Sestao River in the Spanish Cup, with its coach quickly paying the price, while Premier League champion Arsenal was beaten by fourth-tier Fleetwood Town in a penalty shootout in the English League Cup.

Elversberg and Mainz were dumped out of the German Cup by second-division teams but Leipzig narrowly avoided humiliation at third-tier Rot-Weiss Essen.

Sassuolo goalkeeper Stefano Turati saved two penalties but couldn’t prevent his team from falling to a hefty loss.

Sassuolo was already 3-1 down when midfielder Kristian Thorstvedt was shown a straight red card in the 31st minute for a horror tackle on Mattia Zaccagni, who was fortunate to escape without serious injury.

Romano Floriani Mussolini, the great-grandson of former Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, had scored Lazio's third goal.

Sebastiano Esposito managed to pull one back but Zaccagni restored Lazio’s two-goal advantage on the stroke of halftime.

Tijjani Noslin scored twice in the second half, while Turati stopped spotkicks from Zaccagni and Davide Frattesi.

Lazio moved three points clear of Inter Milan, which visits bottom club Venezia on Wednesday.

Roma needed two late goals to beat Cagliari 4-2 and move back to within four points of Lazio. It was Cagliari's third straight loss, following an impressive start to the season.

Como also left it late, with all its goals coming after 80 minutes, to secure a 3-1 win at Torino.

Espanyol coach Manolo González was fired less than two hours after his side lost 4-3 at Sestao River, after extra time, in the first round of the Spanish Cup.

Espanyol needed a last-gasp penalty to force extra time and, although it then took the lead in the 96th minute, Sestao River leveled two minutes later and home defender Jon Rojo scored the winner in stoppage time.

Fleetwood beat Arsenal 5-3 in a penalty shootout to reach the quarterfinals of the English League Cup.

Arsenal's Bruno Guimaraes had a penalty saved. The match had finished 1-1 in regulation. Arsenal's 16-year-old prodigy Max Dowman was sent off for kicking out at an opponent in the 85th.

Eighty-four positions separate the teams in the English soccer pyramid.

Essen’s second-round match against Leipzig had hit the headlines even before kickoff after an act of sabotage saw concrete poured around the gate to the away end at the stadium to seal it shut — it was opened well before supporters started to arrive.

On the field, Essen almost pulled off a shock. Lucas Brumme took advantage of a terrible back pass by Castello Lukeba and a slip by goalkeeper Ørjan Nyland to fire Essen into a ninth-minute lead.

Essen’s chances appeared to grow when Leipzig midfielder Nicolas Seiwald was sent off shortly before halftime following two yellow cards in the space of 10 minutes.

However, substitute Christoph Baumgartner scored two late goals to turn the game around for Leipzig, which won 2-1.

Elversberg, which is enjoying an impressive Bundesliga debut, lost 2-0 at home to Darmstadt. Mainz lost by the same scoreline at Bochum.

Borussia Dortmund prepared for Saturday's top-of-the-table showdown at Bayern Munich by snatching a 3-2 victory over Weder Bremen.

See AP’s full soccer coverage here

Darmstadt's Lars Kehl, second from left, celebrates with his staff after scoring goal during the German Cup soccer match between SV Elversberg and SV Darmstadt 98, Tuesday, Oct. 26, 2026, in Elversberg, Germany. (Uwe Anspach/dpa via AP)

Fleetwood's Andy Cannon kicks on a penalty shootout during the English League Cup soccer match between Fleetwood Town and Arsenal in Fleetwood, England, Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Ian Hodgson)

Bochum's Philipp Hofmann, back to the camera, celebrates with Mansour Ouro-Tagba after scoring his side's second goal during the German soccer cup match between VfL Bochum and FSV Mainz 05 in Bochum, Germany, Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2026. (David Inderlied/dpa via AP)

Leipzig's Christoph Baumgartner, foreground, scores a goal past Essen goalkeeper Jakob Golz during the German soccer cup match between Rot Weiss Essen and RB Leipzig in Essen, Germany, Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2026. (Bernd Thissen/dpa via AP)

Leipzig's head coach Martin Demichelis attends the German soccer cup match between Rot Weiss Essen and RB Leipzig in Essen, Germany, Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2026. (Bernd Thissen/dpa via AP)

Referee Luca Zufferli issues a red card to Sassuolo's Kristian Thorstvedt during the Serie A soccer match between Sassuolo and Lazio in Reggio Emilia, Italy, Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2026. (Massimo Paolone/LaPresse via AP)

Lazio's Tijjani Noslin, second from right, celebrates after scoring a goal during the Serie A soccer match between Sassuolo and Lazio in Reggio Emilia, Italy, Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2026. (Massimo Paolone/LaPresse via AP)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s broad assertions about Arab contributions to humanity's scientific and literary discoveries at a Republican campaign event in Grand Rapids, Michigan, have drawn criticism just days before midterm elections.

“There's 500 million Arabs in the world and yet they don't produce science," Kennedy said on the campaign trail Monday. “They don’t win the Nobel Prize. They don’t win the Fields Prize. They don’t win the Wolf Prize. They don’t produce literature.”

The health secretary's comments — widely condemned overnight by critics as untrue and racially biased — were made while campaigning in a state with a large Arab American population.

An HHS representative did not immediately respond to an Associated Press request for comment.

Arab refers to an ethnic and linguistic identification, while Muslim refers to a religious identity. So while Arabs can be Muslim, Christian, Jewish or of another faith, the vast majority of Muslims worldwide are not Arab.

Here's a closer look at Kennedy's comments.

__Egyptian law scholar Mohamed El Baradei, a diplomat and vice-president of Egypt, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005 alongside the International Atomic Energy Agency. Baradei and the IAEA, which he previously chaired, were awarded for their efforts to prevent nuclear energy from being used for military purposes.

__Tawakkol Karman, a Yemeni journalist, politician, and human rights activist, was a co-recipient of the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize, becoming the first Yemeni and the first Arab woman to win the award.

__Ahmed Zewail, an Egyptian-American scientist, was awarded the 1999 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on femtochemistry.

__Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1988.

__Jordanian-born Omar M. Yaghi was one of three chemists awarded the Nobel Prize in 2025, and won the 2018 Wolf Prize in Chemistry.

__Sir Michael Atiyah, of Lebanese descent, was a Fields medalist in 1966.

__Yasser Arafat, the former head of the Palestine Liberation Organization, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994, together with former Israeli Prime Ministers Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin “for their efforts to achieve peace in the Middle East.” Arafat died in 2004.

__Former Egyptian President Anwar al-Sadat was a co-recipient of the Nobel Prize with then-Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin in 1978 after they signed the Camp David Accords, which ended Israel's occupation of the Sinai Peninsula.

Kennedy made the comments while campaigning for Michigan Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers, who has accused his opponent, Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, of having ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist organization.

El-Sayed, who has disavowed the group, has also been accused by President Donald Trump of being a Muslim Brotherhood member. Trump has also made racist comments about El-Sayed.

“Mike Rogers was talking about the Muslim Brotherhood. That’s something I can talk about,” Kennedy said. Kennedy argued that the world’s 500 million Arabs have not contributed to science or the humanities due to the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood, after he cited Islamic civilization's contributions to literature in the 13th century.

“All that tradition has been destroyed by the Muslim Brotherhood,” Kennedy said. The U.S. has labeled several Middle Eastern branches of the Muslim Brotherhood as terrorist organizations. “They’ve created stagnant societies that do one, two things: hatred and war and victimization," Kennedy said.

The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in Egypt in 1928 but was banned after Brotherhood-backed President Mohamed Morsi was ousted in 2013. Jordan announced a sweeping ban on the organization last year. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain designated the organization as a terrorist group in 2014.

Protect Our Care president Brad Woodhouse said in a statement that “this wasn’t the first time RFK Jr has trafficked in racism, but it may be his ugliest episode yet.” Woodhouse was referring to Kennedy's comments on the “High Level Conversations” podcast in 2024, where he implied that Black children with ADHD and on medication should be “re-parented.”

Dr. Peter Hotez, founding dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor and Texas Children’s Hospital, posted on social media Monday evening that his former colleague, Nobel Prize winner Zewail, would disagree with Kennedy.

“God rest his soul he didn’t have to endure this, and of course RFK Jr forgets that it was the Arab scientists of the Middle Ages who kept Aristotle, Hippocrates, Galen alive to hand it down in the Renaissance.”

Kennedy is slated to serve as a special guest at the “Make Iowa Healthy Again Rally” in Des Moines on Wednesday.

Find AP Fact Checks at https://apnews.com/APFactCheck.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks at a campaign rally with President Donald Trump at Alico Arena on the campus of Florida Gulf Coast University, Friday, Oct. 23, 2026, in Fort Myers, Fla. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

President Donald Trump shakes hands with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at a campaign rally at Alico Arena on the campus of Florida Gulf Coast University, Friday, Oct. 23, 2026, in Fort Myers, Fla. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)