The Bundesliga is back on the menu this weekend after a two-week break and some tasty ties have been served up with leaders Werder Bremen tackling Borussia Dortmund at the Westfalen Stadium, while struggling SV Hamburg travel to a revitalized Bayer Leverkusen.
Dortmund have fond memories of playing Bremen with a 2-1 win securing the 2001/2002 German championship in May last year, but coach Matthias Sammer is wary of the threat posed by the Bundesliga pacesetters who inflicted Dortmund's only home defeat last season.
A Champions League exit and subsequent pay dispute has cast a cloud over Dortmund but Sammer will hope to derail Bremen, who are missing French playmaker Johan Micoud, and get their season back on track.
SV Hamburg face a testing trip to Bayer Leverkusen today hoping to end their dismal away form and record their first win of the 2003/04 campaign.
Hamburg, the longest servants in the Bundesliga, have not won in 11 away matches and come up against a Leverkusen outfit who have scored goals for fun at home.
Kurt Jara's Hamburg have been on a downward spiral since lifting the German League Cup but Stefan Beinlich does not believe they will endure a season-long slump like his former club Bayer.
"What happened to Leverkusen will not happen to us as we will not look for excuses," Beinlich informed German magazine Kicker.
Bayer welcome back long-term injury victim Jens Nowotny with the 29-year-old German international looking to step up his comeback.
"It is possible that I will play 45 minutes," Nowotny told Kicker.
Bayern Munich travel to VfL Wolfsburg today as they bid to build on a solid start to the defense of their crown.
Paraguayan striker Roque Santa Cruz is clipping at the heels of Roy Makaay after scoring a treble in Bayern's German Cup win but coach Ottmar Hitzfeld is set to continue with Claudio Pizarro and Makaay in attack.
Wolfsburg, who will be without the suspended Andres D'Alessandro, have never defeated German champions Bayern and former Wolves star Tobias Rau, now at Bayern, hopes this run does not come to an end.
"Wolfsburg have never managed to win against Bayern and it would be a bit embarrassing for me if it happened straight after my departure," declared Rau.
Elsewhere Hertha Berlin marksman Fredi Bobic hopes to shoot down former club Hannover.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier