Bundesliga champions Bayern Munich fought back from two goals down to draw 2-2 at Schalke 04 on Sunday, a result that leaves both clubs stranded three points behind leaders Werder Bremen.
Schalke led 2-0 inside 20 minutes on goals from Peter Lovenkrands and Levan Kobiashwili, but Munich salvaged a draw through Andreas Ottl in the 45th and Roy Makaay in the 52nd minute.
Neither side was able to capitalize on Bremen's surprise 1-1 draw on Saturday at home against Energie Cottbus. Ivan Klasnic scored with 14 minutes left to cancel out Cottbus' 49th-minute opener from Francis Kioyo.
Bremen lead the way with 20 points from an improving VfB Stuttgart, who have 18 points after a 4-2 win at Alemannia Aachen and are unbeaten in seven games. Munich and Schalke follow on 17 points apiece.
In the other game on Sunday, mid-table club Eintracht Frankfurt beat Borussia Moenchengladbach on a goal from Naohiro Takahara in the 78th minute. Thomas Helved was sent off for the visitors in the 56th minute for a second bookable offence.
Schalke had a dream start to the match -- although the majority of their fans kept silent for the first 19:04 minutes (a reference to the club's founding year of 1904) in protest against mediocer showings in recent games.
Lovenkrands opened the scoring to eerie silence in the 13th minute when he tapped in a defense-splitting pass from Gustavo Varela. Kobiashwili made it 2-0 some five seconds after the fan boycott ended, sending the 61,482 fans into a frenzy.
Kevin Kuranyi missed a golden opportunity for 3-0 in the 29th minute, firing straight at goalkeeper Oliver Kahn from point blank range -- a missed opportunity the hosts paid dearly for.
Ottl halved the deficit on the stroke of half-time after a poor clearance by Schalke goalkeeper Manuel Neuer, who surprisingly got the nod from coach Mirko Slomka over veteran Frank Rost.
Munich further stepped up the pressure in the second half and got the equalizer in the 52nd minute when Ottl fed Roy Makaay for his sixth goal of the season, a low shot from just inside the area.
Munich failed to win at Schalke for the first time since 1998, but with the draw at least stopped a slide after three straight defeats on the road.
"We did not play well at all in the first half hour. But my team reacted in a great way and deserved the draw," Munich coach Felix Magath said.
In other action on Saturday, Hertha Berlin defeated Nuremberg 2-1, VfL Wolfsburg beat struggling SV Hamburg 1-0, Bayer Leverkusen were held 1-1 by 10-man Mainz 05 and Borussia Dortmund got a last-gasp 1-1 draw against Arminia Bielefeld.
VfL Bochum handed last place to Hanover 96 by winning their Friday night game in Hanover 2-0.
Police on Sunday claimed success in stopping Dynamo Dresden's notorious fans from rampaging again at a soccer match.
Dresden used 1,100 officers from several German states -- a record for a third-division match -- to control the 20,000 spectators on Saturday at a match between Dynamo Dresden and Union Berlin.
Trouble was expected after 23 officers were injured last weekend.
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