Paolo Guerrero scored two goals on Sunday to help Hamburg SV beat Cologne 3-1 and take the lead in the Bundesliga on goal difference from Bayer Leverkusen.
The Peruvian international striker now tops the list of scorers with four goals in four games along with Bayer Leverkusen’s Stefan Kiessling.
In the earlier game, Mesut Oezil scored one goal and set up another in Werder Bremen’s 3-2 win at Hertha Berlin.
PHOTO: AFP
Marko Marin set up two goals for Werder, who jumped to third place in the standings. For Hertha, fourth last season, it was their third straight loss and it dropped them to 16th place.
Hamburg and Leverkusen have 10 points from four games, three points ahead of Bremen, Schalke 04 and Borussia Moenchengladbach.
Guerrero put Hamburg ahead after 19 minutes, seizing on a poor clearance by Cologne’s defense. His second goal in the 66th minute came from a deflected shot.
Cologne, winless and last in the standings, pulled one back in the 76th minute when Adil Chihi unleashed a powerful shot from 25m less than two minutes after coming on as a substitute.
Cologne continued to press, but Hamburg secured the victory from a penalty earned by Ze Roberto following a challenge by goalkeeper Faryd Mondragon.
“There was no contact,” a furious Mondragon said after the game, but Piotr Trochowski scored from the spot to complete the victory.
In Berlin, Werder Bremen’s Oezil scored against the run of play in the 57th minute, only minutes after goalkeeper Tim Wiese had blocked a shot by Hertha Berlin’s Gojko Kacar. Oezil used a fast counterattack to put his team ahead after a pass from Marin.
Tim Borowski doubled the lead in the 74th minute after another move by Marin had left the midfielder wide open to tap the ball in.
Three minutes later, Kacar broke through on the left and set up Lukasz Piszczek for Hertha’s first goal, but Oezil beat Hertha’s defense and passed to the unmarked Naldo, who drove the ball home to make it 3-1. Patrick Ebert scored in injury-time for Hertha.
German Bundesliga
Team | P | GD | PTS | |
1 | Hamburg | 4 | 7 | 10 |
2 | Bayer Leverkusen | 4 | 7 | 10 |
3 | Werder Bremen | 4 | 3 | 7 |
4 | Schalke 04 | 4 | 3 | 7 |
5 | Borussia M’gladbach | 4 | 0 | 7 |
6 | Eintracht Frankfurt | 4 | 1 | 6 |
7 | Wolfsburg | 4 | -1 | 6 |
8 | Bayern Munich | 4 | 2 | 5 |
9 | VfB Stuttgart | 4 | 0 | 5 |
10 | TSG Hoffenheim | 4 | 0 | 5 |
11 | Mainz | 4 | -1 | 5 |
12 | Borussia Dortmund | 4 | -2 | 5 |
13 | Hannover 96 | 4 | 0 | 4 |
14 | VfL Bochum | 4 | -3 | 4 |
15 | SC Freiburg | 4 | -6 | 4 |
16 | Hertha Berlin | 4 | -2 | 3 |
17 | Nurnberg | 4 | -3 | 2 |
18 | Cologne | 4 | -5 | 1 |
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