Ex-Germany striker Kevin Kuranyi scored his 100th Bundesliga goal on Sunday in Schalke 04’s 2-0 win over Hertha Berlin, who put the Royal Blues third behind league leaders Leverkusen.
Kuranyi walked out on the Germany team in October last year leading to national coach Joachim Loew saying he will never select him again, but the 27-year-old forward has been in good form this season with seven goals in 14 league games.
Having made his debut for Stuttgart in 1997, Kuranyi went onto score 40 league goals before switching to Schalke and Sunday’s header was his 60th for his club.
PHOTO : REUTERS
Kuranyi profited from a header by Schalke’s Brazil defender Marcelo Bordon to power his own headed effort past Berlin’s goalkeeper Jaroslav Drobny on 59 minutes.
Brazilian defender Rafinha then netted a penalty in injury time to seal the 2-0 win over the league’s bottom side.
Schalke are now third in the table as Felix Magath’s side closed the gap to three points behind the leaders and left them level with second-placed Werder Bremen.
PHOTO: EPA
“I am glad that the team managed to win this game,” Magath said. “The Berliners have improved and made life hard for us. I wanted to attack down the wings in the first half, but that didn’t really happen. We changed things at half-time and things worked better after the break.”
With almost 10 minutes remaining, Hertha’s Columbian striker Adrian Ramos wasted a golden chance to equalize when he fired over with the goal at his mercy.
Earlier, Werder Bremen squandered the chance to close the gap behind Leverkusen when they were held to a goalless draw by relegation-candidates Cologne.
Leverkusen also drew 0-0 with Hanover 96 on Saturday, but Thomas Schaaf’s Bremen are still three points off the leaders after failing to crack a resolute Cologne defense.
The single point takes Cologne away from the relegation zone and leaves them 14th.
Markus Babbel was sacked as coach of Stuttgart on Sunday after his side drew 1-1 with Bochum on Saturday, their eighth straight game without a win, with Christian Gross taking over.
Babbel was robbed of his first league win since September at home to Bochum on Saturday after Bochum’s Austria defender Christian Fuchs curled in a stunning late free-kick to equalize.
Several thousand Stuttgart fans then gathered outside the Mercedes-Benz Arena after the game, demanding Babbel’s resignation with their side third from bottom.
Several police officers were injured and a handful of arrests were made after angry scenes. Stuttgart must beat Romania’s Unirea Urziceni at home tomorrow to progress from Group G in the Champions League behind Sevilla.
German Bundesliga
Team | P | GD | PTS | |
1 | Bayer Leverkusen | 15 | 21 | 31 |
2 | Werder Bremen | 15 | 19 | 28 |
3 | Schalke 04 | 15 | 10 | 28 |
4 | Bayern Munich | 15 | 12 | 27 |
5 | Hamburg SV | 15 | 10 | 25 |
6 | Hoffenheim | 15 | 12 | 24 |
7 | Borussia Dortmund | 15 | 3 | 24 |
8 | VfL Wolfsburg | 15 | 2 | 23 |
9 | Mainz | 15 | 0 | 23 |
10 | Eintracht Frankfurt | 15 | -2 | 22 |
11 | Borussia M’gladbach | 15 | -6 | 18 |
12 | Hannover 96 | 15 | -3 | 17 |
13 | SC Freiburg | 15 | -13 | 17 |
14 | Cologne | 15 | -8 | 14 |
15 | VfL Bochum | 15 | -12 | 13 |
16 | VfB Stuttgart | 15 | -9 | 12 |
17 | Nuremberg | 15 | -13 | 12 |
18 | Hertha Berlin | 15 | -23 | 5 |
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