Surprise Bundesliga leaders FSV Mainz 05 return from the international break looking to renew the magic that brought them a record start to the season, while sputtering champions Bayern Munich are desperate for a victory.
After nearly two weeks out of the spotlight, Mainz continue their campaign with a home match today against Hamburg SV and Thomas Tuchel’s side have lost none of their confidence from before the break.
“If we can keep up our fitness level and continue to play our aggressive Mainz style, then anything is possible. Then maybe nobody can beat us,” Mainz’s midfield maestro Lewis Holtby said.
Photo: EPA
Nobody has taken a point off Mainz this season and after seven straight wins they enjoy a three-point lead over Borussia Dortmund, who took a six-game winning streak into last night’s battle at 16th-placed Cologne.
An eighth consecutive Mainz victory would break the Bundesliga record for the best start to a season, eclipsing the seven straight wins by Bayern Munich in 1995-1996 and Kaiserslautern in 2001-2002.
“The last thing we want to do is lean back and relax,” said Tuchel, whose team beat second division side MSV Duisburg 3-1 last Friday in a friendly to stay in rhythm.
Much of Bayern’s squad, meanwhile, spent the break on national team duty, trying to clear their minds after recording just one win in their last six Bundesliga matches, leaving the perennial favorites lagging in 12th place.
A 13-point deficit behind Mainz has Bayern players and management alike demanding answers to their early problems, which mainly stem from the fact they have scored just five goals all season — the tamest attack in the league.
“We all have to ask ourselves if we are really concentrated in the decisive moments. We have to be more alert,” Bayern goalkeeper Hans-Joerg Butt said ahead of the match against third-placed Hannover 96. “Now is the time to turn this thing around, otherwise we will have some real problems.”
To compound Bayern’s attacking concerns, against Hannover the Champions League runners-up will be without striker Ivica Olic, who broke his nose while playing for Croatia, and Miroslav Klose, who scored three goals in Germany’s two Euro 2012 qualifiers, but suffered a muscle injury against Kazakhstan.
“We have our backs against the wall. Every slip-up minimizes our chances for the title,” Bayern manager Christian Nerlinger said. “We are damned to victories.”
In the weekend’s other top match-up, bottom club VfB Stuttgart head to second-bottom Schalke 04 for their first match since Swiss coach Christian Gross was sacked in response to the club’s poor start to the Bundesliga season.
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