Defending champions Borussia Dortmund went top of the German league for the first time this season on Saturday after defeating neighbors Schalke 2-0 as Bayern Munich dropped to third in the table.
Only one point separates the top three teams, with Dortmund and Borussia Moenchengladbach on 29 points.
Having had their Champions League hopes all but ended with defeat at Arsenal in midweek, Dortmund picked up their seventh win in eight league games with goals by Polish striker Robert Lewandowski and Brazilian defender Felipe Santana in front of 80,720 spectators.
Lewandowski grabbed his ninth league goal when he headed home on 16 minutes and Dortmund made sure of their first home win over Schalke since 2007 when Santana fired home from 13m out in the 139th Ruhr Valley derby.
After losing German midfielder Sven Bender with a broken jaw at Arsenal, and only having had teenage star Mario Goetze confirmed in the starting line-up on Friday night after a knee injury, -Dortmund coach Jurgen Klopp praised his team.
“We didn’t let the opponents back into the game, we were stronger in the middle of the pitch,” Klopp said.
There is no love lost between the rival fans and 28 arrests were made at Dortmund’s sold out Signal Iduna Park stadium as fights between supporters were broken up by police using batons and pepper spray.
Having booked their place in the knock-out phase of the Champions League with a late win at home to Chelsea on Wednesday, Leverkusen sealed a 3-3 draw against Hertha Berlin.
Swiss striker Eren Derdiyok, who scored the equalizer against Chelsea, hit a hat-trick, but having put his side in the lead in the 79th minute to make it 3-2, Berlin’s teenage striker Pierre-Michel Lasogga leveled eight minutes from time.
In other play it was:
‧ ’Gladbach 3, Bayern 0
‧ Nuremberg 1, Kaiserslautern 0
‧ Augsburg 2, Wolfsburg 0
‧ Hamburg 1, Hannover 1
A sumo star was born in Japan on Sunday when 24-year-old Takerufuji became the first wrestler in 110 years to win a top-division tournament on his debut, triumphing at the 15-day Spring Grand Sumo Tournament in Osaka despite injuring his ankle on the penultimate day. Takerufuji, whose injury had left him in a wheelchair outside the ring, shoved out the higher-ranked Gonoyama at the Edion Arena Osaka to the delight of the crowd, giving him an unassailable record of 13 wins and two losses to claim the Emperor’s Cup. “I did it just through willpower. I didn’t really know what was going
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