Kevin Grosskreutz’s bicycle-kick in the 66th minute gave champions Borussia Dortmund a 1-0 victory at lowly Hertha BSC Berlin on Saturday and a three-point lead at the top of the Bundesliga.
Germany international winger Grosskreutz scored from a tight angle after goalkeeper Thomas Kraft palmed away a Robert Lewandowski header to lift Dortmund to 49 points from 22 matches, three points ahead of Borussia Moenchengladbach, who won 2-1 away at Kaiserslautern.
Bayern Munich stumbled to a goalless draw at bottom club SC Freiburg to drop four points off the lead in third place.
Photo: EPA
Dortmund are now unbeaten in 16 league games, while Hertha, who appointed Otto Rehhagel as their coach ahead of their 1,000th Bundesliga game, remained 15th after slumping to a fifth straight league defeat.
“It does not always have to be beautiful football,” Grosskreutz told reporters after Dortmund’s sixth straight league win. “The main thing is we got all three points.”
Dortmund, missing attacking midfielders Mario Goetze and Shinji Kagawa, lacked their usual creativity and apart from two efforts by Lucas Barrios, they had little to show for a first half in front of a sellout 74,000 crowd at the Olympic Stadium.
Hertha took control after the break and Patrick Ebert twice fired narrowly wide in a four-minute spell.
Dortmund struck at just the right time, Grosskreutz’s goal deflating Hertha hopes of a first league win since October.
Bayern did not look serious title contenders at Freiburg and not even the introduction of Dutch winger Arjen Robben in the second half could change their fortunes.
Goals from Patrick Herrmann after nine minutes and Juan Arango after 14 kept ’Gladbach flying high.
However, Hermann, who has been in the running for a Germany call-up, faces several weeks on the sidelines after breaking his collarbone in a first-half collision with Kaiserslautern defender Florian Dick.
In an entertaining northern derby, fifth-placed Werder Bremen won 3-1 at Hamburg SV, with goals from Marko Marin, Tom Trybull and Marko Arnautovic.
Mladen Petric was on target for the hosts.
Bayer 04 Leverkusen bounced back from their midweek defeat by Barcelona in the Champions League to crush second-from-bottom Augsburg 4-1, forward Stefan Kiessling netting twice.
Nuremberg beat Cologne 2-1 to leapfrog their rivals and go 12th.
Additional reporting by staff writer
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
Rafael Nadal on Wednesday said the upcoming French Open would be the moment to “give everything and die” on the court after his comeback from injury in Barcelona was curtailed by Alex de Minaur. The 22-time Grand Slam title winner, back playing this week after three months on the sidelines, battled well, but eventually crumbled 7-5, 6-1 against the world No. 11 from Australia in the second round. Nadal, 37, who missed virtually all of last season, is hoping to compete at the French Open next month where he is the record 14-time champion. The Spaniard said the clash with De Minaur was
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