Borussia Dortmund’s horror run of Bundesliga results continued on Saturday as they lost 1-0 at home to Hanover 96, to drop to 15th after a fourth straight defeat.
Dortmund’s terrible domestic form is in stark contrast to their Champions League campaign, where they top their group with three straight wins after Wednesday’s impressive 4-0 victory at Galatasaray.
However, seven days before they face Bundesliga leaders Bayern Munich away, Dortmund are now winless in their last six league games and just a point above the relegation zone.
Dortmund coach Jurgen Klopp was left fuming on the sidelines at their Westfalenstadion as Japan’s Hiroshi Kiyotake curled in a free kick to score Hanover’s first goal in 416 minutes, following three straight defeats.
Mid-table Hanover finished with 10 men after Turkey midfielder Ceyhun Guelselam earned a red card for his second booking after a challenge on Dortmund winger Marco Reus on 89 minutes.
Hertha Berlin claimed a 3-0 home win against Hamburg with Tunisia’s Anis Ben-Hatira netting twice as Hamburg remain in the bottom three.
VfB Stuttgart leapfrogged Dortmund into 14th place after their 5-4 victory at Eintracht Frankfurt.
Stuttgart captain Christian Gentner scored the 84th-minute winner when he stabbed the ball home at close range from a free kick to claim only their second win of the season.
Frankfurt finished with 10 men after Swiss striker Haris Seferovic was sent off five minutes from time for miming that the referee’s assistant needed glasses.
Roberto di Matteo failed to pick up his third straight win as Schalke 04 coach on Saturday evening as the Royal Blues lost 1-0 against 10-man Bayer Leverkusen in the battle between two of Germany’s Champions League sides.
Turkey midfielder Hakan Calhanoglu settled the matter with a superbly struck free kick on 53 minutes.
Leverkusen finished with 10 men after 18-year-old Croatia international defender Tin Jedvaj was dismissed for a dangerous tackle.
With league leaders Bayern at Borussia Moenchengladbach on Sunday in the weekend’s top fixture, Hoffenheim took Gladbach’s place in second with a 1-0 win at Paderborn.
Winger Kevin Volland pushed his claim for a place in the Germany squad with his first goal of the season.
Augsburg moved up to ninth with a 2-0 win at home to Freiburg with Dutch defender Paul Verhaegh converting a penalty before Turkey’s Halil Altintop added a second goal.
Bottom side Werder Bremen sacked coach Robin Dutt on Saturday, less than 24 hours after his side’s 1-0 defeat at home to Cologne left them winless after nine games.
The 49-year-old is the third Bundesliga coach sacked this season after Mirko Slomka (from Hamburg) and Jens Keller (Schalke 04).
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