Thomas Mueller scored a last-minute penalty for Bayern Munich to beat Augsburg 2-1 and Borussia Dortmund maintained their perfect Bundesliga start by defeating Hannover 96 4-2 on Saturday.
Hannover defender Felipe scored an own-goal and gave away two penalties in a match to forget for the Brazilian.
Alexander Esswein stunned Bayern when he struck for Augsburg two minutes before the break, but Robert Lewandowski equalized in the 77th minute and Mueller made no mistake from the spot after Markus Feulner was adjudged to have fouled Douglas Costa.
Photo: AFP
Video replay showed it was a soft decision by the referee’s assistant, with the Bayern winger running into Feulner and then falling.
“We looked at the replay and I have to say the assistant was wrong. We should have let play continue. Sorry, we’re sorry,” referee Knut Kirchner said.
Augsburg coach Markus Weinzierl called it a “catastrophic decision,” while Bayern coach Pep Guardiola said: “I don’t like to win like that.”
Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang scored both penalties for Dortmund, with Henrikh Mkhitaryan adding a fine strike and Felipe doing the rest. Artur Sobiech scored twice for Hannover.
“This win feels very well deserved. We know how much hard work is involved,” Dortmund coach Thomas Tuchel said.
Alexander Meier marked his return from a knee operation with a hat-trick as he led Eintracht Frankfurt to a 6-2 rout of Cologne in the late game.
Meier, last season’s top scorer, who had not played since April 4, opened the scoring with a header, made it 3-0 in off the post and completed the scoring with another header in the 87th minute. Luc Castaignos added two as Frankfurt moved into fourth place.
“The muscles are a little tired, but it’s OK. Everything’s fine,” Meier said.
Promoted SV Darmstadt 98 upset Bayer 04 Leverkusen 1-0 away for their first win thanks to Aytac Sulu’s eighth-minute header, Ingolstadt 04 and VfL Wolfsburg could draw only 0-0, while Hertha BSC defeated VfB Stuttgart 2-1 at home.
“We’re proud that we can celebrate the first victory in 33 years with Darmstadt,” Darmstadt coach Dirk Schuster said of the club’s long absence from the top flight.
Mdfielder Genki Haraguchi put Hertha ahead in the 14th minute, Toni Sunjic equalized in the 26th, but Fabien Lustenberger scored a spectacular winner in first-half stoppage-time to propel Hertha to sixth place and leave Stuttgart contemplating their fourth defeat from four matches.
Bayern players took to the field holding hands with children on either side, a migrant child on one side, in “a symbol for the integration of refugees.”
The hosts dominated possession, but struggled to make leeway early on. Thomas Mueller twice went close before Marwin Hitz made a great save to deny Thiago Alcantara.
Esswein struck for Augsburg with what was the visitors’ only shot on target. They had four shots, compared with 27 for Bayern.
Guardiola brought France under-21 winger Kingsley Coman on for his Bundesliga debut in the second half, but the 19-year-old who claimed on Thursday he could “make the difference in every minute” failed to back up his words.
Bayern increased the pace and Lewandowski finally made the breakthrough when he stabbed home from close range after Hitz blocked Mueller’s initial effort.
Mueller made sure that Bayern kept pace with Dortmund at the top after Costa’s late fall. Dortmund lead on goal-difference.
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