A thunderbolt of a volley from Spain international Xabi Alonso booked Bayern Munich’s place in the DFB Pokal quarter-finals on Tuesday after a 1-0 win over SV Darmstadt 98.
The 34-year-old midfielder launched a long-range strike from outside the area with 40 minutes gone at Bayern’s Allianz Arena that flew into top-left corner and gave Darmstadt goalkeeper Christian Mathenia no chance.
“Even I would not have tried to pull that one off,” Bayern striker Thomas Mueller said.
Photo: EPA
Bayern could have made it 2-0 when Robert Lewandowski headed against the post later in the first half.
“In the first half, we could have rented the Bayern half as a car park,” Darmstadt coach Dirk Schuster said.
There was a seven-goal thriller at Borussia Moenchengladbach, with Werder Bremen claiming a shock 4-3 win over the hosts to progress to the last eight.
With the score locked at 2-2 with 15 minutes left, Peru striker Claudio Pizarro, 37, proved that age is no barrier by netting before Bremen’s Nigerian striker Anthony Ujah added the visitor’s fourth three minutes later.
Moenchengladbach fought until the end, with Sweden striker Branimir Hrgota pulling one back in stoppage-time by grabbing his second goal of the game.
Javier Hernandez claimed his 16th goal in 13 games for Bayer 04 Leverkusen when he scored in their 3-1 win against fourth-tier side SpVgg Unterhaching.
The minnows stunned Leverkusen by taking an early lead.
However, Leverkusen hit back with goals by Hernandez and Germany striker Stefan Kiessling before Unterhaching had Ulrich Taffertshofer sent off for a dangerous tackle.
Germany winger Karim Bellarabi added Leverkusen’s third to put them in the quarter-finals.
Second-tier side Heidenheim also went through after they enjoyed a 2-0 win at third-tier outfit Erzgebirge Aue to reach the quarter-finals for the first time in the club’s history.
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