Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, the Bundesliga’s top scorer, on Friday claimed his 23rd goal in as many league games as Borussia Dortmund labored to a 1-0 home win over strugglers Ingolstadt 04.
Aubameyang’s first-half winner was his 30th goal in all competitions for Dortmund this season.
Borussia remain third in the table, narrowing the gap behind RB Leipzig to three points, but 13 adrift of runaway leaders Bayern Munich.
Photo: AP
Borussia, who have drawn AS Monaco in the quarter-finals of the UEFA Champions League, were missing a host of stars, but there was no disguising a poor display.
Ingolstadt, who enjoyed 14 shots on goal to Dortmund’s 10, are second from bottom and seven points from safety, but matched Dortmund and should have been awarded a second-half penalty.
“I was already getting ready to save the penalty,” Dortmund goalkeeper Roman Burki said after the referee missed his foul on Dario Lezcano on 52 minutes. “I was glad Auba got his goal, because without it, things would have been even harder for us, but the most important thing was the three points.”
Burki had a busy night and admitted Dortmund were tired from their rescheduled DFB Pokal win at minnows Sportfreunde Lotte on Tuesday to reach the semi-finals.
With Germany winger Marco Reus injured and 19-year-old Ousmane Dembele suspended, Dortmund coach Thomas Tuchel rotated his squad.
US teenage international Christian Pulisic, 18, and Japan’s Shinji Kagawa filled the attacking midfield roles behind Aubayemang.
The Gabon star needed just 14 minutes to add to his goals tally and remain two clear of Bayern Munich’s Robert Lewandowski in the race to be the top scorer this season.
Kagawa started the move in midfield and fed Marcel Schmelzer, who provided the cross from the left which Aubameyang rifled home.
However, Dortmund lived dangerously in the second half and were far from convincing, as Ingolstadt grew in confidence with Australia forward Mathew Leckie leading the attack.
Only Burki’s close-range save denied Leckie.
With 30 minutes to go, Tuchel lost patience with the ineffective Raphael Guerreiro, who won just three of his 10 challenges, and replaced him with Germany’s Julian Weigl in the defensive midfield.
Leckie could have again rescued a point just before the final whistle, but he skied a chance over the bar.
LA LIGA
AP, CANARY ISLANDS, Spain
Kevin-Prince Boateng on Friday scored and forced the sending off of a Villarreal player to help UD Las Palmas win 1-0 at home in La Liga.
Boateng’s header from a well-placed cross by Dani Castellano in the 10th minute was his eighth goal since joining Las Palmas this season.
The former AC Milan standout contributed to Villarreal being reduced to 10 men in the 19th, when he intercepted Mateo Musacchio’s back pass.
Victor Ruiz earned a direct red card for quickly fouling Boateng with only the goalkeeper to beat.
Boateng, who turned 30 last week, went close to adding another goal on back-to-back occasions early in the second half.
The win was Las Palmas’ first in five rounds as they moved into 11th place.
“This is good for morale,” Las Palmas midfielder Roque Mesa said.
Villarreal’s first loss away from home in the league since Nov. 20 last year ended a three-game winning run. They remained in fifth place, losing a chance to close on the top-four spots that earn UEFA Champions league berths.
“It was important for us to win today so we could pressure the teams at the top,” Villarreal’s Bruno Soriano said.
LIGUE 1
AP, PARIS
Lille OSC and Olympique de Marseille on Friday played out a lackluster goalless draw in Ligue 1.
The result left Marseille fifth in the standings, 22 points off leaders AS Monaco’s pace, with Lille lagging 34 points behind.
The hosts had the match’s best chance with six minutes left, but forward Eder’s header was parried away off the crossbar by goalkeeper Yohann Pele.
The game marked Marseille coach Rudi Garcia’s return to his former club.
Lille was coached by Franck Passi, the man Garcia replaced at Marseille after US billionaire Frank McCourt’s takeover.
Garcia spent five years as Lille coach, leading the club to a league and cup double in 2011. He went on to coach AS Roma in Serie A.
Elsewhere, Metz defeated SC Bastia 1-0 to end a five-match winless run to move seven points clear of the relegation zone.
The hosts had the best chances and forced Bastia goalkeeper Jean-Louis Leca to a couple of good saves before Gilles Cioni scored an own-goal in the 47th minute, when Lindsay Rose’s clearance hit the defender and went in.
It was Cioni’s maiden goal in the topflight league.
Bastia had only three shots during the whole game, and none of them were on target. The Corsican side remain in the danger zone, three points above last-placed Lorient.
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