Kerem Demirbay on Friday scored in the third minute of injury time to qualify TSG 1899 Hoffenheim for European soccer for the first time with a 1-1 draw at Cologne in the Bundesliga.
Demirbay’s late strike ensured third-place Hoffenheim cannot finish any lower than sixth, guaranteeing the side a spot in the UEFA Europa League next season, while the point might yet prove valuable in their quest for automatic UEFA Champions League qualification.
Cologne forward Yuya Osako’s botched clearance proved costly for his side — who had missed several chances to seal the result — when Niklas Suele somehow managed to get the ball to Demirbay, who fired into the left corner.
Photo: AFP
It had looked like Leon Bittencourt was about to do former club Borussia Dortmund a favor with his goal inside the hour mark when Jonas Hector found him free at the far post.
LA LIGA
AP, MADRID
Photo: AFP
Paulo Henrique Ganso on Friday scored twice in his first start in more than three months to help Sevilla beat struggling Granada 2-0 in La Liga.
Ganso, the promising Brazilian midfielder who has yet to break through since joining the Spanish club this season, opened the scoring with a shot from inside the area less than five minutes into the match and increased the lead from close range shortly after halftime at the Estadio Ramon Sanchez Pizjuan in Seville, Spain.
Granada, who have lost their eight past matches, stayed second-to-last in the 20-team standings, seven points from safety with five matches to go in the season.
“Mathematically we still haven’t been relegated, so it’s our obligation to give our lives in every match,” Granada defender David Lomban said. “We need to do that for the fans, for the people of Granada. Of course it’s difficult, but we must give everything we have until the final day.”
It was Granada’s second game with former Arsenal captain Tony Adams at the helm.
It was only the second time Ganso had scored for Sevilla. The other goal had come in a 9-1 rout of fourth-division club Formentera in the Copa del Rey last year.
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Staff writer, with AFP, PARIS
In Tomblaine, France, AS Nancy-Lorraine and Olympique de Marseille played out a goalless draw at the Stade Marcel Picot.
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