Eintracht Frankfurt on Wednesday edged Schalke 04 1-0 away to book their place in the DFB Pokal final against Bayern Munich.
Luka Jovic scored with his heel after a corner with 15 minutes remaining for Frankfurt to reach Germany’s season-ending showpiece in Berlin’s Olympiastadion for the second year in a row.
Frankfurt lost to Borussia Dortmund last season.
The win means Frankfurt coach Niko Kovac will face his future club in the final, with Bayern announcing last week that he would take charge of the Bundesliga champions this summer.
Franco di Santo thought he had equalized in stoppage-time after a dramatic finale, but referee Robert Hartmann ruled the goal out after determining that the Argentine controlled the dropping ball with his arm before firing the ball into the top-left corner.
It had been a game of little goalmouth action until Jovic scored.
Lukas Hradecky got the better of Schalke’s Guido Burgstaller in a one-on-one just minutes before, and the Frankfurt goalkeeper followed up with another good save to deny Yevhen Konoplyanka.
The home side’s chances of a comeback were boosted when Gelson Fernandes was sent off with 10 minutes left for a bad challenge on Leon Goretzka just 33 seconds after coming on as a substitute.
Hartmann initially showed a yellow card, but changed it to red after getting prompted to take another look by the video assistant referee.
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