Norwegian rising star Erling Braut Haaland came off the bench to claim a hat-trick inside 20 minutes on his debut for Borussia Dortmund and inspired a 5-3 comeback win against Augsburg in the Bundesliga on Saturday — despite not being fully fit.
The 19-year-old showed why Dortmund paid Austrian club Red Bull Salzburg 20 million euros (US$22 million) for him last month when he came on in the 56th minute with his new team 3-1 down.
However, Dortmund coach Lucien Favre said that the teen lacks full fitness following a knee knock.
Photo: AFP
“He didn’t train at all in December, he had an injury, and in our training camp we couldn’t do much for three or four days,” Favre said. “He’s not quite ready to play the 90 minutes and we have another game on Friday” at home against Cologne.
Haaland said he was “pretty relaxed” about his hat-trick and brushed off questions about his fitness, asking: “did I look fit?”
“I’m at a fantastic club with great teammates and good people around me,” he said. “I came here to score goals and it was a good debut for me.”
Dortmund’s victory left them fourth in the table, level on points with defending champions Bayern Munich and Schalke 04, but seven points behind leaders RB Leipzig, who opened a five-point gap at the top with a 3-1 win over Union Berlin.
Elsewhere, Kwon Chang-hoon and Nils Petersen scored SC Freiburg’s goals in a 2-1 win against FSV Mainz 05, while Werder Bremen kept a clean sheet for the first time this season as an own-goal by Florian Kastenmeier secured a 1-0 win against Fortuna Duesseldorf.
Cologne won 3-1 win at home against VfL Wolfsburg and Eintracht Frankfurt beat TSG 1899 Hoffenheim 2-1.
SERIE A
AP and AFP, MILAN, Italy
Ciro Immobile scored a hat-trick on Saturday to help SS Lazio crush UC Sampdoria 5-1 as Simone Inzaghi’s side continued to look like a genuine title contender.
It was a club record-extending 11th straight Serie A win for Lazio and saw them close within three points of leaders Juventus and one behind second-placed Inter.
Lazio will be full of confidence ahead of a tough week. They face Roma in a capital derby this weekend after continuing their defense of the Coppa Italia against SSC Napoli on Wednesday.
“We’ll enjoy this 11th win, but we have to already be thinking about the next matches,” Inzaghi said. “We know what a derby means but I can’t allow myself to think about Roma.”
Napoli fell 2-0 at home against ACF Fiorentina on Saturday, leaving last season’s Serie A runners-up scrambling to save their season as they fell to 13th, closer to relegation than the Champions League.
LA LIGA
AP, BARCELONA, Spain
Defensive specialist Casemiro scored his first brace for Real Madrid to ensure a 2-1 home win over Sevilla in La Liga action on Saturday.
Casemiro broke the deadlock for Madrid in the 57th minute when the Brazil midfielder was set up by Luka Jovic.
Sevilla striker Luuk de Jong, who had a goal ruled out by a video review in the first half, leveled in the 64th minute before Casemiro headed the hosts back in front five minutes later.
I’m pleased “not only for the goals, but also for the hard work of all the team against a great rival,” Casemiro said. “It was a typical Madrid-Sevilla [game]. These three points are important.”
The victory lifted Madrid into the lead and three points ahead of second-placed Barcelona, who were to play Granada after press time last night.
Atletico Madrid fell further behind in third place after losing 2-0 to Sociedad Deportiva Eibar.
Deportivo Alaves forward Aleix Vidal scored in the second half to secure a 1-0 win against Levante UD, while Real Valladolid and CA Osasuna drew 0-0.
COUPE DE FRANCE
AP, PARIS
Two goals and two assists from 16-year-old forward Rayan Cherki helped Olympique Lyonnais win 4-3 against Nantes and reach the last 16 of the Coupe de France on Saturday, while run of JS Saint-Pierroise from the Reunion Island Premier League ended with a 1-0 loss away against SAS Epinal.
Other Ligue 1 winners on Saturday were OGC Nice, Lille OSC, AS Saint-Etienne and RC Strasbourg Alsace.
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