Mario Gomez and Franck Ribery scored in a labored 2-1 win for Bayern Munich over bottom side Augsburg in a Bavarian derby on Sunday, moving their side five points clear in the Bundesliga.
“There are no easy games,” Bayern coach Jupp Heynckes said.
Gomez scored his Bundesliga-leading 13th goal of the season with a header from close range in the 15th minute when he was well placed to meet Mohamed Amsif’s save from Daniel van Buyten’s header.
Photo: EPA
Ribery twisted inside Dominik Reinhardt before slotting past the helpless Amsif to make it 2-0 in the 28th minute.
Hajime Hosogai pulled one back in the 59th minute when Bayern failed to clear a corner, the ball falling kindly for the Japan midfielder. David Alaba’s desperate lunge failed to stop the ball crossing the line.
Bayern missed Bastian Schweinsteiger, who broke his collarbone in Wednesday’s 3-2 Champions League win over Napoli and only Manuel Neuer prevented Augsburg from equalizing in the 83rd minute with a great reflex save from Edmond Kapllani.
“Basti is of course an incredibly important player for us, but it’s our job to compensate for this loss and David Alaba did his job well,” Bayern midfielder Toni Kroos said after his 100th Bundesliga appearance.
In a nervous finish for the league leaders, Anatoliy Tymoshchuk received a straight red card for raising his foot in a tackle on Baier in stoppage-time.
Earlier, Finland striker Teemu Pukki scored twice in his first Bundesliga start to salvage a 2-2 draw for Schalke 04 at Hannover 96.
Pukki opened the scoring in the 26th minute and tied the game in the 73rd, after an own-goal from Kyriakos Papadopoulos and Mohammed Abdellaoue’s header had given Hannover the lead.
“Schalke were the better team in the end, with two good chances,” Hannover coach Mirko Slomka said. “It’s not good that we’re conceding so many chances. That didn’t please me at all.”
Schalke missed the chance to go second and dropped to fifth, three points ahead of Hannover.
Klaas Jan Huntelaar failed to recover from a broken nose sustained in the Europa League on Thursday, giving Pukki his opportunity in the Dutchman’s place.
The 21-year-old outpaced Karim Haggui for Christian Fuchs’ pass forward for his first Bundesliga goal, taking it past the outrushing Ron-Robert Zieler with his first touch and slotting into the empty net.
Hannover equalized three minutes later when Papadopoulos’ attempted clearance of Lars Pander’s free-kick ended up in his own net.
Abdellaoue was denied a penalty before the interval when he went down under Papadopoulos’ challenge and Pukki’s shot whizzed by the post in the 57th minute, moments before Didier Ya Konan went just as close at the other end.
Abdellaoue scored two minutes later when Jan Schlaudraff crossed brilliantly with the outside of his foot for the Norway striker to head in his eighth goal of the season.
Pukki scored his second from a narrow angle after a great run from Jefferson Farfan, beating Zieler with a powerful shot across goal.
“In the end we had so many chances to score the winner, but it’s still a good result against Hannover,” Pukki said. “We believe we can [reach the Champions League]. We can go far this season.”
RECORD DEFEAT: The Shanghai-based ‘Oriental Sports Daily’ said the drubbing was so disastrous, and taste so bitter, that all that is left is ‘numbness’ Chinese soccer fans and media rounded on the national team yesterday after they experienced fresh humiliation in a 7-0 thrashing to rivals Japan in their opening Group C match in the third phase of Asian qualifying for the 2026 World Cup. The humiliation in Saitama on Thursday against Asia’s top-ranked team was China’s worst defeat in World Cup qualifying and only a goal short of their record 8-0 loss to Brazil in 2012. Chinese President Xi Jinping once said he wanted China to host and even win the World Cup one day, but that ambition looked further away than ever after a
‘KHELIFMANIA’: In the weeks since the Algerian boxer won gold in Paris, national enthusiasm is inspiring newfound interest in the sport, particularly among women In the weeks since Algeria’s Imane Khelif won an Olympic gold medal in women’s boxing, athletes and coaches in the North African nation say national enthusiasm is inspiring newfound interest in the sport, particularly among women. Khelif’s image is practically everywhere, featured in advertisements at airports, on highway billboards and in boxing gyms. The 25-year-old welterweight’s success in Paris has vaulted her to national hero status, especially after Algerians rallied behind her in the face of uninformed speculation about her gender and eligibility to compete. Amateur boxer Zougar Amina, a medical student who has been practicing for a year, called Khelif an
Crowds descended on the home of 17-year-old Chinese diver Quan Hongchan after she won two golds at the Paris Olympics while gymnast Zhang Boheng hid in a Beijing airport toilet to escape overzealous throngs of fans. They are just two recent examples of what state media are calling “toxic fandom” and Chinese authorities have vowed to crack down on it. Some of the adulation toward China’s sports stars has been more sinister — fans obsessing over athletes’ personal lives, cyberbullying opponents or slamming supposedly crooked judges. Experts say it mirrors the kind of behavior once reserved for entertainment celebrities before
GOING GLOBAL: The regular season fixture is part of the football league’s increasingly ambitious plans to spread the sport to international destinations The US National Football League (NFL) breaks new ground in its global expansion strategy tomorrow when the Philadelphia Eagles and Green Bay Packers face off in the first-ever grid-iron game staged in Brazil. For one night only, the land of Pele and ‘The Beautiful Game’ will get a rare glimpse into the bone-crunching world of American football as the Packers and Eagles collide at Sao Paulo’s Neo Quimica Arena, the 46,000-seat home of soccer club Corinthians. The regular season fixture is part of the NFL’s increasingly ambitious plans to spread the US’ most popular sport to new territories following previous international fixtures
RSS