Werder Bremen beat Hamburg 2-1 to jump to the top of the German league table on Saturday.
Bremen have 33 points to Bayern's 31 but Bayern had a game in hand. Hamburg are third with 30.
Against a Hamburg side who are serious title challengers, Bremen held on with a winner from Finnish defender Petri Pasanen midway through the second half.
Ivory Coast's Boubacar Sanogo put Bremen ahead on the quarter-hour after good work by Jurica Vranjes though Hamburg's Rafael van der Vaart equalized on 61 minutes with a superb 25m lob.
Then came Pasanen's winner though it was helped into the net by Hamburg defender Vincent Kompany, meaning Werder took top spot for the first time this season.
Bremen continued their good form from mid September, leaving them unbeaten in their last 10 league outings, even though they were without key players Torsten Frings and Tim Borowski.
Bremen coach Thomas Schaaf said afterwards: "We have managed to get through a difficult week very well," adding his team had been top of their game for several weeks now.
Hamburg coach Huub Stevens also congratulated Bremen.
"The best team won -- the freshest team physically too," said Stevens, whose team beat Rennes in the UEFA Cup 48 hours earlier.
Bayern meanwhile have not been at their best recently and could only manage a 1-1 draw against Portuguese side Braga in the UEFA Cup on Thursday.
Captain and keeper Oliver Kahn said he regretted a "lack of passion" shown by his teammates.
However Bayer Leverkusen have been gaining victory after victory lately and are approaching the leading trio. Leverkusen beat Hertha Berlin 3-0, leaving them six points behind the leaders.
At the other end of the table, Energie Cottbus beat Karlsruhe 2-0 to leave Duisburg bottom.
North Korea’s FIFA Under-17 Women’s World Cup-winning team on Saturday received a heroes’ welcome back in the capital, Pyongyang, with hundreds of people on the streets to celebrate their success. They had defeated Spain on penalties after a 1-1 draw in the U17 World Cup final in the Dominican Republic on Nov. 3. It was the second global title in two months for secretive North Korea — largely closed off to the outside world; they also lifted the FIFA U20 Women’s World Cup in September. Officials and players’ families gathered at Pyongyang International Airport to wave flowers and North Korea flags as the
Taiwan’s top table tennis player Lin Yun-ju made his debut in the US professional table tennis scene by taking on a new role as a team’s co-owner. On Wednesday, Major League Table Tennis (MLTT), founded in September last year, announced on its official Web site that Lin had become part of the ownership group of the Princeton Revolution, one of the league’s eight teams. MLTT chief executive officer Flint Lane described Lin’s investment as “another great milestone for table tennis in America,” saying that the league’s “commitment to growth and innovation is drawing attention from the best in the sport, and we’re
Coco Gauff of the US on Friday defeated top-ranked Aryna Sabalenka 7-6 (7/4), 6-3 to set up a showdown with Olympic champion Zheng Qinwen in the final of the WTA Finals, while in the doubles, Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching was eliminated. Gauff generated six break points to Belarusian Sabalenka’s four and built on early momentum in the opening set’s tiebreak that she carried through to the second set. She is the youngest player at 20 to make the final at the WTA Finals since Denmark’s Caroline Wozniacki in 2010. Zheng earlier defeated Wimbledon champion Barbora Krejcikova of the Czech Republic 6-3, 7-5 to book
For King Faisal, a 20-year-old winger from Ghana, the invitation to move to Brazil to play soccer “was a dream.” “I believed when I came here, it would help me change the life of my family and many other people,” he said in Sao Paulo. For the past year and a half, he has been playing on the under-20s squad for Sao Paulo FC, one of South America’s most prominent clubs. He and a small number of other Africans are tearing across pitches in a country known as the biggest producer and exporter of soccer stars in the world, from Pele to Neymar. For
RSS