Surprise package Borussia Moenchengladbach climbed to the top of the Bundesliga with a 3-0 win at Cologne on Friday as they continued their spectacular run this season.
Two goals from Mike Hanke and one from Juan Arango secured a fourth straight league win that saw them move on to 29 points, one ahead of Bayern Munich, who travel to FSV Mainz 05 today.
“This was a deserved win,” Gladbach coach Lucien Favre told reporters after his team stormed into a 2-0 lead at the break, before adding a third just after the interval. “We could have gone into the second half with an even bigger lead.”
Photo: EPA
“We wanted to pressure them from the start and my players did it well. We could have won by four or five goals today,” said the Swiss, who took charge midway through last season to keep them in the Bundesliga.
Champions Borussia Dortmund, in third place on 26 points, can themselves claim top spot with a home win over bitter rivals Schalke 04, who are a point behind them in fourth.
’Gladbach, who last season needed a relegation playoff to stay up, sent in front when forward Hanke fired in a low drive from 14m in the 20th minute.
Venezuela international Arango doubled the lead on the half hour, curling a 23m free-kick over the wall past goalkeeper Michael Rensing as Gladbach found little resistance in the regional derby that saw crowd trouble before the start.
Hanke dashed any Cologne hopes of a second-half comeback by slotting the ball home in the 47th after Rensing had palmed away a Patrick Herrmann shot.
Shohei Ohtani and Clayton Kershaw on Friday joined their Los Angeles Dodgers teammates in sticking their fists out to show off their glittering World Series rings at a ceremony. “There’s just a lot of excitement, probably more than I can ever recall with the Dodger fan base and our players,” manager Dave Roberts said before Los Angeles rallied to beat the Detroit Tigers 8-5 in 10 innings. “What a way to cap off the first two days of celebrations,” Roberts said afterward. “By far the best opening week I’ve ever experienced. I just couldn’t have scripted it any better.” A choir in the
After fleeing Sudan when civil war erupted, Al-Hilal captain Mohamed Abdelrahman and his teammates have defied the odds to reach the CAF Champions League quarter-finals. They are today to face title-holders Al-Ahly of Egypt in Cairo, with the return match in the Mauritanian capital, Nouakchott, on Tuesday next week. Al-Hilal and biggest domestic rivals Al-Merrikh relocated to Mauritania after a power struggle broke out in April 2023 between the Sudanese army and a paramilitary force. The civil war has claimed tens of thousands of lives and displaced more than 12 million people, according to the UN. The Democratic Republic of the Congo-born Al-Hilal
The famously raucous Hong Kong Sevens are to start today in a big test for a shiny new stadium at the heart of a major US$3.85 billion sports park in the territory. Officials are keeping their fingers crossed that the premier event in Hong Kong’s sporting and social calendar goes off without a hitch at the 50,000-seat Kai Tak Stadium. They hope to entice major European soccer teams to visit in the next few months, with reports in December last year saying that Liverpool were in talks about a pre-season tour. Coldplay are to perform there next month, all part of Hong Kong’s
Shohei Ohtani, Teoscar Hernandez and Tommy Edman on Thursday smashed home runs to give the reigning World Series champions the Los Angeles Dodgers a 5-4 victory over Detroit on the MLB’s opening day in the US. The Dodgers, who won two season-opening games in Tokyo last week, raised their championship banner on a day when 28 clubs launched the season in the US. Dodgers manager Dave Roberts shuffled his batting lineup with all four leadoff hitters finally healthy as Ohtani was followed by Mookie Betts, then Hernandez and Freddie Freeman in the cleanup spot, switching places with Hernandez. “There’s a Teoscar tax to
RSS