After a second successive 1-1 draw on Tuesday, Bayern Munich sporting director Hasan Salihamidzic said it was “high time we flicked the switch,” warning that “the title is at stake.”
A loss when Bayern host Eintracht Frankfurt today would see the Eagles climb within two points of the 31-time Bundesliga title winners, while blowing the league wide open for the chasing pack.
While calling out forward Serge Gnabry for an “amateurish” mid-season jaunt to Paris Fashion Week, Salihamidzic said Bayern need to “wake up now.”
Photo: AFP
“We can prepare well for [Frankfurt] in the next few days, [we must] burn it into our heads how important the game is,” he said.
The shift in reckoning might seem dramatic considering Bayern won 6-1 in Frankfurt in the season’s opening fixture in August last year, but it is a credit to the Eagles’ continued development under manager Oliver Glasner this season.
Half a season later, Frankfurt have lost just once since early October last year in all competitions. They sit third in the league and have made it through to the UEFA Champions League round-of-16 at their first attempt.
A sure sign that the reigning UEFA Europa League champions have Bayern worried came on Sunday’s edition of German TV institution Doppelpass, when Frankfurt became the target of former club boss Uli Hoeness’ pre-match mind games.
Hoeness praised today’s opponents, saying the club had “made the greatest progress of any club [in Germany] in the past 12 to 18 months,” while adding that Bayern had “thought about bringing back” star midfielder Mario Goetze just before the 2014 World Cup winner signed with Frankfurt last year, but opted against it.
Goetze, plucked from Borussia Dortmund in 2013, had a largely unhappy three-year spell in the Bavarian capital. He returned to Dortmund in 2016, before moving to Dutch side PSV Eindhoven on a free transfer in 2020.
While it would be generous to say that Eintracht have the wood on Bayern, they have won two of their past four games against the all-conquering Bavarians and were one of only two teams to win in Munich in the league last season.
Frankfurt’s 3-1 win in the 2017-2018 DFB-Pokal final was only the fourth time Bayern have lost in the showpiece event, having won it on 20 occasions.
However, Frankfurt missed a golden chance to close the gap with Bayern to three points on Wednesday, drawing 1-1 at SC Freiburg.
Glasner warned his side: “I don’t believe it’s going to get any easier in Munich.”
“They play with brutal speed and they are also very strong with headers,” he said.
Japan’s Shohei Ohtani is the record-breaking baseball “superhuman” following in the footsteps of the legendary Babe Ruth who has also earned comparisons to US sporting greats Michael Jordan and Tom Brady. Not since Ruth a century ago has there been a baseball player capable of both pitching and hitting at the top level. The 30-year-old’s performances with the Los Angeles Dodgers have consolidated his position as a baseball legend in the making, and a national icon in his native Japan. He continues to find new ways to amaze, this year becoming the first player to hit 50 home runs and steal 50 bases
Zhang Shuai yesterday said that she nearly quit after losing 24 matches in a row — now the world No. 595 is into the quarter-finals of her home China Open. The 35-year-old is to face Spain’s Paula Badosa as the lowest-ranked player to reach this stage in the history of the tournament after Badosa reeled off 11 of the last 12 games in a 6-4, 6-0 victory over US Open finalist Jessica Pegula. Zhang went into Beijing on a barren run lasting more than 600 days and her string of singles defeats was the second-longest on the WTA Tour Open era, which
Taiwan’s Tony Wu yesterday beat Mackenzie McDonald of the US to win the Nonthaburi Challenger IV in Thailand, his first challenger victory since 2022. The 26-year-old world No. 315, who won both his qualifiers to advance to the main draw, has been on a hot streak this month, winning his past nine matches, including two that ensured Taiwan’s victory in their Davis Cup World Group I tie. Wu took just more than two hours to top world No. 172 McDonald 6-3, 7-6 (7/4) to win his second challenger tournament since the Tallahassee Tennis Challenger in 2022. Wu’s Tallahassee win followed two years of
Taiwanese martial artists bagged one gold, four silver and three bronze medals at the World Junior Wushu Championships in Brunei, the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Brunei Darussalam said yesterday. Liu Yu-tzu won the gold medal in the girl’s taijiquan A group and also picked up a silver medal in the girl’s taijijian A group. Hu Hsin-ling, Yu Min-hsun and Chen Chao-hsiang each won a silver medal in the girl’s jianshu B, boy’s nangun B and boy’s taijijian A groups respectively. Hu also won a bronze medal in the girl’s qiangshu B group, while Yu and Lin Shih-hung picked up bronze medals