Florian Wirtz on Wednesday scored goals in each half as Bayer 04 Leverkusen thrashed Fortuna Duesseldorf 4-0 at home to reach the DFB-Pokal final for the fifth time.
Leverkusen have gained a reputation for stealing last-gasp wins this season, but were in total control from start to finish against their second-tier opponents.
Jeremie Frimpong opened the scoring seven minutes in, with Amine Adli adding another on the 20-minute mark. With five goals, Adli is the top scorer in the DFB-Pokal this season.
Photo: AFP
Wirtz added a third 10 minutes before halftime and doubled up from the penalty spot on the hour mark to seal a comfortable victory for Xabi Alonso’s side.
The win, which extended Leverkusen’s remarkable unbeaten record to 40 matches this season, keeps the dreams of a treble alive for a team with just two major trophies in club history.
Midfielder Granit Xhaka said his side were “doing everything we can to make the fans’ dreams come true after so many years.”
“A final is always special,” Alonso said. “We will be ready, but we need to enjoy this moment.”
Leverkusen won the DFB-Pokal in 1992-1993, but have finished runners-up three times since.
Having never won the Bundesliga, Leverkusen are currently 13 points clear of second-placed Bayern Munich with seven games to play.
“It’s a very good result and we managed to qualify for the final. It’s fun to celebrate with the fans and to see the enjoyment when you look in their faces,” Wirtz said. “We’re happy we could make them happy today.”
Wirtz, the major target of transfer speculation at the club now that Alonso has pledged to stay with Leverkusen next year, told ZDF: “I’m not going to talk about those topics tonight — we’re going to celebrate.”
Standing next to the DFB-Pokal, Leverkusen defender Jonathan Tah said: “We’re glad that we’ve got a chance to grab that beautiful thing there in the final.”
Asked if he wanted to touch it, Tah declined, saying: “We’re waiting.”
Kaiserslautern on Tuesday beat third-tier Saarbruecken to become the first second-tier side in the final since 2010-2011.
Duesseldorf’s hopes of joining Kaiserslautern in the first-ever all second-tier final took an early hit, Frimpong slamming in from close range after seven minutes.
Wirtz, again pulling the strings for Leverkusen despite being just 20, found Adli, who blasted home confidently to double the lead.
Leverkusen scored a third after winning the ball back and working it quickly to Wirtz, who shed a defender and finished past Florian Kastenmeier.
After 60 minutes, Patrik Schick’s header connected with the hand of Duesseldorf’s Matthias Zimmerman, with the referee pointing to the penalty spot after a video assistant referee review.
Kastenmeier guessed correctly, but Wirtz’s shot was perfectly tucked inside the left post and the home fans broke out into chants of “Berlin, we’re going to Berlin” ahead of next month’s final.
The qualifying round of the World Baseball Classic (WBC) is to be held at the Taipei Dome between Feb. 21 and 25, Major League Baseball (MLB) announced today. Taiwan’s group also includes Spain, Nicaragua and South Africa, with two of the four teams advancing onto the 2026 WBC. Taiwan, currently ranked second in the world in the World Baseball Softball Confederation rankings, are favorites to come out of the group, the MLB said in an article announcing the matchups. Last year, Taiwan finished in a five-way tie in their group with two wins and two losses, but finished last on tiebreakers after giving
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
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
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
RSS