After protests erupted across the U.S. this past week, Schalke’s American midfielder Weston McKennie has joined in from Germany. The 21-year-old Texas native wore a “Justice for George” armband during Saturday’s match with Werder Bremen, showing support for George Floyd, who died in police hands on Monday in Minneapolis.
KLAGENFURT, Austria — Salzburg won the Austrian Cup with a ruthless 5-0 destruction of second-tier Austria Lustenau in the final as the season resumed following the coronavirus stoppage on Friday.
With the victory, Salzburg coach Jesse Marsch, a Wisconsin native, became the first American-born coach to win a major trophy in Europe.
Fortuna Dusseldorf boosted their hopes of avoiding relegation from the Bundesliga as goals from Rouwen Hennings and Kenan Karaman helped them come from behind to beat Schalke 04 2-1 at home in a scrappy contest on Wednesday.
The result left Fortuna 16th, the relegation playoff spot, on 27 points from 28 games, one behind Mainz who stayed in the safety zone with a 1-1 draw at Union Berlin.
Schalke, who extended their winless league run to 10 matches, stayed ninth on 37 points.
USMNT player Timmy Chandler helped Eintracht Frankfurt secure a 3-3 draw against Freiburg with an 82nd-minute goal on Tuesday.
Frankfurt had gone down 3-1 before Japanese midfielder Daichi Kamada struck in the 79th minute to bring Die Adler back within one. Soon after, Chandler popped up at the back post to steer home a long cross from Filip Kostic.
American teenager Giovanni Reyna suffered an injury Saturday while warming up for his first start in the Bundesliga.
Our Starting XI against S04
Gio Reyna will make his first official start for BVB pic.twitter.com/bKSxcSPYbq— Borussia Dortmund (@BlackYellow) May 16, 2020
Sergiño Dest, like most footballers around the world, hasn’t played a competitive match since March. At 19, Dest was enjoying a breakout season at Ajax before soccer shut down across Europe. At a time when the USMNT fullback was showing his immense potential, the campaign came to an abrupt end as the Dutch league canceled the season without a champion, despite Ajax sitting top of the table.
Fortunately for Dest, his season didn’t end without some hardware.
The Bundesliga resumes action on Saturday, May 16, with the added intrigue of being one of Europe’s most tightly contested title races. Bayern Munich, in hot pursuit of its eighth straight Meisterschale, has a four-point lead over Borussia Dortmund with nine matches remaining, but both Leipzig and Gladbach are within six points of the leader.
The Bundesliga season will restart on May 16 after a suspension of more than two months, the German Football League (DFL) said on Thursday, becoming the first European league to resume amid the coronavirus epidemic.
The DFL said the season would restart under the terms of a strict health protocol that bans fans from the stadium, with six games on Saturday, including the high-profile Ruhr valley derby between Borussia Dortmund and Schalke 04.
It would be easy to write off Erling Håland as just a beefy striker bro. But the more media attention he receives, the more you realize he’s a thoughtful kid who is living his dream.
Håland is one of Europe’s most precocious strikers. At 19, he’s torn up the Champions League and two different Bundesligas this season (he moved from Salzburg to Dortmund in January) with an astonishing 40 goals in 33 appearances.
The resumption of training in Germany's Bundesliga proved to be bad news for United States men's national team goalkeeper Zack Steffen, who injured a knee not long after getting back on the field.
Steffen, who plays for Fortuna Dusseldorf, was training in a small group, as was permitted, when he came away with an "inner ligament injury," according to the team. The 25-year-old is expected to miss four to six weeks of action.