Arjen Robben's 100th goal for German champions Bayern Munich sent them on their way to a 2-0 win over Freiburg and extended their lead at the top of the Bundesliga table on Tuesday.
Goals by Robben and Thomas Muller sealed Bayern’s win which gave them a 12 point lead over Wolfsburg, who play struggling Borussia Dortmund on Wednesday.
However, Bayern’s win came at a cost as defender Mehdi Benatia, striker Robert Lewandowski and midfielder Xabi Alonso picked up injuries.
Benatia will definitely miss the final game of the year against Mainz on Friday with a groin injury while both Lewandowski and Alonso took knocks to their right ankles.
Bayern chairman Karl-Heinz Rummenigge had described Robben as the “best outfield player in the world” after the Dutch winger scored twice in Bayern’s 4-0 thrashing of Augsburg last Saturday.
The 30-year-old certainly didn’t let Rummenigge regret his words in Tuesday’s game as he headed home Bayern’s opener and claim his ninth goal in 12 Bundesliga games.
Muller added Bayern’s second to wrap up the points.
“It was a good result, we would have liked a few more goals, but they packed men behind the ball, so we’re very happy with the win,” said Muller.
With second-placed Wolfsburg playing at joint second-from-bottom Borussia Dortmund on Wednesday, Bayern took the chance to further extend their huge lead at Munich’s Allianz Arena.
“It’s nice to have a 12-point lead, that was our goal, we were very dominant and we did our job,” added Muller.
Only a superb display from Freiburg goalkeeper Roman Burki kept the scoreline respectable as Bayern fired in 31 shots on goal – a Bundesliga best this season.
With Freiburg packing their defence and Bayern enjoying more than 80 per cent possession, it was only a matter of time before the hosts took the lead.
However, it still took till four minutes before half-time to break the deadlock.
Franck Ribery – who also brought up his century of goals for the club earlier this month – headed back across goal and Robben headed down the bouncing ball past Burki.
The hosts’ second goal came from a superb bit of skill.
Robben’s accurate long-range pass was met by Spain’s Juan Bernat, who put in a superb cross with a deft touch which Burki deflected onto the crossbar only for Muller to head home on 48 minutes.
In Tuesday’s other matches, 10-man Stuttgart climbed out of the bottom three with a 1-0 win at fellow strugglers Hamburg thanks to Florian Klein’s first-half winner.
The visitors played the best part of the second half a man down after defender Georg Niedermeier was shown a straight red for pulling back Hamburg striker Artjoms Rudnevs just after the break.
Augsburg stay fifth despite their second straight defeat as they went down 2-0 at Hannover while mid-table Mainz warmed up for Friday’s visit by Bayern with a goalless draw at Cologne.
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The specs
Engine: 1.5-litre turbo
Power: 181hp
Torque: 230Nm
Transmission: 6-speed automatic
Starting price: Dh79,000
On sale: Now
Children who witnessed blood bath want to help others
Aged just 11, Khulood Al Najjar’s daughter, Nora, bravely attempted to fight off Philip Spence. Her finger was injured when she put her hand in between the claw hammer and her mother’s head.
As a vital witness, she was forced to relive the ordeal by police who needed to identify the attacker and ensure he was found guilty.
Now aged 16, Nora has decided she wants to dedicate her career to helping other victims of crime.
“It was very horrible for her. She saw her mum, dying, just next to her eyes. But now she just wants to go forward,” said Khulood, speaking about how her eldest daughter was dealing with the trauma of the incident five years ago. “She is saying, 'mama, I want to be a lawyer, I want to help people achieve justice'.”
Khulood’s youngest daughter, Fatima, was seven at the time of the attack and attempted to help paramedics responding to the incident.
“Now she wants to be a maxillofacial doctor,” Khulood said. “She said to me ‘it is because a maxillofacial doctor returned your face, mama’. Now she wants to help people see themselves in the mirror again.”
Khulood’s son, Saeed, was nine in 2014 and slept through the attack. While he did not witness the trauma, this made it more difficult for him to understand what had happened. He has ambitions to become an engineer.
COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Kumulus Water
Started: 2021
Founders: Iheb Triki and Mohamed Ali Abid
Based: Tunisia
Sector: Water technology
Number of staff: 22
Investment raised: $4 million
more from Janine di Giovanni
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Book%20Details
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The White Lotus: Season three
Creator: Mike White
Starring: Walton Goggins, Jason Isaacs, Natasha Rothwell
Rating: 4.5/5
MATCH INFO
Inter Milan 2 (Vecino 65', Barella 83')
Verona 1 (Verre 19' pen)
In numbers: PKK’s money network in Europe
Germany: PKK collectors typically bring in $18 million in cash a year – amount has trebled since 2010
Revolutionary tax: Investigators say about $2 million a year raised from ‘tax collection’ around Marseille
Extortion: Gunman convicted in 2023 of demanding $10,000 from Kurdish businessman in Stockholm
Drug trade: PKK income claimed by Turkish anti-drugs force in 2024 to be as high as $500 million a year
Denmark: PKK one of two terrorist groups along with Iranian separatists ASMLA to raise “two-digit million amounts”
Contributions: Hundreds of euros expected from typical Kurdish families and thousands from business owners
TV channel: Kurdish Roj TV accounts frozen and went bankrupt after Denmark fined it more than $1 million over PKK links in 2013
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Zakat definitions
Zakat: an Arabic word meaning ‘to cleanse’ or ‘purification’.
Nisab: the minimum amount that a Muslim must have before being obliged to pay zakat. Traditionally, the nisab threshold was 87.48 grams of gold, or 612.36 grams of silver. The monetary value of the nisab therefore varies by current prices and currencies.
Zakat Al Mal: the ‘cleansing’ of wealth, as one of the five pillars of Islam; a spiritual duty for all Muslims meeting the ‘nisab’ wealth criteria in a lunar year, to pay 2.5 per cent of their wealth in alms to the deserving and needy.
Zakat Al Fitr: a donation to charity given during Ramadan, before Eid Al Fitr, in the form of food. Every adult Muslim who possesses food in excess of the needs of themselves and their family must pay two qadahs (an old measure just over 2 kilograms) of flour, wheat, barley or rice from each person in a household, as a minimum.
The National's picks
4.35pm: Tilal Al Khalediah
5.10pm: Continous
5.45pm: Raging Torrent
6.20pm: West Acre
7pm: Flood Zone
7.40pm: Straight No Chaser
8.15pm: Romantic Warrior
8.50pm: Calandogan
9.30pm: Forever Young
Skewed figures
In the village of Mevagissey in southwest England the housing stock has doubled in the last century while the number of residents is half the historic high. The village's Neighbourhood Development Plan states that 26% of homes are holiday retreats. Prices are high, averaging around £300,000, £50,000 more than the Cornish average of £250,000. The local average wage is £15,458.
COMPANY%20PROFILE
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NO OTHER LAND
Director: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal
Stars: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham
Rating: 3.5/5
Moving%20Out%202
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UAE cricketers abroad
Sid Jhurani is not the first cricketer from the UAE to go to the UK to try his luck.
Rameez Shahzad Played alongside Ben Stokes and Liam Plunkett in Durham while he was studying there. He also played club cricket as an overseas professional, but his time in the UK stunted his UAE career. The batsman went a decade without playing for the national team.
Yodhin Punja The seam bowler was named in the UAE’s extended World Cup squad in 2015 despite being just 15 at the time. He made his senior UAE debut aged 16, and subsequently took up a scholarship at Claremont High School in the south of England.
The specs
Engine: 2.2-litre, turbodiesel
Transmission: 6-speed auto
Power: 160hp
Torque: 385Nm
Price: Dh116,900
On sale: now
Need to know
Unlike other mobile wallets and payment apps, a unique feature of eWallet is that there is no need to have a bank account, credit or debit card to do digital payments.
Customers only need a valid Emirates ID and a working UAE mobile number to register for eWallet account.