Europe

The well-worn cliché in England states that league titles are captured by winning games on your worst days. In Germany, Bayern Munich claims titles by demoralizing opponents on its best days.

Bayern looked well on its way to an eighth straight Bundesliga championship with a 5-0 win over Fortuna Düsseldorf on Saturday at Allianz Arena. The German giants never let up the pressure against relegation-threatened Fortuna, squeezing the life out of the visitors for 90 minutes.

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.

Lucien Favre's Dortmund has been unable to catch a break on the injury front of late. 

Having already lost captain Marco Reus to ongoing fitness issues and center back Dan-Axel Zagadou to a ruptured ligament, Favre has now had to rule out midfielder Mahmoud Dahoud for the rest of the campaign as well.

As much as those in England are obsessed with the talents of Jadon Sancho, the most exciting young attacker in the Bundesliga is not British, Norwegian or Canadian. He’s as German as they come.

MOSCOW — Russia's Sports Minister said on Friday he welcomed a decision by the authorities to allow spectators into stadiums when matches in the country's top professional soccer league resume next month.

The Russian Premier League halted matches in mid-March because of the COVID-19 crisis and is set to resume action on June 21.

"It's important that the soccer championship resumes in the presence of spectators, even though small in number," Russian news agencies quoted Sports Minister Oleg Matytsin as saying.

Roger Federer is the world's highest-paid athlete for 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic knocked soccer's Lionel Messi off top spot, according to the annual Forbes list released on Friday.

The Swiss tennis great, owner of a men's record 20 Grand Slam singles titles, earned $106.3 million in the last 12 months, including $100 million via endorsements, to move up four places and become the first player from his sport to top the list.

MADRID — Spanish soccer's top-flight will resume after a three-month pause due to the coronavirus pandemic on June 11 with the local derby between Sevilla and Real Betis, the government's department for sport (CSD) said in a statement on Friday.

Meanwhile, president Javier Tebas has outlined LaLiga's plans to offer viewers the chance to hear virtual crowd noise during the matches, which will be played without supporters to prevent further spread of the virus.

European football will continue its cautious return to play following the COVID-19 stoppage over the next week as a number of the continent's smaller leagues restart with some novelties and one team in serious trouble for breaking coronavirus rules. 

Portugal, Denmark, Poland, Serbia, Austria, Croatia and Ukraine are among countries which will again be able to enjoy league football, albeit in unusual circumstances with no spectators allowed at games. They join Hungary, Czech Republic, Estonia and the Faroe Islands where play has already restarted. 

The Austrian Bundesliga could be set for a massive shakeup at the top of the table without a ball having been kicked in months. 

Two weeks after 11 of the league's 12 teams accused Valérien Ismaël's side of disregarding rules restricting the size of training groups, LASK have been hit with a six-point deduction. The rules had been set in place by the country's Ministry of Sports as a result of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.