Borussia Dortmund sacked manager Lucien Favre following a run of poor results, the Bundesliga club announced Sunday.
The decision to sack the 63-year-old was confirmed a day after Dortmund was thrashed 5-1 at home against VfB Stuttgart.
“We are all grateful for Lucien Favre and his excellent work over the past two and a half years, where he and his team finished as runner-up twice,” Dortmund CEO Hans-Joachim Watzke said.
“Beyond any doubt, Lucien Favre is a great professional and person.”
Assistant coach Edin Terzic will take charge on an interim basis until the end of the season.
Terzic previously worked as an assistant under Slaven Bilic at West Ham United before joining Favre’s coaching staff when Dortmund appointed the Swiss manager in 2018.
Favre’s first season in charge saw Dortmund go on a 15-match unbeaten run to open the 2018-19 campaign. Despite their 21-point improvement compared to the season prior, Dortmund failed to end Bayern Munich’s reign as Bundesliga champions.
After finishing just two points behind Bayern, Dortmund regressed the following season and trailed 13 points off the pace as Bayern captured their eighth-consecutive league title.
Dortmund sit fifth in the Bundesliga with 19 points after 11 matches.
PITTSBURGH — When Vance McDonald found out that he tested positive for COVID-19 in the early morning hours after a Week 9 win in Dallas, he left the Pittsburgh Steelers’ facility and drove straight to his farm more than an hour away.
He called his wife and told her that he would be living in one of the farm’s outbuildings for at least the next 10 days.
“I came straight from Dallas with nothing but the clothes on my back,” McDonald said Friday. “I called my wife on my way home and said, ‘Hey, I tested positive. I’ve got to quarantine.’
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“My father-in-law is battling stage 4 cancer, so his white blood cell count is super low. We want to take it just as serious as if I’m quarantining from the facility. I’m absolutely quarantining when I got home.”
McDonald spent 16 days quarantining from his family on the farm, but he wasn’t alone.
He had the family’s new German shepherd, Nebo, who was raised by quarterback Ben Roethlisberger and his family during the pandemic and acquired by the McDonalds earlier this season.
“She’s like, ‘Obviously you’re staying out there, but I’m leaving you our German shepherd,'” McDonald said with a laugh. “I love Will Smith, so that movie ‘I Am Legend,’ it was just me and our German shepherd just moving throughout the farm by myself. I started talking to him like he was my friend.”
He can joke about it now, but the experience wasn’t an easy one. McDonald and his wife set up a checkpoint on the land where she could drop off food and clean clothes without being exposed. McDonald’s symptoms weren’t as severe as some cases, but he said he had “GI issues” on Thursday before the game.
To be safe, team doctors held McDonald out of Friday’s practice. But when he returned two negative COVID-19 tests on Saturday, he was cleared to travel to Dallas and play against the Cowboys.
Vance McDonald said his quarantine experience was like the film “I Am Legend” — just a man and his dog. “I started talking to him like he was my friend,” McDonald said. Ian Johnson/Icon Sportswire
“I felt completely normal and went into Dallas, played against Dallas and then got a message from our head trainer Monday morning … He said, ‘Hey, your Sunday test tested positive,'” McDonald said. “It’s just like, what can you really do? In hindsight, I’m sure the team wished that I would’ve tested positive. We did everything right. It’s not like we overlooked anything or skipped any step.”
McDonald went on the NFL’s reserve/COVID-19 list Nov. 9 and came off Nov. 23. As a result of his positive test, the Steelers had to put other players, including Roethlisberger and inside linebacker
FIFA has unveiled the finalists for its marquee honors ahead of this month’s The Best Football Awards show, with a collection of the game’s top players in direct competition for silverware.
After this year’s Ballon d’Or was scrapped due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, FIFA’s annual honors represent the only opportunity for the top men’s and women’s footballers to collect personal hardware in 2020.
The award winners will be announced on Dec. 17.
Here are the finalists for the main individual accolades:
Best Men’s Player
Cristiano Ronaldo (Juventus and Portugal)
Lionel Messi (Barcelona and Argentina)
Robert Lewandowski (Bayern Munich and Poland)
Best Women’s Player
Lucy Bronze (Manchester City and England)
Pernille Harder (Chelsea and Denmark)
Wendie Renard (Lyon and France)
Best Men’s Coach
Marcelo Bielsa (Leeds United)
Hans-Dieter Flick (Bayern Munich)
Jurgen Klopp (Liverpool)
Best Women’s Coach
Emma Hayes (Chelsea)
Jean-Luc Vasseur (Lyon)
Sarina Wiegman (Netherlands)
Best Men’s Goalkeeper
Alisson Becker (Liverpool and Brazil)
Manuel Neuer (Bayern Munich and Germany)
Jan Oblak (Atletico Madrid and Slovenia)
Best Women’s Goalkeeper
Sarah Bouhaddi (Lyon and France)
Christiane Endler (Paris Saint-Germain and Chile)
Alyssa Naeher (Chicago Red Stars and United States)
Puskas Award (best goal)
Giorgian De Arrascaeta: Flamengo vs. Ceara (Aug. 25, 2019)
Heung-Min Son: Tottenham vs. Burnley (Dec. 7, 2019)
Luis Suarez: Barcelona vs. Mallorca (Dec. 7, 2019)
Other honors set to be doled out include FIFA’s Fair Play and Fan awards, while both the men’s and women’s FIFPro World XIs will also be unveiled during a virtual ceremony in Zurich, Switzerland.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Carolina Panthers wide receiver Curtis Samuel was activated Friday from the reserve/COVID-19 list and will play Sunday against the Denver Broncos.
However, fellow wideout DJ Moore remains on the reserve list and is unlikely to be available for the 1 p.m. ET game between the 4-8 teams. Moore has not practiced all week since being one of eight players added to the reserve/COVID-19 list Monday.
Of those on the 53-man roster placed on the reserve list, only Moore and defensive tackle Zach Kerr remain on it. Samuel, outside linebacker Shaq Thompson and defensive tackle Derrick Moore were removed from the list Friday, and all are expected to play Sunday.
