Nurnberg hands Leverkusen first loss

Soccer Betting Lines

03/07/2010 - Nurnberg, Germany (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Eric Maxim Choupo-Moting scored twice in the closing minutes of the first half, Mikael Tavares added a goal 10 minutes after the break, and Nurnberg held on to hand Bayer Leverkusen its first loss of the season, 3-2 on Sunday at Franken Stadion.

Choupo-Moting scored in the 42nd and 45th, and Tavares put Nurnberg in control before Stefan Kiessling scored his Bundesliga-leading 14th and Patrick Helmes added his first of the season.

Leverkusen couldn't finish the comeback, and wasted a chance to regain the top spot in the Bundesliga. Bayern Munich moved into first last week, but settled for a 1-1 draw against Koln on Saturday.

Bayer Leverkusen would have returned to the top with a victory but had its 24- game, season-long unbeaten streak snapped by relegation-threatened Nurnberg.

Nurnberg jumped Hannover and Freiburg to move out of the drop zone but is just one point ahead of those two, and six ahead of last-place Hertha Berlin.

Choupo-Moting sliced through Leverkusen central defenders Manuel Friedrich and Sami Hyypia to beat German goalie Rene Adler for the opener, then took a pass from Dennis Diekmeier three minutes later and finished to the top corner.

Tavares added Nurnberg's third in the 55th when he scored into the lower-right corner, and the struggling side appeared to be in complete control.

Kiessling got one back in the 66th when he turned a pass from Gonzalo Castro past Nurnberg goalkeeper Rafael Schafer, and Helmes took advantage of a poor clearance seven minutes later to convert a low shot.

Leverkusen continued to push for the equalizer but, just one week after losing the top spot, slipped to third in the league behind Bayern and Schalke.

Aristide Bance scored his team-high seventh goal as Mainz defeated Hoffenheim 1-0 Rhein-Neckar-Arena to move up to eighth. Mainz is level with seventh-place Stuttgart on points, and just seven points out of a Europe League berth.

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FOOTBALL TRASH TALK

NFL Football Trash Talk

Trash talk has a place in every competitive endeavor (except baseball; those stirrup-wearers are too busy chewing on their sunflower seeds and their supplements to worry about what their opponents are doing).

Fantasy sports is no exception. Any intelligent discussion of the subject would probably start with a thesis statement or a definition of terms. Thankfully, this wont be an intelligent discussion.

Let me just say that I am happy to take a place in this space alongside my talented colleagues, even our commissioner. (You should see how she bleats like a demented paper boy about league fees on our fantasy site).

Trash talking, I would argue, is primarily about amusing your friends, their sheeplike demeanors and sloping foreheads notwithstanding. The best place I have found for football trash talking is at www.SportsAlarm.com.

Beyond the entertainment factor, though, I would recognize that the sophomoric ritual has one advantage, when properly applied. It magnifies your fantasy triumphs and mitigates your fantasy failures by transforming the eventual point total into an afterthought. Winning makes it seem like your opponent really is a truss-owning, lapel-pin-wearing nitwit. And in defeat, trash talk can be the air bag to break the fall from your hyperbolic heights. The plug-necked yahoos on your team, you can say, will be sacking groceries by the end of the season.

The best trash talk, in my view, is layered and nuanced. And it doesnt focus only on your opponents team. It picks apart your opponent. The idea is to create a shock-and-awe-scale blizzard of nonsense, and the goal is to make your opponent drop his hands from his keyboard in exasperation.

What team does your opponent root for? Accuse a Giants fan of having a Joe Namath pillowcase. Wheres your opponent from? Give a look of concern no matter his reply, then say, I'll try to type slower for you next time. Is your opponent into politics? Label everyone a tax-and-spend corporate shill.

Cap all that with a liberal application of irrelevance. For instance, dont just conclude by saying your opponent is a twerp who drafts like my grandmother. Say that your opponent is a sweater-wearing, eyebrow-plucking twerp who drafts his team about as well as Zsa Zsa Gabor gave acceptance speeches at the Oscars. By the time your foe makes sense of that, his starting running back will have had puppies.

But what about you? Hmm? Recall a memorable slam? Have a tried-and-true technique? Know someone who seems impervious to insult? Take a moment and tells us about it. Put together some (fit-for-publication) thoughts. You wont be too busy returning phone messages from your friends, Im sure, to reply.

In addition to the trash talking, the Sports Alarm has a huge gallery of high resolution pictures of beautiful women and models in bikinis. The most popular models are: Lindsay Lohan, Carrie Underwood, Alessandra Ambrosio, and Paris Hilton.