After Saturday's Bundesliga matches, the league leaders "Schalke" saw their lead decrease against competitors. Closest rivals "Werder" and "Bayern" secured victories and closed the gap on the leaders again. So after fourteen rounds, "Werder" is trailing by two points, while the champions "Bayern" are behind by three.
The Bremen team, after a successful match in the Champions League against "Chelsea," easily defeated the "Arminia" team 3-0 in this round of the national championship. The spectators saw the first goal after about half an hour, with M. Klose cleverly deceiving two defenders and scoring accurately. Before halftime, the German scored his second goal, already his eighth in the championship.
In the second half, Bremen secured their victory after a substitution by A. Hunt, who sent the ball into the net after a great pass from M. Klose. This victory for the "Werder" club ended an eight-match unbeaten run for the "Arminia" team.
Other championship favorites cannot boast an easy victory - the "Bayern" club only managed to break down the "Hamburger" team 2-1 at the end of the match. It is worth noting that in the previous season, the team from the port city was the only team to defeat the later champions "Bavarian" club twice.
In Saturday's match, "Hamburger" took the lead first – in the 18th minute, a penalty was given for a fault by Martino Demichelis, which was converted successfully by R. van der Vaart.
After halftime, "Bayern" increased the tempo and soon equalized the score - after a long break, Sebastian Deisler returned to the team, dribbled past three opponents, passed the ball perfectly to R. Makaay, who scored accurately, leveling the score. The winning goal for the guests from Munich was scored about ten minutes before the end of the match when C. Pizarro scored from a free kick.
Tragically, the struggling Hamburg club has only won 1 out of 22 official matches this season. After the defeat, the club occupies a place at the bottom of the table, only surpassing "Mainz," who also failed to secure points in this round - "Mainz" narrowly lost to "Hannover" with a minimal score at the end of the match, with the Iranian forward V. Hashemian scoring the winning goal with a header in the 78th minute.
Statistics of all matches:
1 - 1
38' [1 - 0] Sotiris Kyrgiakos
79' [1 - 1] Ebi Smolarek
1 - 2
18' [1 - 0] Rafael van der Vaart (11 m.)
57' [1 - 1] Roy Makaay
78' [1 - 2] Claudio Pizarro
1 - 0
75'[1 - 0] Vahid Hashemian
2 - 1
41' [1 - 0] Marko Pantelic
45' [1 - 1] Martin Lehmann
62' [2 - 1] Ashkan Dejagah
3 - 0
29' [1 - 0] Miroslav Klose
45' [2 - 0] Miroslav Klose
75' [3 - 0] Aaron Hunt
1 - 1
7' [0 - 1] Ivan Saenko
74' [1 - 1] Juan Carlos Menseguez
League table: