© EuroFootball.com
Until the end of the Bundesliga competition, with five rounds left in the battle for the title of champions, the intrigue has revived once again. The team of "Hamburger" managed to defeat "Gladbach" at home on Sunday and approached the leading team "Bayern" by only four points.
Before the 29th round, the team was seven points behind, but on Saturday the league leaders suffered a setback in the match against Bremen's "Werder", and taking advantage of it, "Hamburger" again regained hopes of taking the Bundesliga title from the "Bavarians". To do this, the port city footballers need to win all the remaining matches and hope that the Munich team will lose at least four points in the last five games. The opportunity to take points from the leaders will also have the "Kaiserslautern" and "Mainz" clubs fighting for survival in the league, as well as the "Arminia", "Stuttgart" and Dortmund's "Borussia" teams trying to break through to the UEFA Cup tournament next year.
In Sunday's clash against "Gladbach", the Hamburg team was led by R. van der Vaart, successfully converting an eleven-meter penalty for a goalkeeper mistake against S. Barbarez. N. Takahara, who appeared during injury time after a substitution, doubled the score and gifted the victory to coach T. Doll celebrating his 40th birthday. The joy of victory was perhaps slightly overshadowed for the coach by the forward B. Lauth receiving a fifth yellow card, which means the player will not be able to help the team in the next match against "Duisburg".
His help would certainly be useful, as the "Duisburg" footballers fighting for survival are not willing to easily share points – as the Gelsenkirchen "Schalke" team could see in this round, managing to score a goal only at the very end of the match and pull off a draw at 1-1.
Sunday's statistics
2 – 0
57,000 spectators
34` [1 – 0] Rafael van der Vaart (11m.)
92` [2 – 0] Naohiro Takahara
1 – 1
31,500 spectators
40` [1 – 0] Christian Poulsen (own goal)
85` [1 – 1] Sören Larsen
Top scorers
1. Miroslav Klose ("Werder") – 20
2. Halil Altintop ("Kaiserslautern") – 16
– Dimitar Berbatov ("Bayer") – 16
4. Roy Makaay ("Bayern") – 14
5. Ebi Smolarek ("Borussia") – 13
6. Michael Ballack ("Bayern") – 12
7. Marcelinho ("Hertha") – 11
– Diego Klimowicz ("Wolfsburg") – 11
– Michael Thurk ("Mainz") – 11
– Robert Vittek ("Nurnberg") – 11
– Ivan Klasnic ("Werder") – 11
