Bundesliga Briefing

More of the same was the order of Week 24 at the top of the Bundesliga as Hertha Berlin extended their lead over their nearest challengers to four points, but it was all change at the other end where Borussia Mönchengladbach leapt off the bottom and up to within a whisker of the revolving relegation zone doors in one fell swoop to leave Karlsruhe stranded at the foot of Germany's premier division.

Basement side or 'Kellerkind' Karlsruhe cannot say they haven't had it coming. They had lost 4 games in a row going into their clash with Arminia Bielefeld amidst a run of 5 scoreless afternoons and extended that miserable sequence when substitute Zlatko Janjic hit the target with an 86th minute header from a set-piece, ironically a minute after their main threat Artur Wichniarek had been replaced with the teams apparently deadlocked. That outcome condemned the home side to a 1-0 defeat at the hands of the team just 2 places above them at the start of the day's play and left Bielefeld to take in the view from the giddy heights of 14th place.

Mönchengladbach overcame FC Köln by 4 goals to 2 at their Rhein Energie Stadion on Saturday to jump two rungs up the ladder to 16th and remain in the bottom 3 only on goal difference. It was the little magician Marko Marin, creator of the greatest number of Gladbach assists in a season since the great Stefen Effenberg, who again came to the fore in this victory as he supplied the energy and drive that spurred his team on to earn 3 valuable points through goals from Karim Matmour, Rob Friend and two from Michael Bradley, including one originating from one of the clearest fouls seen committed by a player from these shores since Schumacher in '82. Köln were up against their own obstacles on the day that their former skipper Umit Ozat was forced to officially announce his retirement due to an incident earlier in the season where he had fallen unconscious and had thus been advised by doctors not to continue his playing career. Two goals from right back Miso Brecko still failed to stop them losing ground on the teams above them and as a result they remain in 11th position.

On the day which saw a near-record number of 32 goals scored in a single Bundesliga 'spieltag' or 'matchday', a 1-0 win was enough to dispatch 7th placed Bayer Leverkusen and strap Hertha Berlin tightly into the league's hot seat, another goal from 'der Mann mit dem goldenen Zopf' (the man with the golden ponytail) Andriy Voronin, who continues to keep former talisman and fans' favourite Marko Pantelic in the shadows and on the bench after requesting a January move away from the capital, proving ample after the referee's failure to award a stonewall penalty to the guests early on. The Ukrainian's partnership with Raffael has proved highly fruitful and the style with which the Berliners now go about their business is greatly improved as a direct consequence of their pace and movement up front. The goal proved somewhat fortunate as the ball ricocheted back off national keeper Rene Adler and onto Voronin's chest before nestling in the back of Adler's net. However, the way in which the chance was presented capped another sublime performance at the Olympiastadion that gave the hosts a 10th successive home win in the league to allow centre back Josip Simunic to update his promise to the 30,000 fans who stayed behind for 20 minutes after the whistle to celebrate by stating that his team would win 6 from their remaining 10 fixtures and bring 'home' the Championship in May.

2nd placed Bayern Munich eased to victory away to Vfl Bochum in spite of a spate of injuries accrued by their front men. If the 3-0 scoreline flattered anyone it was Bochum, who had injuries to attacking players Franck Ribery, Luca Toni and Miroslav Klose, who may miss the rest of the campaign with torn ankle ligaments, to thank for the scoreboard's rather generous reading of the game, as well as some glaring misses from substitute Jose Ernesto Sosa, not to mention a missed penalty from Lucasz Podolski in the first period. It was left to the evergreen Ze Roberto to break the deadlock with a real zinger in the 32nd minute before Phillip Lahm added to their lead following a trademark surge forward from the left back slot and a Martin Demichaelis header late on to establish any kind of reasonable reflection of their dominance to leave them level on points with the two sides below them and 4 points off the summit.

Below the Bavarians by a deficit of 3 goals lie Wolfsburg, who came back from a goal down to claim a 4-3 win over Schalke 04 at the VW Arena on Friday night. Having gone behind to a superb Heiko Westermann strike with less than 10 minutes on the clock, the Wolves fought back via an Edin Dzeko effort and a hat-trick from goal-machine Grafite, who now sits a single goal behind Vedad Ibisevic's first half of the season tally of 18 despite having missed several games this term due to a serious neck injury, to render late goals from Jermaine Jones and Kevin Kuranyi strikes of solace for Schalke. The losers now occupy 8th spot and look increasingly likely to miss out on European competition altogether for next year, having reached the Champions League quarter-finals only last season.

The other side level on 45 points in the race to catch Hertha are Martin Jol's Hamburg, who eventually beat Energie Cottbus comfortably enough, 2-0 at the HSH Nordbank Arena on Sunday, via a stunning header from Iivca Olic and a free kick from Piotr Trochowski that bamboozled goalkeeper Gerdhart Tremmel, who'd committed himself and could bizarrely only stand and watch the ball fly inches past his foot to provide the game's decisive moment. Hamburg's 14th win of the campaign enabled them to stop the rot after back-to-back defeats, but they will have to do without their top scorer Mladen Petric after the Croat limped off, hamstrung, late in the first half and they will severely miss his goal-scoring input in the run-in to what becomes an ever more engrossing race for the title.

Hoffenheim fell off the pace and now stand in 5th place, 6 points behind Hertha, after they dropped two valuable points in Frankfurt, as the hosts earned a 1-1 draw to reward their 51,000 fans at the CommerzBank Arena on Saturday. Having come through an intestinal abscess (surely the most disgusting injury on record for any footballer, at least one made public) Boubacar Sanogo failed to find the net and even had his title of 'most shots against the woodwork' taken from him by the new 'Aluminiumtrefferkönig' Martin Fenin of Frankfurt, who has now hit post or bar on 5 occasions this season after seeing his improvised effort cannon cruelly back off the crossbar to deny the home side a late winner. Teammate Michael Fink had cancelled out Carlos Eduardo's early opener for the visitors to keep Frankfurt 12th and by no means safe in their battle to avoid the drop.

Hannover 96 and Borussia Dortmund went one better than Wolfsburg and Schalke by sharing 8 goals in a topsy-turvy match between two attack-minded outfits. Hannover are a Jekyll and Hyde sort of side, having racked up 6 home wins and just 1 away, along with 10 losses and 32 goals conceded on the road as we approach April. Dortmund had stormed into a 2 goal lead by the half hour mark thanks to a Florian Kringe strike and a spot-kick converted by Alexander Frei following a horrendous challenge from 39-year-old Michael Tarnat before Hannover hit back through Jari Stajner's 2nd in as many games and an Arnold Bruggink equaliser direct from a corner just after the restart. Dortmund then attained a 2nd seemingly insurmountable 2 goal advantage, only to see it nullified by goals in the last 10 minutes from Mike Hanke and Mikkael Forsell as the pendulum swung for the last time in the game. Dortmund are now 9th with Hannover 13th and 3 points above the drop zone, by no means assured of their Bundesliga status in 2009/10.

I usually leave Werder Bremen match reports til late or last these days because they're usually in mid-table and just have a nice 'summing-up' feel about them but this week i've simply saved the best til last, not necessarily in terms of the Football on show but certainly regarding what took place in and around the action by the river Weser.

Werder took on Vfb Stuttgart at the Weserstadion on Sunday, comprehensively defeating their rivals from the West of Germany and leaving the man with this season's most 'weiße Weste' or clean sheets, Jens Lehmann, thoroughly deflated. The final score read 4-0 but, in truth, it could have been more as the dynamic Diego was at his imperious best, putting in a masterful performance and rounding off an exemplary display by getting one over on everyone's enemy Lehmann, as tempers boiled to overshadow the occasion.

The pivotal moment came in the 34th minute. Diego 'earned' a free-kick for Bremen around 25 yards from goal and, as the referee turned his back to set the wall, he proceeded to move the ball a matter of inches to his right and nearer to goal. Lehmann immediately raced to the referee to alert the official of the minor infringement and the ref duly obliged the German by moving the ball a full yard away from goal, to the bemusement of the Werder players and most of those from Stuttgart. Diego then re-assessed the situation and sent a curling, cutting strike crashing down off the underside of the crossbar and up into the roof of Lehmann's net to leave the stopper stunned. Lehmann refused to let the issue go and continued his debate with the man in the middle at half-time.
On his way out for the 2nd half he squared up to the tiny Brazilian midfielder and told him what he thought of him in no uncertain terms. After that Lehmann appeared pre-occupied with the state of the Weserstadion surface, inspecting the pitch at given intervals and regularly replacing chunks of turf throughout the remainder of the 90 minutes. In his post-match interview he referred to Diego as a "cheater" (inexplicably in English), Diego replying by telling the big keeper to remember that he is, in fact, a player and not an official, while his manager Klaus Allofs remarked that Lehmann "takes himself too seriously" (perhaps the understatement of all understatements) adding more poignantly that the worrying thing is "people listen to him".

Further damage was done to the Stuttart cause by Claudio Pizarro, who scored what was, admittedly, a thunderbolt into the near-hand top corner on 53 minutes. Unfortunately (for everyone - especially Chelsea), the primitive Peruvian is wanted in court back in his homeland to answer charges relating to alleged tax evasion and, incredibly, mafia-related activities including his involvement in the nation's player-transfer 'black market'. Pizarro has vehemently denied any allegations of wrongdoing. However, photographic evidence of him pictured with some of the ‘major players' seem to heavily offset this standpoint and leave the South American ot odds with his club, who reportedly now want nothing to do with their star striker once the current campaign has been completed.

Diego was again instrumental in the final two much-needed goals for Markus Rosenberg, supplying the Swede with a delightfully disguised through-ball from which he was able to nutmeg Lehmann and increase his side's lead, as well as starting the move that led to Rosenberg sealing the win with an accomplished finish, maintaining Werder's status in 10th spot and gathering momentum, while resigning Stuttgart to their first league loss in their ten outings under Markus Babbel to date to put them 6th, 6 points from a Champions League place.