BERLIN: RB Leipzig could lose further ground on leaders Bayern Munich after crashing to a 3-0 defeat at lowly Werder Bremen in the German football Bundesliga on Saturday. Leipzig stay 10 points behind champions Bayern, who will hope to extend their lead when they visit Borussia Moenchengladbach on Sunday. Cologne boosted their chance of European football next season with a 4-2 victory over fifth-placed Hertha Berlin including a hat-trick from French striker Anthony Modeste.
Wolfsburg edged bottom side Darmstadt 1-0 in coach Andries Jonker’s home debut, while fourth-placed Hoffenheim beat visiting Bayer Leverkusen 1-0, and Augsburg and Freiburg drew 1-1. The wins for Bremen and Wolfsburg — both moving to 29 points — put pressure on third-last SV Hamburg (26), who are at Eintracht Frankfurt in the day’s late kick-off. In Bremen, Zlatko Junuzovic struck with a swerving shot in the 34th minute, Florian Grillitsch found the roof of the net following a free-kick in the 59th and Florian Kainz netted in the last minute to make it four wins and a draw in Werder’s last five games. The defeat keeps Leipzig on 49 points, three ahead of Borussia Dortmund, who beat Ingolstadt 1-0 on Friday.
Leipzig coach Ralph Hasenhuettl said his side had not allowed Bremen many chances but found themselves two goals down. “The two goals were of course bitter for us but Bremen did well in both situations. In the end we played an all-or-nothing game,” he said.
“We had our chances in the first half and should have had at least one goal as a reward. At the moment we are not getting that little bit of luck so from this point of view there are things we have to work on and have to learn from. “Now it is important to use the break for internationals well and gather our strength for the difficult tasks ahead.”
Cologne’s Modeste took his season’s goal tally to 22 — one behind leading scorer Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang — with goals in the 35th,37th and 63rd minutes after Yuya Osaka gave Cologne a sixth-minute lead against Hertha. Vedad Ibisevic gave Hertha some hope when he converted a penalty five minutes after the break, and John Anthony Brooks headed a second for the visitors in the 69th.
Hoffenheim’s win, courtesy of a Sandro Wagner goal just after the hour, kept them a point behind Dortmund, while Mario Gomez headed Wolfsburg’s winner in first-half stoppage time. Jonker said: “We played with patience in the first half and scored the goal. After the break we missed three chances, made it difficult for ourselves and were even lucky. But in the end it doesn’t matter -we had to win, we wanted to win and we did win.” — DPA
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