Bundesliga, Week 10: Borussia Dortmund And Mainz 05 Battle For First

Jürgen Klopp’s Borussia Dortmund won the battle of first against second in the Bundesliga as they beat Mainz 05 two-nil with goals from Mario Götze and Lucas Barrios at the Stadion am Bruchweg. The visitors had been sloppy in the early minutes and Mainz looked the more assured of the two sides in front of their raucous home crowd, but the first real chance fell to Barrios on fourteen minutes. He was clean through after a good through ball by Sven Bender, and his shot rolled just wide of Christian Wetklo’s goal. Mainz were nearly caught out again shortly afterward, Wetklo conceding a corner after failing to control Nikolce Noveski’s backpass.

Götze, playing on the right wing in place of the injured Jakub Blaszczykowski, forced more action from the Mainz ‘keeper on twenty minutes, as his shot was well saved. However, Wetklo would have no answer a few minutes later as BVB’s Shinji Kagawa seized on a stray pass by Niko Bungert and Nuri Sahin set up Götze for the opener. Mainz responded poorly to going behind, and Dortmund controlled the balance of the first half, nearly grabbing a second from a corner as Barrios’ flick on to Neven Subotic’s header cracked against the post.

There were goals and upsets galore in the Bundesliga’s early Saturday kickoffs as both Hamburg SV and Werder Bremen failed to close the gap to the top two. Hugo Almeida put Bremen into the lead against Nuremberg after just five minutes, but the visitors responded with goals either side of halftime from Ilkay Gündogan and Mehmet Ekici to take the lead. Gündogan scored again with just under twenty minutes to play, and a stoppage-time tap-in from Claudio Pizarro proved too little and much too late for Thomas Schaaf’s side.

An even bigger surprise came at the RheinEnergieStadion as FC Cologne shocked Hamburg SV thanks to a hat-trick from Milivoje Novakovic. The hosts had taken the lead after just eleven minutes, but Hamburg responded with goals from Mladen Petric and Heung-Min Son, who was making his first start for the club. However, Köln managed to come back with Novakovic equalizing after lovely interplay between Lukas Podolski and Christian Clemens, and the Slovenian striker capped off the match with his third in the eighty-fourth minute. The goal proved to be just enough to give the home side just their second win of the Bundesliga season and lift them out of the bottom three.

Bayern Munich (Demichelis 39’, Gómez 61’, Tymoshchuk 72’, Kroos 80’) 4-2 SC Freiburg (Reisinger 64’, Braafheid o.g. 87’)

Germany’s record champions opened the Bundesliga weekend with an eventually convincing win over Freiburg at the Allianz Arena. An extremely poor first half was punctuated by Martin Demichelis’ headed goal from Daniel Pranjic’s corner kick, but there was else little for the home crowd to enjoy in a disappointing opening forty-five minutes. The Argentine centeback had returned to the Bayern lineup for his first league start of the season following a pre-match injury to Holger Badstuber. Toni Kroos was largely anonymous in the first half, and Papiss Cissé failed to take advantage of Freiburg’s few limited chances before the interval.

Most of the attention for this weekend’s matches will be focused on the game between Mainz 05 and Borussia Dortmund, but there are several interesting matches both before and after the heavyweight clash in the Stadion am Bruchweg. Champions Bayern Munich host early season surprises SC Freiburg and the Bundesliga’s leading scorer Papiss Cissé in the late game on Friday as they try to push back into the title race, while Kaiserslautern and Borussia Mönchengladbach will play out one of the first relegation six-pointers of the season on Saturday.

Elsewhere, Werder Bremen will host Nuremberg in an interesting clash between attack-minded sides, Stuttgart will look to keep their new-found form going against Wolfsburg, and Schalke 04 will seek their first home win of the season against Bayer Leverkusen. Hannover 96 take on TSG Hoffenheim in an extremely interesting battle for third place in the late Sunday kickoff, but the match of the weekend will certainly be the clash between the showdown between Jürgen Klopp’s Dortmund and Thomas Tuchel’s high-flying Mainz. Both sides play high-tempo, attacking football, and their match on Sunday should be one of the best of the season.