Werder Bremen Fall To Nuremberg And FC Cologne Beat Hamburg SV

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.

Elsewhere, Diego laid on goals for Simon Kjaer (his first in the Bundesliga) and Edin Dzeko as Wolfsburg beat Stuttgart two-nil, and Theofanis Gekas continued his excellent form with a brace to help Eintracht Frankfurt come from behind against St. Pauli. Kaiserslautern took their first win at home since August with three second-half goals against Borussia Mönchengladbach. Christian Tiffert scored the opener on seventy-one minutes with a fantastic left-footed curling shot from thirty yards, Adam Nemec added another after a great through-ball by Alexander Bugera, and Srdjan Lakic, who scored a hat-trick in midweek, closed out the match with a third. The win pulls ‘Lautern three points clear of the drop zone, but ‘Gladbach are now bottom, having conceded thirty goals in just ten matches.