Although Mainz 05’s loss to Eintracht Frankfurt on Saturday had already confirmed Borussia Dortmund as herbstmeister (fall champions), the Westphalian side continued their amazing run of results with a 2-0 victory against slumping Nürnberg. BVB are now ten points clear of Mainz in second, and show absolutely no signs of stopping or slipping up; Dortmund were far below their best in the first half against FCN, but were still clearly superior to their hosts. The second half was another demonstration of how dangerous they can be going forward when the five midfielders start clicking -- some of the interplays between Shinji Kagawa, Mario Götze, and Nuri Sahin were quite brilliant.
Bundesliga, Week 15 Review: Borussia Dortmund Juggernaut Rolls On, Schalke 04 Beat Bayern Munich
Stretching their league lead to double digits was impressive, but equally important for BVB was how the match demonstrated their tremendous depth. Lucas Barrios missed out because of a knee injury, but Robert Lewandowski proved himself a more than adequate replacement. The Polish striker has come off the bench in almost every other match this season -- and still managed to find the back of the net four times. He made his first league start of the season on Sunday, held up the ball fairly well and provided good link-up play with Kagawa and Götze. Jakub Blaszczykowski performed well when he came off the bench, and Antonio da Silva took advantage of his brief spell on the pitch at the end of the match to lay on the spectacular second goal for Lewandowski.
The result that handed the herbstmeisterschaft to Dortmund was Mainz 05’s loss to Eintracht Frankfurt on Saturday. The match was decided by a pair of penalties after Marco Russ’ spectacular volley gave Frankfurt the lead, but the flow of play demonstrated why Mainz will have a hard time hanging on to second place. They created very little and Frankfurt should have retaken the lead earlier in the second half. Die Nullfunfer were still without Bo Svensson in defence and Lewis Holtby only came on for the final ten minutes, but the wind seems to have gone completely out of their sails, even after a crazy come-from-behind win against ‘Gladbach and a confident performance at home to Nürnberg.
Before Dortmund disappeared over the horizon on Sunday, Schalke 04 drove what is surely the last nail into Bayern Munich’s coffin (at least as far as the Bundesliga title is concerned). In what was surely the most undeserved result of the season so far, we saw the Jekyll and the Hyde of Bayern and Schalke - the hosts were absolutely dire for most of the game, but have now won their last four home games by a combined score of 12-0, while the visitors demonstrated their undoubted attacking quality, but have won just once away from home in the Bundesliga. Franck Ribéry was particularly awful, and all Bayern can hope for at this point are the returns of Holger Badstuber to shore up a very shaky defence (although Diego Contento played well at left back) and the messiah himself, Arjen Robben.
Results:
St. Pauli 1-0 Kaiserslautern
Borussia Mönchengladbach 1-2 Hannover 96
Eintracht Frankfurt 2-1 Mainz 05
Freiburg 1-0 Hamburg SV
Stuttgart 1-1 Hoffenheim
Wolfsburg 0-0 Werder Bremen
Schalke 04 2-0 Bayern Munich
Bayer Leverkusen 3-2 Cologne
Nürnberg 0-2 Borussia Dortmund
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