Bundesliga - Week 24
Posted by Pete in Bundesliga | 7 March 2006
A weekend of surprises: imagine if Sunderland beat Wigan 4:2 away. You'd think that this sort of thing might only be possible in a parallel universe. So just think about Hertha playing a struggling Cologne at home. If you wanted to play any opponent in order to turn around a miserable series of results, it'd be the team that's stuck at the bottom of the table and hasn't won a game in ages.
So even at half-time and the game at 0:0 things looked promising for Hertha. Nevertheless, true to form they managed to bugger it up and lost, as you've probably already guessed, 4:2. Truly inspirational stuff from Cologne, but a bigger miracle was to follow: Falko Götz kept his job. Mainly because Hertha can't afford to sack him, but that's besides the point; Cologne might just have found a way of getting back into the relegation battle.
Meanwhile, a bit higher up the table Hamburg travelled to Bayern. From the off Hamburg looked the more resolute team. They took the lead early on in the first half and didn't rest on their laurels. The match was a competitive one (8 yellow cards anyone>). Nevertheless, in time-honoured fashion Bayern crept back into the match thanks to Mehmet Scholl. Bayern thought a point was in the bag, but de Jong got a last minute unchallenged headed winner. The second miracle of the weekend, as Hamburg hadn't won in Munich for 24 years.
All of this meant that Bremen, away at Leverkusen, had the chance to narrow the distance between them and first-placed Rekordmeister to six points. But it just seems to be Bayern's year. Once again their cloud had a silver lining as Bremen only managed a point. Once again, Hamburg and Bremen are tied and Bayern lead the pair of them by 8 points. And more annoyingly for the team with the ugliest kit in Europe (bar Barcelona of course), a late Tim Wiese mistake saw them lose 2:1 away to Juve. Better luck next season eh?
