Bundesliga - Week 26
Posted by Pete in Bundesliga | 21 March 2006
The weekend that could've made a difference in the title race, didn't. Bayern beat Schalke, and so remain 6 points ahead of Hamburg. With eight games left and four of those against relegation candidates, for the Rekordmeister to throw it all away would be as likely as Fulham beating Chelsea. Hmmm.
Nevertheless, much like the Premiership, the real excitement is to be found away from the very top, as the scraps for the final European places are only just beginning. Bremen are doing their utmost to hand the third Champions League spot* on a plate to Schalke: they lost 3:1 to Nuremberg who are climbing rapidly to whatever points total is regarded as safe in the Bundesliga.
UEFA-wise it's almost as tight as it was a few weeks ago. Stuttgart (in 5th) and a recently resurgent Hertha (6th) are only separated by two goals, while 'Gladbach, Dortmund and Hannover are breathing heavily down their necks with similar goal differences on 34 points. Bayer are on 32 points and hardly out of the running followed by...a drumroll please...Nuremberg on 30, yes the same Nuremberg who were suffering from relegation worries only two three weeks ago. The bottom three all lost at the weekend though.
Meanwhile, Munich tabloid 'tz' went one step too far and announced in no uncertain terms that Sebastian Schweinsteiger was being interviewed by the police about match-fixing allegations hinted to by the ARD.. Was he the unnamed man I wrote about last week? Well, no. The 'tz' article suffered from one small flaw. They didn't have any evidence to speak of. The police denied all knowledge of ever having spoken to Schweinsteiger or 1860's Paul Agostino. So, unsurprisingly, the paper has had to issue a seriously grovelling apology and is facing at least one libel case.
* only three Bundesliga teams qualify for the Champions League.
