Bremen, Bayer Progress
February 23, 2007
After a majestic 3-0 win over UEFA Cup opponents Ajax Amsterdam last week at the Weserstadion, Werder Bremen looked on course to smoothly advance to the last 16 of the knock-out competition. All they had to do was hang on to their advantage in the Amsterdam Arena to progress. On Thursday night, they achieved that aim -- but only just.
Bremen came very close to blowing their European chances by going down 3-1 to the Dutch side, confirming their passage to the next round with a 4-3 aggregate score.
Four-time European champions Ajax had to hit Bremen early to stand any chance of overturning the deficit and did so after Brazilian Leonardo beat goalkeeper Tim Wiese after only two minutes. Weise did well to initially punch away Ajax midfielder Wesley Sneijder's attempt but Per Mertesacker's clearance fell to Leonardo who swept the ball home.
Almeida eases nerves -- for a while
With the early goal they needed, Ajax went looking for more but were caught out in the desire to add to the score-line when Bremen's Portuguese striker Hugo Almeida headed home from a Tim Borowski cross 10 minutes after the Amsterdam team had taken the lead.
After surviving a scare when Pierre Wome had to clear a Leonardo header off the line, Bremen settled and were looking comfortable at 1-1 until the hour mark when Klaas Jan Huntelaar pulled another goal back for Ajax, connecting with a Ryan Babel cross.
Almeida had a chance to seal the tie by giving Bremen another valuable away goal with 20 minutes to play but missed his chance when it looked easier to score.
Ajax's Babel himself upped the ante when he advanced on a backtracking Bremen defense to unleash a vicious shot four minutes later to make it 3-1 on the night.
As the clock ticked down and Bremen dug deep both Leonardo and Babel had clear chances to send the game into an even more dramatic finale. At the end, Bremen's solid home performance a week before was enough to secure the win over two legs.
Cynical tactics secure passage for Leverkusen
Bayer Leverkusen also endured a night of frayed nerves as they rode out a bad-tempered 0-0 draw at Blackburn Rovers' Ewood Park to go through courtesy of the hard-fought 3-2 home win last week.
On a night when Leverkusen's European experience was telling, Michael Skibbe's team did whatever was necessary to frustrate Blackburn, often resorting to cynical time-wasting, feigning of injury and play-acting to stifle the game.
"Leverkusen did exactly what we expected of them because they have a lot of experience in their team and time-wasting is part and parcel of European soccer," said Blackburn's former US keeper Brad Friedel. "But overall, Leverkusen probably deserved to go through on the basis of their performance in the first-leg in Germany. We had big chances late in the game. We needed them to go in if we were going to go through, but they didn't."