Women's Bundesliga: Sigh of relief for Bremen

There are matchdays when a lot can go wrong. If Carl-Zeiss Jena, for example, had won their basement duel against Sand, Bremen would have been close to danger again. And sometimes, on such days, things do go smoothly: Sand surprisingly beat Jena 4-1, while Bremen fought their way to a 1-1 draw in Leverkusen — and now have a comfortable seven-point cushion to the relegation places and not three. 

Following the weeklong league break due to the Arnold Clark Cup, Bremen even took the lead in Leverkusen in the 13th minute through a Michelle Ulbrich penalty. However, a win would have been too flattering in view of their rather limited performance. But Bremen often did a good job defensively against Leverkusen, who also lacked ideas, but the hosts clearly did not have much fun.

The Bremen women, however, weren't exactly satisfied. "We played too hectically at the back," criticized goalkeeper Anneke Borbe in a post-game interview with DW. "Especially in the first half, we weren't really in it and were always one step too late. In the end, we showed that we can fight for every point. We should have brought that onto the pitch from the start."

With the defeat against Jena on the previous matchday, SV Werder had propelled themselves back into the relegation battle.

The Bremen women wore blue and yellow wrist bands during the match to express their solidarity with Ukraine. However, according to Borbe, politics is not usually a topic in the Bremen dressing room.

"That is due to the exceptional situation. The topic didn't take up much time either. The bands were proposed briefly and it was quickly clear that everyone was on board."

Frankfurt eyeing Champions League spot

In the direct duel against Hoffenheim, the Frankfurt women made their Champions League claims a little more emphatic.

A late goal from Anna Aehling in the 86th minute gave Eintracht a 3-2 victory and moved them level on points with their opponents. Turbine Potsdam also remain in the race for third place; the Potsdam women won 5-0 against Essen and are now also within one point of Hoffenheim.

War eclipses everything in Ukraine

Like all other football competitions, the Ukrainian women's league has been suspended since February 24, when the Russian invasion began.

Many players are speaking out about the war. National player Nicole Kozlova, born in Canada and currently playing for HB Köge in Denmark, tweeted: "It's wrong that I can play football right now while my teammates are hiding in their own country, in fear for their lives, and football doesn't cross their minds."

Her teammate Nadezhda Kunina, who plays in Sweden with Linköping, took part in a demonstration by the Ukrainian diaspora. The Ukrainian national team, down in third place behind Spain and Scotland in the World Cup qualifiers, is actually due to play the Scots again on April 8. However, that is unlikely at the moment.

The team has hardly any overseas players, with most playing for serial champions Zhytlobud-1 Kharkiv. The city is currently undergoing fierce fighting. The history of Ukrainian women's football is young: the Soviet Union only had a women's league in its decline, from which two Ukrainian leagues emerged. The second league, however, was disbanded as early as 1993 and did not exist at all for 20 years, while the first league sometimes consisted of only four teams. It was not until the turn of the millennium that interest in the moribund women's football grew again, and in 2011 the uninterrupted dominance of Zhytlobud Kharkiv began.

In many ways, Russia has never been far away in this league, with many teams bearing Russian names. In the aftermath of the war in eastern Ukraine since 2014, the league lost its Donetsk team. And the now 35-year-old legendary Ukrainian record-holder Darja Apanashtchenko played almost her entire career, from 2004 to 2017, in Russia. She has since returned to Ukraine.

Boredom in the German Cup

The German Cup was rather uneventful.

All the favorites prevailed in the quarterfinals as expected and without mercy, namely Bayern Munich with a 9-1 crushing of Jena, Wolfsburg with 7-0 thrashing of Sand and Potsdam, who also put seven goals past their opponents, second division SV Henstedt-Ulzburg. Only Leverkusen struggled, edging out Essen 2-1 in the only balanced game of the round.

This article was originally published in German