SC Freiburg – Borussia Dortmund 1:1 (0:1)
The BVB missed out on the win they were hoping for after losing in the Champions League midweek. Dortmund played 1:1 (0:1) at SC Freiburg. They also failed to make the possible jump to second place in the Bundesliga.
Borussia, which was missing the ailing Waldemar Anton, Julian Brandt and Aarón Anselmino, among others, started the game strongly in front of 34,700 spectators. Yan Couto in particular kept playing forward. BVB striker Serhou Guirassy had the first chances to score in the 5th and 17th minutes. In the 31st minute, Ramy Bensebaini finally scored for Borussia from a free kick.
However, after a red card against Jobe Bellingham (53′), BVB had to play outnumbered for a long time in the second half. Freiburg was then more offensive and had more possession of the ball. A quarter of an hour before the final whistle, Freiburg’s Lucas Höler scored to make it 1-1 and thus prevented BVB from winning their eighth competitive game in a row. Dortmund were even lucky that a goal from Freiburg’s Igor Matanović (86th) didn’t count because it was offside.
FC Bayern Munich – 1. FSV Mainz 05 2:2 (1:1)
Shortly before the final whistle, FC Bayern Munich avoided its first defeat of the season in the Bundesliga. Against bottom-placed 1. FSV Mainz 05, the German record champions made it 2-2 (1-1) with a penalty kick converted by Harry Kane in the 87th minute. This meant that Bayern extended their lead as league leaders over RB Leipzig to nine points.
After Munich took the lead through Lennart Karl (29th), Mainz initially turned the game around. Kacper Potulski (45th + 1) and Jae Sung Lee (67th) scored for the Mainz guests, where Urs Fischer made his league debut as head coach.
At the side of supervisory board member Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, Bayern legend Thomas Müller followed the duel, in which there was no sign of a draw for a long time: the Munich team dominated the action against the very deep Mainz team with overwhelming superiority. However, thanks to a lot of passion, the guests, led by the strong substitute goalkeeper Daniel Batz, managed to score a surprising point. Curious: Exactly a year ago to the day, the Mainz team handed a defeat to FC Bayern, who were also unbeaten at the time.
SV Werder Bremen – VfB Stuttgart 0:4 (0:2)
VfB Stuttgart has overcome its minor crisis in the Bundesliga and regained its connection to the Champions League places. After only one point from three league games, the Swabians won 4-0 (2-0) at Werder Bremen one match day before the end of the football year. For Werder, however, it was the fourth Bundesliga game without a win.
Three days after Stuttgart’s 4-1 win in the Europa League against Maccabi Tel Aviv, a goal by Deniz Undav was disallowed by the video assistant because of a narrow offside position (26th). In the 40th minute, Bilal El Khannouss finally gave Stuttgart the lead. Four minutes later Jamie Leweling made it 2-0.
After the break, VfB was no longer in danger at all and missed out on an even clearer victory. The Bremen derby defeat at HSV probably left a bigger mark. In addition, Werder had to play outnumbered from the 59th minute onwards because Karim Coulibaly received a yellow-red card. Deniz Undav (79th) and Chris Führich (90th + 6) took advantage of this to score the third and fourth goals.
Read the match reports from Saturday and Friday here.
