VfB Stuttgart has overcome its small crisis in results in the Bundesliga and has regained its connection to the Champions League places.
After just one point from three league games, the Swabians won 4-0 (2-0) at Werder Bremen and are now back on track one match day before the end of the football year. For Werder, however, it was the fourth Bundesliga game in a row without a win, meaning the Green-Whites are only mediocre.
Three days after the 4-1 win in the Europa League against Maccabi Tel Aviv, Bilal El Khannouss gave Stuttgart the lead in the 40th minute. Four minutes later Jamie Leweling increased the score to 2-0. The harmless Bremen team had to operate outnumbered from the 59th minute onwards because youngster Karim Coulibaly was shown a yellow-red card. Deniz Undav (79th) and Chris Führich (90th + 6) took advantage of this to score the third and fourth goals.
Bremen starts offensively
A week after the painful derby defeat at arch-rivals Hamburger SV, Werder started off swinging. Bremen coach Horst Steffen brought in two fresh offensive players in Samuel Mbangula and Justin Njinmah. “Now we have brought more free spirits, creativity and speed into the game,” said Steffen before the game on DAZN. “Now I’m happy to see them and that they’re being let loose and creating a goal threat.”
And in fact, the Green-Whites appeared to be much more variable and dangerous offensively in the early stages than before. Njinmah had the first good opportunity for the hosts in the third minute, but his shot just missed the VfB goal.
But after a good quarter of an hour, Bremen’s momentum faded and Stuttgart took command. Werder now made far too many bad passes and VfB dictated the action. First, a goal from Undav was disallowed by the video assistant because of a narrow offside position (26th).
But five minutes before the break, the Swabians deservedly took the lead – El Khannouss was able to head in completely unchallenged. Shortly before the break, Leweling even increased the score to 2-0 with a powerful long-range shot for the guests, who had recently been weak in the league and, above all, had been defeated by Bayern Munich a week earlier.
In Bremen, however, VfB was no longer in danger at all and missed an even clearer victory in the second half. There was no sign of Werder at all. The derby defeat at HSV left a bigger mark. To make matters worse, captain Marco Friedl had to go out injured shortly after the restart. A little later, Coulibaly also saw yellow and red. This meant that Bremen’s resistance was finally broken, Undav increased it to 3-0 after Leweling’s second assist and Führich increased it to 4-0 in stoppage time.
