Bayern Ousted as Bayer Join Werder, HSV and Mainz in the Semis

Finally Dus­sel­dorf has come good for vis­it­ing dig­ni­taries Bayer Lev­erkusen. After a poor run of form in the league at the LTU, the Werk­self took apart Bay­ern Munich 4–2 in their tem­po­rary home to gain pas­sage to the final four of the DFB Pokal.

Klins­mann tin­kered with his lineup a bit as con­ges­tion is build­ing up for the Bavar­ian giants. He pulled Ze Roberto into the left back posi­tion to try and shore up a weak posi­tion and used Ottl as his replace­ment in the dou­ble six. He then went with a 4–2-3–1 with Klose giv­ing Toni a rest. Over­all a pretty strong start­ing XI, espe­cially as Bay­ern have long been bet­ter suited to this for­ma­tion, rather than the 4–4-2.

With this in mind, Bayer made easy work of Bay­ern, slic­ing through the hold­ers to a 3–0 lead off goals by Helmes, Arturo Vidal and Bar­netta. After the third goal, Bayer took their foot off the gas, and almost paid the price as Klinsmann’s sub­sti­tu­tions worked won­ders and they pulled two goals back in two min­utes. The first came when Adler flopped at a cross that Lucio put away and the sec­ond came when Klose was left unmarked in the area to fin­ish a per­fect Ribery cross.

The final 15 min­utes was tense for the home side, with Adler mak­ing a cou­ple of superb saves and the defense redis­cov­er­ing their focus, but a fourth goal from the tire­less Kiessling secured pas­sage for Bayer. Bruno Lab­ba­dia joins Mar­tin Jol and Thomas Schaaf in the semis.

Ham­burg beat Wehen 2–1 at home. But a strong lead was almost squan­dered in this game, just as it had been in the head­line game, when Frank Rost mis­han­dled an easy Schwartz shot to pull the vis­i­tors within one with 3 min­utes to go. As it stands, a first half goal by Pet­ric and an own goal by Wehen’s Kopi­las was enough to see the Dinosaurs through.

Mean­while, Werder seems to have risen from the ashes after their come back against A.C. Milan and found their scor­ing touch. They put five past a hot Wolfs­burg side at the VW. The game saw braces by Dzeko, Diego and Pizarro in a 7 goal thriller with Werder book­ing their place in the semis by a score of 5–2.

They are joined by Mainz who upset Schalke last night.

Tagged as: Bruno Labbadia, Diego, Jürgen Klinsmann, Rene Adler, Stefan Kiessling, Ze Roberto