Bremen and HSV Prove Why the UEFA Cup is Better to Watch than UCL

While yesterday’s antics by Chelsea and the drama in dying min­utes get all the cov­er­age, today’s semi-final matchup between Werder Bre­men and Ham­burg pro­vided sig­nif­i­cantly more bang for the buck, and a real game to boot. And while there were a few ques­tion­able calls, the only Ger­man to cover him­self in shame, this week, was Mannschaft cap­tain Michael Ballack.

Enter­ing the return leg with a 1–0 lead and a road goal, Mar­tin Jol’s side had the dis­tinct advan­tage at home in the Nord­bank Arena. While the match started tepidly, espe­cially com­pared to the end-to-end first leg, things changed in the 13th minute. After Pizarro missed a chance for Werder, Ham­burg hit on the counter and co-captian Math­i­jssen hit Olic who waited for Tim Weise to com­mit before giv­ing HSV a two goal lead.

The way Werder were play­ing, this looked like the end for Thomas Schaaf’s men. For 120 min­utes, they had been absolutely ane­mic in front of goal. They had dom­i­nated pos­ses­sion and cre­ated over 20 chances dur­ing that stretch, yet couldn’t find the back of the net as their strike force looked to be boys play­ing against men.

But as has been the case on this remark­able run in the UEFA Cup, Diego stepped up and car­ried the team. On the half hour mark, he gath­ered the ball deep in HSV ter­ri­tory. He then played a slick give-and-go with Pizarro, los­ing his marker much too eas­ily. Get­ting the ball back free in the box, he lev­eled the score, giv­ing Werder their first sign of hope. Seven min­utes later, he almost gave Werder the advan­tage when he blasted a long range attempt that Frank Rost was able to deflect onto the bar to save Hamburg’s skin.

Rost wasn’t the only keeper on fire, Weise made six saves, three of them crit­i­cally impor­tant to the final out­come. In the 23rd, he stopped Olic; in the 38th, he stopped Janssen; and, in the 70th he stopped Alex Silva. While Weise’s form never dipped, Rost did have one shock­ing moment that may have cost the hosts a trip to Turkey. The sec­ond goal came when Pizarro gath­ered a ball near the box, turned by Alex Silva and launched a salvo at the HSV goal. Rost should have saved it, but his reac­tion was slow and the ball bounced by him. Werder had lev­eled and were in com­mand on away-goals.

Con­tro­ver­sially, they got a third in the 83rd minute, when a pro­jec­tile caused a back pass by Michael Grav­gaard to go out for a cor­ner. The result­ing set piece found Cap­tain Frank Bau­mann unmarked and he headed the third goal in for the tie-winner. What fol­lowed was a hec­tic final 7 min­utes, where Ham­burg clawed them­selves back into the tie when Olic scored from a Boateng cross in the 87th. But that was as close as they came.

Inevite­ably, despite the pro­jec­tile, Ham­burg didn’t deserve to win. A Pizarro goal was called off­side erro­neously in the 52nd, while Pitroipa failed to con­nect with a sub­lime low cross by Janssen in the 69th. The ball then fell to Tro­chowski, but Weise proved why he was the MOM with another bril­liant save.

Werder Bre­men will now travel to Istan­bul in 13 days time to face Shakhtar Donetsk for the UEFA Cup. But they will do so with­out their tal­is­man Diego, who will miss the game after his third yel­low for a shov­ing match with Alex Silva in the first half. Most impor­tantly, nei­ther Ham­burg play­ers nor the Ham­burg faith­ful saw need to attack the ref, swear on cam­era or make a death threat. Rea­son #8 why the Bun­desliga is bet­ter than the EPL.

Tagged as: Chelsea, Diego, EPL, Ivan Olic, Martin Jol, Tim Weise