Werder and Hamburg Both Win 3–1

Werder Bre­men went a long way to secur­ing a spot in the semi-finals of the UEFA Cup with a 3–1 vic­tory over Udi­nese tonight. Two bril­liant goals by Diego and a third by Pizarro were enough to see off the Ital­ian side and give the Green-Whites a hearty lead head­ing to Udine next week.

There would be a bevy of play­ers to choose as MOM. Diego’s two beau­ti­ful strikes would be a start­ing point and there was also Per Mertesacker’s bril­liance in the air shut­ting down Udinese’s main option in Quagliarella. Goal­keeper Tim Weisse saved two strikes from Quagliarella early in the sec­ond half, which could have changed the tie, as well as a late free­kick by D’Agostino. Frings was solid in front of the back four, shut­ting down the mid­dle of the pitch for the home side and Ozil deliv­ered the final pass on both of Diego’s goals. Left­back Sebas­t­ian Boenisch did a great job of shut­ting down the left and pro­vided the assist on the third goal. In fact the late score by Udi­nese was brought on by replac­ing Boenisch with Pasa­nen who was beaten to allow the ball into a dan­ger­ous area late.

How­ever the per­son that had the most impact on this game wasn’t a player, it was Udi­nese man­ager Pasquale Marino, who set out to get a draw. The first half was a cyn­i­cal approach by the Ital­ian side as they put every­one behind the ball and lofted long balls to Quagliarella. It was the most Eng­lish game I’ve seen a side play since the 1980’s, and it was intended to keep the score low and nick an away goal. It failed because of his sec­ond big error, which was to not man-mark either Diego or Ozil, leav­ing them acres of free­dom. Diego must be drool­ing about his prospec­tive move to Series A next year, if this is the type of mark­ing he can expect. Ozil and Diego were both two meters free on the first goal. Their link led to an expertly taken goal from the edge of the box by the Brazil­ian play­maker. Udi­nese were then forced to chase the game and Werder were able to exploit on the counter.

Werder go to Udi­nese next week with a siz­able lead and the knowl­edge that Ozil and Diego should be able to cre­ate plenty of chances to negate the late goal.

Mean­while, Mar­tin Jol take the same lead to Man­ches­ter next week. After con­ced­ing an early goal to City, the Dinosaurs scored through Math­i­jsen, Tro­chowski and Guer­rero to make the pos­si­bil­ity of an all Ger­man semi­fi­nal a real possibility.

Tagged as: Diego, Mesut Ozil, Per Mertesacker, Sebastian Boenisch, Tim Weisse, Udinese