10-man Hamburg beat Bremen to remain in title hunt (Roundup)

By George Burns Dec 20, 2009, 18:24 GMT

Hamburg - SV Hamburg overcame the first-half dismissal of Jerome Boateng as goals from Joris Mathijsen and Marcell Jansen secured a 2-1 defeat of northern German rivals Werder Bremen Sunday.

The win in freezing conditions sees Hamburg move up to fourth in the Bundesliga on 31 points, four behind so-called 'autumn champions' Bayer Leverkusen, who will spend the winter break at the top thanks to a hard-fought 3- 2 win Saturday against Borussia Moenchengladbach.

Mathijsen gave Hamburg the perfect start at the HSH Nordbank Arena, taking full advantage of lax defending in the Bremen defence to head home unchallenged from close range on nine minutes.

However, Bremen came more into the game and Naldo almost equalized on 27 minutes only to see his overhead kick come back off the bar.

In a now open game, Hamburg could have doubled their lead almost immediately but Sebastian Proedl managed to do enough to prevent Eljero Elia from converting at the far post.

The game appeared to swing back in Bremen's favour on 32 minutes when Hamburg defender Boateng saw a straight red for a last-man foul on Marko Marin.

Instead, Jansen made it 2-0 to Hamburg four minutes later, firing into an empty net after Bremen goalkeeper Tim Wiese raced from his goal but failed to get the ball.

Wiese made some amends for his earlier error shortly before the break, blocking Mathijsen's point-blank shot.

Hamburg continued to threaten in the second half, especially down the left flank, with Wiese twice denying Mladen Petric.

Bremen had their chances too and Aaron Hunt should really have pulled one back for Thomas Schaaf's side on 65 minutes, but failed to connect properly with Mesut Ozil's free-kick into the area.

Hunt and Marin both saw efforts hit the woodwork in a frantic finale and although Naldo did manage to pull one back in added time, Bremen hadn't enough time to find an equalizer and now stay sixth on 28 points.

'We played without direction and in too complicated a manner,' said Schaaf. 'We wanted to play football but that wasn't possible on this pitch. That was our mistake.'

In Sunday's late game, Cologne eased their relegation worries with a 3-0 victory over fellow strugglers Nuremberg.

Geromel opened the scoring after 37 minutes with two second-half goals from Milivoje Novakovic making it 3-0 to move Cologne up to 12th while Nuremberg, who finished with 10 men after the dismissal of Juri Judt, stay second-from-bottom of the table.