Borussia Dortmund move four clear at top of Bundesliga

BERLIN - Borussia Dortmund extended their lead at the top of the Bundesliga football standings to four points Sunday with a 4-0 demolition of Hanover 96.

Shinji Kagawa, Lucas Barrios, Robert Lewandowski and Jakub Blaszczykowski scored the goals for visiting Dortmund, for whom Nuri Sahin had a second-half penalty saved by Hanover goalkeeper Florian Fromlowitz.

Hanover ended the game with 10 men after Karim Haggui was sent off in the second half.

The win sees Dortmund move to 28 points, four more than Mainz 05 who were beaten 1-0 by SC Freiburg on Saturday. Dortmund extended their own record of having won the most number of away games from the start of the season to six.

In Sunday’s later games Bayer Leverkusen came from behind to beat Kaiserslautern 3-1, while VfB Stuttgart trounced Werder Bremen 6-0.

Dortmund completely outplayed Hanover in the second half after Kagawa had given them an early lead. Piszczek found Barrios in the middle with a precise path and the Paraguay international made no mistake in the 72nd minute.

Five minutes later defender Haggui was sent off for kicking substitute Blaszczykowski who was lying in the Hanover area. The referee also awarded a penalty, but Florian Fromlowitz managed to save Sahin’s penalty.

Lewandowski made it three for Dortmund with nine minutes to go after an excellent Fromlowitz save rather fortuitously fell to the substitute. Blaszczykowski added the fourth in injury time.

Although Dortmund remained modest concerning the title race, Sahin said that they were happy to have a good lead from Bayern Munich, who are 12 points behind after drawing 3-3 at Borussia Moenchengladabach Saturday.

“It is better to be 12 points ahead than to have Bayern just one point behind. But we are the last team that will now go overboard,” said Sahin.

Stuttgart proved far too strong for Bremen as Ciprian Marica gave them the lead in the 10th minute after being set up by Timo Gebhart.

Bremen captain Torsten Frings had an opportunity to equalize for his side after referee Thorsten Kinhoefer rather harshly pointed to the spot for a foul on Aaron Hunt. But Frings, who scored his last 19 penalties, saw goalkeeper Sven Ulreich save his effort in the 24th.

Bremen were made to pay the price for the miss as Cacau scored two further goals before the break. The Germany striker missed an opportunity to secure his hat-trick when Wiese saved his spot-kick in the second half.

Christian Gentner, Georg Niedermeier and Arthur Boka added the remaining goals after the break to send Bremen crashing to their worst Bundesliga defeat since a 7-1 home defeat to Moenchengladbach in March 1987.

Stuttgart’s German international Christian Traesch said that they could have scored even more. “We used our chances, but could have scored a few more.

“As a team we played very compact and we had plenty of chances going forward and it was a very good game, but we need to now continue were we left off.”

Bremen coach Thomas Schaaf, who played in Bremen’s 7-1 defeat in 1987, said his side showed no defence. “In boxing if you need confidence you invite an opponent like we were today.

“Missing the penalty was just really an indication of what was to come and we simply did not try hard enough.”

In Leverkusen, the home side moved to the third place in the table on 21 points after coming from behind to beat Kaiserslautern.

Florian Dick gave the visitors the lead after an Alexander Bugera free-kick smashed into the Leverkusen wall, but bounced back to the defender who unleashed a powerful shot from just under 30 metres.

Leverkusen levelled matters seven minutes from the break through former Kaiseralutern midfielder Sidney Sam after the visitors failed to clear. Patrick Helmes put Leverkusen ahead and Sam wrapped up matters with his second goal.