Rafael Van der Vaart
BERLIN – Hamburger SV and Bayer Leverkusen drew 1-1 Saturday in a match that did little for either team’s chances of winning the Bundesliga.
Netherlands captain Rafael van der Vaart put Hamburg ahead with a 27th-minute volley, and Leverkusen equalized through Manuel Friedrich in the 60th with a header but stayed winless against the top five teams in the standings.
Huub Stevens, the coach of fourth-place Hamburg, said the draw was a lost opportunity for both teams.
”The teams at the top are probably relieved,” Stevens said. ”If someone had won, we could have still mixed it up (for the title). But no one won.”
Bayern Munich leads with 39 points and faces second-place Werder Bremen on Sunday. Bremen is three points back, while Leverkusen and Hamburg each have 34.
Leverkusen came into Saturday’s game with six wins in seven games, stirring talk that the club’s mix of young stars and veterans could emulate last year’s surprise champion Stuttgart.
Leverkusen dominated the opening 20 minutes in front of its home fans and forced Hamburg goalkeeper Frank Rost into three top saves at both posts.
But Van der Vaart sprinted forward to get his foot on Piotr Trochowski’s cross and stunned the home side with a goal against the flow of play.
The shot went in off the inside of the right post for his 10th goal of the season, tying him with Bayern’s Luca Toni for the Bundesliga lead.
”We had those 10 bad minutes,” Leverkusen’s Sergei Barbarez said. ”But for 75 minutes we were better. We deserved to win.”
Hamburg failed to win for the fifth straight match.
Stuttgart coach Armin Veh wrote off his team’s season after a 3-1 loss to Hertha Berlin dropped it into 10th place.
”We just have to let go,” Stuttgart coach Armin Veh said. ”We can’t do it, European play, with a performance like this.”
Germany forward Mario Gomez levelled the match for Stuttgart with a 40th-minute header, but the team fell apart when forward Marko Pantelic restored Hertha’s lead five minutes later with his second goal of the game.
Raffael scored Berlin’s final goal in the 49th to send Stuttgart to another one-sided loss after last week’s 4-1 against Schalke.
Veh has tried to shake up the team, and gave 19-year-old goalkeeper Sven Ulreich his Bundesliga debut.
Jan Rosenthal’s 87th-minute goal gave Hannover 96 a 2-2 draw against Karlsruher SC. That kept Karlsruhe, a small promoted club, sixth in the standings and fended off the eighth-place club, a challenger for UEFA Cup berths.
In other games, it was: Bochum 3, Cottbus 3; Nuremberg 1, Hansa Rostock 1; and Wolfsburg 2, Duisburg 1. On Friday, Frankfurt edged Bielefeld 2-1.
Source: GER: Hamburger SV, Leverkusen draw
