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Nico Elvedi headed Gladbach to victory
Photo: Federico Gambarini / dpa
Borussia Mönchengladbach have successfully completed the first half of the Bundesliga: On matchday 17, coach Marco Rose's team beat Werder Bremen 1-0 (0-0) thanks to a header from central defender Nico Elvedi (66th minute).
The defender alleviated the Gladbacher's offensive distress: Marcus Thuram was missing a red card after a spitting action, Breel Embolo was not considered for the squad after a suspected violation of the Corona rules.
At the start of the game, the Bremen team seemed to be keen to disrupt the opponent's offensive game: In deep midfield pressing, Florian Kohfeldt's team formed a 5-3-2 basic order, there were hardly any phases of possession of their own.
But Gladbach also had a hard time: Elvedi headed Werder goalkeeper Jiri Pavlenka after a free kick in the arms (6th), Hannes Wolf was prevented from finishing left in the Bremen penalty area by Marco Friedl (17th).
There were initially no other Gladbach chances.
Werder was lucky, however, when Pavlenka knocked Jonas Hofmann around while trying to intercept a Gladbach pass in front of his own penalty area and head out of the danger zone: Referee Martin Petersen showed the Czech the yellow instead of the red card, so he did not see the action as preventing one clear scoring chance (22nd).
In the middle of the second half Bremen became more active and played their counterattacks more purposefully to the end.
Romano Schmid failed with a remarkable volley shot at the strongly reacting Gladbach goalkeeper Yann Sommer (27th), Felix Agu with a kick against Matthias Ginter, who cleared the line (37th).
At this point, Sommer was already defeated: He too misjudged himself on an excursion in front of his penalty area, fouled Werder's Josh Sargent and, after having played out an advantage, received a yellow card.
In the second round the game became more chaotic, not much happened out of the game.
A standard ultimately made the decision in favor of Borussia: Laszlo Benes crossed the ball from the half-field into the middle.
Elvedi prevailed in the center and extended the cross with his head to the inside post, from where the ball jumped into the goal (66th).
Shortly before the end, substitute Milot Rashica hit the post for Werder (87th).
Thanks to the success, Gladbach keeps up with the European Cup places, Werder finished the first half of the season in the lower half of the table.
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