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Ansgar Knauff opened the Frankfurt scoring in Berlin
Photo: Maja Hitij / Getty Images
At Hertha BSC, concerns about staying up in the league are getting bigger and bigger.
The 1:4 (0:1) home defeat against Eintracht Frankfurt is the fourth bankruptcy in a row for the Berliners. Tayfun Korkut's team, which slipped to the relegation place, recently won against Borussia Dortmund shortly before Christmas.
Ansgar Knauff watched the game from the BVB bank at the time – then Frankfurt loaned the Dortmund winger.
Now it was Knauff who decided the game in favor of Eintracht: First with a headed goal to take the lead (17'), then with a strong cross to Evan N'Dicka, who crossed for Tuta who had run with him (48').
Jesper Lindstrøm made everything clear with a lob over goalkeeper Marcel Litka (56'), Davie Selke's volley (62') was immediately countered by Rafael Borré (63').
As different as the financial possibilities of RB Leipzig and SC Freiburg are, this season the two clubs are sporting rivals on an equal footing: Both made it into the cup semi-finals during the week, and the teams went into the match day with 40 points each four and five.
After the 1-1 (0-1) in Leipzig, the clubs remained level on points: Ermedin Demirović scored the opening goal for Freiburg with a chip ball over Péter Gulácsi (38th), Joško Gvardiol's attempt to clear the goal line could not prevent the goal.
The Freiburg defense then held tight for a long time, Angeliño scored late to equalize (90').
Everyone was looking at Max Kruse when VfL Wolfsburg welcomed Union Berlin, the star striker's former club.
It was only in January that Kruse from Wolfsburg left the Berliners, and Kruse then spoke openly about the financial motives for the sportingly questionable change.
And indeed, a top performer from the first half of the season in Berlin gave VfL the lead – not Kruse, however, but Taiwo Awoniyi, who headed a Wolfsburg corner kick into his own goal (25').
Awoniyi almost appeared as a goal preparer for strike partner Sheraldo Becker (54'), but because of a foul in the goal creation it remained 1-0 for VfL.
In the promotion duel with Greuther Fürth, VfL Bochum took the next big step towards staying up: The 2-1 (1-0) victory gave Bochum a nine-point lead over the relegation zone, while the last team from Fürth lacked the same number of points to the relegation place.
The opening goal for VfL was scored by someone who was still the tragic figure during the week: Maxim Leitsch made the decisive error in the last minute of extra time in the cup defeat against SC Freiburg.
The defender redeemed himself against Fürth with his first Bundesliga goal when he rebounded a free-kick over the line (35').
Leitsch's neighbor Armel Bella-Kotchap scored an own goal (64'), Anthony Losilla made sure that this mishap didn't matter (71').
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