Danke Bochum!

By: Chris | March 4th, 2008

Hamburg cruised to a 4-1 home victory over Frankfurt on Sunday, on a brace by Paolo Guerrero, and tallies Nigel de Jong and Mohamed Zidan. The match saw Huub really open up the offense and let the guys play. The highlights I’ve seen were superb, and if anything, HSV didn’t capitalize on all the chances they had. To Frankfurt’s credit, they were playing with 6 starters out, but a victory’s a victory and we’ll take 3 points any way we can.

The BIG story though comes by way of Bochum, where the local boys put away Leverkusen 2-1. Who cares, you say? Well, we at the Hamburg Offiside care deeply, as the HSV win and Leverkusen loss put us *alone* in the 3rd CL spot on 41 points to Leverkusen’s 38 points. HSV are now most of the way through a truly brutal stretch in their schedule, with very encouraging results:

14.2 at FC Zurich (UEFA Cup) 3-1 victory

17.2 vs Bochum (Bundesliga) 3-0 victory

21.2 vs FC Zurich (UEFA Cup) 0-0 draw

24.2 at Bayern Munich (Bundesliga) 1-1 draw

27.2 at Vfl Wolfsburg (DFB Pokal) 2-1 loss [IT WAS A DIVE!--no I'm not still dwelling on this result]

2.3 vs Eintracht Frankfurt (Bundesliga) 4-1 victory

6.3 at Bayer Leverkusen (UEFA Cup)

9.3 at Nurnberg (Bundesliga)

12.3 vs. Bayer Leverkusen (UEFA Cup)

For those of you scoring along at home, that’s 3 victories, 2 draws and a single loss in 6 matches in the span of 16 days. Well done, lads. Well done indeed.

Thursday night the side travel to Leverkusen for the first leg of the UEFA Cup round of 16 ties. Lots has been written about the fact that 4 teams from the Bundesliga remain in the UEFA Cup, including mighty Bayern. Have a look, though, at an an excellent piece here that Ian wrote. He conducted a study by putting the remaining 16 teams into a table and found that HSV would be sitting 2nd and have the fewest goals allowed (by a country mile) of the remaining sides. That said, I again have no idea how the Leverkusen tie will go. I think that HSV must continue to follow their formula and play solid defense. I think that Guerrero is really in top form right now, as is Zidan. Van der Vaart is, well, Van der Vaart, and HSV are getting goals from guys who don’t normally score much. I think we steal one from Leverkusen. SWAG prediction: HSV 2, Leverkusen 1.