Patrick Herrmann Scored A Wonderful Brace To Secure A 6-3 Win For Gladbach.
Today’s matches saw Michael Ballack’s Leverkusen side take on Michael Bradley’s Borussia Monchengladbach side, as well as a Sami Khedira-less Stuttgart against a prolific Borussia Dortmund team. Saturday’s goal-fest has spilled over onto Sunday, and has made for some very entertaining football.
Bayer Leverkusen hosted Borussia Monchengladbach with the renewed hope and expectation given to them by inspirational German midfielder Michael Ballack. While the veteran failed to make Joachim Loew’s Germany squad for their two upcoming European Championship Qualifying matches, Ballack has started all of Bayer Leverkusen’s fixtures thus far. Unfortunately for Ballack, his move back to Germany has not been all pleasent. His Bayer Leverkusen side were tanked 3-6 at home and Ballack will not have been at all pleased with his side’s efforts. What will have been pleasing, at least from Joachim Loew’s perspective, is how superbly well some of Gladbach’s German youngsters played against Bayer Leverkusen. Patrick Hermann, at just 19 years of age, opened the scoring and hit Gladbach’s third with great skill and technical prowess. He will certainly warrant more first-team chances after the performance he gave today. Marco Reus scored Gladbach’s sixth, an excellent placed shot from the right side of Leverkusen’s 18-yard box and into the top left-hand corner of Rene Adler’s net. Gladbach’s other goalscorers were Roel Brouwers, Juan Arango from an excellently taken free-kick, and Mohamadou Idrissou. Leverkusen managed three of their own, but they did not threaten Gladbach regularly enough to ever look like they could get back into the match.
A Stuttgart side who have lost key players during the summer transfer window, namely Sami Khedira, Aliaksandr Hleb and Jens Lehmann, hosted a Borussia Dortmund side who continue to improve under manager Jurgen Klopp. Stuttgart opened the scoring but it was at the wrong end of the pitch, as Khalid Boulahrouz deflected a shot into his own net after just five minutes. Dortmund continued to press Stuttgart, and netted twice before half-time through the prolific Lucas Barrios and through young German attacking midfielder Mario Gotze. Cacau scored Stuttgart’s consolation goal on 70 minutes, but Stuttgart failed to get back into the match. Disappointing stuff from Christian Gross’ side, who have really failed to reinforce after losing so many key players throughout the summer.
