Dortmund win to stay on Bayern’s heels

Posted Sunday, December 18, 2011 by YAHOO Sport

Champions Borussia Dortmund maintained their pursuit of Bundesliga leaders Bayern Munich on Saturday with a 4-1 victory over Freiburg that left them three points off the top heading into the winter break.

Dortmund’s top scorer, Robert Lewandowski, struck twice to take his tally to 12 this season and Ilkay Gundogan and Kevin Grosskreutz were also on target after the hosts had leveled through Jan Rosenthal in the first half.

Bayern, on 37 points, beat Cologne 3-0 on Friday despite playing with 10 men for an hour following the dismissal of Franck Ribery.

“Second place is not that bad, you can’t get much better than that,” said Dortmund coach Juergen Klopp, whose team struggled for much of the first half before Gundogan restored their lead on the stroke of halftime after Freiburg defenders stopped, thinking Jakub Blaszczykowski was off side.

“We were not much better than our opponents but still won,” said Klopp.

Grosskreutz curled a 20-metre shot into the goal early in the second half before Lewandowski, who had given them a seventh-minute lead, tapped in after 70 minutes to complete their first win after two consecutive draws.

Champions League competitors Bayer Leverkusen slumped to a 3-0 home defeat to Nuremberg to remain sixth on 26 points.

Hamburg SV stretched their unbeaten run to nine games with a 1-1 draw against lowly Augsburg, who had their keeper, Mohamed Amsif, to thank for half a dozen superb saves.

Roman Hubnik’s last-gasp goal earned Hertha Berlin a 1-1 draw at Hoffenheim to keep them in 11th place on 20 points while 2009 Bundesliga champions, VfL Wolfsburg, ended a disappointing year with a 1-0 win over VfB Stuttgart.

Third-placed Schalke 04 were hosting Werder Bremen, in fifth, later on Saturday.