Saturday, December 12, 2009

Austria Vienna 2-2 Werder Bremen



Thiago Schumacher's late equaliser completed Austria Vienna's comeback from a two-goal second-half deficit against Werder Bremen.

Claudio Pizarro scored in the 19th and 63rd minutes to give Bremen a 2-0 lead before Emin Sulimani pulled a goal back in the 73rd minute.

And Schumacher then grabbed the equaliser with two minutes remaining.

Bremen at least extended their current unbeaten run to 14 games and the draw gives Thomas Schaaf's side seven points from th! ree matches in Group L, while Vienna improved to two points.

Austria Vienna boss Karl Daxbacher came into the game without his top two strikers, Tomas Jun and Rubin Okotie, as well as goalkeeper Szabolcs Safar.

The first chance came after 11 minutes as Milenko Acimovic's curling free-kick from 20 yards went just left of Tim Wiese's goal.

Bremen's first real opportunity turned into the first goal of the game in the 19th minute.

Mesut Ozil sent a free-kick from the right wing into the box where Pizarro jumped higher than the Vienna defence to head home past Robert Almer from five yards.

The hosts remained determined to push forward and Acimovic's corner was cleared by Wiese after 29 minutes before Manuel Ortlechner just missed connecting with another dangerous cross.

Midway through the first half, Wiese broke the club record for the longest scoreless stretch, passing Oliver Reck's mark of 641 minutes in 1987-88.

Bremen increase! d the pressure on the hosts and had three straight chances, in! cluding Per Mertesacker's header off the post eight minutes before the break.

Vienna had the ball in the net 10 minutes after the restart through Zlatko Junuzovic but he was ruled offside.

And it was Bremen who scored again in the 63rd minute, Pizarro taking advantage of a horrible mistake by veteran defender Jacek Bak.

Bak tried to head back to his goalkeeper from 25 yards out but Pizarro intercepted the ball and rounded Almer before slotting home.

Vienna pulled a goal back with 17 minutes to play as Sulimani's shot from 20 yards was deflected past Wiese.

And the home side snatched an unlikely point with two minutes to play as substitute Schumacher headed home from 10 yards.