Bundesliga wrap: Dortmund extend gap after Bayern loss

3 March 2012 21:17

Bayern Munich's hopes of winning the Bundesliga took a significant blow on Saturday after a 2-0 loss to Bayer Leverkusen.

Bayern now trail league leaders Borussia Dortmund by seven points after the champions' 2-1 win over Mainz at home.

Earlier, more than 30,000 fans crammed into the BayArena for the visit of Bayern as Leverkusen won their third match in a row to continue their good form.

Stefan Kiessling broke the drought with just 11 minutes to play.

The forward stabbed home from close range after a terrific assist from Eren Derdiyok and the result was sealed on the stroke of full-time.

Gonzalo Castro broke free down the right and hit a well-weighted pass across the face of goal where Karim Bellarabi side-footed past Bayern goalkeeper Manuel Neuer to give Leverkusen a well-deserved victory.

At Signal-Iduna-Park, Jakub Blaszczykowski opened the scoring in the first half for Dortmund, who dominated the match for large portions, but they were made to work for the win after a host of missed chances.

Their profligacy came back to haunt them when Mohamed Zidan netted in the second period, but Shinji Kagawa struck the winner with 13 minutes remaining to put Dortmund in the box seat for back-to-back titles.

Schalke, who sit fourth, were upset 2-1 at lowly Freiburg.

Sebastian Freis and Daniel Caligiuri scored for the winners and despite Teemu Pukki's late strike for Schalke, it was not enough for them to get a point.

Zdravko Kuzmanovic scored a pair of penalties in Stuttgart's thumping 4-0 win at Hamburg while Jan Callsen-Bracker's 89th-minute equaliser saw Augsburg draw 2-2 at Hannover.

Australian Nikita Rukavytsya scored Hertha Berlin's first goal in six matches as they beat Werder Bremen 1-0 while Kaiserslautern and Wolfsburg played out a goalless draw in the day's other match.