This is the second game of FOUR between these two teams in the space of just three weeks! Hamburg may have been beaten on penalties by Bremen at the weekend in the DFB Pokal Cup SemiFinal, but their coach, Martin Jol, still feels confident that it will be his Hamburg team that will be appearing in the UEFA Cup Final.
“We have played well against them twice, beating them in the Bundesliga and drawing in the cup,” Jol said on the club’s official website. “It is the end of April and we are still high up in the Bundesliga while Bremen are tenth. If things were the other way around, then I would be worried.”
“Of course people can claim that we have to be more creative, but we are how we are,” he added. “And we will certainly travel to Bremen full of confidence. They have still not beaten us yet.”
Jol will have to play without his injured striker Mladen Petric, but Hamburg have Guerrero and Olic available up front. Alex Silva will be back in the squad in defence. And he must be just a little worried about facing Werder in their current form. They haven’t lost in the Bundesliga for 14 games, while Jol’s side have lost four of their last eight. They have let Wolfsburg through to take the lead in the league, and are definitely up and down on current form.
Bremen have some pretty good firepower in Diego and the Chelsea striker Pizarro, not to mention Almeida, who can score regularly too.
But Hamburg are nothing but fighters, and the aggregate wins over Udinese and Man City will testify to that. It seems to me that Bremen have far more headline names, but the ex-Spurs manager Jol is a wily old fox, and i think he can engineer at least a draw in this tense meeting.
My pick: Hamburg +0.5 @2.09 with Mansion88.
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