FC St. Pauli 1-0 Hamburger SV
(Kyereh 88′)
Hamburg remains Braun-Weiß! Daniel-Kofi Kyereh, a man who has a taste for the big moments, struck a rocket into Sven Ulreich’s goal with just two minutes left of the Stadtderby as FC St. Pauli beat Hamburger SV for a third time in four meetings.
After a flat second half, dampened by a confusing decision to overturn a penalty for the hosts, a goalless draw looked inevitable. But the goal from Kyereh settled the game, and the inevitable Hamburg meltdown followed.
In the closing moments of stoppage time, with St. Pauli trying to play out time, one-time Nürnburg teammates Tim Leibold and Guido Burgstaller got in a tussle on the sideline, with both booked by Deniz Aytekin. He was advised to have another look though, and replaced Leibold’s yellow with a red for a lash-out at the St. Pauli man.
Hamburg, forced out of the top three by results over the weekend, will now have to play two of the teams above them, Kiel and Bochum, back-to-back, and could be without their captain and only specialist left-back for both.
St. Pauli will have no complaints. In open play, they were the better side, especially in the first half if not so much in the second. All of Hamburg’s big chances came from set pieces, most notably when Sonny Kittel rattled the crossbar from a long-range free-kick just a minute into the game.
Rodrigo Zalazar, Guido Burgstaller and Omar Marmoush all had chances in the first half, going just wide or finding the strong presence of Sven Ulreich in goal, and St. Pauli could, or rather should, have had a second half penalty when Gideon Jung brought down Zalazar in the box.
It will matter little given how the game finished, but Aytekin could have just as easily sent off Jung for a two-footed challenge, rather than overturning the penalty as he did, seemingly believing that Jung had won the ball – it having ricocheted off him following a touch from Zalazar.
In the end, the St. Pauli game plan worked. They kept key attackers like Jeremy Dudziak quiet – even if Philipp Ziereis and Tore Reginiussen got booked in the process – and dried up service to Simon Terodde, who’s only sight of goal was a disallowed strike form a free-kick in the second half.
Going forward, they threatened just often enough to keep Hamburg rattled, and eventually their ‘bigger’ neighbours cracked. It is their third win in six meetings since HSV came down from the Bundesliga. Just imagine the scenes if Kyereh had been celebrating in front of a full Südtribüne though.
2liga.net 