19 October 2006, by Sean Gillen

Werder Bremen fire warning to Barcelona and Chelsea

Werder Bremen 2-0 Levski Sofia

Werder Bremen kept up their hopes of upsetting either Barcelona or Chelsea to make it into the next round with a comfortable home win over Bulgarian champions Levski Sofia. Goals from Brazilians Naldo and Diego were enough to earn the win for Tomas Schaaf’s men to record their first win of the campaign.

Naldo gave his side the lead during first-half injury time, although there was a touch of fortune about the goal. The centre-half’s long range free-kick took a deflection off the wall before beating Levski goalkeeper Georgi Petkov.

Former Porto midfielder Diego put his name on the scoresheet in the second half when he latched onto a Miroslav Klose throughball and calmly finished past Petkov.

Portuguese striker Hugo Almeida came on for the final ten minutes for Bremen, replacing Klose and keeping up his record of having played in all of his side’s Champions League games so far this season.

After the match, manager Schaaf told reporters: “This was a good performance, an important performance. We gave them relatively few chances, scored two goals and got the result.”

“We still have a chance of reaching the quarter finals and we’re very satisfied with that.”

Bremen will need to beat the Bulgarians away from home in their next fixture if they are to beat group favourites Barcelona or Chelsea to a qualification place for the knockout phases.

Werder Bremen:
Wiese, Mertersacker, Naldo, Schulz, Wome (Klasnic, 46), Vranjes (Andreasen, 73), Fritz, Frings, Diego, Hunt, Klose (Almeida, 82)
Yellow Cards: Fritz (41)

Levski Sofia:
Petkov, Topuzakov, Tomasic, Angelov, Wagner, Borimov, Eromoigbe, Telkiiski (Dimitrov, 79), Domovchiyski (Ivanov, 64), Bardon, Yovov (Koprivarov, 79)
Yellow Cards: Tomasic (40), Borimov (46)

Goals:
[1-0] Naldo, 45
[2-0] Diego, 74