RB Leipzig stunned Bundesliga title hopefuls Borussia Dortmund 1-0 on Saturday to claim the club’s first win in the German top flight, while Joel Pohjanpalo scored a stunning hat-trick in Bayer Leverkusen’s 3-1 defeat of Hamburg.
Guinea international Naby Keita struck a minute from time as Leipzig, founded just seven years ago, toppled Thomas Tuchel’s Dortmund in their first Bundesliga home game. Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang threatened early for Dortmund and Andre Schuerrle hit the bar, while Timo Werner and Dominik Kaiser both went close for the hosts, before substitute Keita popped up with the winner on an assist from Scottish teenage debutant Oliver Burke.
The 19-year-old, who like Keita came off the bench late on, became Scotland’s most expensive player after joining Leipzig from Nottingham Forest for around £13mn last month. “We put things in place to stop our opponents, but with the substitutions we reacted when we felt we could win the match,” said Leipzig coach Ralph Hasenhuettl. “We’ve shown we can play at this level.”
Dortmund manager Tuchel admitted his side, who open their Champions League campaign away to Legia Warsaw of Poland on Wednesday, had not been at their best. “We made life a bit difficult for ourselves.
We weren’t so much forced into mistakes, but we made unnecessary errors. We were ready for this match, but we were lacking that finishing touch,” he said.
Earlier, US international Bobby Wood gave Hamburg the lead just before the hour against Leverkusen at the BayArena, but the introduction of Finland striker Pohjanpalo on 72 minutes swung the game dramatically in the home side’s favour. The 21-year-old, who scored on his Bundesliga debut last month, equalised for Leverkusen within seven minutes of his arrival, but was far from done as he netted twice more in stoppage time to hand Roger Schmidt’s side their first points of the season.
Leverkusen begin their Champions League adventure when they host CSKA Moscow in the opening round of group stage matches midweek, but Borussia Moenchengladbach will have to recover quickly ahead of their trip to Manchester City after losing 3-1 at promoted Freiburg.
On Friday, Robert Lewandowski and Joshua Kimmich struck late goals in Bayern Munich’s 2-0 win at Schalke as teenage Portugal star Renato Sanches made his debut for the Bavarian giants.
Yesterday, Augsburg came from behind to beat Werder Bremen 2-1. A 73rd-minute free-kick by Konstantinos Stafylidis gave Augsburg the points to leave Bremen bottom after two games, following their 6-0 first-day thrashing by Bayern Munich two weeks ago.
Serge Gnabry started for the first time for Bremen following his move from Arsenal and coach Viktor Skripnik’s team enjoyed a half-time lead thanks to a stoppage-time penalty by Aron Johannsson. Zlatko Junuzovic went down in the box under a challenge from new signing Martin Hinteregger and Johannsson sent keeper Marwin Hitz the wrong way.
Augsburg were level seven minutes after the interval when defender Jeffrey Gouweleeuw turned in a corner in front of goal, and the visitors took the lead after getting the benefit of a curious free-kick decision.
Augsburg striker Alfred Finnbogason stumbled over the foot of Bremen’s Lamine Sane in the area as both were leaving the box, before falling with some delay outside the area.
Referee Daniel Siebert decided on a free-kick on the edge of the area, and Greek left-back Stafylidis curled a left-foot shot over the wall and into goal.
Bremen’s woes continued when Italian defender Luca Caldirola, a summer arrival from Darmstadt, was stretchered off with what appeared to be an ankle injury. The win gave Augsburg, who slipped to a 2-0 home defeat to Eintracht Frankfurt on the first weekend of the season, their first points.