All square with the champions

A crowd of 60,000 packed into the Mercedes-Benz Arena and were treated to a high-tempo, attacking and hard-fought out clash between VfB Stuttgart and Borussia Dortmund. The home side took the lead through Serdar Tasci but the visitors were back level before the break. There were to be no further goals on the day and the sides shared the spoils in a 1-1 draw.

Trainer Bruno Labbadia made three changes to the eleven that began in the 3-0 mid-week cup win over FSV Frankfurt with Serdar Tasci, Shinji Okazaki and Zdravko Kuzmanovic coming in to replace Patrick Bauer, Ibrahima Traore and Christoph Hemlein. The kick-off was delayed by fifteen minute due to a traffic jam in which the Dortmund team had been caught up. It was the guests who then made the better start, with both Robert Lewandowski and Mario Götze going close early on. At the other end, Roman Weidenfeller had to be alert to punch a Cristian Molinaro strike clear, as the tempo of the game raised continually. In the 22nd minute, VfB then went one better and took the lead. From a Hajnal pass, Harnik powered a shot against the posts but luckily the rebound fell to Serdar Tasci, who made no mistake and made it 1-0.

Very shortly afterwards, Cacau had a chance to double the VfB advantage but the German internationals header went just wide of Weidenfeller’s goal. BVB had a shout for a penalty in the 37th minute when Molinaro connected with Götze in the box, but the referee waved the Dortmund protests away. On the stroke of half time though, Borussia took their chance and levelled through Lukasz Piszczek to make it 1-1 going into the break.