Two first half goals for Hamburg smoothed the way for a 3-1 victory over Cologne at the opener of the 2nd round in the Bundesliga football championship.
Cologne on Friday suffered their second straight loss as Hamburg's Andre Hahn, Bobby Wood and Lewis Holtby provided the goals for the visitors, reports Xinhua news agency.
Both sides staged an evenly balanced opening period but as the match progressed Cologne took over. However, the hosts were unable to break the deadlock as Hamburg staged a well-positioned defence.
Hamburg showed no mercy to the hosts and opened the scoring with their first chance of the game. Cologne failed to clear the ball following a corner allowing Andre Hahn to hammer home the rebound from the edge of the box into the bottom left with 28 minutes played.
Cologne wobbled and conceded another goal as Bobby Wood made use of Luca Waldschmidt's through ball to beat goalkeeper Timo Horn into the bottom left six minutes later.
After the restart, Cologne increased the pressure and things looked to go their way when Hamburg's Mergim Mavraj received his marching orders after seeing his second yellow card of the night in the 60th minute.
Nevertheless, the hosts had to wait until the dying minutes of the game before Frederik Soerensen reduced the arrears after a cross into the box.
Ten-men Hamburg remained unimpressed and destroyed Cologne's hope of a late draw when Lewis Holtby tapped home a cross from Albin Ekdal to put the result beyond doubt in the injury time.
With the result, Hamburg climb atop the standings with two wins from as many games. Meanwhile, Cologne suffered their second defeat to slip to the Bundesliga bottom.
--IANS
pur/bg
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