BERLIN, March 31 (Xinhua) -- German record champion and second positioned Bayern Munich narrowed gap at the Bundesliga standings following a neat 1-0 win over Nuremberg at the 28th round on Saturday.
At the southern derby, Jupp Heynckes side carved out a hard earned 1-0 win over dedicated Nuremberg to utilize Dortmund's draw to narrow the gap to three points at the standings.
Nuremberg made life difficult for unimaginative German record champion throughout the match. It had to come to the 70th minute when Bayern midfielder and Dutch international Arjen Robben slotted home a clearance attempt into bottom right.
After the lead, Bayern retracted, thus Nuremberg sniffed the chance for a late equalizer but all their efforts remained unrewarded. Bayern stays on second position with 60 points including a three-point gap to front-runner Dortmund. Nuremberg slips from 11th to 12th position with 31 points.
Bremen suffered a 3-0 loss against Mainz to suffer a setback at the battle for international competitions as Mainz staged a faultless performance at Weser stadium. Mainz opened the scoring with 19 minutes into the match as striker Adam Szalai slotted home from 11 meters.
After interval, Mainz substitute striker Eric Maxim Choupo Moting donated a brace to seal the deal for his side at the 74th minute. Bremen resides on seventh position with 40 points whereas Mainz jumps from 12th to 10th position with 33 points.
Leverkusen suffered the fourth consecutive loss at the league owing to a harmless performance against Freiburg that wrapped a deserved 2-0 win at BayArena.
Freiburg midfielder Julian Schuster and midfielder mate Daniel Caliguri scored the goals to inflict Leverkusen an unexpected loss in front of home crowd. Both sides stay on their positions, Leverkusen on sixth position with 40 points and Freiburg on 13th position with 31 points.
At the other matches on Saturday, struggling Hamburg edged bottom team Kaiserslautern with a neat 1-0 win due to the winner by midfielder Marcell Jansen. Wolfsburg came from behind to crush relegation threatened Berlin 4-1 while Augsburg overpowered Cologne 2-1.
On Sunday Hannover encounters stunner Monchengladbach and Hoffenheim hosts third positioned Schalke to complete the 28th round of Bundesliga.