Spotlight on red-hot Werner

THE Bundesliga powers on this weekend as we enter the final five matchdays of what has been a quite extraordinary season.

Bayern Munich are closing in on their eighth consecutive championship but there’s plenty still to play for as scramble for Champions League places hots up and the relegation battle rages on. Timo Werner has dominated headlines in the past 24 hours as the RB Leipzig forward moves closer to joining Chelsea for £53million.

There will certainly be more English eyes than usual trained on the German striker as he takes to the field against Paderborn this afternoon. And with Leipzig’s opponents sitting bottom of the table, there’s every chance Werner will bang in a few more goals to excite Chelsea fans.

Leipzig’s title chances may have faded but they need all three points to strengthen their grip on Champions League football next season, while Werner, enjoying his best ever scoring season, will continue his chase of Lewandowski in the scorers’ charts.

Two draws since the resumption ended any hopes of Julian Nagelsmann’s team chasing down Bayern but when it’s clicked, the goals have flowed. Leipzig impressed in winning 4-2 at Cologne on Monday night.

Paderborn aren’t mathematically relegated yet but it’s just a matter of time. They will want to avoid the kind of six-goal drubbing they suffered against Dortmund last time out.

Bayern Munich have rounded the final bend in the lead and cleared that last tricky water jump successfully by winning away at closest challengers Borussia Dortmund.

Now they’re entering the final straight with a substantial lead but have one more hurdle left to clear with the finish line and yet more glory within their sights.

That hurdle is a trip to in-form Bayer Leverkusen this afternoon, the toughest of their five remaining fixtures. Clear it with their seven-point advantage intact and the title is as good as won.

Borussia Dortmund and neutrals everywhere will be hoping Leverkusen, themselves fighting to finish in the Champions League places, can win and breathe life back into the title race.

Leverkusen did manage to win 2-1 at the Allianz Arena back in November, just after Hansi Flick took over, but this Bayern are a totally different proposition.

Four wins out of four since the restart have meant it’s business as usual at the top of the Bundesliga. Werner has been in the headlines but it’s Robert Lewandowski who leads him in the Bundesliga scoring charts by 29 to 25.

Lewandowski has already scored more times at this stage of the season than in any of his previous Bundesliga seasons and some are excitedly chattering about whether he might match or break Gerd Muller’s record 40 goals in 1971-72.

Bayern have also netted 86 league goals this season - another record - and so a century is well within their sights. Leverkusen will be difficult to beat, however, regardless of the proliferation of away victories since the restart behind closed doors.

They have won three of their four games since coming back and have several key players in form, not least Kai Havertz Leverkusen have won their last two meeting with Bayern but they’ve never won three in a row. | Daily Mail

FULL FIXTURES:

TODAY: Leverkusen v Bayern (3.30pm), RB Leipzig v Paderborn (3.30pm), Dusselfdorf v Hoffenheim (3.30pm), Eintracht Frankfurt v Mainz (3.30pm), Dortmund v Hertha (6.30pm). TOMORROW: Werder v Wolfsburg (1.30pm), Union Berlin v Schalke (3.30pm), Augsburg v FC Koln (6pm).

MARK KEOHANE

ANY visit to Boet Erasmus in Port Elizabeth was a battle. And I am not even referring to what was to follow on the infamous night of June 3, 1995 when the Springboks beat Canada 20-0 but through Rugby World Cup tournament suspensions lost the services of hooker James Dalton and left wing Pieter Hendriks.

Boet Erasmus, on its most glorious day, was ugly. The hectic wind and heavy playing surface could turn any dream into a nightmare for visiting teams. I’d seen many very good Western Province, Transvaal or Northern Transvaal teams go to Port Elizabeth to play Eastern Province and really struggle.

There always seemed to be something in the air when it came to being at ‘The Boet’. The crowd was different. They’d call themselves charismatic. I’d describe them as angry. They were small-town and they liked nothing more than to give the boys from the bigger cities a hiding.

If that beating somehow didn’t translate onto the field, then there was a very good chance a player or five from the visiting team would take a pasting somewhere in Port Elizabeth in the early hours of Sunday morning.

I’d always associated a visit to the Boet Erasmus with afternoon rugby, ample time to file copy and then a hostile night out on the town.

On this particular 1995 World Cup June 3 Saturday night, the kick-off was an evening one. Everything about the experience was going to be different, except for the aggressiveness in the crowd. Only this time, I was in town reporting on the Springboks and not Western Province or Transvaal. I was part of the home team crowd.

There was one singular voice and it was backing only green and gold. Unfortunately, this cauldron of hatred spoke directly to the hardened instincts of the Canadian players. They were tough buggers and, in a rugby context, they’d graduated from the ‘School of Underdogs’.

They were consistently written off as an afterthought when playing the big teams, but in the amateur era they never took a step back against anyone and they were very vocal in the match build-up that they were going to give the Springboks a physical war.

Whenever the Springboks play, physicality is always the talking point. You hear it from the All Blacks, English, Irish, Welsh, French and even the Argentineans. They all speak in awe of the size of the Springboks and of the brutality of the contest. Not so the Canadians. They spoke of their own brutality and physical presence.

Back in the day they had some very good players in lock turned No 8 Al Charron, centre Christian Stewart, flyhalf Gareth Rees and prop Rod Snow, who would play 200 matches for Welsh club Newport.

Springbok coach Kitch Christie rarely made mistakes in his one-year tenure. He wasn’t a ‘soundbite’ coach and his press conferences were usually considered. But, perhaps unintentionally, Christie fueled the fires of the Canadians long before kick-off when he announced a mix and match Springboks starting XV and said he’d settle on the ‘A’ team when ‘the tournament got serious’.

Christie was referring to the quarter-finals but the Canadians felt disrespected