BERLIN — Record-chasing Robert Lewandowski scored a first-half hat trick on Saturday as 10-man Bayern Munich kept its four-point lead at the top of the Bundesliga with a 4-0 win over Stuttgart.
Bayern only started playing well after Canadian youngster Alphonso Davies was sent off for a bad tackle on Stuttgart’s Wataru Endo in the 12th minute. The defending champions’ response kept second-place Leipzig at bay before the teams meet on April 4.
“We want to settle it as soon as possible,” Bayern coach Hansi Flick said of his team’s bid for a record-extending ninth consecutive title. “That’s why we’re happy to get the three points in these conditions, with a player less for most of the game.”
Lewandowski’s 33rd, 34th and 35th goals of the season leave him needing just five more to match Bayern and West Germany great Gerd Muller’s Bundesliga record of 40 goals from the 1971-72 season. Eight rounds remain.
“I’m thinking from game to game, and not of how many goals I must score to break this record,” said Lewandowski, who eclipsed Klaus Fischer’s haul from between 1968-88 to move second in the all-time top Bundesliga scorers list.
“It makes me very proud, of course,” said Lewandowski, now on 271 goals from 346 games for Bayern and Borussia Dortmund. Only Muller, who scored 365 in 427 games for Bayern between 1965-79, has more.
“I’m happy with how the team played in the first half. The red card woke us up,” Lewandowski said.
Davies was initially shown a yellow card for landing with his studs on Endo’s ankle, but a VAR check upgraded it to a red.
The sending off only seemed to rouse his teammates. Serge Gnabry crossed for Lewandowski to open his account in the 18th minute, four minutes before Thomas Muller and Leroy Sane played their way through the Stuttgart defence for Gnabry to get Bayern’s second goal.
Muller set up Lewandowski’s second a minute later, and the Poland star completed his hat trick in the 39th after being set up by Sane.
Stuttgart’s Sasa Kalajdzic, who had scored in each of his last seven appearances, missed some good chances in the second half for the visitors.
DORTMUND’S DROPPED POINTS
Erling Haaland scored his second goal late to salvage a 2-2 draw for Borussia Dortmund at Cologne, but the visitors dropped four points behind fourth-place Eintracht Frankfurt, which emerged from a bruising game with a 5-2 win over Union Berlin.
Both Haaland and Frankfurt forward Andre Silva took their Bundesliga goal tallies this season to 21.
Silva got Frankfurt off to a great start in the second minute. But Max Kruse equalized five minutes later and Union went on to create a host of chances.
Frankfurt midfielder Djibril Sow cleared off the line three times, before Union’s Robert Andrich kicked the ball into his own net from around 20 metres (yards) in the 35th. Goalkeeper Andreas Luthe slipped as he tried to reach the back pass but Andrich had likely struck it too hard anyway.
Silva set up Filip Kostic four minutes later, shortly before the Portuguese striker grabbed his second of the game.
Kruse scored his second in first-half injury time to give the visitors some hope, but American defender Timothy Chandler removed any doubt for Frankfurt in injury time. It was Chandler’s first goal of the season and his 13th in 222 Bundesliga games.
Union had 25 efforts at goal, compared to the home side’s nine.
“It hurts,” Andrich said.
American forward Josh Sargent scored an own-goal in Werder Bremen’s 2-1 loss at home to third-place Wolfsburg.
Last-place Schalke was hosting Borussia Monchengladbach later Saturday.
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