BERLIN (AP) — Bundesliga leader Bayern Munich edged Bayer Leverkusen 1-0 Saturday after Luca Toni and Miroslav Klose again combined for the winning goal.
Italy striker Toni scored his sixth league goal this season with a close-range shot after a pass from Klose in the 40th. Klose and Toni have now scored 14 goals in the German first division, more than all other Bundesliga teams apart from Werder Bremen and Schalke.
The win moved Bayern four points clear of Schalke — which beat Hertha Berlin 1-0 Friday — and dropped Leverkusen from second to fourth place with 14 points.
"That was our biggest test this season up to now," Bayern coach Ottmar Hitzfeld said. "I am very happy over the way we pulled out a very close match and took home three hard-fought points."
Leverkusen had six players age 22 or younger.
"I’m still happy with my team’s performance — that was a great performance," Leverkusen coach Michael Skibbe said,
Bremen produced the biggest Bundesliga rout in 19 years, beating Arminia Bielefeld 8-1. Six different players scored, with two apiece from Hugo Almeida and Boubacar Sanogo.
Leverkusen was denied two early chances by Bayern goalkeeper Michael Rensing, who replaced the injured Oliver Kahn in goal.
Rensing charged far out of his goal in the 25th minute to stop the unmarked Stefan Kiessling and prevent the German forward’s fifth goal in four games. Six minutes later, Rensing did the same to Gustavo Vidal.
"If you have chances like that, you have to take them against a team like Bayern, Otherwise you will be chasing them for 90 minutes," Leverkusen sports director Rudi Voeller said.
Voeller and Skibbe have rebuilt Levekusen, after they earlier teamed up to coach Germany to the 2002 World Cup final.
Klose should have been given a goal in the 13th as his attempt ricocheted from the crossbar straight down. TV replays showed the ball landed inside the line by at least six inches.
Bremen moved to fifth place in the most one-sided affair since Bayern thrashed Schalke 8-1 on April 9, 1988.
Bremen easily won despite still waiting for regulars like Germany midfielders Torsten Frings and Tim Borowski to get fit.
Peter Niemeyer scored in the 17th, Almeida in the 35th and 88th, Sanogo in the 41st and 44th, Markus Rosenberg in the 66th and Diego in the 85th. Germany defender Per Mertesacker also gave himself a gift on his 23rd birthday by heading in a goal in the 59th.
"At the end it was easy for us, practically every shot went in," Mertesacker said. "But we need the confidence boost for Wednesday’s Champions League match against Olympiakos."
Stuttgart stumbled ahead of its Champions League match home match against FC Barcelona, falling 2-1 to Hansa Rostock.
Rostock won its third game this week, a huge turnaround after the east German side went a Bundesliga record five games without a point to open the season. The goals came from Tobias Rathgeb in the 16th and Orestes two minutes later.
Mario Gomez pulled one back in the 73rd minute for Stuttgart, which fell to ninth place.
In other games, it was: Hamburg 2, Wolfsburg 2; Bochum 3, Nuremberg 3; and Karlsruher SC 3, Borussia Dortmund 1.