Werder lose 2-1 against Paderborn

After going undefeated in their first five games of the season preparations, Werder Bremen suffered their first loss against SC Paderborn. The second division side, which begins their season in five days, won 2-1, going ahead in the first half through Deniz Yilmaz before Zlatko Junuzovic equalised for Bremen only to see Paderborn pick up their play and Thomas Bertels score to give Paderborn the victory.

Under perfect football conditions, the beginning of the game was just average before the hosts took the lead 1-0 in the 35th minute as Yilmaz, a newcomer to Paderborn, collected the ball on the right side, got past Lukimya and beat keeper Wolf, who got his hand on the ball but could not keep it out of his goal. The 1-0 deficit at halftime was the first time in the preparations that Werder trailed at the break.

Werder began the second half with a lot of motivation. Niklas Füllkrug was taken down just at the border of the area for a good free kick position in the 48th minute but Aaron Hunt's attempt went into the wall. And Marko Arnautovic's blast five minutes later went wide of the goal.

Junozovic was much better shortly thereafter as Werder's number 16 hit home a cross by Florian Hartherz with his heel to make it 1-1 in the 58th minute. The game settled down after that point but the hosts had one more surprise for Werder. Paderborn increased the pressure and then Stephen Schmidt's team was able to convert a counter attack with Diego Demme playing a long ball to Bertels, who got past Stevanovic on the right side of the Bremen defence and then beat Wolf with a low shot to make it 2-1 in the 73rd minute.

The Green-Whites struggled to come back from the deficit and Paderborn kept up the pressure and retained the lead until the end with a 2-1 victory - the first test match defeat of the young season. Werder's next test comes on 4 August in the Liga-total-Cup in Hamburg against Bayern Munich.