Werder Bremen halted their five-match losing streak with a 2-1 home victory over bottom club Hertha Berlin.
Battling Hertha suffer narrow defeat
Werder Bremen halted their five-match losing streak with a 2-1 home victory over bottom club Hertha Berlin at the Weserstadion.
The win breathed life into Werder's fading hopes of European qualification and came thanks to goals from Marko Marin and Claudio Pizarro, with Theofanis Gekas quickly cancelling out the home side's opener.
Hertha remain seven points off safety, although they made Werder work hard for the three points.
The hosts had a lucky escape on the half hour mark when Hertha had a goal wrongly disallowed. Adrian Ramos made space for himself and played a brilliant through-ball to Gekas, who was level with the last defender and finished smartly, only for the referee's assistant to raise his flag.
The breakthrough came in the 66th minute when Ozil's attempted shot was charged down by Lukasz Piszczek and sat up nicely for Marin, who despatched a sweet volley past Jaroslav Drobny.
However, the lead was short-lived as Gekas pounced from close range after Pizarro and goalkeeper Tim Wiese failed to clear a free-kick into the box.
The Peruvian made up for his error, and for a number of earlier misses, when he brought Torsten Frings' free-kick into the box under control and drilled a low left-foot shot past Drobny with nine minutes left for his eighth goal in 11 starts.
