Twente leave it late to defeat Bremen

FC Twente scored twice in the final nine minutes to beat SV Werder Bremen and record their first UEFA Champions League win.

Twente capitalised after Bremen captain Torsten Frings had been sent off 15 minutes from time. Luuk de Jong's 84th-minute header set the seal on victory after Nacer Chadli's deflected shot had broken the deadlock just three minutes before to give the Dutch champions' ambitions of reaching the knockout stages a major boost.

Bremen had come through last season's UEFA Europa League tie between the pair thanks to an explosive start at home in the second leg and although they again began brightly, an end product to their promising approach play was conspicuously absent.

Twente had significantly less of the ball but threatened to do more with it. Chadli's angled cross allowed Marc Janko to stretch Bremen's third-choice goalkeeper Sebastian Mielitz with a header before the Austria forward twice burst clear only to be halted by a pair of impeccably timed challenges from Wesley.

As Bremen's unfamiliar back four, which not only featured Wesley but also fellow midfielder Frings, just about held Twente at bay, the German hosts' vaunted attack came desperately close to putting them ahead. Claudio Pizarro's low shot ricocheted off a post and Hugo Almeida was unable to turn the ball in with the goal unguarded.

Mielitz had already denied Bryan Ruiz before half-time and the 21-year-old produced an even better stop to prevent Chadli's acrobatic effort just after the restart. Chadli did get the better of the home goalkeeper soon after, but the same post that had denied Pizarro in the first half this time come to Bremen's rescue.

Nikolay Mihaylov was also given the opportunity to shine in a frenetic spell, turning aside a fierce Wesley drive before compounding Almeida's frustrations by instinctively parrying a point-blank header and then stretching to dispossess the Portuguese international, who had escaped a static Twente rearguard.

The match, though, would tip definitively the visitors' way when Frings was sent off for hauling back Ruiz with the Costa Rican through on goal. First, Chadli exploited the greater space, cutting inside before firing a shot that deflected off Per Mertesacker to elude the prone Mielitz. Chadli was involved again as Twente gave themselves the ideal tonic ahead of their Matchday 5 trip to face FC Internazionale Milano, the Belgian forward flicking a delightful pass into the path of Ruiz, whose measured cross was headed in by the stooping De Jong.