Hofmann double in two minutes gives Leverkusen win at OFI Crete
Jonas Hofmann scored twice in the 35th and 37th minutes as Leverkusen won 2-0 at the Pankritio Stadium in the Europa League.
By Harvey Watkins,
Leverkusen won 2-0 at OFI Crete in the Europa League on Thursday, and the match was settled by Jonas Hofmann in the space of two minutes before half-time. He scored in the 35th minute and again in the 37th, and those were the only goals at the Pankritio Stadium.
Two goals in two minutes
For 34 minutes the Matchday 3 fixture, which kicked off at 16:45, was goalless. Then Hofmann put Leverkusen ahead, and before OFI Crete had long to absorb that, he had doubled the lead. A match that had been level was, by the 37th minute, one that asked the home side to score twice simply to draw.
The speed of it is the detail worth dwelling on. A single goal shortly before the interval changes a match. A second one two minutes later changes it again, and it removed any prospect of OFI Crete taking a narrow deficit into the break. They went in two behind.
A second half without goals
Nothing further was scored after the 37th minute. That leaves roughly 53 minutes of football, plus whatever was added on, in which OFI Crete did not find a way back and Leverkusen did not extend their advantage. The final score records who won and by how much. It does not, on its own, show how that period unfolded, and it would be guesswork to describe it in any more detail than that.
What the result does establish is that Leverkusen kept a clean sheet away from home, and that OFI Crete finished the night without a goal on their own ground.
Hofmann's evening
All of the scoring belonged to one player. Hofmann's two goals accounted for the full margin of victory, which makes this as clear an individual contribution as a 2-0 can produce. Both arrived in the same short passage of play, so his evening will be remembered for a two-minute burst rather than for anything spread across the full ninety.
There is a particular value in goals that arrive so close together. The first gave Leverkusen the lead, but the second turned a slender advantage into a cushion, and it was that cushion which OFI Crete never managed to reduce.
What it means
For Leverkusen, this was an away win in Europe by two clear goals, achieved without conceding. For OFI Crete, it was a home defeat in which the damage was done in a brief spell and never repaired.
A single result is a narrow base for wider judgements, and one match is not enough to say much about either side's direction in the competition. What can be said without stretching is that the decisive moments came close together, that one man supplied both of them, and that the remaining hour or so did not alter the outcome.