Khedira helps Stuttgart steal point against Bayern

Soccer Betting Lines

12/13/2008 - Stuttgart, Germany (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Sami Khedira scored twice, including the tying goal in the 90th minute, and Stuttgart tied 10-man Bayern Munich 2-2 in the German Bundesliga on Saturday.

Bayern, which got goals from Tim Borowski and Luca Toni, still moved into first place with Hoffenheim idle but wasted a chance to put more pressure on the new Bundesliga club.

Hoffenheim hosts Schalke on Sunday needing just a tie to lead the league at the winter break.

Defending league champion Bayern was in great shape to take all three points at Mercedes-Benz Arena, but defender Massimo Oddo was red carded in the 85th. That helped Khedira add his second goal in the dying seconds of a half - he also had a goal on the last play of the first half.

Stuttgart slipped one spot to 10th, but is still just 10 points behind Bayern. The top five clubs - Bayern, Hoffenheim, Hertha Berlin, Hamburg and Leverkusen - are separated by just three points.

Khedira handed Stuttgart the lead off a corner in the last seconds of the first half, running onto a flicked on header from Matthieu Delpierre to head the ball into the left side past a diving Bayern goalie Michael Rensing.

Borowski, starting in place of injured French star Franck Ribery, tied the game in the 48th minute with a tap-in goal from close range. Bayern played a corner kick short and got the ball to Bastian Schweinsteiger on the top right edge of the area.

Schweinsteiger unleashed a shot that forced Jens Lehmann to make a diving save, but he gave up a rebound and Borowski picked up the easy goal for his fifth of the season.

Borowski set up the tying goal in the 66th, delivering a cross from the left to pick out Toni on the right. Toni didn't get a great touch on the ball, but his shot bounced in front of Lehmann and hoped over the diving goalie. Toni's goal was his ninth of the season.

Bayern was cruising toward the win until Oddo got a red card in the 85th minute for trying to win the ball with his studs inches from the face of Stuttgart's Christian Trasch.

Stuttgart pushed everyone forward in the final minutes, including Lehmann, but Khedira was the hero. He ran onto to a short punched corner from Rensing to hit a rocket just under the crossbar, a nearly unstoppable tying goal, in the 90th.

Bayern still extended its unbeaten streak to 16 straight games, including five Champions League games, but has to watch the scoreboard Sunday to see if it can hold onto the lead for the winter break.

Hertha Berlin quietly continued to take care of business and remain with close range of the top two clubs, getting three late goals to defeat Karlsruhe 4-0.

Maximilian Nicu opened the scoring for Hertha in the eighth minute, and Valeri Domovchiyski (74th), Fabian Lustenberger (86th) and Raffael (88th) capped the win to pull Hertha within two points of the top spot.

Hamburg also moved with two points of Bayern, getting a goal from Mladen Petric in the 59th minute to edge Eintracht 1-0.

Bayer Leverkusen's slide down the standings continued when Jiayi Shao scored in the 90th minute to give Energie a 1-1 draw. Bayer, which led the league a few weeks ago, is fifth.

Werder Bremen got a goal from Per Mertesacker and an own goal to edge Wolfsburg 2-1 to move up seventh, one spot ahead of Wolfsburg.

Nine-man Koln got goals from Kevin McKenna and Manasseh Ishiaku to edge Bochum 2-1 and Artur Wichniarek scored in the 59th and Arminia Bielefeld earned a 1-1 tie with Hannover to wrap up Saturday's matches.

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FOOTBALL BETTING : Crabtree's base deal: six years, $32 million

Football Betting

In the wake of the news that the 49ers have signed receiver Michael Crabtree after an extended holdout, there has been not a hint of the dollars to be paid to Crabtree.

And since this means that his agent hasn't leaked the numbers, it means that his agent feels no specific motivation to do so.

Possibly because his agent isn't all that thrilled to have his name on the deal.

So the numbers will come from sources other than Crabtree's agent. And we've gotten our mitts into them.

Per a league source, Crabtree has signed a six-year, $32 million contract. (The total includes guaranteed money, base salaries, and the one-time incentive based on achieving minimum playing time.)

The deal also includes $17 million in guaranteed money.

As reported elsewhere, the deal can void to five years based on performance triggers, wiping out a final year base salary of $4 million. But they won't be easily reached.

The source tells us that, in his first four seasons (including 2009), Crabtree must either qualify for two Pro Bowls, or he must qualify for one Pro Bowl in one year and he must participate in 80 percent of the offensive snaps in a separate year in which the team makes the playoffs.

In other words, if in 2010 he qualifies for the Pro Bowl and the team makes the playoffs and he participates in 80 percent of the snaps, he'll still need to make it to the Pro Bowl or achieve the 80-percent/playoffs in another season.

Since the chances of Crabtree making the Pro Bowl or participating in 80 percent of the offensive snaps this year is roughly zero percent, he'll have three years to get it done.

And it won't be easy. Frankly, he'll be hard pressed to make it to one Pro Bowl in three years with the likes of Larry Fitzgerald, Calvin Johnson, Anquan Boldin, Steve Smith, the other Steve Smith, Hakeem Nicks, DeSean Jackson, Johnny Knox, Percy Harvin, Greg Jennings, Roddy White, T.J. Houshmandzadeh in the same conference for sportsbook betting.

So, by all appearances, it's a six-year deal. And at $17 million in guaranteed money, the per-year guarantee is a tepid $2.83 million per year.

There's another problem with the deal -- it has no mid-tier incentive package. Instead, the additional $8 million that Crabtree can earn (pushing the max value to six years, $40 million) requires the kind of unrealistic, mega-star performances that no rookie is likely to ever achieve.

So while the contract paid to Packers defensive tackle B.J. Raji covers five years and pays $22.5 million, he has the ability (if he's a solid player) to make up the difference between his base deal and Crabtree's five-year, $28 million haul via the mid-tier incentive package in Raji's deal.

And unless Crabtree meets the performance thresholds necessary to void the sixth year, he'll be stuck under contract for another year at a base salary of only $4 million.

There's one other area of concern with the deal. Crabtree, per the source, received no option bonus. Instead, he has significant money tied to a fairly new device known as a "discretionary salary advance," which unlike an opition bonus is subject to forfeiture if Crabtree decides in a year or two that he wants to hold out for a better deal. (We're also told that the 49ers have included language that would make certain escalators subject to forfeiture, too.)

Meanwhile, the deal falls well short of the mark for which Crabtree and agent Eugene Parker were aiming -- the five-year, $38.25 million contract paid by the Raiders to receiver Darrius Heyward-Bey, the seventh overall pick in the draft.

Even if Crabtree successfully voids the final year, he'll make more than $2 million per year less on average than Heyward-Bey.

Thus, as we explained earlier in the day, this is a deal that Crabtree could have done in July, which would have given him a much better chance of making a contribution to the 49ers during his rookie year.

So while the final outcome can be described as win-win, the broader view suggests that it's really a lose-lose situation.

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