Nuernberg crush Frankfurt

Nuernberg will play the winner of Wednesday's semi-final between VfL Wolfsburg and Stuttgart on May 26 in the final at Berlin's Olympiastadion.

Marco Engelhardt put the Bavarians ahead in the third minute, pouncing on a loose ball in front of Oka Nikolov after the Frankfurt goalkeeper managed to only fist away a difficult shot from Russian international Ivan Saenko.

In front of a frenzied Nuremberg crowd of 47,000, Saenko doubled the lead for the hosts in the 25th minute.

He took a perfect pass through the Frankfurt defence on the right from Andreas Wolf and his crisp shot from the right went between Nikolov's legs.

Tomas Galasek made it 3-0 for Nuremberg, who were beaten 4-2 by Bayern Munich in 1982 when they last reached the Cup final, with a curling free kick around the Frankfurt wall into the top left corner in the 54th minute.

Substitute striker Chhunly Pagenburg's breakaway goal in the 89th minute made it 4-0 for Nuremberg, who have had an excellent second half of the season and have risen to fifth in the Bundesliga.

"We didn't play magic football but we deserved to win, even if 2-0 or 3-1 might have more accurately reflected the match," said Nuremberg coach Hans Meyer.

Frankfurt coach Friedhelm Funkel agreed.

"Nuremberg were simply better," he said. "Last year we beat them in the round of 16. This year they beat us. I hope they take the Cup so we can say we were beaten by the cup winners."

Frankfurt were beaten 1-0 in last year's final by Bayern Munich.