Europa League winner Eintracht Frankfurt celebrated a flattering victory at the start of the year in the Bundesliga and caused a lot of frustration at bottom FC Schalke 04.
Coach Oliver Glasner's team climbed to second place in the table with a 3-0 (1-0) win on Saturday.
A week before the summit at FC Bayern Munich, the Hessians reduced the gap to the leaders and champions to five points.
At the same time, the Champions League round of 16 overtook their next opponent, SC Freiburg.
In front of 50,000 spectators, the Danish World Cup participant Jesper Lindström initially scored the lead in the 22nd minute for the still unsorted Frankfurt team.
Substitute Colombian Rafael Borré and Aurélio Buta added late in his first competitive game for Frankfurt (84th/90th + 1).
The courageous Schalke team of head coach Thomas Reis is still standing after 16 games with only two wins and nine points and has to digest another setback.
The Swiss attacker Michael Frey, who was loaned out from the Belgian first division club Royal Antwerp on Friday, sat on the bench for a good 70 minutes for the number one relegation candidate, who was badly battered in terms of personnel, but was unable to prevent the defeat as a joker.
Many eyes were on Randal Kolo Muani among Eintracht fans: the French World Cup runner-up, who missed a great chance against Argentina in the final in Qatar, drew attention to himself after just five minutes.
The 24-year-old stormed freely in the direction of Schalke goalkeeper Alexander Schwolow, but twisted.
Glasner had already chosen a very offensive orientation around Mario Götze.
Lindstrom takes the lead
"We have a complicated game ahead of us," the Eintracht coach had warned - and he was right: The outsider from Gelsenkirchen started aggressively and had the better room allocation.
But then Danish World Cup participant Lindström fooled his opponent Henning Matriciani and gave Schwolow no chance to make it 1-0 – his seventh goal of the season.
Simon Terodde and Sichiro Kozuki could have turned the game around within a few minutes before the change, but the ball hit the post twice.
The Frankfurt defense around the Croatian Hrovje Smolcic didn't look particularly safe.
Even after the break, Schalke kept putting the hosts under pressure with the strong U21 national player Tom Krauß: Keeper Kevin Trapp saved again against Kozuki on the first offensive action.
Then Terodde headed over the bar.
Schalke seamlessly continued the passable performances before the start of the winter break against Bremen (1:2), Mainz (0:1) and FC Bayern (0:2).
However, the guests did not manage to get the well-deserved equalizer.
Borré and Buta then decided the game.
Frankfurt remained unbeaten against the Royal Blues in their eleventh home game in a row since March 2010.
And the Eintracht supporters happily sang: "German champions – only the SBU!"