AAt the end we celebrated again in front of the fans. The Eintracht pros let themselves be celebrated verbally – and they had every reason to do so. The 2-0 win over Werder Bremen, which Frankfurt more than deserved thanks to goals from Marco Friedl (own goal in the eighth minute of the game) and Randal Kolo Muani (52nd), was in the duty fulfilled category.
From start to finish on Saturday evening in the arena, which was sold out with 50,000 spectators, there was not the slightest doubt that Eintracht would win. Sixth in the table, they are still hopeful in the race for international starting places and are already ahead of the seventh-placed “Wolves” of VfL Wolfsburg comfortable projection pad of eight points. “Task completed, keep your distance to the top,” said Markus Krösche after the home win. The Frankfurt sports director was quite relaxed when he praised the performance of the team in the catacombs of the arena and mentioned two players in particular when asked.
“Jakic did well, Max is getting in better and better.” The Croatian defender called up against Bremen never allowed the Werder attackers to develop in the back three, and the winger who recently switched from Eindhoven to Frankfurt was the starting point and initiator of both Frankfurt goals.
“You were unity”
“My team was disciplined and alert,” Eintracht coach Oliver Glasner praised his team’s performance. “It was absolutely great today, we did a great job and scored the goals at the right time.” For his Bremen colleague Ole Werner, the “deserved victory for Eintracht” was beyond question. “We don’t have to talk about it. We couldn’t do anything with possession today. We lacked conviction and courage.”
Before things really got going in the packed arena, there was a pause. The audience commemorated the recently deceased master player Friedel Lutz and the Holocaust survivor Helmut “Sonny” Sonneberg. Two outstanding men with a special meaning for Eintracht, which could also be read in large letters in the north-west curve. “Glory times, sad days, you were unity, no question.”
Blissful smile
It didn’t take long for the playing staff of the present to put themselves in the limelight against Werder. Loud applause erupted in the eighth minute when the ball was in the Bremen goal. After a free-kick from Philipp Max, the ball came to Kristijan Jakic on the right-hand goal line, who played back into the six-yard box – and just seconds later had a blissful smile on his face because the score was 1-0.
The stadium announcer mistakenly and probably in exuberance of feelings named the Croatian as the scorer. But it was more than obvious that Bremer Friedl had scored an own goal. Eintracht didn’t care. She was in the lead and rightly so. Because coach Glasner’s team invested more than the North Germans, who have played a good season so far as bold climbers.
It should be a very good season for Eintracht until the end of the season, because the crowd in the first third of the table for the international starting places is bigger and tighter than it has been for a long time. Sixth in the table, only two points behind a place in the Champions League, Eintracht is still in a good starting position. A higher lead against Werder would have been more reassuring, which would have been well deserved.
Alone: Eintracht didn’t manage to make the best chances to score a direct hit. In the twelfth minute, Mario Götze released Daichi Kamada in the blink of an eye – and the Japanese headed straight for the Bremen goal. But the 2-0 by the Japanese did not fall. And even when the hard-working Max served Ansgar Knauff perfectly, who was called up on the right wing in the starting XI, the Dortmund loanee didn’t make enough of this excellent opportunity with his head (28th minute). At the beginning of the four-minute stoppage time, it was Jesper Lindström who couldn’t complete the game with Max.
Ovation for Kolo Muani
It took seven minutes in the second half of the game for the still superior Eintracht Max to hit one of his many wonderful crosses on the left wing and Kolo Muani took the measure with his head, which Werder goalkeeper Jiri Pavlenka managed to thwart.
But when Knauff raised the ball back into the danger zone, the free-standing Frenchman only had to push in. So there it was, the 2-0, which made things clear early on in this comparison between two long-standing Bundesliga rivals. In the 68th minute, the spectators rose from their seats to pay their respects standing up for Kolo Muani.
Randal Kolo Muani (right) leaves the field, the spectators applaud.
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Image: dpa
For the man, who scored his tenth goal of the season against Werder, that evening was the end of the day. In anticipation of the upcoming premier class game on Tuesday (9 p.m. in the FAZ live ticker for the Champions League and on Amazon Prime Video) against Naples, Glasner took his storm insurance out of the game and brought in Rafael Borré. Three minutes before the official end, Götze and Lindström were allowed to say goodbye to the end of the day.
Werder could no longer pose a threat to Eintracht, and even when Niklas Füllkrug scored an alleged goal and the video referee was consulted, it was clear from the start: Bremen was offside. But unity is again and more in focus. “For us today, after the defeat in Cologne, it was an important game,” said Götze. “We can be satisfied.” Asked about European ambitions, the thinker and leader of the Eintracht game said: “International would be super nice, top four would be sensational.”