Levin Öztunali crossed from the right, but in the middle, where an addressee should have been, was only Rafal Gikiewicz. Augsburg’s goalkeeper was able to catch the ball without any effort. Nevertheless, the Mainz coach Jan-Moritz Lichte applauded: After all, an offensive cation. It was a scene that said a lot about the Mainz game at FCA and the situation at FSV as a whole.
In the end, the Mainz team had to say that their situation had deteriorated even further. The 1: 3 (0: 1) defeat at Augsburg led to the setting of two negative records: the one from the club’s history of having lost seven times in a row across seasons – and the worst start to the season in Bundesliga history, the one with six defeats the first six match days so far Fortuna Düsseldorf from the 1991/92 season alone led in the chronicle.
“Sleeper soccer” was shown in the first half, criticized Daniel Brosinski afterwards, clearly touching, “you could have changed all eleven.” The veteran, 32, who has played for Mainz for six years, described this passivity as “inexplicable”. There was also another alarming finding. “We didn’t do what the coach told us to do,” said Brosinski at Sky, “we have to work that up internally.” Lichte later confirmed his left-back’s point of view in the press conference, and the coach’s statements were also very worrying. “We didn’t stick to the ideas,” he said, explaining why the offensive game had hardly taken place in the first half. Some players had “their own ideas”. Before the home game next Saturday against the penultimate FC Schalke, we now have to “continue to work on getting an idea on the pitch,” said Lichte. That didn’t sound promising.
Ruben Vargas had put Augsburg in the lead with a nice overhead kick (40th), before Karim Onisiwo equalized (64th). But nothing came of the first point win, because André Hahn scored twice (80th / 90th + 1) to the well-deserved Augsburg victory after two defeats last. The FCA is doing well with ten points from six games. The only positive thing from Mainz’s point of view is that the competition barely scores at the bottom of the table.
Heiko Herrlich, Augsburg’s coach, had hinted before the game that it could be difficult to prove in the unfamiliar role of favorites against the bottom of the table whether the FCA had improved their possession game – that is one of the learning goals that he himself declared. To make matters worse for the FCA was the fact that striker Florian Niederlechner was not available due to a fiber tear in the abdominal muscles. For the former Mainz, Vargas moved into the starting line-up. He ran on the left wing, Hahn acted as a striker, otherwise more likely to be found on the right wing.
At 1-0, the FCA used a mixture of game design and counterstyle: After Jeffrey Gouweleeuw’s long diagonal pass, Iago’s conclusion was blocked, Vargas used the rebound from five meters to an overhead kick, which jumped into the Mainz goal as a touchdown. Shortly afterwards, the guests got their first chance, when Robin Quaison did not hit the ball properly seven meters in front of the goal, which was part of the picture of the previously very manageable Mainz appearance.
In the second half, Mainz tried to be more active. More aggressively, they disrupted the Augsburg structure and tried to increase their game shares and liven up the offensive. At first it remained an attempt. That only changed when Öztunali hit a ball in the middle again. This time he found a buyer in Onisiwo, who had just been substituted. The striker got the ball in front of the goal and pushed it through Gikiewicz’s legs to make it 1-1. When Onisiwo forced Gikiewicz to parade with another degree shortly afterwards, the impression that the FCA had increasingly given up a clearly controlled game was reinforced.
Only towards the end did the Augsburgers decide to correct this. Michael Gregoritsch missed the 2-1 when he just missed. Hahn made it better ten minutes before the final whistle after Iago had flanked and the substitute Alfred Finnbogason had put his head down. Mainz hung their heads, and they sank a little lower when the substitute Noah Sarenren Bazee overran the entire Mainz defense and hung up for Hahn, who scored the final score with his second goal of the afternoon. “We want to fix relegation as soon as possible,” said Hahn later about the good start to the season. The Mainz rather hope that they will manage to stay in the league at all.
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