Dhat they have now: Hardly have the professional footballers of FSV Mainz 05 succeeded in a sensational victory against RB Leipzig with a rump eleven and a substitute bench with almost all U-23 players than they are favorites in the second Bundesliga matchday. The logic behind this point of view is simple: Whoever defeats the title candidate will also beat the promoted and relegated candidate VfL Bochum.
But: Football doesn’t work that easily. “Everyone expects us to dominate,” says coach Bo Svensson, “but we can judge it well. Bochum has a different style of play, plays in a different formation, tactically it will be very different. ”In addition, VfL are playing a first division home game for the first time in eleven years. “You can imagine what will be going on there. The fans will carry the team. “
Only limited conclusions can be drawn from the first encounter of the promoted team, after all, after the red card against Robert Tesche, Thomas Reis’s team was only ten on the field from the fourth minute on. The opponent analysis is still not a problem, says Svensson. “We know their games from the second division and from the cup” – in December 2020 the 05ers failed at home on penalties at VfL after they had given up a 2-0 lead in regular time. However, this still happened under Jan-Moritz Lichte; Svensson didn’t take over until January.
End of quarantine in sight
It looks like the Dane will have the same starting eleven at the Ruhrstadion as he did against Leipzig. Even if he will probably have more staff from the professional squad available again. Because on Friday, a large part of the 14 05er last withdrawn from circulation by the health department can hope for an end to house arrest.
“Those who are in quarantine as first-degree contact persons will do another PCR test tomorrow,” announced sports director Christian Heidel on Thursday. All those whose tests are negative should leave the quarantine during the day. Also Karim Onisiwo, who then spent exactly two weeks in isolation after testing positive before the cup game in Elversberg.
However, getting out of quarantine does not automatically mean getting into the game. “After so long without football training, we can’t plan with them for 90 minutes,” says Svensson. The performance against RB did not offer any reason to change the starting line-up, but it would do no harm to equip the bench in such a way that substitutions are not made within the last ten minutes if the team is similarly exhausted.
An aftermath has the exuberant joy that the team let go to the fans after the 1-0 win against Leipzig. And not in front of the fence, but in the block. “We have to accept the investigation that the DFB has initiated,” says Christian Heidel. Because the proceedings are pending, he does not want to go into it in detail and present the association’s arguments to the association via a press conference.
However, he hoped for a not too high sentence, emphasized Heidel with a view to the extraordinary situation and emphasized the “extenuating circumstances”. “All the players who went to the block were 100 percent vaccinated. And the fans they met were also vaccinated, or recovered, or tested. But I also admit that we had better ideas than going to the block. “
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