The Bundesliga is now so old that there really isn’t anything that hasn’t existed before. In the person of Stefan Kießling, she once set a goal into the world that wasn’t a goal at all. The Bundesliga even produced, which sounds even more incredible, a German champion called Hamburger SV. What has not existed in almost sixty years: a team that is no longer part of the Bundesliga after just eight games.
No, SpVgg Greuther Fürth will not stop playing even after the 0: 1 against VfL Bochum. According to all that can be heard, the newcomer will compete at RB Leipzig next week – it can even be assumed that the Fürth will also play the remaining 25 games. But if you sat in the stands of the Fürth stadium on Saturday afternoon, you got the impression after the final whistle: So a little relegated, that’s the Spielvereinigung already now.
The people of Fürth hadn’t counted on just one point
When it was over, when the Fürth team had lost for the seventh time in this young season, the players ran to their fans, but stopped shortly before the sixteenth, almost as if they weren’t allowed to cross the penalty area line. There they stood and looked into the curve, the applause from the fans was something pitiful.
Half an hour later, Branimir Hrgota was sitting in the media room of the Fürth stadium and had to answer difficult-to-answer questions: Who does the team want to win against if they don’t even win at home against Bochum? Now that the eighth Bundesliga game did not bring the first win, is there a certain perplexity? And, the question also arises: Can you still be happy when there is another game on the weekend? Hrgota, 28, accepted the questions, one after the other, and when Fürth’s captain got up he looked somehow relieved.
“We have to think positively,” Hrgota had ordered, without radiating positivity. “Football is a very, very nice sport,” Hrgota said, without the team offering the spectators very, very nice football.
Even before the first game, it was clear to the Fürthers that they would lose more often than they win this year – but that they are now at the bottom of the table with only one point after the first quarter of the season, they hadn’t expected that. Stefan Leitl said: “It’s a situation that we have prepared for. That’s why I’m not getting restless.” Fürth’s coach also revealed: “Of course I question myself. I don’t make it easy for myself and point to others.”
In mid-October there is already a hint of apocalyptic mood in Fürth
His team approached the 90 minutes against Bochum with high hopes. At home against a team that has to cope with just as modest means and has lost four of the last five games – it should be something with the first win of the season. In the end, it was a standard situation that tipped the balance in favor of Bochum in a tough football duel: Ten minutes before the end, Anthony Losilla hit his head after a free kick by the former Nürnberger Eduard Löwen. It was the only goal of the afternoon, the goal that later made the players stop at the penalty area line and the spectators clap pityingly.
Anyone who closely observed the scenes after the final whistle could hardly help but notice a hint of the end of the world mood as early as mid-October. After an exhilarating year in the second division, it only took three months for everything to turn. A preparation without a win, the end of the DFB Cup at regional league team Babelsberg – and now eight Bundesliga games with just one point: Fürth is already badly hit.
When Hrgota left the media room early on Saturday evening and cleared his seat for Leitl, Fürth’s trainer also had to answer unpleasant questions. The problems with set pieces, the stuttering offensive game, there were several topics that Leitl talked about. In the end it got philosophical. How do you earn happiness? Leitl was asked. Fürth’s coach thought for a moment, then said: “Through commitment, that’s definitely there.” Short break. “And through discipline and an indomitable will. If we get that onto the pitch, luck will jump on our side again.”
The 0: 1 against Bochum, however, and Leitl said that too, was not a question of luck or bad luck.
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