SFor seven match days, Union Berlin amazed the entire football nation as the Bundesliga leaders, it was a very special time that has now come to an end. Top club Bayer Leverkusen, threatened with relegation, defeated the previously extremely stable team from the capital 5-0 on Sunday thanks to a wild second half. Before this match day, coach Urs Fischer had praised the team for their strong defense, which only allowed nine goals to be conceded. Now Union had to accept five more goals within 30 minutes. Former Berliner Robert Andrich (46th minute), twice Moussa Diaby (56th, 58th), Nadiem Amiri (68th) and Mitchell Bakker (76th) scored the goals for the “Werkself”, who ended a day could celebrate the great liberation.
At first everything had started the way it had so often in the past few weeks. Leverkusen have stabilized defensively after the change of coach, but the attacking game before the break was a tragedy that day as well. The scenes that took place on the training ground in front of the arena before kick-off were more exciting than the completely uneventful first half of the game. Florian Wirtz completed a training session there and appeared very agile and fit.
The Leverkusen national player has not yet been called up for his team, after tearing his cruciate ligament Wirtz is “on the way to full team training,” reported sports director Simon Rolfes. But it cannot be ruled out that the exceptional 19-year-old footballer will be there for the first time this season for the game at 1. FC Köln on Wednesday. Even a World Cup nomination is still possible, Rolfes explained: “Not as long as Hansi Flick’s final list is different, you can always have hope.”
“Satisfied” with the development
It sounded as if national coach Flick had signaled that he would like to take Wirtz with him to Qatar, if that is somehow responsible. After all, such a special player can also help if he appears in the final phase of a game with two good ideas. In this game against Union, however, the convalescent would not have found the best conditions for a comeback. Because the Berliners lived up to their reputation as a team that works in a particularly rustic way and, when in doubt, very consciously stops opposing attacks by playing fouls.
With this stylistic device, coach Fischer’s team stopped several promising attacks by Leverkusen before the break, whose coach Xabi Alonso was just as annoyed by inaccuracies by his own players. “I’m here for four weeks, of course we need more time,” he said before the game. After the break it was finally clear why the Spaniard said several times that he was “satisfied” with the development of his team.
Suddenly the combination game worked, the Leverkusen team won more and more duels and, with their intensive style of play, forced the leaders of the table, who had now fallen, to make mistakes. The best example was Jeremie Frimpong winning the ball before the 2-0, when the Dutchman won a tackle against Berlin goalkeeper Lennart Grill, who was well in front of his goal, so that Diaby didn’t have to go past a goalkeeper to score. That was the final breakthrough for the Rhinelanders, who travel to Cologne on the other side of the Rhine on Wednesday, where they can finally end the crisis with a derby victory and a Wirtz comeback.