Cologne vs. Hoffenheim in the Bundesliga: Run, Linton, run – Sport

Maserati, Lamborghini, Ferrari. Comparing players to cars can quickly seem inappropriate, but in the case of TSG Hoffenheim it helps to better explain this enigmatic club. The club affords a squad that has considerable quality on paper. Many Bundesliga coaches would kiss a few players immediately. It’s like a fleet of luxury cars that are too expensive to move in the rain. During the game in Cologne, the names of experts such as Kramaric, Rutter, Kaderabek and Akpoguma were noted – all of whom, mind you, were just sitting on the bench when the game kicked off.

A Bundesliga season has 306 games – impossible and yes, unnecessary to remember them all. A 1-1 draw between Cologne and Hoffenheim sounds like a match that’s easy to forget. But in truth, this game was a great pleasure. The guests didn’t seem to have really understood what their trainer André Breitenreiter had given them; they preferred to stick to the facts, which said: 1. FC Köln have too many injuries (nine) and also played far too many games for the end of October; 52 hours before kick-off, the FC players were still struggling in the Conference League in a Czech town called Uherske Hradiste. And of the last eight duels against Hoffenheim, Cologne had lost exactly eight, FC only has a worse record against FC Bayern.

Then what happened? Cologne ran and ran – and Hoffenheim followed. The hosts covered more than 122 kilometers, nobody was as fast as Linton Maina, who was blitzed at 34.5 km/h and allowed the hosts a tactical device that was long considered outdated: the Cologne team hit long passes into the room the high Hoffenheim defense chain, and then the still fairly unknown Maina rushed off, shot himself or set colleagues in scene, as in the 1-0 by Florian Kainz (13th minute).

Hoffenheim’s coach Breitenreiter lets his players suffer a bit

Hoffenheim’s defensive boss Kevin Vogt – still ambivalent in Cologne’s memory because he prefers to distribute the ball with his outside instep – was duped twice as if in a farce. One felt reminded of the legendary stoner comedy “Up in Smoke”, in which a VW Beetle appears behind the swanky Rolls-Royce radiator section. Similarly, Maina, 23, also dealt with Vogt’s partner Stanley N’Soki. His trainer André Breitenreiter looked at everything calmly, the unexpected equalizer by Bruun-Larsen (36th) gave him time for it. Maybe he wanted to make his players suffer a little for not following his instructions.

Or he saw that Maina was often too fast for himself and his lines rarely arrived. “If the finish and passing game were as outstanding” as his tempo runs, “Maina wouldn’t play for 1. FC Köln,” he wrote Cologne City Gazette aptly.

After the break, Breitenreiter then put the brakes on the fun by bringing Kevin Akpoguma, who is hardly slower than Maina and, on top of that, let the man from Cologne run up with a cold smile, as if he were a fairly agile buffer. Nevertheless, it was obvious that in the end no TSG defender from the starting lineup was still on the pitch: N’Soki was redeemed at half-time, Vogt was injured and Ozan Kabak, 22, sacrificed himself when he was the last man to catch Florian Dietz, who was hurrying away fallen (87th), who soon had to be replaced injured as number ten on the Cologne disabled list. Nevertheless, Steffen Baumgart refrained from sending Rijad Smajic (18 years old/shirt number 46), Joshua Schwirten (20/45), Georg Strauch (21/48) or Maximilian Schmid (19/43) onto the pitch from the makeshift substitute bench .

At this point, Breitenreiter had finally opened up its fleet. The fresh Rutter and Kramaric should make the cynical punchline against the Cologne team, who are now on reserve. And indeed, in the fifth minute of added time, Kramaric appeared on the left of the six-yard box and pushed the ball past FC goalkeeper Schwäbe – but also just past the post. The draw was fair. The only unfair thing is that the Solomonic result of the 108th game of the season covered up what an adventure such a 1-1 can offer.