“Aggressiveness, intensity – everything was missing. That was a cheek”
1. FC Cologne – SV Werder Bremen: DOOH [WELT]
The start of the year turned out to be a historic debacle for Bremen. The criticism after the bankruptcy was correspondingly clear. After fighting the shock, Werder should quickly notice that the first three goals conceded follow a fatal pattern for the promoted team.
AWhen the Bremen pros trotted into the dressing room with vacant looks, only the speed of their movement had changed. They had already seemed bewildered and shocked during the second half. Werder’s players just seemed happy that everything was finally over.
With the 1: 7 at 1. FC Köln they had made possible the highest bankruptcy that their club had suffered in the past 36 years. The result was a historic low: Bremen conceded at least six goals for the 22nd time in a Bundesliga game, breaking the negative record set by Hamburger SV and Schalke 04. For the first time in a Bundesliga game, Bremen have conceded five goals before half-time, and Werder have never been so far behind after 45 minutes.
The comments after the final whistle of the debacle were correspondingly exceptional. “We don’t need to talk about anything, we were inferior in every respect,” said sports director Clemens Fritz after the game on “Sky”: “Aggressiveness, intensity, everything was missing.” That such a game was offered by his club was simply one “Insolence”. If you act like that, “you don’t win a game”.
Clear words after the clear defeat: Werder’s sports director Clemens Fritz
Source: dpa/Carmen Jaspersen
The reasons for the desolate start to the football year should be brought up by the analyzes of the coming days. However, there is hardly any time. Union Berlin comes to the Weserstadion on Wednesday.
But at least the first successful shots of the Cologne shooting festival were made possible by Bremen mistakes that follow a certain pattern. The goals conceded one, two and three resulted from ball losses in the build-up game, the 0:1 even as a result of a free kick in the opposing half. The promoted team has already conceded ten goals in this way – more than any other Bundesliga team.
“At least in the first 45 minutes we were still on the pitch from the structure,” escaped coach Ole Werner, who could not find anything positive without gallows humor: “That was an underground performance.”
Tigges benefits from the Bremen problem
They didn’t want or couldn’t go that far into detail right after the end of the game. “We missed everything that could be missed,” said Marco Friedl, while one of the mistakes made the most beautiful goal of the evening possible.
“I just had to try,” said Steffen Tigges after his goal from 46.7 meters in the 21st minute. “That speaks for the game and the team performance, because the ball just had to go in.” No player in the Bundesliga had ever scored from this distance this season.
Bremen’s Mitchell Weiser, who grew up in Cologne’s youth, had put his goalkeeper Jiri Pavlenka in trouble with a back pass into nowhere. Pavlenka saved the ball well in front of his goal, but played it in the middle of Tigges’ foot. The 24-year-old took the ball over the halfway line and then shot it into an empty goal. Individual sloppiness and a lack of security – two topics that should definitely be on the agenda in Bremen on Sunday.
