current status at Eintracht Frankfurt

AWhen Oliver Glasner asked his players to train under the bright sun in Dubai on Tuesday morning, only one person was missing: Sebastian Rode. The captain and for many also the face of Eintracht Frankfurt as a leader with irrepressible will initially only trained individually, but in the second session in the afternoon he completed the full workload on the pitch like his teammates.

That it pinches every now and then – currently more in the back, not so much in the knee – is nothing new at Rode. It should therefore not have surprised anyone how the 32-year-old midfielder recently described his future plans in a “Bild” interview: End of career in 2024 as soon as his contract expires. Hang in there for another year? “I would have to fall into a fountain of youth,” he said.

Rode has around 18 months if he doesn’t discover a miracle cure in his search for eternal youth, i.e. still to continue tinkering with his hero status in Frankfurt, which he has despite his interim move to Bayern Munich and then to Borussia Dortmund has acquired from many fans with its passion and its consistency.

It doesn’t take clairvoyance to predict that a reasonably fit Rode could become a key factor in their Champions League knockout rounds and international Bundesliga bid. As in the first part of the season before the World Cup in Qatar, he will not always be able to do his job right from the start. But the influence he can have on the outcome of a game as a substitute was not only shown by the captain in the matches at the end of the first half of the season against Sporting Lisbon and FSV Mainz 05, when he put his presence in the center of the sometimes seemingly unstructured game of his team purposefulness and new impetus.

Rode farewell just the beginning?

Eintracht has earned respect with their attacking football and their attack with the second most goals (32) in the Bundesliga. In the second half of the season, you will often meet opponents who rely on “robustness, a compact defense and quick switching”, said sporting director Markus Krösche on Tuesday at a media round in Dubai. Mainz 05 was a good example.

Creative players like Mario Götze, Daichi Kamada and Jesper Lindström are often expected to find solutions against such deep teams. But Rode, with his strategic abilities as an orderly force, is also a profitable element against teams that appear like this. It is an advantage for Eintracht that they now know so early on that Rode wants to end his career. That leaves plenty of time to find a replacement to fill the void he will leave on and off the pitch.

However, quite a few fear that his impending career end was just the beginning and that Eintracht could face a major upheaval in the center and beyond. On Tuesday there was “no new status” from Krösche on Kamada, Evan N’Dicka and Ansgar Knauff, whose contracts all expire at the end of the season, but statements by attacker Randal Kolo Muani that at least left room for speculation. When asked whether he would stay in Frankfurt beyond the summer, where he feels comfortable, Kolo Muani (contract until summer 2027) said on the TV channel “Sky”: “I don’t know what will happen tomorrow or in the next few days . I can’t answer that now.”

Previously, Krösche had made it clear that Eintracht would also reject an offer of more than 100 million euros this winter, before he later became more fundamental in a press round. He took the opportunity to get rid of a message that should have a calming effect: “We are extremely interesting for the players who are here, but also for players who play football elsewhere,” said Krösche, who told the players in the balanced Eintracht -Ensemble doesn’t want to set any ultimatums: “We’re not only successful, we’ve also shown that we can develop young players and raise them to a new level relatively quickly. All of this is perceived positively on the market.”

Eintracht and Krösche believe they are well prepared for all eventualities. When asked if he was afraid of the sell-out, Krösche replied that he was “not worried about Eintracht Frankfurt at all”. It is important to him that everyone who is in the training camp in the desert is “one hundred percent focused on Eintracht Frankfurt”: on the second half of the season and the big goals that the club has. The sports director has set the direction: “We’ve been showered with praise for six weeks now, that’s okay, but now it’s enough. The past is the past,” said Krösche: “Today and tomorrow are important.”