Swiss goalkeeper Jonas Omlin had to turn 29 to finally play in the Bundesliga. “The Bundesliga has always been a dream of mine,” he said on Sunday evening. Before this long-awaited debut game, he called his predecessor, who switched to FC Bayern Munich, and fellow Swiss national team member Yann Sommer several times to get some advice. “Yann told me I would have a lot of fun playing in the Gladbach stadium,” said Omlin – but he didn’t look like he was having fun at the moment.
On Sunday evening, when his dream of the Bundesliga came true, as did Sommer’s prophecy about the beautiful stadium atmosphere, Jonas Omlin conceded 0-1 in the 21st minute, 0-2 in the 43rd minute and 0 in the 67th minute :3. “The felt first three shots from Leverkusen were all in,” regretted Borussia Mönchengladbach coach Daniel Farke afterwards and explicitly expressed his sympathy for Omlin. “The boy couldn’t help it, he couldn’t distinguish himself either.”
For a Swiss goalkeeper, for whom a football dream comes true in Mönchengladbach on the Lower Rhine, Bayer Leverkusen are a really thankless opponent. Omlin saw his frontmen lose balls repeatedly and then he saw lightning-fast Leverkuseners running at him and taking their chances coldly: first Mitchel Bakker, then Amine Adli and finally Nadiem Amiri. “Leverkusen’s speed was impressive,” said Omlin.
Was he still able to enjoy the evening in the sold-out Borussia Park with more than 53,000 spectators? “Except for the result, yes,” he said bravely. The result became more bearable when Lars Stindl reduced the deficit to 2:3 in the 82nd and 93rd minutes. In the last attack in the 96th minute, Omlin even went forward, but he was not granted the equalizer. He has never scored a goal. “I’m working on it,” he said.
Omlin has big shoes to fill. Yann Sommer was in Gladbach for eight and a half years, he became one of the best Bundesliga goalkeepers here and he was one of the biggest crowd favorites in Borussia Park. For the good eight million euros that Gladbach received for the 34-year-old from FC Bayern Munich, they signed Omlin, five years his junior, from Montpellier. A good exchange, a change of perspective. Omlin received a contract until 2027.
Borussia is not stable, but Leverkusen is
For the Gladbachers, where some secretly dream of qualifying for a European Cup competition, the gap to the necessary places in the table is increasing. They have only won two of the last seven Bundesliga games, and they were also eliminated from the DFB Cup. Meanwhile, home wins against Leipzig (3-0), Cologne (5-2) and Dortmund (4-2) kept the atmosphere going. But the Borussia are not stable.
Unlike the Leverkusen. Having started the season with three defeats and still second to bottom on matchday eight under coach Gerardo Seoane, Spaniard Xabi Alonso consolidated the Bayer game from October. Most recently there were four victories in a row in the Bundesliga, which means that the team is now in a single-digit place in the table for the first time this season. It’s only the ninth, okay, but the race to catch up with the dream goal of the Champions League shouldn’t be over yet.
Back after his cruciate ligament rupture and immediately a beacon of hope: Leverkusen’s Florian Wirtz (right).
(Foto: Wunderl/Beautiful Sports/Imago)
Leverkusen have high hopes for 19-year-old Florian Wirtz, who had been out for ten months since March last year due to a torn cruciate ligament in his left knee. Although his knee is healthy again, at the end of last week Wirtz had to take a break from training due to illness, which is why he was only able to come on late in Mönchengladbach. Bayer led 3-0 when Wirtz celebrated his comeback in the 75th minute to the cheers of the fans who had traveled with him, but just as he was back on the pitch Gladbach closed the gap to 2-3. But they don’t blame their young star for this recklessness. Rather, they hope to get the playful impulses from him that should lead them further up the table. “He takes us to another dimension,” said goalkeeper Lukas Hradecky on Sunday evening, sounding like a trailer from a science fiction film.
But Leverkusen’s race to catch up in the European Cup target zone is not fiction. The clubs up there keep making mistakes, while Bayer is becoming more and more stable under coach Alonso. On Wednesday they welcome VfL Bochum, who have won three times in a row. Then Florian Wirtz could be back in the starting eleven for the first time in almost a year. It would be another important motivating factor for Leverkusen.
