NJust two days after the extremely warm welcome from the new coach Pellegrino Matarazzo, disillusionment has set in at TSG 1899 Hoffenheim – almost horror. The 45-year-old successor to André Breitenreiter, who was on leave, had a bitter debut for TSG in the Bundesliga in Sinsheim on Saturday: in the 1-3 (0-1) loss to Bayer Leverkusen in Sinsheim on Saturday, the Kraichgauers acted like a relegated team for a long time. The streak of games without a win rose to ten.
“Of course I hoped that we would approach the game more freely,” admitted Matarazo. “But this is no problem. Next week we will roll up our sleeves and get to work.” On Friday the crisis club will go to FC Augsburg – who recently defeated Leverkusen. “The first 60 minutes were bad,” admitted new signing Thomas Delaney. The 31-year-old former man from Bremen and Dortmund had a long discussion with Matarazzo on the lawn and then demanded: “It’s time we were a little more honest with each other.” poor. We have to be extremely vigilant.”
Because in the table, the former European Cup aspirant is further than table 14. equal on points with VfL Bochum. Four months after leaving VfB Stuttgart, Matarazzo now has a very difficult task ahead of him. In the end he was “happy and a bit grateful” that his team still had a reasonable phase at least in the final phase: “It was only from the 65th minute that we started to play a certain kind of football, where you say: Okay, we can do that build up.”
“Let everyone lead the way!”
In front of just 20,619 spectators, Robert Andrich (6th minute), Moussa Diaby (47th) with his seventh goal of the season and Adam Hlozek (56th) scored the goals for a sovereign Bayer team. The Leverkusen team celebrated their first win in the second half of the season – just in time for the Europa League game against AS Monaco on Thursday. Stanley Nsoki shortened to 1: 3 (77th).
On Thursday, Hoffenheim welcomed the new head coach full of hope, very popular as Julian Nagelsmann’s former assistant and an old acquaintance in the club. Now the new head coach, sports director Alexander Rosen, the fans and probably above all the players were left with the realization that the relegation battle will not be over so quickly.
“We can stabilize quickly and make our way up,” Matarazzo said to Sky immediately before kick-off and demanded: “Everyone should go ahead!” But TSG had too many failures like Ihlas Bebou, Dennis Geiger and Angeliño . The offensive forces Andrej Kramaric and Christoph Baumgartner rubbed themselves off in vain. At the back, the new defense chief John Brooks and his teammates fell from one embarrassment to the next. After a 1:4 against Mönchengladbach and a 2:5 in Bochum still under Breitenreiter, the next heavy setback came.
The fact that the players had also sat down internally makes Matarazzo “very optimistic”. But the team will not get out of there with a fight alone: “We need a defensive game and stability, where we allow fewer chances to score, and play football at the same time. We are not a knocker team.”
