A breath of 2021 wafted through the basement of the Weser Stadium, where the analyzes are made after home games of SV Werder Bremen. 24th matchday, 30 points, a lot of room for the relegation zone, Bremen have experienced all this before, almost exactly two years ago. A spring and a measly point later, they were relegated, second to last with 31 points and only for the second time in their Bundesliga history. It was a traumatic experience for the club.
If football were just a game of numbers, statistics and tables, the supporters of the traditional north German club would now have to worry, because statistically they are even worse off after the 2-3 win against Bayer Leverkusen on Sunday evening than they were in the relegation season back then. They’ve lost a lot more games than they did at the same time, conceded a lot more goals and they were 12 points clear of relegation place 17 then – now it’s just 10. And there isn’t even a Schalke 04 that can at least take last place for sure this time. Even Schalke today is better than Schalke then.
So where is the pointer on the Bremen Panic Barometer?
The one who always turns himself up in such situations is Niclas Füllkrug, 30, top scorer in the Bundesliga, best player at SV Werder and also the best man on the pitch against Leverkusen on Sunday. Füllkrug provided the template for Marvin Ducksch’s 1-0, converted a late handball penalty to make it 2-3, and was also exhausted in 22 duels – no other professional on the pitch has thrown himself into more man-to-man duels than he has. So Füllkrug can feel the pulse of the Bremen game very well, he did, and the diagnosis was: “We have to be careful.”
After the 1-2 draw in Augsburg, Bremen have now left the field for the second time in a row, but by no means only for the second time this season. Again and again they meet teams that are significantly better in terms of quality, only to lose in the end. According to Füllkrug, there was “a certain consistency in these individual mistakes and drowsiness”, which is why it was easy for Leverkusen to praise Werder afterwards (“We made life very difficult for us today”, goalkeeper Hradecky; “they really played well”, defender Tah) – but also to take the three points.
Ole Werner sees “a difference in the penalty areas” against Leverkusen
When Leverkusen equalized to make it 1-1, the ball flew unchallenged through the Bremen penalty area to Mitchell Bakker, who hammered it into the goal; at 2:1 Niklas Stark unluckily deflected a shot from Jeremy Frimpong, at 3:1 the ball also landed deflected by a player from Bremen and landed on goal scorer Adam Hlozek. Bremen’s coach Ole Werner afterwards “made a difference in the penalty areas”, because such mishaps did not happen to the Leverkusen team, which is why Bremen had to shoot quite freely next to (Ducksch) or over (Jens Stage) the goal.
“It has been with us throughout the season that we make far too many mistakes at the back,” Ducksch complained afterwards, only VfL Bochum (56) conceded more goals than Bremen (46). But because Werder now have to work much harder on offense in order to be successful themselves, they have lost the implicitness of being able to turn a game around at any time. The late, game-winning Werder goals are a phenomenon from the first half of the season and are already history. So Werder can’t wrest a dirty draw from teams like Frankfurt recently or Leverkusen on Sunday, which had traveled without Florian Wirtz and Patrick Schick, even after the European Cup.
In the coming games, Bremen will now have to rely on the fact that their clear playing system – which may make the decisive difference to the gray-mouthed 2020/21 relegation season – has always been good enough to keep teams from the last third of the Bundesliga at bay. However, Fullkrug warned, there could be “no flow” at the moment due to constant changes due to injuries, suspensions or illnesses. At least ten times you always had to start with a different starting eleven. “Flow” is one of the favorite words of former coach Florian Kohfeldt. A team is in flow when it can cover up the unpredictability of a football game with its own certainties because the processes are taken for granted.
At the moment, however, as the current coach Werner pointed out, this is not the case in training with the squad reduced to “14, 15 players”: “If the training quality differs so significantly from the game as it has in the last three or four weeks , then it’s difficult to develop.” Or just to find the “flow” – so that history does not repeat itself.
