DEintracht got the last chance to reward themselves with a title for their efforts this season. Now she still needs two more wins to be able to crown herself as the DFB Cup winner for the sixth time on June 3rd in Berlin’s Olympic Stadium. Coach Oliver Glasner’s team easily cleared the hurdle in the quarter-finals against Union Berlin on Tuesday evening. The Frankfurt team won 2-0 in front of their home crowd against the team, which is third in the Bundesliga and three places ahead of them in the table, and thus made it into the last four teams.
The semi-finals are scheduled for May 2nd and 3rd, they will be drawn this Sunday in the ARD sports show. For Eintracht, who recently gave a shaky picture in many respects, it was the first respectable sporting success since mid-February and seven games without a win. For Glasner, the desired result has the potential for a “liberation blow,” as he put it.
It could help to counteract the blazing mood of crisis in the club, which was significantly fueled by the leadership dispute at the top. This Wednesday there will be a showdown between board spokesman Axel Hellmann and supervisory board boss Philip Holzer, who will be moderated by club president Peter Fischer to explore whether and how they can still work together for the benefit of the club in the future. Against Union, both followed what was happening in the box area at a little distance from each other in the stands.
What they saw, among the 49,500 spectators, undoubtedly met their taste in football: Eintracht got off to a good start and didn’t give up later. She threw herself into the duels with determination, settled deep in the half of the Berliners and repeatedly created passing stations by changing positions – the ball circulated with them with speed and precision, which meant that the Unioners could not act independently and were forced to run after them.
High pressure
The pressure didn’t last long. Randal Kolo Muani, who was still centimeters short of a long-range shot in the 5th minute, scored the 1-0 (11th) with his left foot at full speed. He benefited from the noteworthy preparatory work of Mario Götze, who had forwarded a pass from Makoto Hasebe’s defense with a hoe.
And less than 120 seconds later, the goal-getter cheered again. Again it was Götze who paved the way for him, but at first it looked like the angle was too sharp and the distance too great to get past Lennart Grill between the Berlin posts. Kolo Muani tried it anyway – and his chutzpah paid off. The ball dropped in a high arc from the right side over Grill to make it 2-0 (13′).
Rafael Borré, his partner in attack with whom Kolo Muani alternated between striker and wingman roles, wasn’t nearly as lucky; the Colombian, in terms of his readiness for action, was also a terror for the Berliners, who he constantly stirred up. But he didn’t benefit from that in the penalty area.
More vitality
First referee Bastian Dankert took back the goal to make it 3-0 at the intervention of the video assistant, in which Borré, as the television picture revealed, was just offside (20th). His next attempt hit the bar in the 28th minute. Eintracht’s dominance meant that their keeper Kevin Trapp didn’t even have to tackle anything worth mentioning in the first half; 6:1 shots on goal, a ball possession rate of 65 percent and a corner ratio of 5:1 were an expression of Frankfurt’s activism.
Urs Fischer, the Berlin coach, reacted accordingly. He tried to give his team more vitality with a three-way substitution during the break. With Morton Thorsby, Paul Jaeckel and Sven Michel (for Diogo Leite, Paul Seguin and Janik Haberer), the appearance of the “Eisernen” actually looked more stable from then on and there weren’t quite as many gaps in midfield, but Frankfurt continued to dominate the beat. Kolo Muani in particular obviously had his fun and kept sprinting in all offensive zones of the field to give himself and his colleagues space. The fact that there were no further hits was one of the flaws in the Frankfurt performance. They could easily get over them.
