1. FC Nuremberg: After bankruptcy in Hanover, back in the relegation battle – Sport

At 1. FC Nürnberg, last Sunday should have caused just as little joy as Saturday. And after the depressing 0:3 (0:1) that the club endured, that means something. But on the day after the clear bankruptcy, Sandhausen, who had been beaten off until then, also won against Regensburg and thus ensured a table constellation that was not very edifying from a Nuremberg perspective: Four games before the end of the FCN is not only completely back in the relegation battle. He now has to keep an eye on all five clubs that rank below him in the table. Because they can all still pass the club.

A look at the upcoming opponents does not promise panic prevention: On the last day of the game, SC Paderborn comes fourth in the table, Rostock and Magdeburg need every point and just defeated favorites at the weekend. So it would be a good idea to win against Kaiserslautern on Sunday. Nominally, however, Hannover 96 would have been a team against which one could have aimed for a threesome without any megalomania – but not in the way the team acted on Saturday. Passable for 40 minutes, but harmless. And 50 minutes out of the question.

It would have been the icing on the cake of the humiliating evening if the fourth Hanoverian goal conceded by VAR had also counted. Because he, too, resulted from a long ball in the back of a paralyzed defense. It was the double of the first regular Hanoverian goal, in which the entire defensive block looked astonished that one of Hanover’s giants actually came rushing in after a free kick and scored it 1-0 with a header. At 2:0 neither Linus Tempelmann nor Jannes Horn attacked the shooter. And it went on so emotionlessly in the seconds after the goal celebration. Eleven Nuremberg players waited an agonizingly long time for the ball to be released, without anyone saying a word or encouraging their team-mates to be a little more resilient. “That did something to us,” said coach Dieter Hecking. “It took us a long time to shake that out of our clothes.”

What is going on with the great soccer player Mats Möller Daehli? And how many more chances does Felix Lohkemper need before he scores?

In truth, nothing was shaken, the club surrendered. In the overall weak game between the two underperformers in the league – high budget, low place in the table – only one team had its head up. And once again, one did not get the impression that the problem lies in collective behavior. Although one would like to know what is going on with the great soccer player Mats Möller Daehli, for example, and how many chances Felix Lohkemper still needs before he scores. Or why Nuremberg standards never cause a goal threat. The club should discuss all these questions very thoroughly during the summer break.

Well before that, the almost 30,000 spectators who watch Nuremberg home games on average should get the feeling again that they are cheering on a team that defends itself when the game is against them. The 2,000 or so fans who had cheered on their team for 87 minutes in the drafty Hannover Arena vented their disappointment after the final whistle after the white-clad players trotted in front of the corner. You could have imagined a lot. apologetic gestures. Or resistance towards the fans, because no team loses on purpose. But apart from club veteran Enrico Valentini, whose disappointment was clearly evident, the players endured the angry chants without batting an eyelid and mentally counted down the seconds until they could go into the dressing room. However, they had started counting well before that. To be more precise, in the 49th minute of the game. That was 0:2.