Et is not so long ago, only a few months, that Eintracht was considered a model student in the Bundesliga. Six years ago, under manager Fredi Bobic and trainer Niko Kovac, a path was taken on which the Frankfurt team took and inspired many people. The club won the DFB Cup in 2018, and even if Kovac is history and Bobic preferred to burn his fingers at Hertha BSC, others continued on their way. Culminating in winning the Europa League 2022. A club with tradition, arrived in modern football, at home in Europe and always accompanied by tens of thousands of SBU fans. A success-story.
When Axel Hellmann was switched to the live interview on Sunday morning on the “Bild” broadcaster, hardly anything was noticeable. The board spokesman for Eintracht had to comment on the crisis, about players who were willing to leave the club, lack of discipline and appearances that were damaging to their image.
Oliver Glasner saw the red card against Hoffenheim and had to watch the rest of the game from the stands
Quelle: Getty Images/Alex Grimm
About ten Bundesliga games without a win and his coach Oliver Glasner, from whom he can’t really make sense at the moment. Hellmann poured a little oil into the fire here and there, but made an overall effort not to aggravate the crisis further and radiated what the team and coach had been missing for weeks: sovereignty. The fact that there was a lack of harmony not only on the pitch at 1: 3 (0: 3) in Hoffenheim, the most recent bankruptcy, gives the crisis at SBU a new quality. It no longer fits together at Eintracht, and as in the successful months of recent club history, coach Oliver Glasner is the face of Frankfurt.
Glasner presents himself thin-skinned in Sinsheim
The Austrian who is willing to emigrate, who still has a contract until June 30, 2024, but has not yet accepted an offer to extend it, twice did not have his emotions under control during the away game and thus gave the public a glimpse of how nervous things were under thin skin is ordered. “No, I have to intervene immediately. Please stop this (…) stop me with this garbage. I know what the guys are doing here,” the 48-year-old interrupted a journalist at the press conference, who wanted to know if the team hadn’t recognized the opportunity offered by the defeats of the competition. Glasner then reprimanded the questioner in a monologue.
He had also intervened immediately during the game when he threw a ball onto the field to delay a Hoffenheim free kick. Referee Harm Osmers had no choice but to show the red card and refer the coach to the stands.
However, Glasner’s verbal volte at the press conference also had consequences. “It is noticeable that he is of course disappointed with the sporting results. What I absolutely cannot understand is taking that disappointment out on a journalist doing his job.”
Hellmann publicly criticizes Glasner
Hellmann was consistently critical of Glasner’s memorable angry speech. “I honestly can’t see much that’s positive about it,” said the official. The statement that the 39-year-old veteran Makoto Hasebe had “some blood in his urine” because of the great stress, Hellmann explicitly reprimanded: “Such a topic does not belong in public.”
His insight: “The overall picture that we are currently showing on and off the pitch and our overall goals – that doesn’t go together. Of course we also have to talk about thin skins. Not only with the coach, also in the team.”
Quite a few suspect that the reason for this lies precisely in the interaction of the two components. Does Glasner still reach his players? Is there unity on and off the pitch at Eintracht? In any case, the misery is not due to the quality of the professionals, says Hellmann: “I would accept the quality assessment if we had played against top teams in the last ten games in the Bundesliga. A team that wins the Euro League and makes it to the round of 16 in the Champions League certainly doesn’t have any quality problems.”
Frankfurt’s board spokesman Axel Hellmann
Source: dpa/Arne Dedert
With five defeats and five draws from the past ten games, Frankfurt is at the bottom of the league. No other Bundesliga club scored fewer points during this period. The last away win dates from a time when no World Cup had been played in the desert. The successes in the cup competitions should not hide the “bread-and-butter business of the Bundesliga”, Hellmann reprimanded.
Bad results, bad mood that heralded an ice age at Eintracht. It is considered certain that the league will be completed in no man’s land. The Hessians still have a great chance to straighten out the season in the cup final on June 3 against RB Leipzig and still qualify for the European Cup. Only the belief in it is missing. If the final is lost, Frankfurt face a comprehensive new beginning. After 23 years, President Peter Fischer will also not be running for another term.
In any case, regardless of the final result, it is certain that not only important regulars such as Randal Kolo Muani, who is courted throughout Europe, will leave the club after the highlight of the season in the Berlin Olympic Stadium, but also Glasner.
“Glasner himself knows best that the action was not successful”
After the incidents on Saturday, the CEO did not allow direct conclusions about future cooperation, at least in public, but made no secret of his fundamental dissatisfaction: “I think Oliver Glasner himself knows best that the campaign was not happy, but that’s certainly not the yardstick for deciding whether a coach stays or not.
That’s a lack of discipline that we’ve done a lot of on and off the field in recent weeks. I think it fits into the overall picture. And we have to get back on track as soon as possible and straighten things out.”
