Frankfurt football fans have to expect major inconveniences on Friday. Because of the rail strike, the organizers and the municipal transport company expect the streets around the stadium to be overcrowded. A stressful situation that can hardly be avoided due to the early opening of the (too few) parking spaces at 4:30 p.m. and the early opening of the stadium gates at 5:30 p.m. The Eintracht supporters also have to be aware that things won’t roll properly on the pitch either. On Thursday, coach Dino Toppmöller described the opponent Mainz 05 (8.30 p.m. in the FAZ live ticker for the Bundesliga and on DAZN) as “extremely unpleasant”.
“They are very active when it comes to pressing, they always come into high starts. And they also have strong counter-pressing,” said the Eintracht coach, explaining his categorization of Mainz. An opponent who will not give the Frankfurt team any peace to build their game and will hardly give them any time to think and find solutions. “With the new coach, they allowed a maximum of one goal per game,” says Toppmöller, reporting on the effectiveness of the Rheinhessen’s run-intensive style of play under head coach Jan Siewert, who followed Bo Svensson.
Even though he talks strongly about the opponent, who has only managed to win the Bundesliga this season, Toppmöller does not forget his job as a coach to radiate optimism: “We still want to put our stamp on the game. We are the favorites and we accept the role.”
As was the case last Saturday in the Hessen derby in Darmstadt, Eintracht will try to let their opponents run into nothing with a short-pass, staccato ball possession football. If you take the first 60 minutes at the Böllenfalltor as a basis, the Frankfurt team can be optimistic. If the last 35 minutes (with stoppage time) are the benchmark, pessimism is the order of the day.
Toppmöller “continued to worry for a few days” about why the game ended 2-2 after a 2-0 lead because the loss of two points after great dominance was so annoying. His final analysis: “We lost our defensive structure, defended too deeply and therefore also lost the structure in the build-up to the game.”
Individual over-optimism
The coach has forgiven the players in question for the fact that the goals conceded were caused by individual over-optimism despite the structural problems. Goalkeeper Trapp’s planned chip on target player Buta, as well as Tuta’s disastrous cross pass into the middle of the pitch in stoppage time, were intercepted by the Darmstadt team. “We want to play courageously,” says Toppmöller, “under pressure you can sometimes make a decision that doesn’t turn out to be the right one.”
Toppmöller was referring to Trapp, who he basically attested to an improvement in his foot play. He found no excuse for Tuta’s bad pass. “We don’t have the maturity to play a situation cleverly to the end. Tuta’s opponent came rushing up from behind at what felt like 200 kilometers per hour to take the ball from him. All he has to do is put his body in the way, he gets run over and draws a foul.”
Now it was perhaps the most consequential, but far from the first, Tuta’s misjudgment of this season. Toppmöller was asked whether the Brazilian had a fundamental problem with risk management. “He has no fundamental problems, he has the ability to solve difficult situations through his ball security and he often succeeds.”
For him it is more of a time management problem: “If I take the lead deep into stoppage time, I no longer have to try to initiate a counterattack. I allow myself to be fouled, it takes a minute until the free kick is taken, then the ball goes towards the opponent’s corner flag and the game is over.” Toppmöller is convinced that Tuta is learning. “I trust him.”
It appears that Toppmöller is trusting all eleven players who started in Darmstadt against Mainz. Rode, with another week of training under his belt, as well as Skhiri and Chaibi, who returned from the Africa Cup of Nations to Frankfurt on Thursday evening, are prominent alternatives, but the time factor speaks against their inclusion in the starting eleven. “Sebastian has to really get into the training rhythm after his long injury,” Toppmöller said on Thursday about a substitute role for the captain.
Peter Heß Published/Updated: Recommendations: 1 Peter Heß Published/Updated: Recommendations: 1 Jörg Daniels, Darmstadt Published/Updated: , Recommendations: 2
But he believes Rode can do a lot more than the seven minutes in Darmstadt. His mentality can be very important when the game is on the line. For Toppmöller, the match will be decided by will: “We have to want to stay at the top of the table more than Mainz wants to get away from the bottom of the table – then we will win.”
