Sasa Kalajdzic’s serious injury shows once again how fragile well-intentioned plans can be in professional football. After his cruciate ligament tear in the game against Freiburg, the winter commitment, which was seen as an immediate help for the storm, will hardly be used anymore.
This means that for the foreseeable future, Omar Marmoush will have to continue to play the sole entertainer in Frankfurt Eintracht’s attack, as new signing Hugo Ekitiké shows an even greater lack of fitness than was expected after almost a year of playing and several months of training.
If Marmoush were to miss out, Ekitikè would have to be in the starting line-up, even though his body is not yet fully resilient, or young player Nacho Ferri, even though he is not yet mature enough in terms of play.
The alternatives of letting Ansgar Knauff or Jean-Matteo Bahoya try out as a kind of Marmoush copy in the central attacking position are also not convincing. Although their striker profiles are similar to the Egyptian, their skills are nowhere near as developed as Marmoush’s.
“Worked on the finish”
The 25-year-old has only made a big leap in quality this season. “When I came to Frankfurt, I wasn’t at this level yet, coach Toppmöller helped me a lot,” said Marmoush in an interview with the Eintracht media on Monday.
“He taught me how to move correctly in and outside the box, how to receive the ball, where the spaces are and where I should stand to be able to score goals. I also worked a lot on my finishing, because I had a lot of chances before, but scored fewer.” He never scored more than six Bundesliga goals in a season during his time at VfB Stuttgart and Wolfsburg. In Frankfurt he has nine goals after 22 match days.
Developed into a goalscorer: Marmoush scores 1-0 against Freiburg. : Image: Huebner
Marmoush, who was discovered at the age of 17 by former national player Pierre Littbarski as VfL Wolfsburg’s chief scout at the U20 Junior World Cup, has a special value for Eintracht, and not just because of his goals. His excessive running paths across and lengthways in the opponent’s half of the game often make him available for a through ball from his midfielders.
Jörg Daniels, Marc Heinrich, Peter Heß and Ralf Weitbrecht Published/Updated: Ralf Weitbrecht, Freiburg Published/Updated: Ralf Weitbrecht, Brussels Published/Updated: Recommendations: 1
Without Marmoush, the Eintracht offensive is blatantly lacking in depth because no one else is opening up the space for it. In the five Bundesliga games in which he was missing, Eintracht scored four goals (rate 0.8), and in the 17 games with him, Frankfurt scored 29 times (1.7) – more than twice as often. A failure by Marmoush would jeopardize all of Eintracht’s goals for the season.
