Updated on April 16, 2024, 10:30 a.m
Ewa Pajor is playing great and is recommended for Spain. © IMAGO/Eibner press photo/Stefan Mayer
Ewa Pajor sends a recommendation to Spain. Eintracht Frankfurt and TSG Hoffenheim are stumbling towards the Champions League. In the relegation battle, the balance of power becomes clearer. Winners and losers of the 18th matchday in the women’s Bundesliga.
Winner: Ewa Pajor (VfL Wolfsburg)
The championship has already been decided, the gap behind should also be enough to ultimately secure second place in the Bundesliga. For VfL Wolfsburg it’s now just a matter of getting in shape for the DFB Cup final.
On an individual level, Ewa Pajor, for example, still has a title to win. Before the match day, she was in first place in the list of top scorers with ten goals. Close behind: Lea Schüller (9). Although Bayern won 5-1 in Duisburg, the DFB striker did not score. Pajor scored a brace against SC Freiburg and now has twelve goals.
The Pole has been a striker for VfL since 2015 and has developed into one of the best goalscorers in the world. In 191 competitive games she scored 131 times and also prepared 54 goals. Your consistency is impressive. On the one hand, she has high speed and the technical quality to hold her own when dribbling. On the other hand, with her high level of game intelligence, she always finds the right spaces that give her an advantage.
A rumor also made the rounds at the weekend that makes Pajor the winner: According to media reports, FC Barcelona is ready to spend around 500,000 euros for the 27-year-old. That would be a Bundesliga record.
Loser: Eintracht Frankfurt
This 2-0 defeat was unlikely. After the Frankfurt team had recently gotten into better form, there was a big step backwards in Leverkusen. Lots of ball possession, little return – in the second half of the season, the SGE increasingly showed a side that they actually wanted to leave behind.
While in previous years you could interpret the situation positively because you finished in third place behind Bayern and Wolfsburg – last season even with a strong 54 points – this year you are clearly falling short of your own expectations.
Theoretically, 44 points are still possible for Eintracht. But there has to be a significant jump in performance. At the beginning of May there will be a direct clash with TSG Hoffenheim. What gives Frankfurters hope is that TSG is also not in top form.
Loser: TSG Hoffenheim
Hoffenheim had a very difficult time against 1. FC Cologne. Stephan Lerch’s team didn’t come up with much offensively; defensively they wobbled, both in building up the game under pressure and when the guests counter-attacked at high speed.
After Frankfurt’s defeat, Hoffenheim had a huge chance to move ahead by four points. It was the opportunity to become independent of the direct duel with Eintracht. Instead, the team once again showed an uninspired performance. Under Lerch, who will no longer coach TSG from the summer anyway, there has been no development for a while, especially in the ball possession game.
Hoffenheim still sees it as the right decision to install Lerch as head coach after Gabor Gallai’s departure at the end of 2022 with a slight delay, but in retrospect this path has to be questioned. It was clear from the start that a dual role would be very demanding for the 39-year-old.
In terms of football, TSG had a good phase under interim coach Nadine Rolser at the beginning of 2023, from which the team was torn out again with the renewed switch to Lerch. At least that’s what the performances seemed like. To this day, the performances have remained varied. Lerch never really got off to a good start as a coach.
The fact that Champions League qualification is still possible is largely due to Eintracht Frankfurt, who have kept the fight for third place open for too long. And now TSG is awarding a kind of preliminary decision in return. One could ask, somewhat cynically, who will end up in third place.
Winner: 1. FC Cologne
Where there is a weak top team, there is often a less well-known team that can profit from it. But Cologne didn’t stumble to the point in order to stay in the picture. The Domstadt women showed a very strong performance, at times running bravely and high, thus revealing the problems of the Hoffenheim women that had already been evident in the past few weeks.
Cologne didn’t play like a team fighting against relegation. Maybe it was even the best performance from Cologne this year. Even Paulina Krumbiegel’s late equalizer didn’t shake FC. Instead, the guests ran again themselves and almost scored the winning goal shortly before the final whistle.
The only downside is that that’s exactly what didn’t work. Cologne are in good shape in time for the final spurt of the season, but they could have gone home with three points from Hoffenheim. Then the lead over the first relegation place would have grown to five points. The distance has increased, but not yet large enough to provide a certain level of relaxation.
Loser: 1. FC Nuremberg
The 4-0 defeat against SGS Essen could have been the knockout for the club given the other results. As self-sacrificing as the Franconians fought and as impressive as some of their performances in the Bundesliga were, it is clear that the leap upwards was clearly too big for them.
For the DFB, the increasingly clear gap between the second and first divisions should be alarming. For the FCN, the Bundesliga adventure can be seen as predominantly positive. If you stay true to your footballing and playing courage, a lot is possible in the future.
With upcoming away games in Frankfurt and Munich, it will be difficult to catch up with Leipzig by five points and Cologne by three points – especially since the goal difference is significantly weaker. Even if there is still the direct duel with RB at home and another home game against Duisburg, there is a very high probability that Nuremberg will return to the 2nd Bundesliga.
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2024-04-16 08:30:55
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