EThere were people from Frankfurt who were still in a good mood late on Saturday evening. For example, those who stormed the on-board bistro of a Deutsche Bahn ICE train in Leipzig on the way home and celebrated a “Happy Hour!” announced, drinks at special prices. The compassion of the DB staff didn’t extend that far, although they were aware that the people of Frankfurt had witnessed a complete disaster and were therefore able to look on with pity. Complete disaster? Oh yes. Zero six. In numbers: 0:6 at second-placed RB Leipzig.
In fact, all that was missing in the end was a goal, and Leipzig would have been on a level with Karlsruher SC from 1964/65 and 1. FC Köln from the 1983/84 season, the two teams with the highest Bundesliga victories against Eintracht (7-0 each). There have now been 6-0 wins four times, most recently in 1995/1996 by Borussia Dortmund, previously Hamburger SV (1990/91) and BVB again (1988/89). Possibly the worst thing from Frankfurt’s point of view wasn’t even that “it was okay at this altitude,” as coach Dino Toppmöller, 45, admitted. Rather, Eintracht seems to be condemned to be ashamed of their own defense this season.
In the Bundesliga alone, Eintracht conceded 29 goals in 13 games; In the Champions League there are 14 more opposing goals from five games. The fact that there was only one goal conceded in two games in the cup only counts for half as Eintracht has been out since the second round. From a purely tabular point of view, not much has gone wrong. Eintracht doesn’t need eagle eyes to see the Champions League places. In terms of atmosphere, however, there are some things that are wrong.
Especially since the humiliation in Leipzig comes at an inopportune time. On Tuesday there is a trip to FC Barcelona, where Eintracht (the first team ever in the Champions League) will play in the partially renovated Camp Nou. One of the difficulties is that Eintracht is also running out of strikers; after Jonathan Burkardt, 25, Michy Batshuayi, 32, also reported injured on Saturday. With the Frenchman Elye Wahi, 22, another attacker is missing because the training commitment has to be subterranean. Jessic Ngankam, who came on as a substitute on Saturday, is far from his best form after breaking his tibia and fibula in April.
Coach Toppmöller complains that his team is not “dirty” and “adult” enough
“I’m not making a declaration of war on Barcelona now,” said Eintracht coach Toppmöller: “We have to let it sink in today because it hurts.” Nevertheless, he also asked his team to “show a reaction, to stand up” and promised: “We will do that.”
He made his first attempt at analysis in Leipzig. Although that wasn’t so difficult as the second half actually deserved the attribute that Toppmöller himself chose: “desolate”. The coach particularly criticized the fact that his team appeared neither “dirty” nor “adult” enough. What was shown by the fact that until the sixth goal conceded, no one could or wanted to “make a foul” or risk a yellow card.
Not that you’re misunderstanding him: It’s not necessary “that you step out of your opponent’s shoes,” said Toppmöller. He just wanted to illustrate that Eintracht’s defensive actions in basically all of the goals they conceded were at best alibi actions. Because without detracting from the really good Leipzig performance: it was with remarkable ease how they were able to break into the Frankfurters’ quarters and get into their kitchen without any effort.
As Eintracht’s sports director Markus Krösche, 45, complained with a grim face, this was due to the accumulation of “individual” and “team errors against the ball”, which to a certain extent covered the entire universe of conceivable errors. You shouldn’t present yourself like that, added coach Toppmöller, “we definitely need a different attitude.” His colleague from Leipzig, Ole Werner, 37, tried to put things into perspective when he said that in the not so unbalanced first half, when the goal made it 2-0, you could clearly see how close things can be in football.
Mahmoud Dahoud hit the crossbar from 20 meters, then Leipzig launched a quick counterattack that Christoph Baumgartner completed (31′). Only: The attack was accompanied by the Frankfurt team in such a physical manner that the goal matched the style of the other goals conceded by Conrad Harder (5th), David Raum (hand penalty/52nd) and the Ivorian hat-trick scorer Yan Diomande (47th/55th/65th).
The Champions League now goes to Barcelona
Specifically, Krösche missed adequate staggering, consistent counter-pressing, the lack of proper residual defense despite being outnumbered in his own penalty area, and that was just among other things. Defensively, the Frankfurters were only convincing verbally: Toppmöller, for example, when he rejected the question of whether he felt “let down” by the team. Or Krösche when he said apodictically: “We don’t have a trainer topic.”
But opinions differed in the small print. While Krösche stated that he didn’t see an “attitude problem” in the narrower sense, defender and captain Robin Koch recognized exactly this: In the second half you could even clearly see “a head or attitude problem”. Like his superiors, Koch identified an urgent need to speak out: “Every player has to ask themselves whether this is really all we can give.” That sounded like an interesting discussion group approach until Koch unnoticed blurted out the result: “All of the guys know it wasn’t 100 percent.”
The problem is that this wasn’t just a one-off slip-up, but has come to light again and again. The number of high-scoring bankruptcies speaks for itself in this regard. There is a risk that the team’s instructions will repeat themselves. “We’ll maybe tighten the tone again,” said Toppmöller, and he sounded as if he could use a few happy hour whiskeys for that.
