The Eintracht players didn’t have long to recover during a short winter break, returning to training before the new year. The Eagles kicked off 2018 with a brief training camp in Alicante, Spain, before returning to Bundesliga action with a 1-1 draw against Freiburg in mid-January. Back-to-back wins against Wolfsburg and Borussia Mönchengladbach, however, ensured that Eintracht got the second half of the season off to an unbeaten start.
Home strength rediscovered
February began with a somewhat surprising 3-0 defeat at Augsburg, a heaviest loss of the season up to that point. The only bright spot was the return of Marco Fabian after a long injury lay-off. As so often, though, Kovac’s side bounced back in style, first knocking out local rivals Mainz in the quarter-finals of the DFB Cup - Omar Mascarell scoring his first goal for the club in a 3-0 victory - before following that up with an entertaining 4-2 win against Cologne three days later.
Black-and-white Monday
Eintracht produced one of their best performances of the season in their only Monday-night fixture. Although the game was overshadowed by fan protests against Monday matches, Kovac’s troops won 2-1 at home to RB Leipzig in a fierce contest that produced eight yellow cards. The win took the Eagles above their opponents into third place – a single point behind second-placed Borussia Dortmund, yet still only two ahead of Schalke in sixth.
A lack of luck on the road
Eintracht ended the first quarter of 2018 well, with home wins against Hannover and Mainz coming either side of a thrilling contest in Dortmund, where the Eagles twice came from behind against last year’s runners-up before Michy Batshuayi netted a cruel winner for the hosts in the fourth minute of injury time. "It was a great game, constantly going back and forth. Maybe we wanted it too much at the end, but we’re a real unit – we win together and we lose together," said Kevin-Prince Boateng in summation of the match.
