The game against Dortmund – a little look back
Tomorrow I will meet Alex and Tim in front of the Eintracht museum at the stadium. Please feel free to come along, we’ll be there an hour before the game. The important match against the team with the best form of the last five games is upon us – Borussia Dortmund (five wins! By the way – only our last opponent Stuttgart managed five wins in the last five games – these are hard times for Eintracht!). It will be a tough challenge for Eintracht, especially looking at the fact that we still haven’t managed a win against a team situated above us in the table – while we also never lost to teams below us.
Manager Juergen Klopp has formed a strong unit for the Black and Yellows, and some hard work is waiting for the Eagles. As I have seen a few games against Dortmund here’s a little sum up of my memories.
2000/01 we travelled to the away game at the Westfalienstadion on a coach with our fellow friends from the Eintracht fanclub Griesheim. My mate Hal from the UK came along and we arrived in the cathedral of German football as they call the stadium with it’s impressive West stand fitting 25,000 cheerful Dortmunders (the capacity of the ground is now over 80,000!). But the Eintracht away crowd wasn’t too intimidated and put up a great support for the Eagles – it was simply a mind blowing atmosphere with 62,000 noise makers in the stadium. Unfortunately after having Alexander Schur being sent off with a second yellow (an all time hero for his legendary promotion goal in the 93rd minute of the final game in 2003/04) we conceded a goal. Eintracht managed to equalize by a goal of Chinese player Chen Yang (whom we used to nickname ‘Chinese Firecracker A for having a fierce shot ;-) after the break but from then on it went downhill. Every shot of any Dortmund player seemed to go in and we got beat by 6 goals to 1. Not the best memory but to experience that classic ground it was worth it
Three years back in 2005/06 it was the Schobberobber’s president’s stag do (or bachelor party). His best man had picked Mallorca as a location for a get together - don’t ask me why! And obviously the ‘target group’ of the event were Eintracht fans or even mostly Schobberobbers (our fan club). The 33rd matchday took place at the beginning of May and with two games to go we played Dortmund away, and we needed a point to secure Bundesliga football in Frankfurt. We gathered in a big open air pub with a massive screen – a bit like the public viewing areas during the World Cup 2006 in Germany. Needless to say that we didn’t come for Earls Grey tea and biscuits, and the atmosphere got more cheerful by the minute. Then Du-Ri Cha stepped up, the son of another Eintracht legend (Bum Kun Cha – our Korean star striker of the late 70es, early 80es). By the way Du-Ri was born during Bum Kun’s Eintracht heydays in the good old St. Marien hospital in Frankfurt’s north end quarter – as was the author of this column ;-) In the 54th minute he basically whacked the ball in from roughly 30 meters out, a massive strike and a great goal which also meant that we stayed in the league as Eintracht managed a draw at Dortmund in the end. Here you can see the goal:
Another reason to celebrate next to our presidents departure into married life – we tried our best to party that one off!
I also remember a great 3-0 win at home 1992 (that godforsaken season..when we missed the title on the very last matchday..). Ralf Weber, Lothar Sippel and Andi Moeller scored against Stefan Klos in the Dortmund goal – the latter most likely to be well known by our Scottish friends.
Hopefully we will see some classic goals for Eintracht on Saturday, secure the table region of safety and show the stripy Dortmund socks that every winning streak has got to come to an end. I’d like to see Frankfurt boys like Ochs or Russ netting to stick with the tradition – but I’ll take a goal from any other Eagle also of course!
Happy Birthday, Toni Huebler!
This week it was the 80th birthday of another living Eintracht legend – Anton ‘Toni’ Huebler – our long serving kit manager with cult status amongst the fan scene and club. He was employed by the club for over 40 years (from 1954 until 1995!) and did kind of everything from driving the president, to gardening at the training grounds and finally becoming responsible for kits and equipment.
Toni has seen a lot of Eintracht action, and his blood must be red and black. Apparently when the games got to heated and too tense for Toni he went to the changing rooms and let all showers run on full power so that he would not hear any crowd reactions. His loyalty and positive nature are infamous, and his insight into the club must be unique. As he had promised to one of the old presidents not to give out any insider stories we will probably never hear or read the delicate happenings at Eintracht – and I’m sure there are loads.
Here are some more pictures of ‘Sir Anton’: http://www.eintracht.de/aktuell/27007/
We wish Toni Huebler all the best and we have heard that he now can cope at Eintracht games without running showers which is great news!
The Yeboah update
The return of Jupp Heynckes to the Bundesliga (replacing Juergen Klinsmann at Bayern Muenchen for the remainder of the season) has even sparked some interest here in England. A colleague forwarded me the link of a blog on the Guardian newspaper website relating to Jupp Heynckes and his short but demolishing reign at Eintracht and his fallout with our former striker sent from heaven – Tony Yeboah.
At Eintracht Heynckes was assigned in order to get the club into the group of German top Bundesliga teams, but instead he suspended the star players Jay Jay Okocha, Maurizio Gaudino and also Anthony Yeboah. Tony, after having next to no chance to return to the squad was signed by Leeds United where he made an instant impact with goals from another planet including a goal of the season. Heynckes was responsible for Eintracht’s downfall that later on resulted in relegation. Good luck to Bayern….
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2009/apr/29/tony-yeboah-leeds-united-jupp-heynckes
So long, my friends, keep supporting Eintracht from wherever you are, get in touch if you feel like it and have a great May!
