Our courageous and creative team (with problems in the defensive I have to admit) played against Leverkusen. They are one of the strongest teams in the league and stayed without a defeat for 25 matches. German national players like keeper Adler, midfield player Rolfes (injured for nearly the whole season) or striker Kießling (21 goals so far) play together with strong internationals like Hyypiä from Finland, Barnetta from Switzerland or Vidal from Chile.
But every year they start with promising football without being able to keep it up: “Oh, right, it’s spring, Leverkusen starts losing again.” Maybe it was the right time for us to play against them. Teber scored with a penalty – we were all surprised that we scored the first goal, usually it’s the other way around. Two Kießling goals later, Leverkusen was in front. After Schwaab’s being sent ff (he was far too late against Korkmaz and fouled him from behind), Caio scored the “goal of the month”. It was a shot from more than 30 meters which changed its direction during the flight. Adler, who really is a good keeper, couldn’t find out where the ball would arrive so it entered right below the bar.
Our team now seemed to remember the victory over Bayern only 2 weeks ago. One could feel that they believed they would be able to score another goal. After a corner-kick 2 minutes before the end, Russ headed the ball towards the goal. Franz was there, standing with his back to the goal, and performed a “bicycle kick” (lying in the air and kicking the ball towards the goal). GOAL, another great last-minute victory against a “big” opponent!
The moment before Franz realises that he scored:
The joy:
We started to calculate and hope. The league-table looked so friendly and promising. Position 6 would be the one you need to achieve to qualify for the Europe League. Hamburg had 45 points, Eintracht only one less and there were 5 more matches to play. Hamburg still had to play the matches in the Europe-League (half-final). But the dream was already over one week later, when we lost to Gladbach 0:2 (rather weak match) while the teams around us (Hamburg, Stuttgart and Wolfsburg) all won.
The next match against Berlin (with our former coach Funkel) was not completely meaningless but the supporters didn’t really believe anymore that their dreams of matches all around Europe could be fulfilled. The match was interesting though because Berlin had to win in order to avoid relegation. They took the lead twice but Korkmaz and Russ (picture below: he concentrates on the 2:2-header) had the answer. Schwegler misplayed a penalty – otherwise we would have even won but 2:2 was a fair result.
After that we played against our “neighbour” (45 minutes by car) Mainz. With our victory against Mainz in autumn, this would be a special match. Already for years there have been tension between Mainz and Eintracht. Mainz – a club without tradition but with much success in the last 10 years – works hard on the synthetic image of “the different football-club” (everybody is fair and friendly and nobody insults his opponent). For the Frankfurt-supporters who have made their own experiences, this is all a big lie. They prefer to be sincere and admit that there is aggression and passion in football. And they consider Eintracht’s tradition to be more important than the artificial atmosphere in Mainz. These different views on football culture lead to lots of misunderstandings and provocations, so the match was special, although it might not be considered a “derby” in the traditional sense of the word. Meier, who had to play in the defensive midfield in the matches before (in my opinion not his ideal position), was back in the attack due to an injury of Caio. That is why US-boy Clark had his first appearance on the field. He played unremarkable which is normal for his position (defensive midfield). Meier showed how useful he is if he plays up front. He scored the first 2 goals (the first after a fine pass by Korkmaz, the second - picture below - after a big mistake by defender Svensson). Eintracht controlled the match and could have even scored more goals. But in the last minute of the first half, Bancé hit a 30-meter-free-kick against the shoulder of Korkmaz, from where it sank behind Nikolov into the goal. In the second half, Simak scored again for Mainz, but Korkmaz immediately answered with a 25-meter-shot into the corner! It was a match with impressing precision in the offensive actions. Bancé scored the last goal with a header 5 minutes before the end – 3:3.
We stayed on position 9 of the league-table and already reached the official aim of 46 points – not so bad! Let’s enjoy the (short) rest of the season!
