Frankfurt suffered an avoidable defeat against Dortmund on Saturday evening. In the analysis, it was quickly clear what Eintracht had done wrong.
The start of the match belonged to Dortmund, but then Frankfurt turned up the heat, scoring two goals through Rafael Borré and going into the dressing room with a 2:0 lead. Right after the break, Jesper Lindström had a great chance to make it 3:0 – but missed it. “If we had scored then, I think the game would have been over,” Timothy Chandler said on Sky after the match. “Then we completely lost the structure and power. Left gaps too easily where Dortmund could play through.”
“In the second half we ran out of steam a bit, we played too much at the back. Kevin Trapp had almost the most ball contacts of us, we did that much better in the first half,” analysed Sebastian Rode. Coach Oliver Glasner saw it exactly like the midfielder.
“Such top games are always decided by little things in the end. We have a great chance to make it 3-0, then we make a mistake and Dortmund are back in the game at 1-2. The pressure then became greater and greater. Mistakes happen in football, you sometimes miss a goal-scoring opportunity. What we have to reproach ourselves for is that we managed too much, played too much back to Kevin Trapp,” said the coach.
The Austrian added: “No reproach to Jesper, who makes a great move and then doesn’t hit the ball cleanly. Also not to Martin Hinteregger. As a team we should have simply sought our salvation on the offensive and not just hoped to get through well. “
The chances were there after the break, too, but the Hessians were no longer as brave as in the first half. “We had a lot of good ball wins, just like in the first half, but we didn’t look for solutions going forward. We wanted to manage and were punished for it. That is very bitter, for long stretches I saw a very good Frankfurt team,” said Glasner.
Glasner: “We tried to correct from the outside “
With the 1:2 through Thorgan Hazard in the 71st minute, BVB gained new courage. Here, Frankfurt should have countered more, which they failed to do in the end. “We tried to correct that from the outside, tried again and again to influence the players. But that’s what happens. It was a bit like the rabbit in front of the snake, you want to play everything safe,” of course Glasner was not unaware of his team’s passivity in the end. “That’s usually bad if you only play back. You have to keep the opponent busy in his defence – and we didn’t do that enough and were punished very bitterly for it.”
In the end, Glasner can certainly take away positives, as his team did well to keep up with a top team like Dortmund and came close to winning. “Dortmund is a top team and has quality up front, you have to defend well until the 95th minute, otherwise they can make a goal out of any situation, and you saw that then,” Chandler said. The Black and Yellows struck twice to secure a late 3-2 victory in Frankfurt. For coach Glasner, it was the sixth defeat in six games against BVB (four with Wolfsburg, two with Frankfurt).
