He is undoubtedly one of the faces of Bielefeld’s upswing in recent years. But currently Amos Pieper is facing not so pleasant things. The international break comes in handy in more ways than one.
Last Saturday it was that time again. Again. In the 69th minute, Amos Pieper underestimated the flair of his ex-U-21 teammate Jonathan Burkardt when he tried to pass what should have been a safe ball back to his goalkeeper Stefan Ortega Moreno. Burkardt got hold of the ball – and finished for a bitter 1:2 final score for FSV Mainz 05.
from Bielefeld’s point of view.
Not Pieper’s first gaffe this season. Only a week earlier, Arminia’s centre-back had cleared a high ball extremely unluckily right at the feet of Dortmund’s subsequent goalscorer Mats Hummels – whose goal to make it 0:2 for BVB just before the break pulled the plug on the Bielefeld side, final score 1:3. And in the game before that, in the 1:1 in Augsburg Pieper, of all people, appeared as the devil of errors when he missed the effort against the FCA headers Reece Oxford after a corner.
EM, Olympics, contract: Will Pieper get a break?
No one can really blame the 23-year-old, who has been one of the faces of Bielefeld’s upturn in recent years, despite his shaky performances. “Football is a game of mistakes. No one is pilloried,” coach Frank Kramer held immediately after the Mainz game, adding: “Amos is an intelligent person who learns from his mistakes.” However, he also seemed exhausted and overplayed at times. No wonder, since Pieper, as a newcomer, played 30 games for Arminia in his first Bundesliga season in 2020/21 as an undisputed regular, and also served the DFB at the U-21 European Championship and the Olympic Football Tournament this summer.
Despite some time off to recuperate, it seems that the ambitious blond simply cannot draw on all his resources at the moment. A break this weekend, when Arminia plays host to VfB Stuttgart, is apparently also on coach Kramer’s mind when he announces: “We’ll have to see how he deals with it this week. Let’s see how it goes.” Meanwhile, some observers suspect that the still unresolved contract situation in Bielefeld (contract expires) could be weighing on the player’s mind. So far, there have been no talks to this end.
In one statistic Pieper is only trumped by Mavropanos
Pieper is known as a level-headed, detached person who deals with his own situation calmly and objectively. Nevertheless, the upcoming international break is certainly not inconvenient in order to regenerate and put things in order mentally.
At the moment, Pieper has a real double role. And with a positive touch, as the statistics show: behind Stuttgart’s Konstantinos Mavropanos (74 per cent), the Bielefeld defender is currently the player in the Bundesliga who wins the most of his direct duels. 73.8 per cent of them have so far ended successfully for the Lüdinghausen-born defender, who is thus also mutating into a real two-fight monster in the Bundesliga.
