In the third Europa League game of 2024/25, Eintracht Frankfurt celebrated their second victory with a 1-0 win over Rigas Futbola Skola, thereby remaining unbeaten. However, no one at SGE was really satisfied.
“It’s a game you have to win, no question about it. We didn’t concede a goal, that’s the positive thing,” Kevin Trapp summed up on RTL+ after the game against the Latvians, admitting that the relief after the 1-0 win was therefore great. ”But all the things we wanted to do today, to put the opponent under pressure – we didn’t do that nearly enough. We didn’t implement what we set out to do, we have to be honest about that,” said the Frankfurt captain, speaking in no uncertain terms.
Trapp: ‘Not our best performance’
Timmo Hardung had already done the same at half-time: ”I think we play much too slow football. Implementing our qualities with our speed – we haven’t done that at all so far,” the club’s sporting director criticized at half-time. After the game, sports director Markus Krösche was unhappy with ‘a lot of simple mistakes’ and the fact that his team ‘moved very little’ in the first half in particular and also ‘looked flustered and unfocused.’
Meanwhile, Trapp had fully expected the resistance put up by the Latvian underdogs, including a shot hitting the crossbar just after Frankfurt’s late goal. “I’m not surprised, because the opponent is playing in the Europa League and is therefore a team that can play football. We were solely responsible for the outcome of the game, which shows that we didn’t play our best,“ he said, but added: ‘Despite all that, we wanted to win and we managed to do that.’
”Sleepy” Joker Larsson turns the tide
Hugo Larsson was instrumental in the club from Hesse pulling off the win. After the break, coach Dino Toppmöller brought on the Swede for Mahmoud Dahoud. From then on, Larsson was not only making himself seen in tackles, but also in offensive actions – as in the decisive scene in the game in the 79th minute.
To his own amusement, he had “not really hit the ball properly” when he scored, but it went into the far left corner. “But you don’t have to,” said the 20-year-old with a grin. Larsson was also critical of his team’s performance before the break. Although they knew they had the better players, they didn’t play quickly enough (“I didn’t fall asleep, but…” ) to take advantage of their own qualities. It wasn’t until after halftime that things improved a little – with Larsson on the field.
