Energie Cottbus won at FSV Luckenwalde on Sunday. Nevertheless, coach Claus-Dieter “Pele” Wollitz was anything but pleased. In addition, another player will be missing in the upcoming top match at BFC.
Energie Cottbus have now been unbeaten for seven league games, six wins in that period – and jumped to second place in the Regionalliga Nordost table with a 3-2 win at FSV Luckenwalde. Nevertheless, “Pele” Wollitz was anything but satisfied with his team’s performance after the final whistle: “For me, that was an impossible performance in terms of body language, ball reception and occupying the spaces,” he said, summing up his team’s first half.
Driving Cottbusers don’t use their spaces
He was particularly bothered by the play with the ball against the hosts’ pressing: “That left us spaces in the half-fields that we normally exploit with a naturalness and purpose and a high degree of good running and good passing.” Instead, however, his team in Luckenwalde “looked erratic, couldn’t get any composure despite scoring and left far too many gaps.”
Injury overshadows the match
The serious injury to Luckenwalde goalkeeper André Thoms, who played for Cottbus for eleven years, can hardly have been the catalyst for this. After all, the Lusatians managed to take a 2:0 lead within a few minutes only shortly after the substitution of the 39-year-old, who had had an unfortunate collision with a teammate. Nevertheless, “the scene overshadowed everything, of course”, said Wollitz, who wished Thoms “the quickest recovery”.
Wollitz misses tact
Despite the supposedly safe lead, the game became tense again, primarily due to a yellow card against Arnel Kujovic in injury time of the first half. The Cottbus coach would have liked a little more composure from the referee: “He’s 19 years old and I don’t know if you have to give him a yellow card. One foul and one time he pushes the ball three or four metres away.” Although the Luckenwalder would have been “ready to execute” on the resting ball, Wollitz continued, “a little tact” would have been appropriate for him.
Leaders get special praise
The fact that it was still enough for the Lusatians to win the game in the second half after a double strike by Luckenwalde was mainly due to two factors for the Energie coach: Firstly, the hosts’ yellow card shortly after the 2:2, after which his team had shown “the grip, the intensity and the will to play better than in the first half”. On the other hand, his leading players: “Hildebrandt, Borgmann, Hofmann, Erlbeck and Engelhardt I have to pay a huge compliment to. They showed the mentality that makes leading players and thus ensured that we won the game with mentality and an effort.”
These players and virtues will now also be important in the upcoming match. On Friday (7 p.m.), the new second-placed team in the table will welcome the current league leaders BFC Dynamo for the top match. “Now it’s time to recover,” said Wollitz, setting the agenda for the coming days and hoping that “one or two players who didn’t perform well today will perform again next week. Then it could also work out with a success against the leaders.
