It wasn’t so much the avoidance of a negative club record that made the Gladbach footballers happy on Saturday. A fifth home defeat in a row would have been bad for them, no question about it, but what is more, Borussia might have fundamentally questioned their core competence. And her fear of relegation would have increased further.
The 3: 2 (1: 0) in the basement duel against FC Augsburg was in many ways a blessing for the battered Gladbacher soul. A month after the last win at FC Bayern Munich and two weeks after the upsetting resignation of sporting director Max Eberl, Borussia celebrated three points for the table and a bit of comfort for the psyche.
One day after his 52nd birthday, the long-suffering coach Adi Hütter once again had professional reasons to be happy. “We took a load off our shoulders,” said Hütter, “we’ve had difficult weeks behind us, but the next few weeks will probably not get much easier either.” The two goals conceded would have shown that the team is not stable enough again. “We’re on the right track as far as that goes.”
For Augsburg, the previous 2-0 win against Union after five games without a win turned out to be just an intermediate high. The defeat in Mönchengladbach put them on the relegation place for the time being. “We sometimes have to win two games in a row,” scolded attacker André Hahn. “We actually wanted to start a small series,” revealed goalkeeper Rafal Ginkiewicz. “Unfortunately, we’ve been lacking consistency throughout the season,” admitted Hahn.
Borussia last took the lead two months ago
It had been almost two months since the Gladbachers last led 1-0. That was on December 18th in the later 1-1 draw in Hoffenheim. The Gladbachers had been in the lead for the last time in the 2-1 win in Munich on January 7th. So you can imagine what it meant for them to take a 1-0 lead against Augsburg in the 30th minute.
It was a nice header by Kouadio Koné with a remarkable history, because Gladbach played the ball from their own half into the Augsburg penalty area 15 times without Augsburg even touching it. The Bavarian Swabians allowed the Rhinelanders to keep touching the ball and push themselves into their own penalty area.
In the end, Gladbach’s Alassane Pléa crossed from the left and thus reached Koné in the center, who was no longer disturbed by Augsburg’s Iago behind him. This goal and its history should become an elementary part of the Augsburg video analysis in the coming week. “We defended our sixteen too negligently,” said coach Markus Weinzierl after the game.
There was even more learning for the guests. For example, the very first play after the restart, when Gladbach’s Ramy Bensebaini brought the ball in from the left to the penalty spot, where Jonas Hofmann was allowed to put it in undisturbed after 27 seconds to make it 2-0.
However, that was not the preliminary decision at first, because the Gladbachers allowed the Augsburgers to make it 2-1 in the 55th minute. Hahn crossed the ball far into the Gladbach penalty area, where Ruben Vargas passed it on to Iago, who ran up from the left and shot in low.
Twelve minutes later, however, Borussia made everything clear when Bensebaini headed in a cross from Florian Neuhaus to make it 3-1 in the 67th minute. There was still a goal to make it 3-2, but substitute Alfred Finnbogason’s goal in the third minute of added time came too late for Augsburg. When the whistle was blown shortly afterwards, the 10,000 Gladbach spectators cheered with relief. “It’s a load lifted from everyone’s heart,” said goal scorer Jonas Hofmann.