Shortly before the break, referee Patrick Ittrich had the stadium announcer issue a warning. He will interrupt the game if the fans of Borussia Mönchengladbach don’t catch a fence banner again, on which they seriously insult the opponent RB Leipzig and its employees. The fans then caught up with the banner again. Gladbach was leading 2-0 at that point. In any case, the fans could probably not have imagined a greater humiliation for the opposing club than a defeat.
The game was not interrupted unscheduled. In the end, Gladbach won 3-0 (2-0) against RB Leipzig and its coach Marco Rose, who switched from Mönchengladbach to Borussia Dortmund in 2021 under unpleasant emotional circumstances after two years in office. Last week Rose won with Leipzig against Dortmund 3:0, now he lost 0:3 to his former Gladbachers. “It was difficult for us to get into the game and we weren’t as clean and determined as Gladbach as the game progressed,” said Rose work awaits.”
As expected and as in previous years, the Gladbach fans also expressed their dislike of RB Leipzig during the game. A little more this time, because it has become known that her former and once popular sports director Max Eberl will probably start there in January.
In the first 19 minutes, they blew hundreds of whistles every time Leipzig touched the ball, they showed a banner that said: “No acceptance for RB” and they insulted the coach Rose singing. They addressed several banners to Eberl one after the other, with which they criticized his upcoming engagement at RB of all places. They wrote “Max Eberl, your change of heart is making us sick!” and they insulted him badly on another banner.
Leipzig seems neither willing nor able to stand up to Gladbach
Leipzig’s managing director Oliver Mintzlaff had said before the kick-off at Sky that he expected Eberl to take up his duties promptly and certainly before July 1, 2023, which he had promised him in the summer. Mintzlaff said: “I hope it comes before July 1, 2023, because we won’t wait that long.”
Before the game, Rose said he was looking forward to working with Eberl again. If the time comes, then there would already be three of them with former Gladbachers, because when he took up his post in Leipzig as an assistant, Rose also brought the coach named Frank Geideck from Gladbach, who had been an assistant coach there for 13 years, but most recently in the U23s had been transferred.
Jonas Hofmann gave the Gladbach fans a good 1-0 lead in the 10th minute. RB goalkeeper Peter Gulacsi was able to parry a header from Marcus Thuram, but Hofmann threw the rebound into the net. Before the German international made it 2-0 in the 35th minute, Leipzig’s full-back David Raum lost the ball to Thuram in the Gladbach half. He ran away and served Hofmann. Shortly before conceding the first goal, the national player Raum had cut an unfortunate figure in a duel with Gladbach’s Joe Scally.
After the break, Timo Werner replaced André Silva in the Leipzig team, he had been rested in the first half. Xaver Schlager came on for Emil Forsberg. But there was no rebellion in Leipzig. Ramy Bensebaini scored the Gladbach goal to make it 3-0 in the 53rd minute in the midst of a shock-frozen RB defense. Leipzig seemed neither really willing nor able to stand up to Gladbach.
“We hardly gave Leipzig room to breathe,” said Borussia coach Daniel Farke. “We defended everything, played a totally convincing game and deservedly won.”