FCA increased the gap to the relegation places because opponents Bochum, despite initially having a clear superiority, slipped the game in two unfortunate scenes.
The footballers from FC Augsburg have not had any pleasant experiences with VfL Bochum as opponents this season. At the end of October they lost their second round match in the DFB Cup on Castroper Strasse on penalties, and at the beginning of December they lost 3-2 to VfL in the Bundesliga at home.
On Sunday, however, in the 2-0 (2-0) win in Bochum, they finally and just in time achieved an all the more important sense of achievement, as the fourth-to-last game of the season was no less than a big step towards staying up in the league. Because both clubs are reasonably sure of this, they could have given each other flowers afterwards, ideally bought in the “Gartencenter Augsburg” in Bochum. But they left it at the shake hands.
Bochum coach Thomas Reis has a certain connection to FC Augsburg. He played there for a season almost 20 years ago and scored three goals in 27 third division games. On Sunday, however, he had to watch the game from a box because a week earlier in Freiburg he had shown his player Konstantinos Stafylidis the windshield wiper for a bad foul, which the referee Sascha Stegemann had referred to and punished Reis with red.
The Augsburgers keep their opponents away from the goal quite poisonously
Reis and Stafylidis now had to watch how the game slipped away from Bochum in the first half, despite their clear superiority at first. This was due to two unfortunate scenes. In the 15th minute, central defender Maxim Leitsch tried to head a ball back to his goalkeeper Manuel Riemann, but couldn’t put any pressure behind the ball and put it in front of the lurking Augsburg player André Hahn for a 1-0 lead. A similar mishap happened to Leitsch in the DFB Cup quarter-finals when his wrong return pass was enough for SC Freiburg to score the winning goal in added time in extra time.
Michael Gregoritsch scored the 2-0 for Augsburg in the 43rd minute with a penalty after referee Bastian Dankert whistled for a seemingly harmless touch by Danilo Soares on Daniel Caligiuri in the penalty area. The home crowd got really upset, but stayed well-behaved, unlike the Augsburg fans, who lit red and green smoke bombs. The Augsburg players also kept the hosts away from the goal quite venomously after the change, so that they brought home the win, while Bochum did not score in the third game in a row.