The big carnival days are approaching, recognizable by the large number of disguised revelers who visited the packed Müngersdorfer Stadium on Sunday evening at the game between 1. FC Köln and Eintracht Frankfurt. Steffen Baumgart appeared in civilian clothes, but with knickers, a polo shirt and a peaked cap, he still looked like he was wearing the costume of a summer walker on the Ahr red wine trail.
As usual, the coach found no opportunity to freeze in a breezy eight degrees Celsius. He was constantly running up and down the sidelines, adapting to the high level of action of his team, which never allowed the Frankfurt team to rest. Although Eintracht repeatedly revealed their playing qualities, they were unable to overcome the opponent’s passionate and effective resistance and consequently left the pitch as losers. In the second half, Frankfurt could no longer maintain the intensity level of Cologne.
The Frankfurt pass game became more and more inaccurate
The Cologne team not only earned the somewhat too clear 3-0 victory with their strong defensive work, they also looked for the attack and cleverly countered it. The man who announced during the week that he wanted to leave the club in the summer in order to participate in top international football in the future shone as a double goal scorer – one has to say: of all people: Ellyes Skhiri, 27, is now calling out to the fans because of the impending loss already phantom pains. And again of all things: It is Eintracht that is showing great interest in taking over the midfielder on a free transfer.
The first goal came at a moment when hardly anyone would have expected it. After both sides had fought fairly evenly in the first half – with the offensively better moments for Eintracht – the second half had just picked up moderate speed when Florian Kainz picked up a corner kick that had been saved and started to cross. The ball flew into the dense crowd with a curve cut, Timo Hübers put his head down – 1:0 (49th).
The Frankfurters didn’t let themselves be tempted to rush and maintained their confident, fast passing game, but found their goal less and less often. The playmaker duo Daichi Kamada and Mario Götze had to experience how their circles were narrowed more and more. By winning the ball and counterattacks, Cologne came closer to 2-0 than Eintracht to equalization. One of these advances then led to the game-winning success. After a Frankfurt corner, the fast Linton Maina ran away from everyone, and in the end endurance runner Skhiri was in the right spot to complete the attack (71′). Instead of resting for a moment, he had chased after the attack – an extra effort that was far from self-evident but ultimately worthwhile.
For the second goal – a quarter of an hour later – he didn’t have to run quite as far. The jubilation was all the greater. Maybe Skhiri will reconsider whether he really wants to continue his career somewhere else than in happy, jolly Cologne.