Kevin Trapp has been playing at Eintracht Frankfurt long enough not to ignore the loud demand from the northwest corner. Merely applauding the support from a safe distance was out of the question for the keeper and captain. Fans and players are close together in this club – on good days and bad. Anyone who can celebrate together must also suffer together. So after the bitter defeat against Sporting Lisbon (0:3), the national goalkeeper sent his teammates forward with sweeping hand movements before the 32-year-old himself entered into a dialogue with the Ultras.
The Eintracht professionals had already heard during the lap of honor: Even a home defeat for the Champions League premiere does not immediately tear down everything that the Europa League winner has built up. Trapp, who knows low blows on this stage from his time at Paris Saint-Germain, knew best what essence spanned this atmospheric and sobering summer evening in the Frankfurt city forest: “That’s the lesson you pay at this level.” Coach Oliver Glasner formulated the first experience clearly: “It was a victory for efficiency. They shot us down hard. It hurts, but it won’t knock us down, we’ll get a lot out of it.”
However, rapid learning progress is required. Another defeat next Tuesday at Olympique Marseille (0-2 at Tottenham Hotspur) is forbidden unless the premier class chapter for Eintracht is over in two months’ time when the group stage ends. The supporters already showed foresight with the final whistle: “Away win, away win,” chanted the Frankfurt audience, who will set off in large numbers to the southern French port city. Frankfurt’s fans would probably also take a trip to Alaska to support Eintracht.
The demands on Eintracht coach Glasner are higher this season
“It’s a moment of goosebumps. The support is incredible,” said Swiss international Djibril Sow, who, together with his new midfield colleague Eric-Junior Dina Ebimbe, was unable to plug the central holes in the crucial phase the guests used counterattacks by Marcus Edwards (65′), Francisco Trincão (67′) and Nuno Santos (82′) to create finely-tuned counterattacks. Sow spoke of a “blackout”. As if someone had pulled the plug on this energetic ensemble because of the energy crisis. Only: In economy mode, no one gets any further at this level. Even center forward Randal Kolo Muani, highly praised for his versatile skills, who missed the chance to open the scoring after less than 90 seconds, found his limits on his debut in the premier class.
“We’ll raise our heads and keep going”: Coach Oliver Glasner wants Eintracht to be the first newcomer to the Champions League in a long time to make it past the group stage.
(Photo: Arne Dedert/dpa)
So Glasner tried it afterwards with a combative message: “We’ll hold our heads up and let’s keep going. The result mustn’t wear us down.” The Austrian said he had read that no Champions League newcomer had survived the group stage for a quarter of a century: “We want to be the first.” The 48-year-old sounded as if he would like to do everything better tomorrow in Marseille, but unfortunately the Bundesliga is the order of the day again at the weekend. With VfL Wolfsburg, the football teacher who made the many, many beautiful European Cup nights on the Main possible in the first place is coming back to the city forest for the third home game within eight days.
If Niko Kovac hadn’t led the club through relegation in the league in 2016 and to victory in the cup before he left FC Bayern in 2018, the dream trip through Europe would never have started. Glasner, on the other hand, left Wolfsburg with a Champions League participation that, in retrospect, cannot be rated highly enough. At Eintracht, in the first year, he let the Bundesliga slide quite a bit and put everything on the Europa League – with the well-known happy ending in Seville.
This season, however, his superiors are demanding that the much broader squad be pushed to the limit across all competitions. Sports director Markus Krösche put it cleverly on Wednesday evening when he said: “The lads had an experience against a good opponent who has been playing in the competition for years. We can take a lot of things with us for the Bundesliga.”