The game was just over when Leipzig coach Domenico Tedesco called his team together again. So that they formed a circle in the middle of the square and listened to his words once more in the empty stadium. He congratulated the team, Tedesco would later reveal, and not only for the 4-1 win against Mainz, but above all for the fact that they had worked well throughout the week.
The Leipzig team did not go into the dressing room without a warning. He also said that there was no need to rest, said Tedesco, that no one had to be “extremely satisfied”. “We want to see a certain consistency,” said the coach. What sounded like this in the ears of the Hungarian attacking force Dominik Szoboszlai: The triumph against Mainz could “only have been the start”.
A lack of consistency, that was an issue again and again in the first half of the season, at the end of the year Leipzig was only in tenth place. With the victory on Saturday, the Leipzigers can orientate themselves back to the top third of the table. The 4: 1 was clear and in the end not undeserved in terms of height. What can be anything but underestimated: In the past calendar year, the Mainz team collected almost 60 points, in the first game of the Hinserie they – corona-weakened – beat the then highly favored Leipzigers with a rump troop. The only uncertainty victory left was due to its circumstances. Because in front of the empty stands in the Leipzig arena, two games in one were to be examined.
Leipzig is superior to Mainz for a long time
The first game lasted around 20 minutes. The Mainz team initially nipped in the bud the development of the game in Leipzig; In the first few minutes, the hosts had a hard time getting the ball into half of the guests. “I think we sometimes didn’t see the forest for the trees,” Tedesco later explained and said: A ball hit long into the opposing half would have done it. But then came the scene that Mainz coach Bo Svensson called “decisive” and divided the game into a before and after. Because Mainz defender Alexander Hack missed two actions in a single sequence after a good 20 minutes – which symbolized the Mainz Harakiri.
Hack had the ball passed in his own half; but the processing of the pass was so awkward that 05 sports director Martin Schmidt spoke of a “blackout” afterwards. Leipzig striker André Silva had brought Hack off the ground with a pressing movement and, after conquering the ball, served striker Yussuf Poulsen, who shot Mainz goalkeeper Robin Zentner from a central position.
When the rebound landed at Silva again, Hack made his second appearance: a few meters from the line he parried Silva’s shot with his arm; Referee Deniz Aytekin decided on a penalty – which Silva safely converted – and showed Hack the red card. “After that it was a different game,” said Mainz coach Svensson, “that is of course the maximum penalty.” Indeed: There are more pleasant things than playing against Leipzig for 70 minutes with a minority: RB only really got going when Christopher Nkunku came on after the break.
Because: The French not only put on the second goal for Leipzig by Dominik Szoboszlai two minutes after the restart; he was mainly there 62 seconds after the Mainz goal from Jae Sung Lee (57th) to achieve the ultimate 3-1. “That pulled the plug on us,” said Mainz goalkeeper Zentner. In the 61st minute, Nkunku was free to prepare Silva’s second goal (61st).
The rest of the game was then – apart from the numerous substitutions and the minute-long pass relay of the Leipzig against decimated and exhausted Mainz – hardly worth mentioning. “We showed what we can do,” said Silva, who scored four goals in the four games under Tedesco (two wins, one draw, one defeat). “We did what we wanted,” said his attacking colleague Szoboszlai, who already set the direction for the coming weeks: “Now we just have to keep going.”
In the league in Stuttgart and against Wolfsburg; in the cup against Rostock, and at the beginning of February with the team that Leipzig actually wanted to compete with this season: the FC Bayern of former Leipzig coach Julian Nagelsmann.