The lettering was a bit askew for the authors; they had sprayed “Sixty” in unmistakable blue graffiti paint on the bus stop not far from the stadium entrance long before the kick-off of this football game. No mistake, at least not in the spelling. The crucial mistake of the day finally occurred on the stadium pitch.
The third division match between FC Ingolstadt and TSV 1860 Munich was in the 58th minute of the game when this football game took a surprising turn. As almost always this season, Munich led 1-0. Coach Maurizio Jacobacci’s team seemed to have this matter firmly under control when Löwen midfielder Tim Rieder had a back pass in mind, but Ingolstadt striker Jannik Mause missed it. So Rieder’s back pass became a direct template, Mause only had to play around the hopeless keeper Marco Hiller and push it in. And that’s what he did.
At the end of this football drama there was the fourth defeat in a row for the Munich Lions. After the 1:2 in the Bavarian derby, a man who had coached TSV 1860 at the beginning of the year celebrated on the sidelines. Before the game, Michael Köllner gave an insight into his emotional world, which had been shaken by his dismissal in January. He “felt like he was erased,” said Köllner. He wasn’t even given three sentences to say goodbye in the press release, which hurt a lot. And so it was clear that this Upper Bavaria derby should have a very special appeal for Köllner.
Collapsed like a punctured balloon
In the first half, Ingolstadt took it easy, especially in the 23rd minute, when Eroll Zejnullahu presented an apparently rehearsed free-kick trick. Instead of crossing, he used a flat pass to set up fellow striker Julian Guttau, who shot in a conspicuously free-standing position in the box and placed the ball in the far corner to make it 1-0.
It all looked like the 6,000 to 7,000 lion supporters’ journey had been worth it. Goalkeeper Hiller spent the first half largely unemployed, after the restart he played more of the game, but the Ingolstadt team didn’t put him in much trouble. The guests ultimately did it themselves. “We had a lot to work on during the half-time break,” said Mause, who scored his fourth goal of the season with the 1-1 equalizer thanks to Rieder’s failed pass. “I see that he hesitates a bit and gets pressure on his back and then I speculate,” Mauser explained. After his goal, he turned straight towards the touchline – where he earned a hug from his coach. Trainer Köllner was recently “not so happy with the training performance,” Mauser said. “He complained a bit and provoked us a bit for the derby. I wanted to get some praise from him first.”
With the momentum of the equalizer, which was flattering at the time, the Ingolstadt team soon gained momentum. And Lions coach Jacobacci’s staff collapsed like a punctured balloon. As if someone had erased their tactics board.
“It pisses you off,” says Lions captain Jesper Verlaat
Jacobacci said his team performed “very, very well” in the first 45 minutes, “Ingolstadt had no access to the game.” The 1-1 score then “turned the game on its head” and his team then reacted “too passively, not aggressive enough”. Why did this happen? And why again after a 1-0 lead, in almost identical fashion as recently against Erzgebirge Aue (1:2) and Lübeck (1:2)?
Even Lions captain Jesper Verlaat couldn’t quite explain it after the final whistle. “It pisses you off,” said the defense chief, who usually tends to be cheerful. “We have to analyze what it is,” he explained, before calling his colleagues to task. “With a 1-1 draw in the derby, nothing has happened yet,” said Verlaat. “I would have expected more from the whole team to stand our ground.”
Verlaat had once been guided to Giesing by Köllner. He feels that having lost against the old coach was “simply shit”. Köllner himself spoke of a “very impressive game by my team” in the second half. His team improved significantly and from then on “always felt like they were one step ahead” of the guests. In the table, Ingolstadt moved past the Sixties by one point, who are now in 16th place.
The Oktoberfest weeks for the Munich Lions are off to a very bad start. A visit to the Oktoberfest is on the agenda for Tuesday – a date that TSV 1860 midfielder Albion Vrenezi would have really liked to attend with a win under his belt, he explained.
Things won’t get any quieter in Giesing during the Oktoberfest season around the Munich Lions and their coach Maurizio Jacobacci, about whom his predecessor said on the podium at the press conference at the end: “Hopefully we’ll see each other again in the Grünwalder Stadium for the second leg.” In any case, nothing and no one was erased on Saturday evening, not even the crooked “Sixty” lettering on the Ingolstadt bus stop.