VfB Stuttgart has recently been frequently praised for its style of play, for exhilarating victories against Dortmund, Leipzig, Freiburg and a few other victims. Now, after the 2-1 win at Darmstadt 98, a different conclusion has to be drawn for the second time in a week. VfB didn’t play well in the 3-1 win against Mainz or now in Darmstadt. It was more like, as the scorer of the interim 2-0, Mo Dahoud, put it in the best football German: “That was a dirty victory.”
Serhou Guirassy was in the Stuttgart starting eleven for the first time since the Africa Cup in Hesse. However, the fact that he then quickly headed the important 1-0 lead may lead to wrong conclusions. There wasn’t too much to see of him, at least not in the front third of the pitch. The 18-time goalscorer switched to the defensive wing and defended passionately. Just like his fellow striker Deniz Undav, who only recorded one real attempt on goal, but continued to put in kilometers until he had to be replaced after 80 minutes.
After Stenzel was sent off, VfB played one half outnumbered
And that’s enough of the little things, after all you can summarize the last VfB week as what it actually was: extremely successful. Hard-fought and therefore extremely important victories were achieved against both the penultimate Mainz and the last team from Darmstadt. While the competition from Leipzig or Dortmund occasionally leaves points behind, this doesn’t even happen to VfB when, like in Darmstadt, they have to play with ten men because one player (Pascal Stenzel) received a yellow-red card in the first half. Stuttgart is rightly in third place at the moment, five points ahead of Dortmund in fourth place. After two thirds of the season, there are many indications that the final third will be less about whether VfB will be allowed to play internationally in the 2024/25 season. But rather whether he will do it in the Europa League or the Champions League.
Darmstadt, on the other hand, did everything on Saturday to avoid having to play in the second division again any time soon. But a courageous style of play and the requirement to slowly but surely switch to all-or-nothing mode again brought a lot of praise, but no points. Which is why, after the game, coach Torsten Lieberknecht officially stated his goal of staying in the league “via the detour of relegation” and aiming for 16th place. 1. FC Köln is currently four points ahead. But even that will be difficult to catch if the promoted team’s two main problems remain. On the one hand, there is no other way to put it, the Darmstadt team has a bit of bad luck in almost every game. On Saturday, when Waldemar Anton attempted to clear the ball, it almost ended up in the Stuttgart net as an own goal to equalize – but of course it missed by a few centimeters. If you have a lot of time, you can have Torsten Lieberknecht talk about a dozen other such unfortunate coincidences, all from this season.
Seydel’s goal to make it 1-2 was only the third goal by a Darmstadt striker in the 22nd game
The second Darmstadt problem is even more serious. And it is – if you can say that for a club with a bonsai budget – self-inflicted. They also defended more than properly against Stuttgart, and that could well be the basis for a comeback – if the Lilies didn’t act so aggressively in front of the opponent’s goal with unsightly regularity. Aaron Seydel’s goal to make it 1-2 was only the third goal by a Darmstadt striker in the 22nd game.
Against ten Stuttgart players, Darmstadt tried again and again to exploit the advantage, but forgot the purpose of the game. Instead of looking for a shot, the balls were let through, unfortunately usually to the colleague whose shooting position was worse. Winter signing Sebastian Polter was eager, as was fellow striker Luca Pfeiffer. But as awkwardly as he lined up three meters from the goal line, not for the first time, it takes Lieberknecht’s love for his “boys” to judge as graciously as the coach did with a wonderful formulation: ” We hope that he can do it with the coolness that he would normally have.”
In other words, Luca Pfeiffer should have been as cool as the guys from VfB, who are probably just about to take the next stage of their development. The team is currently replicating what is happening in Leverkusen on a slightly smaller scale and of course at a slightly deeper level: the artists are obviously developing a great desire to fight with and for each other. Anyone who watched the Stuttgart team running together from all directions and jumping over each other as they celebrated Dahoud’s 2-0 win doesn’t need to be in the dressing room to understand that this is an intact team, as one would say in football German.
By the way, Luca Pfeiffer is actually part of this team. The Darmstadt team borrowed him from VfB.