NAfter the promising Frankfurt transfer final, Eintracht has been showered with great praise from many quarters. Due to the signing of center forward Hugo Ekitiké from Paris St. Germain, which is now the most expensive transfer – the entire package costs Hessen around 20 million euros – in the club's history, the squad is considered to be stronger and more prominent than ever before.
With regard to the international orientation, it is already said that sixth place in the Bundesliga final table can only be the minimum goal. Rather, at least in the foreseeable future, the premium squad should be aimed at qualifying for the Champions League. “It is clear that expectations are rising,” said coach Dino Toppmöller. “We don’t want to compete with Bayern Munich, but we also have very high standards.”
However, Eintracht did not do them any justice in the away game against Cologne on Saturday evening. In the 0-2 defeat in the duel with the relegation candidate, who was happy about their first win under coach Timo Schultz with a strongly rejuvenated team, Toppmöller's team disappointed across the board.
The weak Hessians never showed their high ambitions, on the contrary: “We rightly lost. From the beginning we did not accept this fight. “Cologne was more passionate,” said Frankfurt’s sports director Markus Krösche, expressing his incomprehension of what was on offer. Eintracht had to admit defeat for the first time this calendar year after ten points from four games.
Two sendings off and blatant mistakes
Faride Alidou, who was loaned to FC from Eintracht, scored Cologne's goal to make it 1-0 in the 68th minute. The 2-0 (80th) in front of 50,000 spectators – around 4,000 of whom were Eintracht supporters – went to Jan Thielmann after a catastrophic bad pass from Frankfurt's Hrvoje Smolcic. From the 66th minute onwards, Eintracht had to play with ten men because Niels Nkounkou received a yellow-red card. Tuta also followed him with a yellow-red card after 83 minutes. “Through the sending offs and the mistakes, we put Cologne on the road to victory. We have to look after our own noses,” said Krösche.
Toppmöller complained that his team did not show “the aggressiveness and power” in the first half “that we wanted to. In terms of football, it was also very thin. We make too many easy technical mistakes. The constant slight ball losses annoy me,” he said. This is “a clear criticism of the implementation” of the things he demanded, emphasized Toppmöller. After a better start to the second half of the game, the bottom line was that “not enough” came out of it, said the coach.
Didn't give any impetus to the game: Mario Götze
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Image: dpa
The 21-year-old Frenchman Ekitiké was not yet part of the starting line-up in Cologne. Like newcomer Jean-Mattéo Bahoya, he took a seat on the bench. Both came into the game from the 77th minute onwards, but they were no longer able to make any significant difference. Donny van de Beek was also on the bench at the start of the game; The Dutchman, who also moved to Main in the previous transfer period, lost his place in the first eleven.
For the first time this calendar year, Toppmöller changed his starting lineup. Defender Willian Pacho was suspended because of his fifth yellow card. Hrvoje Smolcic came into the team to replace him and was once again unable to convince. However, striker Omar Marmoush was not on board. After taking part in the Africa Cup, the offensive player was still in Egypt with a fever and is due to take part in team training again next week.
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