Borussia Monchengladbach could against Werder Bremen bring another narrow lead to the finish line. However, this should not hide the problems with personal leadership.
“Foals finish the first half of the season with a job win,” headlined borussia.de on Tuesday evening after Gladbach’s 1-0 home win over Werder Bremen. In the voices for the game, one expression was found again and again: luck.
“Recently we conceded a number of goals in the closing stages, but today we were a bit lucky on our side and in the end we defended it well,” said winning goal scorer Nico Elvedi. Yann Sommer said: “This time we had the necessary bit of luck that we have earned ourselves over the past few weeks on our side.”
And both were right, because Bremen had the better chances of scoring throughout the game. In the first round, Romano Schmid had already forced a brilliant parade with a volley summer, and Matthias Ginter had to save on the line once. The best chance of the second half then had Milot Rashica, who hit the post. “We had that little bit of luck that we have often missed this season,” said coach Marco Rose, almost the same as his goalkeeper.
It is of course nice that the Gladbachers were lucky and didn’t get equalized in the last minute, be it with a stupid goal or a questionable penalty. But that shouldn’t hide the overall performance. Bremen got in behind right from the start and waited for a counterattack, so the foals were quite dominant at the beginning, but without playing out the very big chances to score.
The fact that it then had to be a standard goal to crack the Bremen defense is not a problem at all. However, after that the Gladbachers fell back into a rut that has been seen so often this season after taking the lead. The urge to decide the game early was not there, instead the inferior opponent got better and better.
Bremen had a really good chance of equalizing through Rashica or Leonardo Bittencourt and there wasn’t much missing, and Borussia would have given a lead again and only played a draw. This time it didn’t happen and Werder coach Kohfeldt spoke of an “unfortunate defeat” afterwards. Gladbach won the game, but the problems with their own leadership remain.
