Coach Dieter Hecking is not sure that his VfL Bochum will ultimately be awarded the full three points from the game at Union Berlin, which was hotly contested by the sports courts. The 60-year-old actually doesn’t talk about this topic because Union Berlin’s appeal is pending before the DFB Federal Court. On Wednesday after the 1-0 win against St. Pauli, Hecking declared with relief that his VfL, which had recently been clearly defeated, had now made it into the table, and he said in this context: “The verdict with Union Berlin is still out, but yourself If we don’t get the points, we’ll be within two points of Kiel, and the other teams are only five points away.”
Hecking played his 426th game as a Bundesliga coach on Wednesday and thus climbed into the top ten Bundesliga coaches. It is this experience that helped VfL, which started the season with one point from the first nine games under coach Peter Zeidler, to get eight points in the eight games under Hecking since then. There may be two more, because the DFB sports court decided in the first instance to rate the 1-1 draw at Union Berlin as 2-0 for Bochum.
“We were in the intensive care unit,” says Hecking about the actually discouraging situation in the table when Bochum was ten points behind the relegation place at the beginning of December. Now there are only five. Of the five clubs in the bottom of the table, VfL scored the most points in four games with seven points.
The resuscitation of the patient VfL is based on a strict tactical diet by Hecking. Under Zeidler, VfL only got one point in nine games with wild football and a goal difference of 9:29. Under Hecking, the now much more disciplined Bochum team scored eight points in eight games with a goal difference of 5:8. However, VfL football now feels as if a self-indulgent bon vivant is now strictly abstaining from meat, chocolate, alcohol and cigarettes. About the rather dull win against St. Pauli, Hecking said: “It was clear that it wasn’t going to be champagne football.” His defender Bernardo, a Brazilian, said with a laugh: “That wasn’t a football game, it was a fight!”
Bochum created the fewest chances of all Bundesliga teams in the first half of the season (60) and only used one in four of them. Center forward Philipp Hofmann had not scored for almost nine hours before the St. Pauli game. But actually: Hofmann scored the golden goal in the 67th minute.
After the victory and the connection to the rival teams, Hecking prophylactically called for courage for the home game on Saturday against RB Leipzig. It won’t be easy, he warned and listed the Leipzig team’s line of attack: “Sesko, Openda, Xavi, Nusa.” Shortly afterwards, however, a miracle happened in Stuttgart when Benjamin Sesko and Lois Openda received yellow-red and were therefore banned on Saturday are. Bochum hopes.
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