Justin Njinmah, that much has been clear since Saturday, has mastered the art of breaking down his emotional world to its essentials. “I thought today was a great day,” said the SV Werder attacker and took a short breath. “But it wasn’t a great day.” In a survey in Bremen’s Weser Stadium, these sentences would have received an approval rating of around 90 to 95 percent. And that only because the VfB Stuttgart fans who traveled north would have taken the exact opposite position. For them this 2:2 was very digestible. On the other hand, there were probably a few people sitting in the Bremen dressing room who were longing for a pack of stomach tablets after the final whistle.
There is no precise information as to whether reaching into the medicine cabinet later contributed to improvement, but the collective grumbling on the banks of the Weser was initially hard to ignore: the Bremen players thought they had played well, with courage, passion and a coherent manner There was no lack of plan. And not against just anyone, but against a Stuttgart team that traveled to the Hanseatic city decimated due to injuries, but which, as runners-up in the Bundesliga last year, continues to play Champions League games during the week. From Bremen’s point of view, it would have been an ideal time to win a challenging football game and advance to those table regions where European mind games are not completely indecent.
“If you want to achieve something, you have to play games like this,” said captain Marco Friedl accurately. Mr. Klartext from Osterdeich immediately followed up with a fiery, angry speech. Ultimately, the overall appearance was “too cheap”; “Annoying mistakes” were made; He was therefore “incredibly” annoyed. Friedl’s final conclusion: “In games like this you just notice that we’re not as far along as we would like.”
Striker Justin Njinmah played in pain – but he was still hard to hold
The Austrian was drawing a line around the previous Bremen season, in which, for example, a win in the 0-0 draw against Dortmund and recently a draw in the 0-1 draw in Frankfurt could easily have been possible. Werder coach Ole Werner summed up the performance once again and basically sees his team on “a sensible path”. On Saturday, this path led with solid reliability towards the Stuttgart penalty area: statisticians afterwards counted 20:10 shots on goal and 11:2 corners to SV Werder’s advantage.
Coach Werner had sent his team onto the pitch with a four-man defense instead of the usual three-man chain, which proved to be an efficient measure to disrupt Stuttgart’s build-up game and put the opponent under constant, if not overwhelming, pressure. The offensive actions were mostly inspired by the fast and agile legs of attacker Njinmah, but not only there: the 24-year-old scored the 1-0 with a header in the sixth minute. Njinmah then hit the post, distributed shots in the leg, took a supposed penalty, which was rightly conceded after checking the Cologne video cellar – and he did all of this with slight pain, as he said, because an ankle injury had “not yet healed properly”. “If the problems look like they did today, that’s okay,” added Werner, referring to Njinmah’s instinct to play. The review of Bremen’s defensive performance was less euphoric: Before the 1-1 draw, it was the hesitant goalkeeper Michael Zetterer who gave Stuttgart’s Ermedin Demirovic enormous space in the six-yard box. And after midfielder Jens Stage had heaved the ball into the goal from a corner to give Bremen the lead again (77′), Senne Lynen was too easily pushed out of the way after a long ball – Demirovic had a clear path and scored to make it 2-2 (85′). .).
In this respect, even substitute Nick Woltemade could see something positive in the fact that he missed Stuttgart’s 3-2 win in added time. The tall striker was trained in Bremen’s youth system, is still a Werder fan and moved to VfB on a free transfer in the summer. Woltemade said his mother, who also supports SV Werder, would certainly have reacted angrily to a more precise finish.
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