No Commitment, No Points

In Mainz, the team has once again taken one of its breaks after four good—or at least successful—matches. On the one hand, this is what keeps us from rea­ching the abso­lu­te top; on the other hand, this pat­tern is some­thing we’­ve seen befo­re.

That we’­ve risen from the very bot­tom and are still in 4th place, with a four-point lead over a posi­ti­on that does­n’t qua­li­fy for Euro­pean com­pe­ti­ti­on? Sure, that’s some­thing. I don’t want to quo­te our sport­ing direc­tor here, but a loss of points against the team in sixth place isn’t exact­ly sho­cking. At least not when, yes, the pro­per atti­tu­de for this kind of game is miss­ing. Of cour­se, one must dif­fe­ren­tia­te here to avo­id argu­ments piling up in the comm­ents: The fact that the team play­ed poor­ly on Satur­day after­noon doesn’t mean it’s all downhill from here or that they fun­da­men­tal­ly lack pro­fes­sio­na­lism. And even less does it mean that Wednesday’s match against Paris is alre­a­dy lost. It sim­ply means that the team approa­ched this game incor­rect­ly, or as Sebas­ti­an Hoe­neß put it: “We can take from this game that we’ll need a dif­fe­rent mind­set over­all on Wed­nes­day. We’ll need to squeeze out a few more per­cent than we did today.” Not­hing more, not­hing less.

One could argue, of cour­se, that VfB had their chan­ces and that things could’ve gone dif­fer­ent­ly. The best chan­ce came from Deniz Undav after 13 minu­tes, but he missed, and the rest of the shots on goal were, unfort­u­na­te­ly, more about try­ing but fai­ling. Robin Zent­ner, who wasn’t par­ti­cu­lar­ly secu­re, was never tru­ly threa­ten­ed again. That was main­ly becau­se, after four con­se­cu­ti­ve wins in com­pe­ti­ti­ve matches, the team indul­ged in a game whe­re they assu­med ever­y­thing would work out on its own. We’­ve seen this befo­re last sea­son; such games are often fol­lo­wed by the next win­ning streak. This sea­son, it’s been simi­lar: after the 4–0 drub­bing in Munich, the team boun­ced back with wins in Turin, against Kiel, and Kai­sers­lau­tern, as well as a 0–0 draw in Lever­ku­sen. After the 5–1 defeat in Bel­gra­de, they respon­ded with vic­to­ries in Regens­burg, against Uni­on, against Bern, and in Hei­den­heim. And after the home match against St. Pau­li, whe­re they bare­ly put up a fight, they star­ted the recent­ly ended streak of four wins.

They Knew What to Expect

Even against Augs­burg, the team loo­ked slug­gish despi­te the pre­ce­ding short win­ter break. Still, they mana­ged to hand­le them­sel­ves and, in the end, the other­wi­se harm­less oppo­nent. But Mainz isn’t sit­ting in 5th place after 19 match­days for no reason. If the­re were a sym­bo­lic image of the dif­fe­rence in men­ta­li­ty on Satur­day, it was Mainz’s jubilant cele­bra­ti­on after their some­what lucky 2–0 goal. The weight lifted from the home team’s should­ers as they final­ly reward­ed them­sel­ves for their effort and fight. The home win was cer­tain­ly deser­ved. One could com­plain about Mainz’s rough play­ing style, but no one should be sur­pri­sed by it. The team, as the offi­ci­als admit­ted after the match, knew exact­ly what to expect—but they weren’t rea­dy to meet it.

This was evi­dent in slop­py pas­ses, rus­hed finis­hes, and a lack of wil­ling­ness to run and fight in mid­field. More often than not, a Mainz play­er rea­ched the ball first. Pas­ses were play­ed with far too much con­fi­dence and too litt­le awa­re­ness, and up front, shots were taken from poor posi­ti­ons, rob­bing them­sel­ves of real scoring chan­ces. While the­se issues affec­ted the enti­re team, the full-backs had an espe­ci­al­ly dreadful day, allo­wing Mainz to repea­ted­ly break through dan­ge­rous­ly. Ata­kan Karazor’s yel­low-card foul in the opponent’s penal­ty area, fol­lo­wing yet ano­ther bot­ched attack, sym­bo­li­zed the men­tal slug­gish­ness of the team. That foul will now side­line him against Mön­chen­glad­bach. VfB could pro­ba­b­ly have play­ed for ano­ther 90 minu­tes, and still wouldn’t have come up with any­thing bet­ter.

Realization Only After the Final Whistle

As men­tio­ned, the­se “off-day” matches fol­low a cer­tain pat­tern, and they happen—apart from the Bay­ern game—primarily against teams that are indi­vi­du­al­ly infe­ri­or to VfB but com­pen­sa­te with effort and good orga­niza­ti­on. In such games, VfB strug­gles to bring its own qua­li­ty to the field, and even a halft­i­me talk doesn’t seem to help. Only after the final whist­le does the rea­liza­ti­on dawn that it wasn’t enough, and our next oppon­ents then typi­cal­ly suf­fer for it. Not the worst mind­set for Wednesday’s game, whe­re such a per­for­mance is unthinkable any­way.

So, it’s time once again to focus on our strengths and start the next win­ning streak. Con­side­ring whe­re we’ve come from and whe­re we still are, that’s not such a bad out­look.

Pic­tu­re: © Chris­ti­an Kas­par-Bart­ke/­Get­ty Images

Schreibe einen Kommentar