Thick Plank

The first Cham­pi­ons League home game in 14 years ends just like the last one, with a 1–1 draw. Howe­ver, VfB Stutt­gart had much more in it against Spar­ta Pra­gue than they did against Bar­ce­lo­na. But to beat the defen­si­ve­ly strong visi­tors, an abo­ve-avera­ge per­for­mance would have been requi­red.

The wri­ter Rita Mae Brown once said that doing the same thing over and over again but expec­ting dif­fe­rent results is mad­ness. And on Tues­day evening, VfB’s tenth attempt to break through Spar­ta Prague’s solid defen­se with a hea­der was start­ing to dri­ve me a bit mad. Or the 27th cross into the Pra­gue penal­ty area. Or the tenth long-distance shot, hoping that this would be the gol­den goal to secu­re the home win. If you look at the sta­tis­tics — more than three times as many com­ple­ted pas­ses, 90% pas­sing accu­ra­cy, 10:0 cor­ners, and 76% pos­ses­si­on — then VfB left two points behind in their first Cham­pi­ons League home game sin­ce Bar­ce­lo­na 2010, just as they did last weekend in Wolfs­burg. Howe­ver, despi­te all the pas­si­vi­ty in the second half, it’s important to remem­ber that VfB was com­pe­ting in the Cham­pi­ons League, and the Czech dou­ble-win­ner is not the kind of wal­ko­ver like the last home game oppo­nent.

Strong start, then a decline

The 1–0 lead show­ed what VfB nee­ded for this game and what they lacked for long stret­ches after­ward: Jamie Lewe­ling fein­ted in one direc­tion but then sent Maxi Mit­tel­städt the other way, almost to the byline. In the midd­le, Enzo Mil­lot posi­tio­ned hims­elf per­fect­ly to head the ball in for ano­ther ear­ly lead. Unfort­u­na­te­ly, that quick thin­king, along with the good pas­sing and posi­tio­ning, was lost in the fol­lo­wing play, part­ly becau­se Pra­gue impro­ved signi­fi­cant­ly on defen­se after fal­ling behind. What cer­tain­ly didn’t help VfB’s offen­si­ve strength were the many tech­ni­cal errors the team made while buil­ding up play. A lear­ning pro­cess is still nee­ded here, rea­li­zing that you can’t hold and shift the ball for as long in this com­pe­ti­ti­on as in the Bun­des­li­ga. With the guests’ two half-stri­kers, Haras­lin and Bir­mance­vic, our team had incre­asing pro­blems, which even­tual­ly led to the tac­ti­cal shift to a back four after the break.

The­r­e­fo­re, the stun­ning equa­li­zer by mid­field engi­ne Kai­ri­nen was some­what pre­dic­ta­ble, albeit frus­t­ra­ting. Alt­hough Spar­ta hit the wood­work twice and loo­ked dan­ge­rous again, the second half was main­ly one-way traf­fic in the oppo­si­te direc­tion. Unfort­u­na­te­ly, the­re was no hap­py ending like in Wolfs­burg, part­ly becau­se the Pra­gue defen­se effec­tively mana­ged to neu­tra­li­ze both VfB stri­kers. It’s tel­ling that this was the second game of the sea­son, after Mainz, whe­re neither Undav nor Demi­ro­vic could score. Even the sub­sti­tu­tes Chris Füh­rich and Fabi­an Rie­der were thwar­ted by the Pra­gue defen­se in the power play of the last ten minu­tes. On Tues­day night, VfB had a pret­ty thick plank to drill through but could­n’t quite get the­re in the end.

First Goosebumps, then Frustration

What remains from this game? The first Cham­pi­ons League point and, in gene­ral, the return of top Euro­pean foot­ball to the Neckar­sta­di­on. If you did­n’t get chills when the Cham­pi­ons League anthem play­ed at 6:45 PM, you pro­ba­b­ly don’t feel any­thing any­mo­re. Unfort­u­na­te­ly, the atmo­sphe­re after­ward couldn’t match the exci­te­ment of other high­light games, like the cup semi-final against Frank­furt. Was it the wrong expec­ta­ti­ons about VfB’s capa­bi­li­ties and the some­what unfa­mi­li­ar oppo­nent? Were the­re too many tou­rists in the sta­di­um, like in the old Cham­pi­ons League days, who just got lucky with the draw? Was it the flow of the game or per­haps the less well-known songs from the stands? Pro­ba­b­ly a bit of ever­y­thing, and I don’t want to speak nega­tively about this new expe­ri­ence of a Cham­pi­ons League home game for many. Howe­ver, after all the anti­ci­pa­ti­on, I somehow expec­ted the sta­di­um to be more on fire, meta­pho­ri­cal­ly spea­king, and to lift the team even when they appeared inse­cu­re or clue­l­ess for lar­ge stret­ches of the game.

The team has shown in recent weeks what it’s still capa­ble of, but they didn’t quite reach that level against Pra­gue and the­r­e­fo­re had to sett­le for a point. The good thing about busy weeks is that you quick­ly get ano­ther chan­ce to do bet­ter. On Sun­day, the strugg­ling Hof­fen­heim team, led by our fal­te­ring ex-coach Pel­le­gri­no Mat­a­raz­zo, comes to the Neckar­sta­di­on. It’s the per­fect oppor­tu­ni­ty to make a state­ment befo­re the next inter­na­tio­nal break and the upco­ming matches in Munich and Turin (!) We should take advan­ta­ge of this. In the Cham­pi­ons League group stage, we now have our first point. Cal­cu­la­ti­ons sug­gest that ten points are nee­ded to qua­li­fy for the next round and secu­re two more games. The team should now know how to approach games against teams like Bern, Bel­gra­de, or Bra­tis­la­va to reach that goal. And may­be, some­thing might even come against Turin, Ber­ga­mo, or Paris. Alt­hough tho­se are tru­ly thick planks to drill through.

Pic­tu­re: © Alex Grimm/Getty Images

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