Undav one, Augsburg nil

The VfB Starts the New Year with a Win, But Makes Things Unneces­s­a­ri­ly Dif­fi­cult in Augs­bur­gIs this the famous “hor­se that bare­ly cle­ars the obs­ta­cle,” or does the team have a more fun­da­men­tal issue with oppon­ents like the­se?

At some point in the midd­le of the second half, I tru­ly lost my tem­per. Antho­ny Rou­ault recei­ved the ball from Alex Nübel on the right and opted for a risky—or rather reckless—way to build up play. The ball was play­ed half-high, with half-hear­ted effort, across the Stutt­gart half and gra­teful­ly picked up by an Augs­burg atta­cker. For­t­u­na­te­ly for us and Rou­ault, FCA was far less dan­ge­rous on Sun­day evening than St. Pau­li was just befo­re Christ­mas. In that game, an almost iden­ti­cal pass led to Eggestein’s goal, which ulti­m­ate­ly beca­me the decisi­ve strike. The fact that simi­lar pas­ses were made at the start of this year’s cam­paign is an alar­ming sign, as it sug­gests that the match against Ham­burg over the holi­days wasn’t careful­ly review­ed. Rouault’s mista­ke wasn’t the only care­less cross-field pass from the VfB defen­se, but Augsburg’s expec­ted goals (xG) of only 0.22 owed more to their woeful­ly ine­pt attack than Stuttgart’s sharp defen­se. Time and again, they deli­ver­ed field goals ins­tead of actu­al goals.

And if Deniz Undav hadn’t been there—standing onside despi­te my TV-indu­ced doubts—it would have been a frus­t­ra­ting evening for VfB, a game that star­ted so well. The team began the match exact­ly as I’d hoped: alert, pres­sing for­ward with intent, strong off-the-ball move­ment, and pre­cise pas­sing com­bi­na­ti­ons. It was remi­nis­cent of last season’s per­for­man­ces, over­whel­ming Augs­burg with supe­ri­or skill—without even fiel­ding Undav or Lewe­ling. But it quick­ly beca­me clear why things had fal­te­red wit­hout tho­se two recent­ly. Erme­din Demi­ro­vić had enough chan­ces to score three goals but con­ver­ted none. His cen­tral hea­der was saved by Finn Dah­men, and his other attempts—a hea­der and a shot—went wide. Scoring even once would have been cru­cial, likely seal­ing the game ear­ly given Augsburg’s toothl­ess­ness.

Build-Up Play Without Intensity

Around the 30th minu­te, dan­ge­rous balls into Augsburg’s penal­ty area sud­den­ly dried up. It was as though the team was dis­ap­poin­ted their ear­ly efforts hadn’t paid off and deci­ded to try the same approach but with less inten­si­ty. Mis­pla­ced pas­ses and lost balls began piling up, and the play­ers’ wil­ling­ness to run dimi­nis­hed. Mean­while, the play­ers in the ico­nic rin­ged shirts tried to stick to their usu­al build-up play, but a lack of pre­cis­i­on often led to Augs­burg counterattacks—fortunately, the­se posed litt­le real dan­ger. One tel­ling moment was a free kick award­ed to VfB in their own half that inex­pli­ca­bly ended up at the feet of an Augs­burg play­er. If this game had been play­ed in Decem­ber, inju­ries and fati­gue might have been valid excu­ses for the drop in inten­si­ty. But after a three-week break and with bet­ter squad avai­la­bi­li­ty, I can’t find a reason—except that this team strug­gles to main­tain focus and inten­si­ty in games whe­re they’re the favo­ri­tes and awa­re of it. Key duels in cri­ti­cal are­as were lost, and loo­se balls were often clai­med first by Augs­burg.

This all sounds over­ly nega­ti­ve after a 1–0 victory—something we haven’t seen often this sea­son. It’s not that I think a 1–0 win over Augs­burg is insuf­fi­ci­ent; I’ll take any vic­to­ry, no mat­ter how it looks. But this one was far too clo­se for com­fort, and once again, VfB almost squan­de­red their reward against an offen­si­ve­ly limi­t­ed oppo­nent like Hof­fen­heim or St. Pau­li. The team’s poten­ti­al was evi­dent in the first half-hour, just as it was in Stiller’s beau­tiful chip pass and Undav’s deter­mi­ned finish. Yet for some reason, they keep flir­ting with dis­as­ter. May­be they alre­a­dy had the grue­ling weeks ahead on their minds, assum­ing Augs­burg would be a mana­geable chall­enge that didn’t requi­re full effort. I don’t know. I’m thril­led with the win and ano­ther clean sheet, but it’s frus­t­ra­ting to see how hard they make it when they should have the game in hand. On a posi­ti­ve note, Jacob Bru­un Lar­sen came on at just the right moment. His quick sprints and pre­cise pas­ses exploi­ted the gaps Augs­burg left as they pushed for­ward late in the game. For a first appearance after just a few days with the team, it was a solid debut.

The Opening is Behind Us

What’s clear is this: VfB can’t afford to per­form like this against upco­ming opponents—and they likely won’t. Per­haps the dip in inten­si­ty had some­thing to do with the lack of qua­li­ty in the oppo­si­ti­on, and the focus will shar­pen against play­ers like Xavi Simons or Vin­cen­zo Grifo. For now, we remain within striking distance of the Euro­pean spots and have suc­cessful­ly navi­ga­ted the often-anti­ci­pa­ted first game of the year. But in the coming weeks, VfB will need more than just Deniz Undav.

Image: © Sebas­ti­an Widmann/Getty Images

Schreibe einen Kommentar