Eintracht Frankfurt (SGE): The hunger for success is back

• Eintracht Frankfur
  t wins against FC Augsburg
• The Hessians must go to Dortmund on Friday
• Eintracht Frankfurt wants to be confident

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Celebrate tomorrow Eintracht Frankfurt Coach Adi Hütter his 50th birthday, no age for a coach. “I still feel young,” he says himself, but the Austrian wants to spend the holiday with his loved ones – so he started training twice for Tuesday, one in the morning and the other in the afternoon. “So that I can be with my boys all day,” laughs the soccer teacher, maybe afterwards there will be coffee and cake. You don’t really know.

Eintracht Frankfurt: Back to daily work

After a long weekend with two days off and the gala againstFC Augsburg On Friday, the Hessen team is back to work every day; Borussia Dortmund, and in view of an all-round successful start of the second half of the season with three wins and a draw and progress in the cup against Leipzig, it is not surprising if the goalkeeper Kevin Trapp asserts that there is no need to hide in Dortmund. “If we perform as we did last time, it will be difficult for everyone against us.” There it is again, the self-confidence that had been shed at the end of the first half of the season, it has returned, the confidence that a team has. “We have a lot of quality,” says Trapp, also recalling the series last year when Eintracht Frankfurt was unbeaten in eleven Bundesliga games until April. A new edition?

Perhaps it is a bit early to look up again, of course Trapp knows that, “that would be presumptuous”. Eintracht Frankfurt lost too much ground at the end of the first half of the season when seven matches only added a measly counter to the points account. This phase of weakness has thrown Frankfurt far back, how far, as the current, so successful chase shows: The ten points that Eintracht scored were urgently needed to gain the connection again in order to get back into calm waters sailing.

Eintracht Frankfurt: The crisis is first off the table

The people of Frankfurt have mastered this crisis for now. Coach Hütter has turned the right screws, he has changed tactical alignment, thinks more defensively, has learned from his mistakes, has recently changed staff more often and allowed his players longer breaks. Having rotated too late in the previous second half of the analysis had identified one of the reasons why the Hessians had slumped in the end.

Dominik Kohr, for example, was out of the picture for a long time; at best he played for minutes, didn’t play a special role. On Friday evening he was in the starting line-up and played well, Djibril Sow and Sebastian Rode were on the substitute bench instead. Of course, rotation only makes sense if the change does not come at the expense of quality, a largely balanced squad is necessary.

Eintracht Frankfurt places more emphasis on the defensive

Hütter was indeed spoiled for choice against Augsburg, for the first time, he thought, “we almost had a Bundesliga team on the bench”, where Rönnow, Hasebe, Sow, Kamada, de Guzman, Rode, da Costa, Durm and Paciencia initially took a seat, all professionals who could have been in the starting XI.

Hütter now has more opportunities thanks to the signing of Stefan Ilsanker, who after half an hour represented the slightly battered David Abraham and was extremely strong in central defense – at least significantly better than in defensive midfield.

The decisive factor for the current upswing is: Eintracht Frankfurt is much more stable, compact, closed, and the team is tactically very disciplined. It doesn’t look particularly attractive, sometimes even tough and torn, but on the other hand the defense is extremely strong. Eintracht have conceded only three goals in the last five competitive matches. In the last phase of the second half of the season, the Frankfurt team got an average of two goals per game, far too much, according to Hütter. And learned lessons from it.

Kevin Trapp gives Eintracht old strength

It was also a relief that Kevin Trapp returned to the goal in top shape after his serious shoulder injury and seamlessly, if not better, continued his old form. Despite the win, it was the national goalkeeper who kept his team at 0-0 in the first half with sparkling clean saves. In addition, he is extremely valuable as a reference station and as one who opens the game with passes accurate to the centimeter, the 29-year-old regularly has 50, 55 ball contacts, more than some field players.

“The direction is 100 percent right,” said Hütter. The galliness is back, the team unity, the winning mentality. Against Eintracht it is difficult to play again, it is nodding and looks “incredibly stable”, as the coach praises. And: “We are hungry again.”