What’s up with Lennart Grill? Many fans and experts are asking themselves this question these days.
Before the season, the U21 national goalkeeper moved from 1. FC Kaiserslautern to Bayer Leverkusen – a jump from the 3rd division to the Bundesliga. Not easy, but he made a conscious decision to make this move, assuming that he would be number 2 behind Lukas Hradecky this season. (The table of the Bundesliga)
“With Lennart Grill we were able to win a very interesting and highly talented goalkeeper for us. This is a commitment with perspective, Lennart has great development opportunities. We are very happy that we were able to convince him,” said Leverkusen’s sporting director Simon Rolfes at the time.
In the first half of the season everything went as planned. Grill was in the squad – in the Bundesliga and in the Europa League.
In the home game against Mainz 05 two weeks ago, Hradecky injured his heel and had to be replaced at break. But why wasn’t Grill in the squad? Niklas Lomb, who Bayer coach Peter Bosz has known for a long time, represented Hradecky in the Bayer box from now on.
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Lomb also plays in the Europa League
Like against Mainz, Lomb was in the league with 1-1 last Saturday at FC Augsburg and in the Europa League against Young Boys Bern in both games in the Werkself goal.
Bayer had named only two goalkeepers for the Europa League squad, instead giving one more chance to an outfield player. The decision was made against grill.
Lomb, on the other hand, drew unpopular attention in his second Bundesliga game against FCA when he was harassed at the beginning of the game after a back pass from Augsburg’s offensive man Florian Niederlechner and missed the ball to be cleared with his foot, which the Augsburger used to mean the opening goal. (Bundesliga schedule and results)
On Thursday, Lomb made a serious mistake against Bern – the Europa League is over for Bayer this season.
It is astonishing that after Hradecky’s failure, Grill is no longer able to play. But how SPORT1 knows, he wants to continue to assert himself and does not seek a change in the summer.
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Does grill get its chance now?
After Lomb’s next mistake against Bern, fans and experts are asking themselves: Will Grill get its chance in the home game against SC Freiburg on Sunday (Bundesliga: Bayer Leverkusen – SC Freiburg, from 6 p.m. in LIVETICKER)? To SPORT1-Information, Leverkusen’s managers think about it specifically.
The 22-year-old’s bad luck so far has been that he has not been able to collect any match practice in the Europa League for Leverkusen and has not been able to complete many training units before the season. And due to the lack of preparation and the winter break, he didn’t have the opportunity to show his skills in test matches.
That could change on Sunday.
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