Braunschweig saves himself in the relegation drama against Saarbrücken

Fight for the 2nd league

Braunschweig saves himself in the relegation thriller

In the relegation second leg, it looked like a zero number for a long time. But then Saarbrücken turned up and it was exciting.

Eintracht Braunschweig will also be part of the 2nd Bundesliga in the coming season. In the relegation secondary against the 1st FC Saarbrücken, the Braunschweigers had to tremble vigorously in front of a home crowd.

Through a converted penalty of Florian Krüger (66th minute) and a goal from Kai Brünker (83.), the Saarbrücken Braunschweig equalized 2-0 lead from the first leg and sent the game into extra time. However, due to a yellow-red card against Calogero Rizzuto, Saarbrücken had to outnumber in the first minute of added time. Braunschweig’s Fabio di Michele Sanchez uses this advantage to 1: 2 (105th minute +2). Saarbrücken continued to fight and worked out some chances. But Braunschweig keeper Thorben Hoffmann saved with several parades and even initiated a counterattack in the 120th minute that led to 2-2 by Rayan Philippe and brought the decision.

In front of 21,854 spectators in the Eintracht stadium, the Saarlanders not only alluded to the first leg result, but also against their own relegation balance. The FCS had previously failed in such promotion games four times in a row: against Eintracht Frankfurt (1989) and VfL Bochum (1990) it was still about leaving the Bundesliga. Against the Würzburger Kickers (2015) and 1860 Munich (2018) only for the third division promotion.

This time, too, the Braunschweiger had significantly more energy and penetrated forward. Sebastian Polter (10th) and Johan Gomez (34th) each missed the chance to make everything clear in the first half. Once again, under the new coach Marc Pfitzner, Eintracht showed a different body language and stability than in the disastrous last games of the regular second division season.

But: After the break, Eintracht had not taken advantage of its chances before. First, the game had to be briefly interrupted due to pyrotechnics in the Saarbrücken fan block. Then FCS trainer Alois Schwartz changed the two massive center forwarders Brünker and Patrick Schmidt. Shortly afterwards it was like 0: 1 out of nowhere. Paul Jaeckel’s handball in his own penalty area had noticed the video referee.

Despite this shock, Eintracht first kept the guests away from their own goal. However, the 0: 2 fell through a counterattack after an unnecessary loss of ball. The Braunschweig uncertainty, the Saarbrücken belief in the sensation: all of this was now back – until the pressure of the Eintracht became too strong. Keeper Hoffmann fought very much for the hosts, then Philippe met 2-2 after the goalkeeper was presented.