Attacker without luck since September
©IMAGO
First the egg spell, then salvation. Steffen Baumgart had a big smile on his face after the 3-1 win against unloved league rivals RB Leipzig. “It obviously makes me smile a bit that we have three goals from our offensive department – from the game. We are happy with the win, but we also know how hard the work was,” said the Union coach.
Since the 4-3 win against Frankfurt in September there had not been a goal scored by an attacker. He had said beforehand that these statistics were “getting on his nerves”. With just 16 goals, the Köpenick team also had the fifth weakest offensive in the Bundesliga before matchday 14. In addition, the Unioners had not scored against RB in four games.
After “Freddy (Rönnow) kept us in the game with two outstanding saves,” Baumgart continued. First the ex-Leipziger Oliver Burke scored (57th minute), then Ilyas Ansah (64th) and Tim Skarke (90th + 3) followed up in front of 22,012 spectators in the sold-out An der Alten Försterei stadium. For Skarke it was his first goal for the Iron Men. “We’ll see whether the spell is broken, it’s a matter of just doing it. I’m particularly pleased that the boys who came in at the back won the game,” said Baumgart, who added: “The boys accepted every duel, ran after every meter, not only worked hard, but also played better forward and made very, very good use of the situations that presented themselves to us.”
After all, we “won against one of the strongest teams in the league. We wrestled the opponent down and defeated them in our own way. After the break we were very sharp and pushed ourselves to the limit physically,” said Baumgart. Goalscorer Ansah said: “We have the will to win this game.” The victory also means that Union’s floodlight streak is maintained: Berlin has not lost a home game on a Friday evening since September 2019. So far, the Berliners have had seven wins and two draws.