Eintracht Frankfurt shows a respectable performance against 1. FC Köln and then loses their reward. However, the greatest surprise is once again the perspective of coach Albert Riera.
Since Albert Riera took charge at Eintracht Frankfurt, a football game has consisted of far more than 90 minutes. Of course, the crucial thing is to continue to be on the pitch under the Spanish coach. What remains from this Easter Sunday is a wasted two-goal lead and an ultimately fair 2-2 draw for Hesse against 1. FC Cologne. In order to correctly classify the situation at Eintracht in spring 2026, Riera’s press conference should not go unmentioned.
After the renewed disappointment, the 43-year-old insisted on continuing to spread positivity and repeatedly emphasized the complexity of his job at Eintracht. Riera reminded that in football the present is always crucial and then turned towards the past. The team that he took over from predecessor Dino Toppmöller around two months ago was, at that point, the worst defensive team in Europe. “There was fear, disappointment, frustration here.”
Riera reminds us of the complexity of his task
He now knows exactly what needs to be changed. However, he did not give a prediction as to when Eintracht would have internalized Riera football and its solutions could be fruitful. Reason for this: “I started here on February 1st, which is the worst day for a coach. The transfer window is closed, I had no preparation and then a game straight away.” None of this should be understood as an excuse. As was the case after the defeat in Mainz, Riera made it clear that the squad did not meet his expectations. “I have to make the players we have better.”
Now Riera is certainly not obliged to give an account after games. The fact that he once again claimed that when he arrived in Frankfurt he had found a pile of rubble lying on the ground, which even under his direction was reaching its limits in terms of quality against opponents like Mainz 05 or Cologne, is very surprising.
At the same time, his attempts to make the status quo look good based on facts regularly fail due to reality. After the defeat in Mainz, Riera falsely claimed to have created more chances in every game (except Bayern). Now he listed that Eintracht only didn’t win against Bayern, Mainz and Union. The goalless draw at St. Pauli went unmentioned. Whether intentional or accidental: statements like these do not add any credibility to the Spaniard. His appearance remains a mystery.
The Eintracht offensive functions
And that would then lead us to what is happening on the lawn, as this too continues to pose a mystery. Against 1. FC Köln, which should and must not go under under any circumstances, Eintracht initially showed one of the most exciting and entertaining performances of this year. The offensive, which had been lacking ideas in recent games, finally broke some of its shackles and showed some respectability. There was no goal scored in the first half. But Riera’s plan was recognizable.
Since Eintracht had obviously identified Cologne’s right side of the defense as vulnerable, this time the source of trouble, Arnaud Kalimuendo, acted as a left winger. Ansgar Knauff, nominally a right-wing player, acted as his counterpart when in possession of the ball. Nathaniel Brown and Ritsu Doan occupied the spaces between the chains when they had the ball, while Oscar Höjlund and Hugo Larsson alternated in offensive and defensive roles in the center. All of this can now be called ordered chaos or chaotic arrangement. But the most important thing: it worked.
Sure: Eintracht repeatedly invited Cologne to counterattacks with their changed style of play, and the guests squandered several good transition opportunities in the first 45 minutes. Since the Hessians remained dangerous even after the break and became even more dangerous with the substitutions of Fares Chaibi and Ayoube Amainouni-Echghouyab, Riera’s idea worked shortly afterwards. First Jonathan Burkardt took the lead as a center forward (66th), then Kalimuendo even added one more (69th).
Koch criticized: We were too wild
What happened next showed, on the one hand, how fragile this unity still is. On the other hand, there is the question of who is responsible. Riera’s explanation that his team simply lost too many duels in the second half and therefore lost the victory is certainly not wrong in the final analysis. Without lost man-to-man duels there would be no goals conceded. The goals from Jakub Kaminski (70th) and Alessio Castro-Montes (83rd) could certainly have been defended somewhere on the pitch.
However, the visibly annoyed captain and head of defense Robin Koch went into a little more detail in his analysis and looked deeper: “We should have kept calm and kept control after the 2-0 win. But we were too wild,” he summarized.
Koch then evaded a question about where the impulse for more stability and a slightly less risky style of play could have come from. But since his coach revealed a few minutes later that Koch had approached him after the second goal and asked about the possibility of a different approach, things quickly became clearer. “Robin asked if we would continue to play like this. I said: ‘Yes, because we scored two goals like that.'” Riera wanted more, Koch obviously wanted more compactness. The rest is known.
Would have, ifs and buts…
Now there are different perspectives and different opinions on football. There is also no guarantee that Eintracht would not have conceded two more goals even in reverse gear. But it is clear that the Hessians are still looking for the right balance between defense and attack under Riera. Either there’s nothing going on at the front or there’s a lot of fire at the back. There is no solution in sight.
For coach Riera, however, it all seems half as wild: “There are also positive things, not just negative things,” he made it clear again at the end of his remarks and tried a daring subjunctive construction to illustrate this. “If we had won and not scored, we would have set a record today.” No matter what Riera says in English, it somehow seems Spanish.
