Eintracht Frankfurt travels to FC Barcelona in very poor condition. Coach Dino Toppmöller invokes team spirit and willingness to suffer. Will that be enough at the Camp Nou construction site?
Seeing the Camp Nou is like meeting an old friend with whom the years have not been kind. If you drive along Avenida Dr. Down Maranon, the venerable FC Barcelona stadium rises ponderously from a desert of construction sites. Lanes are closed, fences have been erected around the area, and it seems like construction dust is in the air. The entire upper part of the arena is still uncovered, a stadium as a skeleton, a starved version of itself, and so the countless cranes that are always in view look like thin doctors leaning worriedly over the bed of a seriously ill patient. The renovation is scheduled to be completed in 2026 and FC Barcelona will then be at home in one of the most modern arenas on the continent. But until then the sight is terrible.
It seems unthinkable that Eintracht Frankfurt should play the Champions League in such a non-location (Tuesday, 9 p.m., live in the audio stream) if you drive past the site. And yet it is also extremely appropriate. The Eintracht Frankfurt team also currently looks like a huge construction site – the defense is full of holes, the attack is more or less out of commission, the mood is bad – and it is up to coach Dino Toppmöller to eliminate the biggest problems as quickly as possible. “We have the chance to do better tomorrow,” he says, referring to the devastating 6-0 defeat in Leipzig last Saturday. And: “Something like what happened in Leipzig can’t happen again.” In Barcelona they want to focus on the things that are in their own hands: “Attitude, body language, commitment.”
Toppmöller: “One of the biggest Challenges”
There are certainly more grateful opponents than FC Barcelona in December 2025. Barca is once again at the top of the table as champions and cup winners, gained momentum again at the weekend with a 5-3 win in Seville, and anyway, apart from all the form curves, a team that has individualists like Lamine Yamal, Raphina, Robert Lewandowski and, and, and in its ranks wouldn’t necessarily be what you would call a building opponent. “This is one of the biggest challenges in football,” said Toppmöller. “There’s an offensive force coming our way.” In order to be successful, you will definitely have to do one thing, says Toppmöller: “Suffer for 90 minutes.”
In any case, this trip doesn’t have much to do with the carefree summer of 2022, when Eintracht took over the Camp Nou in front of 30,000 fans who traveled with them and won the Europa League a few weeks later. Eintracht lacks a capable striker in the absence of Jonny Burkardt and now also Michy Batshuayi, who broke his metatarsal against Leipzig. The team conceded the most goals in the Bundesliga and the second most in the Champions League. There is currently no sign of lightheartedness, rather a leaden atmosphere surrounds the club, so even looking back doesn’t help much. Or as Toppmöller says: “It was a really great experience for everyone who was there and kept the unity. That’s history. A very nice story. But it’s over.”
Is a new story beginning?
Will a new story begin on Tuesday? And what would it look like? Barcelona needs every point in the premier class, and what’s more: no one around Camp Nou will have forgotten the humiliation that happened in 2022, especially since some of the players from back then are still in the current squad. And the unity? Once again, somehow, I’m at a crossroads, albeit a perceived one. The game is only played for three points in the Champions League, nobody’s fate will be decided on Tuesday evening. But against the shadows of the past in 2022 and in the bright light of the current crisis, things seem a little bigger than they are. You think you can see the fine cracks in the structure better, and perhaps the season in Barcelona can take a direction. Just which one?
Not much speaks for unity. This is meaningless until the game is over. But the signs were already better. Or to put it another way: If you bet on Eintracht on Tuesday, you can also try your luck at the countless scratch card booths that are on the Ramblas and in the shopping streets of San Antoni and El Raval, where you can turn a few euros into a small fortune with a lot of luck. A big monetary win is also not particularly likely. But what does that mean? If you stroll through the streets of Barcelona in the afternoon, people are lining up in front of the stalls.
