On the 10th matchday of the women’s Bundesliga, Eintracht Frankfurt travels to SC Freiburg, but that doesn’t mean the end of the season for the SGE.
After Champions League is before the Champions League – that’s how you could summarize the last few weeks of this year from Eintracht Frankfurt’s perspective. The Bundesliga game against SC Freiburg on Saturday (2 p.m.) will not only be framed by the two premier class group games against Benfica Lisbon. Against the Breisgauer women it is also about holding on to third place in the league.
This also entitles you to the qualifying round for the international competition next summer and has been occupied by Eintracht since the last matchday, when the Frankfurt team were able to turn a 0-1 deficit against Hoffenheim into a win. Anyway, Eintracht seems to have a love for catching up.
So far the highlight in this regard is fighting for third place in the league. Frankfurt started with two defeats against SGS Essen and VfL Wolfsburg and then slowly moved up the table from behind. International business is highly competitive: While the first two places are once again fought between the Wolfsburg and Munich women, there are only five points between third place and the Freiburg women in eighth place.
Little rotation despite Triple burden
A sticking point in these days before the winter break could be that the squad seems to lack breadth – also due to injuries in the meantime. At least head coach Niko Arnautis only rotates the starting eleven sporadically and the changes in the second half are often similar. What on the one hand ensures coordination and clear processes is, on the other hand, predictable at some point and costs the regular players a lot of energy in the long run.
This finding is not new; it has been evident in Frankfurt’s football for several seasons. What is new, however, is the triple burden under the flag of Eintracht, merger club 1. As is well known, FFC Frankfurt was the last German Champions League winner in 2015. While SC Freiburg has already had three new signings during the winter break, no transfer has yet been announced from Frankfurt.
“Frankfurt is one of the best counterattacking teams in the league with a lot of speed and high offensive quality. They play a lot of long balls and want to put stress on the backline. That is certainly what we have to stop and defend well“said Freiburg’s head coach Theresa Merk about her upcoming opponents.
Frankfurt’s Laura Freigang applauds towards the fans.
According to Opta data, Frankfurt is in the top third of the Bundesliga in terms of pressing intensity. After Wolfsburg and Bayern, Eintracht is also the team that wins the ball in the opponent’s third most often and is the best in the league at using such high ball wins for a shot on goal. However, of the 21 shots on goal achieved in this way, only four ended up in the net – because Frankfurt is also at the forefront when it comes to missed big opportunities.
Lots of different goal scorers
The overall result is not bad at all with 18 goals scored and is mainly spread across several shoulders: Nicole Anyomi (4 goals, 4 assists), Barbara Dunst (3 goals, 5 assists), Lara Prašnikar (3 goals, 4 assists) and Laura Freigang (5 goals, one assist) share the scorer points between them.
Defensively, compared to the competition for third place, Frankfurt is best at not even allowing shots on their own goal; the comparison with Freiburg is particularly clear: while Eintracht had 64 shots on their own goal during the game, according to Opta There were a whopping 102 goals for SC. This has led to 19 goals conceded by Theresa Merk’s team so far. The Freiburg women’s performances and results have fluctuated since the last second half of the season, but things often go much better against clubs from the top regions of the table who want to play offensively themselves. This was also the case with the victory over SGS Essen on the last match day.
Freiburg’s Gudorf with a positive trend
“Freiburg always has speed and a certain physicality, especially on the wings“, says Niko Arnautis. This refers to Ally Gudorf, who, after moving from Cologne in the summer, has moved back into a more offensive role under Merk than she did at FC last time. With her athleticism, she is important for Freiburg’s pressing and switching game and now seems that way really arrived in Freiburg.
Freiburg’s Ally Gudorf and Hasret Kayikci are annoyed about the missed goal against 1. FC Nürnberg.
Because against Essen she played the full 90 minutes for the first time since mid-October and played a good game. If some of the uncertainty from Lisbon has stuck with Eintracht, Gudorf would be someone who knows how to take advantage of it. On the other hand, Frankfurt can make comebacks – and Freiburg has already lost a lead twice against Duisburg and Cologne this season.