After a fairytale season, Eintracht Frankfurt is suddenly playing the Champions League. A whole city is on cloud nine – and if the Hessians can keep their team together, the fairy tale might be extended.
Eintracht Frankfurt won the Europa League in May. As a reward, the SBU can play in the Champions League from September. And because the squad has been strengthened in breadth and depth, people in Hesse’s fan pubs are quietly saying that the first season in the premier class doesn’t necessarily have to be the last.
That’s how last season went
In a word: dreamy. After the historic win of the DFB Cup in 2018, it was thought that the trophy collection in Frankfurt would not be richer by another trophy for at least 30 years. That one just four years later then won the Europa League and thus qualified for the Champions League, still causes some Eintracht fans to gasp.
But you also have to admit that the first international title since 1980 covered up some of the shortcomings of this team. In the Bundesliga, Eintracht collected a rather meager 42 points after a good first half of the season (27 points) and ended up on a gray eleventh place in the table. In the home stadium, the Hessians only managed four victories – only the relegated teams from Bielefeld and Fürth were even more unsuccessful at home. The double burden of the Europa League and Bundesliga made Frankfurt’s legs really heavy in the final spurt of the season.
Who is coming, who is going?
So that this does not happen again this season with a provisional triple load, the Hessians have strengthened the squad in width and depth. With the Signing of Mario Götze Eintracht has of course managed a real coup, which should also send a clear signal to the national and international competition: Frankfurt is to be expected again.
With all the Götze hype, a few other newcomers should also be mentioned: With Lucas Alario from Bayer Leverkusen, the Hessians have signed the long-awaited full-blooded striker. With Jérôme Onguéné (24) and Hrvoje Smolčić (21) hopeful young central defenders move up. And in Randal Kolo Muani (23), Eintracht has brought a versatile striker into the team, who has already proven his class in Ligue 1 (twelve goals in 36 games) and won the national cup competition with Nantes.
Perhaps the most amazing thing about the transfer summer so far was that the big sell-out didn’t materialize. Departures like Erik Durm, Danny da Costa or Aymen Barkok were planned and didn’t hurt Frankfurt. Eintracht has their regular cast from the past season with the exception of Martin Hinteregger, who ended his career prematurely, held together. Especially with Filip Kostic, Daichi Kamada and Evan N’Dicka, who are all going into their last year of contract in Frankfurt, the fans expect a departure almost every day. None of the three has left the club yet. With every day that stays that way, the hopes of the already euphoric Eintracht attachment grow.
The trainer
When the big coaching shift in the Bundesliga began last season, it was not yet foreseeable that Eintracht of all people had made a stroke of luck. Because Marco Rose wanted to go to Dortmund, Gladbach pulled out Eintracht coach Adi Hütter. Glasner, who came from Wolfsburg, followed in big footsteps in Frankfurt and made a fool of himself in the first round of the DFB Cup in Mannheim. A year later, nobody talks about it anymore.
While Rose and Hütter lost their jobs again during the season, Glasner won more and more sympathy with his calm and open manner. The Austrian is considered to be an extremely good tactician and is one of the many coaches from the RB school who earned their spurs in Salzburg and carried pressing football all over Europe. Aggressive, intense and fast: Just like they love it in Frankfurt.
The problem: Pressing football is not designed per se to play against teams that are at the bottom. That was sort of the Achilles heel of Eintracht last season. Glasner’s latest trick: Im DFB Cup game against Magdeburg he placed the filigree technician Kamada in defensive midfield to accommodate another creative force in the center. Although Magdeburg did not put itself behind, the unity is by the change of position of the Japanese become a bit more variable again. It can be assumed that Glasner will repeat his experiment against supposedly weaker opponents.
in the Opening game this Friday against Bayern (8.30 p.m.) the soon to be 48-year-old is now thinking about changing the system. The usual 3-4-2-1 could become a 3-5-2 in the evening. “We’ll see what fits best. If Bayern play with a lot of players in the center, then we could condense the center even more with a 3-5-2,” said Glasner. But he didn’t want to commit himself two days before the game. Eintracht not only wants to be variable, but also unpredictable.
The expectations of the season
The times when you were stacked low in Frankfurt are over. “We have the clear objective to play the European places and to regularly play internationally,” said sporting director Markus Krösche. To “play along” for the European places is of course a broad term and of course the team would be forgiven for another eleventh place in the league if they stirred up the Champions League as an underdog for it. Regardless of an exact place in the table, there is a clear expectation that Eintracht will annoy the big players again this season – no matter what competition.
