A bitter pill!

Our Elv lost their first home game in the 2. Bundesliga in dramatic fashion. However, the mood remains positive despite the huge disappointment.

Both the fans and also visiting coach Alois Schwartz felt that the game reminded them of the 1999 Champions League final: ‘I remember Bayern Munich leading 1:0 until the 95h minute – and then Man United scored two goals. That might be what it felt like for our opponents’, he noted after the game. ‘Football is sometimes a bit crazy’. And he is right.

SVE offered a strong home game but failed to close the match despite plenty of chances.

In a well-balanced first half, Carlo Sickinger hit the crossbar, going one better shortly after swapping ends and putting our Elv into the lead. The team under coach Horst Steffen then missed lots of opportunities, including a failed penalty kick by Jannik Rochelt. Wahid Faghir’s follow-up shot and goal was then disallowed by the referee team due to running in too early. Madness then ensured: Rostock’s loan player Juan José Perea provided a bitter defeat with two goals in the 11th and 13th minutes.

‘We are of course disappointed. At the end of the day, we should look at the performance, and it was good for the most part. We just failed to lock it down’, coach Horst Steffen said at the press conference after the game. ‘It looked like a win for a long time. There were a few situations that we had to diffuse. We conceded two goals that turned the game on its head somewhat’, explained the SVE coach, who described his team as having played a ‘decent game’.

This performance offers hope for the coming week in the DFB Cup.