Painful defeat

SV Elversberg has had its first painful experience in the 2. Bundesliga. The Fortuna team came to Saarland with plenty of respect.

During the first 2. Bundesliga game in the club’s history in the URSAPHARM Arena on Kaiserlinde, Elversberg were out of luck. Although the promoted team already had to learn the hard way in the previous games of the season, they were outshone in all respects by last year’s fourth placed team and suffered a clear 0:5 loss. Düsseldorf were focused and confident with the ball, remaining tight and offering a threat across the entire team. ‘We have been watching in recent weeks so came with a health dose of respect. And we found what we expected to find: a strong team that plays a lot through the centre.’ This also prompted them to avoid an offensive approach: ‘I also saw games where teams had issues against Elversberg because they applied pressure too high. We therefore wanted to go deeper and not open up these half-spaces where people like to play’, the visiting team’s coach Daniel Thioune explained. Fortuna’s rather defensive play paid off in stopping our Elv from putting their offensive play into practice.

However, Horst Steffen will not be changing this style of play in the future: ‘In our upcoming games, we will not be getting bogged down in our own penalty area and holding up play.’ It was also extremely promising in the initial games, even though things went badly wrong last weekend. Thore Jacobsen also encouraged his fellow players to be bold: ‘I hope that they boys do not let this get them down. We have a confident team that can handle it. It is time we got a three-pointer, for self-confidence alone.’
The next opportunity to do this is in Osnabrück.