Football – Eintracht Frankfurt looks at Bilbao with eagle eyes

Hugo Ekitiké seemed almost anxious this moment on Sunday evening. When the stone eagle Attila, the living mascot of Eintracht Frankfurt, hit his wings violently, the star striker preferred to distance. Before that, the Frenchman had gently caressed the plumage, but another approach seemed to be a little advisable in the 3-0 home win against 1. FC Heidenheim. Nevertheless, Falkner Norbert Lawitschka had everything under control. The animal with a span of almost two meters has been at the Eintracht home games since 2005 when the then very moody diva from the Main had just returned to the Bundesliga. “He was supposed to give our team strength for the first year after the climb – and scare the opponent,” said Lawitschka once.

The Falkner and his bird, Eintracht and their scorer Ekitiké: they are all used unscathed when the quarter-final secondary in the Europa League against Tottenham Hotspur is due on Thursday. For board boss Axel Hellmann, all forces must be bundled for the decisive guide of this season. “We want to get ahead and we want to do this with the entire power of this stadium. We want to show from the first minute that there is nothing to be won against us in the Europa League, «said the club boss, who appeared in the mixed zone for the first time this year for his flaming speech. His overarching message: “I know what it means for people, the city and the club to look towards Bilbao.”

Three years after the triumph in Seville, the Hesse have their sights on a European League final in a Spanish metropolis. Hellmann is convinced that the quarter-final hurdle Tottenham can skip in the first leg after the 1-1. After all, English clubs would lose some of their strength as soon as they left the island: “I definitely don’t want us to let this chance pass.” The team had to fight “until the self -abandonment”.

Hellmann could only advise everyone to recall the pictures from 2022 and mentioned the captain Sebastian Rode, which was already difficult to strike at the time, who had sacrificed his health to win the trophy for the club in the heart of Europe. “We have a lot of young players: to let his life for such a game until the last breath, are not yet so aware.” He is definitely “on fire”.

“I definitely don’t want us to let this chance pass by.”

Axel Hellmann 

CEO Eintracht Frankfurt

After the game against Heidenheim, coach Dino Toppmöller also promised that he initially wanted to go on Thursday without emotions, but then “light the boys so that the spark jumps”. The coach was one on the Sunday after the gates of Jean-Matteo Bahoya and Robin Koch in halftime one and Ekitiké’s goals in round two “pride” for an important three, who gives his team a lead of five points on the fifth FSV Mainz. Such an encounter against a relegation candidate always has to be considered “in the context”, Toppmöller noted: “We played a decent game.”

It sounded like a blatant contradiction to the statements that Markus Krösche had previously formulated with some worry lines on his forehead. The sports director criticized the lecture at the end of the 29th match day: »We scored three goals. That was good. But we still have room for improvement in many areas. “It was simply not serious enough:” It all reminded of a summer shock. “He kept watching a” laissez fairle position “with one or the other, that annoys him. Ergo: “We have to put two classes on Tottenham.”

Of course, Toppmöller was confronted with the critical assessment of his direct superior. “This is Markus Krösche’s job to put your finger in the wound.” The dissonances are due to the distribution of tasks at the sporting management level. The Good Guy-Bad Guy method is also used elsewhere to play the complete keyboard with great challenges. As with the eagle wearers who have become one of the first addresses in German football, since Attila’s real eagle eyes followed the development.