A Difficult Path with Elversberg

The goal conceded to make it 2-0. Until Elversberg’s second goal, the Lilies were doing well in the game. The opening phase clearly belonged to the home team, even after conceding a goal in the 12th minute, which came almost out of nowhere, the South Hesse team continued to have good approaches: Papela intercepted a ball out wide and slid into the penalty area, but it narrowly missed the post in the 31st minute. Corredor’s shot just seven minutes later also narrowly missed its target. And in the 40th minute, Müller won the ball strongly, but did not get enough pressure on the goal from a promising position after a pass from Lakenmacher. In return, however, Elversberg increased the score to 2-0 shortly before half-time. And the Lilies, who certainly had a chance to equalise, were suddenly confronted with a two-goal deficit.

The injuries. It is an honour for Florian Kohfeldt that he never used the numerous failures in his public assessment in recent weeks. And yet he also had to swallow when Lopez was out with back problems on the evening before the home game and then Hornby had to miss out due to an injury a few minutes before the start of the game. The home team played the game with only five field players on the bench. An absolute mini-squad with which South Hesse had to play the match. We don’t want to list the other failures, because then the writer of these lines would be at risk of developing tendonitis in his hand. We will therefore leave it with a positive ray of hope: Lidberg is back.

The balance in the game. The Lilies seemed – as strange as it sounds after a 3-0 – quite pleasant in the first hour. SV 98 runs the ball well and plays good positioning, but not much comes of it. The Boys in Blue have been waiting for a goal of their own for three games. It is important to convert the approaches into compelling chances and, above all, into goals. Just like in the first half of the season. Kohfeldt: „For the next week we have to find a solution as to how we can achieve the balance between creating scoring chances. We also need to go from having more scoring chances again without having to take too much risk in our defensive game.“

The final phase of the game. Yes, after Asllani made it 3-0 after around an hour and especially after Nürnberger’s unnecessary suspension, the game was over. And yet overall there was too little from the home team.

The basic attitude and approach. Just as we found the fly in the ointment after successful games in the first half of the season, there are also things in this game that give us courage that the pendulum will soon swing in the other direction again. The Lilies were in the draw for points for a long time; their decent performance with several options was already described above. Elversberg was extremely effective, but otherwise didn’t come into his own for a long time. „There are still a few points that suggest that this team is stable,“ said Kohfeldt, before the head coach added: „I don’t know whether so many teams had so many high ball recoveries against Elversberg in the first half.“

The mix of criticism and focus after the game. „The first thing we have to do is clearly identify the negative flow, we don’t have to lie about it. What we definitely won’t do is go into the next week and say: Yes, okay, it’ll be fine again,“ emphasised Kohfeldt. „We have to stay active, we have to remain clear. But it is also clear that we are not trying to close one construction site and open three others, but we have to maintain a certain level of rigor.“ And yet, after the PK, the Lilien coach indicated that he had approaches in mind to get his team back on track.