Analysis: The missing bit

Merveille Papela hitting the crossbar: the best opportunity in the first half? It belonged to the Lilies. After a strong move, Guille Bueno brought the ball sharply into the penalty area and found a taker in Merveille Papela. Braunschweig’s Di Michele Sanchez deflected the midfielder’s attempt with his back against the crossbar. Inches were missing from a Lilien lead, which would certainly have had a major impact on the further course of the game. The possible goal would have triggered a “positive feeling” at SV 98, as Marco Thiede explained afterwards. „In the first half of the season, balls like that went in,“ summed up the right-back, with whom Marcel Schuhen agreed with his analysis: „The Braunschweig player turns away and deflects the ball onto the crossbar. For us, the defender turns away, the ball goes through his legs and then into the goal. That was the little moment today.“

The South Hessians have been waiting for a goal of their own for four games, and the Lilies are currently lacking a bit of self-image when it comes to scoring goals. “A goal doesn’t always have to be pretty,” Florian Kohfeldt had already explained after the Nürnberg game, probably having exactly scenes like the Papela attempt in mind. A deflected shot that somehow ends up in the net. A goal like that would also be worth gold for SV 98. Unfortunately, in Braunschweig the woodwork was in the way. And that in two respects. Killian Corredor’s shot in the 89th minute – also deflected – landed on the crossbar.

The goal conceded: What the Lilies couldn’t do, Eintracht Braunschweig managed in the 60th minute of the game. Initially, the Darmstadt team managed to separate Lino Tempelmann from the ball near the penalty area, but the ball ended up back in the feet of the hosts and then again at Tempelmann, who hit the net from 18 meters. “A stupid goal conceded,” summarised Thiede and finally the game-deciding moment. Particularly bitter because SV 98 was able to keep Braunschweig away from their own goal very well in the rest of the season. The hosts‘ xGoals value of 0.54 does not necessarily indicate an excess of chances for Lower Saxony. For comparison: the Lilies had a value of 1.04. Which brings us back to the little moments that were already discussed in the previous section. Or, to put it in Thiede’s words: „Unfortunately, we are currently missing the last bit of luck.“

The sending off for Jean-Paul Boëtius: „After the goal conceded and the yellow-red card, the starting position was extremely difficult,“ explained Florian Kohfeldt, before adding with regard to Jean-Paul Boëtius’s suspension: „In the context of the game, I honestly didn’t see Boëtius‘ yellow-red card that way.“ Seen in isolation, the sending off was certainly justifiable for the Dutchman in the 62nd minute of the game, but the Lilien head coach was more concerned with proportionality in the distribution of cards throughout the game. Ermin Bicakcic and Julian Baas in particular were lucky before the break that their offenses were not punished with yellow cards. “It lacked a bit of sensitivity in many scenes,” Thiede revealed in an interview with SKY. Being outnumbered, SV 98 fought with all their might against the impending defeat, but they were no longer able to score a well-deserved equaliser.

The personnel situation: The Lilies have been with us for a few weeks now and the staffing level is getting thinner from matchday to matchday. “As a team, we will never make this an issue,” said Schuhen in response to the increasingly frequent question as to whether there is now a situation that a team can no longer compensate for. Neither the goalkeeper, Thiede or Kohfeldt used the numerous failures as an excuse, but the head coach in Braunschweig rightly stated that they were definitely decisive for various things. „There was only this one system possible today, we couldn’t make any tactical changes as the game progressed and we only had one really fit substitute on the bench in Luca Marseiler. That has a big impact on the overall situation. We have to adapt to this situation. So today we played what we had to and not what we actually want. But the situation won’t get better if we complain. Rather, if we continue to fight it the way we did today.“

The fighting spirit right up to the final whistle: „There are certainly teams that might fall apart with a 1-0 deficit or after being sent off. Not us. Quite the opposite. We tried everything and were more dangerous than Braunschweig when we were outnumbered.“ With these sentences, Marcel Schuhen emphasised in an interview with NDR what positive aspects the Lilies can take back to southern Hesse. Nobody could deny SV 98’s commitment and will after the 90 minutes in Braunschweig. “We fought until the last second and were ready to defend ourselves,” said Kohfeldt, who called three tall central defenders into the attack in the final phase: Aleksandar Vukotic, Matej Maglica and debutant Meldin Dreskovic. Goalkeeper Marcel Schuhen also dived into the opponent’s penalty area in the final minutes and explained afterwards: „We accepted the difficult situation and were not above playing long balls and putting everything in. The important thing is that we can look in the mirror and say: we tried everything.“