An the horizon Michel and Elbphilharmonie, smells and sounds of the cathedral waft in from the nearby Heiligengeistfeld, and right behind the scoreboard the Ferris wheel turns leisurely: when Hamburg celebrates its folk festival and football is played at the Millerntor, the city’s landmarks are silent witnesses in a true sense of the word atmospheric setting.
How entertaining football in the second division can be when, like on Saturday afternoon, two traditional clubs meet in the promotion race and almost 30,000 people watch, cheer, suffer – you almost forgot how quickly 95 minutes can be over, how much you want extra time would have wished.
It didn’t matter that in the 1:1 of the sympathetically linked northern rivals nobody left the lush green lawn as the winner, both coaches however claimed that they deserved to have been winners of this excitingly beginning and ending game.
If anything, SV Werder had to be annoyed. Draw against SV Sandhausen, now a point at the Millerntor – the series under coach Ole Werner still reads impressively, ten wins in 14 games. Due to the Darmstadt blunder at the “Club”, this 1:1 even got an additional value.
But the chances of the “ugly birds” (quote Niclas Füllkrug) in the Werder storm were so good that the return on a hit actually seemed meager. Vollkrug in the 25th minute, Marvin Ducksch two pointer turns later: Before Daniel-Kofi Kyereh gave FC St. Pauli the 1-0 (42nd), the Bundesliga relegated team could have celebrated twice. After Füllkrug’s equalizer in the 58th minute, Werder sniffed at Ducksch’s crossbar hit in the 86th minute and Füllkrug’s header a little later: “We were closer to the lucky punch,” said Füllkrug, who didn’t want to grieve, even if Werder defeated FC Schalke First place: “It was important not to lose.”
They embody the joy of play
Füllkrug and Ducksch, the self-proclaimed “ugly birds”, have meanwhile scored 32 goals; they were on the pitch together for the first time in the 1-1 draw in the first leg; What was an emergency solution under coach Markus Anfang has become the Bremer Lebensversicherung in the fight for promotion: it’s a pleasure to see how the two look for each other, how they swarm out on the counterattack, how they employ three or four defenders. They embody the joy of the game that the whole team has been exuding for weeks.
It’s pleasing and also goal-oriented how Werder play their game in the good phases – Werner’s team had clear advantages in the system. Unexcited in his work and clear in his instructions, he has built something out of the most expensive squad in the lower house next to Schalke, which is always good for promotion – there is a lot of experience from the Bundesliga in it, which you can’t really say about St. Pauli with coach Timo Schultz can.
And yet his team deserved to win. Two contentious scenes were namely passionately discussed. Florian Badstübner’s whistle was silent twice: first when Guido Burgstaller fell over Mitchell Weiser’s leg in the Bremen penalty area (40′), then when Felix Agu pushed the ball through Marcel Beifus’ legs with a deep forehand volley and prepared the equaliser.
There could have been penalties and free kicks for St. Pauli. Badstübner decided against it. Yes, need to talk, referee scolding no: Schultz preferred to talk about how well his club was doing five games before the end of the season. He seemed full of anticipation of what is to come before the season finale. And that went perfectly with this game, with this league.
