The cute park railway runs past the Friendship Stadium just a few meters away, it connects several Cottbus sights, but is going into its winter break next week. That’s why the TSV 1860 Munich supporters were the last away fans of the year to book a trip, and after what happened in the stadium on Sunday afternoon, the sightseeing program would certainly have been more picturesque than this crazy game. The Sixties were already 1:4 behind at halftime, but in the end it was 1:5. A strange debacle, because important statistics (ball possession, tackles, shots on goal) clearly spoke in favor of Argirios Giannikis‘ team. “Pretty good? “We were just going forward,” the coach said after the final whistle, he didn’t sugarcoat anything. “We will turn over every stone” to find an answer to why Sixty is currently conceding so many goals. While Energie Cottbus took the lead in the table on Sunday thanks to a strong goal difference and coach Pele Wollitz took off his hat to the team, the Lions conceded the most goals in the third division. It was still unclear on Sunday whether the club’s management would turn over stones after this debacle in order to question fundamentals.
Maybe it wasn’t a good idea for Sixty’s captain Jesper Verlaat to let the Cottbus team, who had been unbeaten for so long and performed with a lot of energy, play on their own curve after winning the place. “We are prepared,” Giannikis said before the game, referring to the Cottbus team’s offensive power. That was wrong. After three minutes, Yannik Möker shot on goal for the first time – in. Lions keeper René Vollath was largely blameless that afternoon; the problem was rather the sloppy behavior of those in front of him, especially Leroy Kwadwo, who was responsible for the first and third goals. The left-back was substituted at half-time.
What was strange was that the away team took control of the game for long stretches. “I didn’t expect Sixty to be so good, I’ll be honest,” said Cottbus coach Wollitz at Magentasport. For the home coach, their own goalkeeper Elias Bethke was a crucial man because he scratched Verlaat’s header off the line from close range (14th). Morris Schröter had a great chance to equalize six minutes later, but the score was 2-0. In just nine minutes, Lucas Copado, the son of former Unterhaching attacker Francisco Copado, scored a brace, even though Schröter managed to score the next goal after a goal from the football field with a lot of poke (26th). The decisive blow from Schröter’s point of view was the 4:1 with a dream goal by Tolcay Cigerci in stoppage time, because “going into the break with a 1:3 is something else again”. After the break, the Lions tried hard to prevent a worse fiasco, but there wasn’t much progress left. Timmy Thiele scored the final point after just 61 minutes.
The Lions had recently played 2-2 twice, led a total of four times and repeatedly lost the lead
Actually, in Giesing in the past few weeks, a lot has revolved around the question of whether the team has the potential to be at the top or not. It was not without pride that Giannikis pointed out several times that he had survived the two English weeks of the current season unbeaten – until he went to Cottbus, of course. The team always performed confidently away from home, and a nice side story in this regard is the crowning achievement of Thore Jacobsen’s 60-meter goal in Bielefeld five weeks ago as the goal of the month. The Lions had recently played 2-2 twice, led a total of four times and repeatedly lost the lead. The main reasons for this are individual defensive errors and excessive distances from opposing strikers.
In some ways the performance in Cottbus was even better than the 2-2 draw in Unterhaching a week earlier. But now at Sixty it will be a question of whether the unrest that is sure to arise will still allow consistent performance. The team didn’t even show up to the fans after the game; they reacted angrily. As they made their way home, some had the feeling that the train for this season might have already left.
