An hour after the end of the game, party music was still blaring from the guest cabin at the Grünwalder Stadium. The fans of SpVgg Unterhaching had shouted “lions to the zoo” after the final whistle, and before that the “suburbanites” had bought the edge from the home team. At the top of the humiliation list for the Lions fans was a goalkeeper who had moved from Unterhaching to Giesing in the summer and had now initiated the defeat. The word shame doesn’t actually have a plural, but it would have been necessary for what the sixties experienced on Saturday.
Due to the 1:3 defeat in their own stadium in the Toto Cup quarter-finals, the Giesingers have to say goodbye to a goal for the season and at the same time probably also to the all-important income in the coming financial year. The Lions had already failed in the Toto Cup quarter-finals last year, at the hands of Bayernliga club FC Pipinsried. “There is still a possibility” of reaching the next DFB Cup competition, said a dejected captain Jesper Verlaat after the game. He didn’t elaborate any further. Saturday afternoon was simply not the right time to talk about fourth place in the third division.
There is still a lot of mystery as to why performance in the 1960s fluctuated so much. Most recently, the team was the only group in the club to provide good news – the word dispute now also requires a plural at 1860 Munich. The first half hour of the cup fight was simply boring; after an unfortunate deficit, Sixty never really found their way into the game. This time, Tunay Deniz had a very clear opinion about it: “Three or four players” were “not up to par today and should be leading the way as top performers”.
Goalkeeper Vollath is unfortunate in several situations
He probably also meant the goalkeeper, even though he is no longer the regular goalkeeper. According to the agreement at Sixty, René Vollath will play in the cup because Marco Hiller is now back in the league. Vollath played for the Hachingers last season. And so on Saturday he actually managed to get booed by both camps.
“Out of nowhere” (Tunay) the score was 0-1 for Hachinger after a long free-kick cross. Vollath could be heard shouting from the top stands, a signal that he was coming to the ball. But he didn’t grab it. The ball slipped through his fingers and rolled backwards – 0-1 (31st). “Not fully concentrated,” Sixty’s coach Argirios Giannikis later analyzed, who also spoke of a “sh… goal conceded”. An unusual choice of words for him.
Many Sixty fans were outraged, some calling for Vollath to be replaced immediately. The Haching fans in the opposite west curve, who had insulted him in the 2-2 draw in their own stadium almost four weeks ago, sang his name, a cynical expression of thanks. Just two minutes later, he proved that the 34-year-old keeper doesn’t get upset so quickly when he came out on top in a one-on-one situation with Julian Kügel.
There are more seats left in the stands, otherwise – and the atmosphere is bad
Instead of reflecting on missed opportunities, which was hardly possible, the sixties pondered what would have happened if Haching’s Gibson Adu had been sent off with a yellow-red card. He was given a warning after forming a pack (35′), and in the second half there was no penalty for continuing to play despite a whistle. Even when the score was 0-2 in the 60th minute, Vollath didn’t look good when Kügel’s header hit, but neither did the people in front of him. With the score 3-0 thanks to a deflected shot from Max Lamby, the game was decided, even if Verlaat scored with a header in stoppage time (90th + 3).
“You also pay admission for that,” complained a spectator in the main stand about the performance. The Toto Cup is not included in the annual ticket, the admission prices were very high, 12,470 spectators came. So there were significantly larger gaps than usual in the ranks, but that may not just be due to the prices.
A new fan group is involved, their name: “White & Blue for the TSV”
There is also a dispute in the fan camp at Sixty. On Friday evening, a new group appeared in public for the first time, “Weiss & Blau für den TSV” celebrated something of a spirit of optimism in the Olching club restaurant “Dahoam”. Essentially, it’s about reviving the interests of the Arge fan club representation, which was discontinued two years ago, building a new stadium and playing in the Bundesliga again. The path there should be successful with investor Hasan Ismaik. The new group has set itself the goal of acquiring as many members as possible, for itself, but also for 1860 Munich, in order to have a majority of votes in the next election to the board of directors and thus to disempower the current club management.
In addition to the former 1860 vice president Peter Helfer, Jürgen Pusch is a founding member of the group. He also spoke at length on Friday about the atmosphere in the stadium. He himself has an annual ticket, but often no longer goes to the games because he simply can no longer see the flags – by which he particularly means the ones with Ismaik’s portrait crossed out. That may be the first explanation for the gaps that have been visible in the stands for some time. But he wouldn’t hand in his annual ticket, Pusch continued, because otherwise someone who didn’t deserve it might get the seat in the stands.
So it’s come to this point at Sixty: that the opposition’s dislike is more important than the game down on the pitch. The cup game against Unterhaching would have been an opportunity to, well, enjoy the game without annoying flags. The active fan scene took a break this time; it was unusually quiet in the west curve. Not just after the game.
