In general, far too little thought is given to the misfortune of substitute players in the football industry. As xylophonists in the football business, they are usually only mentioned if they score a goal after being substituted on. How sad the fate of those whom the coach ignores throughout the game became clear after Hannover 96’s 2-1 defeat at the unleashed 1. FC Kaiserslautern. It was half a dozen Hanoverian substitutes who were sent onto the pitch immediately after the final whistle to “run out” again, i.e. to keep muscles supple and at the right temperature, which the coach previously thought he could do without. They must have felt well entertained in the meantime. Because while the previously unemployed were doing their rounds, the Betzenberg was celebrating everything that makes it one of the loudest, wildest and most emotional stadiums in Europe on a good day.
Of course, this Friday was a good day from Lauterer’s point of view, without a doubt. Not least because defender Kevin Kraus, with a keen sense of the dramaturgy of such evenings, only scored the 2-1 for the promoted team in added time and thus gave the starting signal for celebrations that were close to those that followed the victory in the two relegation games against Dynamo Dresden had been performed. “We carried our hearts onto the pitch,” said one goal scorer (Kraus). And the other, Mike Wunderlich, admitted he “would have been happy with a point too”. However, the last-second win was also “hard-earned.”
In fact, the first Lauterer second division goal since 2018, which Wunderlich had just contributed, was the logical product of the style of play prescribed by coach Dirk Schuster: From the start, the hosts really threw themselves into the duels, which they fought with grim determination. This was also the case before the opening goal, when attacker Terrence Boyd grabbed the ball from Hannover’s indisposed defender Julian Börner at the corner flag and immediately passed it to Wunderlich, who only had to close the ball. Together, the two old gentlemen in the extremely experienced Lauterer squad are 67 years old – on Friday, in contrast to the Hannover squad, which was collectively sleepy in the first round, they looked as if they and their colleagues had just emerged from a fountain of youth.
—After years of being third-rate, it’s back on a bigger stage – the Fritz-Walter-Stadion.
(Foto: IMAGO/wolfstone-photo/IMAGO/Werner Schmitt)
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On the other hand, Hannover, who want to make another attempt towards the Bundesliga this season, played exactly as Hannover had played far too often in the past few years until the change of sides. Namely sluggish from head to toe, especially for a team with these individual strengths. Promising counter-attacks were thwarted by miserable first balls, side shifts played unhindered and opponents only attacked when they had already come dangerously close to their own goal.
The suspicion that Hannover 96 could be incapable of reform has yet to be dispelled by coach Stefan Leitl. The man did a good job in Fürth for three years and even received a lot of praise last season when his team had no chance of being relegated from the first division. Not least for the fact that you could always attest to your individually cruelly inferior team plan, heart and often even joy in the beautiful game. In Hanover he is now the eleventh coach in nine years and has a squad at hand that FCK sporting director Thomas Hengen rightly said that “there are players on the bench who would play at any other club.” Leitl knows that too, who has to show in Hanover that he can not only make a lot out of a little – but also out of a lot. After the game he was initially disappointed “that we didn’t take at least one point.” The interim compensation by another ex-Fuerther, Havard Nielsen (80th), was “long overdue” beforehand.
In fact, the second half led by Leitl provided evidence that this collection of highly gifted and highly paid can also be tactically and mentally shaped. Hanover was actually clearly superior at times. And yet had to accept shortly before the final whistle that Kraus brought Betze to a boil one last time. And since it takes a while to cool down after a cooking process, even in physics, three and a half of the four sides of the grandstand continued to sing for a quarter of an hour after the final whistle. Meanwhile, down on the lawn, a small group of guest players continued to do their rounds, while in the dressing room the winning goal scorer said a sentence that was more of a slap in the face for the Hanover players who had been on the pitch during the game: “What else could I have done ? I was completely free.”
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