1. FC Köln must travel to the team of the hour on Sunday evening. Frankfurter Eintracht has already scored more points than FC Bayern this calendar year and impresses with impressive stability and goal risk. After the derby victory in Gladbach, Cologne are now facing a top team again.
Cologne – On Wednesday morning, after two days off, 1. FC Köln started preparations for the upcoming game at Eintracht Frankfurt. The hosts are currently the team of the hour, and for a long time it seemed to be an average season for Frankfurt. After twelve match days, the Hessians were in tenth place in the table – with two wins they had as many as 1. FC Köln and were only four points better than the billy goats with eight draws. Since then, however, a lot has changed for FC’s upcoming opponents. Since December 19, Frankfurt have not lost a game, in eight games there were seven wins for the team of coach Adi Hütter. Only at SC Freiburg there was a 2-2 draw.
Frankfurt a contender for the Champions League?
This means that Eintracht is currently the best team in the Bundesliga in calendar year 2021, ahead of Bayern, scored 19 out of a possible 21 points and has recently always scored at least two goals per game. The team is now on a Champions League place and is four points ahead of Borussia Dortmund and Borussia Mönchengladbach. A slump in Frankfurt is not in sight at the moment, the Elf is currently too stable, which is currently only changed by Hütter in an emergency.
The Frankfurters are currently appearing with a new self-image and have not let themselves be thrown off track by the interim equalization of TSG 1899 Hoffenheim last weekend. “We know about our quality. Even if we had got the 1: 2, that would not have been a problem and we would have come back in our current form ”, defensive boss Martin Hinteregger proves the newly won winning mentality after the success over TSG. The next team will try 1. FC Köln on Sunday evening to defeat Frankfurt Eintracht. At home, however, the Frankfurters haven’t lost at all this season and unlike many other teams in the Bundesliga, Eintracht are not at all interested in slowing down the growing euphoria at the moment.
Every run has to end once
But not only the structure itself seems unbelievably stable in Frankfurt at the moment, the individual players almost all reach their maximum performance. While Hinteregger is stabilizing the defense, which has now been converted to a three-man chain, the now 37-year-old Makoto Hasebe is probably playing his best season in defensive midfield. Amin Younes and Daichi Kamada are convincing on the offensive, while Filip Kostic and André Silva are at the forefront for a goal threat. With 17 goals this season, Silva is currently in second place behind Lewandowski and leaves winter newcomer Luka Jovic hardly a chance to start. It should not be expected on Sunday that the Frankfurt team could underestimate FC in their strong run. But the billy goats with Dortmund, Wolfsburg, Leipzig and Gladbach have already tripped up too many supposed favorites. And the 5-1 win over Arminia Bielefeld in Frankfurt also shows that Eintracht takes every opponent seriously. Meanwhile, the FC players hope to be able to transport the newly won team spirit through the derby win into the away game at Eintracht Frankfurt and to be in no way inferior to the game in Gladbach in terms of tough duels and passion. In addition, the billy goats have shown with their wins against Dortmund and Gladbach as well as the draw against RB Leipzig that they can wrest something countable from the top teams. And both in Cologne and in Frankfurt we know that every run can come to an end at some point.
