The 86th minute was running in the Grünwalder Stadium when the spectators stood up and clapped. They possibly stood up for defender Kaan Kurt, who had just left the pitch together with his defensive colleague Manfred Starke and made room for new players. However, it is reasonable to assume that the Munich Lions’ fans were primarily in support of the player with the number 5 on the shirt: it was attacker Eroll Zejnullahu who not only made this triple substitution perfect.
If you like, the footballers of TSV 1860 managed to equalize in the third division. On match day twelve, the Munich Lions won 2-0 against the second team from SC Freiburg, recording their fifth win out of five defeats and two draws. “In the last few games we’ve often had a 1-0 lead and then the game is over,” said attacker Julian Guttau after the end of the game. The new strategy: “We make it 1-0 at the right time, and after that we just didn’t want to do any less.”
You’ve rarely heard a footballer talk about timing a goal at the wrong time, but that’s not a bad thing. Although the 1-0 scorer was actually rather unwell for his shooter. In the 16th minute, Zejnullahu flicked a corner into the Freiburg penalty area onto the head of Manfred Starke, from there the ball bounced onto the back of Freiburg’s Irish offensive power Ryan Johansson and into the goal.
As if the sixties had signed a new player
The football god, if he actually exists, obviously didn’t have his eyes on Munich-Giesing on Saturday afternoon, because Johansson didn’t necessarily deserve this own goal, as the man with number 28 was the most noticeable player in the Freiburg ranks, in a positive sense. On the Munich side, this role fell to the player with number 5.
Eroll Zejnullahu had already moved from Bayreuth to Munich before the start of the season. In the Giesinger Arena it now seemed as if coach Maurizio Jacobacci had just appointed the German-Kosovan to his squad. Zejnullahu directed Munich’s offensive game in an unprecedentedly efficient manner – and was also quite successful in defensive tasks. “Eroll is a street kicker that you just have to let play and then bring his creativity into play,” analyzed his offensive colleague Guttau. “He can still help us a lot.”
Before the break, the guests had noticeably pushed for an equalizer, and Guttau had to use his defensive creativity when, in the 37th minute, he lost the ball to his keeper David Richter (who was again in goal for the injured Marco Hiller). line clarified. After the restart, Zejnullahu crowned his performance with a remarkable goal, served by Fabian Greilinger, who Guttau had put in the spotlight. It was now 2-0 – and it was clear that the penultimate team from Breisgau would no longer win by much.
Zejnullahu, who had just scored his first competitive goal for the Munich Lions, was not overly euphoric after the final whistle. Rather, he offered insights into his strategic perception. “There’s still a lot of room for improvement,” he said. “We are a really good team, even on the ball, we have to live it out even more, we have the qualities and the players to do it.”
What exactly did he mean by that? “We’ve played a lot of long balls in the last few weeks. I’m a sucker, I prefer balls that are flat,” explained Zejnullahu. “I think we should pay more attention to our offensive game.” Zejnullahu had, of course, benefited from his defensively oriented teammates Manfred Starke and Tim Rieder, who stifled dozens of Freiburg attacking efforts behind him. And so the Lions fans were able to high-five each other at the end with the dialectally flawless sentence “Zu null a no”.
#TSV #Munich #Zejnullahu #leads #sixty #Freiburg
