Historical free game
Fortuna turns the debacle into a sensational comeback
October 21, 2023, 10:33 p.m
What a spectacular duel in the 2nd Bundesliga: After a good half hour, Fortuna Düsseldorf is almost hopelessly behind 3-0 in front of their home crowd. In addition, a bottle thrown from the stands causes a stir, but then Fortuna hits back with all its might.
Second division team Fortuna Düsseldorf celebrated a sensational comeback in the first free game in the history of German professional football. Coach Daniel Thioune’s team defeated 1. FC Kaiserslautern 4:3 (1:3) after a 3-0 deficit and improved to fourth place, at least until Sunday. Ao Tanaka (36th, 63rd), Matthias Zimmermann (49th) and Felix Klaus (57th) turned the game around with their goals and thus saved the start of the “Fortuna for all” project. Except for the VIP guests, all visitors had free entry.
For the Palatinate team it was their first defeat after seven games in a row in which they had scored points. The Red Devils had a seemingly unassailable lead through Richmond Tachie (21st), Jamil Siebert (30th, own goal) and Marlon Ritter (32nd).
The hosts had the first chance through Jordy de Wijs (7th) in front of 52,000 spectators, then things got strange. De Wijs made an unfortunate deflection on Tachie’s opening goal. At 0:2, Siebert pushed a cross from Tachie over his own line. Before the third goal, Siebert lost the ball, Ritter scored in the margin. A plastic bottle then flew onto the field and hit Lauterner Ragnar Ache in the head.
But the people of Düsseldorf, driven by the fans, didn’t give up. Tanaka’s goal released new energy, shortly after the break Emmanuel Iyoha hit the crossbar (48th). A minute later, Zimmermann was lucky that his shot was deflected into the goal. When it came to equalizing, Zimmermann served his teammate Klaus well. Fortuna received around 120,000 ticket requests for the game. The unique project will be tested in a pilot phase with three games this season. In order to be able to offer all games free of charge in the long term as planned, there are no additional donors.