Home with “shit face”.
“Cruel” VfL Bochum shocks itself
May 19, 2024, 8:37 a.m
VfL Bochum is threatened with falling into the 2nd Bundesliga. At Werder Bremen, VfL performed desolately – and rightly had to go into relegation. The mood is down, the players and those responsible are not lacking in self-criticism.
VfL Bochum sits at the poker table with the best hand and gambles everything away. One point would have been enough for the club and it would certainly have remained in the first division. But the Bochum team were as far away from this point on Saturday as a snail from the 100-meter world record. From the first minute, nothing went right for Heiko Butscher’s team. After six minutes it was 0-1. After 90 minutes the score was 1:4. And that was the truth in beautiful. It could easily have been one, two, three more goals conceded if goalkeeper Manuel Riemann hadn’t made several strong saves or saved the ball. In front of 42,100 spectators, Marco Friedl (6th minute), Anthony Jung (78th), Jens Stage (80th) and Romano Schmid (87th) scored the goals for Bremen. Substitute Christopher Antwi-Adjei scored for Bochum (85th).
With this embarrassing performance, VfL actually slipped into relegation. Because the Mainz team crowned their very impressive comeback with a win at VfL Wolfsburg (3-1) and Union Berlin also pushed themselves over the line in stoppage time. The Iron Men were spared the worst crash of a Bundesliga club in 55 years. The catastrophe after a season that began in the Champions League was barely averted. Although the penalty hit the post in extra time, the follow-up shot was there. The Old Forestry House shook. And the people of Bochum then threw anger at themselves.
“Today’s performance is unacceptable”
With a “shit face”, as playmaker Kevin Stöger raged, we returned to Bochum late on Saturday evening. “Today’s performance is unacceptable, that’s not possible.” This blackout on the Weser left deep marks. Even on the field, keeper Riemann constantly reminded his teammates that they were in a do-or-die game. Apparently no one really understood that. It doesn’t take much imagination that “Anne Castroper” will be a blast again this week. Like a few weeks ago. The result back then: two wins against Hoffenheim and Union Berlin. They now have to hope again for a similar power of a cleansing thunderstorm. On Thursday there will be a relegation game against Fortuna Düsseldorf. First at home in the Ruhrstadion, then on Monday there will be the all-important duel in the state capital for league membership.
“We are of course incredibly disappointed,” said Butscher after the horror performance. However, he didn’t want to spend too much time on it: “We have to turn things around and get our heads up again. We have to radiate confidence, get back into work mode very quickly and adjust a few things and do them better against Fortuna Düsseldorf.” A first measure: no more days until the first showdown. “They’re not getting us anywhere now. We have to focus more on football again.” Sports director Marc Lettau was also shocked: “That was cruel. It had nothing to do with VfL Bochum’s football. It certainly had less to do with the boys’ abilities and more to do with the stress. We couldn’t cope with that and we didn’t We didn’t deliver on our performance.”
“If heads drop now…”
The appearance in the Weser Stadium actually had nothing to do with football. The hosts played with enthusiasm and without any pressure. There were plenty of combinations worth seeing. Also because the guests had forgotten that airy spaces in football are a really bad idea. It was easy for Werder to play their way through the Bochum ranks. Riemann was stunned. Butscher seemed perplexed. He sometimes watched with a blank stare as his team was completely paraded. If there’s anything good to come out of this game, it’s the realization that it doesn’t get much worse than this. When this blackout becomes a wake-up call.
“We simply failed today, there’s no other way to say it. If our heads go down now, it won’t work,” said captain Anthony Losilla. The team “that has a better mentality” will make it. And Stöger promised: “Anyone who knows VfL knows that we will get back up in a situation like this. We are usually always strong enough in exactly these situations.”
The impending fall into the second division would probably have been the most avoidable in VfL’s club history. If the games this season had been regularly whistled in the 90th minute, the team would have been somewhere on the road to the European Cup. But because the heart kept racing and then collapsing in stoppage time, an incredible number of points were given away. Bochum is the anti-Bayer-Leverkusen, who have had a lot of fun turning the games over and over again in the extra time. Sometimes surreal things happened. For example, in the Europa League against Qarabag Agdam, when striker Patrik Schick scored in the 93rd and 97th minutes and prevented the knockout.