Arminia Bielefeld 2-2 Eintracht Frankfurt

Saturday, 18 August 07, 05:04 PM · Comments(1)

Crap.

This game was a rather frustrating one to watch on ESPN Soccernet's Gamecast, so I can only wonder how much more frustrating it was to be there at the SchücoArena. It took 23 minutes for Bielefeld to take their first shot, though to be fair, they were quite unlucky as in a five minute stretch they were caught offsides 3 times, but at halftime the shot count was 10-2 for Frankfurt, but Mattias Hain was the difference as he made some critical saves to keep them afloat.

The second half was more of the same until a little after the hour mark, and suddenly Bielefeld began pressing when Jonas Kamper came on as a substitute in the 65th minute, and finally opened up the scoring when Jörg Böhme laid a great cross and Radim Kucera headed it in from 6 yards out in the 67th minute. From there Bielefeld continued to press, and was rewarded twelve minutes later when Artur Wichniarek repeated the previous scoring effort, this time served by Christian Eigler.

From there it seemed to be smooth sailing, as Bielefeld seemed to sense blood in the water, then out of the blue after a Wichniarek shot Frankfurt went the length of the field and Alexander Meier cut the lead in half. I got the sense that the goal took the air out of the building, and Frankfurt could very well tie the game up, and in the 89th minute Marco Russ scored on a volley from about 25 yards to tie the match up. There was only a minute of extra time, and the match ended tied 2-2.

As gut-wrenching as the last ten minutes was, I can't say that the result was unfair when you look at the entire match. Eintracht Frankfurt outshot Bielefeld 22-10, and outshot them on goal 7-3, and controlled large sections of the match, a far cry from how Bielefeld performed against Wolfsburg. But I guess that's just life. 1-1-0 with a +2 goal difference isn't anything to sneeze at even at this stage, but it would have been something to only be separated by goal difference from the top of the Bundesliga by the machine that is Bayern Munich, who destroyed Werder Bremen 4-0 today.

Next week's match: Home vs. Hertha Berlin

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