“Many people here,” asserted Frank Schmidt, “don’t even know what my team achieved here today, playing for a result until the end against a Champions League participant. I would like to encourage everyone to look at their performance a little. It was sensational.”
RB Leipzig emerged victorious from this Sunday meeting of European competition recoverers in southern Germany which, in context, had no business being as satisfying and as enduringly interesting as it turned out to be. Yet here was coach Schmidt feeling he had the unusual task of defending his team after a historic week in Heidenheim’s history, which almost had an even better ending.
In weeks like this, it should not be difficult to recall exactly how far Schmidt and his team have come. The coach’s tenure at Heidenheim is less an era and more an odyssey. Since he took the helm in 2007, the club have risen from the fifth tier to first, begun to establish themselves in the Bundesliga and even reached Europe. On Thursday night, Voith-Arena hosted its first European group-stage game, as the on-loan teenage star Paul Wanner put in the rebound from his own saved penalty late on to beat Olimpija Ljubljana in the Conference League.
Maybe that’s it. Perhaps Heidenheim and Schmidt have picked up the age-old problem of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, if in a very different arena, desensitising their public by making the extraordinary every day. It might have been perceived differently had Jan Schöppner’s second-half piledriver flown six inches lower rather than smacking the crossbar, giving the hosts a deserved equaliser. Instead Loïs Openda’s vicious finish from an Antonio Nusa pass proved to be the decider, as well as an eloquent expression of Leipzig’s far greater means (“they have maybe 12 times our squad value,” pondered Schmidt) and their higher ambitions.
Heidenheim and Leipzig are two clubs with, ostensibly, much in common; authors of improbable rises up the levels of German football and now in the Bundesliga to upset the status quo, albeit with different senses of timing. To define them thus, however, would to ignore almost all of the detail. Heidenheim supporters made their distaste for the RB concept clear with a matchday protest as long ago as 2013, when the two sides met for the first time back in the third tier. Last week, before their latest visit, 24-hour security was deployed at Voith-Arena to prevent a repeat of last season, when masked assailants broke in on the eve of the game and sprayed the away end with butyric acid, making it smell of vomit even post-clean (which also lumbered the club with a €15,000 fine).
Leipzig have long since grown used to the opprobrium. Yet the club’s culture is to demand more of themselves than focus on outside perception. The morning after the deflating home Champions League defeat to 10-man Juventus, all the management big dogs convened, including Mario Gómez and the supervisory board chairman Oliver Mintzlaff, to pick through the bones of it. Marco Rose is a Leipzig native and has done good work at the club. Yet each setback brings analysis, and he will never be safe in his seat. Mintzlaff complained in the build-up to Sunday’s game that whenever an opportunity opens up for Leipzig to thrust towards the top, they never manage to take it. Here, with Leverkusen and Borussia Dortmund having dropped points and Bayern Munich about to, they got the necessary done.
They also picked themselves up from setbacks, with what would have been an opener for Benjamin Sesko just after half-time ruled out for a debatable foul on Willi Orban. Openda, who – like the team’s star Xavi Simons – has not looked quite as sharp as he might after a summer at the Euros, picked up the slack, underlining the quality at their disposal. In fact, that still-unbeaten Leipzig sit level with leaders Bayern on points despite the knowledge they can still get better, stronger and sharper underlines that their depth is perhaps greater than it ever has been.
Heidenheim do not have such luxuries, as Schmidt would like some fans to remember. But Sunday highlighted that like Leipzig, their ambition and motivation still burns bright despite a hefty workload.
Talking points
It should have been a day of celebration for Leverkusen, as they marked two years in charge for Xabi Alonso (and 100 games at the helm), plus the club’s 120th birthday, which was heralded by the team wearing a special-edition retro jersey. Holstein Kiel should have been compliant opponents too and looked like they would be after going 2-0 down to Victor Boniface and Jonas Hofmann goals in the first eight minutes. Instead, a gutsy comeback from the promoted club gained them a point – the once-feted Fiete Arp netted the equaliser from the penalty spot – as Leverkusen gave away a two-goal lead in the Bundesliga for the third time this season, a huge setback after seemingly making big defensive strides against Bayern and Milan. “We simply don’t recognise the danger in some situations,” lamented the returning Hofmann. “With an attitude like this and performance like this, we won’t win anything,” said skipper Lukas Hradecky bluntly. “I hope everyone thinks about it and wakes up during the international break. It can’t go on like this.”
For the third game in a row Bayern dazzled and dominated against good opponents and, for the third game in a row, they didn’t win, victims of league top scorer Omar Marmoush’s stoppage-time equaliser to give him a brace and his Eintracht Frankfurt a thrilling 3-3 draw. Much as against Leverkusen and Aston Villa, Bayern were again inspired by Michael Olise and should have been out of sight (they had 23 shots, with 13 on target, to Eintracht’s six shots and four on target). Instead they wake to a Monday morning of doubts – not just due to the injuries picked up by Harry Kane, Dayot Upamecano and Mathys Tel, but over whether they can snare the trophies to match their talent, given the risks which they continue to take under Vincent Kompany (“this is Bayern Munich’s identity and you don’t change your identity,” said a defiant Max Eberl).
For crisis rather than light fretting, enter the consistently inconsistent Dortmund, who followed up dropping an avalanche of Champions League goals on Celtic with a colourless performance at Union Berlin, leading to a second straight away defeat in the Bundesliga. It has become almost predictable, as Bild’s Patrick Kleinmann wrote: “Quite a few were already certain at the final whistle on Tuesday that, despite and precisely because of the success (against Celtic), the next setback would follow at the Alte Försterei.” BVB again defended poorly (“we are conceding far too many goals,” admitted Nuri Sahin) but that is only the tip of the iceberg for a team who ran 9km less than an energised Union. Sahin needs time, but he also needs better guidance.
Elsewhere it was a great weekend for Jonathan Burkhardt, who scored twice in Mainz’s 3-0 win at St Pauli to continue his strong start and then got a first Germany call-up from Julian Nagelsmann hours later, replacing the injured Kai Havertz.
