Lustri’s chaos pixies pull off an epic collapse and an epicer comeback against Frankfurt

Pre Match

A new season dawns in Köpenick.

The Union men’s team kicked off a fresh Bundesliga season with a visit from Eintracht Frankfurt, with a new coach and a slew of new faces leaving us all wondering what we’d see.

At some point last season, we discovered that there’s a matchday Union boat that delivers fans to Köpenick via a scenic trip down the Spree, so of course we had to take that for the first game.

If you’re wondering what a dedicated, 3 hour, Eisern-themed boat trip on a boat decked out in Union gear is like, it’s possibly even more glorious than you can imagine.

An absolutely fantastic start to the day - singing, chanting, plenty of beer, plenty of people waving their Union shirts to us out of their windows.

We moored up Köpenick at about 2, leaving it a bit tight to get in and get space in a jam packed Sektor 3.

The excitement was palpable, as it always is at the first game. Everyone is fresh and hopeful, the sun is out, we’re far from the harsh bite of reality.

As I’m sure every fan of every club in the world thinks on the first day of the season: maybe this could be our year.

Our new coach Lustrinelli named Aebischer and Ljubicic in the starting lineup after their impressive cameos against Braunschweig, in a 4-4-2 which included 4 central midfielders. Ansah is on the brink of a megabucks move to Hull, while Ilic is still crocked.

Before the game, Frederik Ronnow came out to receive his player of the year award for the 4th time. As someone said afterwards, it’s always frightening to see Freddie’s actual hands, without gloves. It goes against the natural order of things.

The Waldseite started fervent chants way before the game, the Alte Försterei crackling with energy as we kicked off, the Frankfurt fans as ever travelling in loud numbers.

First half

Viva la revolution, as they probably say somewhere in Switzerland.

After a bit of Frankfurt pressure, Union sprung the counter towards Ljubicic, who hared forward in space but was closed down, his eventual shot deflected for a corner.

Having already notched a couple, I fancied van den Bosch to power one in, but was surprised and delighted to see new striker Emmanuel Latte Lath leap like a fucking salmon to absolutely plant a header into the top corner, hanging gloriously in the air as he met it.

As someone who grew up idolising Tim Cahill, I can tell you that nothing fills my heart like a smaller player with pogo sticks for legs, and I sense that Latte Lath might be one of those.

Anyway, a dream start in just the 4th minute. Hopefully we could hold on and build on the lead.

We could not.

I’m not a tactician and I don’t know Lustrinelli’s system, but as against Braunschweig it almost seems like we only care about defending the central corridor of the pitch?

On both flanks but especially on our left, Frankfurt just kept getting to the box on the wings almost totally unchallenged. We seemed to rely on getting enough bodies in the box to snuff out the crossing threat, and it was sort of effective but my word it’s heart in mouth stuff.

Dirk Zingler said recently that Unioner were bored by the football they’d seen in recent years, and by all accounts that won’t be the case this season.

We cracked after just 10 minutes, a corner floated deep to the back post, a collective moment of ‘hey who’s marking that guy?’, a ball back across from said guy, and the ball hooked in for the equaliser.

Not the finest defensive effort, but in fairness, new manager, new systems, lots of new players. These things take time.

1-1 and time to reset and recover. But straight from our own kickoff, Querfeld took a nightmare touch and was immediately robbed by the Frankfurt striker. Querfeld was already the last man back, so Ebnoutalib had a clear run at goal. Raab made a good attempt at keeping it out with a sprawling block, but the ball just popped over the line before we could hook it away.

Conceding two in about 30 seconds was a real sucker punch, and for most of the first half after that we were rocking badly and hanging on.

Rothe managed to break and whip in a ball for Ljubicic that he just couldn’t connect with on the stretch, but that was about it for attacking threat.

We found some respite after about half an hour as the players stopped for what appeared to be a hydration break, the whole stadium collectively letting the officials know precisely what they thought about that as a concept.

But it transpired that the linesman had managed to injure himself, something I’ve never seen. Eventually a linesman returned, no idea if it was the same one.

We looked better after this break, but still went into half time pretty dejected after absolutely blowing a good start.

The second half started off a little cagey from both sides. After 60 minutes Lustrinelli rang in a triple change with Jeong, Skarke and Burch all coming on.

I say Skarke, it was a man in a Skarke shirt, but with an entirely different head versus last year. I’m not entirely convinced it’s the same guy.

Having actual wide players on helped a lot, and we started to be much more dangerous. Rothe and Juranovic started finding opportunities to get forward without being quite so exposed, and the ball carrying of Jeong and Burcu gave us some control.

Rothe in particular I felt had a good game, the kid covers unbelievable distances and is a big threat from crosses, in the air and even in the box.

He first set up Skarke for an effort that he scuffed awkwardly into the keeper’s arms - maybe it is the same guy after all - and then troubled Atabolu again with an angled volley that Skarke so nearly turned in on the rebound, the goalie with lightning reflexes to pluck it off his toe.

Atabolu is a quality keeper and many of us remarked that he should have stayed at Freiburg, because he pulled off a string of beautiful saves in the latter stages.

Frankfurt’s attacks were fewer and further between, but after a break forward, we somehow failed to clear and the ball broke to Ebnoutalib again to gleefully rifle a volley home and put the visitors 3-1 up.

They must have thought the game was sewn up by that point, but Union really did keep giving it a proper go.

With about 80 minutes on the clock, we got some hope. Atabolu again came up with a reflex save to keep out a pinballed strike in the box, before the half-cleared ball found its way to Juranovic.

He struck it perfectly and it seemed destined for the net, but Atabolu clawed it over the bar.

Thankfully corners are pretty much penalties for this Union side, and another fine ball in from Juranovic was met with absolute violence by Querfeld, slamming the ball home with a header that left the Frankfurt keeper rooted to the spot.

Game on.

The stadium was absolutely bouncing by now, roared on from all sides. We really were playing some nice football. Last season we were a bit one dimensional - wing, cross, repeat - but we mixed it up more today and kept Frankfurt guessing.

We also committed more players to the box, looking for knock downs and second balls, which caused pleasing amounts of havoc.

Every free kick or corner we got caused panic among the Frankfurters, Juranovic apoplectic with his own teammates when nobody attacked a juicy ball in, begging for someone to throw themselves at it.

We ticked into 4 minutes of added time and it seemed Frankfurt would sneak it, but we still had some magic up our sleeves.

Derrick Köhn was on as a right winger because why the fuck not.

Our entire team was camped in the Frankfurt box because why the fuck not.

We managed to work the ball out left again, Burcu and the indefatigable Rothe there again. Another fine ball to the back post found van den Bosch, he knocked a lovely ball to Querfeld, he knocked a lovely ball to Skarke, and a man claiming to be Tim Skarke simply backheel-volleyed the thing home like prime Gianfranco Zola.

I’ve seen, felt and been covered in some chaotic celebrations in my time at the Alte Försterei, but this was up there with them.

The place just exploded. The culmination of a swaggering fightback capped by a magical goal, willed in by thousands.

The whole bench cleared to sprint down the line and bundle onto Skarke as we untangled ourselves from the melee of limbs in the stands.

The final whistle came shortly afterwards and was cheered like a win.

If it’s like this all season god knows how we’ll survive it as fans. Whoever does the scoreboard is going to get in incredible shape.

We veered from chaos to genius across an insane game, from joy to despair and back again. But especially after we recovered from self-inflicted wounds, there was so much to enjoy out there today.

After a couple of months without the guttural roar of the Waldseite ringing in my ears, I was reminded that there’s really no place like this. No team like this. No club like this.

No better way to spend a river-boating, eardrum-shredding, heart-stopping, beer-flying Saturday.

Eisern!