Goalkeeper Tim Schreiber aptly summarized what happened on the cup evening from 1. FC Saarbrücken’s perspective: “Football can be beautiful and football can be shit – and today it just sucks for me.” His team had previously buried their dream of the final in Berlin have to, also because Schreiber made a decisive mistake in front of the visitors’ opening goal in the 2-0 defeat against 1. FC Kaiserslautern.
All the luck in the football world that had been with the Saarbrücken team in the first four rounds of the cup season – including two winning goals in stoppage time against FC Bayern and Borussia Mönchengladbach – was lost to them on this Tuesday evening in the Ludwigsparkstadion. The dejected players of the third division team initially found it difficult to find explanations. Maybe it was just the weather. Because there was no rain this time.
And opponents 1. FC Kaiserslautern also played the way a sixteenth-placed player in the second league does with a middle-class team in league three: wait and see. In contrast to the opponents in the previous rounds, the role of favorites was not so clearly distributed this time and the Lauterers did not do the Saarlanders the favor of taking control from the start and taking control of the game through possession of the ball.
This led to a tough first half, the level of which was very reminiscent of a third division game. There were almost no chances to score, but there were even more duels. It would probably have continued like this for 90 or even 120 minutes if Tim Schreiber hadn’t made such a fatal mistake. A harmless header from Marlon Ritter first went through his arms and then through his legs. The Saarbrücken team never recovered from this.
The dream of the cup final was within reach for the underdog. Instead, it suddenly burst so close to the finish. And yet 1. FC Saarbrücken shouldn’t worry for too long. The club had provided dramatic football entertainment in the previous rounds and even if that was initially little consolation for the disappointed players, coach Rüdiger Ziehl summed it up in the end: “With a little distance, I think we can be proud Be happy about what we achieved, how we were here in the semi-finals and also about the opponents we defeated.”
Tuesday evening may have been disappointing for the FCS, but in the end the football was very nice much more often this cup season. In a few weeks Tim Schreiber will probably see it that way too.