With the 2:1 at West Ham, Eintracht Frankfurt has opened the door to the Europa League final. However, the SGE did not fall into a state of euphoria.
Oliver Glasner had nothing exuberant in his voice. There was nothing of euphoria, no trace of elation, no sparkle in his eyes either. Frankfurt’s coach knew that even with the 90 minutes that lay behind him and his team, they were not done yet. That Eintracht is not yet where it wants to be.
But what Glasner did say, it was very clear how great the pride is in what his Eintracht has already achieved. “What impressed me a lot was how we came out of the dressing room,” Frankfurt’s coach said as he took his seat on the podium in the media room at London’s Olympic Stadium late on Thursday night.
“We’re playing away in front of 60,000 and we’re leading 1-0 after one minute,” Glasner marvelled, then recalled the quarter-final when his team had already taken the lead in the 4th minute in Barcelona. In London, Ansgar Knauff’s goal was a perfect start – everything that followed was pure passion.
When Glasner said after the game that the only thing he had to criticise was the often unnecessary back passes to Kevin Trapp, it was clear that the team had not only impressed their fans, but also their coach.
However, Glasner allowed objectivity to prevail in the hour of success. “It’s half-time,” he stressed, “we will analyse the game well. I think West Ham will analyse it well too, and then it’s a case of going one better to really realise our dream of the final.”
After all, Seville, not London, is to be the last stop on Frankfurt’s fairytale European tour.
