Augsburg's Mergim Berisha is annoyed after Bochum's goal to make it 2-1. ©
VfL Bochum have not won six games in a row. The 3-2 win against FC Augsburg on the third-to-last matchday broke the knot. Which could put the FCA in trouble once again.
Bochum - Thomas Letsch himself was surprised. "I danced?" asked the VfL Bochum coach, reflecting on his celebrations after scoring in the 3-2 (1-1) win over FC Augsburg. Apparently, Letsch was not even aware of how much he let his joy out. "It's about staying in the league. Whether you play in the 1st or 2nd Bundesliga is a huge difference. Something falls off," he explained: "But next time I'll hold back. If my dancing is so weird, I'll stop it."
Letsch also revealed how great the tension was before what felt like the final against FCA. He had "deliberately not watched" the Friday game of rivals Hertha BSC at 1. I preferred to go to the cinema so that I wouldn't notice." His choice had fallen on "Air: The Big Hit", a film about basketball superstar Michael Jordan: "It was good," Letsch said with a laugh.
However, the weekend mercilessly showed how tight it is in the basement of the Bundesliga table. During Berlin's lead in Cologne, Bochum had slipped to last place in the live table - Letsch was spared this news, he only learned the final result of 2:5 from Hertha's point of view. Thanks to their own victory on Saturday, Bochum have now jumped to 15th place, which was saved at the end of the season, for at least one day and travel to Hertha with a six-point lead two matchdays before the end of the season.
In any case, he will watch the Berlin game in Cologne to prepare for the opponents, Letsch assured. He didn't want to watch live because of the experience of the previous week. On Friday evening, he saw rivals FC Schalke 04 win 3-2 in Mainz with a penalty kick in the twelfth minute of injury time. "And after that I slept catastrophically," said the coach: "I didn't want to do that to myself again."
What he can rely on at the moment is the resilience of his team. The Bochumers are not yet the "unrelegables" as they were in the 1980s, but at the moment they are definitely the indestructibles. "It's a recurring theme throughout the season that the team doesn't let setbacks throw it off track," Letsch said with satisfaction. When he arrived, his team had a point after seven games. Even after the 0-2 home defeat against Schalke at the beginning of March, "we were already written off by everyone," the coach recalled. And after last week's 0-2 defeat in Mönchengladbach after a poor performance and then six games without a win, there was again a doomsday mood. "And again we showed a reaction," said the coach happily.
Although the victory was deserved, there was also some luck involved. A lightning goal by Christopher Antwi-Adjei after 91 seconds, an own goal by Augsburg captain Jeffrey Gouweleeuw (60') and a deflected shot by Bochum's captain Anthony Losillla (62') ensured the goals. "But that little bit of luck never comes by itself," Letsch emphasized: "We've worked hard for it."
Ausgsburg coach Enrico Maaßen, on the other hand, was "already annoyed" that the early rescue did not succeed despite the 1-1 draw by Arne Maier (29th) and the first Bundesliga goal by Kelvin Yeboah (85th), the nephew of former Bundesliga top scorer Anthony Yeboah. "We knew that if we took anything with us, that's it," said Maaßen: "But we didn't do enough to be able to make demands. And now we still have two real boards with Dortmund and Gladbach." dpa