Eintracht triumphs in the first Friday game

It was Lech’s second sparring game of the winter training camp. This time, the Polish club faced Eintracht Frankfurt, that is last year’s Europa League winners. On Friday, the team will play against Eintracht twice. Coach Oliver Glasner sent in his top starting line-up for the 10 a.m. match, among them Randal Kolo Muani, Daichi Kamada, and Jesper Lindstrom.

Eintracht didn’t wait and kicked off the game with intense offensive attempts. In the 2^nd minute, the German side had a good goal-scoring opportunity following Joel Pereira’s mistake, but Jesper Lindstrom’s shot from outside the box was impressively stopped by Lech’s keeper, Filip Bednarek. The game seemed to have slowed down after that. Eintracht remained in possession of the ball for the majority of the time, however, that possession didn’t result in more goals. Meanwhile, Lech stayed focused on the defence. Michał Skóraś was active on the wing, and so were the duos Jesper Karlström-Radosław Murawski and Antonio Milić-Bartosz Salamon who looked very well on Friday morning. In the 28^th minute, Randal Kolo Muani had a similar scoring chance to his teammate Lindstrom, but his attempt was off target. Neither of the sides had many more goal-scoring chances aside from those mentioned, hence at halftime, it was still 0:0.

The second half was much more exhilarating. In the 51^st minute, Daichi Kamada and Mario Goetze impressed with a beautiful team effort and the latter beat Bednarek with a shot from the 16^th meter. From that moment on, Lech attacked more bravely as opposed to focusing on the defence. The Polish side had a good chance to score when Adriel Ba Loua’s great pass put Skóraś one-on-one with Eintracht’s keeper, Kevin Trapp, but neither the original attempt nor the follow-up shot was good enough to beat him. Towards the end of the match, Jakub Antczak who had just come on the pitch won space on the left flank and sent a good pass to Joel Pereira. Unfortunately, the Portuguese’s shot was blocked. Shortly afterwards, Ba Loua dribbled past Eintracht’s defensive line and passed to Antczak. The youngster could have redirected the ball to Joao Amaral, who was left unmarked, but instead, they chose to shoot and missed. Lech run out of time to equalize, hence the first sparring game ended with a 1:0 win for the German squad.

Lech Poznań – Eintracht Frankfurt 0:1 (0:0)

Goals: Kamada (51.)

Lech Poznań: Filip Bednarek – Joel Pereira, Bartosz Salamon, Antonio Milić, Pedro Rebocho – Jesper Karlström, Radosław Murawski – Adriel Ba Loua, Filip Szymczak, Michał Skóraś (84. Jakub Antczak) – Mikael Ishak (60. Joao Amaral)

Eintracht Frankfurt: – Kevin Trapp – Evan Ndicka, Hrvoje Smolcić, Djibril Sow, Randal Kolo Muani, Daichi Kamada, Junior Dina Ebimbe, Mario Gotze, Jesper Lindstrom, Tuta, Ansgar Knauff