“We’ll need to be patient again” | OneFootball

Eintracht boss Albert Riera delivers his thoughts on personnel, preparations for 1. FSV Mainz 05 and the Eagles’ upcoming opponents.

Eintracht Frankfurt will look to build on their 1-0 home victory over 1. FC Heidenheim last weekend when they take on 1. FSV Mainz 05 at the MEWA Arena at 15:30 CET on Sunday 22 March.At the press conference ahead of the Matchday 27 encounter, head coach Albert Riera spoke about…… training this week: “We work on different aspects every day. On Thursday for example, the focus was on our attack. Today we’ve been looking at our defence. We want to deliver a dominant performance against Mainz, and to do that we need to play well at both ends of the pitch. We’ve had a full week of training and go into the game well prepared.”

… Eintracht’s approach: “Ideally, we want to score a lot of goals and not concede any. We could spend days discussing what it means to play well in football. For me, in short, it’s about attacking and defending, not conceding any goals and scoring a lot of goals. We’re probably going to need to be patient again on Sunday.”

… personnel: “Other than Rasmus Kristensen and Kaua Santos, everyone’s available for the matchday squad, so I’m going to have to leave players out. I want to be fair to everyone – my players mean everything to me. At the end of the day, I need to make decisions because we can’t field more players than our opponents.” 

… the Eagles’ possible starting XI ahead of Jonathan Burkardt’s return to Mainz: “What I will say is this: your name, passport, age, how many World Cups you’ve won or being the most handsome player – none of that interests me. The only thing that interests me is which players have the right characteristics to help our game plan against Mainz.”

… Mainz playing three days after featuring in the UEFA Conference League: “Mainz having to play [on Thursday] is definitely an advantage for us. I’m crossing my fingers for all the Bundesliga clubs in Europe and hope that they’re successful – we need as many teams in Europe as possible. Yesterday, though, I wanted Mainz to have to play extra time and then qualify for the next round (laughs).”

… his time in Frankfurt so far: “I’ve been here six weeks and said from the beginning that I wanted to instil fresh positivity. A big issue was the number of goals we were conceding. We’ve managed to get that under control. Now, a lot of people are talking about how many goals we can score ourselves. A little perspective is important when making an assessment, and an awareness of where we’ve come from. Six weeks ago, not everything was a disaster. Everything isn’t perfect now, but the atmosphere is good.”