St. Pauli head coach calls out Eric Smith and others after ‘irritating’ Bundesliga loss | OneFootball

FC St. Pauli head coach Alexander Blessin singled out two of his players – Eric Smith and Tomoya Ando – for criticism following Friday evening’s Bundesliga loss. Blessin admitted that an absolute cracker of a free-kick goal from Borussia Mönchengladbach’s Kevin Stöger was “gorgeous“, but remained irritated at the manner in which the dead ball situation was conceded. 

Blessin lashes out at Eric Smith

Central defender Smith – forced into a emergency midfield deployment due to an injury to regular starter James Sands – gave Stöger a chance with the free kick after striking Gladbach’s Yannik Engelhardt in the face with a high boot. While not a natural midfielder, the 29-year-old Smith has worked the position enough times to know better. 

“Eric just has to be more mentally alert there,” Blessin growled at the post-match press conference. “He needs to act faster in the area in front of the back line. You can’t just let that happen. I don’t care [if you don’t have a good view of your marker]. Put your body in the way. Take the ball with you. Then that kind of thing doesn’t happen.”

Blessin angry with work of back-three on second goal

St. Pauli played a much better second half than their opponents. The Westphalian hosts scored the decisive 2-0 in the 62nd-minute totally against the run-of-play. Franck Honorat and Joe Scally were able to construct a goal thanks to the fact that new January signing Tomoya Ando had completely switched off and Hauke Wahl was only defending halfheartedly. 

“We weren’t pressing properly,” Blessin said. “We were inactive and assumed that the ball had already been cleared. We were punished for lethargic defensive movements.”

Blessin and St. Pauli players sum up

Both Blessin and his starting center forward on the night Danel Sinani did wish to emphasize that the team performance wasn’t totally terrible. Apart from the two mistakes resulting in goals, Hamburg’s Kiezkicker played a serviceable enough match. There was still room for optimism in the St. Pauli camp, particularly from keeper Nikola Vasilj. 

Blessin’s team had picked up ten points from their previous five league fixtures. During that time, only Bundesliga leaders Bayern (15) and RB Leipzig (11) had earned more points. Vasilj had even been on the cusp of setting a new club record. Had Stöger’s goal not sailed past him, the Bosnian national team keeper might have broke the St. Pauli record of 286 minutes without conceding a Bundesliga goal.

“It’s not that I thought Gladbach played better today,” Blessin said. “It didn’t feel like a 0–2 result. But we handed them two decisive gifts and lost because of that. In some situations, we weren’t prepared to stay composed.”

“We didn’t end up allowing much past us defensively,” Blessin continued. “A 0-0 draw here would have been perfectly acceptable. But we need more points and time is running out. That’s annoying.“

“It was a very important game from us today and we wanted to win,” Sinani told Sky Germany. “In the end, minute details proved decisive. We made two mistakes and the opponent turned them into two goals.“

“Things just went as badly as possible,” Vasilj said in the mixed zone. “But we’ve survived far worse. We’ll be back!“

GGFN | Peter Weis