Thanks to a dream goal from Philipp Hofmann, VfL Bochum sparked a new spark of hope in the fog in the relegation battle. The striker scored the winning goal with his heel in the basement duel against newly promoted FC St. Pauli to make it 1-0 (0-0). The bottom of the table celebrated its second win of the season on the pitch, the third three-pointer at the green table after the “Köpenick scandal” has yet to be upheld in the appeal.
After the spectacular climax of a very weak game (67th), there are currently nine points and the gap has shrunk. In two months as VfL coach, Dieter Hecking has significantly improved the prospects of staying in the league. Bochum has two more points in sight thanks to the subsequent victory after the lighter throw in the 1-1 draw at Union Berlin before the winter break; a decision on the appeal against the DFB sports court’s ruling is expected to be made in February. It’s going to be tight for St. Pauli, and Adam Dzwigala was shown a red card shortly before the final whistle for serious foul play (90+4).
“With a win we can turn a hopeless situation into a realistic one,” Hecking emphasized before his 426th Bundesliga game, with which he moved into the top ten – and changed to three positions compared to the disappointing 0-2 at the start of the year at Mainz 05. Among other things, winger Gerrit Holtmann came into the starting line-up. His counterpart Alexander Blessin, on the other hand, trusted the same team again despite the 0-1 defeat against Eintracht Frankfurt.
The Hamburg coach saw the announced “dirty game” – dogged duels, lots of high balls, few technical details. Maximilian Wittek fired the first shot on goal for VfL after just 68 seconds, after which there wasn’t much more to come apart from a harmless header from St. Pauli’s captain Jackson Irvine (16th). Both teams tried desperately to get some order and structure into their game, but combinations over more than three stations were rare.
Clouds of mist wafted into the stadium, there was nothing exciting to see in the duel between the weakest attacking Bundesliga teams, the fans of both camps kept themselves warm in the wet cold with chants. Until suddenly Holtmann sprinted away from everyone, but shot the ball just past the goal (31′). A header from Erhan Masovic (37th) was followed by the first top-class chance for the guests on the other side: Oladapo Afolayan headed almost undisturbed just over the Bochum goal (40th).
After the break, the hosts increased their attacking efforts – and were rewarded. Moritz Broschinski, who had just come on as a substitute, crossed from the right, Hofmann drove the ball into the net with his back to the goal.
