“A tough nut to crack” | OneFootball

Dino Toppmöller and Hugo Larsson regard Thursday’s clash with Slavia Praha as Eintracht’s “toughest home game” of the league phase but head into the game full of confidence.

The third Europa League game at Frankfurt Stadion this season throws up another first for Eintracht Frankfurt. After facing Latvian opponents for the first time earlier in the competition, the Eagles will play their first-ever match against seven-time Czech league champions and cup winners SK Slavia Praha at 18:45 CET on Thursday 7 November. At the pre-match press conference, head coach Dino Toppmöller and Hugo Larsson shared their thoughts on…

…the backdrop

Dino Toppmöller: “We’ve put ourselves in a very good position in the table, and we’d like to improve it with a home win. Prague are doing very well in the league and impressed with their football against Ajax and Bilbao in the Europa League. It's a tough nut that we have to crack!”

Hugo Larsson: “I’m feeling very good and positive, and I hope we can show that on Thursday. We’re coming off the back of a good week. Praha have only lost one game so far, they come here full of confidence and will want to play their own game, but I see us as the better team. We need to perform on the pitch and take control. It’s going to be an intense encounter. Together with our fans, we want to continue on our path and get the three points.”  …opponents Slavia Praha

Dino Toppmöller: “On paper, Slavia are our strongest opponents at home. They play man-to-man and aggressively. They have a strong collective and a few notable individual players. I can say the same about my team. We're ready.”

…Eintracht’s approach

Dino Toppmöller: “We’ve made good progress. Our transitional play is good, we’re finding better solutions with the ball. We need to take the dynamics of the game into account. We won’t deliberately give our opponents the ball and play on the counter-attack, but there will certainly be periods where Slavia have the ball more often. We want to be very proactive with the ball. In order to win games, you have to play well in all periods of the game – we did that emphatically against Bochum.”  …the Eagles’ current form

Dino Toppmöller: “No matter how we line up, we always have full confidence in this team. We go about things with conviction. It’s important to have strong competition. We're so well covered in a lot of positions that we can use the full squad without noticing when one top player or another is left out.”