Union Berlin masters the dance at three weddings excellently and builds on its strong previous season in the Bundesliga. Thanks to a double strike from Taiwo Awoniyi (69th / 73rd) at the old place of work, the Köpenickers won 2-1 (0-1) at FSV Mainz 05 and climbed to seventh place.
Three days after beating Maccabi Haifa (3-0) in the Conference League, Union also broke its away curse in the league and won a three-point away for the first time since February.
With twelve points from seven games, coach Urs Fischer’s team is just as good as it was in the successful past season. Mainz (10 points), who had taken the lead through Marcus Ingvartsen (39th), who had been loaned from Union, had to let go after their convincing start to the season and slipped to ninth place after the third game in a row without a win. In the final phase, Dominik Kohr (90. + 2) also saw the yellow-red card.
“For us the three points are the most important. My first goal, I liked the best. It was a good fight between both teams, in the end we took our chances,” said Awoniyi. FSV sporting director Martin Schmidt said: “We let ourselves be played off with two counterattacks, which is very annoying. Today the former players scored against the former clubs, unfortunately the former Mainz scored twice.”
St. Juste is injured
Mainz coach Bo Svensson had identified many parallels between the competitors and particularly emphasized the “physically intensive” game. This is exactly how both teams went to work – because Mainz and Union initially largely neutralized each other, a competitive game developed in front of 16,000 spectators, which only picked up speed in the second half.
The Mainz central defender Jeremiah St. Juste had to leave the field injured after just 17 minutes – another weakening for the already severely weakened defense around celebrity Stefan Bell, who was the second player after Nikolce Noveski to break the 200 Bundesliga appearances for the FSV.
Mainz: Ingvartsen meets in the starting eleven against ex-club
It was a long time before the first good opportunities. Awoniyi (23rd) hit the ball from a good position, on the other side Anderson Lucoqui’s shot (27th) went wide. Shortly afterwards, Union was shocked by old acquaintance Ingvartsen, who made his starting eleven debut in Mainz and, after preliminary work by Karim Onisiwo, pushed in free-standing.
After the break, Union came back much more energetic, but with the double chance by Julian Ryerson (48th), both shots were blocked. Svensson was annoyed on the sidelines by the lack of concentration in his defense. And he saw stronger and stronger guests, Awoniyi (60th) and Max Kruse (61st) warped only wafer-thin.
Then came the big hour for Awoniyi, who scored the Bundesliga goals 100 and 101 for Union. Awoniyi had still played in Mainz in the 2019/20 season – after the increase in performance he definitely deserved it, even if Mainz threw everything forward again in a hectic final phase.
