Darmstadt accept angry fan's lecture: "We weren't fit to wear the shirt."
Just about everyone associated with SV Darmstadt expressed totally contrite embarrassment following their error-filled 0-6 shellacking at the hands of FC Augsburg on Saturday afternoon.
Broadcast cameras caught an ultra from the fan-block rushing onto the pitch, wagging his finger in the team's face, and seemingly berating the team with an incendiary rant. The crestfallen players and their coach offered up no resistance.
Afterwards, club President Ruddier Fritsch and keeper Marcel Schuhen even defended the fan in their post-match comments. Schuhen made no attempt to make excuses for the team's performance.
Broadcast cameras caught an ultra from the fan-block rushing onto the pitch, wagging his finger in the team's face, and seemingly berating the team with an incendiary rant. The crestfallen players and their coach offered up no resistance.
Afterwards, club President Ruddier Fritsch and keeper Marcel Schuhen even defended the fan in their post-match comments. Schuhen made no attempt to make excuses for the team's performance.
Long before the Sky microphones could reach the Darmstadt player's for comment, the German Sky commentator responsible for handling the match on the German broadcaster's "Konferenz" feed expressed disbelief that what he was witnessing was actually taking place in Germany's top footballing flight. Schuhen concurred as soon as his interview asked him about it.
"An absolutely catastrophic performance," Schuhen bluntly said, "I can't process what happened. It was desolate. We were dressed down and given a slap in the face. It hurts brutally."
Schuhen went into further detail in the mixed zone; questioning whether he could liken a game of football to a "brutal fight for survival" before doing so. Club President Rüdiger Fritsch - tasked with conducting a Sky interview - also went with the most self-deprecating words he could find.
"This was a nightmare," Fritsch said, "The individual blackouts [mistakes by certain players] were so catastrophic that they don't even deserve analysis. They don't need explanation [as they speak for themselves."
Neither Fritsch nor Schuhen could even bring themselves to say much negative 4 about a fan who stormed onto the pitch from the ultra block and proceeded to read the team the riot act after the full-time whistle. It does occasionally come to pass in German football that players do not attempt to defend themselves after a disastrous performance.
To take one famous example, current VfB Stuttgart fullback Maximilian Mittelstädt and some of his fellow Hertha BSC colleagues removed their tricots and placed them before irate ultras at the Berliner Olympiastadion following a humiliating defeat to cross-town rivals 1. FC Union Berlin in April of 2022.
Fritsch and Schuhen both described the exchange as a "positive and passionate exchange of ideas". Broadcast cameras catching seen showed it to be anything but. The SV98 member quite clearly wagged his finger at the team and frothed at the mouth whilst the players stood silent.
"It was emotional, but it was fine," Schuhen said, "The fans actually showed us a lot of respect, which we honestly didn't deserve. They could have thrown things at us. I would have accepted anything really because we weren't fit to wear the shirt today."
