Braunschweig return to winning ways in Anfang’s Düsseldorf debut

Eintracht Braunschweig took all three points away from home in a hardly-fought encounter in Düsseldorf.

The hosts had a strong start to the game, but, once again, there were loud boos when the teams went into the dressing room for the half-time break. Fortuna are yet to win at home this season, and they were 2-0 down to strugglers Eintracht Braunschweig after 45 minutes.

Florian Kastenmeier had a couple of shaky moments before Braunschweig’s first goal. Sven Köhler nearly punished Fortuna’s goalkeeper when he inexplicably left his penalty box, and Erencan Yardımcı also gave him a real fight in another incident that the home fans didn’t want to witness.

As it’s in the script, Kastenmeier was at fault for the opening goal by the visitors. Christian Conteh gets the better of Fortuna’s captain from a tight angle on the right side. Moments later, Braunschweig doubled their lead with another move on the right wing as Max Marie scored his first goal for the club.

Markus Anfang introduced Christian Rasmussen for the second-half in his first game in charge, but Conteh was the closest to scoring the next goal of the game. Rasmussen had Fortuna’s best chance of the match from a beautiful free-kick around the hour-mark after they lost fellow new signing Cedric Itten to an injury.

Danny Schmidt replaced the Swiss international, and he witnessed his namesake, Kenneth, immediately breathe life into the game. The defender gets to the end of Rasmussen’s excellent delivery to half the deficit for the hosts.

Fortuna followed it up with a valiant effort that was lacking for the earlier hour. The former Ajax midfielder continued to make the difference for Fortuna as Ron-Thorben Hoffmann had to make a top save to deny him a spectacular strike.

The former Bayern goalkeeper had a busy final ten minutes, with Rasmussen involved in pretty much every move by the hosts. But he was equal to everything they threw at him, including the final shot of the game by Danny Schmidt.

Braunschweig ended their four-match losing streak with a big win before hosting Hannover next weekend. Fortuna are still winless at home with their next Merkur Spiel-Arena fixture pitting them against Bundesliga outfit Freiburg in the DFB-Pokal. Before that, they will face Hertha Berlin away from home with the danger of losing three league games on the trot for the first time this season.