Toppmöller draws comparison to Özil in explaining Chaibi's form dip: “A matter of body language.”

Ahead of a highly anticipated duel with fellow Bundesligsts Borussia Mönchengladbach tomorrow, Eintracht Frankfurt head-coach Dino Toppmöller fielded questions about potential squad rotations at his Tuesday pre-match presser conference. As it turned out, the topic of two North Africans currently fighting for minutes in the team came up. Fares Chaibi and Ellyes Skhiri are both currently featuring less in Toppmöller’s squad. 

A year ago, few could have envisioned a Frankfurt lineup without Algerian attacker Chaibi and certainly couldn’t have predicted that Tunisian midfield talisman Skhiri would be behind a player such as Mahmoud Dahoud on the depth chart. Chabi has started just five 12 competitive fixtures thus far this season. He hasn’t started in the league since match-day six and wasn’t even selected for the recent Europa League match against Riga.

Skhiri started in Sunday’s 1-1 league draw agains Union Berlin and recorded an assist on Mario Götze’s goal, but has had to take a seat in favor of Dahoud, Tuta, and even Chabi himself in four of the SGE’s last six competitive fixtures. Toppmöller began by discussing Chaibi, whom he directly challenged to “pick up his game”. The Eintracht trainer would not guarantee Skhiri a start in tomorrow’s Pokal fixture. 

“Fares hasn’t seemed quite so happy in the last few games,” Toppmöller said, “We expect a lot more from him, including in terms of body language. The problem of body language is always a crux.. Mesut Özil became world champion with Germany, but he also didn’t give the impression with his body language that he would plough up the pitch from the 1st to the 90th minute despite his quality.”

“We won’t be bringing down the hammer on him,” Toppmöller continued, “but he knows we’re not 100 percent satisfied.” 

“Ellyes had a decent game against Union and is in good form,” Toppmöller said of Skhiri, “[Dahoud] could give our attack a decent boost. We will be choosing one over the other because Hugo Larsson will also be playing.”