There was a gap of 1,001 days between Maximilian and Johannes Eggestein’s respective first Bundesliga appearances. But on Friday evening, the brothers made their debuts just minutes apart for the Germany U21 side and at least from a personal perspective, it was a successful debut for the Eggesteins. WERDER.DE summarises the Eggesteins’ performances as well as the other international games which Green-Whites players featured in on Friday.
After the success at the European Championships in June, a newly formed Germany U21 side started the long journey to retaining their title. Amongst the newcomers in Stefan Kuntz’s team were Werder’s Maximilian and Johannes Eggestein and both got minutes under their belt for the national team in a friendly against Hungary.
Maximilian celebrated his debut with a starting berth in Paderborn and had a brilliant performance as one of the two holding midfielders in the first half before being replaced at the break. His younger brother Johannes entered the fray after 63 minutes with the score 2-0 to Hungary and it didn’t take him long to announce himself. Just two minutes after being subbed on, the 19-year-old took advantage of a goalkeeping error to score on his debut. For the rest of the game, the youngster, who made his Bundesliga debut last weekend, was one of Germany’s key threats but he could not prevent his team from suffering a surprising loss to the Hungarians.
Thomas Delaney and Denmark celebrated a huge victory on Friday in World Cup qualification group E against table-toppers Poland. 16 minutes into the game, Werder’s midfield star set the Scandinavians on course to victory, scoring with his shoulder from a Christian Eriksen cross to make it 1-0. Delaney came off four minutes from time after a heroic performance. At full time, the scoreboard in Copenhagen Park read 4-0 to the Danes, who, with three games left in the group, still have the chance of topping the group and so keep the door open for automatic qualification for the World Cup in Russia next year. They play Armenia next on Monday.
Meanwhile, the Czech Republic’s chances of qualifying for next summer’s tournament are getting ever narrow. After Friday’s 2-1 loss to Germany, the Czechs are seven points behind second-placed Northern Ireland. Theodor Gebre Selassie played 90 minutes against Germany as a right wing back in a five-man defence, the same role as he played last week for Werder, whilst Jiri Pavlenka did not come off the bench. Now they have a must-win game against Northern Ireland on Monday in a direct battle for the play-off spot in Group C. If they don’t, then their World Cup dreams will be over.
Ulisses Garcia played at left-back for the Switzerland U21s in a European qualifier against Wales, in which his team went down 3-0. He and his teammates will look to make up for this surprising defeat on Tuesday against Romania.
