Trier hand Mainz their first defeat of pre-season

Thursday night most definitely wasn’t Mainz’s best ever performance. The third friendly of pre-season, against Eintracht Trier in Morbach, saw Bo Henriksen’s side suffer their first defeat ahead of the new campaign. Trier, who start their Regionalliga campaign in nine days as a newly-promoted side, won 3-0 thanks to goals from Linus Wimmer (a Mainz academy product), Mateo Biondic and Sven König.

The game began with few chances to speak of for either side. The first opportunity came in the 19th minute when Nelson Weiper crossed for Armindo Sieb, however he was denied by the Trier goalkeeper. This remained the only notable chance of the first half an hour. Around 2,000 fans were in attendance and they saw U23s player Daniel Gleiber play a nice pass to Sieb, but an Eintracht defender did well to snuff out the danger. The opponents were far more clinical and took their first chance of the game to take the lead. Wimmer, who was at FSV from 2009 to 2018, was one-on-one against Robin Zentner and left Mainz’s number 1 with no chance from around 10 yards out.

Mainz struggle to create chances, Trier take theirs

Mainz coach Henriksen didn’t use the trio of Brajan Gruda, Jae-sung Lee and Andreas Hanche-Olsen, with the players only returning from their holiday this week. He also left out Karim Onisiwo and Jonny Burkardt due to knocks, while Silvan Widmer and Phillipp Mwene will only be back from their respective holidays following EURO 2024 at the end of July. The Dane made several changes for the second half, though this didn’t really have a positive impact on the game. It was clear that the tiring training sessions over the first two weeks of pre-season were taking their toll on the players against a side almost ready for the start of competitive football again. The best chance in the second half for FSV was Nadiem Amiri’s free-kick, which only narrowly missed the target (54’). Although it took Trier a long time to threaten again, they were extremely clinical with their chances and scored twice late on via Biondic and König.

"We saw what we have to work on"

“We’re obviously not satisfied with today’s game, but it’s been a long week. We were lacking some power against a good team, but also the correct attitude. Nobody took on any responsibility. We were also missing some players that will be back next week. We need their quality, but we also want to help integrate the lads better who aren’t in the starting XI. We saw what we have to work on today, but the result isn’t a disaster. Everybody makes mistakes, though we obviously have higher expectations of ourselves, even in games like this,” said Bo Henriksen after the game.

EINTRACHT TRIER - MAINZ 05 3-0

FSV: Zentner (46’ Batz) - Veratschnig (46’ da Costa), Kohr (46’ Fernandes), Bell (63’ Dal), Leitsch (63’ Schulz), Müller (46’ Caci) - Gleiber, Barkok (46’ Amiri), Richter (46’ Krauß) - Sieb (46’ Nebel), Weiper (46’ Ajorque) 

Goals: 1-0 Wimmer (40’), 2-0 Biondic (75’), 3-0 König (84’)

Attendance: 1,984
Referee: Patrick Alt