Where Eintracht Needs to Improve Next Season

Dino Toppmöller‘s Eintracht Frankfurt played a historic campaign last season, finishing third in the Bundesliga. Despite this historic league finish, our season wasn’t perfect. We’ve identified the few problems that remain in our game, which should be improved upon going into next season.

DEFENSIVE SET PIECES

Set-pieces have always been a topic at Eintracht Frankfurt in the past seasons. Our offensive corners specifically seemed cursed, it sometimes seemed impossible for us to even get the ball in the opponents box. Dino Toppmöller and his coaching staff changed that. Last season, we often seemed a threat from corners, even scoring several goals. However, our defensive corners remained an issue throughout the season. We conceded the second-most goals (10) from corners out of any team in the Bundesliga last season.

A reason for this may be the lack of height in the squad. Our most-used starting lineup last season featured not a single player over 1.90m. Despite this, defensive corners should be an area in which we look to improve drastically next season, as it was often the reason for losing tight matches, often against weaker teams.

PLAYING AGAINST A LOW BLOCK

Breaking down deep-lying opponents has proven to be a problem in Frankfurt for some time now. Teams with a very low defensive line, such as Union Berlin or St. Pauli, have always created difficulties for us. While we actually managed to win most of these matches towards the start of the season, it still turned out to be an issue in the latter parts of the season. The departure of Omar Marmoush and the injury of Mario Götze may have been significant factors in this decline.

Here are a few examples of high-possession games against teams defending in a low block, towards the end of the season:

1-2 loss against Union Berlin (67% possession)

2-0 loss against Werder Bremen (63% possession)

0-1 loss against Tottenham (61% possession)

2-2 draw against St. Pauli (73% possession)

While some of these games also included some instances of bad luck, they all showed our inability to create chances from long periods of possession. Even though we had the ball for the majority of the 90 minutes, we didn’t often didn’t control these games. In fact, in matches with less possession, we often created more chances. 

Last season, we had 2,2% less possession than in Dino Toppmöller’s first season in charge (2023/24). Looking at each of last season‘s matches, you can see an inverse relationship between our possession and the match result (less possession = better result).

This can be explained by our great counter-attacking play, especially with players such as Marmoush and Ekitike leading the line. However, we can’t always rely on counter-attacking, especially with these two star forwards now gone.

There will always be matches against Augsburg, Union Berlin or St. Pauli, where we will have most of the ball. With creative playmakers like Götze and Uzun, and the new addition of Jonny Burkardt to our attack, our squad will hopefully have the tools to break down deep-lying defenses more effectively next season.

INCLUDING SQUAD PLAYERS

While Dino Toppmöller has proven to be excellent at man management and developing players, there have also been some players who have been somewhat ‘cast aside’. Mo Dahoud played hardly any minutes in 2025. Niels Nlounkou has completely lost his place in the team. Junior Dina Ebimbe wasn’t even a part of the match day squad at times. Igor Matanovic played no significant role in the second half of the season.

From an outside perspective it’s very hard to judge who is responsible for the stagnant development of these players. What’s obvious however, is that it can’t be helpful for a team‘s dynamics to have such clear ‘outcasts’. Even if that didn’t seem to have a notable effect on the team‘s performance last season, it still seems like an area where the club needs to find a better strategy to integrate players back into the squad.

CUP COMPETITIONS

While Dino Toppmöller‘s record in the Bundesliga is very impressive, the results in cup competitions remain a little lacking. Our performance in the Europa League last season was very respectable, although the quarter-final was also the furthest Toppmöller has come in any cup competition with Eintracht Frankfurt so far during his tenure.

The early DFB Pokal exit against RB Leipzig was a very tough defeat to take. On the one hand, losing away at Leipzig is something that can always happen, but the way in which is happened was quite shocking, especially as it came following a seven-game winning streak. 

In next season’s Champions League, no one will realistically expect us to go very far. That takes some pressure off Toppmöller’s team; they don’t have much to lose, and may even have the chance to cause an upset or two in the group phase. In the DFB Pokal however, a competition in which Frankfurt usually performs well, many fans will hope to see Eintracht reach the latter stages once more.

TAKEAWAY

After such a successful season it was hard to find any areas where the team really needed to improve. While the topics we discussed don’t seem like fundamental issues, the next season will still bring its challenges, and fixing some of these problems will be vital in completing another successful campaign.