Haaland, upsets, sub drama — Pokal gets German season off to a flyer | OneFootball

The DFB Pokal first round took its traditional place before the opening Bundesliga weekend in the German football calendar over the weekend and there was no shortage of storylines.

Upsets

The cup will always be good for an upset and provided us with more classics as the weekend played out.

And it started on Friday evening as 1860 Munich sent SV Darmstadt packing with a win on penalties.

Things continued into Saturday, when Werder Bremen lost to VfL Osnabrück, but the biggest surprise of the lot was reserved for Sunday.

Third tier side Waldhof Mannheim claimed the scalp of the weekend, delivering a nightmare start to new Eintracht Frankfurt boss Oliver Glasner. The 2018 winners, Frankfurt were humbled 2-0 and ended the game with 10-men before Mannheim captain Marcel Seegert insisted his side “should’ve scored four or five” after the match.

Another nearly moment came in the north, where Weiche Flensburg took Holstein Kiel deep into extra-time only to lose 4-2 after equalising twice through Patrick Herrmann, who was making his debut for the club after an eight-and-a-half year spell with their opponents which saw him score just three times.

Van Bommel’s nightmare start

VfL Wolfsburg are facing the prospect of being kicked out of the competition despite eventually beating Preußen Münster 3-1 after extra time.

New boss Mark van Bommel made six subs in the 120 minutes, mistakenly believing extra-time afforded him an additional change, a rule the DFB removed when the number of subs allowed in 90 minutes was increased to five last year.

A formal appeal was lodged by Münster on Monday.

Erling Haaland is at it again

Talk about picking up where you left off. Erling Haaland fired off a ridiculous seven shots in Dortmund’s first game under Marco Rose. He found the net with three of them.

The Norwegian was the only player to find the back of the net as Dortmund eased past Wehen Wiesbaden.

His hat-trick made it 60 goals in as many games since joining the club in January 2020.

Nine!

SpVgg Bayreuth and Arminia Bielefeld handed us the match of the round, though, lighting up Saturday’s programme with a nine-goal affair.

The hosts, usually seen in the fourth regional tier of the German game, fell behind twice but equalised to make it 1-1 and 3-3 to keep their cup hopes alive.

Unfortunately for them, they ran out of steam and Bielefeld netted three times in the final 12 minutes to book their place in the second round.