St. Pauli defend Nikola Vasilj after mistake: “He’s saved our asses plenty of times.” | OneFootball

For all the troubles facing promoted Bundesliga side St. Pauli in the current Bundesliga campaign, FCSP can at least take solace in the fact that they have the third best defence in the German top flight. This owes much to Bosnia & Herzegovina national team keeper Nikola Vasilj. The 29-year-old has been spectacular in goal in this season.

In point of fact – according to Kicker – Vasilj maintains the second best cumulative match grades of any top flight keeper. Only Mainz’ Robin Zentner – recently recommended by his coach for the German national team – maintains a better grade point average. Such a rating in Germany’s top footballing publication means a lot.

Vasilj naturally picked a poor moment to screw up in Saturday afternoon’s 2-0 loss to Mainz. A spilled rebound on a Nadiem Amiri effort in the 67th minute allowed Jae-Sung Lee to open the scoring. The Hanseatic city state guests never recovered from Vasilj’s blunder in the tight contest and incurred their 14th league loss of the campaign.

Speaking to Sky Germany afterwards, St. Pauli defender Hauke Wahl (working in the back three after Eric Smith was forced to move into midfield) defended his goalkeeper. Clearly thinking about close scoring chances from Noah Weißhaupt and Johannes Eggestein in the first half, Wahl also lamented the fact that the result wasn’t strictly fair.

“We have to be there for the rebound,” Wahl said. “We can’t expect Niko to fish everything out of the air. He’s saved our asses often enough this season. [Amiri’s shot] had a nasty trajectory. [Niko] has to be able to rely on us and he couldn’t at that moment.

“It’s emblematic of how things have gone for us in recent weeks,” Wahl said of the result in general. “extremely unlucky.“

GGFN | Peter Weis