“Everything an Eintracht fan could possibly wish for” | OneFootball

CEO Axel Hellmann has made his traditional end-of-year address – here is his review of 2024.

2024 is now in the books, as least as far as Eintracht Frankfurt are concerned. And according to Axel Hellmann, it had “everything that an Eintracht fan could possibly wish for”. As is now tradition, the CEO has taken a look back at the past 12 months and drawn some conclusions:

“2024 was a good year. That is not just a matter of ticking all of the boxes and feeling satisfied with yourself – it means having highs and lows, struggling and going through the tough times together and coming out the other side and seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.”

The second half of the previous season saw the men’s team “achieve their target”, finishing sixth in the Bundesliga, which qualified them for European football. “It was a tough route to get there and wasn’t the footballing way of things that our club is used to,” said Hellmann. But the bottom line was that “we qualified for the Europa League and have every chance of going far. We know what this club is capable of once we’re on the right path. Last year, we laid the foundation for what we’re currently experiencing.”

“What we’re currently experiencing” is the first half of the current season, with Frankfurt third in the Bundesliga over the winter break and fifth in the UEFA Europa League. “I’m very satisfied with the way the first half of the season has gone,” said Hellmann. “The stadium is back to being a fortress and that’s exactly what we were hoping for last summer.”

Hellmann’s most memorable match of the year was the DFB Cup tie against Borussia Mönchengladbach. “We were a man down after 16 minutes, but we are Eintracht and we turned it around to win 2-1. Afterwards, you could see that this had an effect on the team – the belief and the performance levels increased dramatically, and that enabled us to turn the tight games in our favour.” The first half of the 2024/25 season saw Eintracht put in a whole host of solid performances and above all demonstrate “the explosivity that we were missing last season”.

Eintracht Women are certainly on explosive form, sitting atop the Google Pixel Women’s Bundesliga. “We’re incredibly proud of this,” said a smiling Hellmann, before going on to say how exciting the competition is becoming in the Women’s Bundesliga. “There are four teams very much at the top who have every chance of success. It means that the league is more exciting than it has been in years or even decades.” And as far as Hellmann is concerned, “we’re looking to win the title. There’s no way that we would be satisfied with finishing fifth.”

For 2025, Hellmann is hoping that “we can continue to ride the wave that we’re on with the men’s and women’s teams, all the way to the end of the season”.