How Kramaric and Beier have launched Matarazzo's Hoffenheim up the Bundesliga table
The Sinsheim club have proven to be one of the most attacking teams in the German top-flight this season and it has quickly propelled Pellegrino Matarazzo team up the league table.
Leonardo Bonucci’s introduction to the Bundesliga was nothing short of a baptism of fire last weekend, when his Union Berlin side played host to high-flying Hoffenheim. Straight off the back of a gruelling 1-0 defeat to Real Madrid in the Champions League, the 36-year-old defender started his first league game in German football just three days later and looked considerably off the pace against a quick and very attacking opponent.
That was most evident 20 minutes into the match, when Bonucci happily drifted from right to left, shadowing young striker Maximilian Beier in what seemed like a harmless attempt to find space out wide. However, in the flash of an eye the former Italian international clocked a late run from Andrej Kramaric directly into the space Bonucci had left unoccupied. Four seconds later the Union defender was desperately chasing his opponent into the box, before resorting to tugging on Kramaric’s arm to slow him down. The Hoffenheim midfielder went to ground, his team won a penalty and before Bonucci’s Bundesliga career had even started he’d already gifted the opponents a goal.
This, thankfully for Union fans, isn’t a deconstruction of Bonucci’s faults as an ageing defender. That may come at a later date. Instead, this moment of football was in fact a perfect example of how Hoffenheim have managed to bamboozle most of their domestic opponents to date and why Pellegrino Matarazzo’s side now sit fifth in the Bundesliga table ahead of this weekend’s clash with Borussia Dortmund.
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