CHAPTER 107: PEN

The game resumed and Eintracht Frankfurt were starting to apply more pressure on Leverkusen than they had in the entire opening 35+ minutes.

They pressed high with speed as a unit and almost caught the opposition off guard right after kick-off.

Lukas stuck to the role Toppmöller had instructed Ekitike to tell him about. He stopped wandering about and started trying to read and dictate the game from deep. He never crossed the halfway line even as Ekitike, Knauff, and Götze pressed high, because he knew if Leverkusen managed to beat the press, one pass to Xhaka and Eintracht’s defense would be in deep trouble.

His job, from now on, was to stop Xhaka from getting too much space to pick out passes like they were the easiest thing to do on the pitch.

In the 38th minute, Tah and Mukiele passed the ball around to beat Ekitike’s press before sending a clean pass to Xhaka down the middle.

As Granit Xhaka received the ball right at the edge of the centre circle and turned, Lukas was already an inch away from him. Before the Swiss could take a glance to find a player to pass to, Lukas stretched his leg and poked the ball away from Xhaka and into Skhiri’s path, and immediately the counterattack was on.

Skhiri was under pressure from Garcia, so he passed the ball to Brown on the right flank. Brown looked at his marker — Jeremie Frimpong — and knew he couldn’t outrun him, so he passed the ball back into midfield to Lukas, with his back to goal, who was between Garcia and Wirtz.

The ball came at Lukas with speed, and he could feel Garcia’s presence behind him and Wirtz right in front of him.

Lukas moved his body ever so slightly to the left, the direction the ball was coming from, as if he was getting ready to turn that way. But when the ball got to him, he didn’t touch it at first, letting it roll across his body as he turned to his right while the two players were covering his left-hand side.

He didn’t dwell on the ball after beating them. He took a look up and lofted it over the defense into Ekitike’s path.

The final shot, however, was not as clinical as the first goal, as the ball sailed over the bar and Ekitike put his hands on his head.

"Missed chance by Ekitike, this game should have been 3-2 now. Eintracht Frankfurt are growing into this game by the minute, even the fans can feel it," the commentator said as the fans were starting to chant some tunes to raise the spirits of their players.

It seems those chants did the magic they were meant to do as Eintracht Frankfurt got a chance to score their second just before the half-time break.

It started with a small stint of possession in the first minute of the four-minute stoppage time inside their own penalty area.

Trapp received a back pass from Theate and sent it the opposite way to Kristensen.

Kristensen turned, shielding the ball from Tella before launching it down the line to Knauff, who was being chased down by Grimaldo.

"ON YOUR RIGHT!" was all Knauff needed to hear to flick the ball with his right foot into the midfield, where Lukas received it right at the entrance of Leverkusen’s final third.

Lukas looked around calmly as he trapped the ball and saw the entire play develop even before his second touch.

Knauff had continued his run after passing the ball, and that was all Lukas needed as he floated the ball over Xhaka and Grimaldo to Knauff, who took it down brilliantly.

Lukas sprinted up the pitch immediately after playing that pass as he breezed past Xhaka, then Garcia, and got to the edge of the penalty area even before Knauff could send the cross in.

The Leverkusen midfielders tried to get close to him, but they were nowhere near as fast as he was.

Knauff, coming down the right flank with the ball, glanced into the box and saw Lukas with his hands pointing to the space in front of him right at the edge of the penalty area while Ekitike was already making a run into the box.

He decided to cut it back for Lukas before Grimaldo could get close, as the Spaniard was closing him down at top speed.

"Knauff in possession. He has several options in the box! He cuts it back for Brandt! CHANCE! BRANDT GOES DOWN IN THE BOX... AND THE REFEREE POINTS TO THE SPOT! PENALTY FOR EINTRACHT FRANKFURT!"

The crowd went crazy with cheers as Lukas picked himself off the ground with a sly grin on his face.

Everything had gone according to plan.

Once he received the ball from Knauff, he knew any hesitation would make Garcia and Xhaka close in on him from behind, while Tah was already coming to block the shooting angle inside the box.

With his first touch killing the momentum of the pass completely, he dragged the ball slightly past the line and into the box, and once he threw his left foot back to shoot, that foot got caught between Garcia’s legs as he ran onto him from behind.

Once he felt his leg get stuck, he just hit the floor.

It wasn’t a dive — he wasn’t looking for the penalty when it happened. He had planned to take Tah out with that first fake before slotting the ball in the back of the net, but once he was caught, there was no reason not to go down, especially since the penalty would be given once VAR intervened.

He got a pat on the back from Larsson and Götze as he fixed his boots and retied the undone laces on the foot he was caught on.

"You should take it," Ekitike said to Lukas as he handed the ball to him.

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah. You’re the best penalty taker during training and you won the penalty. I think you should take it."

Lukas looked at Ekitike for a brief moment before nodding and collecting the ball from him.

There were slight gasps among the crowd as the supporters were both surprised Lukas was taking such a penalty and worried that he might miss it.

"Ekitike has handed the ball to Brandt. He has won the penalty, and now he has been tasked with converting it. Toppmöller doesn’t look too worried. His teammates too. We haven’t seen him take a penalty in his senior career yet, but there must be a reason why they’re confident enough to let him take one even in a high-stakes match like this."

The crowd held its breath as Lukas set the ball down at the penalty spot, which Kristensen and Koch had been protecting from being scuffed by the Leverkusen players.

He raised his head to look at Hradecky, and the goalkeeper was staring right at him — employing every play in the book from clapping, bouncing on his feet, moving right and then left, anything to try and destabilize Lukas.

"Lukas Brandt against Lukas Hradecky. Which of the two Lukases would come out on top? Brandt to put this game right on a knife edge just before half-time, Hradecky to help his team hold on to their two-goal lead going into the half... LUKAAAASS!!!"