When he was substituted for the club icon Fabian Klos after 58 minutes, Janni Serra took a seat on the players bench and held a blanket over his face.
Among them, the center forward, who has remained far below his potential in his new club Arminia Bielefeld, first shed a few tears.
Not the disappointment, but the sheer joy of the long-awaited moment a minute before that had made him a Bundesliga shooter.
The massive attacker who was 1.93 meters in length and who was 1.93 meters long seemed predestined to succeed the 34-year-old Klos - and then revealed in eleven mostly short-term missions in the Bielefeld storm center an unmistakable nervousness and inhibition of boxing through a class higher. With the fans it was difficult for him to arrive as it would have been according to his talent. On Tuesday, in the 2-0 home win over VfL Bochum, Serra fell again against his colleagues.
And then Serra's Christmas fairy tale came true after all.
"If you dream for years of scoring a goal in the Bundesliga and then succeed, the emotions run away a bit," he said, describing the upsetting moments of his elation when he wanted to stay with himself.
The Lower Saxony, in the A-youth of Borussia Dortmund converted from central defender to striker, promised "many more goals" and finally felt comfortable again.
He was able to show everyone who had doubted him with the goal he initiated to make it 1-0 from five meters away that he had not forgotten his primary quality, scoring goals.
So it's no wonder that he kissed the lawn for the first time after his Bundesliga premiere - literally the basis of his profession.
"Crazy, I'm overwhelmed"
Later he stood side by side with Klos, who had been expelled from the field ten minutes after his substitution (68th) for a gross foul on Leipzig's Willi Orban, on the edge of the field and waited for the final whistle of a game that the table seventeenth was now back in close contact to other endangered teams deservedly won, also because the current top scorer, Masaya Okugawa, who had given Arminia his fifth goal of the season against the unimaginative Leipzig (75th). For the people of Bielefeld, and especially for Serra, it was Christmas on Saturday. "Crazy, I'm overwhelmed, we played a great game," the Armine of the day praised his team. A team that, including coach Frank Kramer, had always believed in Janni Serra's execution skills.
Contrary to the mood in the stands, where the fans groaned or grumbled when the central attacker, no matter how accurate in the second division, had once again missed an opportunity to recommend himself for further appearances. Serra was noticeable for months how hard it must have been for the colleague and competitor of the Bielefeld idol Klos to assert itself qualitatively against a valued but naturally dominant colleague. In Leipzig, Serra took the first step to replace Klos as the number one center forward.
It was the day on which Arminia Bielefeld reported back with clearly visible trademarks in the fight for another year of first class: with a calm defensive, the fifth best in the league, in which the calm radiating substitute goalkeeper Stefanos Kapino the corona sick Stefan Ortega first class replaced; with a middle field of hard-working workers, in which the absence of the captain Manuel Prietl, who was also tested with Covid-19 symptoms, was compensated for by the Vasiliadis / Schöpf axis; and with strikers who first made a name for themselves.
In addition to the executor Serra, his partner Florian Krüger, who came from Aue, also shone as a valuable assistant in making the 1-0.
In the medium term, many Bielefeld hopes rest on the Krüger, trained in the Schalke youth, as on his neighbor on Saturday.
The patience of coach Frank Kramer and sports director Samir Arabi with the newly formed center forward offensive, which also includes the young Frenchman Bryan Lasme, is beginning to pay off.
A good sign for the Bielefeld offensive department, which is currently the second worst in the Bundesliga with 16 goals.