Early in the morning, a message came over social media that was intended to calm all outsiders who had worried about him: Sebastian Rode is doing well, he is doing according to the circumstances and he could, which was not entirely unimportant to him, as he did in photos showed, in all celebrations, in which the people of Frankfurt cheered and watered their triumph until sunrise, later involved almost unrestrictedly.

Marc Heinrich

sports editor.

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It had initially looked very different on Wednesday evening.

Rode had been extensively treated medically in the stadium by the Eintracht team doctors.

A scar with a dozen stitches running vertically across his forehead testified to the seriousness of the injury he sustained in the fifth minute of what was a hard-fought encounter with Glasgow Rangers.

"The main thing is to get the thing!

Everything else doesn't matter," was Rode's quintessence of the final in the Europa League, in which Frankfurt also prevailed because they had pushed themselves to the limit of their physical endurance.

John Lundstram hit Rode in the face during an illegal attack in a duel for the ball.

The Hesse had to be treated in the field, covered in blood.

"I was always conscious, knew that I had to keep playing - and immediately thought of Bastian Schweinsteiger 2014." The former Bayern colleague also fought his way through the final at the World Cup with a gaping head wound, which the national team won in Rio.

Now Rode experienced his career highlight as a man of sorrows.

It was a "shock moment" to see how the Scotsman struck down Rode with the cleats first, said trainer Oliver Glasner, while the referee Slavko Vincic, who was inappropriately generous in many scenes, saw no reason to issue a warning or a dismissal would have been well within the realm of possibility.

"The foot was very high," Glasner rightly remarked, Rode looked "excellent" with the kick.

With a view to the extensive celebration program, which continues on Thursday after landing at home, the coach gave little hope that Rode would look dewy again so quickly: "I assume that it will look even worse at first. "

Rode was first given a turban made of gauze bandages and bandages, with which the wound was treated out of necessity.

He held on for the 90th minute before making room for Kristijan Jakic before extra time.

Glasner said he felt gratitude to his players, who once again showed their resilience.

“We always believed in ourselves.

From day one.

That's how we developed a spirit that carried us to the end," emphasized the 47-year-old.

He was "very proud" of the group.

"Everyone put their egos aside and put everything at the service of the team."

With his will to assert himself, the 31-year-old Rode, whose career after stations in Munich and Borussia Dortmund was already on the verge of several knee operations, advanced before returning to Frankfurt and disabused all skeptics who considered his state of health to be a transfer risk.

At the Estadio Ramón Sánchez Pizjuán, he too shed tears of joy as he lifted the mighty trophy into the night sky in front of the fan curve and the supporters chanted his name again and again.

Rode said the next day, with a large band-aid between his hairline, that he would "never forget what happened here."

So he's in good company.