Lingor's faith lifts Frankfurt

Renate Lingor was convinced her 1. FFC Frankfurt side would win the UEFA Women's Cup final even before they defeated 1. FFC Turbine Potsdam 4-0 in the first leg.

Victory completed
Frankfurt reclaimed the title they first won in the inaugural competition in 2001/02 as a 3-2 win at home on Saturday completed a 7-2 aggregate win against Potsdam, who denied them the Bundesliga and German Cup this season and beat them 6-2 in a league game as recently as Easter. "When we played them at Easter, we all knew right after the match that we had played so badly that we could hardly have done worse," playmaker Lingor told uefa.com. "We didn't even reach 20 per cent of our potential back then, we simply gave up and we don't know why."

Confident approach
However, when it came to the final, her and her team-mates were well aware that they had the beating of Potsdam even before their 4-0 win at the Karl-Liebnecht stadium. "We had always known we could do it, and that this match was probably the most important for us this season," she said. Potsdam took the lead earlier in the second leg but Frankfurt did not panic, and twice levelled the scores - the second time through Lingor's 73rd-minute penalty - before FIFA World Player of the Year Birgit Prinz scored what proved to be the winner on the day three minutes into added time.

No nerves
"I don't think we looked nervous at all, despite going 1-0 down so early," said Lingor. "We continued to play our game and in trademark style we were able to convert the chances we created. In the last minutes, when Potsdam opened up, we knew we were going to get chances on the break and Birgit took one of them."

Age barrier
Lingor and her team had been stung by criticism that Frankfurt's defeats to Potsdam were proof that they were over-reliant upon older players, saying: "We thought that was not the right way to see it. After all, you could just turn it around and say that we are so experienced and have so many starters for the national side in our team, that it should be very, very hard to beat us."

Germany unbeatable?
With two German sides in the final, many have questioned whether any other nation can compete with the Bundesliga clubs, but Lingor is not convinced. She said: "We have some very professional coaches now and the level of performance has been upped considerably in the past years. However, we must not forget that two years ago it was two Swedish teams in the final, so we are certainly not without peers."