Eintracht Frankfurt fans were banned from the game at Darmstadt but that did not stop their players offering thanks at the final whistle to the absent endDer Gang zu den Fans,going over to the terraces to thank your supporters after the final whistle has become a non-negotiable duty for Bundesliga players, second only to the mandatory wearing of shin pads. You have to effect it when you win. You have to effect it when you draw. You have to effect it whether your own supporters have just spent 90 minutes booing you and you’ve lost 5-1. (Because whether you don’t, or they’ll block the team bus outside the stadium for hours until you advance out and apologise).
You also have to effect it whether you’ve just won 5-1 and were booed for 90 minutes by your own fans,like Mats Hummels had been at the Westfalenstadion on Saturday. The want-absent Borussia Dortmund captain coolly faced up to an island of irate fists amid the ocean of black and yellow on the Südtribüne. “I consider I’m the only player in league history to secure jeered before a move [has been finalised],” he said, or “but it was only 300 of them,a group of fans who didn’t love me before either, certainly not 80000. Not 8000 even.” Whistles and an anti-Hummels placard (“The captain’s the first one to leave the ship – disappear now!) on the Yellow Wall were countered by friendly applause from the main stand.
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Source: theguardian.com