NUREMBERG: Eintracht Frankfurt kept their Bundesliga place and condemned Nuremberg to another season in the second tier after Haris Seferovic gave them a 1-0 away win in a tense relegation/promotion play-off on Monday.

The Swiss striker’s 66th-minute strike after good work from Mijat Gacinovic, his first since November, earned Frankfurt a 2-1 aggregate win against the deflated hosts who had needed only a goalless draw to return to the top flight after two seasons.

It means Frankfurt coach Niko Kovac has succeeded in his mission of keeping Frankfurt up having taken over with nine games left last March and his team in the bottom three.

“We completely deserved to win. When you look at the two games, only we could have won,” said retiring Frankfurt chairman Heribert Bruchhagen after his last game. “It was great that I could experience it to the end.”

It was the eighth playoff, featuring the third-bottom Bundesliga team and third-placed second-tier side, since the system was introduced in the 2008/09 season and the sixth occasion that the Bundesliga team has survived.

Nuremberg, in 2009, and Fortuna Duesseldorf, in 2012, are the only second-tier teams to have broken the sequence.

Published in Dawn, May 25th, 2016