Second division team Fortuna Düsseldorf has celebrated a sensational comeback in the first free match in the history of German professional soccer.

Fortuna Düsseldorf defeated 1. FC Kaiserslautern 4:3 (1:3) after trailing 0:3 and improved to fourth place at least until Sunday.

Ao Tanaka (36th, 63rd), Matthias Zimmermann (49th) and Felix Klaus (57th) turned the match around with their goals and thus saved the start of the “Fortuna for all” project. Except for the VIP guests, all visitors had free admission.

For the Palatinate team, it was the first defeat after seven matches in a row in which they had scored. The Red Devils had taken seemingly unassailable leads through Richmond Tachie (21st), Jamil Siebert (30th, own goal) and Marlon Ritter (32nd).

The hosts had the first chance in front of 52,000 spectators through Jordy de Wijs (7.), then it became curious. When Tachie scored the visitors’ first goal, de Wijs made an unfortunate deflection. At 0:2 Siebert pushed a Tachie cross over his own line. Before the third goal, Siebert lost the ball and Ritter scored on the follow-up shot. Afterwards, a plastic bottle flew onto the field and hit Lauter’s Ragnar Ache in the head.

But the Dusseldorf team, driven by the fans, did not give up. Tanaka’s goal released new energy, and shortly after the break Emmanuel Iyoha only hit the crossbar (48th). A minute later, Zimmermann was lucky that his shot was also deflected into the goal. For the equalizer, Zimmermann served his teammate Klaus strongly.

Fortuna had received around 120,000 ticket requests for the match. The project, which is unique in this form, will be tested this season in a pilot phase with three games. In order to be able to offer all games free of charge in the long term, as planned, there is a lack of further financial backers.