Eintracht Frankfurt travel to Borussia Dortmund on Friday evening, with kick-off scheduled for Friday 8 May at 20:30 CEST, and midfielder Elles Skhiri insisting his team will fight for three points that could lift them into seventh place.
Frankfurt arrive on the back of a 2-1 home defeat by Hamburger SV on Matchday 32 that dropped them to eighth, a point behind SC Freiburg, whom they can at least temporarily leapfrog with a positive result at Signal Iduna Park. Freiburg do not play again until Sunday, when they face Hamburg away.
For Dortmund the match is about cementing a season that has them chasing a runners-up finish behind Bayern Munich. Borussia lost 1-0 at Borussia Mönchengladbach last time out but still hold a five-point cushion over third place — a margin that underlines how much is at stake for both sides in the closing stages of the Bundesliga season.
The fixture carries history. The clubs meet for the 106th time in all competitions, and the pair have already met twice this season: Frankfurt went out on penalties to Dortmund in the DFB Cup, and in the first league meeting of the campaign Eintracht took a 3-2 stoppage-time lead before Dortmund fought back to a 3-3 draw. Frankfurt’s January 2025 visit to Dortmund produced a 2-0 Eintracht win, with Hugo Ekitiké and Oscar Højlund on the scoresheet.
There is a contrast worth noting in underlying numbers. In 2025/26 only Bayern have taken more of their chances than Frankfurt and Dortmund; Frankfurt sit second in the Bundesliga for shooting accuracy behind Bayern. That clinical edge explains why Skhiri warned that league position alone does not decide single matches, saying that Frankfurt know the table tells only part of the story and that anything could happen, before adding that the squad will work hard to be ready and to try to get the three points.
Yet the record between the sides in recent Bundesliga meetings gives Dortmund reason for confidence. Since April 2021 Eintracht have lost eight of their nine Bundesliga encounters with Borussia, and victories for Frankfurt at Dortmund have been scarce. That history sits against Frankfurt’s recent ability to convert chances, creating a clear tactical tension: clinical finishing versus psychological and historical dominance.
Dortmund’s own mood is raw. Winger Ansgar Knauff described recent performances as frustrating, acknowledged supporters’ right to express displeasure at the final whistle and said the players feel the same frustration; he added that the desire is present but they cannot seem to get it right and that with two games left they must give everything. Those words frame a team under pressure to tidy loose ends and secure second place.
The immediate consequence of Friday’s result is direct and simple. A win would lift Eintracht at least temporarily above Freiburg into seventh, keeping their fate in their own hands ahead of a final league game against VfB Stuttgart. A loss or draw would leave them still behind Freiburg and reliant on other results — notably Freiburg’s Sunday trip to Hamburg — to improve their European prospects.
On balance, the match is set up as a classic end-of-season test: Dortmund chasing position and needing to shrug off a setback, Frankfurt chasing points and confidence to push into the top seven. Given Dortmund’s larger margin for error and the recent head-to-head record, they remain a slight favorite on paper; yet Frankfurt’s finishing numbers make them dangerous on the break and mean they cannot be written off. Skhiri’s vow to prepare and push for three points frames what comes next — if Frankfurt leave Dortmund with a win, the European race opens again; if they do not, their season will hinge on closing the gap in the final game.
