Last season’s top scorer Jonathan Burkardt took a back seat last weekend for strike partner Younes Ebnoutalib’s stunning hat-trick, but the roles reversed here for Frankfurt to snatch an early lead.
Ebnoutalib found himself on the left with space to swing a cross to the far post, where Burkardt stormed in to outjump Hennes Behrens and nod into the near corner.
The hosts remained in full control for almost the entirety of the half’s remainder, with Can Uzun, Raphael Onyedika and Ebnoutalib all calling Finn Dahmen into saves, with a one-on-one stop from the latter particularly important.
Augsburg had hardly troubled, but gained encouragement from Fabian Rieder’s stoppage-time free kick, which bounced teasingly wide of the right post. But that appeared to be exactly what the visitors had needed, with the restart netting two goals within two minutes to complete a stunning turnaround.
26 seconds after the whistle, Marius Wolf looped a high cross into the centre of the area, where Arijon Ibrahimović rose to head into the bottom-left corner via a deflection off Elias Baum.
Right from kick-off, Ibrahimović then burst through and shot, causing Noah Atubolu to spill the ball into the path of Robin Fellhauer, who bundled in.
A lull followed, but Augsburg were back at it after the hour mark, and this time it was much tidier. After some patient build-up play, Alexis Claude-Maurice spun past Onyedika and sped forward, unleashing a curling strike inside the side netting from the edge of the area.
A host of changes by returning manager Adi Hutter didn’t do much to switch the momentum back, and Augsburg sealed things with just a few minutes remaining when Rieder succeeded where he had failed earlier by bending a perfect free-kick over the wall and into the top-right corner.
Augsburg’s convincing opening-day win over Schalke combines with this result to make this their best start to a Bundesliga season since promotion in 2011.
A seven-match unbeaten run in home H2Hs comes to an end for Frankfurt, who will be concerned that they have only managed to record six victories in their last 30 competitive matches.
Flashscore Man of the Match: Finn Dahmen (Augsburg)
