There are afternoons when a striker simply decides that the game belongs to him, and at the PreZero Arena on Saturday Adam Hlozek made that decision twice. His pair of goals, each finished with the calm of a man who had seen the picture before it arrived, carried TSG Hoffenheim to a 2-1 victory over VfB Stuttgart in a fixture that crackled with the nerves of two teams desperate to climb out of trouble.

The margins were tiny, the stakes anything but. Both sides had arrived level on points, both marooned in the wrong half of the table, both aware that a fourth matchday defeat would begin to feel like a pattern rather than a wobble. By the final whistle it was Hoffenheim who exhaled, hauled up to 13th and, for one weekend at least, able to look down on the visitors they had just beaten.

Stuttgart will feel they had the equaliser to build on and the momentum to seize. Instead they were undone by the very thing that has bedevilled their start to the season — a defence caught flat-footed on the counter, punished twice by a fast break and a striker who does not miss those chances.

Fast start, cold finish

Hoffenheim did not wait to feel their way into the contest. Inside 13 minutes they were ahead, and the goal bore all the hallmarks of a side that had done its homework on Stuttgart's high line. Bambase Conte broke at speed, released Hlozek and watched as the forward opened his body and stroked a right-footed shot from the centre of the box into the bottom-left corner.

It was a goal of frightening efficiency, the kind that turns a plan into points. The break was quick, the pass weighted, the finish placed rather than blasted. For the home crowd it was the perfect early tonic; for Stuttgart it was an early warning that would go unheeded.

The lead settled Hoffenheim and unsettled their guests. Stuttgart carried the ball into promising areas without ever quite finding the incision to match it, and they went in at the interval trailing to a single moment of counter-attacking precision. The pattern of the afternoon had been set: leave space behind, and this Hoffenheim side would find it.

Stuttgart strike back

Whatever was said in the Stuttgart dressing room at half-time had teeth. The visitors emerged with fresh urgency and were level within three minutes of the restart, Maximilian Mittelstadt arriving in the centre of the box to lash a left-footed finish into the bottom-left corner. It was a captain's contribution from an unexpected source, a full-back turning up in the six-yard box when it mattered most.

For a spell the game tilted decisively Stuttgart's way. The equaliser lent them belief, the crowd grew quieter, and the visitors sensed that a point — or more — was there to be taken. Level on the scoreboard and level in the table, this was suddenly a contest that either side could shape.

But parity is a fragile thing when your defence keeps offering the same invitation. Stuttgart pushed men forward in search of a second, and in doing so left the door ajar behind them. Hoffenheim, patient and predatory, needed only one more crack of light to walk through it.

Hlozek has the final word

The decisive blow landed on 67 minutes, and it was authored by the same combination of ingredients that had produced the first. Adam Daghim burst clear on the break, picked out Hlozek, and the striker steadied himself before curling a left-footed finish into the bottom-left corner. Two goals, both from fast breaks, both tucked into the same corner — a portrait of a forward in complete command of his craft.

It was the kind of finish that decides seasons as much as matches. Hlozek's movement had been sharp all afternoon, his timing on the transition impeccable, and when the second chance came he dispatched it with the same unhurried certainty as the first. Daghim's assist completed a pair of textbook counters that Stuttgart, for all their possession, could not legislate against.

From there Hoffenheim managed the closing stages with the discipline of a team that knew exactly how much this result mattered. Stuttgart threw bodies forward but found no third goal to threaten, their afternoon reduced to a bruising lesson in the cost of an open defence. The two breaks that beat them had come from the same script, and they had failed to rewrite it in time.

The road ahead

Three matchdays in, both clubs now sit on three points, but the mood in each camp could scarcely differ more. Hoffenheim have their second win of the campaign and a first taste of momentum, having scored six and conceded seven — numbers that speak to a side capable of hurting anyone but still leaking too freely at the other end. On this evidence, the attacking threat is real, and in Hlozek they have a man happy to shoulder it.

Stuttgart, by contrast, are left to stew on a defeat that drops them to 14th and lays bare the flaw threatening to define their season. Eight goals conceded in three games is a total that no amount of front-foot football can outrun, and twice on Saturday they were sliced open on the counter by opponents who barely needed a second look. The equaliser flattered to deceive; the concession that followed told the truer story.

The Bundesliga table remains a jumble at this early stage, a cluster of clubs separated by nothing more than goal difference and nerve. For Hoffenheim, this is a platform to build upon and a reminder of what their forward line can do when the spaces open up. For Stuttgart, it is a warning that must be answered soon, before the early stumbles harden into a crisis that a squad with this much attacking promise should never have to face.