SVWW narrow defeat to Champions in season finale
Pros |
With the last international break of 2019 now over, the calendar year is entering its final phase. For SV Wehen Wiesbaden, the countdown begins with a home game against 12th-placed Holstein Kiel on Saturday 23 November. Kick-off at the BRITA-Arena will be at 13:00 CET.
Personnel matters: There’s positive news to report on the injury front, with the trio of Heinz Lindner, Sebastian Mrowca and Marcel Titsch Rivero back to fitness and available for the Red & Blacks. However, head coach Rüdiger Rehm is still without Jules Schwadorf, Patrick Schönfeld, Marc Wachs, Arthur Lyska and Philipp Tietz. They are joined on the sidelines by the injured Moritz Kuhn and the suspended Stefan Aigner.
The scenario: As they did in the previous two international breaks, the coaching staff used the domestic hiatus to finetune one or two things. “We were poor defensively at the beginning of the season and we worked on it,” explained the SVWW coach at the press conference. Now the focus is very much on creating more chances at the other end. But Rehm was quick to point out that “the balance between attack and defence is important and we’ve worked on that in recent weeks. The team’s development has been positive, it’s going in the right direction and we’re improving. And as we get better, we’ll start to pick up more points.”
Outlook: The winter break may be approaching, but there are still 15 points to play for. Rüdiger Rehm and his charges have some “very, very important matches” coming up in order to ensure they “go into the New Year in the perfect position”. But the head coach also said: “We won’t let the table get to us; we need to focus solely on picking up points.” The aim is to get the next three on the board on Sunday. “Kiel are in a decent position in terms of points, but they’re within reach of us. That’s why it’s important for us to win the game on Saturday.”
The opposition: The Storks currently possess the youngest squad in the 2. Bundesliga with an average age of 24.5 years, although they do have some experienced heads such as Johannes van den Bergh and Alexander Mühling in their ranks. “We know what a good footballing side Kiel are, how good they are at switching the play,” said Rehm of the team currently occupying 12th in the table. “We need to ensure we don’t invite them to hit us on the counter-attack and so we’ll need to be very careful with our build-up play.”
What Niklas Dams had to say: “We always go into a game with the objective of giving away as little as possible and keeping a clean sheet. We’ve done very well in that respect in the recent past. You can see that we, as a team, have had something of a rethink and placed a greater focus on defence. We need to continue with that.”
Man of the Match: As always, you have the opportunity to vote for your Man of the Match. Simply cast your vote in the Match Center on the SVWW website anytime between kick-off and midnight on the day of the game and win a shirt signed by the Man of the Match!