SVWW narrow defeat to Champions in season finale
Pros |
SV Wehen Wiesbaden will kick off the second half of their Bundesliga 2 campaign with a home game under the floodlights on Tuesday 28 January (20:30 CET). FC Erzgebirge Aue will be the first opponents of 2020.
Off the pitch, SVWW will be joining their fellow German professional football clubs in participating in the Erinnerungstag im deutschen Fußball (German Football Remembrance Day), which has been set in motion by the initiative !Nie wieder (Never again). To mark the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, fans, clubs and associations will be remembering the victims of National Sozialism at the end of January. SVWW has planned a range of diverse activities for the week leading up to the home game and the matchday itself.
Further information can be found here.
Personnel matters: The return of Phillip Tietz, who spent six months on the sidelines recovering from injury, feels almost like a new signing. Another reinforcement to head coach Rüdiger Rehm's squad is Sidney Friede, who joined SVWW over the winter break. Manuel Schäffler is available again after serving his suspension, while Daniel-Kofi Kyereh has recovered from a muscular injury. Long-term injury absentees aside, the whole squad is fit and available.
Scenario: Rüdiger Rehm emphasised at the press conference on Sunday that he and his team wanted to continue with "what we touched upon before the winter break. We've discussed the right things. Now I'm expecting the team to give everything." While some elements of the three friendlies – against Fortuna Cologne, FC St. Pauli and CFR Cluj – were positive, there was still room for improvement in other respects. "Exactly that is what's important: that we don't only do things perfectly but that we learn too."
Outlook: "We're delighted that it's starting up again," said both the coach and his striker in the run-up to the Aue match. One of SVWW's main objectives for the remainder of the season is to stabilise their home form. "We've conceded too many goals at home," admitted Rehm. "But the good thing is that you can start from scratch again after a winter break. We need to ensure we pick up more points here than we did last year. We want to start with that against Erzgebirge Aue on Tuesday."
The opposition: Prior to fixtures getting underway in 2020, FC Erzgebirge Aue occupy fifth spot in the table with 29 points on the board – making them a contender for promotion. They prefer not to talk about the word "promotion" over at FCE. Nonetheless, Rüdiger Rehm, who knows the club very well from his playing career, believes that the opposition want to keep "competing at the top" and that SVWW will therefore be "facing brutal resistance. Aue won't just turn up here and say, we have 29 points, none of us want to get promoted, so let's just leave the points here."
Here's what Phillip Tietz had to say: For Tietzi, the return fixture against FCE means coming full circle. It was in the first meeting that the forward scored his first SVWW goal. Then came the injury that has kept him out of action until Tuesday evening. "I'm happy to once again be part of the team's inner circle. We'll give it our best-possible shot against Aue." The 22-year-old does not feel he's back to 100% yet after a long spell out injured, but he's been putting in regular extra shifts with fitness coach Sebastian Wagener in a bid to return to peak fitness as soon as possible.