The change game | OneFootball

The change game | OneFootball

Icon: Rund um den Brustring

Rund um den Brustring

·30. Oktober 2024

The change game

Artikelbild:The change game

Once again, against Kai­sers­lau­tern, VfB advan­ces in the cup with their second-string lin­e­up. Howe­ver, a refe­ree mis­pla­ce­ment and the team’s own care­less­ness made the game unneces­s­a­ri­ly exci­ting.

By the time Nick Wol­te­ma­de scored the 1–0 goal after about fif­teen minu­tes with an assist from Erme­din Demirović—finally con­ver­ting the 75% pos­ses­si­on his team had held up to that point into a goal—it should have been clear to any obser­ver who would pro­gress to the next round that Tues­day evening. The visi­tors from Kai­sers­lau­tern were over­whel­med by the way play­ers like Krät­zig, Rie­der, and others moved the ball, with a class dif­fe­rence appa­rent ear­ly on. And that was even with half of the Ger­man natio­nal team still on the bench, as Sebas­ti­an Hoe­neß, just as he had in the first round against Lautern’s fel­low second-tier team Müns­ter, spun the rota­ti­on carou­sel exten­si­ve­ly.


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Superior Play

Though cal­ling it rota­ti­on almost isn’t accu­ra­te, as it would imply that play­ers like Hen­driks, Wol­te­ma­de, Sten­zel, or Krät­zig would be seen more often in the future. Ins­tead, it was more a case of VfB’s coach taking the oppor­tu­ni­ty to give his sub­sti­tu­tes some play­ing time, kno­wing that this wouldn’t jeo­par­di­ze their pro­gres­si­on and that his bench was strong enough to ulti­m­ate­ly secu­re the vic­to­ry. And that’s how it tur­ned out, with Führich—a play­er who doesn’t often fea­ture in the start­ing lineup—scoring one of the deci­ding goals.

For load manage­ment, it might have been bet­ter if Deniz Undav and Ange­lo Stil­ler had each play­ed around half an hour, and Jamie Lewe­ling and Enzo Mil­lot around 15 minu­tes each, but VfB strug­g­led for a long time against a limi­t­ed yet fight­ing Kai­sers­lau­tern team to turn their supe­ri­or play into a decisi­ve lead. After the equa­li­zer, FCK incre­asing­ly reli­ed on coun­ter-attacks, and VfB’s game set­up was at times too intri­ca­te to over­co­me the many defen­ders in red socks crow­ded in front of the goal. On one or two of the visi­tors’ coun­ter-attacks, VfB even got a bit lucky.

A Misassigned Referee: Schlager

That the score remain­ed tied until the 76th minu­te was part­ly due to VfB’s own care­less­ness in front of the opponent’s goal, and to a les­ser degree in front of their own goal when Fabi­an Rie­der fou­led his oppo­nent Mar­lon Rit­ter some­what clum­si­ly just befo­re halft­i­me. But also due to refe­ree Dani­el Schla­ger, inex­pli­ca­bly assi­gned yet again to a VfB cup match. Schla­ger not only strug­g­led to judge phy­si­cal con­tests cor­rect­ly but also inter­ven­ed cru­ci­al­ly in the game when he fai­led to spot that Rieder’s unneces­sa­ry foul took place cle­ar­ly out­side the penal­ty area from just a few yards away.

This time, at least, he could excu­se hims­elf by say­ing the­re is no video assistant in the second round of the cup, mea­ning the team had to live with the referee’s incompetence—which I frank­ly pre­fer over the unpre­dic­ta­ble and incon­sis­tent thres­hold for inter­ven­ti­on, see­mingly adjus­ted to suit the refe­ree and his supe­ri­ors when­ever con­ve­ni­ent. When Schla­ger fai­led to send Robert And­rich off the field in Febru­ary or gave a far-fet­ched expl­ana­ti­on in May 2023 for a missed penal­ty call against Frank­furt, this excu­se didn’t app­ly. Lucki­ly, he wasn’t able to kick us out of the cup this time.

The Game Plan in Place

But let’s not dwell lon­ger than neces­sa­ry on things bey­ond our con­trol. Despi­te the nar­row score, the­re were ple­nty of posi­ti­ve aspects to take from the game. First and fore­most, Fabi­an Bred­low, who, in Alex­an­der Nübel’s shadow, has signi­fi­cant­ly impro­ved his ball skills and rein­forced the impres­si­on that, while Sebas­ti­an Hoe­neß can’t neces­s­a­ri­ly field every play­er against every oppo­nent, the enti­re squad has inter­na­li­zed the coach’s game plan. Facing a recent­ly strong-per­forming second-divi­si­on team, he had the luxu­ry of chan­ging nine posi­ti­ons from Saturday’s start­ing ele­ven. It’s under­stan­da­ble that rou­ti­nes might not flow as smooth­ly with play­ers lack­ing match prac­ti­ce, but in the end, the sub­sti­tu­ti­ons paid off.

With this third con­se­cu­ti­ve win and some play­ers having res­ted on cer­tain posi­ti­ons, the team now heads into Friday’s matchup bet­ween the reig­ning cham­pi­on and run­ner-up, fol­lo­wed by games against Euro­pa League cham­pi­on Ber­ga­mo and an ambi­tious Frank­furt team, fea­turing for­mer VfB loan­ee Omar Mar­moush. The team has alre­a­dy tack­led the sup­po­sedly easier tasks in this con­ge­sted sche­du­le and hand­led them with the requi­red serious­ness. In the coming week, we can likely expect a bit more spec­ta­cle. The important thing, howe­ver, is that the team has put the Bay­ern game behind them and is poi­sed to take on the next three matches befo­re the inter­na­tio­nal break—if neces­sa­ry, even with someone from the second lin­e­up.

Pic­tu­re: © Chris­tof Koepsel/Getty Images

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