VfL Wolfsburg Women will contest their first away match in this season’s UEFA Women’s Champions League on Wednesday (kick-off 18:45 CEST) when they take on Norwegian league and cup double winners Valerenga in Oslo.
At his press conference ahead of the game, head coach Stephan Lerch spoke about…
…team news: “Svenja Huth was carrying a knock ahead of our last game and it got worse following the intense match against Bayern Munich. She’s currently out with an infection. Ella Peddemors has a mild strain and we didn’t want to take any risks, so she stayed at home.”
…how things stand: “Tomorrow we have the chance to move onto six points, which would be fantastic in light of the fixtures and the stage of the competition we’re in. We’re focused and motivated. I’m sure the players are aware that we have a great opportunity tomorrow if we can impose our game and be clinical in front of goal.”
…the opposition: “They’re one of the best teams in their domestic league, where they press higher up the pitch and are very dominant. In Europe they tend to sit back a bit deeper. We’re expecting them to sit deep or in a low block tomorrow and try to get forward in transition. Unlike our game against Paris, we’re expecting to have more possession, so we’ll need to find solutions in order to keep the tempo high. We’ll need to be patient and absolutely clinical so that we can make the most of the few chances we’ll get.”
…the artificial pitch: “The stadium was built to house an artificial pitch. The playing surface will be fine. It’s a small adjustment for us, because we’re not used to playing on a pitch like that. We didn’t have time to prepare for it specifically, but that’s why we came here early so that we could hold our final training session on-site and get used to the pitch.”
