VfL Women are bidding to reach the final of the DFB Cup for the 10th year in a row on Saturday. To do that, they must get past SGS Essen at the AOK Stadion on Saturday 30 March (kick-off 13:00 CET). At the pre-match press conference, head coach Tommy Stroot discussed…
…team news: “Lena Lattwein, Marina Hegering, Alex Popp, Tabea Sellner and Rebecka Blomqvist are out injured.”
…the opponents: “Essen are a young and hungry team, who offer a lot of energy and quality too. We know they’re in decent form generally and how difficult it is to play against them. I watched Essen’s match against Bayern Munich and the two against Eintracht. A lot happened and Essen played a big part in that. They have good qualities in possession but also a good work ethic without the ball. In a cup game like this, it’s about blocking and breaking that in order to emerge victorious.”
…whether the pressure has increased following the Bayern defeat: “No. Everyone knows our expectations. It’s clear that we go into this match as favourites and we want to live up to that role. We have the quality to do that, so the defeat doesn’t change the circumstances for the match against Essen.”
…lessons from the Bayern game: “It's clear that in our last two games, we didn't execute the opportunities to create and take our chances as consistently and purposefully as we should have done in such big games. I think that's the biggest criticism we have of ourselves. We didn't show the mentality it takes to somehow get the ball over the line or finish situations in front of goal cleanly. Those were therefore the points that we've focused on more this week. Basically, we're happy that we have a certain frequency of goalscoring chances and a certain quality in our possession. These are points that help us.”
