A place in the DFB Cup semi-finals is at stake when VfL Wolfsburg Women travel to TSG 1899 Hoffenheim in the last eight on Wednesday 12 February (kick-off 18:30 CET), in a repeat of last year’s quarter-final action.
The Green-and-Whites earned a 3-0 victory at the Dietmar-Hopp-Stadion on that occasion, and would have nothing against a repeat result as they look to continue their defence of the trophy by advancing to the next round. Nevertheless, they go into the game wary of an ambitious home side. At his pre-match press conference, head coach Tommy Stroot spoke about...
…personnel: “Merle Frohms [ill] will miss out. Kristin Demann, Luca Papp and Camilla Küver aren’t in the squad yet but they’re all back on the training pitch. Lena Lattwein and Marina Hegering are available as usual.”
… Hoffenheim: “Looking at where Hoffenheim dropped easy points in the first half of the season, I can see the steps they’ve taken since then. At the weekend they managed to pose some real challenges to Bayern, as was probably expected of them in the first half of the campaign. I think they’re increasingly settled as a team now and their patterns of play are more defined. That’s something we’ve noticed in our analysis. I’m expecting it to be a real cup battle in which we’ll be pushed to our limit. Hoffenheim have certain qualities that are awkward to deal with. We’ll have to stop those and not allow them to get into their groove.”
…his approach to the game: “We know what we have to do. We want to reach the next round of the cup and know we’re facing an opponent who will cause us some problems at certain times. We want to play with commitment, desire and all the attributes that characterise us in knockout games like this so that we’re able to progress. We’ll have to give everything for 90 minutes.”
