VfL Wolfsburg Women were not considered favourites for the FLYERALARM Women’s Bundesliga title at the start of the season, but the Green-and-Whites are now on the verge of claiming their seventh German title. Victory at FC Carl Zeiss Jena on Sunday 8 May (kick-off 16:00 CEST) will give the She-Wolves an unassailable lead over second-placed FC Bayern Munich with only one round of fixtures left to play. At the press conference ahead of the trip to Jena, head coach Tommy Stroot answered questions on…
…personnel: “Rebecka Blomqvist, Lisa Weiß, Pia-Sophie Wolter are ruled out, that much is clear. Katarzyna Kiedrzynek is expected to return to the squad and the same goes for Lena Oberdorf. As always, though, we want to wait until after the final training session.”
…VfL’s opponents: “Jena are quite compact and keep their shape well in certain phases. You could see that in the home game against Bayern Munich, for example, when it was still 0-0 at the break. You first have to break through that compactness. Having a game like the one against Essen for the first time in a long while was helpful. In the weeks prior to that, we only played opponents at a similar level to ourselves.”
…the game plan: “We want to bring character, energy and our quality onto the pitch. It’ll be important to have a lot of movement without the ball and to find regular opportunities to counter. If we then have the necessary quality in our passing game, we’ll create enough scoring opportunities and set plays to get the all-important first goal.”
…title preparations: “I already told the office staff in February that I don’t want anything to do with it if any kind of celebration needs preparing. I want to deal with the job at hand first of all, then enjoy it after that. That’s how we’ve always approached things and we’re not changing that now, but I obviously won’t complain if something is prepared in case we win.”
