All about the next game: Munich away

In Munich, VfB kicks off four inten­se weeks on Satur­day evening befo­re the next inter­na­tio­nal break, facing very dif­fe­rent chal­lenges than in recent times.

I have to say: I’m still frus­tra­ted by the draw against Hof­fen­heim. Not becau­se of the late won point or the total of nine points from six games, but sim­ply the fact that, unli­ke against Pra­gue against a strong oppo­nent or in Wolfs­burg against a weak refe­ree, we real­ly drop­ped points here against a team that capi­ta­li­zed on an indi­vi­du­al mista­ke and then tried to hold onto the lead with their hasti­ly assem­bled squad and a coach on the ver­ge of being fired. And they almost suc­cee­ded wit­hout a goal from the only play­er I am tru­ly afraid of, Andrej Kra­ma­ric.

But right now — and may­be in gene­ral — it doesn’t help to dwell on the past. The pace at VfB has mas­si­ve­ly picked up this sea­son. Sin­ce the game against the Badensers on Sun­day night a week befo­re last, the club with the red stri­pe has writ­ten new sto­ries, with six Ger­man natio­nal play­ers in a DFB squad, two of whom were respon­si­ble for all of Germany’s goals in the two inter­na­tio­nal matches. Apart from Chris Füh­rich, most of the natio­nal play­ers have likely retur­ned to Stutt­gart with a lot of con­fi­dence, in good rhythm but also wit­hout a real break. Con­fi­dence and match prac­ti­ce will be cru­cial for the upco­ming weeks, and the squad has been streng­the­ned in depth over the sum­mer to avo­id fati­gue.

Satur­day Munich, Tues­day Tori­no, Satur­day Kiel, Tues­day Kai­sers­lau­tern, Fri­day Lever­ku­sen, Wed­nes­day Ber­ga­mo, Sun­day Frank­furt. That’s the sche­du­le for the next few weeks. On the one hand, there’s litt­le time to catch a breath, but also litt­le time to emo­tio­nal­ly pro­cess the results. In every sen­se. This will be a chall­enge not just for the team, but for us fans as well: befo­re you’ve men­tal­ly moved on from the always important game against Bay­ern, you’­re alre­a­dy in the away sec­tion in Turin or sit­ting in front of the TV, and you have to focus on pro­ba­b­ly a very defen­si­ve Kiel side. How many wins we’ll cele­bra­te in the­se seven games is still unclear. But with all the focus on the sport, we should­n’t for­get to enjoy this situa­ti­on a bit. We’­re com­pe­ting against the Ger­man record cham­pi­on, the reig­ning Ger­man cham­pi­on, the Ita­li­an record cham­pi­on, the Euro­pa League win­ner, and one of the hot­test teams in the Bun­des­li­ga right now — and we don’t need to hide from anyo­ne.

Per­haps this was some­what overs­ha­dowed by the slight dis­ap­point­ment of miss­ing out on three wins in a week. VfB may not be able to repeat last sea­son — I coin­ci­den­tal­ly rewat­ched the first two home games from last sea­son on You­Tube today, and it’s hard to imme­dia­te­ly com­pen­sa­te for the buil­dup play from Anton and Ito as well as the goal-scoring abili­ties of Gui­ras­sy, as seen in tho­se games — but this team and this coach will still play a strong role this sea­son. The dif­fe­rence is that we curr­ent­ly need a bit more time to adapt to the new situa­ti­on: Defen­si­ve teams that, unli­ke last sea­son, won’t move the bus under any cir­cum­s­tances becau­se they’d be satis­fied with a draw. The tran­si­ti­on from a tar­get stri­ker to a sys­tem with seve­ral offen­si­ve play­ers with dif­fe­rent pro­files. At least for now, the buil­dup play doesn’t neces­s­a­ri­ly crea­te space right from the defen­se.

Nevert­hel­ess, Erme­din Demi­ro­vic, Deniz Undav, and Enzo Mil­lot have alre­a­dy scored twel­ve goals tog­e­ther in the first six league games. In the Bun­des­li­ga, only Har­ry Kane, Micha­el Oli­se, and Jamal Musia­la — who will be on the pitch with the next oppo­nent — have matched that. Defen­si­ve­ly, the team has allo­wed no more than four shots on tar­get in the last four games. Of cour­se, too many of tho­se shots ended up in the back of the net, but that’s also dif­fe­rent this sea­son: we no lon­ger seem to get ever­y­thing fal­ling into our lap as it some­ti­mes appeared in the past. All the more reason to regain the sharp­ness and quick reac­tions that distin­gu­is­hed us in the past in the upco­ming games, regard­less of whe­ther the oppo­nent is sit­ting deep or besie­ging our goal.

Personnel situation

Unfort­u­na­te­ly, Chris Füh­rich is out after suf­fe­ring a mus­cle fiber tear during his late sub­sti­tu­ti­on against Bos­nia-Her­ze­go­vina, Jus­tin Diehl and Leo­ni­das Ster­giou are not fit enough for the match­day squad, and we will be wit­hout Daxo Zag­adou for a while again, with Luca Rai­mund also still out. Whe­ther Niko Nar­tey or Ameen Al-Dak­hil will tra­vel to Munich due to their lack of match prac­ti­ce is still uncer­tain.

Possible starting lineup

Basi­cal­ly, Füh­rich — along­side Zag­adou — is the only nota­ble absen­tee, even though he hasn’t yet matched his per­for­man­ces from the run­ner-up cam­paign. Even with this lin­e­up, VfB’s curr­ent­ly stron­gest team will still be on the pitch, though Sebas­ti­an Hoe­neß will cer­tain­ly rota­te bet­ween the two upco­ming away games, may­be lea­ving Undav, who was slight­ly inju­red in the second inter­na­tio­nal match, on the bench and start­ing Rie­der — hard to pre­dict.

Statistics

It’s the 111th Süd­gip­fel in the Bun­des­li­ga, and we won the last one at the Neckar­sta­di­on in May — as we often do when we have an out­stan­ding sea­son. In Munich, though, things look grim apart from the freak game under Korkut. You have to go back to March 2010 and Marica’s hea­der. FCB is, of cour­se, once again near the top this sea­son under their new coach Vin­cent Kom­pa­ny, with their trans­fer bud­get and qua­li­ty being sim­ply too big. At least they, like VfB, haven’t won any of their last three com­pe­ti­ti­ve matches, dra­wing against Lever­ku­sen and Frank­furt and losing to Aston Vil­la.

Still, they are joint league lea­ders with Red Bull, have alre­a­dy shown their goal-hun­gry form this sea­son, have scored the most goals, have the best goal dif­fe­rence, and are ran­ked first on expec­ted points by Understat.com. Inte­res­t­ingly, VfB is right behind them in second. They’ve also con­ce­ded the fewest shots on tar­get so far — just twel­ve in six games — but seven of tho­se have gone in, the worst ratio in the league. When it comes to shot effi­ci­en­cy, mea­ning the ratio of goals to shots on tar­get, VfB is ahead of Munich. Inte­res­t­ingly, Munich is not only in the top ranks for pos­ses­si­on and pas­sing accu­ra­cy this sea­son but also for run­ning sta­tis­tics.

Conclusion

Can VfB repeat the coup from the third-to-last match­day of last sea­son? Dif­fi­cult, espe­ci­al­ly away in Munich. But it’s also clear that, just like in the last match, Munich is not unbeata­ble defen­si­ve­ly, and Vin­cent Kom­pa­ny won’t want to let VfB have the ball the way Tho­mas Tuchel did. And Sebas­ti­an Hoe­neß cer­tain­ly won’t be out­coa­ched again. Tough weeks lie ahead, as men­tio­ned befo­re. Whe­ther in Turin or Munich, VfB can’t afford to slip up if they want to take points. Care­less mista­kes will be dou­bly punis­hed here. If we get that under con­trol, the coming weeks will be not only exci­ting but also suc­cessful.

Pic­tu­re: © Sebas­ti­an Widmann/Getty Images