Augsburg wants to avoid disgrace in the cup
Even before the first appearances of the top teams from BVB, schalke and bayern, FCA wants to punch its ticket to the second round. As quietly as possible, with a good team and no new injuries.
In the other two friday matches, second division clubs eintracht braunschweig (at vfb lubeck) and FSV frankfurt (at sonnenhof grobaspach) are favored – also in duels with regional league teams. A total of 32 amateur clubs will be competing against the 32 professional clubs in the opening round.
The augsburger are highly anxious that their game will spark as little wind as possible in the media. That could only be the case if the favorite doesn’t have a slip-up. "Our concentration is on wilhelmshaven," said coach markus weinzierl. However, FCA will probably have to do without its creative players ja-cheol koo and jan moravek (both with training backlog).
This is the fourth time that the team from wilhelmshaven has played a bundesliga team in the DFB cup, but so far they have always lost by four goals to one team: in 1980 against bochum, in 2007 against lautern, and finally two years ago against eintracht frankfurt. To improve the balance sheet, coach christian neidhart has now even had augsburg watched – so as not to be accused later of not having taken the small chance of advancing seriously.
"We look at every opponent once, twice. And even against a first division team, a surprise is possible. That’s why I have to prepare my team as well as possible," commented the 43-year-old SVW coach in the "wilhelmshavener zeitung".
Braunschweig enters cup with pretty rough confidence, the lower saxons drove 2 after two games. League still without a loss. "We don’t have to hide from anyone," said defender deniz dogan. Lubeck, however, is known for cup surprises; three years ago, for example, vfb knocked out mainz 05 in round one. The coach of the northern germans is, interestingly enough, also an ex-braunschweig player: ramazan yildirim played for eintracht from 2007 to 2009. "It’s crazy that it’s coming to a duel after such a short time," he said.
