All about the next game: Belgrade away in the Champions League | OneFootball

Hard­ly is the inter­na­tio­nal break over, and the sche­du­ling stress con­ti­nues. In Bel­gra­de, VfB Stutt­gart aims to build on their home vic­to­ry against Bochum, but they must impro­ve com­pared to their game against the league’s bot­tom team.

It could have been so pro­mi­sing: over­co­ming some tough oppon­ents in the league, unex­pec­ted­ly coll­ec­ting points in the Cham­pi­ons League in Turin, and hea­ding into the final stretch befo­re Christ­mas with a more cohe­si­ve and con­fi­dent team. Ins­tead, we now have two inju­red stri­kers and two offen­si­ve play­ers who fea­tured against Bochum over the weekend—one of whom even scored—but are not regis­tered for the Cham­pi­ons League squad. On the other hand, the team deli­ver­ed a focu­sed, though not par­ti­cu­lar­ly potent, per­for­mance against the bot­tom team. The­r­e­fo­re, it’s unli­kely they will unde­re­sti­ma­te the Ser­bi­an seri­al cham­pi­ons, who, much like Bochum in the Bun­des­li­ga, are lan­gu­is­hing at the bot­tom of the table in the Cham­pi­ons League. All in all, howe­ver, VfB will need to step up their game in this away match to match the demands of the com­pe­ti­ti­on and the chall­enge at hand. Bel­gra­de domi­na­tes their dome­stic league and likely isn’t par­ti­cu­lar­ly skil­led at bun­ke­ring in front of their own goal like some Bun­des­li­ga teams. That’s an oppor­tu­ni­ty we need to exploit bet­ter than we did in the home game against Spar­ta. What hasn’t impro­ved much sin­ce the weekend, though, is the

Personnel situation

Undav and El Bil­al are out, alt­hough the for­mer might return to trai­ning by the end of the year. For El Bil­al, howe­ver, the club alre­a­dy seems to be loo­king for a repla­ce­ment in the win­ter trans­fer win­dow. Lewe­ling is on the mend, but this game comes too soon for him, and Al Dak­hil is still ill. Then the­re are the long-term inju­ries to Zag­adou and Rai­mund. At least Ange­lo Stil­ler seems ful­ly fit again and was only sub­sti­tu­ted in the second half against Bochum. At the same time, Sebas­ti­an Hoe­neß must alre­a­dy con­sider the not-so-easy game in Bre­men on Satur­day.

Possible Starting Lineup

In defen­se, I would rota­te back and let Vagno­man and Rie­der hand­le the right flank, with the opti­on to bring on Ster­giou or Sten­zel and push Vagno­man for­ward. On the left, hop­eful­ly, Füh­rich can build on his strong form in tan­dem with Mit­tel­städt. Mil­lot moves fur­ther upfield again and will hop­eful­ly deli­ver some good balls to Erme­din Demi­ro­vic.

Statistics

VfB Stutt­gart has never play­ed against Red Star Bel­gra­de but has faced their city rival Par­tizan. In Novem­ber 2008, Mario Gomez scored a brace in the UEFA Cup. Red Star has won every league title sin­ce 2018 and curr­ent­ly leads the Ser­bi­an league by ele­ven points. Howe­ver, they remain win­less in the Cham­pi­ons League, making it hard to gau­ge their strength. An inte­res­t­ing aspect will be the role of Silas tonight. While he knows the team well, his strengths and weak­ne­s­ses are also well-known to us. Ano­ther for­mer VfB play­er is Milos Dege­nek, who made nine appearan­ces for VfB II. The top scorer in the Ser­bi­an league is Che­rif Ndiaye, with nine goals.

Conclusion

VfB Stutt­gart has the qua­li­ty to pre­vail in this match and take a big step clo­ser to the knock­out stage and two more Cham­pi­ons League games (and an inte­res­t­ing away trip?). Con­side­ring the squad situa­ti­on, the upco­ming games will demand a lot of pati­ence and perseverance—both from the play­ers and us fans. That’s why an away vic­to­ry in Bel­gra­de would be even more important to build con­fi­dence, inte­gra­te the curr­ent­ly fit play­ers fur­ther, and impro­ve the team’s pro­ces­ses, par­ti­cu­lar­ly on offen­se.

Pic­tu­re: © Srd­jan Stevanovic/Getty Images