FC Bayern Women travel to Sand to kick off DFB Cup campaign | OneFootball

After getting their league campaign off to a winning start last week, FC Bayern Women contest their first DFB Cup fixture of the 2024/25 season on Sunday 8 September. Kick-off against second-division SC Sand is at 14:00 CEST at the ADAMS Arena. Tickets for the team's first cup match of the season can be purchased from the SC Sand online store. The tie is also being broadcast live and exclusively on FC Bayern TV PLUS.

The state of play

Head coach Alexander Straus' team opened the new Google Pixel Women's Bundesliga season at Turbine Potsdam and comfortably won 2-0 thanks to a brace from Linda Sembrandt. The Munich girls had already celebrated their first title of the new term on the previous weekend, beating VfL Wolfsburg 1-0 in the Supercup thanks to Klara Bühl's winning goal.

The reigning German champions are now aiming to make it three wins from three competitive games and secure their place in the last 16 of the cup against Sand. The omens for this are good: of their previous 17 encounters with teams in the second tier, Bayern have won 14 and lost just one.

Hard work: Tuva Hansen and Co have been training in over 30 degrees at times this week.

The opponents

Sand edged past SG Andernach 2-1 in the first round of the DFB Cup. In the league, Alexander Fischinger's side began the new campaign with a 3-1 win away to FSV Gütersloh before celebrating an emphatic 6-2 victory over Borussia Mönchengladbach, leaving them in fourth place in the Bundesliga 2 table.

The team news

Lena Oberdorf (ACL and MCL), Katharina Naschenweng (knee joint) and Franziska Kett (ankle) are unavailable for the trip to Baden-Württemberg. Magdalena Eriksson will also miss out due to knee problems. Ana Maria Guzman (knee) and Ena Mahmutovic (foot) are working their way back to fitness and have joined in with parts of team training this week. Alara Şehitler is away at the U20 World Cup in Colombia along with Laura Gloning and Sarah Ernst.

Head coach Alexander Straus is plotting a third competitive win of the season with his team.

The pre-match quotes

Alexander Straus: "We're going to come up against a team who'll go into the game full of enthusiasm and wanting to cause an upset. We'll prepare as best we can and then it's down to us on Sunday to implement our plan. It's never easy to come away as winners because every opponent has their strengths and their own plan. A lot of hard work and good preparation goes into winning regularly. However, I firmly believe we'll be successful on Sunday. To do that we need to stick to our game consistently."

Lea Schüller: "We've prepared ourselves for the likelihood that we'll come up against deep-lying opponents in Sand. We expect them to play in a similar way to the previous meetings against us and know that they're a physical side. We also played against them in the Bundesliga every season up until two years ago and our assistant coach Clara Schöne faced them in the second division last season, so we're able to prepare well."

On Thursday 12 September, the first big documentary about FC Bayern Women will be released:

First FC Bayern Women documentary: 'More than 90 minutes - presented by Allianz'