“Show a clear reaction” | OneFootball

Dino Toppmöller gives his thoughts on FC Augsburg, team news, passion and his desire for victory at Deutsche Bank Park on Saturday.

Eintracht host FC Augsburg at Deutsche Bank Park on Saturday 13 December (kick-off 15:30 CET). At the pre-match press conference, Dino Toppmöller discussed...

… how things stand: “I’m expecting my team to build on the performance in Barcelona. Passion, commitment and power, especially when it comes to defending together. We have to show a clear reaction to what happened last weekend when we take to the pitch against Augsburg on Saturday. We have to show a different side of ourselves. We’ve had a great year as a club, we started with a home win and we want to win our last one of 2025 as well. We want to do it for our fans in particular, because they’re not only with us in the good times but they’re also there in the bad times, supporting us.”

… FC Augsburg: “Manuel Baum taking over as coach hasn’t changed the way they play. We know all about Augsburg’s DNA: passionate defending, toughness, a willingness to cover a lot of ground as well as good individual quality in every position. They’ve got an interesting mix in their squad. Everything points to this being a very different game than the Barcelona one. That doesn’t mean that I think they’ll just sit deep right from kick-off. There will be periods when we’re in their half, and we’ll need to be patient in order to make the right decisions and to find the spaces. And we’ll need to make our presence felt in the tackles in defence as well.”

… team news: “We won’t make wholesale changes against Augsburg, but some fresh legs would do us good. We have a few players pushing for contention. We’re pleased that Hugo Larsson was able to take his first steps back from injury in Leipzig, and that he was able to start in Barcelona. We knew he wouldn’t be able to play for 90 minutes. We’ll have to make smart decisions with a view to the coming weeks when we’ll be without two players in his position [with Farès Chaibi and Ellyes Skhiri on international duty at the Africa Cup of Nations]. Can Uzun is back too, but we‘ll have to wait and see how far along he is.”

… the impact of the Africa Cup of Nations (21 December to 18 January): “Farès and Ellyes will both be with us this weekend but then they’ll join up with their national teams after that. Oscar Højlund will get a few opportunities, and he’ll need to take the chance to show what he can do. We also have Hugo Larsson, Mo Dahoud, Oscar, Mario Götze and Ebu Bekir Is, who we’re giving some thought to.”