Gentle Pace with Feel-Good Factor | OneFootball

In Regens­burg, VfB Stutt­gart made short work of the 2nd Bundesliga’s bot­tom club and effort­less­ly advan­ced to the quar­ter­fi­nals of the Ger­man Cup. A reco­very for mora­le and bodies ali­ke.

A cup evening just as you’d hope: VfB could rest half the start­ing lin­e­up from their last Bun­des­li­ga match on the bench, still secu­re a com­man­ding cup win, and neither had to go into extra time nor exert them­sel­ves against a bra­ve but out­mat­ched second-divi­si­on side. The most exci­ting part of Tues­day, in fact, was the fan liaison’s tra­vel advi­so­ry:

Along with the blue scar­ves in the home end and chants that were rare­ly caught by other TV came­ras bes­i­des SWR or Regio TV Stuttgart’s.

Becau­se VfB’s team show­ed two things in the DFB-Pokal Round of 16: first, they wan­ted to estab­lish clear domi­nan­ce right away, and second, they could easi­ly do so against a team straddling the boun­da­ry bet­ween the third and second divi­si­ons. Even wit­hout seve­ral key play­ers, who—except for Ange­lo Stil­ler and Enzo Millot—enjoyed the match from the bench. Unli­ke Kai­sers­lau­tern, Regens­burg posed litt­le tac­ti­cal or tech­ni­cal chall­enge, allo­wing VfB to exe­cu­te their pas­sing game and capi­ta­li­ze on their quality—like Millot’s spin-and-shoot goal to open the scoring.

Room to Shine

It was also nice to see other play­ers shi­ne on Tues­day night. For ins­tance, Anrie Cha­se scored his first goal for VfB, and Jus­tin Diehl show­ca­sed his impro­ving form with a bril­li­ant pass to set up Wol­te­ma­de, who poked the ball past the goal­kee­per into the net. Howe­ver, it was noti­ceable that his U21 natio­nal team­ma­te Frans Krät­zig was not in the squad at all, and from the second team, only Jar­z­in­ho Malan­ga got a chan­ce to pro­ve hims­elf. For play­ers like Tho­mas Kas­t­a­n­a­ras, the door to the first team seems firm­ly clo­sed for now.

Asi­de from such side notes, it was tru­ly a match, as men­tio­ned ear­lier, to savor. The first day of this round of the cup alre­a­dy offe­red a sur­pri­se with Bielefeld’s home vic­to­ry. Hop­eful­ly, VfB can avo­id Lever­ku­sen and the win­ner of Frank­furt vs. Leip­zig in the quar­ter­fi­nals. A trip to the Alm (Armi­nia Bielefeld’s sta­di­um) or a derby—now that would be some­thing. First, though, Saint Nicho­las Day on Fri­day brings not only Uni­on Ber­lin but also a cru­cial Cham­pi­ons League game against Bern. This time, howe­ver, the who­le squad will get a few extra days to reco­ver.

Pic­tu­re: © Sebas­ti­an Widmann/Getty Images