Away in the Champions League against an opponent with zero points in the table and then an early lead. There were no good memories for the team and fans. But against Bratislava everything should be different than in Belgrade.
After the 4-0 win against Freiburg, Sebastian Hoeneß started the Swabian rotation machine again: Chabot, Mittelstädt, Keitel, Führich and Undav played for Al-Dakhil, Karazor, Demirovic, as well as Hendriks and Woltemade, who were not eligible to play in the Champions League.
Immediately after kick-off, VfB started like the famous fire department and had their first good chance through Chris Führich after just two minutes. Nine minutes later it was already 1-0: Jeff Chabot played a wonderful vertical pass that Millot drained perfectly to Deniz Undav. And the national player played with a lot of overview on Leweling, who had moved into the center forward position. His first Champions League goal. The perfect start!
But as written at the beginning. VfB had not had good experiences with early goals in the Champions League. It was all the more important that VfB remained dominant and did not allow Slovan any chances. More importantly, Jamie Leweling made it 2-0 before half-time. The next vertical pass, this time from Rouault to Millot, but failed by the Slovakian keeper. But no problem, Jamie Leweling dusted him off, albeit a little too excitingly.
We went into the half-time break with a score of 2-0, 13-1 shots on goal and 65% possession of the ball. A stable performance from VfB, but still a dangerous result. Especially because Slovan was now starting VfB much higher.
And after about an hour, the Hoeneß team actually got into a difficult phase. Even if there were no top-class chances for Bratislava: VfB was on the verge of getting into trouble.
It was all the more tragic that both Maxi Mittelstädt and Deniz Undav missed huge chances to make it 3-0 in the 67th and 69th minutes. Substitute Demirovic also missed the decision in the 75th minute.
-And after Demirovic failed again in the 82nd minute, things happened as they had to: Slovan made it 2-1 because the VfB defense was stretched, substitute Barseghyan played a great pass and Josha Vagnoman wasn't good in the duel against Metsoko looked like. And the VfB fans like this:
But Sebastian Hoeneß's boys are not only the comebackers from the Neckar, they also had the perfect answer ready on the Danube: Substitute Rieder was cleared in an exemplary manner by Maxi Mittelstädt and, unlike his teammates, the Swiss international had no problems at all against the strong Slovan- To defeat keeper. 3:1, the game was over!
With now 10 points, VfB has a realistic chance of a place in the top 24, which would entitle them to take part in the play-offs. Stuttgart can take care of that themselves in the home game against Paris next Wednesday. But there are also plenty of constellations in which just one point would be enough. If you would like to play through it yourself, click here for the table calculator.
Speaking of Paris: VfB is currently not only ahead of the Qatar club in the table, but also ahead of Real Madrid, Manchester City and of course ahead of RB Leipzig.
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The usury of opportunities could still take its revenge. Why? You can read that in our text about the game.
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