Today's pre-match press conference started with the subject of the announcement of the contract extension for Bosz to 2022. The 56-year-old and Bayer 04 sporting director Simon Rolfes spoke about the contract extension before focusing on the clash with SCP.
And the Dutchman, whose team won the earlier league meeting at the BayArena 3-2 and the DFB Cup game 1-0 at the same venue, immediately highlighted the strengths of the opponents. While Paderborn are currently bottom, "we are talking about the hardest-working team in the league." The hosts covered a total of 2,034 kilometres in the first half of the season. That's three more than the Werkself who are second in that ranking. Bosz: "If nothing less, we have great respect for Paderborn because of that and it will be a tough game. They never give up, have great mentality and are fighting fit!"
It's important to the head coach that the away game does not turn into an end-to-end encounter. "Then everything will be unstructured. That suits them because they have very quick players up front. We'll try to be very compact," explained Bosz who will have to manage without the injured Charles Aránguiz, the suspended Leon Bailey, Wendell and new signing Exequiel Palacios. In addition, Paulinho is away with the Brazil Olympic squad.
Looking back at the first half of the season, the Werkself head coach wishes his team could score more goals. However, he is convinced that they are capable of putting that into action – for two reasons: "We've already shown we can score a lot of goals. In addition, we've created a lots of goalscoring opportunities – above all at the beginning of the season; that's always the start of it. That gives me confidence that we can score more goals than in first half of the season."
Match information:
TV broadcaster: Sky (TV) plus Werkself Radio (Start: 17.30 CET at bayer04.de)
Referee: Daniel Siebert
Tickets: Seats in the stand are available for Bayer 04 fans at the ground.
Rüdiger Vollborn has been at the club for 40 years, he holds the record number of Bundesliga appearances for the club (401) and is the only Bayer 04 player to have won both the UEFA Cup (1988) and the DFB Pokal (1993). And the Berliner stayed with the Werkself after ending his impressive playing career as he worked as a goalkeeping coach for the following nine years. Vollborn now works under the Bayer Cross as a fan liaison officer and club archivist. Since February 2021, the personalised Black and Red lexicon takes Werkself fans under the heading of 'Rudi recounts...' on a brief trip through the history of Bayer 04 every month.
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