The fact the game on matchday 34 is not a dead rubber for the Werkself and the team want to take three points from the visit to the Signal Iduna Park at the end of the season was made clear by the Bayer 04 head coach Hannes Wolf at the start of the pre-match press conference: “Both teams have the luxury of achieving the sporting targets last week but tomorrow’s game will be a normal Bundesliga match. It’s about sporting competition – we want to have a very, very good game and sign off with a win against Dortmund.”
The selection options for the Werkself head coach for the game against Borussia Dortmund are somewhat limited. In addition to long-term absentees Timothy Fosu-Mensah and Santiago Arias, Wolf will also have to manage without Exequiel Palacios, Lucas Alario, Leon Bailey and Daley Sinkgraven plus the suspended Edmond Tapsoba and Nadiem Amiri. That means everyone available will travel to Dortmund.
One of those is our number 15: “Julian Baumgartlinger trained incredibly well last week given his serious injury (torn cruciate, ed.),” said Wolf on the chances of the Austria international making the squad.
In terms of his record under the Bayer Cross, the Werkself head coach, who is set to return to his role as the Germany U19 coach after the end of the season, is very positive: “I’m 95 per cent happy with the past eight weeks. 95 per cent because we were able to achieve the club’s targets and only lost once. And the way we worked with the team – some great things happened here. Therefore, I’ve learned a lot in my time here at Leverkusen and I take a lot of positives with me.”
The only negative aspects for the Bochum-born coach were the injury crisis at the end of the season and the absence of Black and Red supporters: “It’s obviously a great pity I wasn’t able to experience Bayer fans. I’m lucky that I’ve had a few games in my career where there were spectators in the stadiums. Of course, I would have very much liked to experienced that here at the BayArena too.”
In addition to the purely sporting aspects, the press conference also dealt with emotional side of the clash between the head coaches. Terzic and Wolf have known each other for almost 20 years but nothing will be given away in the meeting between BVB and Bayer 04. “We got to know each other at university and played up front together in the university team at Bochum. I knew back then how Edin thought and thinks about football and that makes a good coach. It’s something special that both coaches will be in the dugouts for the game between Dortmund and Leverkusen, ” said the 40-year-old.
Match information:
Broadcasters: Sky and Werks11 Radio
Referee: The match officials will be announced on the day of the match
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