The Werkself qualified for the play-offs as the seventh-placed team in the North West division, Stuttgart after finishing fourth in the South East division – making them slight favourites ahead of the match. In addition, the VfB squad included two former German individual champions in Dylan ‘DULLENMIKE’ Neuhausen, who scored the most goals in individual games in the league phase across all the divisions, and Antonio ‘ANTONIORADELJA’ Radelja. Neuhaus won in 2002, Radelja in 2023.
In the 2 vs 2 opener on the night, Marc 'MARC_LDW23' Landwehr and Sean 'SEAN_LDW07' Landwehr were 2-0 down after eight minutes. The Leverkusen cousins did have more possession, created plenty of chances and were on top in all statistics. They pulled a goal back on 85 minutes but were unable to level. That meant the Black and Reds lost the opening game 2-1.
That put Sean Landwehr under pressure in the final individual game – but he was able to deal with it. The Bayer 04 eSports player was not unsettled after conceding an early goal to ‘DULLENMIKE’ and he hit back on four minutes but then conceded again to go 2-1 down two minutes later. The Leverkusen player took that as incentive to really up his game: He netted an impressive four goals between 18 and 33 minutes – from 2-1 down to 5-2 up! The score at the break was 6-4.
It was end-to-end action after the restart but Sean Landwehr had a suitable response to Stuttgart pulling a goal back. He was focused in the closing stages and gave little away with ‘DULLENMIKE’ only pulling a goal back at 8-7 on 88 minutes, which was too late from a VfB perspective. That meant the overall victory was to be decided in the third game.
The second 1 vs 1 game saw Marc Landwehr take on ‘ANTONIORADELJA’, a good colleague from his long eSports career. Both players were cautious at the start as they sought to avoid making mistakes. Marc Landwehr did open the scoring on 19 minutes but the Stuttgart player equalised three minutes later. Two more goals for Landwehr gave him a 3-1 lead at the break.
And there was end-to-end action after half-time in this game as well: VfB made it 3-2 (55'), Marc Landwehr scored at 4-2 on 69 minutes. After missing a great chance, the Leverkusen player was shown a red card due to a professional foul on 86 minutes and he conceded the penalty to make it 4-3. Nevertheless, Landwehr held on to the lead despite being a man down to seal the much celebrated progression to VBL Grand Final for the Leverkusen eSports players.
The finals in this year's German club championship again last two days. Matches will be played on Saturday, 22 March, and on Sunday, 23 March, at the Straßenkickerbase in Cologne. Three of the four group matches will be played on Saturday and the final group matches plus the knockout phase and final the day after.
Opponents for the #B04eSports players in Group B:
Anyone interested and eSports fans can watch the VBL Grand Final at the Straßenkickerbase free of charge. Doors open on Saturday at 11:00 CET and on Sunday at 10:00 CET. There is limited capacity. Alternatively, games can be watched live on the VBL Twitch channel. Broadcasting on Saturday begins at 11:30 CET and on Sunday at 10:30 CET.
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Another efficient performance from the Werkself in the 3-0 home win against FC St. Pauli saw them reach the semi-finals of the DFB Pokal for the third time in a row, and it was not the only record set on what was a successful evening. It meant head coach Kasper Hjulmand was delighted to "still be in with the chance of winning something". Like the coach, however, the ambitious Edmond Tapsoba also stated that he wanted to keep "improving" bit by bit: "We'll continue to give our all, no matter who we come up against." The Werkself review of the clash.
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