The management of the Werkself youngsters were suitably disappointed. "At the end of the day it was a deserved win for Dresden," said coach Markus von Ahlen and his colleague Iraklis Metaxas added: "The lads didn't really do enough today."
Although Atakan Akkaynak, Sam Schreck and Jakub Bednarczyk, who all completed the pre-season with the Bayer 04 first team squad, were in the starting line-up, Leverkusen never found their usual and hoped-for form. "We set out to control the game but we didn't manage it. We played too slowly and, above all, we didn't function as a team. We weren’t decisive enough up front and too susceptible at the back," criticised von Ahlen.
The latter was clearly evident at set pieces with the dangerous Dresden side scoring their first two goals in that way on 15 and 56 minutes. "We lacked organisation and resolve," declared Metaxas. Güven Yalcin equalised seven minutes before the break and substitute Ömer Tokac levelled at 2-2 five minutes to play. "In those moves we succeeded in getting behind their defence. But we didn't do that enough," said von Ahlen. A minute after the second equaliser, the Dresden fans were able to celebrate the 3-2 scoreline as the Bayer 04 defence were again not compact and lacked energy in their approach.
The championship of the West group in the U19 Bundesliga starts for the Bayer 04 U19 side on Sunday 13 August with a crunch match away to Schalke 04 (11.00 CET). "We'll need to do much better than we did at Dresden if we’re going to to get a result," said von Ahlen.
Match stats:
Dynamo Dresden: Schneider – Vetterlein, Kusej (Ziehm 90'), Huber (Hauptmann 71’), Bär, Kulke, Jacob, Shubitidze, Atilgan (Engst 82’), Käppler, Stelzer
Bayer 04: Kucz – Shala, Stappmann, Boller, Popovic (Deveci 69’) – Schneider (Tokac 55’), Arik – Schreck, Akkaynak, Bednarczyk (Bukusu 78’) – Yalcin
Goals: 1-0 (15’) Atilgan, 1-1 (38’) Yalcin, 2-1 (56’), Atilgan, 2-2 (85’) Tokac, 3-2 (86’) Shubitidze
Referee: Schipke (Landsberg-Queis)
Booked: Shala, Stappmann, Tokac
Attendance: 692
For the third time in a row, the Leverkusen eSports players have made it through to the final round of the VBL Club Championship. From 7 to 8 March, they will compete for the German Club Championship at XPERION in Hamburg. At the start of the final round, they face Hamburger SV in the Round of 16. The match starts at 19:30 CET on Saturday, 7 March and will be broadcast live on the VBL Twitch channel. The eSports preview.
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The second attempt was a successful one: the Werkself won 1-0 at Hamburger SV in the rearranged Bundesliga Matchday 17 encounter. Head coach Kasper Hjulmand's side dominated play from the start and eventually scored the winning goal through Christian Kofane in the 73rd minute.
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