2023-06-07 08:18:05
After the championship is before promotion: Energie Cottbus and SpVgg Unterhaching are fighting for the last free place in the 3rd division. If FCE coach Wollitz has his way, the Lausitzer make almost everything clear in the first leg in front of their own audience. The “Stadium of Friendship” should become a witch’s cauldron.
Actually, FC Energie Cottbus would have had a lot of reasons to be happy last weekend. With a 4-1 victory in the Brandenburg State Cup against FSV Luckenwalde, the regional league club has become the record cup winner in its state and at the same time qualified for the lucrative DFB Cup. And since the Lausitzer want to compete there as a third division team, they had to pull themselves together. Because there are still two games missing against the Unterhaching game association for promotion. On Wednesday (June 7th, from 8:30 p.m. in the live ticker) is the first leg in Cottbus, on Sunday (June 11th) the decision will finally be made in the suburbs of Munich.
Wollitz wants to celebrate next Sunday
And because of these all-or-nothing games, the cup triumph on Saturday was only celebrated with the handbrake on. “We celebrated after the Babelsberg game (decision in the championship, editor’s note), also for a very long time … I’m not really recovered from that. We said so. But we’re not celebrating now. We will Celebrate Sunday next week! I believe in the reward and that if you always behave correctly, you will get the appropriate results,” explained energy coach Claus-Dieter Wollitz after the final whistle on Saturday on RBB.
The focus was therefore immediately placed on the tasks ahead. Wollitz has all the important players available for the first leg and was able to make a timely change thanks to the confident performance against Luckenwalde over long stretches and thus conserve energy in order to throw everything into the balance in the first leg. “On Wednesday we have 20 people and the whole stadium. It’s going to be a cauldron here, we’ll fire everything,” explained the 57-year-old. “We’ll play at full throttle – with everything we have, everything that goes with football: fairness, a crowd and a team with a coach who knows what they have to do.”
Image rights: IMAGO / Matthias Koch
Cottbus like Stuttgart and Wehen Wiesbaden?
Wollitz did not want to say much about his match plan, but referred to prominent examples from the past week. “We got two role models,” he explained, referring to VfB Stuttgart and SV Wehen-Wiesbaden, who both won the first leg of their respective relegations in front of their own fans. “A lot of things are repeated and why shouldn’t that be repeated on Wednesday?” asked the FCE coach.
But there is also an opponent. The SpVgg has been champions for several weeks, but it has only been clear for a few days that they will exercise the right to participate in the promotion games. A circumstance that cost Wollitz a lot of nerves for a long time because he didn’t know which opponent to prepare his team for. But now he just doesn’t want to deal with it anymore: “The topic is ticked off for me now. I thought it was a shame because I think it should be the same for both teams – champions play against champions.”
Wollitz doesn’t want to hold grudges, but he does it again
The reason for the long stalemate is the financial situation at the champions of the Regionalliga Bayern. For a long time, Haching President Manfred Schwabl wasn’t sure whether his club could afford the adventure of the 3rd league without getting into further difficulties. Now, however, a solution seems to have been found without having to cut back on the youth academy or the infrastructure. Schwabl described this as a “taboo subject”.
And no matter how it turned out at the weekend, Wollitz no longer wants to hold grudges, but cannot resist another tip against the associations: “I have positioned myself against this stupid solution several times. You have to imagine: we will 34 matchdays champions and not allowed to move up. It’s bottomless and it’s decided by people who aren’t interested in finding solutions.”
Haching “incredibly well prepared for Cottbus”
In terms of sport, SpVgg presented itself in great shape this season. The team coached by former FC Bayern striker Sandro Wagner only failed to finish first on nine of the 38 match days. With 86 goals they provided the third best attack in the league and with only 33 goals conceded the best defense (in comparison: Cottbus 65 goals with 28 goals conceded in 34 games). The early decision in the championship race played into the hands of the people from Haching, Wagner believes: “Because we became champions relatively early, we prepared incredibly well for Cottbus”.
The long wait wasn’t optimal for him and his boys either, he explained in an interview with the Bavarian radio. Now that those in charge have “done their homework”, the side must deliver despite all the squabbling off the pitch this season. For Wagner, regardless of the outcome, it is the last two games on the sidelines in the Munich suburb. He will leave the game association. As far as he’s concerned, as a promotion coach, of course: “After this season, the team deserves to be promoted.”
This topic in the program:MDR TELEVISION | MDR current | 08 June 2023 | 19:30 o’clock
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