Wolfsburg's Volkswagen Arena will be unusually quiet at first on Saturday afternoon. The home fans will be silent for the first 19 minutes and 45 seconds due to the Wolves' most recent performances (the club was founded in 1945). The men from Lower Saxony have only won one of their last eight Bundesliga matches, drawing four and losing three. Wolfsburg currently lie 13th in the table, somewhere between the drop zone and the midfield. And their next opponents will be FC Bayern.
"We don't have much to lose," said coach Martin Schmidt ahead of the encounter with the table-toppers: "We'll approach the match with confidence, with our heads held high." The home side are not without a chance, as they demonstrated in the first half of the season, when they held Bayern to a 2-2 draw. Schmidt demanded "positive thinking" and "courage" against the German record champions: "I have to take the respect away from my team a little and let them know they can hurt Bayern."
Lengthy injury roster
He prepared his team with "talks in small groups and face-to-face conversations." The team must not let themselves be influenced by the unrest in the club's environment, according to Schmidt: "We're trying lots of things but mustn't blindly do things for the sake of doing them. From experience I know how to return to winning ways: with calm."
Defender Paul Verhaegh, who is suffering from a bout of flu, is rated doubtful. "It's going to be tight," said Schmidt. Six key players will miss the match with injury: John Anthony Brooks, Ignacio Camacho, Felix Uduokhai, Jakub Blaszczykowski, Marcel Tisserand und Yannick Gerhardt.
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