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“Difficult”: VfB Stuttgart in the valley and in front of hard touchstones

VfB Stuttgart has no green branch – and has immensely difficult tasks right in front of the chest. What to do? Coach Bruno Labbadia recognizes possible reasons after the 1: 2 at Schalke and wants to “explore” more details.

With the defeat at Schalke even more under pressure: VfB Stuttgart, threatened with relegation.

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The earnings since hiring coach Bruno Labbadia still leave a lot to be desired: Apart from the recent 3-0 win against 1. FC Köln, the first VfB win in 2023 and the first three under the new coach, there are also two draws set four losses. The youngest of them this Saturday evening against Schalke at the bottom of the Bundesliga – 1: 2 after a weak first half.

The result: With 19 points, the Swabians are only a hair’s breadth and ahead of the tied teams from Hoffenheim, Bochum and the only three points weaker and currently successful S04.

Labbadia was unsurprisingly disappointed after the bankruptcy at Schalke. The 57-year-old admitted this openly in an interview with “Sky”: “We are extremely disappointed because a lot more could have been done here. We also planned to do that. We wanted to put Schalke under pressure. Especially since we also knew how Schalke would play.”

“Too cheap”

Nevertheless, the royal blues stole the show from the Swabians in the first 45 minutes, were more greedy, gripper, more dangerous. What went wrong here? “We weren’t ready to go any different ways,” Labbadia said during his analysis. “It has to do with a player having to realize: ‘Now I have to push.’ We didn’t do that well and lost the typical 50:50 balls too easily.”

And the two goals conceded “were too cheap again”.

It only went better after the change of sides, including (lucky) Borna Sosa’s goal and opportunities to make it 2-2. “I told the team during the break that things couldn’t go on like this,” the Stuttgart coach gave a little insight. “I just didn’t have the courage in the first half. That’s always the problem with such a young team – and we’re the youngest – we know that.”

All in all, it was just “annoying, because you could see in the second half that something would have worked. We could have made it 2-2 here, but we just overslept it in the first half.”

“We have to accept that”

And now? “Now we have to find out why we didn’t manage that. I’m also very interested in why that is the case. For example, we were too weak in the duel today.”

Goal scorer Sosa saw it the same way – and said with foresight: “We are in a situation where we have to fight to the end. But we have to accept that – and there are still enough games to play.” But this is where “it’s going to be difficult”: next Saturday (6.30 p.m.) the VfB champions Bayern Munich await in front of their home crowd before duels with Frankfurt, Wolfsburg and Union Berlin follow.

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