BY OLIVER GRISS
As if the frustration at Grünwalder Straße 114 wasn’t great enough after the professionals’ 1-2 defeat at VfB Stuttgart II and the swansong of their last promotion hopes, the U19s also lost their opening game in League B on Sunday afternoon 2-0 against the Bundesliga youth team SC Freiburg.
Jakob Benz (34′) and Osagie Okungbowa (83′) scored the goals for the guests, who had the advantage from the 68th minute after Jamie Jenni’s second yellow card.
Coach Jonas Schittenhelm, who walked to the dugout on crutches, explained to tsv1860.de: “We struggled to create chances. You just have to say that very clearly. Nevertheless, it was a relatively open game. We didn’t allow much, but we simply didn’t create enough chances going forward.”
In the short term, the young lions had to do without Paul Sturm, who was missing along with professional debutant Loris Husic and Emre Erdogan. “Paul would certainly have been good for us. As a result, we didn’t have enough power and hardly managed to get any shots. After the yellow-red card in the second half, things were over, Freiburg were too strong for that today and we were too harmless in the final third.” There were also prominent observers among the around 150 spectators at the artificial turf pitch: former Lions favorites Benny Lauth and Harald Cerny saw a committed but toothless 1860 team.
Despite the opening defeat, Schittenhelm honored his team’s performance: “It certainly wasn’t all wrong. We just didn’t develop enough forward power today!”
So the lion roared: Dunker – Mühl (87th Osmani), Jenni, Estermann, Schurz (87th Weinelt) – Karakoc (66th Wohlketzetter), Krasniqi, Hohmann (87th Xaver Lippmann) – Fiedler (74th Efe) – Bannert (46th Kawele), Ortiviero Calderon.
The U17 did better than the U19, easily winning their opener in Memmingen 4-0. At halftime it was still 0-0, and with this clear success the Ulbricht team took first place in Group C.
