In the 3-1 victory of SC Paderborn II against Fortuna Cologne, two players were in the starting lineup who had been in the professional squad the day before. Much to the annoyance of Fortuna coach Matthias Mink.
From SC Paderborn’s point of view, it was a perfect weekend in Cologne: the day before the U21 regional league game against Fortuna Cologne (3:1), the first team from East Westphalia had already won away at 1. FC Cologne.
Fortuna coach Matthias Mink had already complained before the regional league game that the two games had not been scheduled at the same time and that it was therefore possible to release players from the Paderborn professional squad: “Because of this, I don’t really know who will be facing us on Saturday. On the part of the association, this is a bizarre story. Normally, the U-teams should always play at the same time as the professionals. For us, this is once again not the case. There are clear criteria, so I don’t understand it. It’s very annoying.”
At the press conference following the game, Mink reiterated this criticism: “The colleague who scored the 2-1 (Mika Baur, editor’s note), was still sitting on the bench yesterday in the course of this league game (against 1. FC Cologne, editor’s note), has a market value of 1.5 million. That is the result of the fact that in the course of league operations, the same standards are not applied and the U23 teams do not always play at the same time as the professionals. If we had played last night, Baur would not have been on the field.”
However, Mink also emphasized: “This is not a criticism of the second teams, but there is a clear guideline from the association that the second teams should in principle play at the same time as the professional teams. If you apply different standards match day after match day and don’t treat them equally, then you end up with postponements like this, but that has nothing to do with Mika Baur or Anton Bäuerle, who were already in Cologne and should inevitably play football, because that is part of the training of these U-teams.”
Guest coach Daniel Brinkmann showed understanding for Mink’s statements, but also put them into perspective from his point of view: “I can understand that to a certain extent, but I would also like to emphasize that we missed Adrian Bravo Sanchez, who was our top scorer this year and last year.” In fact, 30-year-old Bravo Sanchez had celebrated his professional debut against FC on the previous day and was therefore not fielded against Fortuna.
Brinkmann also emphasized that the affected players Mika Baur and Anton Bäuerle are not “ready players”. “None of our players has played where I would say, this is a seasoned second division player. Mika Baur is on his way there, Anton Bäuerle played the first 15 minutes against Kaiserslautern last week. You can’t forget that we’re talking about very young players.”
Matthias Mink is likely to be dealing with this topic again next week when his team has to play against the U23 team of Fortuna Düsseldorf. The Düsseldorf professional team will have already played against Preußen Münster, so the players who do not play there can also play in the U23 team.