Darmstadt striker Isac Lidberg was missing from the league match at Schalke. And what will happen on Wednesday in the DFB Cup?
When it came to assessing Schalke 04’s 1-0 win over Darmstadt 98 last Friday, the name of Isac Lidberg always came up.
The striker was absent from the second division game due to illness, and that was probably one reason why the South Hessians’ offense was surprisingly harmless, although it is also true that Schalke’s defensive players put in a convincing performance.
When the Royal Blues meet Darmstadt again on Wednesday, this time in the DFB Cup (8:45 p.m./Sky), Nikola Katic’s defense will have to be prepared for Lidberg’s return. The 27-year-old Swede missed the league match due to illness but is now fit again.
“He then took two days off and trained individually. Now he’s fine again. As things stand, I expect him to be in the starting lineup on Wednesday,” SVD coach Florian Kohfeldt announced on Tuesday.
Darmstadt striker Lidberg particularly enjoys scoring against Schalke Lidberg’s statistics so far this season show just how dangerous he is: In nine appearances, he has scored eight goals and provided one assist. And the former international striker clearly particularly enjoys scoring against Schalke: last season, he scored a hat-trick in the first leg (3-5 from S04’s perspective) and added a brace in the return leg (0-2). In addition to Lidberg, Darmstadt is expecting another key player to return on Wednesday: midfielder Paul Klefisch is back after a month-long break and is “an option—even for the starting lineup,” as Kohfeldt emphasized. With Lidberg’s likely return, the dynamics of Darmstadt’s attacking play are likely to change. “It’s still obvious that we haven’t created enough chances for our standards,” Kohfeldt said, looking ahead to Friday evening. “Maybe that had something to do with Isac’s absence, but not only that. It had more to do with the way we move forward. And we have to work on that. That’s our main focus for Wednesday’s game, without changing anything else.”
The 43-year-old expects Schalke to be aggressive and active on Wednesday. “They hardly differ between home and away games. We, on the other hand, have to be more determined with the ball. We have to be more confident in playing into the spaces we want to play into. We had a few breakthroughs at Schalke. But then we have to be confident enough to push forward and dominate the game ourselves.” Schalke coach Miron Muslic described the match in advance as a “fifty-fifty game.” His Darmstadt counterpart echoed this sentiment: “Two traditional German clubs are facing each other in a 50-50 game. The league match already showed that. So there are plenty of ingredients for a cool cup night.”