First game, new pitch, first win. VfL Bochum’s U19s got off to a good start in their preparations.

VfL Bochum’s U19s have been preparing for the new season in the U19 Bundesliga West for a few days now.

In the first test on Wednesday against SV Lippstadt, a new pitch was inaugurated. VfL Bochum’s talent centre has been given a new artificial pitch. After almost four months of construction, the grass pitch 3 of the junior training centre was replaced by a new artificial turf with cork infill.

The first test for the U10s was immediately successful. They won 4:1 against the talents of SV Lippstadt. Adam Tolba, Akram-Dine Mohamadou, Divine Boafo and Cajetan Lenz scored for coach Heiko Butscher’s team. For SV Lippstadt, Shayan Sadeghi equalised the score at 1-1.

After the win, Butscher summed up: “I’m never satisfied anyway. We saw certain things that we can do quite well. But we also saw things that need to be improved. But that’s what these games are for. We are on the third day of preparation. We have a completely new team. Not everything can work out yet, but we also have high expectations of ourselves.”

What the VfL coach liked was the approach of the opponent, who by no means only wanted to stonewall. Butscher: “In terms of play, they were a good opponent, I’m always happy when opponents want to play football. But you also have to say that they conceded three or four goals as a result. If we had been more efficient, we could have scored even more. We had so many ball recoveries in the final third. If we were already where we want to be at the end of the preparation, then we could score four or five more goals.”

Things get underway for the VfL talents in the U19 Bundesliga on Sunday (13 August, 11am) at Alemannia Aachen. Butscher’s team then plays its first home game a week later against Bayer Leverkusen (Saturday, 19 August, 11 a.m.). cb / gp