One day before the VfB squad head off to St. Gallen for their training camp, they took on amateur side TSG Backnang in a friendly in honour of TSG’s centenary year. New arrivals Coulibaly, who started the match, and Awoudja, who came on in the second half, both got their first pre-season minutes under their belt.
The third signing of this week, Sasa Kalajdzic, only put pen to paper his contract on Friday and was therefore not involved. Gregor Kobel, Fabian Bredlow, Holger Badstuber, Gonzalo Castro, Daniel Didavi, Mario Gomez, Philipp Klement and David Kopacz also played no part in Backnang. VfB won thanks to goals from Santiago Ascacibar (16’), Nicolas Gonzalez (57’) and Awoudja (76’)
VfB head coach Tim Walter:
“Considering how hard we’ve been working in training this week and how much that’s taken out of us, the performance was OK today. We had a lot of young players on the pitch who will certainly get more comfortable with their new environment over the coming weeks.”
First half line-up:
13 Jens Grahl – 2 Emiliano Insua, 4 Marc Oliver Kempf, 6 Santiago Ascacibar, 7 Tanguy Coulibaly, 17 Erik Thommy, 18 Hamadi Al Ghaddidioui, 26 Antonis Aidonis, 30 Roberto Massimo, 31 Mateo Klimowicz, 36 Luca Mack
Second half line-up:
40 Sebastian Hornung – 2 Emiliano Insua, 15 Pascal Stenzel, 16 Atakan Karazor, 22 Nicolas Gonzalez, 25 Leon Dajaku, 31 Mateo Klimowicz, 35 Marcin Kaminski, 36 Luca Mack, 37 Maxime Awoudja, 38 David Grözinger
Goals
1-0 Santiago Ascacibar (16'), 2-0 Nicolas Gonzalez (57'), 3-0 Maxime Awoudja (76')