VfB Stuttgart won their third friendly ahead of the forthcoming Bundesliga season. In a hard-fought match, Zürich took the lead in the 28th minute through Wilfried Gnonto and managed to keep their noses in front up until half-time.
Stuttgart showed their character after the break, turning things around though Naouirou Ahamada (58', 71') and Darko Churlinov (69') to take a 3-1 lead, although Cheick Conde reduced the deficit shortly before the end (88').
"We could see today that one or two players still aren’t as comfortable on the ball as they’d like to be,” said VfB sporting director Sven Mislintat. "I was a lot more pleased with the second half than I was with the first. Before the break, it was a potential starting line-up that was playing and then after half-time it was those challenging for a spot. And what I really liked today was how the lads in the second half showed us that they should have been the ones playing in the first half as well."
VfB line-up
First-half
1 Florian Müller
2 Waldemar Anton
3 Wataru Endo (C)
5 Konstantinos Mavropanos
9 Sasa Kalajdzic
10 Tiago Tomás
14 Silas
15 Pascal Stenzel
21 Hiroki Ito
22 Chris Führich
23 Orel Mangala
Second-half
1 Florian Müller
6 Clinton Mola
7 Tanguy Coulibaly
8 Enzo Millot
17 Darko Churlinov
25 Lilian Egloff
27 Alou Kuol
28 Nikolas Nartey
32 Naouirou Ahamada
37 Antonis Aidonis
39 Thomas Kastanaras
Goals
0-1 Wilfried Gnonto (28'), 1-1 Naouirou Ahamada (58'), 2-1 Darko Churlinov (69'), 3-1 Naouirou Ahamada (71'), 3-2 Cheick Conde (88')
