Thorup: “We feel well prepared”
A sell-out at home against Dortmund
FC Augsburg are set to take on fifth-placed Borussia Dortmund at a sold-out WWK ARENA in their last home game of the year. Jess Thorup’s side have moved on from the recent 2-0 defeat in Bremen.
“It was clear that we couldn’t stay unbeaten forever, even though I was naturally hoping that we would,” said Thorup, looking back on the most recent away game in Bremen. FCA’s head coach has used the time this week to conduct lots of individual conversations with the players and to analyse the performance in detail. Even though the six-game unbeaten run has come to an end, Thorup is looking very positively at the home game: “We want to put the opposition under pressure and take the game to them with our fans behind us.”
Dortmund, who have fallen to fifth following their 3-2 defeat in Leipzig, have continued to put in mixed performances recently, picking up a point against Paris Saint-Germain (1-1) in the Champions League on Wednesday. “We can’t forget the team we’re talking about here. They have lots of individual quality, but we’ve worked hard during the week and feel well prepared,” Thorup explained.
Beljo and Iago could miss out
Thorup had to make do with a smaller squad in training at the beginning of the week, since Dion Beljo, Sven Michel and Iago were all out of action due to muscle problems. However, Michel is back in team training and we’ll have to wait and see whether Beljo and Iago, who both completed individual training sessions, will feature in the squad to face Dortmund.
FCA will have the full support of a home crowd in their final match of the calendar year. The WWK ARENA is completely sold out, continuing the positive trend in terms of enthusiasm of recent weeks. “I’m really pleased about that – it’s great,” said Thorup, adding: “We’ll give everything to treat our home fans to a home win as an early Christmas present.”
