Flexibility our trump card in the Hanseatic city

Some fans were probably a little surprised after an hour when head coach Pellegrino Matarazzo made a double substitution immediately after Andrej Kramarić’s goal in the 60th minute had given TSG a 2-1 lead. Centre-back Kevin Vogt and central midfielder Grischa Prömel left the field of play, with a winger and a centre-forward coming on to replace them in Julian Justvan and Ihlas Bebou. The two substitutes triggered a massive reshuffle on the pitch: Pavel Kadeřábek moved into the back-three, Kramarić took Prömel’s position and Marius Bülter went from the left wing to the centre of the TSG attack. Bebou and Justvan were brought on to give Hoffenheim fresh impetus down the wings – and they did just that.

Bebou set up Bülter to make it 3-1 on 70 minutes, and shortly afterwards, Justvan himself found the net in the 76th minute. Bebou was again involved in the build-up. So two debutants wrapped up the game with their first goals for TSG, and the changes bore fruit. Wout Weghorst, who, like Attila Szalai, celebrated his first competitive appearance in a TSG shirt, was also involved in one of the goals, bagging the assist for Justvan’s goal.

Meanwhile, Andrej Kramarić was making history: with his two goals, the Croatian became TSG’s top scorer in the DFB-Pokal in the history of the club. The 32-year-old now has ten goals in the competition – one more than Roberto Firmino and Sven Schipplock.

Hoffenheim got their campaign off to a winning start, and will be hoping for a similarly successful start to the Bundesliga season against SC Freiburg on Saturday (15:30 CET, live updates on tsg-hoffenheim.de).