3.21 Stuttgarter Kickers(2-5-6, 7th) vs. FC Schweinfurt 05(3-4-6, 6th)
A miserable year for Schweinfurt comes to an end. Havelse's draw clinched the final spot for them as Aachen lost, while we can still finish as high as 5th if we win here in our finale and Wattenscheid loses. Anything but a victory and it's 7th for us. Tiel and Hirsch will both start and likely get yanked early in what will be their final matches as Kickers, to ensure they can fetch a decent price.
On the matchup, they have three forwards but one is a L3 nutmeg who can't shoot, neither of the others have skills we care about. Schulte on for the fatigued Ortag. He's displaying the problem with old players here; they just don't recover energy as quickly. One of the most giving teams in the league, they are playing a five-wide high defensive line with two spaced CDs in it. Our only good chance at beating that is with Karger rainbow-feinting past one of them, but that can't happen after a kickoff and our counterattacking is weak. I wouldn't be shocked to see a scoreless match here.
They easily block
Karger's early long-range try, long-pass it into the box, and
Komolong stands there like the house by the side of the road as
Fendler blasts a shot easily past him. We could not possibly have started off any worse. Then another forward dribbles through our defense and gets them a corner, then gets two point-blank shots off that as the first one bounces right back to him. Komolong trying to redeem himself with three saves in the final minutes of the half ... or just pad his stats to stay on top of the honors for year-end?
Munster and
Pitzen come on for Tiel and Hirsch, who get some polite applause for both disgusted family members who are watching this. Then we get our break as they foul Karger, who was holding the ball to try and provoke something. We take the subtle approach and have try to feint his way into the box, but that backfires. Nothing else gave us an even or better chance of scoring. Odds-wise it was as good as anything we had and probably the best option, but it didn't work. A last-ditch try from distance by
Jedin didn't get the job done either.
FC Schweinfurt 05 1, Stuttgarter Kickers 0
Well that kind of sucked. Schweinfurt's been one of those clubs all year that I think should be better than they are, and I can't figure out how to beat them even though everybody else seems to know how to do it.
** Levels - Komolong(17)
*** Fetscher
** Komolong
* Jager
Tiel gets his FW upgrade in his final match, which means he'll be worth a bit more.
** Balance - 15.4k(+75)
As we head towards the end-season stuff,
Doringer gets his level-2 skill finished off and Hirsch his only level-1 ability. For our sweeper, that puts him over the 200k mark in value(queue greed dollar-signs). Hirsch only increased by a few thousand ... it seems nothing helps you much when you are 33.
7th place for the second year in a row.
VfB Stuttgart, a real club from our home city that doesn't rent/borrow/steal a small part of a public park for their matches, takes home the EFA trophy. Some irrelevant group from Turkey wins the European Cup. Spain still gets the top marks for this year but we're a close second and make up more ground on England. The pack behind condenses well behind us, as Portugal and Turkey notably have their best seasons to date.
It was actually a worse year than last by final position; same in the league and one round earlier in the Cup.
Look at all those guys though! Note that we only get credit for Karger's goals with us, and of course Komolong is the one really bringing home the bacon as the top save guy for the second year in a row.
Trans Ether seems the obvious choice here.