Han-Joachim Watzke said on Wednesday before the first leg: “you can’t rate Wolfsberg any worse than VFL Bochum.” However in the end WAC is not supposed to be more than the first hurdle in a long competition: “we want to continue to leave our mark in Europe.”

How important is the competition for the club?
We want to continue to leave our mark in Europe. So that means that the Europa League is very important to us. You also have some big name teams in this competition, as we saw last season when VFL Wolfsburg played against Inter Milan. We have had a very good training camp and pre-season. However that is no reason for us to start being euphoric.

What do you know about Wolfsberg AC?
I know that you cannot underestimate this team in any way. Austrian football has made a huge step forward in the past few years, which you can see from the national team and their results in the EURO qualifiers. The stadium is sold out. Wolfsberg is strong in defense and they will try to lure us. We should not let them lure us.

What kind of a match do you expect?
It won’t be as easy as people might think. We lost in Bochum two weeks ago and Wolfsberg is certainly not a worse side than VFL. We have to give a good performance. The last friendly matches have given me the feeling that we will do this tomorrow evening.

How much do the qualification rounds influence the preparations for the season?
The Head Coach and the team have adapted to it. We have been preparing for the season for four weeks now. We’re not quite done yet, but we would have played a pre-season friendly today or tomorrow anyway.

The fact that Kevin Groβkreutz was not called up into the squad caused some uproar within the media…
I can’t understand it. We had to name a squad for two games, we had 28 players in the squad, but we could only name 25 players. So it is plainly obvious that those players who weren’t named were not completely fit yet. Kevin was out injured for months. He only just returned to training with the team a few days ago. Boris Rupert