Borussia Dortmund’s U23s will be away to VfL Osnabrück in their final game of the 3. Liga season on Saturday (13:30 CET).

While the U23s have already achieved their season objective by staying up, VfL Osnabrück are still targeting a return to the 2. Bundesliga. The Lower Saxony outfit hold all the trump cards in their hands. VfL only occupy third position in the table ahead of the final day, which would secure them a place in the relegation/promotion play-off against the third-bottom team in the second tier. But given that second-placed SC Freiburg II are not eligible for promotion as the reserve team of a Bundesliga club, VfL would take their place and gain automatic promotion to the second tier.

Osnabrück are competing for promotion with SV Wehen Wiesbaden, who are level on points, as well as their rivals from Saarbrücken und Dresden, who both have a point fewer. In light of the fact that goal difference could ultimately prove to be decisive, the opposition are expected to take an attacking approach.

A special atmosphere is awaiting the Black & Yellows at a sold-out Stadion an der Bremer Brücke, which is celebrating its 90th birthday this week. “The fans will be a force to be reckoned with,” expects head coach Jan Zimmermann. “It will be a really good test for one or two players.”

Turning his attentions to the narrow 1-0 victory at home to Bayreuth, the bottom club in the table, last weekend, Zimmermann announced: “We’ll show a different side to ourselves compared to the Bayreuth game. There you could see that we didn't manage to keep the concentration and tension levels at 100%. That will and must be different on Saturday.”

BVB will be without the duo of Abdoulaye Kamara und Ole Pohlmann in Osnabrück. Kamara sustained a knee injury, while Pohlmann underwent an operation following a broken hand.

The focus among BVB fans is likely to be on the Bundesliga title race on Saturday, which is why the scale of the Black & Yellow support at the Bremer Brücke on Saturday is likely to be negligible. It’s a bit of a shame that we won’t have the support that we did previously in one or two away games. But it’s understandable that every Dortmund fan will be in and around Signal Iduna Park on Saturday,” Zimmermann explained.

After the match, the U23s will spend the evening together as a team. “We have one or two players who are leaving us. We want to mark that appropriately.” The players will then go on their summer holidays on Sunday and will commence preparations for next season on 26 June.