Probably the longest break in the history of Regionalliga football will come to an end when play gets under way at Aachen's Tivoli Stadion this weekend. By the time the 2020/21 season kicks off on Saturday (14:00 CET), it will have been exactly 182 days since the Borussia Dortmund U19s' last competitive game in March.

Enrico Maaßen was there that day in March and he will be there in September too. But the 36-year-old was in the other dugout when the BVB U23s faced SV Rödinghausen in that last competitive match. Maaßen has been a Black & Yellow since the summer, however. "We're delighted to get going again after six months. I hope that we can make a positive start to the season," said Maaßen. Team manager Ingo Preuß can't wait for the action to kick off either and went even further: "If we get a win in Aachen, then it'll have been the most superb pre-season in the world!"

A quick reminder: BVB played various friendly fixtures and held a training camp in Kirchberg, Tyrol as part of their pre-season preparations. In addition to the hard yards put in on the pitch, a significant focus was placed on team-building too. There were 15 new arrivals to integrate into the squad and merge with the existing players to form a team. Maaßen confirmed several days ago that those efforts were successful. "The atmosphere in and around the team is very good." Despite the good pre-season, Ingo Preuß believes there is one negative. "At the moment I think everything is positive except for the injury to Moritz Broschinski. He was our first signing and for me a very, very important one too. He will unfortunately be out of action for months but we hope he'll be fit again relatively soon. The operation went well." That aside, Preuß is in a positive mood about the upcoming Regionalliga season. "If we can carry our sense of enjoyment, desire to work hard and willingness to fight for each other into the season, I'll have a lot of fun."

The upcoming opponents will be without one of their biggest strengths on Saturday. The numerous Alemannia supporters will not be able to be in the stadium in person to drive their team forward, and yet the team from the Rhineland still represent a first big challenge. "Alemannia are physically very strong. They are unpleasant to play against," said coach Maaßen. "I believe that they'll be compact and aggressive off the ball and want to try to catch us by surprise with one or two attacks. They rely a lot on counter-attacks, so it will be a very intense task for us." Nonetheless, the tactician has great faith in his team and has been highly impressed by the players in pre-season. What is he expecting from the lads on Saturday? "For us to put in exactly the kind of performance that we did in pre-season. We are very well organised when we don't have the ball and focused when we do have it. I expect us to create a lot of opportunities and then of course to score some goals too," Maaßen declared.
Timo Lammert