Gladbach warm up for Bayern with cup win over Kaiserslautern

Kaiserslautern 0-1 Borussia Mönchengladbach
(Stindl '11)
Fritz-Walter-Stadion, Kaiserslautern

Borussia Mönchengladbach wrapped up their pre-season preparations with a 1-0 victory away at Kaiserslautern in the first round of the German Cup on Monday night, as they look ahead to Friday's Bundesliga opener against Bayern Munich.

Captain Lars Stindl scored the only goal of the game at the Fritz-Walter-Stadion on the famous Betzenberg hill, a first half header from a Patrick Herrmann cross, to hand new head coach Adi Hütter a victory in his first competitive game in charge of the Foals.

"It was a well worked goal because we're aiming to get extra bodies in the box like that," said Hütter. "But it was equally important to me that we kept a clean sheet."

Adi Hütter: 'Price tags don't interest me'

Having been knocked out of the cup in the second round in two of the past three years, a good cup run will go down well with Gladbach fans. But Hütter has bigger priorities in his first season at Borussia Park: returning the Foals to European competition.

Gladbach may not have fallen anywhere near as low as former German champions Kaiserslautern, now in the third division, but last season's eighth-place Bundesliga finish was their lowest since 2018 and only the third time they've finished outside the top five since 2015.

Last season ended in acrimony and disappointment as former coach Marco Rose announced his departure to Borussia Dortmund midway through the campaign, with sporting director Max Eberl also coming in for criticism. But once Dortmund had triggered Rose's €5m release clause, there was nothing Eberl could realistically do, and he in turn put that money towards triggering Hütter's €7.5m release clause at Eintracht Frankfurt.

"The price tags don't interest me," Hütter told Kicker this week, having said previously in Sportbild: "Football is now dictated by supply and demand. If you work well, you attract the attention of other clubs, both players and coaches. And I never promised Eintracht that I would stay."

Joe Scally 'very promising'

Like most top Bundesliga clubs, Gladbach's pre-season progress has been dictated by the rate at which players have returned from international duty, and in what physical state. Forwards Lilian Thuram, Breel Embolo and Jonas Hofmann all missed the trip to Kaiserslautern through injury, the latter having suffered from COVID-19, too.

Alassane Plea only managed the final twenty minutes while Ramy Bensebaini is also still out and was ably replaced at left-back by American teenager Joe Scally. The 18-year-old joined Gladbach from New York City in January and is a right-back by trade, but he's already made a positive impact on Hütter.

"I am relieved when I see how he's able to deputize for Ramy," he told Kicker magazine last week. "He's a very promising player who is very flexible, and he's also physically well developed for his age."

With the arrivals of Hannes Wolf (€9.5m from RB Leipzig) and the highly rated Luca Netz (also 18 years old, €4m from Hertha Berlin), Scally isn't the only new youngster at the club, complimenting a squad which sporting director Eberl has just about managed to keep together – with two likely exceptions.

Possible departures: Zakaria and Ginter 

Eberl has already confirmed that Gladbach have received offers for the classy Swiss midfielder Denis Zakaria, with Roma and Napoli reported to be leading the chase, while German international Matthias Ginter could also be on the way out.

The 27-year-old, who started in all four of Germany's games at Euro 2020, has a contract until 2022 and would like to extend it, but Eberl has made it clear that Gladbach can't afford to offer him improved terms after seeing turnover fall by €50 million due to the pandemic.

A shrewd economic operator, Eberl would rather sell Ginter now than see him leave for free next summer – but even he might struggle to find a club willing to pay upwards of €20m for the €30m-rated centerback, with Sportbild reporting that interest from Atletico Madrid, Real Madrid and Barcelona isn't as great as first thought.

Losing Ginter would be an early blow to Hütter. The Austrian has a reputation as an offensive coach from his successful spells at Red Bull Salzburg (Austrian champions 2015), Young Boys Bern (Swiss champions 2018) and Eintracht Frankfurt (Europa League semifinalists 2019), but says his first priority at Gladbach is to fix a leaky defense.

Only Cologne and relegated Werder Bremen and Schalke conceded more than Gladbach's 56 league goals last season. "A good defense is the key to success," Hütter told Kicker. "You don't start building a house from the first floor; you start with the foundations."

Those foundations were in place against Kaiserslautern in the cup on Monday night, but Hütter knows they will be subjected to much greater pressure against Bayern Munich on Friday, the next stage of his Gladbach rebuild.