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Another clean sheet in a sixth straight win
As expected, it was a tough friendly for TSG, who are currently in pre-season training. Hoffenheim were the dominant team before half time and Kevin Volland had two good chances in the first four minutes. The ball flew over the crossbar for the first, before FCZ's goalkeeper Favre saved the next.
A private battle developed in the following moments that Favre had complete control over. He managed to deal with two more good shots from Volland and also kept out Sebastian Rudy's shot from 24 yards.
Szalai scores but is offside
Favre had no chance in a one-on-one with Adam Szalai, but despite the Hungarian striker tucking the ball away in the 26th minute, his strike was ruled out for offside. He was put through after Ermin Bicakcic won a header from a corner.
Zurich had just the one big chance and it came right before half time. With only one minute to spare, Jens Grahl did well to take the ball right off Maurice Brenner's feet after he had been put in by Kleiber's pass.
Eight changes
Markus Gisdol made substantial changes at the interval, with Weippert, Hamad, Modeste, Salihovic, Schipplock, Vestergaard and Abraham all coming on. However, the match didn't change much. TSG controlled the play and worked themselves some more goalscoring opportunities. The best of them came for Sven Schipplock in the 66th minute, but he couldn't get his foot onto Salihovic's ball.
Anthony Modeste and Sejad Salihovic had good chances, with the latter just unable to convert a free kick from a free kick in the 76th minute. It took until the 89th minute before Hoffenheim could finally find the breakthrough. A clever pass from Sven Schipplock set up Grischa Prömel, who was able to grab a late winner for Hoffenheim.
Markus Gisdol went over the victory after the final whistle: “We're not looking at building runs necessarily. The goal is to gain stability. That's something the team achieved today. We won't look into the results from the pre-season too much, but it was a good friendly against motivated and fresh opponents. The team are heading in a good direction, even though precision was lacking at times today.”
