It's back for another year! The Telekom Cup is a pre-season tournament held in Germany and has four Bundesliga teams as participants. The Imtech Arena, Hamburg, is the stage for this year's event; with Hamburger SV, Borussia Monchengladbach, VfL Wolfsburg and Bundesliga Champions Bayern Munich competing, we should be in for a great weekend of football.
The format differs to a 'normal' tournament. Games will last 60 minutes, split into 30 minute halves. If a match is drawn after the given hour, it will be decided straight after by a penalty shootout, with no extra time involved. The Saturday ties will consist of two 'semi finals' with the final and a 3rd place play off taking place on Sunday. VfL Wolfsburg will play Hamburg, while a re-run of the 2013 final is taking place afterwards, with Borussia Monchengladbach facing holders Bayern Munich. The winners of each game will face each other in the final, with the losers battling it out beforehand for 3rd place.
The sides will be looking to get some good game time in a highly competitive situation, in which all four teams will be looking to lift the trophy at the end of the weekend.
Pep Guardiola will be looking to guide his Bayern Munich side to another superb season both domestically and on the European stage. He'll want to win this weekend, but will the Bavarians will be missing the major of their World Cup contingent, due to them being away on holidays following the World Cup. However: David Alaba, Holger Badstuber, Franck Ribery and Robert Lewandowski are all expected to feature. “It’s a welcome test. We’re missing a couple of players but we’ll still try to win our games,” said Alaba. Claudio Pizarro is also expected to feature after his calf problems, he spoke about the release of Bayern's new away kit, “The kit’s really good. I hope we win the cup wearing it.”
After a quite miserable season, Hamburg will be looking to turn themselves around and start this year as they mean to go on. After just scrapping a relegation play-off win, Rafael van der Vaart will be hoping his form improves. Despite missing out on Hiroshi Kiyotake and selling Hakan Cahlanoglu, the star-man of last term, Pierre-Michel Lasogga, made his loan permanent and will be welcomed back with open arms.
VfL Wolfsburg, on the other hand, had an excellent 8 months by clinching 5th and a Europa League spot. After threatening to take 4th place off of Schalke for large periods of the season, the additions of Sebastian Jung and Aaron Hunt will likely push them even closer. They will be tough to beat, that much is for sure. However, it is unsure whether players such as Luiz Gustavo and Kevin de Bruyne will play; it's unlikely to say the least.
Gladbach have certainly 'returned' to the heights that they used to be at in recent years and have pulled together an impressive squad. After losing last time out and being demolished 5-1 in the final against Bayern, they will be looking to make up for their errors by going one better than reaching the final. Thorgan Hazard has signed on for the season from Chelsea and he could play this weekend. Andre Hahn and Ibrahima Traore may also feature, along with Fabian Johnson.
