Sports Mole previews Tuesday’s friendly clash between Hoffenheim and Norwich City, including predictions, team news and possible lineups.
Hoffenheim and Norwich City step up their preparations for the upcoming campaign with a friendly encounter at the Koasastadion St. Johann in Tirol on Tuesday.
The teams head into this one off the back of contrasting results as Hoffenheim picked up a routine win last time out, while their English counterparts were beaten for the second time in three matches.
Match preview
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Hoffenheim eased past the challenge of lower league side Elversberg courtesy of a 3-1 win in Wednesday’s meeting at Sportanlage Hauselgrund.
Pellegrino Matarazzo‘s men took the lead after just 15 minutes through Robin Fellhauer‘s own goal and doubled their advantage via a Simon Mukuta strike before Florian Le Joncour pulled one back, only for Max Moerstedt to put the result beyond doubt.
Consequently, Die Kraichgauer have now won each of their last four matches since a 1-1 stalemate against RB Leipzig back in early May.
More impressively, the Bundesliga outfit have scored a whopping 20 goals in that time and will be looking to wreck further havoc at the top end of the pitch.
Tuesday’s clash against Norwich is the first of three straight matches against English opponents for Hoffenheim with games against Ipswich Town and Fulham to follow.
Norwich fell to a narrow 1-0 defeat against Magdeburg when the teams locked horns at Carrow Road on Friday evening.
Johannes Thorup‘s men fell behind to Baris Arik‘s effort in the 17th minute and that was enough to put them to the sword despite being in the ascendancy for large spells of the game.
As a result, The Canaries have won just one of their last nine matches across all competitions either side of a humiliating 4-0 defeat to Leeds in the Championship playoffs semi-final.
With the start of their league campaign barely two weeks away, Norwich will be keen to return to winning ways in their penultimate warm-up fixture after which they round off pre season against St. Pauli.
Hoffenheim friendly form:
Hoffenheim form (all competitions):
Norwich City friendly form:
Norwich City form (all competitions):
Team News
Eighteen-year-old Max Moerstedt has scored in consecutive games for Hoffenheim and is one to keep an eye on here.
Andrej Kramaric could finally return to action for his side here having not featured since representing Croatia at the European Championships.
Norwich’s Liam Gibbs made his second straight substitute appearance since returning from a muscle problem and will be pushing for a start here.
Defender Lucien Mahovo still awaits his first outing for his employers since joining from Notts County three weeks ago.
Hoffenheim possible starting lineup:
Philipp; Kaderabek, Drexler, Akpoguma; Tohumcu, Geiger, Promel, Stach, Bulter; Bischof, Bebou
Norwich City possible starting lineup:
Long; Stacey, Fisher, Hanley, Sorensen; McLean, Nunez; Sara, Rowe, Sainz; Kamara
We say: Hoffenheim 3-1 Norwich City
Hoffenheim are firing on all cylinders at the moment and will be confident of getting the job done here. We are backing the German side to cruise to a routine win at the end of the 90 minutes here.
For data analysis of the most likely results, scorelines and more for this match please click here.